Bates has been a resident of The Farm since 1972. A former attorney, he argued environmental and civil rights cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and drafted a number of legislative Acts during a 26-year legal career. The holder of a number of design patents, Bates invented the concentrating photovoltaic arrays and solar-powered automobile displayed at the 1982 World's Fair. He served on the steering committee of Plenty International for 18 years, focussing on relief and development work with indigenous peoples, human rights and the environment. An emergency medical technician (EMT), he was a founding member of The Farm Ambulance Service. He was also a licensed Amateur Radio operator.
Bates first came to national prominence in 1978 when he sued to shut down the entire U.S. nuclear fuel cycle from mines to waste repositories. The case, which went four times to the United States Supreme Court and was later profiled in a law review article[2] and two books, was ultimately unsuccessful but raised troubling questions about the health effects of nuclear energy and the ethical dimensions — and civil liberties implications — of the federal role in promoting power deployment while actively suppressing and concealing public health effects.
Bates has played a major role in the ecovillage movement as one of the organizers of the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN), and served as GEN's chairman of the board (from 2002 to 2003) and president (from 2003 to 2004). He was also the principal organizer of the Ecovillage Network of the Americas and served as its president (from 1996 to 2003). In 1994 he founded the Ecovillage Training Center, a "whole systems immersion experience of ecovillage living."[3] He has taught courses in sustainable design, natural building, permaculture and technologies of the future to students from more than 50 nations.
Bates' Climate in Crisis (1990) was the first book published on web (rolled paper) press using a 100% recycled product without chemically removing clays or inks. Since then, he has been planting a private forest to sequester carbon dioxide and related greenhouse gas emissions from travel, business and personal activities. At 40 acres under mixed-age, mixed-species, climate-resilient management, primarily being managed for ecosystem services, that forest now annually plants itself as it expands.[4]
Awards
In 1980, Bates shared in the first Right Livelihood Award as part of the executive board of Plenty International. In 2012, he received the Gaia Award from Gaia Trust of Denmark for his efforts in fostering the ecovillage movement. He was named 2024 EcoHero of the Year by a California Permaculture group.
Published works
Bates is author of many books on law, energy, history and environment, including:
The Grass Case (1973) with William Meyers, Matthew McClure, Peter Schweitzer, and Joel Kachinsky,
Honicker v. Hendrie: A Lawsuit to End Atomic Power (1974),
Shutdown: Nuclear Power on Trial (1979) with John Gofman and Ernest Sternglass,
Your Rights to Victims Compensation (1980),
Climate in Crisis (1990),
Voices from The Farm (1998) with Rupert Fike,
The Y2K Survival Guide and Cookbook (1999) with Dorothy R. Bates,
The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook (2006),
The Biochar Solution (2010),
Fermaculture (2011) with Sandor Katz,
The Paris Agreement (2015),
Pour Evian on Your Radishes (2015),
The Financial Collapse Survival Guide and Cookbook (2015),
Burn: Using Fire to Cool the Earth (2019) with Kathleen Draper,
Transforming Plastic: From Pollution to Evolution (2019),
A Side Door Introduction to The Farm (2019),
Taming Plastic (2019),
Dark Side of the Ocean (2020),
Plagued: Surviving A Modern Pandemic (2020),
Making Waves (2021),
Cool Down (2021) with Kathleen Draper,
Retropulationism (2024).
The Post-petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook: Recipes for Changing Times, was published in 2006.[5] In it Bates examines the transition from a society based on abundant cheap petroleum to one of "compelled conservation." The book looks at the ways of preparing for this transition. He regards the coming change as an opportunity to "redeem our essential interconnectedness with nature and with each other."
In his introduction, Bates outlines the realities of declining fossil energy and global climate change. He puts forward a "twelve step petrochemical addiction recovery program," from post-growth economics through methods to conserve fresh water, manage wastes, generate energy, produce and store food, and travel without the aid of fossil fuels. As a review by Ryan McGreal states: "The central message in this book is sustainability and permaculture. A recurring theme is that every waste product is something else's food, and that the most sustainable arrangement works with the prevailing conditions, not against them."[6] McGreal summarizes Bates' proposals for human adaptation as follows:
Instead of wasting energy trying to fight nature, it makes more sense to understand nature and use it to your mutual benefit. This, of course, means the end of one-size-fits-all industrial solutions and a return to decentralized, idiosyncratic plans based on local conditions.[6]
The Biochar Solution: Carbon farming and Climate Change, was published in 2010.[7] In it Bates traces the evolution of carbon-enriching agriculture from the ancient black soils of the Amazon to its reappearance as a modern climate restoration strategy.
In The Biochar Solution, Bates repeats the urgency of declining fossil energy, especially in the context of chemical and energy-intensive progressive agriculture and global climate change. He proposes a carbon-oriented agricultural revolution that could double world food supplies while simultaneously building soil fertility and lowering atmospheric and oceanic concentrations of carbon. Bates suggests that, if sourced cautiously, biochar energy systems could eliminate fossil fuel dependency, bring new life to desertified landscapes, purify drinking water, and build carbon-negative homes, communities and economies. Peter Bane, the editor of Permaculture Activist, describes Bates' talents in this way:
If there is a smart, multi-functional, low-cost, democratic strategy that can help to pull carbon out of the atmosphere, it's probably in this book: chinampas, step-harvest planting of trees (with six times the carbon density per acre), harnessing youth to the task, agroforestry, greening the desert, uneven-aged forest management, carbon farming, the soil food web, and more. Each of these gets a relatively brief, punchy, and fairly technical description. Bates is a good and stylish writer; he has an ear for the pithy phrase, and reading him is generally a pleasure. This book, based on original scholarship, vast knowledge of a rapidly changing global field, and the arcana of many loosely linked disciplines brings the skills and interests of its polymath author together for a supremely important purpose.[8]
Bates' The Paris Agreement: the best chance we have to save the one planet we've got was published just weeks after the close of COP-21, the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in December 2015. The book follows Bates' year-long travels leading up to the Paris conference, the delicate and often fractious negotiations, and dissects the final document agreed to by 196 countries. It includes anecdotes from a range of surroundings, from inside the halls of Le Bourget to boating the Seine with indigenous peoples there to protest the talks.
In 2019, no fewer than four books by Bates were published by various publishers. In Burn: Using Fire to Cool the Earth,[9] Bates says we need to radically alter how humans live on Earth. In 2020, Chelsea Green brought out a paper edition as Burn: Igniting a New Carbon Drawdown Economy to End the Climate Crisis.
We have to go from spending carbon to banking it. We have to put back the trees, wetlands, and corals. We have to regrow the soil and turn back the desert. We have to save whales, wombats, and wolves. We have to reverse the flow of greenhouse gases and send them in exactly the opposite direction: down, not up. We have to flip the carbon cycle and run it backward. For such a revolutionary transformation we’ll need civilization 2.0.
Burn looks beyond renewable biomass or carbon capture energy systems to a new, circular economy in which energy, natural resources, and human ingenuity enter a virtuous cycle of improvement in time to save us from climate catastrophe and human extinction.
Transforming Plastic, and a school edition, Taming Plastic,[10] Bates addresses the magnitude and consequences of another global problem. Bates emphasizes that the only way to stem the present onslaught of a material that endures forever is to enforce mandatory economic and industrial changes so that recycled, biosourced, and biodegradable plastic become more cost-effective than plastic made from fossil fuels. He explores current worldwide efforts for stronger regulations and better waste management, along with exciting new biological and man-made technologies for improved plastics collection and disposal.
In A Side Door Introduction to The Farm, Bates brings together the observations of authors, reporters and casual observers over the first 50 years of his ecovillage's history, some positive but many critical. This short anthology contains many surprising insights into the mechanics of crafting a holistic, utopian vision and then trying to bring it into the world. It explains quite a lot about why the Farm has continued to thrive, now into four generations, after half a century of bet-your-life, whole-systems experimentation.
Since 2006, Bates has written a blog called The Great Change,[11] which appears Sundays on Substack, Medium and Blogger and is occasionally syndicated to other sites.
An ecovillage is a traditional or intentional community that aims to become more socially, culturally, economically and/or environmentally sustainable. An ecovillage strives to have the least possible negative impact on the natural environment through the intentional physical design and behavioural choices of its inhabitants. It is consciously designed through locally owned, participatory processes to regenerate and restore its social and natural environments. Most range from a population of 50 to 250 individuals, although some are smaller, and traditional ecovillages are often much larger. Larger ecovillages often exist as networks of smaller sub-communities. Some ecovillages have grown through like-minded individuals, families, or other small groups—who are not members, at least at the outset—settling on the ecovillage's periphery and participating de facto in the community. There are currently more than 10,000 ecovillages around the world.
A land lab is an area of land that has been set aside for use in biological studies. Thus, it is literally an outdoor laboratory based on an area of land.
Energy development is the field of activities focused on obtaining sources of energy from natural resources. These activities include the production of renewable, nuclear, and fossil fuel derived sources of energy, and for the recovery and reuse of energy that would otherwise be wasted. Energy conservation and efficiency measures reduce the demand for energy development, and can have benefits to society with improvements to environmental issues.
Electric power systems consist of generation plants of different energy sources, transmission networks, and distribution lines. Each of these components can have environmental impacts at multiple stages of their development and use including in their construction, during the generation of electricity, and in their decommissioning and disposal. These impacts can be split into operational impacts and construction impacts. All forms of electricity generation have some form of environmental impact, but coal-fired power is the dirtiest. This page is organized by energy source and includes impacts such as water usage, emissions, local pollution, and wildlife displacement.
Energy is sustainable if it "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." Definitions of sustainable energy usually look at its effects on the environment, the economy, and society. These impacts range from greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution to energy poverty and toxic waste. Renewable energy sources such as wind, hydro, solar, and geothermal energy can cause environmental damage but are generally far more sustainable than fossil fuel sources.
A fossil fuel power station is a thermal power station which burns a fossil fuel, such as coal, oil, or natural gas, to produce electricity. Fossil fuel power stations have machinery to convert the heat energy of combustion into mechanical energy, which then operates an electrical generator. The prime mover may be a steam turbine, a gas turbine or, in small plants, a reciprocating gas engine. All plants use the energy extracted from the expansion of a hot gas, either steam or combustion gases. Although different energy conversion methods exist, all thermal power station conversion methods have their efficiency limited by the Carnot efficiency and therefore produce waste heat.
Climate change mitigation (or decarbonisation) is action to limit the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that cause climate change. Climate change mitigation actions include conserving energy and replacing fossil fuels with clean energy sources. Secondary mitigation strategies include changes to land use and removing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere. Current climate change mitigation policies are insufficient as they would still result in global warming of about 2.7 °C by 2100, significantly above the 2015 Paris Agreement's goal of limiting global warming to below 2 °C.
The Ecovillage Training Center is a "total immersion school" for sustainability. It is located at The Farm, an intentional community/ecovillage in Summertown, Tennessee, USA. The curricula of the center are "holistic and comprehensivist" and foster hands-on learning.
Waste-to-energy (WtE) or energy-from-waste (EfW) refers to a series of processes designed to convert waste materials into usable forms of energy, typically electricity or heat. As a form of energy recovery, WtE plays a crucial role in both waste management and sustainable energy production by reducing the volume of waste in landfills and providing an alternative energy source.
Biochar is charcoal, sometimes modified, that is intended for organic use, as in soil. It is the lightweight black remnants, consisting of carbon and ashes, remaining after the pyrolysis of biomass, and is a form of charcoal. Biochar is defined by the International Biochar Initiative as the "solid material obtained from the thermochemical conversion of biomass in an oxygen-limited environment".
Low-carbon electricity or low-carbon power is electricity produced with substantially lower greenhouse gas emissions over the entire lifecycle than power generation using fossil fuels. The energy transition to low-carbon power is one of the most important actions required to limit climate change.
Our Choice is a 2009 book written by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and published by Rodale, Inc. in Emmaus, Pennsylvania.
Environmental issues in the United States include climate change, energy, species conservation, invasive species, deforestation, mining, nuclear accidents, pesticides, pollution, waste and over-population. Despite taking hundreds of measures, the rate of environmental issues is increasing rapidly instead of reducing. The United States is among the most significant emitters of greenhouse gasses in the world. In terms of both total and per capita emissions, it is among the largest contributors. The climate policy of the United States has a major influence on the world.
The environmental impact of electricity generation from wind power is minor when compared to that of fossil fuel power. Wind turbines have some of the lowest global warming potential per unit of electricity generated: far less greenhouse gas is emitted than for the average unit of electricity, so wind power helps limit climate change. Wind power consumes no fuel, and emits no air pollution, unlike fossil fuel power sources. The energy consumed to manufacture and transport the materials used to build a wind power plant is equal to the new energy produced by the plant within a few months.
Greenhouse gas emissions by Australia totalled 533 million tonnes CO2-equivalent based on greenhouse gas national inventory report data for 2019; representing per capita CO2e emissions of 21 tons, three times the global average. Coal was responsible for 30% of emissions. The national Greenhouse Gas Inventory estimates for the year to March 2021 were 494.2 million tonnes, which is 27.8 million tonnes, or 5.3%, lower than the previous year. It is 20.8% lower than in 2005. According to the government, the result reflects the decrease in transport emissions due to COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, reduced fugitive emissions, and reductions in emissions from electricity; however, there were increased greenhouse gas emissions from the land and agriculture sectors.
The natural environment, commonly referred to simply as the environment, includes all living and non-living things occurring naturally on Earth.
John D. Hamaker (1914–1994), was an American mechanical engineer, ecologist, agronomist and science writer in the fields of soil regeneration, rock dusting, mineral cycles, climate cycles and glaciology.
Individual action on climate change is about personal choices that everyone can make to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of their lifestyles. Such personal choices are related to the way people travel, their diet, shopping habits, consumption of goods and services, number of children they have and so on. Individuals can also get active in local and political advocacy work around climate action. People who wish to reduce their carbon footprint, can for example reduce their air travel for holidays, use bicycles instead of cars on a daily basis, eat a plant-based diet, and use consumer products for longer. Avoiding meat and dairy products has been called "the single biggest way" how individuals can reduce their environmental impacts.
Low-impact development (LID) has been defined as "development which through its low negative environmental impact either enhances or does not significantly diminish environmental quality".
Climate-friendly gardening is a form of gardening that can reduce emissions of greenhouse gases from gardens and encourage the absorption of carbon dioxide by soils and plants in order to aid the reduction of global warming. To be a climate-friendly gardener means considering both what happens in a garden and the materials brought into it as well as the impact they have on land use and climate. It can also include garden features or activities in the garden that help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through processes not directly related to gardening.
↑ Bates, Albert (January 20, 2013) "A Personal Forest (Parts I and II)." The Great Change. Retrieved on: June 12, 2013. Simultaneously published in The Permaculture Activist 88:40–43 (May 2013) (print edition).
J.Edgar Hoover and The Farm International Communal Studies Conference on Culture, Thought and Living in Community, New Harmony, Indiana, October 1993. Online version accessed: 2012-06-12.
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