How then, do we move backwards? How does a society, with most of the people having no clue of future events, move from being dependent on a vast and intertwined network of goods and services produced by the indigenous people of whereever, to a local resource and renewable energy based society, and do so in the timeframe available (20-30 years using the most liberal extimates, 10-20 with resonable estimates, 5-10 with worst case scenarios), all the while prices on everything increasing, world politics getting more militaristic, governments continuously reducing civil liberties, shortages of goods on the market and weather patterns resembling bad Hollywood movies?
Joined: May 24, 2004 Posts: 1913 Location: Richland Center, Wisconsin
Posted: Thu Nov 18, 2004 2:18 pm Post subject: [David Blume]
Biography
David Blume is the Founder and Director of the International Institute for Ecological Agriculture (IIEA).
Dave Blume started his ecological training at a young age. He and his father organically grew almost all the food their family ate. This wouldn't be unusual out in a rural setting nowadays, but they did this on a city lot in San Francisco in the mid-sixties!
Dave taught his first ecology class in 1970. He majored in Ecological Biology and Biosystematics at San Francisco State University while doing volunteer fieldwork with a number of non-profits like the Point Reyes Bird Observatory. He put himself through school by teaching backpacking and wildlife biology through open universities during the summers.
In 1978, he was employed by NASA to work on an experimental solar self-sufficient energy, sewage treatment, desalinization plant in the Virgin Islands. After solving many previously persistent problems in this system, he went to work for the Mother Earth News Eco Village in North Carolina where he worked in a team using alternative building techniques. There he constructed a number of unique structures, like a cordwood half dome, that was used as the back half of a greenhouse. He also worked extensively with their alternative energy projects.
When the energy crisis of 1978-9 struck, Dave started the American Homegrown Fuel Co. Inc. It was an educational organization teaching farmers and others how to produce and use low cost alcohol fuel at home or on the farm. Alcohol, a renewable and virtually pollution-free fuel, is used in place of gasoline in automobile engines. AHGF became a small corporation with 15 employees. Dave taught 180 workshops to 7,000 people over a two year period while appearing over 750 times in print, radio and television.
PBS then asked Dave to put his workshop on television. He spent two years working with PBS to make the 10 part series Alcohol as Fuel, which aired in 1983. To accompany the series he wrote the comprehensive manual on the subject, Alcohol Can Be A Gas! The book and series were so powerful that shortly after the series began to air in San Francisco oil companies threatened to pull out their funding if the series was released to the rest of the PBS network!! PBS caved in and halted the distribution of the series and book.
Dave is currently revising Alcohol Can Be A Gas!, which should be in bookstores in February 2005.
Dave went on to consult for a wide array of clients including foreign governments, farmers and food processors in turning waste into fuel, animal feed, carbon dioxide, and valuable industrial products.
Dave founded Planetary Movers Inc in 1984. This commercial venture was a financial success and a major social experiment. Within five years, Planetary Movers Inc. went from one truck and no capital to a 2 million dollar per year corporation employing 45 people. Planetary Movers won many awards as a progressive employer and pioneered practices in the 80's which 10 years later would be called "green marketing". It was the first corporation in California to advertise its donation of 10 percent of its profits to peace and environmental causes.
Dave entered the non-profit world by serving on the board of Ecosites International. Not content with a simple supporting role, he led survey teams to sensitive ecological sites, and there designed student study centers for these sites.
In 1990, Dave joined the board of Vivamos Mejor as the director of Agroecology Projects. A year of this time was spent working in Mexico. In this position he developed and implemented an integrated ecological project in Central Mexico with a cooperative of the Nauhautl people.
Upon returning from Mexico in 1992, Dave was recruited by the Committee for Sustainable Agriculture (now known as the Ecological Farming Association) for its board. For 22 years the EFA has put on the planet's best-attended and most diverse sustainable agriculture conference at Asilomar each year. Last year almost 1500 people attended this event. In addition, a dozen one-day workshops are held around the state each year. These workshops, which typically have 150 attendees, are directed at conventional farmers to show them how they can profitably go organic. The workshops are focused on one crop or a related group of crops, i.e. almonds, stone fruit, mixed vegetables, etc. He served on the board for three years.
During this time Dave's "day job" was as executive director of the 1600-acre Hidden Villa Farm and Wilderness Preserve. Using his entrepreneurial and ecological skills in systems design, he turned this organization around in one year from losing $250,000 per year on a $750,000 budget, to a million dollar balanced budget.
Dave then decided it was time to get back to working with the land in a personal way. 1n 1994, he started the community supported agriculture farm, Our Farm. Our Farm was a teaching farm, which hosted over 200 live-in interns and apprentices from all over the world, during its existence. It fed approximately 450 people through 150 shares in its CSA at its peak. Annually, it grew as much as 100,000 pounds of food per acre, without a tractor, using only hand tools, on a terraced, 35 degree slope similar to farms in China or Guatemala.
Our Farm was part of the International Institute for Ecological Agriculture (IIEA). This non-profit organization, founded by Dave in 1993, is dedicated to healing the planet while providing the human community with research, education, and the implementation of socially just, ecologically sound, resource conserving forms of agriculture - the basis of all sustainable societies. Dave Blume is currently Executive Director of the IIEA.
The IIEA has been teaching Permaculture, an ethical system of ecological land design, which incorporates the disciplines of agriculture, hydrology, energy, architecture, economics, social science, animal husbandry, forestry, etc.
His current work is wide-ranging. He begins work in Winter 2004 on a series of projects for the Government of Ghana in alternative fuels, training the country's agricultural extension agents in organic farming and designing an ecological strategy to stop the advance of the Sahara Desert into the country. Utilizing his expertise in Natural Building, he inspired the City of Urbana, Illinois to hold a conference between builders, lenders, developers, municipalities, building inspectors, architects, and engineers to bring all region stakeholders up to date on the mainstreaming of natural building technologies.
You can learn more about Dave at:
http://www.permaculture.com/who/davidblume.htm _________________ --------------------------------
| Whose reality is this anyway!? |
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(-------< Temet Nosce >-------)
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Joined: May 24, 2004 Posts: 1913 Location: Richland Center, Wisconsin
Posted: Thu Nov 18, 2004 2:24 pm Post subject: Ethanol Verification
Dave has agreed to submit a couple of statements and validations for his assertion that we can grow enough plant matter and ferment it to produce the ethanol necessary to fuel a vast majority of the passenger car fleet in the US, given some cutback in unnecessary trips. I'll try to catch up with him sometime soon.
If you have questions or comments to send his way, post them here. _________________ --------------------------------
| Whose reality is this anyway!? |
--------------------------------
(-------< Temet Nosce >-------)
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Joined: Aug 18, 2004 Posts: 694 Location: SF Bay Area, Calif
Posted: Thu Nov 18, 2004 4:04 pm Post subject: Questions for David Bloom
Question: Even if ethanol could power most of the passenger car fleet in the US, would that be a good thing?
Great quantities of energy and raw materials would still be required for car manufacture, highways, and other infrastructure. We would probably see a devastation of the soils in the attempt to supply a cheap source of fuel, given the past record of US agriculture. The major problem seems to me to be reducing demand, rather than finding yet more ways to feed our fuel addiction.
Question: How do you see permaculture helping us to live in a post-Peak Oil world? Are there any specific ideas that you think are not recognized?
Question: What five things do you think individuals should do now, in light of the possible end of cheap oil?
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