Sorry Hopkins, but your reply to Holmgren is simply not of the standard I was expecting. Holmgren and Foss seem to be discussing at a deeper level, while Hopkins apparently still thinks that some magic fairy can possibly turn our shity capitalist/corporatist economic system in to a zero growth system without even having to crash it first. With such illusions, the conclusion can hardly be satisfying, and it isn't. That said, it doesn't mean that Holmgren is right.
First Holmgren is in my oppinion correct in his assessment that an economic collaps sooner would be better than an economic collaps later, and that such a collapse will come either way because our maxed out system can't cope with both climate change and peak everything. Secondly I agree with JimD and Hopkins in that Holmgren is shooting himself in the foot by writing this essay. Although telling the truth can allways be justified, this will give all his opponents a concrete reason to label him as a terrorist, and take deliberate action to dismantle his "terrorist organisation" if permaculture ever were to threaten economic stability, as Holmgren wishes. Thirdly Holmgren (not to mention Hopkins) seem to underestimate the power of the rich elite, if the elite feels that their interests are under threat by people who withdraw from consumerism, they will find some way to outlaw people from doing that, trading with homemade goods for example, is already being made harder and harder as permits for such activities are required to a larger and larger extent. Making random individuals pay harshly for breaking such ridiculous regulations is one extremly efficient way to prevent others from doing the same. Shortly summed up, his 10% goal was not really going to happen and will never, NEVER happen after this paper was published, though, I applaud his effort.
So what can be done? This very delicate problem we face seem to have no obvious solution, none of the possible solutions are likely to succeed with crashing the system and even less likely to succesfully replace it with a system that works in both the long and short term, none of the possible solutions won't require huge personal sacrifices by those involved. However, there is one alternative I consider at least possible. Now, Holmgren dismissed the idea of mass mobilization for reasons that are very understandable, movements like "Green Peace" and "Occupy" are grim examples of attempted mass mobilizations which has utterly failed to produce results of any significance, no reason to believe such mobilizations will become easier in the future. My proposal, though, is to encourage mass mobilization and revolution in the poorest countries in the world instead of trying to mobilize an apathetic western middle class. No doubt it would have been favourable to have a revolution in an industrialized country, but getting people with something to loose to revolt against the people that apparently gave them this "something" is, as Holmgren correctly assess, a hopeless task, getting people with nothing to loose to revolt against the people that gave them nothing is another story entirely. It will not be to counter the "brown tech" economy and it's elite directly, but potentially undermine it by slashing the supply of raw material (which might be enough to cause severe economic turmoil) as well as potentially establishing a goverment that actively counters Brown Tech.
Of course there are several drawback with such a solution. Even if peacefull protest is encouraged, such a revolution, and especially an eventual crash of the global economy, is going to spark large scale violence and human suffering. There is also a question about time, which is perhaps what worries me the most, this need to be done pretty fast. And controling post-revolutionary chaos with mighty contra-revolutionary forces constantly trying to break your back, will perhaps be even harder than creating a large scale revolt in the first place. However, I still think going down this path can possibly yield a very possitive result in the longer run, not likely to come through, but nevertheless the best, and perhaps only, alternative we are left with.
Last but not at least, thank you Wili for posting all these links and for making an excelent reply to Joanne Poyourow, I blame myself for having been to lazy to take a thorough look at this thread before.
