The Shock Doctrine: No Conspiracy Necessary November 30, 2008
Posted by Graham in : Geo-politics, book review , 5comments
Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand world history of the last 50 years is Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine.
Her extraordinary account begins with the exploits of one Dr. Ewan Cameron, president of the American and World Psychiatric Association, who’s theories on treating psychiatric patients by erasing their personalities became influential in the spread of Electric Shock Treatment (EST) in U.S. hospitals from the late 1940s.
Cameron believed that he could use a combination of sensory deprivation, EST and drugs to reduce the personality to a tabula rasa- “shock and awe warfare on the mind.”
The application of these methods in political torture are probably obvious and well-known, but what Klein’s book does is to show the link between this method of first erasing the personality and then reconstructing it according to the desires of the “therapist” were applied systematically, not just to individuals but to whole countries through the economic theories of Milton Friedman. (more…)
Transition Town Tramore November 23, 2008
Posted by Graham in : General , add a commentAfter the success of the Permaculture course at the Dunhill eco-centre I returned to Tramore at the weekend to deliver a talk on edible forest gardens organised by Transition Towns
Tramore.
More than 60 people turned up, many of them experienced gardeners, and it was interesting to find their response was good to the idea of the forest garden.
I included a slide of Robert Hart and this quote from him concerning his vision of reforesting the land by people planting useful tree crops in their gardens throughout the suburbs:
Obviously, few of us are in a position to restore the forests.. But tens of millions of us have gardens, or access to open spaces such as industrial wastelands, where trees can be planted. and if full advantage can be taken of the potentialities that are available even in heavily built up areas, new ‘city forests’ can arise…
Many suburban areas have beautiful and well cared-for ornamental gardens with considerable diversity of trees, shrubs, climbers, and perennials and i often often wonder how much food could be produced in such places if that same enthusiasm and energy was put into edible and useful plants.
I also mentioned the traditional Mayan forest gardens that evolved over perhaps long periods of time to consist primarily of edible and useful plants favoured by the inhabitants. This was not a deliberate designed process but one that took place by human selection of plants most useful to them. There is some interesting information about this here.
The Transition group in Tramore is vibrant and dynamic, this being their third event in a series since the summer. Some of the group have recently attended the first Skilling Up for Powerdown Trainers Training in Cultivate.
In the morning I was taken on a tour of the town to consider possibilities for edible landscaping, and shown the community garden at the Quakers’ Meeting House which is used as an educational garden for schoolchildren.
Book Review: Plan C November 21, 2008
Posted by Graham in : Peak Oil, book review, climate change, community , 3commentsPlan C: Community Survival Strategies for Peak oil and Climate Change
Pat Murphy
New Society 2008
Pat Murphy is the Executive Director of Community Solutions who produced the seminal film “The Power Of Community” which charts Cuba’s transition to a low-energy society after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
That film still rates as the most essential of the Peak Oil genre, combining as it does a succinct analyses of peak oil with the real world example of how Cuba coped with a massive and abrupt decline in oil supplies, showing how the people adapted as a community and used permaculture and low-tech solutions rather than attempting to maintain a high-energy lifestyle by other means.
Plan C is Pat Murphy’s book which provides a range of solutions through energy, food, housing and transport with a focus on how communities will adapt to lower energy supplies through lifestyle changes and reducing energy demand.
In Murphy’s typology, Plan A is “Business as Usual”- which will be prevented by absolute resource and environmental constraints; Plan B is the proposed switch to “Clean Green technology”- which will not be able to replace oil in time; while Plan D is “Die Off”. Thus we are leftwith Plan C which the plan of “curtailment and community”- the kind of responses being explored in the Transition movement, as well as our own Powerdown Community project, for which this book is a key resource.
This is, as Murphy tells us at the start, “a numbers book”, filled with graphs and statistics which, although heavily focussed on the US, set a standard for how we need to assess our current consumption, and how we could cut back if we learn to make differnet priorities and just do things differently.
After an opening chapter which outlines the basic realities of peak oil and climate change and how they will effect us, Murphy looks at “Peak Economy”, crunching the numbers for us between energy consumption, income and pollution: it is a pretty clear picture that the richer you are the more energy you are likely to consume and the more pollution you create- and yet few economists have appear to have addressed this fundamental issue.
In the next chapter, Peak Empire, Murphy looks at the relationship between war, colonialism and energy, concluding that “The United States of America has had its day in the sun, and its record is not a good one…There is still time to become a nation with new values and the world needs a new kind of US citizen- one no linger addicted to the consumption patterns made possible by cheap oil”.
A key contribution the book makes that is not always covered by other peak oil books is the role of the media in shaping our values and culture, and inhibiting appropriate responses:
How is it that media can change people’s values, creating a different world view than that of the education system, the culture at large or religions? For this to happen, people must recieve massive amounts of information with themes that can be repeated over and over again. Thus a population which immerses itself in media recieves an extremely high volume of manipulative data.
Part 2 attends to the responses to these issues. Crucially, Murphy emphasizes the need for numeracy skills- and the need to understand energy in terms of per capita consumption. A big part of our failure to respond is in a general lack of understanding of how much energy we actually use in different sectors, and this allows us to be manipulated by the media and get priorities wrong.
For example, recycling is often promoted as an important way to reduce our footprint, and Murphy provides us with a lot of relevant figures on how much Americans consume and throw away; but goes onto say
Big as the post-consumer solid waste problem is, it is insignificant compared to pollution, toxins and hazardous waste from manufacturing everyday products.
The following chapters cover community responses to housing, transport and food. The chapter on transport is of great interest, as Murphy again uses the facts to show that conventional responses such as switching to mass transit may not reduce energy consumption enough, and argues that we needd to use the existing fleet of private vehicles differently, proposing a “smart jitney” system of private taxis and approprite software to link them with passengers in a convivial manner. Something like this emerged in Cuba, and apparently some of the software which could be used has been developed by Mapflow in Kinsale!
The food chapter is also excellent, giving some interesting data on the most nutritious vegetables as opposed to those most consumed: the first table is almost the inverse to the second.
He also quotes the wonderful Michael Pollan who has said
if you are concerned about your health you should probably avoid food products that make health claims.
The final chapters consider how to achieve these changes. In “Changind Practices” he emphasises the difference between conserving- which means minor adjustments- and curtailment- which “implies amuch more severe reduction in consumption (80-90%)”
It is too late to merely conserve. Curtailment must become the main driving force of Western Civilisation for the next century, just as consuming drove the last century…. Those who desire to make the transition successfully with minimal risk must start now to toughen and strengthen themselves physically and psychologically for difficult times to come. Such people will be more prepared to live in a future that is poorer in material goods but richer in spiritual, psychological and community benefits. Those who delay may not have the physical and emotional stamina to survive in a more physically difficult environment.
“Plan C” is a powerful and authoritative analyses of our energy predicament that helps us think outside the box in looking for solutions and helps give us the confidence to change. Essential reading for all transition and powerdown groups.
Media madness November 20, 2008
Posted by Graham in : General , 2commentsIf you had been listening to RTE radio 1 this morning you would have been treated to a great example of media double-think and extreme “disconnect”, as Kunstler might say.
On the one hand, we had a genuine gloom-and-doom story at the top of the news with the reporting of the visit to Ireland of a member of the International Energy Agency and their report that oil output from the world’s 400 major oil fields is expected to decline by a staggering 9%;
on the other hand we had Joe Duffy on Liveline encouraging service stations around the country to phone in if they have dropped the price of a litre of petrol to below one euro- which some of them have.
“We can beat this recession! As the price comes down at the pumps more people will buy petrol, which means that more money will go into the government coffers in tax, which will allow the government to spend more and break the recession” claimed Duffy with great hurrahs.
Unfortunately, the drop in oil price will surley be only temporary, and although the market will likely be highly volatile in the months to come, $200 a barrel could be with us soon, followed by actual shortages at the pumps. Ultimately, the recession is a result of declining physical resources in the real world, and there is no way we can pump our way out of recession by more consumption- a truly, grotesquely Orwellian concept.
At the Tipperary Institute November 16, 2008
Posted by Graham in : General , add a commentLast week I made my annual pilgrimage to the Tipperary Institute to give a 2-day course on permaculture.
This year I had students from both the B.A in Sustainable Rural Development as well as from the new BSc in Environmental and Natural Resource Management, running this year for the first time.
This year we were able to put some of the theory into practice and planted a mulched fruit and herb garden on a green verge in the car-park.
Hopefully the mini-garden will inspire more permaculture to be integrated into the extensive campus at the T.I., which, with its great facilities and land could move towards becoming an important centre of permaculture research and development.
I would love to see for example some of the land being used for trials of cultivated nut crops.
Many thanks to Pauline Ryan and Kevin Healion for organising these courses, and to the enthusiasm of the students for making the new garden a success.
