Permaculture for Starhawk is a practical application of Paganism. This is the link that connects the Goddess(es) and our vegetable gardens. The Goddess, as we know her within Wicca and other forms of Paganism, represents the cycles of birth – growth – death – decay – and regeneration, exactly the cycles that permaculture deals with in a more pragmatic way.

To say that the Goddess is sacred doesn’t mean you have to believe in something outside of yourself, according to Starhawk. It simply means that you need to shift your attitude towards viewing these natural cycles as amazing, even miraculous. Spiritually, we need to pay attention to how they’re happening around us all the time. They are the ways we connect with each other most deeply and with all other life forms on the planet. If we approach them with awe, reverence, and respect, these natural processes will lead us into ways of living and working that will create more health, abundance, beauty, and biodiversity as well as more joy and freedom on the planet. And if we don’t, Starhawk admonishes, we’ll get the mess we’re in today.

Starhawk has seen in her life that when nature becomes our model — for instance when we apply permaculture to the ways we organize agriculture — we find tremendous allies that can open up possibilities for more real abundance for us and amazing gifts that can also repair or regenerate the Earth. As opposed to the anti-natural lifestyle in the US today, using permaculture doesn’t harm the Earth, but creates tikkun.

One example of this type of work is carbon sequestration in the soil. The excess carbon in the atmosphere that’s responsible for overheating the planet and, as a result, for the increased turbulence and “global weirding” of the climate comes, as we all know, from fossil fuels. But as Star told me, it also occurs — maybe even to a greater degree — when the world’s soils are destroyed.

Soil damage stems from plowing, erosion, and the oxidation of carbon that results when healthy humus-rich soil is exposed to the air. A lot of organic carbons are stored in the soil by bacteria and fungi. Matter decomposed by these microorganisms creates fertile humus which helps hold the soil. But when plowed or eroded, the carbon in the soil mixes with oxygen in the atmosphere and becomes carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.

Dr. Rattan Lal, a professor at Ohio State University who is the director of the Carbon Management and Sequestration Center at Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center, believes that we have as much carbon in the atmosphere from the dust bowl of the 1930s as we do from every car invented. Of course, that doesn’t mean that we should continue to burn fossil fuels, Starhawk explained. But it does mean that the world’s soils are hungry for carbon, and if we can find a way of fulfilling that hunger, we can take carbon out of the atmosphere — for at least 50 years — giving us a head start on dealing with global warming.

As a result, we don’t need the high tech carbon sequestration ideas that are being bandied about lately: injecting carbon dioxide into underground streams, terraforming the Earth, or putting giant mirrors into space to deflect sunlight. Mother Nature has been sequestering carbon for hundreds of millions of years using plants. We can use the same ways, using nature as our model.

Starhawk went on to say that there are no downsides to these simple methods of carbon sequestration. In fact, they repair other problems we face, such as the desertification of marginal dry lands. If we build up soil, it can hold more water, and as a result, become more fertile. That means it can grow more food, even plants that are more resilient to the shifting conditions of our planet. These changes will create the foundation for better nutrition for people who live in such areas, as well as greater health, and decent lives, rather than the horrific conditions of today that include famine, war, and disease.

The type of agriculture that permaculture promotes requires an adjustment in our farming patterns, Star told me. But that doesn’t mean that all of us need to change. It just means that we have to shift away from factory farming.  But doing this, Star noted, would actually solve another one of our current problems — unemployment.  Today in the U.S. we have an excess of unused labor.  We lack meaningful work that allows people to feel good about themselves and gives them fulfilling lives.  Star believes that if we teach people permaculture skills and reward farmers who build soil with their practices rather than destroying it, we will be on our way to solving at least two problems at once.  In order to accomplish this, however, we need economic and political change to happen.