South Hams Friends of the Earth

A Tale of Two Cities… well three actually….

The first was NYC. We had a quiet night at The Bridge Winery in Brooklyn. Several people turned up, young mostly, and turned on -a good group. We had a small conversation about TTs; they listened and asked good questions and we had a dialogue. Two things struck me.  Firstly the audience was young. That’s unusual, and that probably reflects my daughter, who organised the evening. The other was that of the 7-8 million people in NYC only 8 could be bothered to show up.

They were a young and ambitious group and I guess that reflects the values and focus of people who migrate to NYC. They have a bigger investment than most in believing in the current system- which I think is much more in the USA than certainly in Europe. Like one person put it, there are no poor in America, there are the rich and the not yet rich. I wonder what happens when the American Dreams encounters Never Never Land?

The next city/town really was Montpelier, Vermont. Over 220 turned out on a cold night with snow forecast. Several people on the way in remarked on the number of activists turning up, and what a crowd, and what a buzz. This was a beautiful, well planned and well supported evening. I met up with the Transition Montpelier initiating group at a local organic restaurant for a light supper before the event and we talked and exchanged stories. One gentleman told me of the energy committees in so many of the towns in Vermont. He said that there was an energy committee in ¼ of the towns in Vermont. That’s huge!. Their remit was the same as the energy group of TTT, to reduce overall energy use and increase renewables. These groups work closely with Town Councils and other stakeholders. Powerdown seems to be a given, no awareness raising necessary.

The evening was a real boost to the activities of Transition Montpelier who only just got their official status the week before. The real meat of the evening came for me after the local cider and cheese was served downstairs. We arranged 2 circles of chairs and had many people standing. There was a good natured banter, people spoke from their hearts, tears were shed and things that needed to be said were said. My favourite question was someone who asked if we had $100 million given to us what would be do differently.

I answered that it would make a nonsense of the project. We just would not want it. We could create a model transition but it wouldn’t serve as a model. It would be a one off and that misses the point. It is so often assumed that money is the issue and it’s not. Money plays a part and at a certain point we needed money, but it’s not the issue. We want something that works in Bangladesh as well as Bologna, London or Montpelier. Transition is about creating the methodology for making the Transition.  We are in such a lather about getting there, and wherever ‘there’ is.

I was left off at Boston South Street station by Stan who came up from Boston to be part of this evening. We just talked, not just about the training but about life and you know -stuff. I so appreciate the many great people who I meet training, and how many are such stars, it’s a very special privilege of doing the work I’m doing.

I stayed with Carl and Diana in Montpelier. Carl hosts a regular Powerdown phone in on the local radio station, and I was his guest on Monday mid day, my first radio phone in!. They live about 3 miles out of town in and old farm house they have converted into a very energy efficient and delightful place to live. Carl showed me his latest powerdown gadget- a hand grain mill.  We had some of their apple cider and a nightcap of last year’s apple jack. Low energy houses have a special quality, they are so comfortable and have a connection to life that ordinary houses don’t have. They are part of the life systems around them, even the flicker of a wood stove, (a wood stove that is an integral part of the house system, not an optional extra), I woke up to a winter wonderland in a spectacular spot, looking out across the green mountains of Vermont.

The Cambridge Massachusetts training was a powerful experience for me.. There were many facilitators with many years experience in doing similar work, which can always be somewhat intimidating.  Pat and Alastair were a trip to work with, very solid facilitators and a joy to be around. We stayed with Rob who organised the training and his delightful wife Aviva and daughter, (Pat called her a munchkin- which is what I called my daughters) Aya. They live in a neighbourhood of wooden houses and small yards, a typical American tableau. It was a great joy and pleasure to eat vege organic food and feel the struggles of their lives- the struggle to make life work in the midst of a deeply dysfunctional society; the struggle around childcare and to eat well and life a low energy lifestyle.

It’s a way of life they love and are really on board with, but where it meets the current system it’s a struggle. We trained at Livable Streets a non profit that has been given some space by MIT. It was doubly poignant to be doing this work in the epicentre of American technology, in a place that represents the opposite stance to life as most of us in Transition (I am sure this is a vast over simplification!).

This was my first training in the US. They were a technically sophisticated group that Pat and Alastair hadn’t encountered before. Referencing the context for transition became an issue, and a future solution came in the form of Tina who will be doing the Training for trainers. She thought she had a group in the US who could provide us with some technical backup. Otherwise the questions that people came up with were broadly similar, inclusivity came strongly into it, with people of colour. Transition seems to translate into the US with ease.

Naresh December 08

It’s that time of year when the laptop gets turned off, put in the drawer and when family, friends and not getting up at 6.45am to write Transition Culture posts come to the fore.  Thank you so much for all your support, comments and hard work during 2008, the year that, I think, will go down in history as the point when the Great Unravelling really began, and when the seeds of the Great Turning began to grow with phenomenal speed.  What an extraordinary time to be alive.  Sharon Astyk has made her predictions for 2009, my only prediction to add is that by the end of 2009, very few people, especially those in positions of authority, will still be talking about “when things get back to normal”.  Anyway, have a great break, and normal service will be resumed at Transition Culture on January 5th.  See you then.

This fantastic image and the following text come from the Permaculture Principles calendar;

Jim Walsh and his giant schnauzer Tom doing an easy 40 km/hr. “Tom and I have reached a maximum recorded speed of 64.8k/hr in this cart.  On a cool day he has pulled me around for 6 hours in one day and, like most working breeds, he loves doing it.  How great it would be if carparks were replanted with useful trees where happy dogs might rest before taking their owners home at the end of the day”.

As readers of Transition Handbook will know, David Holmgren’s 12 Permaculture Principles are key thinking and design tools for any work that is looking beyond our current dependency on fossil fuels.  Immersing oneself in them is extremely useful, and vitally important. We would all gain much by having them ticking away in the back of our head as one of our key thinking tools.

For that reason I want to give a plug to two recent outputs from the rather wonderful PermaculturePrinciples.com.  The first is the calendar from which the page above is extracted, which uses one principle for each month (handy that there were 12) with a memorable example to illustrate the idea behind it.  It is a beautifully designed and attractive calendar, with lots of space to write in. Transition Town Totnes’s ‘Nut Tree Capital of Britain’ initiative puts in an appearance too.

The other is a ring bound diary, packed with much more detail on each principle, and some great case studies.  It also contains recipes and tips, and some fantastic photos.  Each page has a tip at the top, most of which are common sense tips for saving energy and reducing one’s impact, although I’d imagine Tip #74 won’t be one of relevance to too many of you, “change your heated waterbed to a mattress”.

At this time of year there are of course lots and lots of calendars and diaries around, from nude farmers holding pumpkins in appropriate places to David Beckham (who still buys David Beckham calendars?) and things like ‘Whales of the World’.  For me, this calendar and diary are a great way of going about your daily business while at the same time subtly drip-feeding your mind with Holmgren’s principles in a way which is inspiring and practical.  Highly recommended.

You can read more about the calendar here and the diary here, as well as information on ordering them.

A while ago now I had a conversation with David Holmgren about how his 12 principles of permaculture might apply to business.  It was just an initial exploration, but there was a great deal of useful stuff in it, and prompted by an article by Stefan Geyer in the latest Permaculture Activist magazine (wonderful as ever), who made reference to it, I thought it was time to put it out there for discussion.  I hope you find it useful.  The images are from the Permaculture Principles site, the best place to find out more about these principles. They have also produced a great diary and calendar which I’ll review tomorrow…

I have presented it in the following format; each principles opens with the title, Holmgren’s graphic and the ‘in a nutshell’ saying for each one, then in bold is the succinct summary of the principle from “The Transition Handbook”, and then my notes from my conversation with David.

General thoughts: in many ways business is already ahead of the rest of us in terms of some of the thinking approaches that are required for energy descent. They are used to thinking ‘lean’ and getting the most out of things. The shift will be from merely prioritising output to thinking more widely. These principles offer a good lens through which to look at how to build resilience for business.

1. Observe and Interact

The power of good observation is something not many of us have, and detailed observation of where we are will underpin any actions we undertake. A post-peak world will depend on detailed observation and good design rather than energy-intensive solutions.

This principle challenges the idea that you only take your information from accredited sources and from sources within the industry itself, ie. secondary data that someone else has processed. In these times, businesses will need to learn to look out of the window, to, as it were, not rely on weather forecasts but to learn to read the clouds, to ask awkward questions whereas before they just accepted the information provided.

Paul Hawken put it thus; “instead of researching the market, be the market”. If you see a need for information or for a product, it is likely that someone else, somewhere else, is seeing the same need. Rather than relying on information gathered at arms length, businesses should be out there observing. This has always much more been something SMEs excel at, but larger businesses tend to rely more on surveys and on second-hand information. Having a feedback relationship with one’s customers, with the people who are actually using the product, is very important, direct contact with customers.

2. Catch and Store Energy.

Energy passes through our natural systems, and is stored in a variety of ways, in water, trees, plants, soils, seeds and so on. We need to become skilled at making best use of these, and move our idea of ‘capital’ from what we have in the bank, to the resources we have around us. I once heard Holmgren say that a good woodpile, such as you would see in Eastern Europe, is a far more reasonable indicator of national wealth than GDP.

This principle stresses the importance of not running a business on a constant high speed cash throughput with little or no capital reserves. It highlights the perilous lack of resilience in the just-in-time supply approach. It advocates a shift to storages of parts and materials, as well as the need to financially not be so dependent on debt financing. A preferable approach would be to work slower with more financial reserves and take less risks, not building beyond what the company’s financial resources can support.

The principle is either to not borrow any money at all, or to borrow so much money that you can’t fail, being bigger than the people you borrow money from, so they have a vested interest in your succeeding!
This principle also stresses the need to make a business’s buildings as energy efficient as possible, and as able to trap, store and make use of the sun and other energy that is ‘passing through’ the site. When seen just in the short term, making buildings and operations more energy efficient is not seen as a sensible investment, but the thinking needs to become more long term. The payback for such things is not merely financial, it is in the form of resilience and insurance, it is measured in the long term. Looking to make buildings as autonomous as possible in a world entering energy descent is critical.

This principle also stresses the need to see things that are flowing past and through the business that others don’t see as being a resource and having no monetary value as being valuable.

3. Obtain a Yield.

This principle states that any intervention we make in a system, any changes we make or elements we introduce ought to be productive, e.g. productive trees in public places, edible roof gardens, or urban edible landscaping.

This is something that businesses do intuitively, when thinking about maximising cash flow, about doing something that someone needs in order to be able to sell it. This is instinctive to businesses. However, many of us with no business experience have forgotten this. Also, much of business, especially at a corporate level, have taken this to extremes that are exploitative, distorting and damaging, seeing profit maximisation at the sole focus. Obtain a Yield, in this context, is out of balance.

If Catch and Store Energy is about maximising capital, Obtain a Yield is about income, and the observation that our businesses, our projects, need to generate a profit.

4. Apply Self Regulation and Feedback.

A well-designed system using permaculture principles should be able to self-regulate, and require the minimum of intervention and maintenance, like a woodland ecosystem, which requires no weeding, fertiliser or pest control.

This principle recommends moving from “we’re just obeying the law” to being proactive, acting before you get hit over the head with regulation and other vulnerabilities. Businesses need to be able to put a foot on the break, not just going hell for leather on profit maximisation. We need to be able to apply applied restraint, avoiding excessive, overfast growth that hasn’t been consolidated. There is the danger of economic ‘bubbles’, even in the world of renewable energy, if people throw all their money into it but it isn’t consolidated.

This principle is about looking for the negative feedbacks, from customers and from the environment in general. It is key to build these negative feedbacks in in order to stay ahead of the game. We need to increase the tightness of feedbacks.

5. Use and Value Renewable Resources and Services

Where nature can perform particular functions, be it aerating soil (worms), fixing nitrogen(clover) or building soil (trees) we should utilise these attributes, rather than thinking we can replace them. Where nature can take some work off our hands we should let it.

This principle recognises the need for a general shift away from a dependence on non-renewable energy sources, both directly as fuels and indirectly as embodied fossil fuel use. It encourages the valuing of these resources. It also emphasises a shift towards renewable resources. For example, current thinking is that we should value a forest by not using it, but ‘conserving’ it. Instead we use plastic instead of wood. When we look at renewable resources, we need to look at their husbandry, as stocks of renewable resources are smaller and have quicker feedback loops than their non-renewable counterparts. In this context it is useful to ask, “are this business’s inputs being sustainably managed?”

As a business shifts more and more towards smaller and smaller resources, you will need to deal with issues of renewability. The emerging opportunities for businesses are things that are renewable. Renewable energy sources are the ones that will ensure a business’s stability in the long run. We can also broaden the concept of renewable resources to include things like goodwill and trust, things which a business can rebuild with good husbandry. Most business doesn’t just depend on law and competition, trust is at the heart of much business and it is very much a renewable resource

6. Produce No Waste

The concept of waste is essentially a reflection of poor design. Every output from one system could become the input to another system. We need to think cyclically rather than in linear systems.

This is well explored elsewhere, i.e. in William McDonagh’s Cradle to Grave approaches, and their concept of Waste=Food. It emphasises the concept of closing loops wherever possible.

7. Design from Patterns to Details.

We need to be able to keep looking at our work from a range of perspectives. This principle argues that we need to see our work in the wider context of watershed, regional economy and so on, so as to keep a clearer sense of the wider canvas on which we are painting, and the forces that affect what we are doing.

There is a lot to be gained from stepping back and seeing the bigger picture. While it is important to focus on getting the details right, being strategic is important too. Many large businesses do have teams that do strategic thinking, but it is a luxury that few smaller businesses have. It is important to ask how is what we are doing part of a bigger picture, the move away from globalisation and towards the local, taking steps back from the everyday.

This can be done firstly by allowing space for Devil’s advocates, for black sheep, for hearing the voices of those outside of the dominant culture of the organisation and secondly by looking from a holistic perspective of how things interconnect, rather than just relying on experts who are embedded in detail. It emphasises the need to value the generalist, to give value to holistic thinkers.

This is also where scenario planning comes in useful, allowing people to imagine different possibilities.

8. Integrate Rather Than Segregate

Permaculture has been described as the science of maximising beneficial relationships. In a powered-down settlement, what will become increasingly important is the relationships that we can weave between different elements of the place. Solutions are to be found in integrated holistic solutions rather than increased specialisation and compartmentalisation.

The challenge here is to move to seeing business as being part of the geographical community, as being rooted in place, rather than just part of a globalised community. At the moment for many larger businesses, the local is something one pays lip-service to as a source of good PR, something one is passing through, rather than actually being an integral part of the community.

This is a profound structural challenge for large organisations. Part of the resilience of the organisation comes from the degree of lateral integration. Resilience is in all solutions, it is the characteristic of ecological systems. If we apply these principles, resilience is one of the emergent properties.

9. Slow and Small Solutions

This principle represents the core argument of this book, that, as Holmgren puts it, systems should be designed to perform functions at the smallest scale that is practical and energy-efficient for that function.” Our solutions will be based on the principle that the smaller and more intensive they can be, the more resilient they will be.

At the moment, economies of scale always encourage businesses to think bigger and bigger. While it is important to note that small is not always best, the notion that big is best needs to be challenged. In this new energy world, never assume that the big will replace the small. In practice what happens in business is that the big fish do eat the fish just below them, but as they grow, a number of new opportunities open up at smaller scales.

For example, in aviation it might look as though we now only have a few operators, but on smaller routes there are now many smaller companies with smaller overheads running those routes. We are seeing this too in the increase in small bakeries and breweries. These new opportunities are very hard to understand and exploit from a macro level perspective, and are much better done from small scale perspective. It is here that the idea of appropriateness of scale becomes key.

10. Use and Value Diversity

Monocultures are incredibly fragile and prone to disease and pests, more diverse systems have much more inbuilt resilience. Our towns will be much more able to prosper during energy descent if they have a diversity of small businesses, local currencies, food sources, energy sources and so on than if they are just dependent on centralised systems, globalisation’s version of monoculture.

This refers to the diversity between different systems, and how during Transition, the idea that everything will continue to be best served by business approaches which dismantle diversity will become inappropriate. Internally within the business this principle is about insurance, about not having all your eggs in one basket. It is key that the business identify its key input sources such as energy supplies, and seek to diverse the base from which it obtains them.

In the short term this kind of diversification could reduce profits, but in the longer term it will be more secure. Traditionally, the agricultural sector suffered from a high degree of uncertainty, being one storm or famine away from great hardship, whereas manufacturing and the rest of society were further away from it, better insulated. Now the level of uncertainty facing farmers is shared more and more businesses as their oil vulnerability becomes more problematic. In essence, this is about the reverse of specialisation, about having a mixed portfolio, and presents a big culture change for businesses.

In the same way that wild food is not something we depend on but which in tough times we need to understand and have access to in order to survive, it is a good strategy for business to keep a diverse portfolio of what sustains the business, keep some things that appear to be peripheral. They may not at this stage appear to be a serious part of how the business is run, but in this new world they will increasingly become so. For example, if the business were to transform its surrounding landscape into a productive urban landscape, it would offer some degree of food security, the workers could buy some food, and it may actually turn out to be the reason they stay loyal and keep working for our business rather than going elsewhere, and could be the difference between whether or not we have a reliable and well-fed workforce!

11. Maximising Edge
“Don’t think you are on the right track just because its a well-beaten path”

One of the observations used a lot in permaculture is the idea of ‘edge’, that the point where two ecosystems meet is often more productive than either of those systems on their own. This principle reminds us of the need to overlap systems where possible so as to maximise their potential.

This principle is about recognising that innovation doesn’t come from the centre but from fringe thinkers. New business entrepreneurship comes from places with cheap rent, that tend to be cheap to rent, a bit tatty, loose and unregulated. It comes from the wild side, not from Governments or corporations. This principle is about giving status to the marginal. It is important that the business has as many fingers in as many pies as possible, as many interfaces, and recognises that every person working for the business represents it in the community.

12. Creatively Use and Respond to Change.

Natural systems are constantly in flux, evolving and growing. The way they respond to shock, such as forest fires, can teach us a great deal about how we might manage the transition away from fossil fuels. Remaining observant of the changes around you, and not fixing onto the idea that anything around you is fixed or permanent will help too.

The business sector has generally learnt to be quite good at this. Forces come out of the blue that businesses have to respond to, and they have learnt to be flexible, lean and adaptable. Business culture has a lot of strengths here, it has learnt not to be squeamish about change, to be able to ditch things it had previously thought of as essential. Now, as we enter energy descent, it will have different criteria than in the past.
A healthy approach is to start with no complete plan, to allow the process to be emergent. This is not a time when we can work to a rigid plan as conditions will change so fast. Organisations will need to stay on their toes, without rigid management.

You can read my review of Holmgren’s seminal book, ‘Permaculture: principles and pathways beyond sustainability’ here.

I have two requests to throw out today and see if anyone out there can help.  I’ll go into more detail below, but in essence, Transition Network is looking for somewhere to host the 2009 Transition Conference and needs your suggestions, and Transition Town Totnes is working on its Energy Descent Plan, and needs some creative input from designers in order to maximise its brilliance.  So, in more detail….

Conference.

The first was in Nailsworth near Stroud in 2007, 2008’s was at the Royal Agricultural College near Cirencester, but where will 2009’s be?  It will take place on the last weekend in April, and what we are looking for is a host town or city or venue that can tick the following boxes;

• be able to host, feed and accommodate up to 300 people
• be relatively central in the UK
• ideally be in a place where there is already a Transition initiative underway
• be accessible by public transport
• ideally somewhere that some people can camp
• somewhere to be able to play football always goes down well

Our plan for the 2009 conference will be a step on from previous ones.  We are planning it so that it contains several events that are open to the wider public, one of which will be the ‘Energy Descent Plan in 2 Hours’ activity developed in London, as well as a couple of high profile speakers, which would mean that for the host town or city, they would be host almost to a ‘Festival of Transition’, which would boost their profile and generate a lot of interest in their work. It will also feature, wait for it,  the World Premiere of The Transition Movie.

We would hope that over time, the effects of hosting the Conference and the beneficial impacts of what it leaves behind, would mean that it would become like the Olympics, with many places wanting to host it each year.  So, if you either know of a suitable venue, or if you are a Transition Initiative who would like to host the 2009 conference, please contact either myself (robjhopkins (at) gmail.com) or Ben (benbrangwyn@transitionnetwork.org).

Designers

The Totnes Energy Descent Plan will be one of the very first such plans, and is intended to be quite wonderful and seminal.  In order to create something that takes people’s breath away, and that conveys its vision of a powered-down, lower energy, infinitely preferable Totnes of 2030, we need input from some creative designers who can generate some graphic representations of what we are talking about.

It should be really good fun.  Photoshopped images of familiar views of the town, but with nut trees, food gardens, solar panels and so on (such as the one done for Transition Brixton, see left).  Images used to really convey the visual splendour of a powered-down world.  Can you help?  This will be a very high profile document, which will go around the world, so if you feel you have skills and design genius to contribute, please either contact me (robjhopkins (at) gmail.com) or Jacqi Hodgson (jacqihodgson@gmail.com).

I love my town.  Its not something we say a great deal in England.  In the US, people write songs about their towns and cities (Box Elder MO, Put Your Hands Up for Detroit, New York, New York…), as well as about the roads that join them together (Highway 61), but not here.  Other than bands like the Smiths, who sang songs about rented rooms in Whalley Range and other parts of Manchester, and one or two other bands (such as It’s Immaterial’s song about driving across England from the 80s), we don’t have a strong tradition of celebrating where we come from.  I noticed when I lived in Ireland that when two Irish people met, one would ask where the other came from, and pretty much regardless of where the person came from, they would say “ah, a beautiful place”.  Harder to do in England.  “You’re from Slough?  Oh”.   Anyway, last night saw my town at its best, and I want to write a few lines in praise of the place.

For the last few years, on the three Tuesday evenings in the run up to Christmas, Totnes holds its Christmas Festival, and the final one was last night.  What happens is that basically the High Street is closed to traffic (which feels so right that it is amazing more people don’t wonder why it isn’t done permanently) and filled with stalls, music, light, food, crafts, thousands of people, and all the shops stay open late.

It is all done really well.  There are no tacky plastic snowmen, people walking around dressed as Santa or tinny Slade blaring out over loudspeakers.  Instead you will find local food, ordinary folks who have spent the previous couple of days making special chocolates in their own kitchens, making cakes and biscuits, mulled wine and chai, as well as local farms serving up their own meat in sausages and burgers.  There are people selling lovingly handmade soap, lotions and potions.

There are all kinds of buskers, schoolkids playing the violin, choirs, an amazing huge Samba band, Bert Miller and the Animal Folk playing outside the Animal Rescue shop, a few jazz crooners, and some drumming.  There is Thai food, Indian food, Chinese food, burgers, barbecues and all sorts of delicious edibles.  There are stalls selling locally made jewellery, local wood crafts, clothes, baskets and a whole range of other stuff.

The streets are packed with people, to the extent where it becomes hard to move around.  It is an amazing showing of the town at its best, beautifully lit, with music and food smells; the word most people had on their lips when I talked to them was ‘magical’.

It was an amazing contrast with the Woolworths on the High Street.  As anyone who has been following the news will know, Woolies are bust, and are closing after Christmas.  I popped in because it felt like an historic moment to see the demise of something that had been such a part of our lives for so long.  People swarming around looking for bargains, like vultures picking over the bones.  An amazing contrast with the vibrant, creative, local culture outside.

In which of the two does a town find its resilience, its ability to weather the economic ice age rapidly enveloping this country?  In the ability of people to work together to create a market place that runs the length of its pedestrianised High Street, small traders bringing homemade foodstuffs from their kitchens and farms and goods to sell and trade in a way that also encourages creativity, music and art?  Or in these ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ chains, with no local loyalty or connection?  In Woolies you hear no laughter, no music actually made by real people, no creativity, so smells other than floor cleaner, nothing that celebrates life.

On nights like this one gets a sense of what our towns and cities could be like.  In the oral history work I am doing one gets a sense of the diversity and richness of the markets, of the street traders, of the web of local food producers, bakers, fishmongers, butchers, creameries that flourished here until the supermarkets and chain stores moved in.   Of the noisy, untidy, colourful, human-scale nature of the street markets, before the idea of buying and selling thins became sanitised and regulated to a point where it lost touch with people and place.  Our towns didn’t just die, they were deliberately bumped off.  How we feed, clothe and amuse ourselves can be a cultural experience, about meeting and greeting each other, or it can be the cold, cynical and deadening experience that 10 minutes in Woolworths invariably is.

I do love this town.  This creative, eclectic, eccentric, frustrating, unique old place that has become home, is an amazing place to live.  A friend in town tells of her daughter going on a canoeing trip to Canada, and being in the middle of one of the Great Lakes in a kayak, seeing another boat and rowing over the say hello.  “Where you from?”, she was asked.  “Totnes” she replied.  “Oh, Transition Town Totnes!” they said.  Another friend, Andy Langford of Gaia University, born and bred in the town, told me that he attended a public meeting in the US where he got a round of applause just for saying he was from Totnes!  While the town doesn’t yet really deserve its reputation for being a cutting edge eco-town, on nights like last night, one can sense the potential, one TTT is doing its bit to try and draw out.

Not enough people write songs about their hometowns here.  I’m not a writer of songs.  I did write several many years ago, fairly dirgy affairs they were too.  I would hope though, as Transition Initiatives continue to embed themselves up and down the country, and lead to people reconnecting with place, that the creativity will pour forth.  I would certainly think that the inevitable and impending relocalisation of our towns and cities will give us more reasons to celebrate and enjoy where we live, more events like last night, more reasons to be creative and poetic rather than less.  Within the demise of Woolworths one can get a taste of the new world just waiting to be birthed.  May our Transitional acts of mass midwifery be fruitful.

NB. Apologies for the ropy photos, my camera is broken so these are taken on my phone.  Thanks and congratulations are also due to the Festival organising committee for pulling off another wonderful series of events.

The notes from the Transition Cities conference are all now up, you can read them here.  One of the highlights for me was Shilpa Shah’s workshop, on Diversity.  About 25 people attended, and what follows are the notes I took during it.  At the workshop Shilpa gave out a really useful handout which offers some great tools for Transition initiatives to use, which you can find here.

Initial Go Round

Participants from Brixton, Bristol, Gent (Belgium), Glasgow, Hollaway (London), Nottingham, Sheffield, London (Tooting), Exeter, Liverpool, Birmingham, Cardiff, Cambridge, Brighton, London (Hackney).

Key issues that arose from the initial opening go-round:

• Beyond white, accents, middle class, ‘usual suspects’
• Already working on Transition issues
• ‘We’ as opposed to ‘them’
• Not about being PC, rather the need to be more inclusive
• Popular Education concepts (ie. Trapese)
• Working with different faith communities
• Equality, discrimination
• Social justice, poverty and discrimination
• Discomfort/curiousity
• Celebrating difference
• ‘Intra cultural’
• Community development – going ‘out’ to people

In Tooting, a walk from Tooting Bec to Tooting Broadway tube stations visiting different faith groups and looking at texts that relate to the environment, did one last year and it was mind blowing
Not just about colour, also language, education, long words, education, etc.

Shilpa than gave a Presentation

Why do I think diversity is important? As has been said about many of these places, cities are deeply diverse, in terms of colour, faith, age, education, language to name just a few. Don’t want to try and just box it into diversity with capital D. The issue is how we feel about that, about working with those people. That richness is in no way reflected in environmental movement. I have done many of these sessions where people come looking for a Magic Bullet, something to just allow box-ticking.

Some people also think it will help with their funding, which rather misses the point. It is about being inclusive, working alongside people, empowerment and listening. The term ‘hard-to-reach’ is a big problem. No-one is hard to reach, some are just easier than others. One group I worked with said “we are not hard to reach, we have been meeting here every Friday for 15 years!” So let’s dismiss the idea of ‘hard-to-reach’ now.

More recent initiatives including the Transition concept has come about because Greens always have had a scary model, saying that the world will end tomorrow. The response is that we get over-busy and burnt out, while others think don’t want to know, it is a scary model, and many just put their heads under the duvet. We (in the environmental movement) use lots of written, dense, technical information, we expect people to come to us, put out the leaflet and people will come. We have made a distinction between ‘us’ who care about it and ‘them’ who don’t.

Things have improved, our messaging has become more creative, more inspiring in some ways, message has become clearer but still confusion. There is an issue around vision, is it our vision or is it a shared vision? Can be seen as patronising, going out to ‘teach’, and end up talking to people like us. I am not saying it is easy, that we should beat each other up about it. I am inspired that there are 30 people here who are interested in this.

What are the benefits of exploring diversity? One is increased resilience. We know about this term in terms of Transition, but it can also can allow us to make more of an impact… Diane Abbott wrote recently in the Guardian that climate change is a white middle class movement. She said that from Parliament many MPs feel that if more people contacted them from ethnic groups it would make it easier to change. The movement doesn’t represent the interests and concerns of 70% of the people in her constituency. The environmental justice and the social justice movement are largely the same things.

Activity. The Comfort Zone.

Getting out of your comfort zone. If we think about our comfort zone in terms of people that are organisations we find comfortable or easy to work with, it is useful to look at this at the start of this workshop. Shilpa then drew a target diagram with 3 rings, and invited people to write on Post-It notes people they felt comfortable with and those they didn’t and then place them on the target, with most comfortable in the middle, and least comfortable to the side.

Case Studies

Cambridge Carbon Footprint. This initiative took carbon footprinting out around Cambridge and ran ‘Carbon conversations’, 5 meetings across 5 months, play games, what does climate change mean to you, discuss insulation, energy meters, talk about food, public transport and so on, but found that they were still working within their comfort zone.

Akashi project was to go out, meet people on their own ground, where they are at, and set up forms of engagement that really brought people in. An example was a Hindu festival about nature, work across generations, bringing generations together, also working with older people, picture of meeting of older Jewish women discussing Jewish ideas about the environment. Poster competition, working with afro-caribbean communityworking to explore climate issues, as well as African traditions. A meeting on consumption looked at traditional African stories about the peanut, it can be ground up, part for porridge, part for animal feed, compost, etc, understanding of what goes in and out, and consumption.

What are the principles and values and what are we glad to have left behind? For the Caribbean community much discussion was around storms and sea level rise. Work with Bangladeshi women doing food growing. Harvest festival at a Baptist Church group, built the festival around food issues. Climate change henna painting. Dance workshops and performances. Making recycled gifts out of old saris.

Lessons

Going out to groups on their turf. Start by listening. What are you interested in? What inspires you? What are your dreams? What do you like to do?

Southwark Friends of the Earth group in London, started with building connections and networking. Very successful. London Sustainability Exchange’s South Asian Communities Campaign was given as an example of a very different approach focussed on quantity of people reached. London Sustainability Exchange. South Asian Communities Campaign.

Longsight in Manchester, FOE ran a great campaign looking at buses. A mosque in Manchester and the Stockton Unitarian Church, green changes, food growing projects run by Womens Environmental Network, Birmingham Multi-Faith project, Birmingham FoE, London citizens and TELCO. Based on community organising model. TELCO an unmbrella organisation, unions, cultural groups, etc. Very political organisation. Marches for Living Wage, supporting asylum seekers, have got lots of pledges from Boris Johnson,

Key Lessons

It is about listening. Really is. Not ‘hi, would you like a leaflet’, but ‘hi, how are you, what are you doing?’ It takes lots of cups of tea! We need to take the time out to build relationships. Then we can more effectively work alongside people to come up with forms of engagement and solutions which are inclusive, accessible and work for all groups involved.

This was then followed by the Open Space Session. Divided into 4 groups, here are the notes from each session.

1. Twinning/Sibling with 3rd world city impacted by climate change

• Education within our groups to prioritise diverse in practice
• Transition and refugees?
• City of Sanctuary concept/movement
• Website presence of diversity stories
• Story-telling – short videos of minority community viewpoints… YouTube
• Recruit minorities onto steering group
• Bring Transition to churches
• Resources : time, energy, skills, funding, get professionals in to support applications, professional help!

2. What is our story and do we need to change it?

• Sincerity/active listening/sharing leading to involvement
• Is the content of the Transition Handbook what we actually want to get across
• The story of peak oil and climate change is demanding to convey
• Need to get away from WE versus THEM
• Build on shared religious ideas
• Build social/cultural story around the hard science
• Concentrate initially on their interests e.g their energy bill
• Remember everyone’s interested in food and fuel prices
• Help people project their own aspirations into the common vision.

3. Why do we listen?

We bring certain assumptions to the discourse. Why do that? We need to grow experience of listening in our own projects. Needs to be an active process of purposeful listening, communicating the benefits. To grow positive listening as a practice, as an active process. We acknowledged existing body of theories and practice, NVC, co-counselling, identifying own needs, deep democracy, Marshall Rosenburg, compassionate conversation and others. Experience of not being listened to, withdrawing and feeling cut off and cross. Should we be more explicit about those experiences.

‘Conflictional celebration’, a conversation you leave feeling it went really well but unaware of the hurt and confusion caused. Humour is a very good practical way of moving a conversation forward. If you constantly say “you do that, you do that”, better to say “what I do, what moves me is…”. The sense of urgency in Transition can skew our sense of agency, can skew the discussion and sow seeds of disharmony, and problems of status and power.

One of the key things from sales is what you sell to people as the reasons to have it… for Transition, honesty, being honest from your perspective is vital.

I once heard a comedian (I don’t remember who) say “we’re told we have to think about future generations… what have future generations ever done for us?”  Although I try to dedicate as much of my time as possible to helping leave this planet in a better place than it was in when I popped out into the world in Chiswick Hospital many moons ago, sometimes there are jobs you find yourself doing that are so unpleasant and downright horrible that one does feel somewhat begrudging towards future generations.  Like insulating under the floor for example.

This weekend, I did the first part of a job which, admittedly, I have been putting off for a long time, insulating beneath the floor of my house, and it was really rather unpleasant.  You may remember that about this time last year I insulated my loft (which was actually a relatively pleasant experience), and now the time has come to head under the floor to tackle the next greatest cause of loss of heat from my house.  When we had an energy makeover plan done, one of the first things it identified was that in each room downstairs, the combined surface area of all the cracks and gaps in the floorboards was equivalent to a 1m square hole in the middle of each room.  Sometimes you can actually feel the wind whistling up between the boards.  Not good.

So, this Sunday, aided by my friend Andrew (see left, in action, below ground), we embarked on a journey into the subterranean depths of my house, or rather a concrety/gravelly crawlspace which varies in height from 3ft down to spaces too narrow to get into (in some places we will have to pull up floorboards and do it that way).  It is definitely a 2 person job, as much as for vital moral support and to check you haven’t got wedged somewhere and slowly starve to death) as for practical necessity.  The idea is to stuff insulation (I used the same recycled bottle stuff as last time) between the joists and then staple a breathable membrane over the surface of that to hold it in place. Sounds really easy in the retrofit books…

In practice this meant, having squeezed down through a small hole in the floor, crawling in spaces so tight that I couldn’t even turn over, and had to do the whole thing on my back, a bit like working under a car, while Andrew passed me membrane, insulation, scissors, whatever was required.  A claustrophobe’s nightmare.  Indeed, one of the main things that kept coming to mind was Sebastian Faulkes’ brilliant book ‘Birdsong’, which tells the story of soldiers working in World War 1 as tunnellers, digging tunnels in France under each others’ trenches in order to put bombs there… possibly the single most claustrophobic piece of writing I have ever read.

In the same way that as you insulate a loft in the winter it grows noticably colder the most insulation you lay, when insulating under floors it gets hotter.  And dustier.  And more claustrophobic.  I had a dustmask on, but couldn’t keep it on all the time as I got too hot. I’m really selling this to you aren’t I?

The upside of it is that over one Sunday afternoon, we actually did half our house, and it feels like a  real achievement.  I can’t quantify how much CO2 we will save, or the payback time, but it makes complete sense and has the added satisfaction of being one of those jobs I have put off for ages and have now finally got round to. While the putting up of vast arrays of photovoltaic cells or wind turbines is the sexy side of energy efficiency, dusty Sunday afternoons under floors is decidedly not, yet it is almost certainly more important and more cost effective.

I once took my young children to see ‘The ‘Pokemon Movie’, the most utterly execrable film I have ever had to endure.  An hour and a half of utterly incomprehensible storyline (to anyone over 6), appalling animation and relentless marketing for plastic toys.  In the car on the way home, as part of a discussion aimed to explore what the film was about, I told my son that even if I spent that last 30 years of my life bedbound and incontinent, and it was his daily chore to attend to my lavatorial output, he still would not have repaid my having to sit through The Pokemon Movie.  Although future generations will hopefully benefit from a better climate thanks to my deeply unpleasant afternoon under the floorboards, they will have to be very nice to me indeed to compensate for yesterday afternoon…. perhaps regularly trimming my geriatric toenails might just about do it…

(The title of this post is in part inspired by the news that the seminal Magazine are to reform… worth getting tickets if you can!)

Our trip to Wales was a success. We filmed Isabel Lovelock from Transition Llandeilo planting an orchard at the local primary school. The kids all got involved but I’m not sure they learned much about how to plant the trees. It was a bit of a photo opportunity with kids dressed in their cubs/brownies uniforms and a friendly policeman on site. Before we arrived, they hadn’t heard of Transition but when you point a big camera at something people are immediately interested. They certainly know about Transition now!

Whilst we were there we took a short visit to the Centre for Alternative Technology and interviewed Paul Allen who’s written the Zero Carbon Britain Report. He thinks we’ve still got a chance but only if Governments act. Up the road in Aberdovey we interviewed Sir John Houghton who was professor at Oxford and on the International Panel for Climate Change. He gave us a very simple explanation of climate change and I couldn’t help thinking that it was very fortunate that scientists were looking at the atmosphere and recording data because otherwise we wouldn’t even know it was going on!

Emma took the PD150 mini DV camera to the Nottingham Cities Conference and it was camera central. There were no less than 3 other people there filming! So we’ve got that covered…

James Engwell, who has just moved down to Totnes from Yorkshire, got in touch with us to offer his help on the film. He’s donated a Mac computer for the Transition Network office and some software (Frameline) which annotates and effectively archives all the footage. This means that we will be able to search for any shots we like at any time and they will be immediately accessible. We can now put any clips we have filmed so far onto YouTube. The first few have gone up already…see yoodooright1968.

Chris was very excited when he came back from Norwich where he filmed Rob Hopkins present Transition to the local authority. Chris is originally from Norwich and was very proud when they unanimously agreed to become a Transition Local Authority and appoint a Transition Officer. He was really impressed with Rob’s presentation and the film began to take more definite shape in his mind.

Next stop Stroud and Lewes. We’re hoping to film the Lewes Pound story and some Stroud Food Projects. We’re still notably lacking a big transport story. If anyone knows any good Transport Projects out there then please let me know about it.

Contact Emma on 01803 863928 (mornings only), or you can email emmagoude@hotmail.com.

That’s the country, not the pneumatically-enhanced uber-celebrity.  Here is an article from JO, an English language Jordanian magazine, which looks at what the Transition concept might have to offer in a Jordian context.  Also contains some great graphics….

Last week a friend sent me a stunning, thinking-shifting powerpoint by Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre’s Energy Programme entitled Reframing Climate Change: from long-term targets to emission pathways. If you want a sobering and, frankly, deeply depressing, update on the implications of the latest climate science, this is as good a place to start as any. It looks at the scale of the year-on-year emissions that we need to make, and it is quite something. Given that we need to aim to stay below 450ppm in order to have any chance of avoiding runaway climate change (and even that, as the Climate Safety report, issued last week, and the recent testimony from Tim Helwig-Larsen and James Hansen at the House of Commons set out, is almost certainly not enough), what does that actually mean in terms of emissions cuts?

If , Anderson argues, we were to aim for 650ppm with global emissions peaking in 2020, we would need 3% annual cuts starting today. A huge task in itself. If we want to aim for 550ppm with emissions peaking in 2020, we would need 6% annual reductions (which means 9% reductions in emissions from energy generation). If we go for the 450ppm target, which is, realistically, the one that has any chance of preserving a stable climate, we need 9% reductions, every year, for the foreseeable future, starting now. 9%.

9% is just a number though, and as one wades through the climate change literature one is bombared with numbers… but having studied this presentation, 9% is clearly an important one, perhaps as important as Bill McKibben’s 350.  What might it actually mean in practice?   Anderson goes on to look at the rare occasions in the past when reductions have actually been achieved by ‘developed’ nations. Annual reductions of greater than 1% p.a. have, he argues, quoting the Stern Report, only “been associated with economic recession or upheaval”. Interesting.

The Dash for Gas in the UK, and the French nuclear power programme apparently led to reductions of 1%. The collapse of the Soviet Union led to reductions of just 5%.  Yet we need to do 9% every year, starting  now, in order to have any chance of avoiding runaway climate change.  That is the vitally important point, so important that I will say it again.  We need to bring about 9% cuts every year, starting  now, in order to have any chance of avoiding runaway climate change.  This might be a good moment to sit down and take a few deep breaths.  I know I had to.

In this context, the decision by the British government to pump billions of pounds into the banking system and to cut interest rates and VAT in order to get us shopping again looks even more foolish than it did the day before I read this presentation. We may well have done our chances of survival more good by using that money to actively undermine and hasten the demise of our economy rather than trying to prop it up! The sensible option would have been to use it to prepare for the post carbon world which is, after all, an inevitability anyway, with profound urgency.

I’m not talking here about the kind of fantasty post-carbon world so beloved of policymakers; the one with millions of hydrogen cars, a globalised economy with huge container ships bringing still largely unnecessary products from better insulated factories in China aided by a huge sail to reduce their fuel consumption and then moved around between superstores here in a more efficient manner. We are talking about profound structural change, a move from the global to the local, from ’sustainability’ to resilience, and from haggling in conference centre corridors over wording in climate agreements to putting society on a footing akin to a wartime mobilisation.

Alastair Darling’s decision to throw everything at trying to get the economy to spend itself better, seems even more vastly inappropriate than it did before.  If getting overly into debt in order to buy more stuff we didn’t need in the first place is one of the things that got us into this mess in the first place, then it surely isn’t going to be the thing that gets us out of it again.  Comedian Marcus Brigstock on Radio 4 last week called this the ‘Buy Crap For Britain!’ campaign, lampooning the idea that it is our patriotic duty to buy more stuff that in 6 weeks will end up landfill anyway. From a 9% perspective, as well as from many others, its madness.

Rather than give money to bail out the car industry in order to enable them to keep making cars, that money should be tied to regearing the industry to producing wind turbines, solar panels and low energy forms of transportation.  If we are to give money to support peoples’ livelihoods (no bad thing), then we are in a position to demand changes to how it functions.  Some industries though, are beyond becoming climate-responsible, it is, for example, hard to see a creative way of bailing out Ryanair.

As I have written before, if your horse has died, no amount of dangling carrots in front of its face or kicking it up the backside is going to make a difference.  It is time to move on, grieve for that horse, and start thinking about life post-horse. To use another analogy, this time in relation to the oil price, what has happened with oil prices is somewhat similar to the Wizard of Oz (if you’ve never seen it it’ll be Christmas soon, you can see it then…).

The difference between the last time oil cost $50 a barrel and now is like Dorothy’s house being picked up in Kansas in the hurricane, spun around and plonked back down again, in a world that initially looks like Kansas, but is actually completely different.  As in the Wizard of Oz, we can also see a pair of legs sticking out from beneath our house, the Witch of Economic Growth, squashed as flat as a pancake.

Economic growth was, let’s face it, an idea with a temporary lifespan to start with, one that would inevitably hit the buffers of resource constraints.  It brought many benefits, but also increased loneliness, social fragmentation, pushed the world to the bring of ecological meltdown and much more besides.  I say let’s write it off as a fascinating but ultimately failed economic experiment, and look instead at a new way, one based on the economics of resilience and, ultimately, survival.

We have a once-off opportunity to put in place the infrastructure that we will need in a post-oil, resource constrained, 9%-a-year world.  What might the first steps look like?  George Monbiot has set out some things that could be done tomorrow and wouldn’t immediately incense anyone too much.  The Climate Safety report sets out a clear programme of action that can also start tomorrow (you can download the pdf. here).  What Transition initiatives are starting to do around the world is to model the benefits a lower energy world might bring, and to start the process of making unelectable policies electable. They take as their starting point the vision of what the world might be like once it has made the Transition, leaner, more efficient, less stressed, friendlier, more practical and adaptable, more rooted in community.  Monbiot captured this very well in his piece in the Guardian this week;

He (George Marshall) proposes that instead of arguing for sacrifice, environmentalists should show where the rewards might lie: that understanding what the science is saying and planning accordingly is the smart thing to do, which will protect your interests more effectively than flinging abuse at scientists. We should emphasise the old-fashioned virtues of uniting in the face of a crisis, of resourcefulness and community action. Projects like the transition towns network and proposals for a green new deal tell a story which people are more willing to hear.

This is also where the concept of the Green New Deal comes into its own.  It is a concept that can all too easily be hijacked, but at its core, the idea that economies need to be redesigned from the ground up based on resilience and preparedness for a lower energy world, is a key one of our age.

If anyone is still struggling to find a silver lining in the idea of a lower energy, 9%, world which is actually moving towards 9% cuts called in a committed way, then it can, at times, be worth looking towards our more tried and tested human instincts.  A piece on the BBC website last week entitled Britons ‘saving money with sex’ showed that alongside the long-desired reduction in air travel, car sales and road traffic currently underway, the recession is having some other positive side effects too.

According to the article, a survey by YouGov found that sex was the most popular free activity, something more and more people are looking for, far ahead of window shopping and gossiping. Scotland is apparently the place making best use of this free source of entertainment, with 43% of people choosing sex ahead of tiddlewinks and making things out of pipecleaners, whereas in England the figure is lower at 35% (perhaps because its because the winter days are a bit longer?). The survey did highlight a gender difference though, with women putting gossiping above sex, whereas for the men, it was definitely sex that topped the ‘what shall we do now?’ chart.

So if we are moving away from consumption, from the ‘Buy Crap for Britain’ solution to economic contraction, towards a more profound rethink given the need to tackle climate change with unprecedented gusto, perhaps we might do worse than to link it to increased pleasure and intimacy, and to a move away from the loneliness so many people experience.  It may be more successful than pictures of polar bears.  We just need to work out something to make condoms out of other than oil.  Hemp?

I often liken Transition to a mychorrhizal fungi that innoculates the ’soil’, running all over the place, and leaves one very surprised at where it pops up as mushrooms. I thought you might find it useful to just have a short round up of some of the latest ‘fruitings’. We start with something I mentioned last week, Ed Milliband’s talk at the Environment Agency conference, which is now online, before moving onto a smorgasbord of Transition stuff…

There is a mention in passing at the end of George Monbiot’s column today which is an excellent swipe at nonsensical climate change deniers.  Then there’s;

• Leicestershire County Council’s passing of a resolution, a la Somerset, supporting Transition Initiatives  Mention of Transition Town Torbay in their local paper
• In Pete Burden’s excellent Sustainable Business blog
• Elizabeth Logan getting excited about Transition in the US
• Transition Town West Kirby getting funding to plant fruit and nut trees
• Transition Exmouth in their local paper
• a somewhat critical review of the Transition Handbook
• Patty Baker in Sustainable Dunwoody getting excited about Transition
• A short radio piece from Vermont
• an article from Hawick News in Scotland
• Totnes poet Matt Harvey visits Stroud to look at the Great Reskilling
• Transition Peterborough (the one in the US) toying with launching their own currency
• a report on one of Naresh Giangrande’s talks in the US as part of their Transition Tour
• an article in the financial press about the Lewes Pound
• an article about Transition Town Totnes, which describes it as ‘ultra green group’….
• Transition Wingecarribbee, the 112th formal Transition Initiative
• news of an Edible Garden Crawl in New Zealand
• a great piece from Farmers Weekly about a farmer joining his local Transition iniative
• another snapshot of Mr Giangrande’s Stateside gaddings
• Alexis Rowell, the ‘Eco Councillor’ (and a thoroughly nice bloke) writing about Transition
• Pershore Town Council offer to support Transition goings-on in their area
• Graham Strouts gives a talk to Transition Tramore in Ireland about forest gardens
• a snapshot by Carl Etnier of Transition in Vermont
• the latest from Transition West Kirby and…
• a taste of what they are up to in Farnham.

That’s it for now, plenty to keep you busy!  Happy reading….

Here is an interesting clip from the Netherlands… I have no idea what any of them are talking about, not being a native speaker myself, but maybe some of you are….

While editing the Transition Timeline (coming soon), Shaun and I came up with the following from a section looking at transportation in 2018. “In addition, those who tried to flaunt wealth by driving a car everywhere and buying showy possessions increasingly became seen at best as rather selfish and passé figures of fun. Calling someone a ‘Clarkson’ became a gentle form of abuse, but one which underpinned how far society had moved away from the kind of flamboyant car culture seen 10 years previously”. However, over the last couple of days, ‘doing a Clarkson’ has taken on an entirely different meaning.

It has now come to refer to the most completely unexpected, the most completely jaw-droppingly improbable person, who has for years been a poster child for the runaway excesses of the Oil Age, and who once said “I’m not a scientist, but I read enough scientific literature to know the whole global warming theory is bonkers. A complete fairy story”,  who now suddenly grasps the scale of change rolling across the world with inevitability.

In an interview with BBC Radio 5 Live, Clarkson said, “the politicians know just how catastrophic it is going to be, and just think well there’s nothing we can do so we’re just going to not bother telling them… fiddle around, drop the interest rate…. I believe we are heading towards The End of Days, economically speaking, and that you’d better get yourself an allotment, personally. I talked to a couple of bankers who say ‘it’s SO bad’…. Buffet (?) the other day said “we’re not even in it yet…”

Jeremy Clarkson on his allotment, now there’s an image to conjur with.  He then went on to argue that it was inappropriate for the UK government to bail out the car industry, because if they did so, then they should be bailing out every other business that is struggling.  So, Clarkson advocating local food production, the end of the car industry, the end of economic growth… I have to say I never thought I would see the day… extraordinary.

Energy Descent Plans… The story so far
Presented by Rob Hopkins, John Green & Lucy Neal

#1. Rob Hopkins – Transition Town Totnes

The Energy Descent Action Plan (EDAP) can be considered a community’s Plan B, developed by the community itself and based on more realistic assumptions than what local authorities, businesses and government departments use. The EDAP can be a tool to plot out what the other side of the peak oil curve, the downhill slope, may look like for a particular community. As the last of the 12 Steps in the transition model, the EDAP is an attempt to weave together the various threads (eg. food or energy or transport initiatives…) that have been running, like mychorriza through the community over the past year or two of the transition process.

The first EDAP was developed in 2005 in Kinsale, Ireland, as a student project. Since then, there have been EDAPs initiated in Portobello, Edinburgh in  Scotland and the Sunshine Coast, Australia (which we are awaiting with baited breath). It is, however, a concept still in development as so far no community has developed a thorough and robust EDAP.

Transition Town Totnes has been given some funding to develop their EDAP and are currently in the process of developing their Transition Timeline. To offer people a chance to dream about what they may be doing in 2030, what Totnes may look like then, and how they reached that point, a number of events were held.  Various activities and exercises have been developed, eg. a fictitious 2030 school reunion, or the creative visioning work done in the local school, known as Transition Tales. The stories, ideas and visions emerging during these activities, are being developed into the Totnes EDAP, and some of them will emege earlier in the Transition Timeline report (due to be published by Transition Network in January).  In the EDAP, the timeline will run from 2006 – 2030 (it goes back to 2006 to include trends that were emerging, and that have started since TTT kicked off, key projects, etc), using three or four different scenarios about what transition may look like.

By starting with a vision of a positive future of, say, what food and farming will look like in 2030, we can then ‘backcast’ or work backwards to ‘remember’ how we got there, what the key events were, etc. This can be done for different aspects of the community such energy, building & housing, economy & livelihoods, education, governance, art & culture, health & wellbeing, transport, biodiversity, water, waste, community issues, youth issues, etc. Through the narratives that emerge from the community, the EDAP becomes the story of how the community can move through this era. The EDAP is therefore not at all a dry Council plan, but instead a vibrant holiday brochure that entices and compels people to a particular future.

At the same time as the future visioning, Totnes is also attempting to draw a clearer picture of the present situation in the town (eg. through carbon footprinting, a questionnaire on food and agriculture), as well as the history of the town (eg. through oral histories).  It’s important to note though, that the EDAP should be seen as an ongoing document that is referred to and revised on a regular basis. Aside from providing a vision and rough timeframe, a community-developed EDAP also identifies areas where campaigning might be appropriate, as it will identify obstacles to its own implementation.

#2. John Green - Transition Nottingham

John described a day-long team building exercise that provided a useful plan for the most effective projects and organisational issues for the Transition Nottingham hub group. The intention for the day was ‘planning the unplannable’ using what is referred to as the Japanese ‘KJ method’ or ‘affinity methodology’ or ‘Hoshin planning’.

The first step of the process was to discuss the title of the day’s session until everyone had a clear understanding of the scope of the question. People were then asked to enter into silent brainstorming about the question, writing up each idea or question on individual post-it notes (which were colour-coded to keep track of what was being said by whom), beginning the shift from what may usually be an oral meeting to a visual form of communication.

Following the brainstorming, each person read out their notes and in turn posted them onto flipcharts that were being labelled according to emerging themes. After the last notes were read out, each person adopted a flipchart/theme and expressed to the group the ideas that had emerged around that theme, these were then discussed so that everyone understood what were the key ideas in that theme, and a new title was developed for that flipchart/theme. These headings in turn placed in a circle, or what John referred to as the ‘clock’, and the connections between these themes were then established through an interrelationship diagram in order understand the cause and effect relationships of the different factors within the community.

#3. Lucy Neal, Transition Tooting

Lucy gave an account of what has been described as “a romp through the 12 Steps to Transition”.  It is an inspirational event which condensed the entire Transition process from “forming an initiating group” through to “creating an Energy Descent Action pathway” into a colourful and collaborative pageant running the course of an afternoon in July 2008 on the South Bank in London.

Lucy described a workshop held as part of London’s Lift Festival during which participants were walked through a whirlwind version of the 12 Steps of Transition for their imaginary town of Anywhere, culminating with the publication of a Transition Anywhere EDAP.

The workshop not only enabled people working on the various London transition initiatives to meet and find ways to work together and support each other, but also acted as a vibrant and inspiring introduction to the concept of transition, and a taster of the element of playfulness and enthusiasm driving it.

A video of the workshop is available from here and will soon be posted onto YouTube.

************************************

Unfortunately question time for the workshop was limited, but one of the key questions that came up here along with at various other stages of the conference was whether, in the context of cities, EDAPs should be developed at the city-wide level or at local community levels.  The view from the speakers was that it is really up to the initiative to find the scale that makes sense to work on, and to be realistic about what you can and can’t do.

With many thanks to Amelia for the photos and to Asha for transcribing this session.

Last year’s Soil Association conference offered delegates a deep immersion in the peak oil/Transition debates, and was, for many, a seminal experience. This year’s took the discussions deeper and offered delegates an update on progress since and a re-energiser in terms of the scale of the work needed to be done for food and farming to truly be ‘in Transition’.  You can hear podcasts from the whole conference here and download the pdf of the conference programme here.

I arrived slightly late, midway through a video address from Caroline Lucas MEP, which was excellent. This was followed by Jeremy Leggett, who gave an excellent refresher in peak oil and climate change, based mainly around the recent Peak Oil Task Force he was a major player in, which brought together 8 companies from across UK industry to look at the implications of peak oil. The report concluded that peak oil would be in 2013 and would “hit society like a tidal wave”. He went through the various objections to the peak oil concept, and addressed each one in turn. We can get through though, he argued, with a Green New Deal (he was one of the contributors to the nef report) and with a revolution in energy generation.

After Jeremy was Dr Pete Smith from Aberdeen University, who talked about soils and their role in the stabilising of carbon emissions. There is, he said, twice as much carbon in soils than there is in the atmosphere, and three times more than in forests. Although he was short on specifics in terms of what a carbon-negative economy would look like, he called for a broad campaign of rebuilding and revaluing soils. Population, he said, would be our big challenge, with 9 billion people being on the Earth by 2050 (I always take these figures with a pinch of salt, the energy base then will no way suppor that number of people). The other key challenge will be how to feed all these people, and the need to continually increase production. This seemed quite frustrating for me, using the Predict and Provide model in the wrong place.

This was followed by a workshop session, where delegates had 4 choices for the session. I went to one on urban food production,which was chaired by Rosie Boycott, the London Food Czar. She talked about her Capital Growth scheme, which aims to create 2012 food gardens in London by 2012, in time for the Olympic Games. Carrie (didn’t get her surname…) then spoke about the Swillington Farm CSA near Leeds, in an old walled garden, which feeds many families and which allows those involved to feel part of a wider community.

Richard Spalding from UWE (an old lecturer of mine from many years ago) spoke about the ‘Blue Finger’, a parcel of high quality farmland which heads out of Bristol going north, and which used to be home to a raft of market gardeners, farmers and allotments. Much of this land is now under great threat of development, and Richard argued the case for it being preserved and put back to a productive use. He also talked about some of the built environment heritage that can be found along the ‘Finger’, 13th century barns, remnants of apple pressing and so on. The revival of this would, he argued, unite urban and rural, in a ‘Joyful Transition’.

The final speaker was Emma Noble from the Soil Association’s Food for Life programme, which was discussed a while ago here at Transition Culture. This wonderful project is now in hundreds of schools in the UK, bringing fresh fruit and vegetables onto children’s plates.

After lunch Soil Association President Monty Don spoke of his hope for the organisation to initiate a revolution in how the nation feeds itself. He was followed by Patrick Holden. The only way to get politicians to introduce change, he said, was with the pressure of informed public opinion. What has to happen, and happen urgently, he said, was to move from an agriculture based on using stored sunlight to actual susnshine. This is, he said, the biggest challenge ever faced by agriculture. Even if the nation were put on a war footing, this would still be a huge task. The challenge, he said, is to take food and farming into a world that is resilient to external shocks.

Patrick was followed by Hilary Benn MP, the Minister for Food, who gave a pre-recorded video presentation from London. His talk was a classic politician’s speech which sounds great but which actually says very little. On GM, his take was that the 2 questions we need to ask are ‘is it safe to eat?’ and ‘is it safe to grow?’ The answer to both those questions, he said, according to all the research he had read, was yes. We need more trials, he said, in order to be able to establish the answers. Ultimately though, it is up to us what we eat, up to the shops what they stock and it is up to the science. One thing he did say that was interesting was a direct acknowledgement of oil depletion, when he spoke of ‘oil running out sooner rather than later’ or words to that effect.

His talk was followed by an opportunity for the audience to quiz him. Gundula Azeez tore into Benn about his claims that the research thus far shows it to be safe to eat and grow, referring him to a recent study from the EU, which she described as being for GM what the IPCC reports are for climate change, and which came down on the side of GM being a technology we really don’t need. Vandana Shiva also laid into him over the GM question. The question we should be asking about GM, she said, is does it increase livelihoods of farmers. She has, she said, 20 years of research which show that adding more toxins to food is clearly not in the interests of public health. Food security is increasingly become an issue, he said, and his department will soon publish a paper on the subject.

The day ended with a presentation from Vandana Shiva, who was, as ever, on fine form, delivering the annual kick up the backside to everyone present. She talked about how the climate and the food crises are now being used by the GM industries to push their seeds, claiming they can solve both, whereas actually they can solve neither. She spoke of the last time she was in a part of India where farmer suicides are especially high. She visited the widow of a farmer who recently took his own life. She found that although the BT cotton seeds he used were branded differently, they were all made by the same company, so when one variety failed he tried another, but they were all from the same company.

GM seeds, in India, the US, or anywhere, lock farmers into cycles of debt and repayments from which they can never hope to escape.  She spoke of the G20 conference that just concluded, which decided to keep pushing for economic growth at all costs, saying that the solution put forward is to just repeat ideology. GM seeds need 13 times more pesticides than normal crops, and these costs add up. Indian cotton farmers used to grow cotton among a diversity of other things, food, fuel etc. They were food secure. Now they are indebted and highly vulnerable. For farmers in India, growing roses for export instead of vegetables raise enough money to buy back one quarter of the vegetables you would have grown anyway. With food becoming more and more a commodity, food for people is being priced out, competing with biofuels and other uses. The EU, she said, is even contemplating allowing a potato that could be grown for furniture! (must be a bloody big potato).

The GM issue, she said, is being used to divide North and South, the North being told that blocking GM is condemning the South to starvation, and the South being told that blocking GM will lead to their ‘being left behind’. One of the main objections to GM is the fact that it continues the system that caused all the problems in the first place. With the unravelling of the credit bubble we are seeing every piece of the model falling apart, we need to shift now to a co-operative model.

In the same way that we saw Wall Street collapse, we are seeing agriculture collapse. It is time, she said, to take agriculture back. We need to return to the soil. We need to remove soil from the influence of economics. We need to intensify carbon in soils, and focus on soil, not oil. It represents the changes we need to make; it is not just the ground we stand on, it embodies the change towards a network of resilient communities which are localised and which enhance wellbeing. Soil teaches us to be earth citizens. We are seeing many livelihoods falling away… supermarkets in India have lost 90% of their growth. We have to remain realistic and compassionate, and we must build alternatives. What we must never forget, she concluded, is the power of the dispossessed. They, after all, have nothing to lose.

That evening featured a great Slow Food banquet at the Bordeaux Quay, with an amazing array of local food, and chatting and socialising into the early hours.

Day 2.

The second day began with Tim Lang, the only Professor in Food Policy in the world. The fundamentals for 21st century food and farming, he said, were climate change, energy, water, biodiversity, land use, labour, urbanisation, demographics and nutrition. His talk was a powerful taste of academics at their best, deeply knowledgable on his subject, a passionate speaker, and a man on a mission. One of his key aims is to see the production of a National Food Plan for the UK, one that addresses all of the challenges set out above.

Then I spoke, and gave an overview of the Transition model, and how much had happened since the last conference. I illustrated my talk with examples of food projects taking place across the Network, from urban community gardens in Bristol, to fruit tree plantings in New Zealand. After me was Julie Brown from Growing Communities in Hackney, a wonderful project I will blog more about later. Her model for urban food production is very useful, and has much overlap with Transition groups.

The final speaker of the session was Peter Melchett.  One of the facts he said that stuck with me was that 5-7 fold increases in fuel and pesticide use has only led to a 2 fold increase in actual production. He questioned the assumption that we need more food to feed more people, comparing it to toxic mortgages. Given the scarcity of the oil and the cost of it, as well as the need to cut emissions hugely, the question should really be what would food production look like and how will we equip the world with the skills it will need.

After a break were more workshops, which I missed, and after lunch there were more, which I missed too…. not very good I know for a roving Transition Culture reporter, but I had other things to do, and did some useful networking! The event closed with two speakers who had both travelled from the US. The first, Judith Redmond, told the story of Full Belly Farm, an exemplar CSA in California. It was an inspiring story of how local food systems can work.

The final speaker was Cathrine Sneed. I saw her speak 14 years ago in Bristol at the Schumacher lectures, an amazing talk that made my cry, and which changed my outlook on many things. A quite extraordinary woman. Her talk was so powerful, so moving, so profoundly important, that I will not do it justice by trying to write up my poor notes. So click here and listen to it. Really. Give yourself 20 minutes and listen to it. She has an amazing tale to tell.

And then that was that. Fascinating to see how the peak oil/transition thing is gradually embedding itself into the Soil Association’s work, and where it is meeting resistance.  You can download the ‘Inconvenient Truth About Food’ report, launched at the conference, here.

Deepest thanks to Ed and Sally Collard, who filmed the Nottingham Cities conference and produced the following fantastic film about it… its not the same as having been there, but its as close as you’ll get! There is a higher quality version here, but here is the YouTube version for your delectation.

The previous night’s social at the Canal House was lively and resulted in much discussion, networking and imbibing.  Eyes weren’t excessively bleary the next day though when we reconvened, most people appearing raring to go at 9.15am for the first workshop session.  There were four to choose from, Diversity in Cities, Cities of Sanctuary, Constellations in Cities and Food in Cities.  Although I was only able to attend the one, notes were taken in the others which will be available soon.

The one I attended, on Diversity, was led by Shilpa Shah, and ran through what diversity actually means, and the experience of those running Transition initiatives in trying to engage people from a broad diversity of backgrounds.  Early on in the session she dispelled the idea of some groups being ‘hard-to-reach’, saying there is no such thing, having met many groups who told her “we’re supposed to be hard’to-reach, but we meet here every Wednesday afternoon, can’t be that hard!”.  The workshop was an excellent and thought provoking immersion in issues around diversity, and it was extraordinary to see how much she packed into a short workshop.  On the other side of the partition from Shilpa’s workshop was the Constellations one, which, judging from feedback I heard later and from the laughter through the partition, was also excellent.

After the break, we were into the last Open Space sessions.  I flitted around these, but tried to be most involved in Shilpa’s which was an exploration of different aspects of diversity.  This produced some fascinating discussion, most of which was scribed and will be posted soon.  After this session, we all raced outside to do a group photo (see right), and then, after a very short break for anyone who wanted a snack to sustain their energy through the last part, we reconvened for the final session.

The aim of this was somewhat ambitious.  It was to create a Blueprint for Cities in Transition.  The question posed was “does the Transition model as it exists so far (the 12 Steps, the 7 Buts etc) work for you?  Does it need revising, updating, or completely rethinking?”  In order to facilitate this we divided the room into 5 lots of tables, to look at different aspects of this, such as the 12 Steps, Awareness Raising and the need for good communication.  They were asked to also come up with any tools they have found useful in their work.

At the end of this session, people posted their outputs and their thinking onto the main wall.  The result was a huge amount of useful input, some really important thinking, which will be digested over the next couple of weeks.  I was then asked, having only had time to look at a few of them, to summarise the outcomes.  It seemed to me that the main thing was that actually the 12 Steps as a guide is still relevant and useful, but it needs deepening for urban initiatives.  What was also clear was that one of the key elements of success was setting up structures and good and clear communication processes early on, which seems, given the scale, to be more important for urban groups than for those in smaller communities.

The need to celebrate, as identified by John Croft, also came up, the need for this process to be fun and engaging.  There was much more, which we are just starting to sift through, and which will be mused on subsequently.  The main insight for me was that yes, Transition is possible in cities, but they need perhaps more specific support than those working on a smaller scale.  Then there was some time for feedback and reflection, where people talked about how much they had enjoyed the event, how powerful they had found the networking aspects of it, and how they would be returning to their groups re-energised and with many new tools.

It was a very dynamic couple of days.  I have often written how the Transition model is a constantly iterative one, one that reinvents and updates itself dependening on the incoming information and ideas.  This event felt like a key part of that, and it was also a re-enforcement that the Open Space way of running these events is actualy really very powerful and effective.

A heartfelt thanks to everyone who travelled to Nottingham to bring their aspect of the collective genius, to Nottingham City Council who supported the event, to John and Paul and everyone at Transition Nottingham for being such excellent hosts, to all those who led workshops so ably, to the wonderful Sim and Kristin who organised the event so superbly, to John and Amelia for use of their photos, to all the scribes, those who accommodated people, to the various film crews and to the Canal House for being such great hosts.   I will update you over the next few days as to the outputs from it all.

Volunteer researchers needed to assist in the collection of material for The Transition Guide to Food. Recent research experience preferable, as is a keen interest and experience in the subject of local food production. I am particularly interested in hearing from anyone in the Surrey/London area, so that we can work face to face - but this is not absolutely necessary. Volunteers needed from now up until Christmas. All contributors will be given due credit in the Guide. Please email Tamzin at greentamzin@gmail.com or call on 01932 702515 to discuss further.

Robert Perez filming an interview outside the site during his recent visit to Totnes

(Here is a press release issued to the local media today…)

New Initiative Places Food at the Centre of Healthcare Revolution

A new initiative which would offer a groundbreaking approach to health promotion and food growing in the town’s back gardens has been unveiled. The initiative, Totnes Healthy Futures, is proposed for a site in central Totnes which Devon County Council will be selling this week. It is the result of an innovative partnership between Transition Town Totnes, the Totnes Development Trust, University of Plymouth and the Leatside Surgery.

With obesity and preventable illness top of the Government’s list of health priorities, it is widely agreed that new approaches are needed for promoting exercise, healthy eating and for reconnecting people with good, locally grown affordable food. The Totnes Health Futures centre will combine an low carbon building built using mainly local materials, which incorporates a public cafe, a large space for various events, as well as smaller rooms and a covered greenhouse/growing area. The rest of the site will be dedicated to a model urban food garden, featuring raised beds, soft fruit and medicinal herbs, designed so as to be a powerful educational resource, showing in varied ways the potential productivity of urban spaces.

Following the recent appearance of the Transition Town Totnes Garden Share scheme on Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s ‘River Cottage’ programme, a feature which inspired River Cottage’s ‘Landshare’ campaign, the Healthy Futures initiative aims to keep the town at the forefront of the idea of encouraging more people to grow and cook their own food, something being promoted by a spectrum as diverse as the Mayor of London (who is striving to get 2012 food-producing gardens in London in time for the Olympics), and Blue Peter, who recently dug out the famous Blue Peter garden to replace it with vegetable beds.

The project has identified a number of potential sites, but has formally applied to Devon County Council for the former lorry depot on Babbage Road, which directly adjoins the Leatside Surgery and which goes for sale by formal tender on December 3rd. The coalition of organisations behind the proposal is adamant that a site of such strategic importance to the community ought not merely be sold to the highest bidder. Rather, it is asking that Devon County Council use its powers to choose lower bids in the case of proposals with a demonstrable community benefit.

“The exciting thing about this site”, says Rob Hopkins, TTT founder, “is that it is somewhere many people pass by on a daily basis, yet often don’t notice. We feel that one of the great challenges of the next 10 years will be the art of turning the vast expanses of land we have surrendered to concrete back to more productive uses. The precedent created by this initiative will be very important, transforming a barren concrete wasteland into an oasis of abundance and diversity where one least expects it”.

TV gardening guru Monty Don has been very supportive of the initiative. He writes “I enthusiastically endorse the proposal for the Totnes Healthy Futures Centre and believe it to be a profound inspiration that will set a standard for the rest of the country. All my experience shows that a close connection with the soil, particularly through growing and eating organic fruit and vegetables improves personal physical and mental health as well as the health of the community. This is an inspired and important scheme that will have profound and lasting benefits to the community and I sincerely hope that it will be supported and encouraged by all, and if invited I look forward to attending the opening!”

The project is designed so as to act as a tremendous catalyst. Doctors and nurses working in Totnes are excited by the possibilities of the project, which will bring benefits to the community by encouraging healthier diets and increased exercise. The project will complement the work already taking place in GP surgeries by providing resources for peopel with long term health problems as well as promoting healthy living to families with young children. The £¾m project will be funded through a mixture of grants and private funding, and is designed to be self financing from the start. The deadline for bids for the site is December 3rd, with a decision expected from the Council by the following week.

Transition Town Totnes
43 Fore Street
Totnes
Devon
TQ9 5HN
www.totnes.transitionnetwork.org
Tel:01803 867358