Transitions

About five years ago, something really awesome happened. And its unique awesomeness has yet to be surpassed by any other awesome thing in this groovy world.

Permaculture designer Rob Hopkins decided to work with students at Kinsale Education College in Ireland on a strategy called an Energy Descent Action Plan (or EDAP). The plan analysed the best ways to adapt to a truly sustainable way of life, in attempt to mitigate the crises caused by climate change and peak oil. It didn’t focus on one specific cause or sector; everything was incorporated into the plan: energy production, agriculture, economics, etc. This was a holistic approach to sustainability that included and integrated every aspect of life. And it wasn’t just a goal post. The plan strategically outlined the incremental steps necessary for a community to become truly sustainable.

In essence, the EDAP ’s main goal was to build a community that could survive the impact of energy descent, drawing on what changes the community would like to see in twenty years’ time. The plan soon evolved, with the help of student Louise Rooney, into the Transition Towns concept. From there the concept spread, until over one hundred Transition communities existed on the globe. That number is still growing.

Twelve Steps to a Transition Town
Transition Towns use a twelve-step model, though very unlike the one used in AA and NA. The model was very strategically set up to be as effective as possible:

1. Create a steering group (to set up steps 2-5) and plan its demise from the beginning.
2. Raise awareness, identify key allies and create networks, do public education (such as film screenings and presentations).
3. Network with existing groups and activists, explain how important they are to the Transition process.
4. The Great Unleashing (or “coming out party”): Get the wider community involved, celebrate, work out how to cooperate most effectively, promote awareness of group psychology.
5. Create sub-groups, which may include members from the steering group, but also others from the wider community. These groups focus on specific tasks or subjects, such as local economy, food, entertainment, DIY crafts, etc.
6. Use Open Space Technology (an anarchistic conference techniqe) for groups and workshops, which allows for creative energy and self-organisation.
7. Practiacally apply the knowledge and techniques developed in the sub-groups; allow for a visual manifestation of the Transition.
8. The Great Reskilling: Educate the community, focusing on general, multi-disciplinary knowledge as opposed to increased specialisation. This allows for each community member to be as useful and practical as possible.
9. Build a bridge to local government; get them involved as a stakeholder but not as a leader.
10. Honour elders: Acknowledge that the practical skills and knowledge that they leared a while ago are essential to the survival of the community.
11. Allow the Transition to come, and acknowledge that everything that is expected to happen won’t necessarily happen.
12. Create an EDAP.

Language
Language is important in any movement, and the Transition movement recognises that. Though many would see the movement as Leftist in nature, it tries to stay away from left-right spectrum politics. So, for example, the term “sustainability,” often associated with environmentalists, is replaced with “resilience,” which is not only more neutral, but more applicable. The purpose of a Transition Initiative is not to do as little harm as possible to our environment (which is often how sustainability is described), but to strengthen it. A resilient ecosystem, just like a resilient community, not only survives but thrives, and can bounce back after a shock or crisis.

Group Psychology
One of the unique things about Transition Initiatives is that they foster community health and self-awareness. It is essential that the entire community understand how groups work so that they may be as productive as possible. For example, having a film screening with three depressing films in a row would create apathy, and not create the communal initiative needed for a Transition Town to work.

I learned about Transition Towns a couple years ago, and was immediately inspired. I am currently on the Steering Group for Transition Ranui-Swanson, an Auckland, New Zealand town. Be aware, though, that there will be both periods of excitement and lulls in energy, as is with any large project.

Please see the Glossary for explanations of all the words in bold.

The Times They Are A-Changin’

Sometimes I feel the fear of uncertainty stinging clear
And I can’t help but ask myself how much I let the fear
take the wheel and steer… (1)

Are these the words of a master poet? No, not unless you put Incubus on the same level as Walt Whitman. But the words’ relevance is unmistakable. These are uncertain times. Human history is full of uncertain times, marked by fear and courage, destruction and resilience. Change is inevitable, and we continue change faster and faster as our species develops more powerful technology and becomes more integrated throughout the world.

The above song, Drive, is relevant in another way, too. We are letting our addiction to nonrenewable resources, such as petroleum, cloud our judgment. As long as we can drive, we will, until the planet has been sucked dry of all pragmatically accessible fossil fuels.

We are more destructive than ever now; we have the power to effect the entire planet. It is very frightening. And some people let the fear overwhelm them and descend into apathy and depression.

I won’t be made useless. I won’t be idle with despair. (2)

But…we cannot lose hope. I know that’s always the end message…”But wait! We know all this severely depressing shit is happening, but there’s still hope!” It’s in all the new documentaries. Al Gore went on and on about how doomed we are in An Inconvenient Truth and then at the end said, “we can still change things!” And then we heard Melissa Etheridge’s happy song.

There’s a reason they do this in documentaries. If the audience leaves feeling useless and hopeless, the entire point of the film is lost. Their purpose is to make sure people are empowered with knowledge of what’s truly going on in the world, so they have a chance to change it. In the American Civil Rights Movement, seemingly powerless people all over the country came together and held their ground, and eventually changed the country. They were mostly Black people; second-class citizens without the power or wealth that we assume is needed to make a difference. Similarly, during the Indian fight for independence from the British, a bunch of “powerless” Indians decided to take production into their own hands, and not let the British keep their power by exploiting Indians.

So how is this global movement different? I’ll tell you how. It’s a movement, not only of seemingly powerless people with few resources, but of privileged, middle-class people in industrialised nations.

In this global movement for change, there are powerful people involved. We have absolutely no excuse for failure!

Whatever tomorrow brings, I’ll be there
With open arms and open eyes. (1)

1) Incubus, Drive
2) Jewel Kilcher, Hands

Solutions Part III

Here I go again. This is the last installment for now in my Solutions series. Here is the third popular “solution” that is promoted by big-wigs around the world.

Promote free trade to allow all markets in the world equal opportunity to compete.
This is a nice, fluffy idea. Okay, I won’t be too sarcastic since this is my hope blog, not my sarcasm blog (which will be finished soon). The concern regarding trade is that right now, tariffs and agricultural subsidies in developed nations are making it impossible for the developing nations to have a fair crack at the market. For example, Zimbabwean peaches might be the best in the world, but England gets its peaches from France, because they are subsidised, since both England and France are part of the European Union. I use the EU as an example because they are famous for having the most restrictive trade barriers to the Third World. (No Zimbabwe probably doesn’t export peaches, but what example would you prefer? Widgets?) Anyway, on to the…

Problem: This is one of the many reasons why I keep repeating the point that alternative solutions are important and we need to think outside the box. The whole “free markets are a cure for everything” philosophy continues to blow up in our faces, yet enough people in power still try to implement this “solution.” As soon as poor nations feel they have to sacrifice huge amounts of resources in order to compete successfully with rich nations, the poor nations have already lost. This has been happening for hundreds of years. We have stripped large areas of sub-Saharan Africa dry; destroyed the land; and sucked the life out of its people. This was all in the name of profit, competition, and market control. It is truly sad that we have set such an unsustainable, destructive precedent for others to follow. In order to be like us, they must destroy like us. Hence, China.

Free trade takes away all trade barriers. This includes labour and environmental regulations, it includes any international human rights laws. Child labour and sweatshops are okay. Slash-and-burning rainforests and dumping toxic waste in poor neighbourhoods is groovy. Extracting and using the least environmentally friendly resources is awesome. Why? Because you have to compete! Stay in the game, never let your head down, always be first. Whatever is cheapest is best. And this usually doesn’t include very much long-term planning, because despite the belief that businesses must look out for their long-term interests, the only interests they are really concerned about are those of the shareholders. Give them lots of money to reinvest now; the biggest dividends now.

But what about consumer activism? Surely that has a huge impact on corporations. After all, economics is based on supply and demand. If there’s no demand, the suppliers are out of luck, right? Wrong. Supply and demand is a simplistic way of looking at economics. It’s more like create false demand, and supply that demand. It’s all about advertising, image, and lies. In the late 1970s, there was a massive boycott of Nestlé because they were selling baby formula in Africa, and as a result many infants died from water-borne illnesses and malnutrition (infant formula was diluted with water because the mothers couldn’t afford the amount needed to feed their children). So how did Nestlé change, after this massive global boycott? They didn’t. The boycott continues today, though it has died down quite a bit.

In addition, there’s the new “greenwashing,” which is when corporations put a “sustainability” slant on their image and/or products, without doing anything actually sustainable. For example, Westpac Bank advertises itself as a very sustainable organisation, all the while supporting uranium mining.

Solution: Aaaanyway, finally, the solutions. In order for developing nations to have real equal opportunity to developed nations, they have to have the same amount of global power. Obviously, they do not. As I have explained before, export agriculture is itself a form of colonialism, and it is unnecessary for any nation to feel the need to compete in a global market. Focusing on local production and consumption is the real sustainable option. Poor nations would no longer have to destroy themselves, because they would only be taking what they need, as opposed to what other nations want. If they practiced sustainable agricultural methods, which are inherently part of many traditional agricultural practices already, then they would be able to feed themselves and their close neighbours. Maybe they wouldn’t have a television in every room, or three iPods each, or two SUVs each, but they would have full stomachs and healthy communities.

Perhaps all this hype about “development” is exactly that: hype. We want nations to follow in our footsteps, to give money an inherent value and living things no value at all, to base their entire economies on speculation and group psychology, to live for the purpose of being exploitable labour for someone else who is always more powerful, more wealthy. If we want real solutions, we need to re-evaluate our entire social structure, our entire culture. The rich nations have a huge responsibility: to provide a good example for the poor, since they are following in our footsteps as we speak. Or even better, we could give them the resources they need (that we took away from them) to be self-sufficient and then leave them alone.

Solutions Part II

Next in the solutions series, where I explain the flaws of the most popular “solutions” to the world’s problems I’ve heard. Here’s the second one:

Create more large-scale industrialised farms to feed the hungry of the world.
Problem: Many. First of all, we can already feed the hungry of the world. Reports show that at this time, we have enough food in the world for everyone to consume between 2500 and 3000 calories per day. So why on earth are there hungry people? The same reason there are poor people. Uneven distribution.

Second of all, large-scale agriculture, industrialised agriculture, and cash crops have created more problems than they have solved. The people who are hungry could fill their bellies on subsistence agriculture. They are using large-scale agriculture to make a profit; that is, money. Or perhaps I should say, not them, but the people who hire them. They then make enough money for a bowl of rice, pass on the rest of the profit to big agricultural businesses, and ship the cash crops off to other countries. Much of the food is thrown away. This is how export agriculture has always been; a form of colonialism.

The other problems that industrialised agriculture causes are environmental, but of course translate to social and economic problems as well. Industrialised agriculture comprises several unsustainable inputs:

1. Petroleum-based fertilisers and pesticides. Because this form of agriculture relies on petroleum, prices are completely unstable, as they fluctuate with the price of oil. As oil extraction becomes less efficient, pesticides and fertilisers become more expensive. They also pollute the groundwater, destroy ecosystems, and create even more robust pests with a new-found tolerance to pesticides. These chemicals destroy soil fertility, making it harder and harder to grow crops with each generation. This is one of the reasons our global food yield is dropping.
2. Petroleum-powered machines. Once again, this is linked to the price of oil, along with greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants from exhaust.
3. Monocropping. This also causes the soil to becomes less and less fertile, reducing yield. Acres upon acres of a single crop dominate this form of agriculture. This creates a perfect breeding ground for pests, while depriving the crops of nutrients they could naturally get from being mixed with other crops. It also destroys ecosystem diversity.
4. Clear-cutting. Huge areas of forests are destroyed for agricultural development. This creates erosion, as the tree roots that once held the soil together are gone. The soil is washed away with the rain, along with the chemicals used in fertilisers and pesticides.

Solution: I know it’s popular among greenies today to promote local, organic agriculture. But popular things can sometimes be right.

So why local? Because it provides self-sufficiency for the people cultivating the land in the first place. Its primary purpose isn’t to create profit for some disconnected multinational corporation. If you buy from a small local farm, you are giving money directly to the people who made the food. No dissociation from reality is required.

And why organic? The general definition of organic agriculture involves various sustainable practices, such as cover-cropping and green manure (as opposed to fertilisers), integrated pest management (as opposed to pesticides), intercropping (as opposed to monocropping), and even sometimes zero-tillage (as opposed to machine tillage).

In addition, permaculture is the best form of agriculture there is, in my humble opinion. It is also known as the lowest of low external input agriculture, meaning it takes fewer resources than other forms of agriculture. On top of that, it is not just an agricultural practice, but a lifestyle with its own design, economic, and social principles.

Please see the Glossary for explanations of all the words in bold.

Solutions Part I

I am now required to post once a day for the next month, so try to keep up!

I’m sure most of us are aware by now of all the problems we face in this world. There are plenty of ideas out there for solutions to our problems, but I have to say, I’m unimpressed with a vast majority of them. There are several I hear a lot, and the next few posts will be about them. Here’s the first one:

Tweak our current economic system so it puts a monetary value on nature.
Problem: This approach does not acknowledge the inherent lack of sustainability our current economic system (henceforth referred to as CES) has. It is not only reliant on infinite growth (which cannot be amended), but it has distinctly dissociative characteristics. If the CES promotes and relies on a complete detachment between product and stakeholder, source and profit, producer and consumer, worker and capitalist; then how on earth are we supposed to connect environmental health and justice to economics? Assigning a monetary value to nature is like assigning a monetary value to a human being. It can be done, I suppose, but it is meaningless. Equating inherent value with monetary value is extremely dangerous, and we already do enough of that.

Solution: We need to stop valuing profit for profit’s sake. Many equate the term economics with our CES, but that isn’t what it means. An economic system is a system of producing, consuming, and distributing goods and services. The possibilities are endless. My favourite, of course, is the libertarian socialist (or what I like to call anarcho-socialist) system, where worker collectives fuel production. This gets rid of the hierarchy found in traditional businesses and corporations. And while many may claim that a democratic approach to business is impossible, it has been proven time and again to be quite possible. I would like to see a local currency scheme combined with worker collectives, rotational local leadership, and fair representative leadership at the higher (state, national, global) levels.

For a good example of relatively large-scale libertarian socialism that worked for a while, read this.

Please see the Glossary for explanations of all the words in bold.

Change Your Lightbulb…And Then Some

In addition to making our voices heard, we can each make climate-friendly choices in our personal lives, whether by buying energy efficient appliances, switching to electricity generated by renewable energy, or taking public transportation.

Reading this on the We Can Solve It website (I know, second mention of this site) reignited my insistence to drive home a particular point: there is no “simple” solution to a complex problem. You must start by looking at the roots of the problem for the solution. In this case, I see the main root of the problem to be our global economic system. If consumerism is one of the causes of our predicament, then insisting that consumers switch from one product to another, without changing their lifestyles at all, will not solve the problem.

This blog is about solutions, so here I go. There are many levels on which we can make a difference. Some people go to protests, some write to their politicians, others educate their friends, still others write, run for office, become a teacher or therapist, or become a shareholder in a corporation. I see a lot of waste; ours is a culture of waste. So if by “change your lightbulb,” you actually mean, “practice a more sustainable lifestyle with lest waste,” then I completely agree. But that’s not how a lot of people see it.

We can make changes in our everyday lives, and for some of us, they have to be incremental. Some of us will not budge any other way. So you start by recycling. Then you start buying products with less packaging, such as buying in bulk. Then you try to figure out what items you actually need, and you consume less and less. You get into a habit of less consumption, and it becomes easier to find joy in subsistence living. Perhaps you get tired of buying grocery veges and decide to plant your own garden, if you have the resources. Of course, this could take years, or even decades to do. But it’s worth it.

Then it’s time to acknowledge the fact that we don’t live in a vacuum. Action on a communal level makes a bigger difference. Living by example helps raise awareness to a certain extent, but there is more you can do. The actions I mentioned above (such as writing to politicians) are good examples. If you live in a democracy, or if your country claims to be democratic, take advantage of that! The whole purpose of democracy is that citizens can change the course of their country.

Finally, there are specific societal and policy changes, and lifestyle choices, that we can make. Specifics are important, because they help us find a goal to move towards. In later posts, I will talk about Transition Towns, permaculture, cohousing, L.E.T.S. schemes, and other practical, local initiatives that can have a powerful impact. There are examples of all of these things all over the world. Local communities, once broken by the nuclear family age, are coming together out of necessity. It’s happening in both the “developed” and “developing” nations. We are beginning to embrace our nature as social creatures once again, and I have to say, it’s about time.

It’s Beginning

“America must commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and other clean sources within 10 years.”

Al Gore’s recent speech on a clean energy economy inspired me to finally begin this blog. This blog promotes progress in the name of sustainability in all its forms: ecological, social, and economic. Really, ecology, society and the economy are intricately linked, so when addressing one, you inevitably address the others.

Here is a 5-minute preview to the speech.

Please watch the entire speech. It’s a bit long, but worth every minute.

Despite my political differences with Gore, I was very impressed with his speech, which pulled few punches about the situation we are in today. He handled it the way a politician should: he laid out the problems and then stated solutions, while continuously weaving empowering words throughout the speech. He did not address some of the more gloomy truth. The fact is that our entire culture of consumerism and growth must change, or we will continue to come up against problems relating to resource depletion and unsustainability. But that must be reserved for those of us who work more outside the system. When dealing with the mainstream public, you must spoon feed them one piece of information at a time. Changing the entire infrastructure of a country to suit clean energy is enough for a person to have to deal with, without also being told they must change their entire lifestyle.

Surprisingly, Gore addressed peak oil (though he doesn’t label it as such) and successfully outlined the biggest problems that our society faces today. He even suggests some sort of Just Transition for displaced workers such as coal miners, though he doesn’t specify the policy instruments that will be used.

This blog will address the very things Gore mentioned, but in greater detail. To learn more about Gore’s innovative project to combat climate change, go to the We Campaign website.