“Redesigning Civilization: Where Our Culture Went Wrong and How Permaculture Can Help”

It's no secret that our society has become unsustainable. Modern agriculture, industry and finance all extract more than they give back, and the Earth is starting to show the strain. How did we get in this mess? And, more importantly, what can we do to help our culture get back on track? The ecological design approach known as permaculture offers powerful tools for the design of regenerative, fair ways to provide food, energy, livelihood, and other needs while letting humans share the planet with the rest of nature. This presentation will give you insight into why our culture has become fundamentally unsustainable, and offers ecologically-based solutions that can help create a just and sustainable society.

Toby Hemenway is the author of Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, which for the last seven years has been the best-selling permaculture book in the world. He has been an adjunct professor at Portland State University, Scholar-in-Residence at Pacific University, and is currently a field director at the Permaculture Institute (USA). Toby has presented lectures and workshops at major sustainability conferences such as Bioneers, SolFest, and EcoFarm, and at Duke University, Tufts University, University of Minnesota, University of Delaware and many other educational venues. Toby and his wife, Kiel, spent ten years creating a rural permaculture site in southern Oregon. He was the editor of Permaculture Activist, a journal of ecological design and sustainable culture, from 1999 to 2004. He moved to Portland, Oregon in 2004, and after six years of developing urban sustainability resources there, Toby and his wife now divide their time between Sebastopol, California and western Montana.

Admission is $15 at the door.

For more information, email info@transitionsarasota.org or call (941) 408-3374.

Co-sponsored by the Social Justice Committee of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Sarasota.