twice about accepting houses designed with another climate in mind. As food prices rise we suddenly realize that gardening need not be only a summer pastime but that food, with simple technological assistance (greenhouses, for example) may be produced year- round. As the prices of nuclear energy continue to rise, we look again at hydroelectric power, a renewable, bountiful and affordable energy supply. The instructions for how to survive in a particular region are there, but they are obscured by the messages produced by our urban culture. We can listen more attentively, pay attention to the common sense of old-timers, and examine the particular ecological balances of our region, but in order to plan for the future, and to sustain the population even at the present level, we may need some sophisticated planning tools. Bio-regional planning perhaps offers some new conceptual tools for this. Peter Berg, a bioregional planning consultant and founder of the Planet Drum Foundation (San Francisco), defines a bioregion as: A distinct area where the conditions that influence life are similar and these in turn influence human occupancy. The extent of a bioregion can be determined by using climatology, physiography, animal and plant geography, natural history and other descriptive sciences. The idea of a bioregion, however, is cultural. It defines both a place and adaptive ideas about living in that place. In Renewable Energy and Bioregions: A New Context for Public Policy, Peter Berg and George Tukel lay some groundwork for bioregional planning. The publication was prepared for the Solar Business Office of the State of California, headed by Jerry Yudelson. In the introduction, Yudelson describes what a bioregion is and why it might be important in planning: The bioregion is a more suitable decision-making unit. A bioregion is a geographical province with a marked ecological and often cultural unity. It is often demarked by the watersheds of major river systems, but can be composed of smaller hydrogeologic or biological units. Since renewable energy resources rely heavily on localized "solar" resources (sun, wind, vegetation and terrain), energy supply planning at the bioregional level makes good sense, for it allows more diversity and flexibility in planning and reduces the potential for conflict between political jurisdictions. The bioregional approach has also been adopted, with considerable success, for controlling both air and water pollution throughout the United States. Key to bioregional planning is watershed consciousness. The roots to “watershed" start in old English with words related to "parting of hairs." The 19th century sense of watershed came from "parting" (of the flow) or "separation" (of the waters). It meant the boundary line that separated the flow of rainfall. In the United States we call this the "divide." Eventually the meaning of watershed was stretched to include an area of land which drains water, sediment and dissolved materials to a common outlet at some point along a stream or river. Because waterflow does not obey human desires, it forces humans to 12 Dana Olsen
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