In the Transition Movement, we call this a “reskilling” workshop. We are relearning the basic skills needed for everyday living – skills like growing, preserving, and pickling food; rainwater harvesting; composting and building fertile soils; crafting functional items; building structures; and making basic clothing. In the past 150 years of energy plenty – the brief “age of oil” – we have gleefully outsourced these basic needs to distant continents. But as we enter the declining second half of our planetary oil supply, as we begin to glimpse the extent to which climate change will impact agriculture and fresh water supplies, and as we fathom the far reaching repercussions of economic contraction and the end of economic “growth,” we find we are going to need these basic skills.

In the Transition Movement, we realize that our current lifestyles and our current way of doing things cannot continue. With the “triple header” of peak oil, climate change, and economic contraction, business-as-usual is doomed. We are faced with rethinking just about everything we currently consider “normal.” When our basic daily sustenance comes from supermarkets which stock a mere three-day supply of highly-processed food, fed by an oil-dependent globalized supply chain, and fully dependent upon petrochemical-driven agriculture, it is clear that we are not well equipped to handle what is coming.

On a Sunday evening, in an entirely different setting in the North Hills area of the San Fernando Valley north of Los Angeles, 50 people gathered in a borrowed church facility. The attendees included young parents and senior citizens, small-business persons and employees of global corporations. They had the highest qualifications: concerned earth citizens. Within the Transition Movement, we understand that it is at this grassroots level where we will find creative, ingenious, very realistic and possible solutions. Once people understand the problems ahead, they can begin to invent practical solutions. And most of these solutions involve existing knowledge, existing materials, low-technology, and on-the-ground familiarity with local resources.

After a brief Powerpoint overview of the “triple header” crisis, the North Hills session broke out into working groups, roughly by neighborhood. The question was asked for public discussion: What might resilience mean in your local community?

The Transition Movement

Transition Los Angeles has been asking this very question of audiences across Southern California and getting some inspiring, clearly focused, and intelligent responses. We are using proactive and creative approaches developed by the international Transition Network,  a rapidly growing grassroots effort that began in the United Kingdom and has now spread to most of the developed nations of the world. The Transition Movement asserts that life without oil could possibly be better than what we have now, if we get to work and plan for it.

The Transition Movement has its roots in Permaculture, a design philosophy developed in the 1970s by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren to explore how we might consciously create a permanent human culture.  In 2004, Rob Hopkins, the founder of the Transition Movement, was teaching Permaculture classes in Kinsale, Ireland. He asked his class to envision the changes to different sectors of society – food, housing, transportation, and more – as society moved into a post-petroleum era. Hopkins carried the ideas generated in Kinsale to his new home in Totnes, Devon, England. There he was joined by several creative individuals including Naresh Giangrande, Sophy Banks, and Ben Brangwyn.

The Totnes team embarked on an aggressive program to spur action within their local town by raising awareness of peak oil and climate change, offering reskilling workshops, networking with other organizations, and holding working groups and visioning sessions. At the end of their first four years, 74.9% of the townspeople were aware of the Totnes team’s work, and 33.3% had participated in one form or another.  Now the work begun in Transition Town Totnes has inspired the world.

Within the Transition Movement, we speak of the “inner and outer Transition.” Even as we are installing physical projects like community gardens and rainwater harvesting equipment or setting up economic structures like Time Banks and local food redistribution networks, we realize that these tangible elements are only the vehicle for the deeper, inner changes of building community and changing minds.

Our Westchester group has worked with many different faith communities and offered workshops where community members can explore the psychological and spiritual implications of radical paradigm change. Even as we change the outer, physical aspects of our lives, we must facilitate the inner Transition as well.

Resilience versus Sustainability

Building resilience is the cornerstone of the Transition Movement. By “resilience,” we mean our ability to flex and adapt through the changes ahead. Specifically, this means the ability to adapt to peak oil and climate change, simultaneously, combined with economic circumstances that will render large-scale capital investment unrealistic.

When considered separately, peak oil and climate change each have a set of possible solutions. Yet many of the possible solutions to peak oil – switching to coal, for example – are unthinkable for global warming. And many of the proposed solutions to global warming – switching to electric cars, or the “hydrogen economy” – are severely constrained by how much cheap oil we will have on hand to put the infrastructure in place and whether we will have sufficient economic support for the massive conversion.

Taken together, the “triple header” crisis dictates a very small pool of potential solutions. Realistic solutions are not likely to include continued globalization; we simply will not have the fuel to maintain it. The most resilient solutions tend to be simple, local, and small scale and demand few resources and little in the way of energy inputs. This set of solutions has been variously described as “energy descent”  or “powerdown.”  In any event, the crises we face have already determined that our future will inevitably be one of less energy consumption overall.

Within Transition initiatives, building resilience means growing our local ability to meet the everyday needs of life despite fewer resources and less energy with which to do it. The goal is that local communities become more flexible, robust, and skilled. Thus rather than campaigning for “clean-fuel” trucks to bring our food from globalized supply networks to supermarkets, resilience-thinking guides a Transition initiative to expand its local skill base and develop the local food network through urban agriculture and edible landscaping. Rather than massive-scale solar projects in a grid across the desert, resilience-thinking highlights the wisdom of small, community-owned solar arrays while simultaneously powering down our electricity demands to a minimal level which matches what can be generated locally. Rather than one-size-fits-all, resilience-thinking points to local culture, local abilities, and local resources as the core of practical answers.

The term “sustainability” has become far less useful. In order to achieve a state of human existence which might potentially be able to be sustained for a long period of time, powerdown must come first. Given our North American and developed-nations ecological footprint, we must substantially adjust our consumption habits to bring them within the carrying capacity of the planet. When the word “sustainability” is used in a context that excludes the concept of powerdown – for example the oxymoron “sustainable prosperity” – it becomes completely useless as a target for basic human survival. Additionally, attaining true societal sustainability is such a long-term prospect that big-picture thinkers such as David Holmgren estimate that those of us alive today will never see it, and it implies such a static state that thinkers such as Transition Colorado’s Don Hall hope we never do.

“Resilience,” on the other hand, is imbued with the vibrancy of life. The term brings up images of a kid bouncing on a trampoline, able to rebound easily and delightfully with the changing surface beneath him. Resilience is simultaneously robust and flexible. Resilience is exhilarating creativity. Resilience is diversity of approaches and multiplicity of solutions. And resilience-building contains “the potential for an economic, cultural, and social renaissance the likes of which we have never seen.”

The Transition Approach

In Hopkins’ early work, he stressed our “addiction to oil” and explored how psychological models of treating substance addictions could be useful in creating post-petroleum consciousness change within society as a whole. Thus he offers “12 Steps” that the Totnes team used to achieve their stellar progress. Many of these involve reaching out to citizens within the community through public events.

Community-building is essential to resilience. Without a supportive community around us, if we do not know our neighbors and get a good working relationship in place, we will be ill equipped to weather the sweeping changes ahead. As contrasted with a survivalist approach, the Transition Movement is by nature community-centric. We recognize that the survival of one – whether family, street, neighborhood, or village – is entirely dependent upon working toward the survival of all.

When forming a new Transition initiative, one of the first steps is to cultivate awareness within the community – awareness of the problems we face together with awareness of the need to radically change our lifestyles in order to prepare. Transition initiatives around the world have invented many creative, delightful, and fun techniques for transmitting this information; and they share these event ideas freely in Creative Commons forums.

Reskilling is another one of the “12 Steps.” Here in Los Angeles, in addition to the fruit tree pruning workshop, we have offered bread baking, raw foods cooking, solar cooker-building workshops, quilting circles, organic vegetable gardening classes, and more. This helps grow the local skill base of functional, practical skills that our local communities will need in coming years as oil and transportation become far less available. In addition, deep inside, the participants who gain these new skills begin to feel more capable, more prepared, and more able to cope psychologically with whatever the future might bring. A regular stream of public meetings creates a gathering place – the beginnings of a new sense of community.

The Transition Movement realizes that it does not have all the answers; in fact, we may become mere facilitators of what already exists. Thus networking is one of the “12 Steps,” reaching out to other organizations within the local area which might be doing similar work. When existing work – whether that be transportation plans, social justice campaigns, education and outreach projects, or health-oriented programs – is viewed within the context of peak oil + climate change + economic contraction, a finite set of realistic solutions emerges. Sector by sector, a larger picture emerges. This larger picture is ultimately what we are after.

We are a society which is adrift without a story to guide our future. The old story of colonial expansion, industrial growth, moon landings, and Starship Enterprise has expired. In an energy-constrained, post-carbon world, that old story does not serve us anymore, but we have not yet replaced it. We need new stories which excite the consciousness and guide us forward into a resource-efficient, socially just, post-petroleum future. Transition initiatives are working to develop those stories too. Using art, performance, and storytelling techniques, they entice community participants to develop visions for this possible future.

The creation of the Energy Descent Action Plan is perhaps the defining moment for a Transition initiative. Step 12 of Hopkins’ approach – and so far attained by only a few Transition initiatives worldwide – this document typically merges the concrete sector-by-sector plans with the imaginative art and storytelling and offers a vision for the future of the community. In some UK communities, these documents have been embraced by planning departments and city councils as guidelines for future direction.  Thus an Energy Descent Action Plan holds enormous potential to bring environmental and social forecasts, plus the voice of citizens, to guide land use considerations, government investment decisions, educational curriculums, and more.

What We Can Do

With respect to implications for planning, policy-making, and action, resilience-thinking leads us to several conclusions:

(1) Question the growth paradigm. Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, our society has embraced the idea that growth is good and lack of growth is a failure: When the stock market does not rise, we panic; when our incomes do not increase, we must be doing something wrong. Yet as humanity reaches the planet’s carrying capacity and experiences resource limitations including but not limited to peak oil, we are clearly at the end of “growth” as we have known it.

What will replace “growth”? Many thinkers are working on the answers.  But as we plan cities, plan developments, and plan programs for the future, if these plans are to be anything approaching viable, they must include decreased resource supplies, decreased energy supplies, decreased transportation abilities, and decreased financial resources. Additionally, without growth, the underlying premise of debt (borrowing against the future because future income will presumably be greater) disappears; thus incurring any new debt becomes unwise, and eliminating the old becomes essential.

(2) Include peak oil and climate change combined. As stated earlier, when we consider one problem or the other, exclusively, we come up with a portfolio of solutions, many of which will be rendered unrealistic once we consider the repercussions of the other problem. We must include both peak oil and climate change as a combined and interdependent unit in all of our thinking and planning. This will dictate rather specific types of solutions: local solutions; solutions which operate mechanically or energy-free; solutions which consider the embodied energy and cradle-to-cradle implications; and consideration of whether a new program’s goals are even irrelevant with less oil, less ability to transport ourselves, or diminished economic vitality.

Any investment made this year, next year, and into the future should better prepare us for the impacts of peak oil and climate change. If it does not, it is headed in the wrong direction. Future expenditures of transportation funds, for example, should emphasize fossil-free bicycle and pedestrian transportation and overtly phase out the current dominance of the personal automobile. Water policies should curtail wasteful uses such as ornamental landscapes while encouraging local rainwater harvesting and on-site, low-tech greywater filtration. In an economy where capital investment is so scarce and precious, the opportunity cost of ill-placed investments is very high: they undermine our potential to survive.

(3) Prepare your communities with resilience. Educational and outreach programs should enlighten the public about the realities and forecast repercussions of the “triple header” of crises. Educational programs need to gear up young and old, middle class and working class in acquiring the hands-on practical skills needed for everyday living in a post-petroleum era, including skills of growing and producing food, garden-to-medicine herbalism, and basic craftsmanship. Public policies could ease prohibitions against city chickens, simple greywater systems, and composting toilets. Social programs will need mental health providers to assist people with the psychological aspects of Transition – that the reality of our future is dramatically different from what we were reared to think it would be. In order to finance all this during economic contraction, we will have to get creative about economics too, perhaps with sophisticated bartering systems and local currencies.

(4) Walk the talk. Resilience building and the Transition to a post-carbon, post-petroleum future begins at home. Even as you make big plans for our collective future, cultivate resilience-building practices in your personal and family life. Switch to local foods; bike to work; hang out the laundry; create a potluck with your neighbors; dig a vegetable garden and wriggle your fingers in the soil. Get to know real life in your immediate spot on this very small, very precious planet we all call home because herein is the beginning of the change.

Often MDG campaigns focus on collecting cash for third-world countries.  In many cases, people simply give cash, and figure that takes care of their obligation.  “Out of sight, out of mind.”  There is no pressure to change their lifestyle.

For an event last summer, we created a “taking the MDG local” display.  We wanted to underline how communities who believe in bringing the MDG to reality have plenty of work to do at home.

The lifestyles we call “normal” are a huge part of what perpetuates the poverty cycle and makes the MDGs necessary.

Plus, given the realities we face within the decade (peak oil, climate change, economic contraction), it is imperative that we bring to life certain aspects of the MDGs within our home communities, to prepare them and grow resilience to adapt to our future.

With the link below you can download the tabletop cards we used in the display.  Each card was surrounded by a display of local resources about that topic.  We hope sharing this information helps you in creating positive change within your local community.

• The Millennium Development Goals, localized (Word doc) note: the display was for a church community, so does include some Christian terminology; however it could easily be modified for virtually any faith tradition.
• More resources we have created for use with faith communities:
  http://envirochangemakers.org/ECM.resources.htm scroll to “Resources for Groups”
• How our group has worked with people from a wide diversity of faith communities:  http://www.transitionus.org/blog/diversity 

Myrto wrote about Raising Funds for Transition.  Several months ago, here in Los Angeles, we were discussing similar issues.  But thoughts which began with “how do we get money” soon ventured into a different realm:  “What does a sustainable service organization look like in this powerdown era and time of economic contraction?”

Here in the Transition movement, we understand that with the end of cheap oil, we will experience an inevitable (and likely severe) economic contraction.  In our Transition Trainings we discuss the fallacies of the Industrial Growth Complex.  We know what lies ahead:  simpler times, less affluent times, less cash available, and necessarily more community participation in every single aspect of life.

Nonprofit organizations won’t be immune.  Already, most nonprofits are struggling for funding, and the fun’s just beginning.  Just like the energy surplus which is disappearing with the end of cheap oil, the cash surplus which used to fund nonprofits is disappearing with the credit/banking/economic crunch.  We have witnessed “peak nonprofit.” 

It is absolutely absurd, in this post-peak day and age, to set up a nonprofit organization with the expectation that it will run on society’s cash surplus (i.e. donations and grants).  This old model, the nonprofit model we’ve grown up with, is a phenomenon of pre-peak excess.

We have around us several models for service organizations:

• churches/faith organizations, which live on tithing, donations from members, fundraisers, donations from wills of the deceased, etc.  Some restrict services to members-only, and some serve much more broadly, varies considerably.
• traditional not-for-profits like the Sierra Club, which exist on grants and membership and donations.  Many serve quite broadly.
• clubs, which rely on membership to fund them and generally restrict their services to the paying members
• government, which funds itself based on legally-enforced taxation but is thus able to serve all.
• if you can think of further models, please add to the comments.

Transition initiatives (”TIs”) by definition must serve quite broadly — they must be inclusive within the community.  We aren’t setting up TIs to rescue “members only” from the horrors of peak oil and civilization collapse.  Rather, we’re setting up Energy Descent Action Plans and new parallel structures with the intent to serve the entireties of our local communities.  Thus our organizational model must reflect that.  The club and membership models won’t work because we have to set up organizations that can and will serve a very broad base.

We’re working within a new era — an era of descent, of contraction, of coming together, of people having more time (albeit through unemployment); an era of less stuff and more sharing, an era where new things and glossy presentation will become far less important than sheer ability to get the job done.  It will be a more localized era with less need to travel; an era of art and creative solutions because the “usual way” (i.e. the old buy-it consumer way) doesn’t work anymore.

Doesn’t it seem appropriate that we be using a new view of organization to go with this new era?

As we rethink society for a post-petroleum future, it’s opportunity to rethink nonprofit structures, too.  Rather than looking for how to fund Transition, and binding ourselves to a model of eternally-scrapping-for-fundraising (”Where can we fundraise?”  “Where can we get grants?”  “Where can we get money?”), creating new nonprofits in a time of economic contraction presents us with opportunity to rethink the idea of service-based organizations altogether.

A sustainable nonprofit in an era of powerdown and economic contraction must be able to flex and adapt to circumstances.  It cannot carry debt.  A loan is borrowing against the promise of a brighter future; yet we are likely now experiencing the brightest (conventional) economic times many of us will ever see.  A sustainable nonprofit cannot carry pricey leases or heavy salary obligations.  The operations of a sustainable nonprofit must be designed such that it can weather the long-term, because we need our TIs to be around and functioning for the long-term!

What about the cash-free nonprofit (or at least a lower-cash nonprofit):  In one of our Los Angeles local groups, we recently held an event about ways a neighborhood could share finances — everything from garden sharing to alternative currencies to group purchasing.   In the course of preparing for this event, we created a chart which compares bartering, time banking, local currencies, and LETS (Local Economic Trading Systems).  These represent an alternative view of economics, and for the same reasons an individual might be drawn to cash-free or lower-cash ways of meeting his needs, our nonprofit organizations could benefit.  One online pamphlet, “The Community Way,” describes a scrip-type program which could possibly help support a nonprofit’s cash needs.  More progressively, the TI could simply become yet another participant in a community-wide LETS system (see video).

What about the employee-free nonprofit:  Many of the recent efforts of advocates of “the green economy” are geared toward development of jobs (as in, traditional white-collar desk jobs which pay nice W2 salaries) and “growing this sector.”  Yet we in the Transition movement understand that all sectors of society are being impacted by the end of cheap oil; all sectors are shrinking; and if we review biocapacity/global footprint constraints, we’ll understand why no sectors can possibly expect to be growing, whether green or not-green. (for further discussion of this issue see page 6 and prior of this pdf).  In a world of shrinking cash resources, creating new “nice W2 salaries” of any kind is tenuous-to-unlikely.  The age of the salaried nonprofit executive is probably nearing its end.  And in fact salaried executives (representing a single, influential viewpoint) might be in conflict with the circular-structured, working-group-representative, engaged-creativity models that our Transition Trainings are teaching us to use.  For clerical and administrative tasks, barter-based labor, time bank-based labor, LETS system-based labor, and volunteerism are all much more likely scenarios.

What about the premises-free nonprofit:  It requires networking, but hey, isn’t that one of the 12 Steps of Transition anyway?  Here in the Los Angeles area, our various local groups are using on a regular and ongoing basis the hall of an Episcopal church, the hall of a Methodist church, the premises of a yoga center, the open space at a community garden in a public school, some private homes, a meeting room in a public library, and they’ve been offered a room in a private school. Each of these has required us to form working relationships with the premises owners, fostering connections which in many cases are becoming supportive, rich, mutually enlightening, and interdependent.  We didn’t just “find” these generous people; we co-evolved and grew together.

What about the legalities-free nonprofit:  Our Los Angeles initiating group has sustained more than 4 years of ongoing, active operations without any legal existence.  It isn’t a 501(c)(3).  It isn’t a corporation.  It doesn’t even have a checking account.  Admittedly, this type of invisible operations probably won’t work for all circumstances, but it may work for many!

As we talk about reducing consumption, our TIs are a chance to model stuff-free behavior.  The challenge is:  how much can you do with how little?  If you think about the typical office setup with a Permaculture eye, you can see the waste.  TIs have to be different.  In many cases, office equipment and personal property isn’t necessary; most of these can be short-term borrowed as needed, or dealt with in some form of co-op arrangement.  We don’t need single-use items, and reducing paper is a no-brainer.  Glossy, expensive, full-corporate-services web presence isn’t necessary (realize that vast swathes of the general population have limited or low-tech computer capabilities so they can’t access all that fancy stuff — rather than “better communications,” in many cases it actually deepens demographic divides).  Keep it simple.  It’s hard for us to remember when we’ve grown up amidst a more-more-more world that this time around it’s the message that counts, not the trappings.  Our new view of organization, our new view of nonprofits will have to reflect that.

Each time our Los Angeles initiating group has been faced with cash needs, it has become opportunity to ask the unshopping questions:  “Do we really need this? Can we get by without this?”  In true Permaculture fashion, we ask, “Could we meet this need with borrowed, repurposed, or scavenged items?  How could we do it with the skills within our community?”  In addition to ongoing community meetings and reskilling programs, our group has constructed a centerpiece community garden on a shoestring budget.  We’ve borrowed AV equipment.  We’ve used web design and graphic design skills of TI members, and have developed other skills internally (reskilling).  It is possible!

Create opportunities for people to give — of their time, their stuff, their creativity and ingenuity.  The process engages people in a way that writing a check never, ever will.  It binds people to the cause.  They feel a part of that garden, that project, that event, that journey.  And isn’t this ultimately the Transition goal:  finding ways to get people thinking and acting differently, finding ways to get people connected to this process, inspiring greater participation.  Nonconventional organization structures and progressive financial arrangements can become yet one more tool to make this happen.

It simply (simply?!) requires thinking differently about finances, rethinking our sense of organization and nonprofit, forming partnerships, and building community.

]]> http://legacyla.net/transformation/?feed=rss2&p=281 http://legacyla.net/transformation/?p=279 http://legacyla.net/transformation/?p=279#comments Sun, 31 Jan 2010 15:48:51 +0000 joanne Culture & Education Our local Community http://legacyla.net/transformation/?p=279 [Originally published on Transition United States in December 2009]

Solidarity

It’s so foreign to our American experience that I had to look it up in the dictionary to get it right.  In a session from Copenhagen’s Klimaforum, May East (of Findhorn, Scotland and Sao Paulo, Brazil) asserts that lack of solidarity is precisely what is missing in our communities in the developed nations of the northern hemisphere.

We use the word “community” a lot, and we readilly agree that we don’t have tight-knit “communities.”  But when we boil it down, what does lack of community mean?  May East identifies it: lack of solidarity.

To explain this, she tells a story.  (at approx 24:55 minute point in video)  In journeying from the UK to Brazil, she brought her host a box of English biscuits (I think that means “cookies” in American).  She tells how she had expected the man to take the precious box home to share with his wife and kids.  Instead, an hour later she noticed the slum’s children along the street:  each one had a tiny fragment of cookie, and they were carefully breaking those tiny fragments into still smaller fragments to hand to their friends.  They didn’t have much, but what they had, they shared.

May East also notes how both the U.S. and South America were hit by major hurricanes, and in her observation South America was emerging from the crisis with far more resilience.  Not just because of resilient “things” like we often talk about in Transition circles, but East asserts it was because of solidarity — a common purpose, the same life outlook which had the street children sharing their cookie morsels.  East calls solidarity “the fabric of your community.”

Resilience and self-sufficiency

The Transition Network says that the goal of the movement is building “resilience.”  When Transition U.S. began its web presence (I see that this has since changed) it used to say something like “local self-sufficiency and resilience.”  This I can understand.  In the elevator talk — where you have 60 seconds to get your message across — “resilience” doesn’t sell; nobody knows what it means.

“Local self-sufficiency” rings a bell with people, because we Americans have cultural history there.  The Pilgrims, Laura Ingalls Wilder, we have plenty of self-sufficiency stories, and the concept holds a certain glory.  It appeals to the back-to-the-landers and to the peak oil survivalists and to the conservative individualists.  It defines a clear position, and when used in conjunction with “resilience,” self-sufficiency works because it helps to define the R-word.  But in many cases, “resilience” remains about skills and things.

Perhaps the R-word itself needs to be modified.  With “solidarity.”

The missing ingredient of our communities

May East presented her biscuit story in remarks about what Transition in the developed North could learn from the global South.  Within Transition we glibly say that we need to “build community,” but solidarity identifies specifically that element which we are lacking.

In our current culture of peak-individualism, we have lost “common responsibilities.”  We outsource these to our government and nonprofits and expect them to handle it for us.  Schooling our children, care of parklands, preservation of The Commons.  It’s not working too well.

In some ways we even outsourced our common responsibilities to corporations, and we are dismayed to discover that the corporate interests haven’t upheld those commons.  Hence the stumbling attempts to create corporate ethics.

In our culture of individualism and competition, we no longer understand community of purpose.  In 4 years of activitsm in my SUV-intense neighborhood, I have so often heard the reaction “I’m glad somebody’s doing this.”  They agree it’s an important cause but they’re happy to outsource it, and have someone else do the work.  They don’t have the time, which really translates into they’re too busy competing in the workplace, competing for space on the freeway, competing that their children should have the best extracurricular activities and should get into the best colleges for the best future …

May East’s comments helped me to identify specifically what aspect is missing.  We need to reawaken solidarity, that sense of common purpose.

Americans don’t understand solidarity.  We don’t have a history in it.  We don’t have many cultural stories or models.  Perhaps our closest example was the Revolutionary War, where colonists banned together — but that same story is the source of our proud American independence.

And independence is perhaps solidarity’s polar opposite.

How do we do it?

We need to become the kids sharing their cookie.

In reality, I don’t know how to reawaken solidarity either.  But I write this article so that you, as community leaders in this Transition time, might be alert to glimmers of it within your own community.

East says “we have been educated to compete.”  She says she doesn’t know what it will take to get us to change course, change consciousness.  I propose that we Transition leaders try the opposite: consciously educating people to be in solidarity.

At our local community group in Los Angeles, we have seen glimmers of shared responsibility in our work days in the community garden.  We see common purpose in urban harvest redistribution programs.  The warmth of common interest bubbles forth in our community potlucks.  I’m guessing that glimmers more will appear as we get going with noncompetitive means of exchange like time banks and LETS systems.

As we approach the New Year, I’m reviewing what has worked and what hasn’t in the past year of Transition activities.  Over and over my thoughts are returning to the simplest things.  Our organic vegetable gardening class series has been a big success, not simply because it is growing garden knowledge (reskilling), or getting more people to try urban agriculture (physical projects), but because we now have a core group of regulars who know each other and recognize each other as fellows on the path.  We are building relationships.

Our hands-on reskilling classes, whether those be pickling or breadbaking or building solar cookers, have drawn many of the same people.  Guest speakers comment again and again how warm our circle is — I’m in it every week, so it takes the comments of these outsiders to make me recognize it.  This “warmth” is the caring and sense of sharing that people within our circle have begun to build.

As I continue my process of “year in review” and as we put together our calendar of Transition activities for 2010, I will be looking for those kind of activites which are most likely to build and further that warmth, that caring, those first glimmers of reawakened solidarity.

[Originally published on Transition United States in October 2009]

Climate change says we should change
whereas peak oil says we will be forced to change.

– Rob Hopkins

Here in the U.S., the film “An Inconvenient Truth” made awesome strides in informing the general public about the reality of global warming.  The April 2007 Step It Up campaign got people in 1,400 U.S. sites involved in activism.  This month’s 350.org campaign  will advance public awareness in two ways:  Firstly, the Oct 2009 350.org Day of Action is unfolding internationally, so it is an opportunity for citizens in non-U.S. countries to get involved, and secondly, it informs the general public about the target, the end goal.

350 is aptly being called “the most important number on the planet.”  350 parts-per-million carbon dioxide concentration in the upper atmosphere is what NASA and Columbia University scientists say we must attain.  We’re currently at 385ppm and climbing.  All these figures tell us that we’d better severely reduce our carbon emissions immediately, in order to have any hope of preserving the type of planetary climate upon which all life forms on the planet are dependent for survival.  (See the 350 animation.)

But how do we do it?

All of these programs — “An Inconvenient Truth,” Step It Up, 350.org — are marvelous awareness-raisers.  However when it comes to solutions, they dodge the real answers.

The “solutions” which rolled with the credits to “An Inconvenient Truth” are painfully inadequate when compared to the magnitude of the gap (385ppm vs 350ppm).  Changing to CFL bulbs is important, but it isn’t nearly enough.

Step It Up and 350.org have been great awareness-raisers too.  But the predominant focus of both Step It Up and 350.org has been on rallies/demonstrations to get top-down legislation passed, not on any real, physical change.

Ecophilosopher Joanna Macy describes three types of action required to achieve The Great Turning:

“An Inconvenient Truth,” Step It Up, and 350.org really only focus on Macy’s action #1: “Holding action to slow down the destruction of life”.  They simply don’t have sufficient scope to address the other two.

It is very important, as people involved in the Transition movement, to realize how unique and how critical our movement is.  Transition has two aspects: inner Transition and outer Transition.  With Energy Descent Action Plans, local food events, setting up alternative currencies, and more, outer Transition begins to address Macy’s action #2: “Creating new structures” within society.  Inner Transition — a vital and important part of all that we do — is Macy’s action #3: “A shift in consciousness,” a shift in our basic awareness of how humanity fits within the massive ecosystems of this planet.

THIS is what it’s going to take get from 385+ppm to 350ppm. Transition means both examining and working toward what it’s really going to take to get our society reoriented so that the 350ppm goal is in any way possible.

Include Peak Oil

And Transition has another serious aspect to it that none of the others do: peak oil.  The Transition movement considers peak oil and climate change combined, because we will face the two simultaneously.  In many cases, the “solutions” that conventional approaches are proposing for global warming will be unattainable because we won’t have the oil to bring these techno-dreams to reality.

In the quote at the beginning of this post, Rob Hopkins addresses the dicotomy of “should” versus “must.”  We haven’t made much progress on climate action, because with its long, slow lead time it’s all still in the realm of “should.”  We “should” change our lifestyles so that our grandchildren can survive.  But because it’s only a “should” and not yet a “must,” many people lapse into inaction:  “I’ll do it when I have to.”

But peak oil demands that we “must” change (and pretty fast, too!).  Fairly soon we’re not going to be able to afford what’s left of our planetary oil supply.  Knowing this, now is the time to plan, prepare, and take action to adapt.

Both peak oil and climate change tell us that, plain and simply, we must learn to live in ways which don’t burn fossil fuels.  Neither “An Inconvenient Truth” nor 350.org happen to mention this.  But it is absolutely imperative for Transition initiatives working within our local communities to keep it at the forefront.

Here’s how:

1) When you show any film (”An Inconvenient Truth” or others), hold a community discussion afterward.  Remember that the film is just the excuse to gather the people but the real point of the gathering is to get people together, to get them talking, connecting and planning!  (See Hopkins p. 155 for great ideas)

2) At your local 350.org gatherings on Oct 24, be sure to include the topic of peak oil, and refer participants to your local Transition group for ongoing activities.  Perhaps you might modify 350’s “10 Things” handout to include contact information for your local Transtion group.

3) If your group shows “An Inconvenient Truth,” be sure to include peak oil, and offer real solutions.  Here’s a peak oil short animation that you can show (3 minutes).  Real solutions are of course all three actions of Joanna Macy, which eventually boils down to the Transition process.

4) Any time your Transition initiative partners with other organizations (350, green business associations, etc.), bring them on board the Transition understanding:  teach them to consider both climate change and peak oil in their approach to public education as well as in their operations.

5) Walk the Talk.  Even as you advocate that people change their lifestyles, be changing your own.  Be an example to others.  Recall that Hopkins himself is offering us examples: years ago he quit flying, then more recently he and his family went car-free.  In addition to a rigorous speaking schedule, helping run an international organization, and contributing to the writing of several books, he has substantially upgraded the insulation in his home and he grows vegetables for his family.  You can do it too.  Always be adding new steps to your personal Transition journey, a little at a time.

[republished from Transition United States]

One of the most brilliant, well-written pieces I have read about the economy is “The Wrong Tree” (as in “Barking up the …”). Written by Jerry Mander of the International Forum on Globalization, it is found as part of the introduction to the the latest publication of peak oil sage Richard Heinberg.

First, about Heinberg: Richard Heinberg ’s Searching for a Miracle: ‘Net Energy’ Limits and the Fate of Industrialized Society is a serious analysis of just about every form of alternative energy and its potential (read: lack of potential) to fulfill our energy demands as we devour the declining second half of our planetary oil supply.

If you are a stranger to the weaknesses inherent in alternative energy, I highly recommend Heinberg’s rather technical publication. I also recommend this short article. Heinberg’s section “Transition Plans” (page 61 of the document, page 68 of the pdf) is good, albeit short. It does mention the Transition movement in a brief nod, which is notable given Heinberg’s previously expressed opinions. But I do trust that Heinberg is coming around. You can download Heinberg’s publication as a free pdf via the link at the base of the posting here (pdf 2.6MB).

But back to Jerry Mander: “The Wrong Tree” (page 2 of the Heinberg document, page 9 of the pdf) explains why the economy is not recovering, and why it won’t recover. In the incredibly brief space of one page, Mander hits such issues as: operating on the wrong assumptions, resource limitations, the scale of denial, and the need for fundamental systemic change. It might leave you breathless.

Certainly there are full-length works on this topic, but I have not found such a well-worded, comprehensive, conclusive, irrefutable, brief explanation. In our Training for Transition we were introduced to the decline of the Industrial Growth Complex, but the explanation was leaden and at times vague. Mander is clear and searing.

If anyone questions you about the economy, point them to Mander’s piece. And then be prepared to collect the reader’s staggering form. Perhaps Rob Hopkins’ “Coping with Your ‘End of Suburbia Moment’ ” (page 83 of the Transition Handbook) should be included in fine print after Mander’s piece.

[republished from Transition United States]

But in the early 1990s I figured it out:  you don’t have to read the news.  You don’t have to watch the TV, you don’t have to listen to the radio, you don’t have to take the “news” as media dishes it out.  You can turn it off.  You can step aside. 

Ostrich with head in the sand?  Hardly.  Mere months into my 1990s experiment, I learned that if it’s important enough you’ll hear about it.  Despite not listening to TV or radio, I learned of the Oklahoma City bombing within hours of it happening.  We learned of 9/11 as the second plane hit.  You don’t have to spend hours glued to the TV daily to find out about these things.

The relentless pounding of mainstream media daily, hourly, minute-by-minute, and now second-by-millisecond, sends us a perpetual message of how messed up the world is.  All of it is sculpted and crafted for maximum sensationalist delivery.  All of it has the spin of the advertisers and the industrial growth complex:  more, more, more, because growth is good and lack of growth is terrifying.  It’s intentionally designed to bring out that adrenaline feeling within us of panic and helplessness.  All of it misses the point on what’s really wrong (peak oil, resource depletion, overpopulation, misguided premises …).  And none of it is oriented toward solutions.

Real solutions aren’t shiny, glossy, sensational.  As an apple tree grows its solid and substantial root base, you don’t see too much visible action above ground.  Like a tomato ripening in the sun, real solutions are slow to grow and develop, so they don’t cooperate with sound-bite speed.  They don’t capture the limelight.  They rarely get mentioned in mainstream news.

As we set out to build a movement, it is challenging to stay positive.  Particularly when you’re being fed a daily diet of horror tales.  That’s why we need to surround ourselves with positive news.

At our Environmental Change-Makers meetings (our local community group in Los Angeles), we begin each meeting with an activity we call Positive Environmental News.  This is a time when people bring out the good news stories.  What positive news have you heard in the press, in the community?  California won the greenhouse gas emissions lawsuit with the EPA.  The local power company refused to renew the coal contract.  A Transition-knowledgeable person is running for State Assembly.  You have to hunt to find it, that’s why all of us looking together can come up with quite a list!  What have you been doing in your own life, what positive steps have you taken?  That’s Positive Environmental News too!  I planted my vegetable garden.  I bicycled to farmer’s market.  My chicken laid her first eggs!  Where else can you get a round of applause for setting up your composter?

On my desktop browser, my bookmarks are for sites where I’ll find positive news like Transition Culture and the blogs at Transition United States.  I find solutions-oriented sites like City Farmer and Homegrown Evolution where people are experimenting with the ideas and lifestyles of the future and sharing their results.  I visit beautiful sites that warm my heart, like the gorgeous photos at Earth Home Garden.  In these places I know I will find like-minded authors who are not only well-aware of the problems we face, but are actively working to solve them.  Here I know I can find reinforcements to shore me up when my own courage falters.  Here I know I can find things to warm my heart and encourage me to continue the job of trying to rebuild society.

Our Transition Los Angeles group has a simple blog for local happenings and a Yahoo discussion group where members can swap articles and resource links.  True, sometimes it’s the latest study of ice shelf melting that gets posted, but just as often our discussion is about good ideas for Transition.  In Los Angeles we’ve elected to stay with the simpler versions of technology so as not to exclude the diverse people we hope to bring on board this positive and proactive movement.

On sites like these, you’ll find that the concept of time is rather different than on the mainstream “news” sites.  Rather than the millisecond post, these positive news sites might post once a day, or once a week, or once in a while.  Welcome to a more realistic sense of time.  Like the apple tree and the tomato, real news happens like that.  And like the local apple and the heirloom tomato, it’s luscious and fulfilling and well worth the wait.

That mainstream media stuff might be called “news,” but how “new” is it really if it’s the same old rehashed stuff, built upon the same misguided paradigms?  REAL NEWS is that which is boldly setting out into the new pattern, the new direction, the path of our resilient future.

Why not change your browser over to REAL NEWS and allow it to support you and shore you up in your Transition efforts.

[republished from Transition United States]

]]> http://legacyla.net/transformation/?feed=rss2&p=276 http://legacyla.net/transformation/?p=274 http://legacyla.net/transformation/?p=274#comments Sun, 16 Aug 2009 15:06:26 +0000 joanne What Can I Do? Culture & Education Finance & Economics Our local Community http://legacyla.net/transformation/?p=274 As the economic contraction gets underway, there has been increasing interest in local currencies.  Local currencies made the pages of the Los Angeles Times last month, and within the Transition communities we make a great deal about the Totnes pound.  But there are many additional ways of sharing finances within communities, including time banks, LETS systems, barter, and all kinds of other creative sharing arrangements. Some of these are ways to meet our needs cash-free.  Others are ways to reduce costs or to access things we might not get alone.

Alternative sharing arrangements can be as simple as a seed swap or a group purchase of bare root fruit trees.  Our local group in our Los Angeles neighborhood has facilitated these in the past, and plans to repeat them this autumn.  We also plan to set up a group purchase of rainwater harvesting barrels.  Other simple sharing arrangements might include carpooling or sharing pet care.

Sharing gets more elaborate with arrangements like garden sharing, where a property owner gives a gardening friend permission to grow vegetables on the property-owner’s land.  In some communities, people join together to create a neighborhood home improvement group, working together on projects at different members’ homes each month.  In Portland, they have a tool sharing arrangement, which works a lot like borrowing books from a library.

At the Sept 24 meeting of our local group, we’re going to explore many different ways of sharing within communities.  It is designed as a way to jump-start multiple ways of community-based finances, and to get neighbors used to working together, even if a local currency doesn’t turn out to be practical for our location at this point in time.  We plan to implement some of the simpler sharing techniques immediately, and the Sept 24 meeting is the public’s initial chance to join in.  For the more complex systems, the Sept 24 session is a chance to meet others who are interested in setting up arrangements.

How do you set up a Neighborhood Sharing event?

1) Learn what’s possible.  Read about sharing techniques, both simple and complex.
* The Sharing Solution, by Janelle Orsi & Attorney Emily Doskow, describes many simple alternative sharing techniques which are easy to set up.  It also introduces some more complex techniques and gives you questions to ask and legal forms to adapt and use. www.sharingsolution.com
* North Portland Tool Library www.northportlandtoollibrary.org
* don’t forget to look up what already exists in your neighborhood under FreeCycle, The Recycler, Craig’s List free section, neighborlibrary.com
* BerkShares website www.berkshares.org
* Totnes pound webpage http://totnes.transitionnetwork.org/totnespound/home
* Portland PDXTimebank www.pdxtimebank.org
* Ithaca Hours materials
* compare-and-contrast articles like this one from Yes Magazine http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/the-new-economy/dollars-with-good-sense-diy-cash
* our comparison chart of barter / time banks / local currencies / LETS systems http://envirochangemakers.org/documents/sharing2.pdf

2) make lists as you read:
* sharing techniques that already exist in your neighborhood
* sharing techniques that would be easy to put in place in your neighborhood
* sharing techniques that might be a little harder but you’d really like to see in your neighborhood

3) make a flier that invites people to an event about Neighborhood Sharing.  Explain in the flier that there are cash-free and low-cash ways to get their needs met.  List some of your ideas from #2 above.
* see our flier at http://envirochangemakers.org/documents/sharing1.pdf

4) make tabletop markers, one for each topic.  We will set up the easy ones (”already exist” or “easy” in #2 above) to take signups at the table.  We’ll set up discussion circles for the more complicated ones. Our tabletop markers include:
* Local currencies - discussion of possibilities
* LETS system - discussion of possibilities
* Neighborhood home improvement group - discussion of possibilities
* Group purchase of fruit trees - signup
* Group purchase of rain barrels - signup
* Garden sharing - signup
* Local CSA - signup
* Community gardens-in-formation - info about next meetings
* Seed Swap - flier about upcoming date
If any resources are appropriate (i.e. catalog for the bulk purchase of natural foods, etc.) have them out on the table at the appropriate table marker.

5) As people arrive have them complete something that makes them think, such as the Neighbor Questionnaire or “What Could I Share?” from The Sharing Solution.  Offer a short talk about the different kinds of sharing.  We’ll do a compare-and-contrast between Time Banks, Local Currencies, and LETS, then introduce all the other kinds of sharing techniques.
* our version of “What Could I Share?” http://envirochangemakers.org/documents/sharing3.pdf

6) Consider playing a sharing game to get them warmed up.  We’ll have them compare their “What Could I Share?” worksheets with a few people around them and talk through some pretend exchanges.

7) Give a quick tour of the tabletop markers around the room, remind them of “the law of two feet” (if you are not contributing or learning it’s up to you go to somewhere where you are), then turn the crowd loose to sign up for tabletop signups and to find their way to discussion groups that they’re interested in.

8) As host, move between the discussion groups to assure they are operating smoothly.
Instruct the “Discussion of possibilities” groups to designate 2-3 potential coordinators and to select a followup meeting time.

9) Just before the event time is up, reconvene the entire group.  Ask for feedback.  Make sure everyone had a chance to make connections.  If necessary, permit people to stand up and say “before John Jones leaves I’d like to speak with him” or “if anyone wants to talk about tool sharing, see me,” etc.  Leave the table displays out until the crowd thins.

10) Publicize widely any followup meetings scheduled by the Discussion groups.

]]> http://legacyla.net/transformation/?feed=rss2&p=274 http://legacyla.net/transformation/?p=273 http://legacyla.net/transformation/?p=273#comments Wed, 22 Jul 2009 14:37:51 +0000 joanne Community Governance Our local Community http://legacyla.net/transformation/?p=273 That was exciting news on the phone Monday!

You said you were contemplating what you felt were the most important issues of the day and formulating your platform.   Here is some background and my personal opinion.

Background

Obviously ECM has been working climate change since our group’s very inception.  And at ECM meetings you’ve heard me mention peak oil.  The biggest issue that will hit humanity in our lifetimes is the twin crises of peak oil and climate change combined.  It will have far-reaching implications from agricultural upsets, to hurricanes and firestorms, to droughts, to extreme price volatility and severe economic repercussions.  If we do not prepare our citizenry, it will also likely bring civil unrest and war.

You probably have seen the ASPO diagram at our ECM meetings.  It shows that with regards to regular and heavy oil (orange and black parts of diagram), we have already passed the peak of global supply.  We are now consuming the second half of our planetary supply. (1)

Natural gas (the green part) is about to follow suit.

That means the extreme price volatility we have seen in the past year (oil prices $147 in July 2008, $30 in Dec. 2008) will become the norm.  This will bring dramatic upset to the business environment and will drive futher economic downturn.  We will also see supply interruptions, shortages, and competition / conflict over what supply remains.

Another diagram came to my attention this week.  For this second diagram, they took a simplified version of the peak oil curve and overlaid the concept of Energy Return On Investment (EROI).  EROI is the understanding that you have to invest a certain amount of oil in the processes of extraction (drilling, processing, trucks, etc) in order to get more oil.  In the early days of the oil boom, the oil industry could invest 1 unit of oil and get back 100 units of oil.  Now we have already consumed the easy-to-get-to stuff and they are working fields like deepwater and, where it is much more difficult and expensive to extract the oil.  For an investment of 1 unit they only get back 11 units of oil.(2)   In this second diagram, the analyst took a simplified version of the peak oil curve and overlaid this increasing cost of extraction.

The results are chilling.

The Murphy diagram pulls the entire timeline back.  It reveals that although there still remains oil in the planet for us to extract, the dramatically increasing EROI cost of doing so means we’d better be ready to deal with a society with pretty much no oil by 2030.

We have to start preparations now.

Some quick resources on peak oil:

• Peak oil primer http://www.energybulletin.net/primer
• Shell Oil CEO:  “Shell estimates that after 2015 supplies of easy-to-access oil and gas will no longer keep up with demand.”(3)   Chevron CEO: “The era of easy oil is over.”(4)  Chevron’s public ad campaign (5), and push for conservation and new answers(6)
• Energy descent pathways – a view of what lies ahead Diagram or Narrative
• US Representative Roscoe Bartlett (MD) and the Congressional Peak Oil Caucus

You said in your call that you generally had heard of the Transition movement.  Transition groups are working to prepare our society for the twin crises of peak oil and climate change.  While climate change says we’d better stop using oil, peak oil says we have to.

Within a society which is completely dependent upon oil, we urgently need to invest our remaining oil resources in infrastructure which will support people’s basic needs in the near future when we won’t have oil.  We need to develop local resources for food, water, security.  We need to adapt our existing buildings and structures to run with next-to-no energy.  We need to develop fuel resources, and those renewable energy sources which we are able to.  Most of all, we need to grow people’s consciousness – the understanding that the future is going to get very different than what our parents and grandparents experienced, and the knowledge/skill base of how to conduct life in an energy-scarce world.  The above forecasts show we have a scant 10 years (2010-2020) to create this massive transition.

In the UK around the time I founded Change-Makers, some small towns started preparing for life after oil.  Transition Initiatives work based on the presumption that “the future with less oil could be better than the present, but only if we engage in designing this Transition with creativity and imagination.”  The process they’ve been working involves

1. awareness-raising, letting people know about peak oil and climate change;
2. forming a steering group to lead the community forward.  Here in LA, we formed that last year.  www.TransitionLA.org
3. reskilling.  You’ve been to several of our reskilling events from seed events, to garden events, to breadbaking.  You mentioned health care in your call – we plan to offer herbalism soon.
4. Forming working groups to look at the impact of peak oil + climate change on specific aspects of society.  Here in LA we’re just getting to the point of doing this.  Transition groups in Sebastapol CA, Portland OR, and Boulder CO are further along.
5. Networking with other groups who are doing similar work.  You came to the TreePeople event.  We’re doing similar with other groups.
6. The eventual goal of all of this is to form an Energy Descent Action Plan (EDAP).  In the EDAP a community constructs a positive vision for what “weaning off oil” could look like over the next two decades.
• Ventura CA’s EDAP
• Portland OR’s EDAP
• I believe San Francisco CA is working on one
• Some other EDAPs are linked online

Some quick resources on the Transition concept:

• Video of the UK founder
• Video that explains the Transition process
• Transition primer
• TED talk script of the UK founder

The Most Important Issues of the Day

You said you were putting your thoughts together about the most important issue of our day.  Obviously, “peak oil + climate change” is it, but I don’t think that makes for a very enticing political platform.  I think that all the issues you could name – health care, jobs, economy, energy, etc – all boil down to “peak oil + climate change” but I don’t think that without background, people have enough systems training to understand how they all link up to a common cause.

I’d say that in simple language, the most important issues are:  jobs, economic reform, and food security.

In the relatively affluent areas of your district, it will be economic concerns.  In the less-affluent areas of your district it will be jobs and food security.  Here’s how these issues pan out with respect to peak oil + climate change:

JOBS
There are lots of forums these days about “green jobs” and “green economy”.  ECM and Transition LA have been invited to several of them.  It is very important, as we cultivate new jobs, to cultivate jobs in the correct sectors – sectors which will advance a relocalization of our society, sectors which will render local communities much more resilient to the massive changes ahead.

Peak oil means that the concept of globalization is dead.  Without oil, we simply will not be able to move ourselves and our goods around the planet the way we have become accustomed to over the past 50 years.  Cultivating jobs which attempt to advance globalization, or which are dependent upon a globalized infrastructure, are dead end jobs.  Trying to set up and maintain those jobs is a waste of government funding and human resources, and an exercise in futility.  And meanwhile it doesn’t do anything to help our local communities get better prepared for what is coming.

I’ve been drafting a handout about job opportunities for our very real future.(7)   When we speak of creating jobs for people, or training for future jobs, these are the types of jobs our society desperately will need filled.

ECONOMIC REFORM
When people talk about the “green economy,” in many cases they are talking about green-tech:  building massive solar panel fields across the desert (where are we getting the trace elements to make all those panels?  Our planet is experiencing “peak” in other elements as well.), shifting manufacturing to use recycled materials, etc.  All of these discussions have one concept beneath them:  economic growth.

Since the Industrial Revolution we have held the idea that growth is good and lack of growth is failure.  We have wholeheartedly embraced the mistaken idea that growth can and will continue forever.  That is why, when the stock market falters, when real estate prices topple, everything else falls apart.

We live on a finite planet.  The earth isn’t adding more molecules.  It isn’t growing any bigger.  The earth is a planet of cycles:  a seed sprouts, becomes a plant, bears fruit and the seed of the next generation, and the old plant becomes compost nutrition for the new.

Our current economic thinking is linear.  We take resources from one place, use them once, and then throw them “away” to a mixed-up industrial landfill where the molecules can’t rejoin the natural cycles.  In North America we have perfected this consumption pattern to a horrifying degree:  we are now consuming at a rate which – if everyone on the planet lived like we do – takes 5 planets worth of resources to support.

Obviously we don’t have 5 planets.

Which is why we cannot possibly “grow” our economy any further, and all notions of “economic recovery” are absolutely ludicrous.  The only answer is Reduce.

The economy we must grow, at this point in American history, is economic reform.  We must rethink how our economy runs, at a very basic level.  Rather than “recovery” and vainly attempting to regain the old excessive ways, we must invent new ways which are more in keeping with what is normal on this one small planet we live on:

• A local economy, which will empower our local communities to grow the local resources they’ll need to weather the massive changes ahead.(8)

• An economy which supports human health, satisfaction, and happiness.(9)   An economy which doesn’t externalize costs, which accounts for the entire panorama of costs, costs such as greenhouse gas emissions; costs of heavy metals and lost forests and human health in strip mining; untold costs of human lives in nuclear; costs of greenhouse gas emissions, waste disposal, and alternative future uses of resources in the case of excess manufacturing of single-use planned-obsolescence consumer goods.(10)

• An economy which reflects the fact that we live in a steady state ecology, an ecology which runs on interconnected systems.  An economy which reflects the understanding that, in order to sustain our species, humanity must become integrated within the cycles of the earth.

How do we sell this?  Particularly to wealthy voters, the kind that would get you campaign contributions?  I’m not sure, but perhaps it is in the “grow local business opportunities”, “local economic security,” and “create a sustainable economy” type of slogan.

FOOD SECURITY
You’ve seen all the efforts ECM has made to reform food.  That is because hungry people are the recipe for civil unrest.  With the population concentration we have in LA, food security is basic to urban security.  We must teach all areas of this city how to feed themselves.  Turning sprawl into an asset, there is plenty of space between our existing LA buildings to grow lots of food.

Right now, most of our food travels an average of 1,500 miles from farm to table.(11)   It is highly processed, leading to secondary problems like obesity and diabetes, and the entire processing-and-packaging process consumes enormous amounts of fossil fuels.  Conventional agriculture is highly dependent upon petrochemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides; GMO crops cannot exist without their petrochemical companions (more than 85% of our corn is GMO (12), as is 90% of our soy (13)).  In a future with severely restricted fossil resources, either our food must change dramatically, or we will have widespread hunger.

Regional Food Bank statistics show a 34% increase in demand over a year ago, and a 24% increase over 6 months ago. (14)  Hunger is coming.  And for many of your lower-income constituents, it might already be here.

Right now, most people don’t know how to grow food.  You know from your own vegetable garden experience and from our garden classes that there is a learning curve; it takes time to regain the skills of urban agriculture.

We must capitalize on the current “hip” popularity of Recession Gardening.

1. Legalize it.  We must make it completely legal to grow food.  Eliminate restrictions on front-yard vegetable growing.  Soften guidelines on city chickens and pet goats.  Protect community food redistribution networks from errant regulation.(15)
2. Teach it.  We must leverage the know-how we currently have.  Encourage and support urban gardens, from community plots to school gardens.  Make it part of required curriculum to learn how to grow, cook, and preserve many kinds of locally grown food.  Support the Master Gardener programs (and encourage them to focus on organic food rather than ornamentals and chemicals) so that people with know-how can afford to spread the word.  Promote Urban Farming’s slogan “include food when planting and landscaping.”
3. Give it space.  Open public properties to food production such as we’re trying to do at the Westchester/Loyola Village library.  Facilitate vacant lots being used – even for a short time – as community gardens.
4. Give it water.  Localized food production reduces the agricultural burden elsewhere in the state and region.  In the drought restrictions, differentiate local food production from ornamental landscapes.  Get tough on lawns and turn that wasted water over to food.  Distribute knowledge about water-wise food gardening and irrigation best practices specifically for edible plants.  Facilitate research and distribute information about how to safely use greywater on edibles.
5. Give it compost.  As government budgets get cut, don’t cut programs which teach local on-site waste disposal.  Composting education programs and subsidized bins are essential, not only to our overfilled landfills and solid waste problems, but also to greenhouse gas issues and most of all, to homegrown soil nutrition for urban food production.

Other issues

HEALTH CARE
It’s a buzzword right now because the national political campaigns have brought it to the forefront.  But in view of our energy-scarce future, “heath care reform” is a misnomer;  the current proposals are really about pouring public resources into the same old corporate pockets.  And our current medical system is horrifyingly dependent on fossil energy. (16)

Real health care reform – the kind we desperately need for our post-oil future – would cultivate local self-sufficiency.

• We need widespread education of adults, youth, and children in whole foods nutrition, vegetarian protein combinations (17), and garden-to-table food preparation, together with the things listed above under gardening comments, so that people are empowered with wholesome and nourishing meals.

• We need widespread education in health modalities which can operate without fossil fuels such as accupressure, garden-to-medicine herbalism, chiropractics, accupuncture, and more.(18)   We need to support the health care workers who currently are experienced in these modalities, and make it possible for more local caregivers to be trained in these essential skills.

These tools could empower our citizens and make it possible for us to handle most health needs at home in our local communities without travel and without fossil fuels.

WATER
Drought issues are a hot topic this summer but will continue to be so throughout your political terms and throughout our lifetime.  Right now, our society has a cavalier and wasteful attitude about water.  We also have a “use it once and send it AWAY” attitude.  And we completely accept the idea that it’s okay for our water to be imported from someplace else. It’s time to rethink our paradigm about:
•    water sources
•    wastewater
•    water uses

Many of the public forums on water focus almost entirely on conservation (which falls under “water uses”).  We must reach far beyond mere conservation, into considering what are appropriate versus inappropriate uses of our limited water resources.  We must also embrace alternative sources such as rainwater harvesting, and adopt new attitudes about wastewater such as using our water multiple times before it leaves our property.(19)

Please refer to our previous comments about the rethink we must make on water.(20)

GLOBAL WARMING
We need immediate binding legislative action, based upon science – not watered down for special interests – to curb emissions.  Climate change is already with us, but it’s up to us HOW BAD it gets.  Our choice of action will either doom our species (and other species which depend on the climate we’ve all evolved to live within), or we’ll curb our emissions and have a hope of staying below the “tipping point.”  Learn why 350 is the most important number on the planet(21) and decide what you will be doing on Oct. 24. (22)

Even as we curb emissions, we must prepare for the effects of climate change.  The above comments about reforming food, reducing consumption, and relocalizing our lifestyles serve dual function:  they help curb our carbon emissions, even as they prepare us for a life with less oil.

In addition, we must be realistic about our future.  It is unwise and unsafe to permit any new structures in areas like Venice and Marina del Rey which are forecast to be flooded with only moderate sea level rise.  Statewide, we must consider forecasted shifts in rainwater patterns and shifts in salt/fresh water tide lines, as we consider water issues.  It is preposterous to expend more government funds on infrastructure such as airport and highway expansions which must go unused as we curb our carbon emissions (which will go unused as we run out of oil).

As we design lower-carbon alternatives, we must remember that we’ll simultaneously be experiencing peak oil.  “Solutions” such as biofuels (24) and hydrogen will never come to fruition.  Renewables like solar and wind could assume a small part of the gap left by fossil fuels, but renewables do not have sufficient energy density to shoulder the full amount of our excessive energy consumption habits.  The only answer will be to power-down our lifestyles – learn to live in a world with less energy overall.

BUDGET
Debt is the concept of borrowing from the future.  Debt structure contains the presumption that our future will be brighter and bigger than the present:  We’re spending a bit of that brighter future now, which will be repaid later when we have more.  But with the concepts of peak oil and resource depletion, we can see the fallacy in this presumption.  Our forecasted future is much leaner than our present.  There simply is nothing to borrow against.

In ordinary times, balancing the government budget is prudent.  But in the current economic times, designing a budgetary surplus is essential.  What we have presently is the biggest we will ever see.  We must spend it wisely, and spend it in ways which prepare us for leaner times.

We cannot balance budgets simply by “trimming waste.”  Even the concept of “trimming waste” includes the presumption that operations will continue pretty much as they always have.  Along with peak oil, we have probably seen “peak government,” too.  What we need now is a rethink – a complete overhaul of what gets governed and how that governing is achieved.

We must get far more real as we examine programs.  Which programs prepare us for a lower-consumption, lower energy future?  These should be restructured for lean operations:  less administration, with the freed-up funds going to actual operations.  Some essential programs such as police and fire protection will require extensive redesign in order to function in a post-oil era.  Programs which are not preparing us for an energy-scarce future should be disbanded.  Excessively huge departments should be divided into locally-controllable scope.

On the revenues side, which tax structures will fade out as consumer income and spending decreases; as imports trail off; as we drive less; as we experience less real estate transactions and smaller business transactions?  Government revenues should be anticipated to shrink.

The coming years will bring phenomenal change, at a very rapid pace, the likes of which humanity hasn’t ever experienced.  We need strong leaders who understand the Big Picture of issues we face, and brave leaders who will make policy that cultivates resilient local communities, rather than futilely hanging onto old images from the past.

You mentioned that some candidates were running as “an environmentalist.”  To me, the environment is that which surrounds us:  all that contains and comprises our physical existence.  In this time of peak oil and climate change, being an environmentalist means being concerned about all that surrounds our physical life.  It means being concerned about life, how humanity lives within and among other life forms.  Being an environmentalist therefore touches every aspect of our lives, even our very urban lives.

Roscoe Bartlett’s bio says he considers himself a citizen-legislator, not a politician.  In all of our interactions, in your devotion to Rotary, in your attendance at Environmental Change-Maker meetings, and your push for the community garden, you have always been first and foremost a citizen.  Thank you for your ongoing caring and service.

Best wishes for your election campaign,

JP

Sources:

(1)  http://www.energybulletin.net/primer
(2)  http://netenergy.theoildrum.com/node/5500
(3)  http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/01/shell_ceo_peak_oil.php
(4)  http://jamminangels.net/media/2/PeakOilChevron.jpg
(5)  http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpWESSEX/images/ChevronAd.jpg and http://www.thegreenlifeonline.org/images/chevronad.gif
(6)  http://willyoujoinus.com/
(7)  Ref for Jobs handout
(8)  http://legacyla.net/transformation/?p=268
(9)  http://www.rprogress.org/sustainability_indicators/genuine_progress_indicator.htm
(10)  http://www.steadystate.org/index.html
(11)  I believe the source on this was Organic Consumers Association – I can dig it up if you need it.
(12)  http://pacific.bizjournals.com/pacific/stories/2004/09/06/daily11.html
(13)  http://www.gmo-compass.org/eng/agri_biotechnology/gmo_planting/283.usa_cultivations_2007.html
(14)  http://www.lahomelessblog.org/2009/06/is-there-run-on-food-banks.html
(15)  Refer to our letter about HR875 http://envirochangemakers.org/documents/HR875letter.pdf
(16)  http://www.energybulletin.net/18588.html and http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/314/
(17)  Vegetarian proteins are typically more affordable to families in economic hardship.  Plus vegetarian proteins can be cultivated with far less land, far less water, and far less environmental impact.  Source info:  John Robbins Food Revolution, via http://michaelbluejay.com/veg/environment.html
(18)  http://www.teleosis.org/pdf/WithoutHarm.pdf
(19)  http://legacyla.net/transformation/?p=249
(20)  http://transitionla.blogspot.com/2009/02/letter-to-senator-fran-pavley.html
(21)  90 second video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5kg1oOq9tY
narrative about the science of the 350 number http://www.350.org/about/science
(22)  http://www.350.org/actions
(23)  http://transitionla.blogspot.com/2009/05/climate-change-forecasts-for-los.html
(24)  less than 1 unit of fuel produced per unit of fossil energy expended to extract them, not to mention the land use issues, land which we need for growing food.  See the work of George Monbiot and his series of articles in The Guardian.

]]> http://legacyla.net/transformation/?feed=rss2&p=273 http://legacyla.net/transformation/?p=272 http://legacyla.net/transformation/?p=272#comments Thu, 16 Jul 2009 15:12:36 +0000 joanne Culture & Education Health & Spirit Our local Community Public presence http://legacyla.net/transformation/?p=272 Last week, at the national convention in Anaheim, the Episcopal Church of the United States embraced the Genesis Covenant.

THE PROMISE

The Genesis Covenant is a multi-faith invitation to join the action in curtailing global warming:

We will reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from every facility that we maintain by 50% in 10 years.

We applaud these faith communities for taking an aggressive stance in the drive to curb global warming.

At a time when the U.S. government is watering-down any prospective legislation, giving in to status-quo business interests rather than listening to scientists, it is wonderful that morality-based organizations such as churches, synagogues, mosques, and more, are taking such an aggressive stance.

50% in 10 years is an aggressive stance.  It means that groups which embrace the Genesis Covenant need to get to work immediately, in order to stand any chance of meeting the goal.  And achieving 50% in 10 years will take far more than just changing a few lightbulbs to more efficient ones.

Achieving 50% in 10 years means embracing the understanding that the world is changing — massively — and that our lifestyles much change, equally as massively.  We cannot achieve 50% in 10 years by living the same way and simply “choosing green” about a few minor outside trappings.  Curbing global warming, and achieving 50% in 10 years, necessitates fundamental revision.

REAL ACTION
Now that the Covenant has been adopted it is time to Walk the Talk, time to put in place the very real actions which will begin to cut carbon emissions.

Since our Environmental Change-Makers group happened to be speaking at the Episcopal convention, mere days after the Genesis Covenant was adopted, we prepared a Genesis Covenant how-to guide.

In this document, we describe in 5 steps (of increasing degree of change) which will help a community get solidly on the path toward very real action.  Please feel free to download our pdf and use it in your community.

http://envirochangemakers.org/documents/GenesisCovenant.pdf 

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