Hello Moritz @my-permaculture ! Sorry if my tone sounded a little aggressive...

My main problem with this kind of ranking is that is invariably put together by "scientists" with very little to no experience of what actually goes on in real life and who seem to think that it is far better to spend your life behind a computer screen drawing up excel sheets and filtering dubiously-acquired data than it it to get outside, get your hands dirty and starting producing food and restoring natural ecosystems. As a result, their conclusions show total disregard for natural systems, rely solely on modern technology (at the obvious expense of common sense) and do little more than reflect current governmental policy, neo-liberal thought and industrial strategy. This is something that was made very clear to me when I attended the PIC in London two years ago. Whilst the actual permaculturists giving talks had experience of working with literally thousands of farmers, got their hands dirty on a daily basis and had nothing but love and respect for the people in the regions where they working, the academics who had deigned to come down from their ivory towers to address us relied purely on powerpoint presentations, endless and obscure figures, and blamed virtually everything on population growth in the third world. I was left offended and disgusted by their approach and increasingly respectful of genuine permaculturists like Geoff Lawton. Anyway, that is my basic feeling.

As for the specific technologies mentioned, this is what I have to say.

Wind farms onshore and offshore consume vast amounts of energy in their fabrication (most often not taken into account when calculating energy efficiency), require the destruction of large areas of land and sea for their construction (these are big, heavy, massive structures, resisting extremely strong forces and must be very stably anchored in thousands of square metres of concrete) and are relatively inefficient, producing large amounts of energy -- that most often cannot be stored -- intermittently and unreliably. They are also a financial drain on public resources: in Scotland where I come from, the operating companies are routinely refunded for energy NOT collected when winds do not blow as expected or when too much energy is produced at any one time and cannot be stored (and sold on later). Having said that, I think that small units on individual farms are a great way of producing energy (or milling, or pumping water) when used in tandem with other tools, and can be erected with very little to no impact on the environment.

As for solar, my reservations are much the same as for wind power. In other words, the materials used in the production of solar panels are expensive and in short supply and invariably stolen from poor countries at great ecological expense; they are inefficient in that they produce (or, rather, harvest) when electricity is perhaps least required, during the day (at least the wind can be relied upon to blow at night) and the batteries used are not always efficient; solar farms are also destructive of the environment, requiring large areas of land to be literally killed -- using huge quantities of pesticides and herbicides (ever seen anyone cutting weeds in a solar park?!) for a permanent effect -- and flattened in order for them to be operated effectively. That being said -- once again -- solar panels on individual houses have, I think, a far higher rate of efficiency and use and I am not against them, just industrial parks.

It is also important to note that as governments provide funding and other incentives for these kinds of technologies on an industrial scale, more and more comapnies are moving into the sector, building solar parks and wind turbines without taking the time to examine the actual ecological costs and benefits: where I live in Japan, SoftBank, a mobile phone corporation, has bought a previously suspended solar park as a means of obtaining tax rebates and is preparing to operate at great consternation of the villagers who are justifiably worried about the ecological side effects. When the government is saying that wind and solar are good and is offering tax benefits, big companies like SoftBank don't give a damn what the local community has to say, they consider themselves to be in the right, full stop.

As for family planning, I thought it was common permaculture knowledge that not only is the number of human beings on the planet not the real problem (it's not how many we are, it's how we use the environment we live in that matters), but that the most effective (and humane) way to reduce births is to pull the poor up into prosperity, not poisoning them into infertility or polluting their bodies (and, subsequently, water supplies) with western-produced chemical substances.

From what I have seen, people like Hawken and all the other government funded pseudo-ecologists are little more than eugenicists, who are convinced that global warming is the fault of the poor in the third world who must be culled like savage animals. They do nothing more than parrot western neo-imperialistic propaganda and go in directly the opposite direction to permaculture: for them everything must be centralised in the hands of the state, and controlled by the financial and political elites, definitely not by the communities themselves and the people most effected by the results of their policies (how often is the ravaging effect of western bombing campaigns and western backed industrial agriculture taken into account in theses projections and proposed "solutions"?!).

I am sure you already know his, but for the benefit of those who may not have much experience of permaculture, here is a quick run-down on what I (and people like Geoff Lawton) think of the "global warming" situation:

The number one problem is the erosion of soils (not population growth or pollution, but what government gives a damn about it?!)
The number two problem is deforestation (again not population growth or pollution, again what government gives a damn about it?!)
The number three problem is pollution (and that could be easily reversed by addressing the first two problems)
Centralisation is NOT the answer, decentralisation IS. We must all act individually and together to solve this crisis, and not rely on technological "solutions" proposed by governments and government backed institutions (i.e. the majority of NGOs): not only are governments most often the ones who created the problems in the first place, but most often the solutions are not hi-tech, but lo-tech. If governments really want to get involved, they should be encouraging decentralisation, small-scale community-level hydro-electricity, wind-power and solar, not centralisation and industrial-scale. Putting an end to subsidising industrial farming, encouraging reforestation and empowering local communities is the way to go.

Anyway, I'll stop ranting now and let you have your post back! Again, I have nothing against you, but these technocrats really get me angry. Together we can win this!

All the best, Nick