Creating Sustainable Culture

This isn't about the trendy "going green". It's called "permaculture" and the meaning is revolutionary. You don't have to be a hippy (ahem, all of you hippy haters..) and even if you think that global warming is a farce, you can't ignore the fact that we have a responsibility to protect the environment and to be conscious of the implications of our daily actions. This is more than environmental change, its social change, relational change..
Reform Judaism Magazine - Earthcare: An Ethical Culture Designed to Save Our Planet & Ourselves
This article talks with members of Kibbutz Lotan Center for Creative Ecology in the Negev of Israel who teach and practice permaculture.

"In the 1970s, Bill Mollison, an Australian ecologist,and one of his students, David Holmgren, developed the concept- a contraction of "permanent agriculture" (or sustainable agriculture) that soon turned into "permanent culture" (or sustainable culture). Permaculture is a culture, philosophy, and design method that teaches us to look at a whole system or problem, to observe how the parts relate, and to mend what needs fixing by applying time-tested substainable practices. For example, when we're about to purchase an item at the store, such as a bottle of milk, rather than think only of its immediate usuage, which is only a small part of the system, we consider the whole picture: Do I really need it, where was it produced, what materials is it made of,and always, what happens after its used, how will it be disposed of? To guide us in our decision-making, permaculture has a simple reference we call "the three ethics"
1) Care of the earth, including all living things-plants, animals, land, water and air
2) Care of people, promoting access to resources, self reliance, community responsibility and
3) Fare Share, placing limits on consumption to assure that the planets limited resources are used wisely and equitably. Now before we make our milk purchase, we can ask: "Care of the earth" questions: were the animals who gave the milk treated well? Were they fed sprayed food which might affect milk quality as well as the earth the food was grown in? Is the dairy farm local, avoiding pollution that would be generated from the milk's transport? We ask "Care of the people" questions: Does the farmer properly manage the manure so as not to pollute the local drinking water? Will the milk sale generate income for a neighborhood farm, increasing the liklihood that money will be resused efficiently within the local area? And we ask "Fare Share" questions too: Are part of the cow pastures and woodlands kept"wild" for wildlife? Can the milk bottle be reused or recycled easily or will disposing of it contribute to the landfill? Once we truly understand that we only have one planet Earth and her resources are limited, we appreciate that we are invested with the power to change Earth, for better or worse, in any decision we make. -Mike Kaplin, co creater, director and head permaculture teacher, Center for Creative Ecology