Green Wizardry: Conservation, Solar Power, Organic Gardening, and Other Hands-On Skills From the Appropriate Tech Toolkit

258 Pages·2013·5.26 MB·English

by  John Michael Greer

US/Can $18.95 SUSTAINABLE LIVING John

Michael
Tested Skills f o r Thriving in Greer

the Age of Limits

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John Michael Greer tackles energy, economics, technology and organic production r
practices with approachable precision … Interested in a real “Green Revolution”? e
Let Green Wizardry show you the way AND the why! e Green
Oscar H. Will iii, editor-in-chief, GRIT Magazine, and author, Plowing with Pigs n
and Other Creative, Low-budget Homesteading Solutions

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In ancIent tImes, a wizard was a specialist in unfamiliar knowledge —
basically a freelance intellectual. Rather than magical powers, his main stock in trade was i
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good advice supported by a thorough, well-rounded, practical education — in essence,
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the true Renaissance man. In Green Wizardry, Greer proposes a modern mage for
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uncertain times; one who possesses a startling array of skills gleaned from the appropriate d
tech and organic gardening movements forged in the energy crisis of the 1970s.
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From the basic concepts of ecology to a plethora of practical techniques — such
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as composting, green manure, low-tech food preservation and storage, small-scale chicken

and rabbit raising, solar water heating, alternative energy sources, home-scale energy
Solar Power,
conservation and more — Green Wizardry is a comprehensive manual for today’s wizard- Conservation,

in-training. Providing a solid practical introduction to the entire appropriate tech toolkit,
this book is a must-read for anyone concerned about decreasing our dependence on an Organic
Gardening,
overloaded industrial system and, in a world of serious energy shortages and economic and other
troubles, making life a great deal less traumatic and more livable.
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most widely cited online resources dealing with the future of industrial society. He is the it sknic
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John Michael Greer
www.newsociety.com
US/CAN $18.95
Praise for Green Wizardry
Using an integrated systems approach to ecologically sustainable
living strategies, John Michael Greer tackles energy, economics,
technology and organic production practices with approachable
precision in Green Wizardry. Interested in a real “Green” revolu-
tion? Let Green Wizardry show you the way AND the why!
—Oscar H. Will iii, editor-in-chief, GRIT magazine
and author, Plowing with Pigs and Other Creative,
Low-budget Homesteading Solutions
Wanted: real wizards. Must be capable of guiding their commu-
nities through difficult times by exercising practical skills and
applying down-to-earth knowledge of how things work. If you’re
interested in applying for the job, then read this marvelous book.
Greer is the ideal guide; his wisdom and gentle humor animate
every page. A magical career awaits you.
—Richard Heinberg, author, The End of Growth
Greer races back down the muddy track we’ve slogged up this past
half century and shouts that he has found a turn we missed. It was
clearly marked – flagged by economist Vince Taylor as “the Easy
Path” and physicist Amory Lovins as “the Soft Path” – but we all
just blew right by the signpost in our headlong rush up the hard
and wide asphalt highway. We overestimated the difficulty of this
road, and our skill at climbing, but that soft and easy path is still
clearly marked, and open to us, if we just go back down a little
ways. We actually have to. It is the only way forward.
—Albert Bates, founder, Global Village Institute
for Appropriate Technology and author,
The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and The Biochar Solution
This is book is part nostalgic trip through what once could have
been, and could have saved us, before we decided to go all in on
unbounded economic growth and endless militarism, and part
survival guide which, now that the results of this bout of folly are
coming in, can allow families and communities to cut their burn
rate in comfort and style. And it also lays out the foundations of a
very useful and very necessary vocation to which all of us, young
and old can aspire: Green Wizardry.
— Dmitry Orlov, author of Reinventing Collapse
and The Five Stages of Collapse
Just as someone starting a business would get a book on business
planning, this is the book for planning a greener life. Rather than
being split into chapters, Green Wizardry is split into 36 lessons,
each with an exercise at the end, where you are challenged to apply
your new-found knowledge to your own life or delve more deeply
into a subject. If there were a class on green living, this would be
the ideal text!
— Deborah Niemann, author of Homegrown and Handmade,
Ecothrifty, and Raising Goats Naturally

Copyright © 2013 by John Michael Greer.
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Diane McIntosh. Cover image © Rose Ann Janzen
Printed in Canada. First printing September 2013.
Paperback isbn: 978-0-86571-747-3
eisbn: 978-1-55092-539-5
Inquiries regarding requests to reprint all or part of Green Wizardry
should be addressed to New Society Publishers at the address below.
To order directly from the publishers, please call toll-free (North America)
1-800-567-6772, or order online at www.newsociety.com
Any other inquiries can be directed by mail to:
New Society Publishers
P.O. Box 189, Gabriola Island, BC V0R 1X0, Canada
[phone]
New Society Publishers’ mission is to publish books that contribute in fundamental
ways to building an ecologically sustainable and just society, and to do so with the
least possible impact on the environment, in a manner that models this vision. We
are committed to doing this not just through education, but through action. The
interior pages of our bound books are printed on Forest Stewardship Council®-
registered acid-free paper that is 100% post-consumer recycled (100% old growth
forest-free), processed chlorine free, and printed with vegetable-based, low-VOC
inks, with covers produced using FSC®-registered stock. New Society also works to
reduce its carbon footprint, and purchases carbon offsets based on an annual audit
to ensure a carbon neutral footprint. For further information, or to browse our
full list of books and purchase securely, visit our website at: www.newsociety.com
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Greer, John Michael, author
Green wizardry : conservation, solar power, organic gardening, and other hands-on
skills from the appropriate tech toolkit / John Michael Greer.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-86571-747-3 (pbk.)
1. Sustainable living. 2. Energy conservation. 3. Organic gardening.
4. Vegetable gardening. 5. Green technology. 6. Dwellings—Energy conservation. I.
Title.
GE196.G74 2013 640.28’6 C2013-902582-0
Contents
Foreword: A Time for Wizardry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
PART ONE: PRINCIPLES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Lesson 1: Introducing Energy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Lesson 2: Introducing Matter. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Lesson 3: Introducing Information. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Lesson 4: Thinking in Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Lesson 5: Flows and Funds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Lesson 6: Sustainability and Resilience. . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Resources for Part One. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
PART TWO: FOOD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Lesson 7: The Small Garden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Lesson 8: Understanding Soil. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Lesson 9: Composting and Mulching. . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Lesson 10: Keeping Them Healthy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Lesson 11: Season Extenders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Lesson 12: Saving Seeds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Lesson 13: Breeding New Varieties. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Lesson 14: Wild Helpers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Lesson 15: Home Livestock. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Lesson 16: The Unwanted . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Lesson 17: Storing the Harvest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
Lesson 18: Using the Harvest. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Resources for Part Two. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
v
vi  •  Green Wizardry
PART THREE: ENERGY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Lesson 19: Using Less Energy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Lesson 20: Caulking and Weatherstripping. . . . . . . . . . 117
Lesson 21: Insulation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
Lesson 22: Window Coverings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
Lesson 23: Conserving the Differences. . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Lesson 24: Hayboxes and Sunboxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
Lesson 25: Solar Hot Water. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Lesson 26: Passive Solar Heat. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
Lesson 27: Solar Electricity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
Lesson 28: Wind Power. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Lesson 29: Other Energy Sources. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Lesson 30: Transportation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
Resources for Part Three . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
PART FOUR: WHOLE SYSTEMS . . . . . . . . . . . 175
Lesson 31: Putting It Together . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
Lesson 32: The New Alchemy Option . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Lesson 33: The Down Home Funk Option . . . . . . . . . . 186
Lesson 34: The Retrofit Option. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Lesson 35: The Way of Dissensus. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
Lesson 36: The Long View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Resources for Part Four. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
Afterword: Why It Matters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
About the Author. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
foreword
A Time for Wizardry
A little more than three decades ago, as a geeky kid from an or-
dinarily troubled American family, I began my freshman year of
college at a midsized state university. I had, as eighteen-year-olds
usually have, a laundry list of things I wanted to do with my life,
spread out along the spectrum from the plausible to the preposter-
ous. Novels by J. R. R. Tolkien and Hermann Hesse, books of envi-
ronmental philosophy by Theodore Roszak and E. F. Schumacher,
and a well-thumbed copy of the Tao Te Ching were the intellectual
compasses by which I hoped to find my way. At the time, I was
considering a career in what was then the booming field of appro-
priate technology.
Those of my readers who were not around in the 1970s may
never have encountered the phrase “appropriate technology,” and
plenty of people who were around then seem to have done their
level best to forget it. Still, in a time of energy crises and gas lines,
when a great many people all over the industrial world recognized
the absurdity of pursuing limitless growth on a finite planet, it was
a label that anchored a great many hopeful visions of the future.
E. F. Schumacher, the maverick economist whose book Small is
Beautiful was one of my guiding lights in those days, launched the
appropriate technology movement back in the 1950s in response
to the needs and possibilities of the nonindustrialized world. He
called it “intermediate technology” — intermediate, that is, between
the traditional folk technologies of the global South and the energy-
and capital-intensive technologies of the industrial nations. As the
energy crises of the 1970s made it clear that those same energy- and
vii
viii  •  Green Wizardry
capital-intensive technologies were no more sustainable in rich na-
tions than in poor ones, a generation of green innovators adapted
the phrase, and the concept, to the demands of the approaching
Age of Limits.
In the world of the twenty-first century, appropriate-tech
mavens argued, the cheap abundant energy and resources that sup-
ported the extravagant machinery of twentieth-century industrial
nations would inevitably run short. Before that happened, a new
breed of technology had to be invented and put into production.
The new technologies they hoped to pioneer would use energy
and resources sparingly; they would work with the cycles of nature
rather than against them; they would meet human needs without
placing unsustainable burdens on the biosphere. All over the world
in those days, you could find little nonprofits on shoestring budgets
and small companies run by basement entrepreneurs, hard at work
making that dream a reality.
To a remarkable extent, they succeeded. This is the fact that
most often gets left out of the story on those rare occasions when
the appropriate-tech project is remembered at all. By the time I
started college in 1980, the core technologies had been invented,
the most challenging problems solved. In dozens of different ways,
varying with local conditions and resources, people in the appro-
priate tech movement proved that it was possible to live sustain-
ably, and even comfortably, on a small fraction of the energy and
resources most middle-class people in the industrial world thought
they needed to sustain their lives. As the new technologies moved
toward maturity, a great many of us recognized that with hard
work and a willingness to make modest sacrifices in order to build
a better world for our grandchildren, the world could manage a
relatively smooth transition into the Age of Limits.
That wasn’t what happened. Instead, the world’s industrial na-
tions threw away the promise of a relatively easy transition into the
future and committed themselves to a trajectory that guaranteed
they would face a head-on collision with the hard limits of a finite
A Time for Wizardry • ix
planet. Here in the United States, the tipping point was Ronald
Reagan’s election as president, which gave a radical faction within
the Republican party the chance to dismantle the environmental
policies and green initiatives of the previous decade. The same
thing happened elsewhere in the world about the same time, as
“conservative” parties (the word belongs in quotes, since buying
short-term prosperity at the price of long-term calamity is not a
conservative policy in any meaningful sense of the term) discov-
ered that they could win elections and reshape the political dia-
logue by insisting that the world could keep using up irreplaceable
resources at unsustainable rates and never have to suffer the con-
sequences.
The conservatives’ claim never rested on anything more solid
than partisan rhetoric, but it allowed millions of people to justify
their abandonment of the steps toward sustainability that had been
taken in the previous decade, and it also provided an excuse for
pumping newly drilled oil fields in the North Sea and the Alaskan
North Slope as fast as geology would permit, flooding world mar-
kets with oil and sending the price plummeting to the neighbor-
hood of us$10 a barrel — its lowest level, corrected for inflation, in
all of human history. The flood of cheap oil launched a lavish if
temporary economic boom across the industrial world, sweeping
aside the nascent culture of conservation just as it was beginning
to bear fruit.
There were some people, to be sure, who stayed with the
appropriate- technology project even after the Reagan era’s tempo-
rary glut of cheap energy made it unfashionable. I was one of them.
I left college without a degree when it became clear that my hopes of
making a career in appropriate tech were headed nowhere; even so,
I was awarded a Master Conserver certificate from the W ashington
State Energy Extension Program in 1985 (just before it lost its fund-
ing) and I kept growing organic gardens and conserving energy
and resources straight through the years of extravagance that fol-
lowed. I wasn’t the only person who held onto the dream, though