In a recent short review of the Mayo Energy Audit, (http://transitiontownsireland.ning.com/forum/topics/mayo-energy-audit-review) Roger Adair points out that indigenous resources, even if developed in an optimal way, will only provide the equivalent of a small fraction of current energy usage. If we take Final Energy Consumption, the figures are as follows (proportion of current Final Energy Consumption ultimately provided from indigenous resources): 2020: 16% 2030: 28% 2040: 35%

I have used the word ‘indigenous’ as there was some turf included in the Mayo calculations. However, this is a diminishing resource, and the extraction of the raw material carries a high environmental footprint.

The Mayo figures were quite optimistic, as they assumed the necessary steps to plant thousands of acres of sub-tillage-quality land in broadleaves (for biomass) would begin almost immediately. I don’t see much sign of that happening!

However, there was also some surplus electricity (not included in the figures above), which could be exported to regions of Ireland less endowed with electricity generation capability.

Is Mayo representative of Ireland? Not really. Its population density of 22 persons per km2 is only slightly over one third of the national average (59 persons/km2). Conversely, it has good renewable resources compared to many parts of Ireland. Current per capita energy use is slightly above the national average owing to high transport requirements.

The inescapable conclusion is that the Final Energy Consumption percentages given above should probably be divided by three when applied to Ireland as a whole. This gives:

2020: 5-6% 2030: 9-10% 2040: 11-12%

Remember, these are best case scenario figures, and assumes massive country-wide mobilisation, beginning immediately.

Just to put the energy figures in context, if Ireland relied on indigenous resources alone, the best case scenario would imply about the same per capita energy usage as India, not Cuba!!

It is worth pointing out that Ireland’s low population density and good renewable energy resources base still puts it in a much better position than many of its European neighbours, especially Britain ( with 15 times the population and only 3 times the renewable resources)!!

The question is, how long does Ireland have to make the switch from fossil fuels to a renewable energy-based society that carries out its essential functions on as little as one tenth of what we use now? If we really did have till 2040, and could wean ourselves off oil and gas in a gentle gradual way, probably the transition could be made relatively easily. I somehow doubt the reality will be anything like that.

but I dont feel you have really addressed the issue: you specifically go out of your way in the book to highlight “alternative” medicine as a CORE PILLAR of the transition approach to medicine. All these approaches are lumped together in the same way that they tend to lump themselves together. You wont get an acupuncturist claim they have evidence for the effectiveness of their therapy, while at the same time challenging, say homeopathy; alternative therapists clan together, because for them, the treatments are faith-based, promoted by clever marketing- “holistic” “natural, safe alternatives” to which we might add “helps build community resilience; medicine without oil dependency”; none of which adress the issue: do they work? The evidence for this is absolutely as clear as is the evidence for climate change: they do not work. If you can grapple so skillfully with the nuances of the evidence for GW, you should have no problem with evidence-based medicine. Interesting point you make about whether we will still have the energy for clinical trials, but for most of what you are referring to as “alternative medicine” the evidence is already there, the trials already done: are you suggesting we ignore this because in the future we may not be able to do science the way we do now?

what do you mean by “alternative”? I think the only answer, since you make no distinctions between them, is “holistic” in the religious sense, ie. remedies that are exempt from having any supportive evidence. This is why I spent so long on the issue in my review- for one it seems a sloppy and even irresponsible approach to something as important as health; but more broadly it betrays an ideological and anti-science world view which underpins much of the environmental movement, and,it seems, the transition movement as well- which as I say is surely an example of cognitive dissonance.

I’m glad you enjoyed my book, and thanks for your many kind comments on it and the work I put in – they are much appreciated. As ever though, I will expend more words addressing your constructive criticisms!

As you state, I acknowledge in the book that the lack of a thorough energy audit is a big loss, and it was simply not feasible for me to take this on a full UK energy audit as an unfunded individual (as Rob will testify, I did have that ambition at one stage!).

I completely agree that our plans must be visionary, but also need to be grounded and quantified. I am currently working with the Zero Carbon Britain team to this end, but if you have ideas as to other constructive ways to take this work forward, then drop me a line.

I have been in contact with the authors of the Mayo Energy Audit, and others looking at this area, but could not see a good way of incorporating such work into my book, with its broader scale. In the end, we decided a collaborative approach was best, and so put the book out there as is as a first draft, with the intention that this work could continue from there via the Transition Forums and the Appropedia collaborative drafting process

Nonetheless, I feel that the scenarios as they stand make a useful contribution. You would likely agree that my broad brushstroke approach is sufficient to highlight the unsustainability of business as usual, which of course leaves us with the task of devising a satisfactory low-energy, low-emissions way of life.

You say that the book is lacking “some kind of analysis of what a reasonable standard of living might be”, but I would argue that the whole Transition Vision section of my book is that very exploration of the possibility of a lower-consumption, higher quality-of-life way of living. Indeed, your Cuba suggestion makes a number of appearances in that section in just that role.

Yes, energy use reductions of an even more dramatic nature may be required, but getting people thinking about these questions at the local level is a positive step either way. The fundamental point of the book is that if we are actually going to act on any auditing work done then our underlying cultural stories need to shift dramatically. This is where the first edition of my book focuses its efforts.

Re: your specific comments on population it seems to me that we fundamentally agree. My book makes very clear that both population and consumption must be addressed, and on that we agree. I make no attempt to present it as either/or. I completely agree with Nate Hagens that we are predisposed to increase both our population and our consumption, and he completely agrees with me that “cultural change is likely our only successful path forward” (from his endorsement quote in the front of my book).

The Transition Timeline also makes clear that consumption is the bigger contributor of the two to our environmental catastrophe. On that you do not challenge the facts but question whether it is a meaningful distinction. It seems to me that it is, but since that does not change the actions we advocate to reduce both, I don’t think it’s one for us to lose sleep over.

I was a bit surprised to see that almost half of your review focused on one brief comment on ‘alternative’ medicines (the quote you pull out being the only mention in the whole book). As I understand it, your strong reaction is really to the “New Age and pseudoscientific ” cultural story that you perceive as underlying that quote, although you acknowledge that the book and the wider Transition movement are generally based on verifiable science.

Your discussions with Rob and others above and in the Transition Timeline forum re: homeopathy, vaccine policy etc I wouldn’t presume to comment on. I know little about this, and they are not mentioned in my book. Although I worked with many brilliant people in putting The Transition Timeline I am not a specialist in healthcare, any more than I am a specialist in food and farming.

Still, I would respond to your comment:

“Now, certainly the problems with modern medicine are manifold, in particular the over-dependence on oil, horrific levels of waste and a level of corruption amongst Big Pharma. None of this is evidence that alternatives…work”.

Of course this is true. But this unsustainability is evidence that alternatives to the current way of doing things are all we have to try and find something that does work.

As you say, some ‘alternative’ medicine works and some doesn’t, just like every other kind of medicine. And since large-scale industrialised research trials are just as unsustainable as the rest of industrialised medicine, an interesting question is perhaps how we can organise reliable low-energy tests of efficacy.

If there is as you say “no way of knowing for sure” without high-energy processes, then we will be left with the process of experiment and local ‘anecdote’ that tended to humanity for millennia, but perhaps we can do better?

I think we can agree that instances of ‘quackery’ exist, and also that instances of corruption and bias in large-scale trials exist, but perhaps we can draw on your interesting analogy between the arguments of climate change denialists and endorsements of alternative medicine.

As I understand it you are criticising the extrapolation from one cool day, week, month or year to the belief that future periods will also be cool. Such an extrapolation clearly ignores all the evidence collected by climate science as to the long-term trends. In other words, their sample size is vastly too small, but this is not to say that the evidence of that cool day is inadmissible, simply that it is outweighed by the evidence in the other direction.

In a similar way, taking the fact that a treatment worked for you to mean that it might work for a friend does constitute valid evidence, it is just on a very small sample size. Clearly increasing the sample size is desirable. Yet this kind of trusted advice or ‘anecdote’ is the basis for a great deal of human behaviour, in all manner of contexts. So how can we increase the sample size on which it is based?

I’m just pondering out loud here, but maybe some form of internet-based collaborative way of “WeThinking could increase the sample size of our evidence, without greatly increasing energy demands? Perhaps practitioners could sign up to point all of their clients at the appropriate survey before treating them? Though this idea would depend on opinions as to the sustainability and resilience of the internet of course…

Thoughts welcome, but anyway, thanks again for your considered and thoughtful review

All the best, Shaun http://www.darkoptimism.org

ps I tend to agree that the Peak Car estimate should be moved forward – such are the perils of putting anything down in print!

Thanks for the review. I will let Shaun respond to the issues around population and medicine. I did want to respond your points about energy budgets and so on. You wrote;

…”it is a little disappointing that after two publications and several years, Transition has not even produced a few pages on basic energy literacy or how to do a simple domestic energy audit, all of which would make this book much more useful”

We haven’t done that, principally because there are so many other people out there who are doing that, or who have developed those tools. We point people towards them, but there is no sense in our dedicating our scarce resources to wheel reinvention… in the same way we don’t offer advice about setting up CSAs (the Soil Association does it), loft insulation (loads of people do that ) or carbon footprinting (there are loads of these around).

However Transition Together, the group study programme developed here in Totnes, which we hope to soon made available to the wider Transition world, takes people through basic energy literacy and measuring their own consumption in a very accessible way. In terms of the kind of energy budgeting that Andy did in Mayo, the Totnes EDAP when it comes out will have a very detailed energy budget that we have worked on for months. I’m sure you will approve (complete absence of free energy machines).

It is important to remember though that it is easy to sit and say that communities ought to do their own energy budgets, but it is a huge piece of work, a huge task, requiring quite specialist knowledge, as we have found in doing the Totnes one. It may well be the case that most communities need support with that, something Transition Network might be able to provide.

You say that the book suffers for not having a detailed energy audit underpinning it, but that was never the intention of the book, and a complete energy audit for the UK is a huge task. The aim of the book was to suggest what the landscape communities designing their EDAPs might look like over the next 20 years on the basis on an assumed proactive response to peak oil and climate change. But Shaun will, I’m sure, respond to that, it is, after all, his book.

One final point, one I have made to Graham by email, and which might be good to make to the wider Zone 5 readership, my comment about how my children have been healthy thus far “touch wood” (a comment Graham relishes as a somehow being an affirmation of my cultish New Age tree worshipping lunatic woowoo approach to healthcare) was offered as a humorous aside, not a medical prescription.

With best wishes Rob