Act: Inspiration

Don’t Panic!

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Talk about stockpiling food brings home the seriousness of the situation, the potential for disorder to descend on our society with terrifying speed. The threat of chaos and awareness of how close it is, triggers panic, an instinct to flee, to jump around, lose all sense of place and direction. Oooft. Stop and breathe. The scary thing about Transition is that so many well-informed, intelligent individuals share the conviction we’re on extremely dangerous ground. It would be such a relief to be able to dismiss it as a paranoid delusion.

Toilet paper preparedness vs. true resilience

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A back-up propane stove and an outhouse are not testimonials to resilience. They are merely some extra tools to draw upon if your home is blessed by a massive stroke of good fortune that leaves it standing while those around you are destroyed. No amount of toilet paper, backyard vegetable plots, or canned tomato sauce could help a household suddenly flooded with eight feet of water. That is not to say these things aren’t extremely important. Our “toilet paper preparedness” kept us safe and comfortable so that resources could go to help those who were not. It empowered us to help folks around us. But canned produce, outhouses, and a backyard garden are merely surface-level survival tools. Surviving a true community disaster requires resilience at a far more profound depth.

A Transition participant’s response to Luane Todd

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It has been interesting to observe so many commentators dispensing advice to the participants of the Occupy movement, telling them what they should or should not be doing. I have also seen this happening with Transition: activist pundits, one after another, issuing proclamations about how the Transition movement is too much this, or not enough that. The latest of these critiques can be found in Luane Todd’s recently published article on Energy Bulletin on November 23, titled, Why Occupy has Taken Off.

Why Occupy has taken off

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The Occupy movement, unlike the peak oil/climate/Transition movement (?) is a bottom-up not a top-down approach. That appeals to the younger people and many of the older ones as well. What they are doing is not coming in the form of ‘delivered wisdom’ from the ‘experts in the field’ with their laundry list of what we ‘must’ do.

Native American forestry combines traditional wisdom with modern science

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Ten thousand years ago, ancestors of today’s Coquille Indians lived along the southern Oregon coast from Coos Bay to Cape Blanco and along the inland valleys of the Coquille River drainage. A common misconception among European Americans is that Indians lived passively within their environment, “at one with nature.” On the contrary, aboriginal peoples actively managed their landscape for their own objectives, using the technologies available to them.

Best job in the neighborhood—and they own it

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Sharon Kaiser, a supervisor and worker-owner at Evergreen Laundry, reports that her friends and family are eager to hear about what is happening inside Evergreen. “They want to know what they can do to be part of this,” she says. “It is a very positive thing for the community.” This expressed longing to participate in Evergreen’s model of sustainable wealth-building should not be underestimated. As Howard describes it, Evergreen is unleashing a powerful force: “the energy of people to become actors in history in their own lifetimes.”

Community resilience, Transition, and why government thinking needs both

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After my talk in Norwich last week, I met a local authority emergency planner, who said that he had found the talk, and the Transition take on resilience, very illuminating. He pointed me in the direction of the latest “Strategic National Framework on Community Resilience”, the latest “national statement for how individual and community resilience can work”, published by the Cabinet Office in March of this year. It is a fascinating document, and is indeed the first official government document on community resilience that refers explicitly to the Transition movement, and as such deserves a post reflecting on it. It also offers a tantalising glimpse into what a government response to peak oil, climate change and economic contraction might look like if anyone had the imagination to create one.

Occupy Maine and the need to decentralize

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Decentralization of the Occupy movement is as important as the decentralization of any other piece of our infrastructure. If the #OWS crowd popped up in small groups around NYC, they would be easier to raid individually, but not much worth it. If one goes down, there are sites still available to regroup and relocate. … Good communications could combine dispersed occupiers for various marches and individual protest demonstrations. Seriously, we need to be in little, flexible, creative bunches everywhere, not in one giant lump.