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Does Peak Oil Really “Make Ordinary Politics Irrelevant”?: Rupert Read misses the point about Transition Initiatives.
Rob Hopkins, Transition Culture
It was fascinating to read Rupert Read’s recent article posted both on his website and reproduced in the Green Party magazine Green World entitled ‘Peak Oil’ only makes the Green Party message more urgent”, in which he sets about the Transition movement for being naive and even potentially harmful. ”Next time you hear a Transition Town aficionado peaking about how Peak Oil renders ordinary politics irrelevant, please beg to differ”, he writes. However, Read’s piece betrays such a profound misunderstanding of where the Transition movement is coming from that I feel duty bound to respond.
There are a few key arguments that Read uses in his piece which I will address below, but his core argument is basically that any successful transition away from dependence on fossil fuels cannot happen independent of legislation and politics, and that the Green Party is the only party capable of providing that. The first of his specific arguments, the one that I am still scratching my head about days after reading his piece, goes as follows;
”The Transition Towns movement alone cannot save us because, within the existing economic system, some people reducing their use of fossil fuels is received by everyone else as a price signal that it is OK to use even more fossil fuels”.
This seems like an astonishing argument from a member of the Green Party, to suggest that it is counter-productive to reduce fossil fuel consumption in one place because it will just increase it elsewhere. I sometimes hear the same argument from those who suggest that there is no point in our doing anything to lower our carbon emissions because China and India will never do so. So does Read suggest that instead we just madly consume whatever fossil fuels we can in order to use them up as quickly as possible? No. His argument is that what we need is “legislation that enforces lower overall use of fossil fuels and/or that forces everyone to try and become a Transition Town”. In other words, all stick and no carrot.
It is absurd to suggest that reducing dependence on fossil fuels is counter-productive for many reasons, including the following;
- It inspires other places. Places such as Findhorn and BedZed with their low carbon footprints show the rest of the world what is possible in an inspiring way. There is no research to the best of my knowledge to indicate that communities living next to those places feel duty bound to increase their fossil fuel consumption due to that left over by their more frugal neighbours
- This is about more than just cutting consumption. In the Transition approach, the cutting of carbon emissions/fossil fuel consumption is a way of making the settlement in question more resilient, with a stronger local economy which in turn unleashes all kinds of other positive economic feedbacks
- In the context of the peak oil argument, as the price of liquids fuels starts to rise, it will be the degree of resilience that has been put in place that will be important. Delight at being able to pick up, for example, Totnes’s fossil fuel leftovers, will be short lived and entirely counter-productive.
It seems to me that legislation will struggle and be ultimately ineffectual if it is fighting against rather than with the will of the people. …
(12 February 2008)
The full article by Rupert Read has just been posted: ‘Transition Towns’ are great – but they won’t save us, without help. After reading the full article, I don’t think Hopkins and Read are as far apart as it may seem at first. -BA
Monastery throws switch on green initiatives
Dave Downey, North County Times (California)
ESCONDIDO —- With the flip of a switch Sunday, a secluded monastery tucked away in the brush-and-oak-covered canyons north of this city’s downtown began producing its own energy.
Deer Park Monastery’s new 66-kilowatt, sun-powered electricity system will provide virtually all the electricity required to keep the lights on and air conditioners humming in its living quarters, meditation hall, dining hall and offices.
The solar panels are just one of many environmental efforts under way at the Buddhist monastery.
In the past year, the monks and nuns have retrofitted three 1980s-era, diesel-powered Mercedes cars to run on 100-percent vegetable oil. They voluntarily park all their vehicles on Tuesdays. And they have installed a system they call Earth Tub that slowly breaks down the monastery’s food scraps and turns it into compost, which later is used to fertilize the monastery’s lush gardens.
Brother Stream, a 32-year-old monk from Connecticut whose given name is Douglas Bachman, said the residents do not view any of the green initiatives as painful, obligatory sacrifices.
“That is exactly not what we are doing,” said Brother Stream, wearing a traditional Vietnamese straw hat. “The earth is a beautiful place, and it’s a joy to make the Earth a more beautiful place.”
(11 February 2008)
Generation Green taking on parents to help them save the planet
Canadian Press
Marika Martin is a vegetarian. So is her husband, Charles Gonzalez, who rides his bicycle to work every day in New York City traffic, rain or shine.
The couple cares deeply about the environment, but if you ask their kids, 12-year-old Sinika and eight-year-old Soren, it’s sometimes not deeply enough.
“My hopeless mother is obsessed with plastic bags,” said Soren, a third-grader and huge fan of Al Gore’s global warming documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.”
“A lot of plastic can’t be recycled,” chimed in his sister, who’s in Grade 7. “The turtles can get suffocated and it can go into the water. My dad gave her a cloth bag but she doesn’t use it. Plastic drives me nuts!”
Say hello to Generation Green. They’re young, well-researched and mad as heck – inspired by an outpouring of movies, TV shows, books, websites and “green classes” at school. They’ve been learning how to save the planet since toddlerhood, and they’re taking on their parents to do more, do better.
While some parents fret that the pop culture tidal wave amounts to environmental indoctrination, others are looking for ways to accommodate their kids – and compromise when the price tag or the convenience factor come into play.
“I get it, I get it, I’m a bag lady,” Martin said of her plastic-wrapped groceries. “But I’m always doing spontaneous shopping so it’s hard. It isn’t always feasible. Of course it’s making me feel guilty. I know I shouldn’t use them but in everyday living it’s hard.”
…Compromise is key, said Julie Ross, a parent and family therapist in New York who has written three books on child-rearing.
Not every family can afford to install solar panels, but they can put on a sweater and turn down the thermostat, she suggested. If a new car isn’t in the budget, a hybrid is out of the question, but carpooling to school or turning off the car rather than idling when stopped in the pickup line might work. Some parents think composting toilets are way too big a hassle, but they’re willing to share a flush.
…How to manage an eco-warrior kid
Parents faced with the challenges of raising eco-warrior kids just need to take a little time to process their concerns, says Julie Ross, a family therapist in New York.
Keep the acronym RRAC in mind, for Respect, Research, Acknowledge, Compromise:
-Respect your child’s point of view by listening.
-Research (if necessary) your environmental options if you can’t say “yes” to a request.
-Acknowledge with pride your child’s desire to create change.
-Compromise when possible by taking “baby steps” towards a mutual goal.
(11 February 2008)
How former miners transformed a pit into an energy village
Martin Wainwright, Guardian
Britain’s royal organisation dealing with high quality planning has given its annual award to the regeneration of 150 acres of former coalmine and slagheap, once regarded as a national totem of despair.
An industrial provident society in Nottinghamshire, which has carried out traditional northern doorstep-cleaning on a massive scale, has won the Silver Jubilee Cup, the Royal Town Planning Institute’s highest award
“We used to say ‘where there’s muck there’s brass’ but we’d had enough muck when mining came to an end,” says Stan Crawford, the former president of the National Union of Mineworkers in Nottinghamshire, who heads the group’s remarkable creation, Sherwood Energy Village.
Looking out over wind turbines, ponds and modern offices angled to trap sunlight, he can now count 600 jobs on the site, as many as when Ollerton colliery finally closed in 1995.
“We knew two other things back then: that we wanted a diverse economy, after years of the pit for the men and the clothes factory for the women, and we didn’t want anyone else imposing our future on us,” says Crawford.
The society, democratically run on traditional co-op lines, negotiated with British Coal for two years before buying the site on a 100% mortgage of £50,000.
(12 February 2008)
Related at the Guardian: A town called eco by Leo Hickman:
The ‘eco’ prefix is being used at every opportunity it seems, and one has to wonder about the green credentials of the government’s ambitious plans to build 10 ‘ecotowns’ across the country
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Eco-villages Prove to be Sustainable
Peta Evans, Epoch Times
Australians produce over 560 million tonnes of greenhouse gases annually – that is equivalent to putting 127 million cars on the road.
In an eco-village, however, life is all about ecological balance and sustainability.
“The whole community is solar powered, there’s no one connected to the grid, so there’s no one using fossil fuels for their energy consumption,” said Chelsea McNab, a community resident from the Moora Moora Co-operative Community, located just 90 minutes from Melbourne.
Although many may not be quite ready for mud-brick houses or compost toilets, Moora Moora shows just how environmental sustainability can be done.
Established in 1974, the Moora Moora village is situated on Mount Toolebewong, Victoria. Comprising six eco-village clusters and a community centre, the 600-acre property is shared by around 50 adults and 15 children.
Living at Moora Moora is devoid of technological advances. Houses are made out of straw-bale, mud-brick and poured earth, there are compost toilets, wind and solar power, a private spring and an organic veggie garden that feeds the whole community. To save energy, most homes incorporated thermal mass in their design.
(12 February 2008)
