Although Permaculture is about design, ..

“..it is also about values and ethics, and above all about a sense of personal responsibility for earth care…

The sad reality is that we are in danger of perishing from our own stupidity and lack of personal responsibility to life. If we become extinct because of factors beyond our control, then we can at least die with pride in ourselves, but to create a mess in which we perish by our own inaction makes nonsense of our claims to consciousness and morality.

There is too much contemporary evidence of ecological disaster which appals me, and it should frighten you, too. Our consumptive lifestyle has led us to the very brink of annihilation. We have expanded our right to live on the earth to an entitlement to conquer the earth, yet “conquerors” of nature always lose. To accumulate wealth, power, or land beyond one’s needs in a limited world is to be truly immoral, be it as an individual, an institution, or a nation-state.

What we have done, we can undo. There is no longer time to waste nor any need to accumulate more evidence of disasters; the time for action is here. I deeply believe that people are the only critical resource needed by people. We, ourselves, if we organize our talents, are sufficient to each other. What is more, we will either survive together, or none of us will survive. To fight between ourselves is as stupid and wasteful as it is to fight during times of natural disasters, when everyone’s cooperation is vital.

A person of courage today is a person of peace. The courage we need is to refuse authority and to accept only personally responsible decisions. Like war, growth at any cost is an outmoded and discredited concept. It isour lives that are being laid to waste. What is worse, it is our children’s world which is being destroyed. It is therefore our only possible decision to withhold all support for destructive systems and to cease to invest our lives in our own annihilation.”

Bill Mollison