I met Helena over 10 years ago in Dublin where I remember debating her on whether the people of Ladakh, where she has based her organisation the International Society for Ecology and Culture, really were happier than us in the west as she seemed to think, and whether their “consciousness” was really more advanced than our own, as she maintained.

Why I wondered, if that was the case, did they appear to have no premonition of the problems that might accrue once the Evil Modern World was let in. Apparently their culture was so fragile that not only could they do nothing to stop it but the whole fabric of their society fell apart as soon as it encountered consumerism, commercial advertising and globalisation.

In this new film, I was surprised to see some of the material from Norberg-Hodge’s earlier film Ancient Futures- Learning from Ladakh simply recycled as she recounts once again the story of an early visit to a Ladakh village where she asked a young man to show her the poor houses in the village. After thinking for a while he responds that there are not really any poor houses; but revisiting the same village 10 years later, after the arrival of tourism and their western values, she overhears the same man complain, “oh, we Ladakhis, we are so poor”.

It is a poignant story and the message is one of changing perceptions in a changing world. This must have made a particularly strong impression on Helena as she worked as a translator in Ladakh when visitors from the outside were rare, and had the unusual experience of seeing an ancient culture transformed almost before her eyes in just a few years as the modern world moved in for the first time.

ISEC has a twin approach to this issue of perception and the problem of dissatisfaction engendered by advertising: one is to take westerners to the villages where they can stay for a while and live with the locals on working on the farms. This brings in an income, but perhaps more importantly, helps with the Ladakhi’s self-esteem as they come to understand how valued their farming life-style, traditional community and local crafts are to disaffected post-modernists from the west.

More interestingly still, ISEC has arranged to take Ladakhis who had never previously left their villages to visit the west where they are wowed out by washing machines and other gadgets but also get the message that behind the bright lights and glitz the west has serious social problems unknown in back home. When they return their message is: “The west is not all it’s cracked up to be. Don’t go down that path.”

This is a very interesting take on East meets West and there is much to be learned from it but I’m not sure I take the same message that Helena presents in the new film. In fact, although there is a partial truth here, it is a blatant over-simplification with some glaring errors and misrepresentations.

Clive Hamilton is one of the interviewees and his message is: “Material wealth has never brought us happiness.” Excuse me? This is a central and prevalent myth of the environmental movement: poor people are happier. They have community, family, traditions- things we have lost and yearn for. There are certainly serious and real problems caused by affluence, which may include depression, but they are trivial in comparison to the problems of poverty. The Ladakhis do look very appealing to the neurotic romantic westerner who has so much mobility they are always feeling homesick, and a volunteer holiday working on a farm there for a few weeks could be a great thing to do, but we do not actually want to trade places with them. The lack of mobility in traditional communities would stifle us and we would I think find it more like a prison if we didnt know we had a plane ticket out of there.

(There are studies that suggest we dont get much happier beyond a certain level of wealth, but we still get a little happier; I think it may be the wealth of the wider society that would count here, the availability of expensive surgery perhaps when we need it, that would make a difference also.)

Nor would we be likely to admire the feudal political system, or the complete lack of any opportunities apart from those designated by circumstance at birth, the vagaries of the weather causing sporadic crop yields (shame about all that cheap subsidised food coming on the new road in smelly trucks, but it might save you from going hungry in a bad year) or the complete absence of that other Evil product of globalisation and modern technology, modern medicine and such things as hip replacements (my Mother just had her second at 85 years of age, now she’s like Riverdance).

(I havn’t been to Ladakh, but trekking in Nepal 20 years ago I was struck by how often I was stopped by locals who showed me wounds and sores or sick children and implored me for medicine. They wanted western medicine because they knew it worked.)

The film’s central message is: globalisation and the modern world are terrible; traditional communities are happier; we need an entirely new approach based on localisation. Not complete self-reliance, we are told, but local needs should come first, starting with local food, but also decentralised renewable energy in the form of wind and photovoltaic.

The latter point about energy is the most ridiculous part of the film. Who in their right minds in making general proposals of -not just renewables- but decentralised renewables? I myself do live off grid like that and I’m not advocating it!

Never mind that these technologies are absolutely the product of globalisation, they could scarcely be created locally, and mostly are manufactured in China using probably quite polluting processes that require rare Earth metals of which China has 95% of the world’s supply;

or that running decentralised energy systems to any extent is basically prohibited currently by limitations in storage- batteries- which is still very costly, and that such systems could only supply relatively very small amounts of power.

There is a big emphases on food of course. Vandana Shiva is there telling us that “our research” has proved that small farms consistently deliver 3-5x the yield of- what? large scale conventional farms? I think not, but one of the problems with films like this is that references are rather forgotten so it is hard to check. But anyway, all that “science” and “evidence” stuff is all part of the problem, innit? After all we are also talking a crisis of the Human Spirit, one really should try to avoid THINKING too much.

Conspicuously absent in the film was any mention of Genetic Engineering but in her brief talk afterwards Helena came out with the old canard about “for-profit seeds that have terminator genes in them.” Crikey, do these globe-trotting super-greenies not bother to read even basic information about the stuff they are promoting? Doesnt she listen to Skepteco??

Arch-doomer Richard Heinberg is also featured, claiming that globalisation is propelling us into a “universal famine”- forgetting perhaps that historically agrarian cultures have always been subject to intermittent famines, and the Green Revolution- which Shiva and Norberg-Hodge would be completely opposed to- has succeeded in more than keeping abreast of population and the incidence of famines has declined since the 1980s.

There are some contentious points about localisation made by Goldsmith in the film: “food miles” are not such a big component in food, especially if coming by sea (airfreight is another matter); but there are other difficulties with localisation of food: in a famine, you cannot just import food from somewhere else unless you have a global economy functioning; and some areas are better suited to some crops than others, so local food might lead to less choice.

Farmers markets are much promoted in the film of course and in the discussion afterwards, but it is questionable that lots of people driving to a farmers market as may be the case involves less “food miles” than them all walking to a central supermarket. And one other issue noticeably missing from any discussion: farmers markets, like organic food, tend to be more expensive, often supplying fancy artisan food rather than basics. Delicious, healthy, wonderful, I love farmers’ markets, but they are inevitably criticized as being middle-class and elitist, and cheap food is surely one of the great successes of globalisation.

Farming as a career is appealing to some, but I think of the essay written a few years ago by Heinberg himslef calling for 40 million more farmers in a post-peak oil world in America alone- this would completely reverse the trend of the last 50-60 years. Most people do not want to be subsistence farmers, it is too hard. I really wonder how many in the packed audience would really want to give up their electronic gadgets and all the other trappings of globalisation they benefit from and work on a farm for the rest of their lives, because for the localisation project to gain any real traction, must of them would have to do just that.

And would Helena really want to give up her jet-setting lifestyle of international travel as award-winning author and environmentalist and become grounded permanently and localised, perhaps in a remote village in Ladakh -or anywhere- herself rather than just romanticizing the lives of others?

There are important lessons to be learned from Ladakh, including issues around community, how we treat our old people and how to manage development; but this film has no depth and just regurgitates the same old over-simplified post-modern dirge we have been hearing for years.

We were born in pre-history, an integral part of Mother Nature who nurtured us and taught us the Wisdom of the wilds, plant spirit medicine, and much more.

Being connected to Nature, so this story goes, was a birth rite robbed from us when we opened Pandora’s box and started unpacking nature’s laws with science, which then unleashed technology- the very opposite of Nature, with which we have created what we call The Modern World.

And, according to this powerful story, the modern world is everything that nature is not: mechanical, devoid of emotion, rational, intellectual, cold and meaningless.

One of the early formulations of this story that I came across in my Deep Ecological days, going back over 10 years, was in Thom Hartmann’s The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight.

In Hartmann’s formulation, humanity lived in a kind of blissful garden of Eden for many thousands of years, safe and secure in the bosom of Mother Nature, wise enough to live lightly and sustainably on the earth, never taking more than their fair share or more than the natural world can replenish.

Then, Something Happened: somehow, we separated from Nature, and so began the long fall which lead to the Atom Bomb, GE crops and Twitter.

Even as I repeated this compelling and popular story in those Deep Ecology workshops years ago I was aware of a small problem: why, if things were so good, did we leave Eden? Why did we give up on such a good deal and make the mistake of going it alone?

The answer is, because nature wasnt actually so great in the first place. Nature meant that we died young- in neolithic times, the average life expectancy was only about 20.

Being close to Nature meant high infant mortality, disease, danger, frequent tribal warfare, famine, slavery and cannibalism.

Being close to nature meant that life was tough, very tough, a struggle for survival, so when adaptations such as farming came along, the hairless apes who were our ancestors took it- even though there was a price to pay in increased work.

And as time went on and further technological adaptations enticed us, we took them , all of them, because although they all came with a price- a more complex, stratified society, the need for standing armies to defend the newly gained wealth, the pollution, the danger of collapse and return to earlier times if the crops failed- we took them every time because it always seemed worth the pay-off for a better life, a life with more opportunities, and, eventually, longer and healthier lives as the hard-won wealth that was gained by exploiting nature allowed us -or some of us- to improve our own local environments, and then by extension to care about the environment more as a whole.

And now, in the ultra-globalized world of the 21st century, we have a situation where some of the wealthiest, most secure and most successful humans, mainly people who have never known hunger and have never known real hardship, or what it means to have to live your whole life in one village with oppressive values (particularly to women), who have traveled the world on jet planes and have had every opportunity of education and leisure in their lives, perhaps not even having to have spent much time working at all, have turned around from all this and viewed nature from this privileged position and seen the destruction that must take place if we are to continue with our lifestyles, and have concluded that this human world of technology and concrete, schools and prisons and toxic sludge, is all deeply, profoundly flawed, because it is Not Natural, and that the answer is to Go Back to Nature and Reconnect with Her Wisdom, Her Purity, Her Sanctity.

From this complex modern world of ours, with all its flaws and rules and regulations, the natural world can seem just so much more appealing. The sunset, the ocean, the forest- beauty in nature can take the breath away and awaken a deep yearning for… something intangible … that the hubris of TV and fashion and celebrity and the filth of industry and the routine of manufacturing just cannot fulfill.

But there is a real danger in this yearning for a return to an idealized version of nature, because nature really isnt like that. In fact, it is only possible to see the natural world in this way if one is truly ignorant of what if means to eek out a living from the land- if, indeed, one truly has been separated from True Nature.

Because this is harder than modern people can ever imagine, and while many may find it a satisfying and rewarding lifestyle for a while, we would not choose it I think without the support system a modern society provides, without the safety nets of welfare, modern health care and cheap, readily available industrial food to keep the wolf at bay.

A real Return to Nature means a return to the wolf. It means Grizzly Man, it means Into the Wild , it means a life that is likely to be nasty, brutish and short.

It is completely understandable that these philosophies of the Return, steeped as they are in western Judeo-Christian myths, should emerge, for the comforts of the modern world do indeed often have a pay-off of alienation: part of us misses the danger, the excitement, the adventure, of life in the wilderness, and we want to escape the confines of security.

This is made up for in the immense popularity of sports, and in outdoor pursuits, and in gardening. But if we had no trappings of technology and modernity to come back to, even after extended stays away, we might see nature rather differently.

I have been through all this myself. I have on occasion had brief tastes of what it means to be part of nature in this sense, such as when getting lost for a few days in the Himalayas, and running out of food, entirely alone. A powerful, life-changing experience for a young 20-something full of the spirit of youthful adventure, but not something I would wish to repeat.

There is no doubt that gardening is one of the most beneficial activities, for all sort of reasons: exercise. fresh air, connection with the natural world, building social capital, education. It can even provide a useful amount of produce and, if you work hard and are good at it, even save money or earn you a living. It is absolutely right that we should encourage home gardening, community orchards and many other ways of providing for ourselves, but we shouldnt kid ourselves we really want to be self-sufficient.

It is natural that in a recession many will start to provide something for themselves and growing food is a natural place to start, but I think its main benefits will be social, unless we experience a Cuba-style collapse- although even in Cuba most food is still grown on large industrial farms.

But modern home gardening, with its improved varieties, crop protection, automatic irrigation and so on is a far cry from living wild from the land; and it would be a choice few would make if they had a choice. No-one really want to be a subsistence farmer, except at the weekends.

It is no doubt true that complete detachment from the natural world, as may occur in some cities. is extremely unhealthy, can lead to psychological and emotional problems, and that contact with nature and gardening can be very therapeutic. As Geoff Lawton says, “You can heal everything in a garden”.

Our predicament as a species is existential; in terms of improving our lot, as we will inevitably want to do, there is always a cost to the environment, and to other parts opf ourselves. Yet, the wealthier and more successful we become, the more space and time and leisure we have to appreciate, and therefore protect, the environment, and this is how it should be.

But beware those who explain the core predicament of the modern world as being “separation from nature”, unless you want to be eaten by a Grizzly.

Book Review: Whole Earth Discipline An Ecopragmatist Manifesto

by Stewart Brand

Atlantic Books 2009 316pp

“Civilization is at risk, but civilization is the problem”.

Stewart Brand is one of the iconic founders of the environmental movement, an original old hippy whose influence on the boomer generation should not be understated. With his latest book Whole Earth Discipline he takes that same movement to task for rejecting science and getting sidetracked by ideology at the very time when the practical application of science through engineering and technology may be the only way to save ourselves.

I came across an early copy of The Whole Earth Catalog, founded by Brand in 1968, on an early visit to a small “back to the land” commune about 25 years ago. It was a thrilling introduction to the possibilities of the burgeoning “alternative” lifestyle of organic gardening and renewable energy I was joining at the time.

Over the coming years, I read about his early involvement in LSD in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and currently have a copy of his 1999 book The Clock of the Long Now on my bookshelf.

In a recent interview, I heard Brand take on the environmental movement’s anti-science stance on various issues. I have been grappling with this issue myself for some time now, particularly in the credulous acceptance by most green organisations of “alternative medicine” for which there is no evidence, and the anti-science diatribes that are inevitably summoned up in defense.

More recently I have discovered for myself how little science there is behind the health claims of organic food, and how organisations such as the Soil Association are often pseudo-scientific in their claims and their treatment of evidence.

Whole Earth Discipline challenges the greens on four more holy cows: population, urbanisation, nuclear power and Genetically Engineered crops, and in reading this compelling and fascinating book I have had to do some serious re-thinking around these issues myself.

Of those four issues the one I have been most concerned about myself has been population: what use our hard-won per capita reductions in carbon emissions if this is to be always canceled out by more people? What chance of eco-system restoration if a growing population is constantly increasing the pressure?

In contrast to Brand- who had Population Bomb author Paul Ehrlich as one of his early tutors- I do not see population really as a big environmentalist cause, rather it seems to be the elephant in the room that no-one wants to talk about, perhaps because of connections with oppressive regimes, racism and the sheer intractability of the problem.

Brand claims however that world population will most likely peak within another generation at around 9 billion, far less than was being predicted in the 70s and 80s, and that there is one major reason for this: urbanization. Most of humanity now live in cities and as the rural poor move there they reduce their numbers of offspring, so much so that far from a population crash, we are facing a crisis of an aging population.

Brand paints a very different picture of this process of the move to town than that of the conventional environmentalist. The move to the city Brand claims is liberating on the whole, and especially for women. Rural village life tends to be parochial and oppressive, offering little by way of opportunity. Peasant subsistence agriculture is far from the romantic view of the back-to-the-land movement for most, but back breaking toil subject to the vagaries of the weather with no back-up in case of crop failure.

The mega-slums of the developing world may appear to be hellish and grossly over-crowded polluted and destitute to the affluent western greenie, but Brand argues that in fact they are preferable to squalid farming because they offer opportunities to escape poverty. One way this is happening is by the ubiquitous spread of the cell phone: even the poorest of the poor have one, with incoming calls often free.

Not only that, but growing cities mean an emptying countryside which is good for forest regeneration. The point is made clearly: if you want to be green, than the compact life in the city id for you, while those in wealthy countries who set up their small-holdings in remote rural locations are likely to have a larger footprint, subsidised as they are by car transport and long supply lines. (I would be a classic example of this last category.)

Surprising though Brand’s analysis is on cities, his more controversial chapters are likely to be the ones on nuclear and GE crops.

While I attended anti-nuclear demos in my youth- CND was at its height in the late 1970s when I was leaving school- more recently I have been swayed by James Lovelock’s position on nuclear, that which ever way you look at it, coal is the real dirty fuel and if your concern is over future generations, addressing climate change by decarbonising the economy is your first priority.

It does indeed seem that fears over the dangers of nuclear waste have been exaggerated. The total per capita waste from a lifetime of using nuclear fuel for one family would fit into a soda can. France runs 80% of its electricity from nuclear, but while many die every day in car crashes, nuclear seems to be very safe these days. Not only that, but there are new generations of nuclear power stations which are relatively small and which can be deployed anywhere. One scheme is to produce small power stations which contain their entire lifetimes worth of fuel, are buried for the duration of the fuel and simply switched off when that is spent, with no waste extracted.

Brand also points out that all the existing nuclear powers developed weapons technology first, which then gave rise to civil energy uses, rather than the other way round; since Iran actually does need nuclear power, the international community would be in a very strong place to insist how this is developed safely. In the west meanwhile, large numbers of nukes are being used as a source of fuel for power generation.

What Brand skips over in his book with barely a mention is peak oil. He clearly thinks new technologies and fuel sources can fill the gap somehow; uranium can be extracted from sea water, and if that runs out, we can use thorium instead.

Peak oil doomers like myself have long argued against nuclear on the grounds that it will take too long to construct, that the carbon footprint is still high once you have counted the embodied energy in construction and decommissioning;that uranium will peak also before too long should we try to run everything from nuclear. While Brand makes a convincing case for the safety of modern reactors and the promise of new technologies, he is clearly under no illusion about the challenge facing us were we to try to replace existing coal and oil with a range of alternatives, including nuclear, before the climate tipping point. Brand is no techno-fantasist, but a pragmatic and practical engineer.

Perhaps even more of a Holy Cow for environmentalists than nuclear is Genetically Engineered crops. (Brand prefers “GE” to the more common “GM”.) This seems to go right to the heart of what sees as the problem with the ideological position of “romantic” greens who are motivated by a spurious ideological notions of what is “natural”. Tampering with genes, especially crossing the species divide, seems unnatural to many and unholy to some.

But scientists are no more concerned about GE technology than they are about plant breeding and loss of diversity from farming in general, because they know as Brand says that genes are extremely fungible in nature: transgenic mutations, especially on the microbial level, are apparently quite normal, indeed we could hardly have evolved without this process. Although the “strawberry with fish genes” is apparently an urban myth, in fact any given gene may be nearly identical in two very different species so splicing genes from one organism into another may not be nearly as “abnormal” as it may appear.

The problem is not this or that particular kind of farming, but farming in general. Unless you advocate a return to hunter-gatherer lifestyles (there are those who do) there is no reason to feel GE crops are uniquely evil or dangerous.

To an ecologist, or to a Gaian for that matter, agriculture is one vast catastrophe. The less of it the better.

Another urban myth which may be partly responsible for the extreme opposition to GE- in common with anti-abortion and anti-vivisection activism, anti-GE sentiment is deemed to justify violence on occasion- is the “terminator gene”, designed to produce sterile genes. This does appear to be unjustifiable, interfering as it does with ancient farming practices of seed-saving, until you read the true story: no “terminator” crops were ever actually produced, in part because of protests, but the real reason for their proposed development was to limit the dangers of the new crops running amok in the wild: in other words, terminator technology was part of the checks and balances that Monsanto were proposing to address some of the environmentalists concerns. Without this, preventing contamination may now be harder.

The absurdity of the opposition to these crops is expressed in the quote given by Vandana Shiva, from her book Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply (2000):

“The gradual spread of sterility in seeding plants would result in a global catastrophe that would eventually wipe out higher life forms, including humans, from the planet”- a biological impossibility, since terminator plants would be unable to spread by seeds.

Brand gives a shocking account of how ideologically motivated environmental organizations including Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth campaigned extensively against US food aid to Africa during famines in 2001 and 2002 because it contained GE crops, threatening to prevent any African imports to Europe if this badly needed food was accepted. Brand ruefully quotes Brecht: “Grub first, then ethics.”

Starvation was treated as a measure of commitment to the cause. In the service of what was thought to be a higher good, the environmental movement went sociopathic in Africa.

That well funded environmental groups in Europe campaigned so vociferously against food aid that was meant for starving people is surely a shocking indictment that there is something seriously wrong with the movement.

Many of the arguments Brand discusses in favour of GE crops are given here;

-after a decade of real life trials, no evidence suggests any human health implications from eating GE food;

-checks and balances are employed far more diligently in GE than in many other areas;

-GE is already becoming decentralised with many smaller companies and NGOs becoming involved in using the technology appropriately to help the poor and the hungry, with many beneficial effects for the environment including less use of pesticides:

“Developing countries are building their own non -corporate GE programs suited to their unique agricultural needs.” The democratization of the technology may even have been hampered by anti-GE activism: “Only a few big corporate players have survived a period of consolidation, caused partly by excessive anti-GE regulation that drove out small companies”.

And the potential of the technology is impressive: unlike conventional plant breeding, GE can be highly specific and precise in the traits it develops, and has had many successes despite the hampering of environmental protests.

Brand discusses at length how the bogus concept of the “precautionary” principle has been used to scupper development of the technology. In the absence of any clear evidence of danger, the precautionary principle is merely a recipe for social apoplexy. No doubt there were protesters using the same argument when people first discovered fire. In fact there are lots of checks and balances and the scientists who know what they are doing are far more aware of possible dangers than protesters.

Quasi-scientific propaganda against climate change is no different from quasi-scientific propaganda against genetic engineering. Both try to harness science to a political agenda.

In the coming years, GE seems certain to spread and eventually to be accepted: “The fact is that the fastest-moving countries now with GE crops are the developing nations that have the scientific competence and confidence to stand up to excessively cautious environmentalists- China, Brazil, India, South Africa, Argentina, the Philippines. as they go, so goes the world.”

As I write this I am getting forwarded emails asking me to sign the Avaaz petition against the recent decision by the European Council to allow GE potatoes to be grown here. I wont be signing, but I know most of my colleagues- many of whom have pulled up GM crops themselves- will.

In the future however, the strategy is likely to be to aim the benefits of the produce at the consumer: if the technology is good enough, people will simply prefer the better product. The proof will be in the pudding.

Brand returns to the issue of the dysfunction of Greens in his next chapter, Romantics, Scientist and Engineers

Here he suggests that one of the driving forces of green movements has been the romantic notion of decline. As a peak -oiler myself a lot of bells rang as I read through the book and I found myself stopping to question how much of my beliefs about the inevitability of collapse and “the long descent” are ideological rather than based on real evidence.

Clearly the potential for collapse is very real, and perhaps an over-optimistic world view based on “positive thinking” has contributed to the recent financial collapse, as Barbara Ehrenreich has argued in her book Smile or Die.

Without discussing the ins and outs of the collapse theory- he has already outlined some of the worst scenarios of climate change in the opening chapter- Brand explores the idea that romantic greens are ideologically opposed to finding solutions, whereas engineers believe there must be a solution to everything.

A new set of environmental players is shifting the balance. Engineers are arriving who see environmental problems neither as a romantic tragedy nor as a a scientific puzzle but simply as something to fix.

I myself used to buy into the still prevalent myth of the Fall from an idyllic past: for thousands of years,so this particular myth goes- humans lived in harmony with Nature, responsive to Her (usually feminine) deepest energies and understandings.

At a certain unspecified point in our history, we lost our way, separating from Nature and playing God by manipulating natural laws. It is because this myth is still so powerful that anti-GE and anti-nuclear sentiment remains so strong and vitriolic- Thou Shalt Not meddle with the Deeper Law.

In reality, there never was such an idyllic harmonious past; Rousseau’s Noble Savage never was.

Nature does not care about us, nor does it have plans or desires; rather, any species that were to evolve the adaptive advantages of opposable thumbs and the neo-cortex would have come to dominate our predators and competitors in the same way we have.

Being close to nature has always meant short life-span, high infant mortality and constant resource wars. It has only ever been our technology- starting with fire- that has allowed us to escape such an existence.

As Brand outlines so succinctly in his opening pages, the fundamental problem of humanity is not separation from nature, but existential: everything we do has a footprint; yet we want our children to survive and prosper.

Brand takes a brief look at how these retro-romantic views have been associated with, and are not incompatible with, Nazism: yearning for a purity in nature not found in culture; and an elitism only possible in the well fed to moralize to the hungry.

But the engineer’s approach is very different from any kind of deluded new age pseudo-therapy, rooted as it is in science and practical experience. There is surely no guarantee that we will be able to pull off the kind of techno-fixes Brand describes in his last chapters- which includes such things as giant sunshades in space and the sequestration of carbon through biochar on a massive scale- but the worst aspects of the romantic’s world view should not hinder these attempts which may be our last chance.

Every environmentalist should read this life-changing – and maybe even planet-changing book.

The long-evolved Green agenda is suddenly outdated- too negative, too tradition-bound, too specialized, too politically one-sided for the scale of the climate problem. Far from taking a new dominant role,environmentalists risk being marginalized more than ever, with many of their deep goals and well-honed strategies irrelevant to the new tasks. Accustomed to saving natural systems from civilization, Greens now have the unfamiliar task of saving civilization from a natural system- climate dynamics.

My long-time Permaculture and peak oil colleague Davie Philip gave an inspirational talk for Feasta in Dublin last summer.

He includes a nice account of the origins of the Transition movement in Kinsale with the Energy Descent Plan by Rob and his Permaculture students, and his own personal journey with Peak Oil which started even before with the Feasta conference in 2000;the influence on his thinking before that even of John Seymour; then following the story of Rob’s moving to Totnes and the movement starting in earnest from there, bringing us up to now with a discussion of some of the issues now facing Transition.

Took me back to those heady days of the first viewings of The End of Suburbia and flickerings of an awareness of oil depletion.

Davie Philip – Developing a transition mindset to overcome the inertia of the familiar from Feasta on Vimeo.

Thia was the first visit of an ambassador to the village, and came about through a Cuban connection between a family member of one of the founders of the Cloughjordan Eco-village. The Ambassador had been intrigued by the eco-village and paid a visit there to see if links could be made with similar projects in Cuba.

The Ambassador gives an address after planting a pear tree

The visit was especially appropriate as it took place at the end of our Permaculture Design Course. A short reception on the village green with the Mayor and other local dignitaries was followed by a tour of the new eco-village development and a tree planting ceremony; later the film The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak oil was shown and a panel discussion followed with Albert Bates- one of the tutors on the permaculture course; Michelline Sheehy Skeffington, a botanist from NUI Galway; and professor Peadar Kirby of the University of Limerick, hosted by Iva Peacock of Coughjordan Eco-village.

Left to Right: Professor Peadar Kirby; Ambassador Noel Carillo; Iva Pocock; Michelline Sheehy; Albert Bates

In the panel discussion, a common theme was that Cuba was no garden of Eden.

Michelline, who has been in Cuba for several visits and worked on a voluntary basis in the National Botanic Gardens in Havana on the fruit tree project in 2001, pointed out that most Cuban will drop the bicycle as soon as they have a little money to use a car, and also told us how, despite the extensive market gardens that are shown so well in the film, she actually found that they were given very little vegetables at meals- the Cubans prefer meat! She also asked the question, could the Cubans have managed so well as they did during the Special Period were it not for the socialist system, particularly with its emphasis on education?

Albert Bates has not actually visited Cuba but has worked with many Cuban Eco-villagers in the United States.

He began his talk by saying that there are parallels between the island nations of Cuba and Ireland- an island nation will have in innate awareness of natural limits. He also called for a campaign in the US and internationally to end the US trade embargo and sanctions against Cuba.

Cuba was the first Latin American country visited by Peadar Kirby, in 1979, and he also paid tribute to the country which had survived so well through hardship and its people who had managed to forge a future despite the US making life as hard as possible for them. He raised a huge laugh by claiming Cuba as being the only country in the world he has visited where the poeple will spontaneously come up to you and tell you how much the government means to them!

The Ambassador  made quite an impression and came over as a very personable character, and echoed the comments of the previosu speakers: Cuba is no paradise on earth. It continues to be a struggle for the Cuban people, and although he knows they have to work it out for themseleves, he also wants to make links with the eco-village in Cloughjordan.

Cuba, he told us, had made a lot of mistakes. During the Soviet era it was just too easy to take the fossil energy from their allies and trade with Eastern Europe. Twenty years ago they were importing 13million tonnes of energy every year. They had serious pollution problems because of their industrial model, and had become very lazy. At the same time, they had been just as keen as the west to develop consumer lifestyles, an ideology that had been deeply rooted in their minds after being taught for 60 years by the Americans!

Once the Soviet block collapsed, Cuba found itself with no assets, and only itself to blame for its dependency.

I found this an interesting point, the complete lack of resilience in the system up to that point.

He spoke of how hard it was still to make links internationally- for example it had been practically impossible to make links with irish companies becasue oif their US connections.

He echoed Michelline’s comments about  Cuban dietary preference, raising quite a few laughs with his frankness about the downsides of Cuban life and culture,  telling us that, like many Cubans, he doesnt like vegetables! “I know they are good for you but we Cubans want to eat beef!” He also stressed that for most ordinary Cubans, the “organoponic” farms are preferred just because they are cheaper. The more sustainable lifestyle portrayed in the film have been adopted only because of necessity.

VIVA LA REVOLUCION -Albert Bates and myself pose by the Ambassadors’ car

They are still hugely dependent on imports of a lot of their food, in particular more than 2/3 of their milk is imported despite being strictly rationed within the country. (Apparently they used to buy from Ireland but now find milk cheaper from New Zealand!)

There is still a huge amount of unused land in Cuba, but apparently land will be given freely to anyone who wants to start growing food- a scheme that caught the attention of several of the permaculture students there!

Leon also told us how they had reduced energy demand by a government scheme that simply gave everyone a free fluorescent lightbulb in exchange for an old incandescent one; and how they operate a decentralized grid with over 200 mini power stations throughout the country.

Most tellingly of all, the Ambassador told us that, although he thought he would be killed for saying this in his own country, he hoped that they never find oil in Cuba- it would always place them under US scrutiny and control if they did.

Afterwards I managed to get in a couple of questions about Cuba and the Special Period, and how he thought Ireland might cope under similar circumstances, before he was lead away to watch a display of hurling on the GAA pitch. I hope to post this interview as a podcast at a later date, once I have mastered the technology.

Davie Philip lowers the Cuban Flag at the end of the day

Book Review:

The Transition Timeline

for  a local, resilient future

Shaun Chamberlin

Forward by Rob Hopkins

190 pp pbk

Chelsea Green 2009

The follow-up to Rob Hopkins’ seminal The Transition Handbook uses the method of “backcasting” from an envisioned  future from which we create a timeline of how the transition to a more local, resilient world unfolded.

The first part goes through four different scenarios presented as “cultural stories” roughly along the same lines as the scenarios we are familiar with from Holmgren’s Future Scenarios, this time under the headings:

-Denial

-Hitting the Wall

-The Impossible Dream

-The Transition Vision

The transition approach is to look at these possible futures in terms of the cultural stories that we tell ourselves, the idea being that we have the power to make our own cultural stories and thereby empower ouselves to guide the future to a more desirable outcome:

Human Nature is the ability to choose our own path

The second part of the book takes a deeper look at the Transition Vision in the five areas of population and demographics; Food and Water; Electricity and Energy; travel and transport; Health and Medicine.

Each of these sections presents a thorough and well-researched overview of the current situation, ending with a Timeline of how we reached a more desirable situation by 2027.

At the back of the book Chamberlin states that “This book has not attempted to quantify the energy/emissions footprint of each aspect of the Transition Vision, but this represents a critical avenue for further work.”

Unfortunatley, this lack of analysis seriously compromises the usefulness of the book, as the projected scenarios may be widely implausible or purely aspirational.

Many other authors have put work into this already, which could have been drawn from, a recent example being the Mayo Energy Audit, which also uses a scenario format, but successfully puts values and figures on the scenarios.

The population chapter, is to be lauded for highlighting an issue often neglected in the environmental movement; however, the author falls into the same trap that others tend to by visiting the “population or consumption” debate over which is the bigger issues:

…population is not (as some claim) the single most crucial environmental issue. It is clearly has a significant effect as a multiplier, but our chosen way of life and ecological footprint are bigger contributors to climate change, energy resource depletion and the other challenges facing us today and in the near future

As I have written previously

this is really a straw dog issue because as Ehrlich (whom he refers to) pointed out in The Population Bomb population and consumption are two sides of the same coin. It is in my opinion quite meaningless to speak about which is the greater issue, like we are dealing with some kind of Top of the Apocalyptic Pops.Ehrlich’s famous formula- which should be on every high-school curriculum- is: I (Impact) = P (population) x A (Affluence) x T (Technology) The issues of consumption and population are quite simply inseparable. If the population increases, there will be less resources to go around, so in theory we can increase the population so long as we reduce per capita consumption- and vice-a-verse.

The difficulty I have with making population/consumption an either/or issue is that it simplifies the challenges we have have as a species; I believe we are disposed by our evolution to increase both our population AND our consumption- see the recent discussion by Nate Hagens on environmental psychology.

It is the interplay between demographics and the natural impulse to increase our standard of living that needs to be explored here.

What would be essential to make this section work would be some kind of analysis of what a reasonable standard of living might be- it is not much use talking vaguely of reducing population without some assessment of what a sustainable level would be, which must be gauged against an acceptable level of consumption (I suggested Cuba, at about half the per capita energy use of Europe as a starting point in the above post.)

The food section gives an excellent analysis of the predicament, importantly drawing our attention to issues such as the huge “water footprint” of our food, particularly in meat and dairy- Fred Pierce in “When the Rivers Run Dry” calculates that the equivalent of 20 Nile rivers  move from developing to developed countries each year- a stunning image of the sustainability of our food production at present.

The transport section proposes a lift-Hiker system using GPS and mobile phone technology, similar to that of “the Smart Jitney” proposed by Pat Murphy in Plan C.

I particularly like the notion  of “hypermiling” which by 2018 has become a fashionable trend as it becomes socially unacceptable to waste resources.

The Health and Medicine section begins well by highlighting the oil dependency of the NHS, and presents the astonishing fact that while by far the largest cost of treating injuries is road accident related, the NHS itself generates as much as 5% of all UK transport!

Issues such as the challenge new diseases being brought by climate change, the inefficiency of big scale health services, and even euthanasia are mentioned; as well as a comparison with Cuba, which appears to have at least as healthy a population as the UK’s but with far less energy dependence.

But then, in the Timeline section, we read:

What used to be known as ‘alternative’ medicines were embraced, as practices like herbalism, acupuncture, massage and osteopathy became core pillars [my emphases] of public healthcare, with a big investment in teaching these skills leading to a blossoming of independent regulated practitioners in most communities.

Oh nooooo! Quackery! This paragraph is deeply concerning, betraying the New Age and pseudoscientific influences in the transition movement.

What is known as “alternative” medicine is simply medicine for which there is no good evidence of effectiveness; certainly, not all “conventional” medicine is evidence-based either, but new-Agers tend to use this as an excuse for throwing out the need for  evidence altogether. Often these therapies are based on dubious or discredited “ancient wisdom” which simply has not been born out by the discoveries of modern science. It is modern medical research and science which has lead to an increase in life expectancy, a decline in infant mortality etc..

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 like acupuncture work, while many repeated, verifiable blind trials indicate they do no better than placebo.

All these issues and their many nuances are discussed brilliantly in Ben Goldacre’s book Bad Science and I urge you to read it if you are of an alternative disposition when it comes to health care.

The fact is, some remedies work, some don’t; some herbs work, some dont; there is absolutely no way of knowing for sure without large scale clinical trials of the sort the medical establishment does routinely, and which the alternative sector has apparently no knowledge nor interest in.

The curious thing here is that the whole basis of the Transition Movement is based on the verifiable science of Climate Change and Peak Oil; but when it comes to quack medicine, the evidence offered is as useless as that offered by climate change deniers- personal anecdotes along the “it worked for me” kind and pseudoscience.

Transition founder Rob Hopkins provides some startling examples of this on recent comments to Zone5.

In the discussion after this post for example, he comments:

“I have had a great deal of acupuncture in my life, I think it is extraordinary. Had some on a painful back the other week, worked a treat. Acupuncture is based on many centuries of the observation of subtle phenomena.”

Many will say the same or similar, but anecdotes do not constitute evidence; if they did we would have to accept that global warming is not happening on the basis of it being rather cool today for the time of year. I’m only slightly exaggerating – climate change deniers do routinely use the same kind of reasoning to dismiss the science of anthropogenic climate change; and even more so, they point out the failings of Big Science in general terms as a way of discrediting evidence- it is corrupt, in the pockets of the government and corporations etc. “therefore we can dismiss the evidence.”

Even more worrying, Rob goes on to say:

“None of my children have ever been vaccinated, nor have they ever had any antibiotics. They are strong and healthy (touch wood).”

The irresponsibility and naivete of this statement is shocking- the reason his kids have not got measles is likely to be either just luck, or because everyone else’s kids have been vaccinated. (Unvaccinated children may also put at risk certain categories of children who cannot safely be vaccinated for medical reasons, or who may be more susceptible in the event of catching measles.)

Let’s be clear here: the evidence for the safety and effectiveness of the MMR vaccine is just as clear as the evidence for man-made climate change; the kind of thinking that refutes one is pretty much the same as that which is used to discredit the other. By throwing in “alternative medicine” in such an uncritical way Chamberlin panders to the  reactionary and retarded element of the New Age meme which believes mainstream medicine is all a con designed to make money and poison us, and alternatives can be uncritically accepted as “safe, holistic alternatives”.

In fact, they are expensive lifestyle products which can in no way replace modern medicine other than as being different forms of TLC- Tender Loving Care. Nothing wrong with that, but they need to be seen as such and drop the false claims of being able to cure specific diseases.

And God help us if they are to become a “core pillar” of public healthcare.

Partly as a result of the kind of delusional thinking expressed by Rob in the above comment, the UK is now facing the worst measles epidemic in decades. It is about time the Transition Movement took a stand on this and put out good information on the subject.

Not only that, but by promoting alternative medicine in this way, Chamberlin is actually undermining his arguments for understanding climate change and Peak Oil. This is all the more ironic since the book covers the need for evidence on these two issues very thoroughly, plenty of graphs and stats and quotes such as that of Daniel Moynihan who said “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts” – a thought that proponents of alternative therapies would do well to meditate on for some time.

The Cuban example is really useful but although their state health service has embraced complimentary therapies including Homeopathy, there is little indication that this has become anything like a core pillar, the success of the Cuban situation being more likely a result of following evidence-based medicine to a high standard, putting in sufficient resources, and focussing on community care and prevention.

Energy Descent Planning

Rob Hopkins  writes the next section, Timelines and Energy Descent Plans which is an account of community planning tools and “visioning” processes for changing the communities’ cultural story to the more agreeable Transtion Vision.

An EDAP (Energy Descent Action Plan) is, he says “as much as anything, a new story for the community…

We often stress in Transition that we need to create visions of a post-carbon world so enticing, so compelling and attractive that people leap out of bed in the morning determined to dedicate their lives to its implementation. An EDAP is an embodiment of this.

“Determined to dedicate their lives” does sound a bit cultish and scary to me, and not a little evangelical; however, this chapter concerns itself only with the visioning processes, again with barely a mention of the need to actually count and quantify energy demand and supply; I understand that the movement is working on a more detailed follow-up to the Timeline on how to write an Energy Descent Plan, but 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.

Rob writes as if this is all that is involved in writing an EDAP, while these visioning processes, useful and inspirational as they are, surely do not provide the meat of a true EDAP, which would start with an audit, and then assess local available resources and then assess how best to use them.

The last section of the book gives more detailed explanation of Peak Oil and then Climate Change; the Peak Oil section is fine, but adds little to existing literature; but the Climate Change section I found really excellent, surprisingly learning plenty of new things, for example about how different measures of greenhouse gas concentrations are used in public discourse which are little understood and distort the picture.

In conclusion, the Transition Timeline has plenty of useful information and some great ideas, but fails to really move the work of transition on in a way we might expect at this stage; and, perhaps inevitably, tends to paint a rather rosy picture of how the transition will play out. Personally, I would hope to see a more realistic view, which includes more on emergency planning and a future which may not be able to deliver the kind of smart technology envisioned for some of the areas explored.

(Andy Wilson of the Sustainability Institute has suggested to me that Peak Car use has probably already passed, while the Timeline puts it as not happening until 2016- a very pessimistic (sic) view!)

Predictably(!), I am highly critical- and will continue to be- of the New Age influence in the Health section,which will feed the suspicion in some quarters that transition is adopting some cultish attributes, and insist on the promotion of evidence-based medicine; and I feel, the lack of detailed energy auditing just means that the Transition Vision will tend to move further away from the observed reality.

Workshop participants practice forest garden design…

…now they are planting and mulching for real…

It was a great weekend, despite the truly wintry weather on the Saturday, and a great opportunity to see how the Village project is progressing, with three houses currently under construction.

The next permaculture course here will be a Full 10-day Permaculture Certificate Design Course August 21st-30th. Please see “courses for 2009” page for details.

This course will also include a complete Powerdown Toolkit Training.

Tutors include: Graham Strouts,  Davie Philip of the Irish Transition Network, Albert Bates of the Farm, Tenessee.

many thanks to Davie Philip for organising the event, and for all the great participants for taking part and making it possible, and most of all for staying awake through a whole day of classroom activities on the wet Saturday despite a very late campfire session Friday night!!

by Graham Strouts and Davie Philip

This is the introduction to the 10th and final episode  of the Powerdown Toolkit 10-week community learning course created by the Cultivate Center in Dublin. It has an accompanying TV show with a 30-minute episode accompanying each week of the course, soon to be aired on Dublin Community TV.

On sale Now! The Powerdown TV show featuring the 10 TV shows to accompany the introductions serialized here on zone5 over the past few weeks, with interviews with Rob Hopkins, Richard Douthwaite, Megan Quinn, Peader Kirby and many others.

A free preview of Episode 8: Energy Descent Pathways can be viewed here.

When we try to communicate the ideas being explored in the Powerdown Toolkit we run into what might be called “the environmentalists dilemma”- we are trying to get over a message few people want to hear- if they did, the world would be a very different place- it would already be in transition!

In thinking about this issue let us consider the spectrum of responses, from the “cornucopians” who believe the markets will resolve everything as price spikes send a signal to put more investment into renewables; to the “doomers” who see Peak oil as heralding in a collapse of civilisation.

Somehow we need to bridge the gap between the two: the “cornucopians” need to be challenged because the evidence we have looked at does not support their case: the flow of cheap energy will surely decline and with it the “business as usual” scenarios we have become accustomed to over the past couple of generations, with its implicit faith in technological progress and ever-increasing prosperity.

The “doomer” stance on the other hand, while providing a valuable balance to the complacency of doing nothing, may lead to paralysis and fear that “there is nothing we can do”.

Somewhere in between we have Transition: On the one hand, it is imperative that we promote a message that things will change, that many expectations will never be met, and that cosmetic adjustments will not be enough to plug the energy gap.

We must prepare psychologically for the changes ahead because there will surely be less of some things: less traffic jams, less pollution, less waste; less stress maybe, less running on the treadmill to service our debts, and less mind-numbing “reality” TV.

Alongside this however there must be an emphasis on the benefits there may be in living in a low-energy world, for there will surely be more of other things:

-more time with the family, more time in close and meaningful connection with the natural world;

-more creativity as we are called to draw upon the full wealth of our ingenuity to respond to the challenges ahead;

-there will be the opportunity for a resurgence of the community as globalisation retreats, and a rediscovery of a sense of place and connection;

-local food, local music, local culture will make a resurgence giving us a new sense of identity.

It is crucial to include ideas and openings for positive action when outlining the difficulties we may have to face. Even a small positive collective action- planting a tree for example- can go a long way to creating a sense of community empowerment. Early, easy-to-achieve sense of success will provide a strong foundation for continuing with optimism and positive energy.

Knowing your audience

Various theories have emerged from marketing and developmental psychology suggesting that people may respond differently depending on the values they hold, so “knowing your audience” is crucial.

For example, campaign strategists Chris Rose and Pat Dade (1)  draw on the work of Maslow who argued that we are all motivated to behave in ways that help  meet their underlying dominant psychological needs. They identify the following three types which fit the majority of the population:

• ‘Settlers’ are primarily motivated to fulfill their need for security; they value home, family, locality, stability

• ‘Prospectors’ are primarily motivated to fulfill their need for status; they value popularity and visible success above other things;

•    ‘Pioneers’ are primarily motivated to enhance the greater good; they particularly value ethics, justice and sustainability for their own sake.

This is important because framing new ideas and behaviours within the right dominant need may help to motivate people to engage with the issue. Getting it wrong can lead to disengagement because they do not represent the values of every group.

This may help provide a key as to why the environmental message is slow to become more widely accepted: since it tends to come initially from the third group –the “pioneers”- it is usually phrased in terms that appeal only to this group- “save Gaia” “save the whales” “think of the next generation” –but messages phrases in this way are unlikely to appeal to “prospectors”.

This group might be more likely to respond to messages that appeal to the values of status and success that they espouse-

“get ahead of the game with the latest energy-saving technology”

“the smart and savvy will start moving into renewables now”.

Similarly, “settlers” are more likely to respond to messages that support traditional values.

A similar idea was proposed by Malcom Gladwell in “The Tipping Point”.(Gladwell, 2000).

Gladwell argues that it is possible to identify some people as “innovators” who tend to be ahead of the game- in Transition this might include community activists calling for action on peak oil and climate change, those who are aware of the issues and hope to inspire change; “early adopters” who are most likely to be open to change- “late adopters” and “traditionalists”.

By understanding the dynamics of these different groups and how “connectors” are able to transmit a message very quickly through their community, it is possible for a small group of activists to start a “positive” epidemic very quickly, with very little input. It is all about framing the message in the right way and taking it to the people first who are most likely to be in a position to respond.

Visioning the Future

The visioning tools we have from the Transition Handbook, and those you will be invited to explore on this course, will allow us to gain as sense of empowerment as we ask: what is really important? Is burning more energy really the be-all and end-all of our lives? What qualities and talents do we have to bring to this process?

In the Further Reading list below you will find other resources that examine the psychology of communicating change, a fascinating topic in its own right which has a growing and rich literature developed from several decades of environmental activism.

In this area perhaps more than any other we have looked at on the course it is important to avoid “reinventing the wheel”:

Examining our own psychology, and the psychology of others, can be an emotive issue. People may not be ready to examine their own hidden motivations and resistances to change.

We should begin nonetheless with an open attitude towards people and the knowledge that in general, we all want to do the right thing.

As we travel further down the curve of energy descent over the next few years, we need to ask ourselves what we are gaining, and what we will be glad to leave behind from the old culture. It may be time to acknowledge that too much energy has been bad for us, and the environment, and try to communicate the message that in many ways, a low-energy future may find us enriched, more resilient, fulfilled and secure.

The future may be uncertain, but it need not be something to fear if we prepare together.

As David Fleming has said, “…localisation stands, at best, at the limits of practical possibility, but it has the decisive argument in its favour that there will be no alternative”.

Further reading

1] Climate Change communications: dipping a toe into public motivation Chris Rose, Pat Dade, Nick Gaillie and John Scott, May 2005

[2] The Rules of the Game: Principles of Climate Change Communications. Futerra 2005

[3] The Rules of the Game: Principles of Climate Change Communications. Futerra 2005

[4] Fostering Sustainable Behaviour: An introduction to community-based social marketing. Doug McKenzie-Mohr and William Smith, 1999

[5]   The Rules of the Game: Principles of Climate Change Communications. Futerra 2005

[6] Fostering Sustainable Behaviour: An introduction to community-based social marketing. Doug McKenzie-Mohr and William Smith, 1999:51

[7] Malcome Gladwell 2000 The Tipping Point- How Little things Can Make a Big Difference.

This is the introduction to  week seven of the Powerdown Toolkit 10-week community learning course created by the Cultivate Center in Dublin. It has an accompanying TV show with a 30-minute episode accompanying each week of the course, soon to be aired on Dublin Community TV.

Energy and the Household

Recent increases in energy costs have spawned a huge increase in interest in “sustainable” housing with considerable improvements in some aspects of house design and construction. With a plethora of new building products and systems emerging from the industry on one hand and a burgeoning interest in natural building materials such as cob and strawbale, housing has been one of the most intensely scrutinised areas in terms of energy conservation and use. The industrial revolution that downgraded the household to the edge of economic life; the time has come now for it to reclaim its place. David Holmgren has described how this might occur for many over the first years of energy descent in his paper Retrofitting the Suburbs.

In the future, the great challenge will be to retrofit the existing housing stock to be more energy efficient. New builds will decline to a fraction of what they have been during the years and decades of industrial growth.

House Design

A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander {1977} is a design manual for convivial housing and town planning, compiling over 240 “patterns” or design solutions many of which will both help conserve energy and build community.

“Each pattern”, says Alexander “describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way as you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice.”

Here are a few examples of patterns in house design and function that may prove useful in the low-energy future:

1.    Living space: The house needs to be a place where families – or the extended household – lives, talks and eats together, on a regular basis.

2.    Working space: There should be a workshop, and/or a study, and/or a potting shed.  Houses will be central to the economy of the future, power houses of the local economy, and not just places for leisure and sleep.

3.    Growing space.  Most houses will need a garden or contact with a garden.  They need some way of recycling food waste and, in the longer term, of recycling, composting and reusing human waste.  Not every householder will have the aptitude to grow his or her own vegetables, but there could be reciprocal arrangements with other households that do.

4.    Located in the community.  Every household will need to participate in the community’s material economy and in its social capital.  This will have a bearing on the design of houses: they will need to be compact in layout, saving space and forming neighbourhoods, all parts of which are in easy walking distance; the neighbourhoods should be held together by its busy, sociable streets.  Gardens may vary in size: terraced houses can have long/large gardens; other gardens can be a short distance away, or in allotments.

The design and placement of buildings in towns and the squares and meeting places they define will have a big impact on the development of the community.

5.    Local materials.  Houses in the community of the future will rely on local materials, wherever possible, for construction and repair.

Energy in Housing. By Andy Wilson

Andy Wilson is an independent energy consultant working mainly in renewables and off-grip systems, as well as energy efficient house construction and retro-fitting. He has extensive experience in many other areas of self-sufficiency  including woodland management and horticulture.

He is the editor of Sustainability Magazine and co-author with Paul Lynch of the  recent Mayo Energy Audit.

Andy gives workshops and talks around Ireland on energy in housing and solar DIY.

The housing sector accounts for some 20-30% of all energy used in Ireland today. Energy use in the sector can be subdivided into three categories:

Energy used in construction (the embodied energy) Energy used to heat the dwelling Energy used to provide lighting and to run appliances

Embodied Energy

The total embodied energy in a modest dwelling made largely from locally sourced low energy materials could be as little as one twentieth  of the embodied energy in a very large house constructed entirely from high energy products or ones imported from thousands of miles away.

Size of Dwellings

The average dwelling size in Ireland is approximately 110m2. The average size of new dwellings however, is about 150m2. In tandem with this increase in size has been the gradual decease in the number of occupants per dwelling, down from about 4.0 occupants per dwelling in 1966 to only 2.9 today. Floor area in new build has now exceeded 50m2 per occupant. This compares with 20-25m2 per occupant in Eastern Europe. Heating

The energy required to heat a typical house, when measured as the quantity of energy per unit area of floor space, has been decreasing gradually in recent years owing to better standards of insulation.  This increase in energy efficiency has been largely offset by the larger size of new houses and by higher internal temperatures.  According to SEI data, the average household uses some 20,000 kWh of energy per annum for heating. Over 97% of this energy is derived from non renewable sources.

The heating requirement of a building is usually expressed as kWh/m² of floor space per annum. The figure may be as high as 500 kWh/m²/ annum in an uninsulated house,   but 50-70 kWh/m² / annum in  houses  compliant with current building regulations, and as little as 10-15 kWh/ m² / annum for a passive house. Houses described as passive often use electrical appliances for domestic water heating and for running heat recovery ventilation systems and micro heat pumps.

Reducing Energy Requirements for Heating

Keep dwelling sizes small both in floor area and volume. High ceilings waste heat: we only     occupy the bottom 1.5-2 meters of a room.

Insulate well

Minimise draughts: Airtightness in newly built houses can vary by up to a factor of six     depending on construction methods, choice of materials, design detail and standard of     workmanship.

Use the highest spec windows and external doors affordable

Avoid open chimneys

Make use of passive solar design

Improve air tightness -On average about 40% of heat losses from buildings occurs through ventilation and about 60% through the fabric of the structure, though the proportions can vary widely from building to building.

Insulation

It is estimated that about 20-30% of our entire housing stock has totally inadequate insulation (or no insulation whatsoever). Less than 5% of our housing stock is well insulated.

There are many insulation products on the market. Some are made from natural fibres and have a low embodied energy as well as being environmentally friendly. The synthetic insulation products generally have a higher embodied energy and carry a higher environmental price tag.  While some insulation products, notably the multi-layer foil insulation genre, perform very poorly, most insulation materials work well if they are installed properly. Unfortunately this is often not the case, with insulation being frequently applied poorly or not at all, for example many lofts have not been insulated at all.

In the case of retrofit on older buildings, space may be at a premium and compromises will have to be made. Even so, minimum targets to aim for should be walls 50-100mm, roofs/ceilings 200mm, and floors 50-80mm. It should be recognised that these are only ballpark figures and the depth required will also vary according to the insulation product used.

Beyond a certain point, the benefits of extra insulation are marginal, particularly as the heat losses through windows and doors may be almost as much as the losses from the floor roof and walls combined.

Thermal Mass

Thermal mass is the mass of a building which is available for use as a heat store, rather like a large storage heater.

Timber frame houses typically have low thermal mass, especially ones built on pillars which are not in contact with the ground. Houses built from stone, concrete blocks and cob all have high thermal mass. Thermal mass is only useful if it is insulated on the outside to prevent the heat simply radiating out and being lost.

Materials such as cob and hemp lime have properties which allow them to warm up more quickly than stone or concrete.

Windows and Doors

It is not widely known  that windows  (even double or triple glazed ones) conduct heat  five or even ten times as rapidly as a well insulated wall or roof. In the case of timber doors the difference is even greater. For this reason, windows should be sized according to their primary function, which is to provide light.  In terms of heat losses, timber frames perform better than PVC frames.

Almost all windows are net energy losers in wintertime, even south facing ones. For this reason, heavy curtains or internal shutters are an excellent idea.

Passive Solar

The idea behind passive solar is that solar radiation is trapped in the building behind glazing and is used as a supplementary or even principal form of heating. Most of the glazing should be on the south side of the building, but excessive glazing can lead to overheating and then heat loss through the glass at night time.

Insulation is more important than solar gain however as other heat sources- from cooking, the occupants’ metabolism (each occupant of a building is equivalent to a 80-100 watt incandescent light bulb), or electrical appliances may often warm the house more than the sun.

Internal Temperatures

No statistics are available for Ireland but in the UK,  the average internal temperatures of dwellings rose from only 12.6 ºC in 1970 to 18.9 ºC  in 2001. These averages mask the much higher and much lower temperatures which will be found in some dwellings.

One aspect of energy conservation is to change out habits and requirements- an extra piece of clothing could be just as important as extra insulation, saving money as well as carbon emissions.

Heat Losses from Pipes and Cylinders

Lagging of hot water pipes and cylinders is woefully inadequate in the majority of dwellings, irrespective of the method of heating water or whether the water being heated is for delivering to radiators or hot water cylinders. In many cases, transmission heat losses probably exceed 50%. The greater part of these losses could be eliminated by properly lagging all hot water pipes and connections, double or even triple lagging cylinders, and insulating hot presses. In most cases, the cost of doing this is extremely low. Energy Used for Lighting and Appliances

The   average annual domestic   consumption of 5000 kWh of electricity per household is at its highest level ever and is still rising as houses become bigger and are filled with an increasing number of appliances; notably televisions, computers, freezers and dishwashers.. The difference between the electricity consumption of the most energy aware households and the energy oblivious is in excess of a factor of ten.

Lighting may account for up to one fifth of the total electricity usage but this may easily be reduced by changing over to compact fluorescent lights (CFLs). CFLs use less than 25% of the energy of conventional incandescent lights for a comparable light output. As a simple rule, if a light gets hot, it means a lot of energy is being wasted as heat.  Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) are even more efficient than compact fluorescents and may be particularly useful for background lighting or small spotlights.

A huge amount of electrical energy (up to 50% in some households) is wasted simply by leaving things switched on when not in use or by leaving appliances plugged in when they are ‘turned off’.

Final words

Think small, think simple.

Rethinking Energy: Conservation, Curtailment, Efficiency and Appropriate Technology

by David Fleming and Graham Strouts

Energy is first and foremost a demand issue- how much do we need and for what ?- and yet the majority of public debate on the issue is to do with finding new sources of supply so as to allow industrial growth to continue.

Community Powerdown is concerned with redesigning our living arrangements as far as possible so as to reduce demand. We need to reduce drastically both per capita energy consumption as well as total world energy use.

This is an essential point to understand because simply making energy use more efficient, or even reducing per capita consumption, will not be sufficient if total demand is still increasing- for example, driven by rising population.

This means that we will sometimes have to make hard decisions about what we use energy for. Energy is fundamental but one of the challenges of understanding energy in today’s’ world is that we are so unaware of how much we use or what the impacts of its use are. Taking more responsibility for how we use energy is the starting point.

In order to understand better our use of energy it is useful to consider the laws of thermodynamics, and how they impose absolute limits on energy consumption in society. By understanding this we will be able to make better choices about the use of energy in society.

Howard Odum {Odum, H., Odum, E. Energy Basis for Man and Nature 1976} has done much to show how energy is fundamental to not just the physical world, but also the social and even the psychological world:

“Citizens who think of energy as simply one commodity, separate from matter, information, art, and human spirit, must learn that everything has an energy component. The more intangible and valuable something is the more it costs in energy. And the more intangible a value is the more energy value is lost when it deteriorates or is lost”.

Thus, energy is not just for physicists: everyone in all sectors of society should become energy literate. Odum explains the Laws of Thermodynamics in the following way:

1)    Energy cannot be created or destroyed. This is known as the Law of Conservation of Energy We cannot “create” new sources of energy: either we use non-renewable sources which are essentially extracted from holes in the ground- including oil, gas and uranium- or we are confined to the availability of ambient solar energy that arrives on the planet each day. Thus, burning wood is renewable because trees can re-grow, but if we use the resource faster than the replenishment rate, it is no longer sustainable.

2)    The Law of Degradation of Energy. Without compensating changes elsewhere, heat can flow only from a hotter to a colder body. This is the law of entropy- the tendency for heat energy to become progressively more diffuse over time.

3)    Systems which use energy best survive. The maximum power principle explains that systems which use energy the most effectively are more likely to survive longer.

These energy laws together can be summed up by the concept of limits: there are absolute physical and natural limits to human activity on the planet, and we need to bring a deep understanding of this into every area of society.

One of the reasons it is so hard to accept the reality of these energy laws is that cheap oil has effectively been a source of “free” energy, allowing humans for one or two generations to escape the natural laws that hold all other life forms in check. With the rapid rise in technology, particularly computer processing power and communications technology, we have created a compelling illusion that we can delay pay-back time indefinitely.

Another reason is to do with the second law, the entropy law: ancient fossil energy stored deep in the ground represent potential energy; once they have been burned, that energy is dispersed throughout the environment, and some of its effect will turn up later as climate change, habitat destruction or pollution- often far removed from where it was consumed. So the consumer may be far removed from the results of that consumption.

Metaphorically, we might also perceive the effects of entropy in some of the common ills of modern society: traffic jams, road rage, road kill are all side-effects of a society using too much energy too fast. It has been estimated for example that the energy content of 40litres of oil would be roughly equivalent to three years of human physical labour- imagine pushing your car around over the same distance! And yet, in the past, and still over much of the planet, most work was done by human or animal labour. We need to prepare for a world where this will once again be the case.

Here are 6 points that should always be born in mind when discussing energy:

Firstly, the entropy law tells us that there will be consequences for the consummate use of energy that we have not yet paid for: the use of energy has a cost, in pollution, environmental destruction, and climate change.

Secondly, we take energy for granted: at the flick of a switch we can turn on powerful engines that can do the work of many people. The use of energy has allowed us evolve a new type of human- what William Catton calls “Homo Colossus”- a monstrous being with enormous  energy at its disposal- and enormous capacity for destruction.{Catton, W., Overshoot 1982)

Thirdly, the use of energy has had an enormous effect on social relationships. The introduction of machinery has turned us from a mainly agrarian culture to an urban one in which much of the work is done by machines. We have lost many traditional skills that we may have to re-learn.

In addition, we have become extremely mobile and this has lead to families and communities being flung to the four corners of the earth. Commitment and retaining connection to the land is very hard when there are so many exotic opportunities for travel and adventure.

Fourthly, the rebound effect means that in a society dedicated to growth, improvements in efficiency without equal attention to reduction in overall demand may actually lead to an increase of energy, as that energy can now do more work and is therefore more valuable.

Fifthly, the energy return on energy invested is reducing. We have picked the low-hanging fruit and remaining energy supplies will be very costly to extract. This is known as “Energy Return on Energy Invested” or EROEI. Often, when a new oil discovery is reported for example, the energy cost required to extract the resource is not counted. In reality, much of the oil and gas in the ground will never be recovered because the energy to do so will exceed the energy it would provide.

Finally, energy is a social justice issue because worldwide, energy consumption is hugely inequitable. For example, Ireland’s per capita consumption of energy is only half that of the average American, but 4 times that of the average Cuban and nearly 8 times that of the average Indian. {World resource Institute 2007} While much of the developed world is still in denial about the reduced availability of energy in the future, most of the world will never experience the benefits of cheap fossil fuels that the West has had.

David Fleming calls the following issues the “Lean Energy Sequence”.

1.  Energy conservation: Develop all the ways you can think of to use energy more efficiently.  Most energy in the United Kingdom and Ireland is used for heating, lighting, and the other energy-based services of buildings, so some simple changes such as turning the heating down can make significant savings.  Aim to get the energy services you use now for less than half the energy you use now.

2.  Structural change: By changing structural aspects of your life- for example, by taking a job you can cycle to, or working part time so you can spend more time growing your own food- it may be possible to aim for ultimately an 80 percent reduction in total energy consumption. In this era of cheap energy, transport is the rule; doing things locally is the exception.  When the energy famine comes, it will be the other way round. Better conservation can help to open the way to structural change; structural change can open the way to better conservation.

3.  Renewables.  Living off the grid with domestic wind or solar systems will only be for the very few, partly because of cost and partly because few sites are suitable. Passive solar water and space heating will however be applicable to some extent in most places; but renewable energy production for the most part needs to be on a community or municipal scale, and its source will depend on the area.

4.  Institutional framework.  If we are going to reduce and redesign our energy needs, and achieve the massive changes needed by the proximity principle, we will need a system in which we can all work to a common purpose.  This will eventually mean some system of rationing- one such proposal is David Fleming’s Tradable Energy Quotas (www.teqs.net).

Re-thinking energy means exploring all of these issues together so that declining supplies of fossil energy are replaced, not with new sources of energy but with systems that promote community resilience.