RB: More than we need. It is a given that without directing our minds to sustainability we face multi-faceted global disaster. We will not be able to guarantee the health or safety of the next generation.

TM: How long do you think it will take the government to take sufficient action?

JC: Governments don't always govern, instead responding to the majority vote reflected in opinion polls. They will be to slow to make the necessary changes.

RB: We should talk not to the peak of the pyramid, but to its base. Waiting for the government helps no-one. Individuals must take action: there is no point trying to change bureaucracy.

JC:"Top down thinking, bottom up action."

TM: Why don't we just build more power stations and desalination plants?

RB: Power stations and desalination plants have huge hidden costs, typically twice their construction cost, involved in bringing the product to the consumer. A billion dollar coal-fired plant will require 2 billion dollars for wiring. Instead we could stop using stand-by power in domestic appliances, and limit the use of air-conditioning.

JC: Desalination plants could water hydroponic genetically-modified food plants in huge sheds, but aside from the questions of energy consumption and genetic manipulation, there is a far greater psychological loss: that of our wholistic, hands-on relationship to the environment.

RB: Our essential need is for cultural, not technological change. Energy and water efficiency, for examples, are easily achieved by modest changes in awareness and lifestyle.

TM:This is the rationale of permaculture?

JC: Permaculture is not limited to individual gardening practices. It is the application of systems theory to the project of long-term survival of our species. Its development by David Holmgren and Bill Mollison, initially in Tasmania, was triggered by the Club of Rome's 1972 report on the environment. Thus permaculture, for examples, has been instrumental in the development of solar architecture, the Landcare movement, ethical investment trusts, broadacre agriculture, community gardens and the LETS system.

TM: Can permaculture save us?

JC: Yes if we embrace it quickly. For example we have now reached "Peak Oil", the point at which the energy to make oil available equals the energy we can extract from it. Once we pass this point, prices will rise dramatically, and large-scale agriculture, which is heavily transport and storage dependant, will also suffer escalating price rises, risking chaos in the cities.

TM: You see a role for Information Technology in a sustainable world?

RB: Yes. A good example of this is the present installation of broadband. This will finally realise one long-awaited application of the office computer: desktop to desktop live video conferencing, saving enormous amounts of time and energy for the business world, and reducing such highly wasteful practices as flying business people around the world.

TM: But how can we nurture highly trained specialists and build sophisticated machines like computers if we are busy in the vegetable patch? And is it not impossible for a person to be truly self-sufficient?

JC: The permaculture concept prefers that of communal sustainability. Even ancient societies had specialised members who did no agricultural or construction work.

TM: Sustainability sounds expensive, because it requires the creation of a whole new range of computers, solar panels, electric bicycles?

RB: Energy efficient design of human spaces is much cheaper in the long run. Presently we are using more and more energy to correct the consequences of using more and more energy. This however is but a detail in the whole picture of sustainability. The main thing we need is cultural change, and that is free.

TM: How many people actually practice permaculture in Australia?

JC: That is hard to say. Tens of thousands have attended courses, and most go home and implement some of the necessary changes. I teach people to do something more towards true sustainability each year, and I enjoy seeing how students transfer their knowledge to action.

I teach people to start with themselves, changing basic habits, before moving first into the garden and then into the wider community, including schools. The concepts are hard for today's children, who are daily persuaded by powerful corporations to behave destructively from a permaculture point of view. I also believe strongly in teaching by example.

TM: What is being done locally to create a sustainable community?

JC: One project I am involved with is the Eco-Village on the Bega river. We are now awaiting DA approval for our design that incorporates 21 residential blocks, a community building, and an agriculture/forestry zone, all on 35 acres within easy walking distance to town.

TM: Where do you think the resistance to Permaculture comes from?

JC: All sorts of places! Some academics don't like its wholistic approach that crosses disciplinary boundaries. Governments don't like the idea of self-regulating communities because empowered people disempower them. Big Business hates the notion of not consuming, spending, wasting. Bureaucrats may despise it because by and large its practitioners can do without their help. Even some conservationists dislike permaculture, because it advocates the planned use of trees and animals for shelter and sustenance. It is not conservation, but sustainable usage, of the environment.

TM: Perhaps permaculture is seen as too far on the political left?

JC: The concept of self-empowered communities as a political theory probably takes root easily in socialist societies. The best example is Cuba after the fall of the Berlin wall. In response to the consequent loss of trade with the communist block there was a top-down implementation of self-reliant food programs, in which permaculturalists assisted in trialing roof-top chook gardens in Havana, and researching tropical climate wheat production.

Where permaculture is desperately needed it is popular, as in many UN development programs. Its ethical base also appeals strongly to very diverse groups, for example Quakers and some Baptist congregations, and Atheists who see it as scientific common sense.

In contrast to the developing world, there has been very little progress in the US.

TM: A consideration of human nature, and contemporary history, suggest to me a rapid deterioration into chronic global resource-based conflict. The US occupation of Iraq, for example, is termed by many Arabs the "Oil War". Perhaps the only sustainable activity we can guarantee for the future is war?

JC: The West must get away from blind consumerism, and the absurdity of continuous growth promoted by a so-called rationalist money market. We need negative growth, but no capitalist government will institute this.

RB: I suspect an absolute disaster, one that empties the supermarkets, will be required to change our behaviour.

JC: Humans are amazing in their ability to adapt and respond. We will see that disaster, whether it is sudden or gradual, but at least some of us will survive it, hopefully the wiser.

RB: We are in gradual disaster now. For example, our farming practices having been wasting our topsoil at the rate of 1% per annum, there are now 55,000 internal drought refugees moving per annum from the west to the east of the Great Dividing Range.

JC: For the sake of humanity, the focus on terrorism, climate change, and rampant capitalism needs replacing with an understanding of the effects of Peak Oil and the social justice divide between rich and poor. Permaculture provides a tool for creating this new understanding, and is potentially Australia's greatest intellectual export to the world.

Further Reading: Holmgren, D (2002) Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability, Holmgren Design Services

Tim Metcalf's third collection of poetry, Into the No Zone, was Highly Commended in the 2004 ACT Publisher's Awards. He lives in the Brogo, via Bega.

Roger Bunyan, who was an energy efficiency consultant and has turned web consultant; and

John Champagne, who moved from landscape gardening in Melbourne to live and teach permaculture.