Toby Hemenway Public Lecture

THE WEATHER WILL NOT STOP US!  SEE YOU TONIGHT!  We are not taking advance registration for this event; donations will be taken at the door and seating will be general admission. 

In addition to the public lecture described below, Toby Hemenway will offer two full-day workshops in the Twin Cities on January 8 & 9.  These workshops are FILLED. Workshop details.

Find out what makes agriculture, and the industrial society that relies on it, fundamentally unsustainable, and how permaculture offers us a better way.

Pulitzer-prize winning author Jared Diamond calls it "the worst mistake in the history of the human race." Founder of permaculture Bill Mollison says it can "destroy whole landscapes." Are they describing nuclear energy? Suburbia? Coal mining? No. They are talking about agriculture. It's not just that farming in its current industrial manifestation is destroying topsoil and biodiversity. Agriculture in any form is inherently unsustainable. At its doorstep can also be laid our culture's split between people and nature, much disease and poor health, and the origins of class inequality and police states.

Toby Hemenway, author of the groundbreaking homescale permaculture primer for northern climates Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, will explore the above issues in a public lecture. According to Hemenway, new fuels and high technology are not the way out of the dilemma that agriculture has gotten us into. However, there are ways to live sustainably on the Earth without going back to the Stone Age. Many societies have lived in harmony with other species and yet have developed art, music, philosophy, medicine, and the other hallmarks of a rich culture. What many of them have in common looks a lot like what today is known as permaculture, an ecological design approach based on knowledge gained from nature.

Hemenway will be available to sign copies of his book after the lecture. We will have limited copies of the book for sale until they run out. You can guarantee yourself a copy by pre-ordering the book to be picked up at this event. Pre-order Here.

When: 7-9pm on Thursday, January 7, 2010

Where:
Theater room, St Paul Student Center building
University of Minnesota
2017 Buford Avenue, St. Paul, MN
(see map)

Cost: $10 per person suggested donation at the door

Questions? Contact Evelyn.

About Toby Hemenway A former researcher in genetics and immunology, Hemenway's current project is developing urban sustainability resources in Portland, Oregon, where he lives. He also teaches at Portland State University, is Scholar in Residence at Pacific University, and consults, teaches, and lectures on ecological design and permaculture throughout the country. He was associate editor of Permaculture Activist, a journal of ecological design and sustainable culture, from 1999 to 2004. You can find out more about him and read several of his recent articles at patternliteracy.com.

This event brought to you by Permaculture Research Institute Cold Climate.

This event is sponsored by the What's Up in Sustainable Agriculture (WUSA) student group at the University of Minnesota. This event is made possible in part by a U of M Coca-Cola Activity Initative Grant.