Fleeing Vesuvius Overcoming the risks of economic and environmental collapse

edited by Richard Douthwaite and Gillian Fallon

Feasta 2010 ppbck 417 pp.

The recent economic collapse is not just a financial and banking issue, not just an economic and political issue, not a result only of bad policies and lack of regulation, but actually precipitated by the passing of peak oil, which sent oil prices spiraling above $150/barrel in 2008 and is essentially sounding the death-knoll for industrial society. Not only will we never be able to return to economic growth, but we are now facing a chaotic period of decline and collapse. The peak of energy availability has passed and we are now staring into the abyss of continual economic contraction which will result in a vastly simplified society where human muscle power will progressively replace fossil energy, and we will return to the technologies of the Middle Ages or before.

Such is the fundamental of the oddly titled new book from Feasta the Irish-based think-tank on sustainable economics: Fleeing Vesuvius is not about responding to a natural catastrophe such as Vesuvius, the volcano that destroyed Pompeii in AD79; nor is it about fleeing, for as editor Richard Douthwaite asks rhetorically, “We expect to get any clearer warnings of impending disaster than the people of Pompeii received. There are already financial fires around the economic cone. If we are to survive we need to move out quickly. Now. But which way are we to go? Is there a map? It would be a poor book about an emergency situation which did not provide one. So, for the final chapter, my co-editor and I asked the contributors to suggest actions which readers could take or support at four levels- personal, community, national and global.”

The book is layed out in seven parts: “Energy Availability”; “Innovation in business, money and finance”; “New Ways of using the land”; “Dealing with Climate Change”; “Changing the Way we live”; “Changing the Way we Think”; and “Ideas for Action”;

There are 28 contributors including economist Richard Douthwaite (author of The Growth Illusion and Short Circuit; julian Darley of the Post carbon Institute; Nate Hagens of the Oil Drum; and Reinventing Collapse author Dmitri Orlov; and with an introduction by Eamon Ryan of the Irish Green Party who had been minister for Communication, Energy and Natural Resources in the last government.

While the starting point is the same for each- the financial crisis and its connection to peak oil-, there are several wide differences of opinion expressed by the various contributors: some see a gradual decline which is worth trying to manage through Transition Towns and international treaties on climate change; while arch-doomer Dmitry Orlov for example pokes fun at such ideas, suggesting instead we should be more concerned with getting enough sleep, avoiding drawing attention to ourselves too much less we become a target for marauding gangs, and collecting things that dont lose their value that are easy to store such as bronze nails.

“Is there a reason to think” he asks when considering such community solution, ” that it is possible to achieve this radical simplification in a series of controlled steps? Isn’t that a bit like asking a demolition crew to demolish a building brick by brick instead of what it normally does? Which is, mine it, blow it up, and bulldoze and haul away the debris?”

While there are many worthwhile discussion in the book, I’m going to argue here that the general thesis expressed by all the contributors is based on an outdated and discredited concept of environmentalism rooted more in ideology than rational thought.

The tone is set by our ex-Minister Eamon Ryan in his preface when he invokes the 1972 Club of Rome report The Limits to Growth when discussing the potential for new technologies:

“Some will argue that new natural gas supplies will allow us to get off the hook. It is true that new shale gas supplies have altered the international gas markets. However, as Dennis Meadows and others showed in the 1972 book The Limits to Growth, the challenge this century will be to avoid breaching one of a number of constraints that come with living on a finite planet. “Even if gas is more easily available and even if it has relatively low carbon emissions in comparison with other fossil fuels, the reality is that simply replacing oil with natural gas will see us breach the greenhouse gas limits that the best scientific advice says we have to avoid”. (my emphasis).

To my mind this statement rather well expresses some of the core contradictions and confusion in the environmental movement. Essentially, as regards shale gas or other potential ways of new energy sources, Ryan is arguing they should not be used because we have already past the “limits” of what should be used, with reference to a 40-year old report based on computer models.

Make no mistake: I used to think the same myself. I used to argue that limits had been reached a long time ago and any attempt to extend them further would merely lead to a bigger crash and die-off later. Neo-Malthusians argue the same: dont work to feed the hungry of the world, that will simply lead to them breeding all the more and even more people starving later on. (I personally know individuals who subscribe to this policy.) This vile philosophy fails to understand the essential ways in which humanity differs from other species who are indeed subject to limits of boom-and-bust cycles: language and technology.

Whatever about the “science” of climate change, Ryan fails to explain that the dangers of future climate change need to be balanced against the current benefits of cheap energy now and the future wealth it will foster which, coupled with ongoing technological innovation, will set us in a better position to withstand such future challenges.

There are certainly some interesting chapters. Richard Douthwaite, who has written an earlier book surveying attempts at various models of alternative currencies, and who initiated a L.E.T.S. system that I was briefly involved with in Westport, Co. Mayo, advocates regional Liquidity Exchange Networks to help with the credit crunch. Local councils would open accounts in Quids- the generic name for regional currencies- which could be used for public services, possibly to pay a proportion of tax and some other uses; the supply of currency would be completely transparent and can be automatically increased or decreased according to the needs of the system. It is not clear how well they might work on a regional level however; many local areas in Ireland have so little manufacturing that there might not be enough local economic activity to warrant their introduction. Nevertheless, Feasta is dong important work in researching such initiatives and new currency models of this kind may become essential in the near future as the financial crisis deepens.

None of the authors pick up on the fact that it has been the recession that has proved to be not only the most effective instrument by far in reducing CO2 emissions, but the only effective instrument, while environmental concerns have gone out the window for the same reasons, as evidenced by the annihilation of the Irish Green Party, including the loss of Minister Ryan’s seat, in the elections that followed the publication of this book.

Why on earth would anyone be interested in policies that might increase fuel prices when they are struggling to pay their mortgage or keep their jobs, while at the same time we are being told big international globalised institutions are unlikely to last much longer anyway, so the effort required to develop international climate treaties seems futile. Who would give a damn about small amounts of global average temperature increases that may or may not happen 100 years from now when the same people are telling us the supermarkets might be going to run out of food and we should start stashing cans of beans? These interesting issues are not explored by the contributors.

We are treated however to some rather glaring examples of ideological bias: -Patrick Andrews includes in his table comparing the “old and new mindset” “Giving back to Mother Earth more than we take”- an explicitly religious viewpoint; the idea that we need a new mindset and that Andrews is the one to tell us what it might be is just taken as a given- detractors are suffering from a cognitive dissonance attributable to a human propensity to assume that because everything has been ok so far it will be ok in the future. An alternative view might be that Andrews is the one suffering from cognitive dissonance attributable to the human tendency to spend decades and even lifetimes assuming that the End is Nigh.

-Brian Davey includes in his list of “well-established trends in global food production” – which he recommends “if you really want to be frightened”- the old canard about “terminator seeds”: “Development “terminator” seeds to concentrate all seed sales in the hands of a corporate elite.” Maybe his “peer-reviewed” source for this was The Economics of Happiness. How many times do I have to debunk this? Terminator seeds were never developed or used outside the laboratory, and were originally created only as a safeguard against gene-flow. GE seeds can be saved by farmers in most cases; most farmers however continue to buy their seeds quite happily without needing to invoke 9-11 type conspiracy theories.

-Davey will also raise some eyebrows with his unequivocal statement: “If fossil fuels create climate change they should be banned from sale without a permit. Period.” Which sounds not only quite nutty but a call for the end of debate and even maybe even democracy.

-in a later chapter Davy and Rutledge lament the loss of public trust in science, mentioning Climategate but not even considering the possibility that this might actually represent a good reason for people not to trust activist scientists.

-Anne Ryan in an chapter on “Changing the Way we think” is positioned firmly in the “nature knows best” naturalistic fallacy: “Nature favours cycles because they come to an organic end after a suitable period of growth. They do not go on growing because in nature, that is a cancer.” Maybe someone should explain to Ryan that cancer is nature as well. Cycles don’t come to an end in nature because nature knows better but because other species dont have the ability to innovate their way out of these limits. Give any species- including cancer cells- the ability to overcome the limits of evolution and they will take the chance just as we have done.

This kind of naive blabber about “nature” in the context of this book would really make you wonder whether Feasta is actually a “think tank” at all or merely another branch of the seemingly all-pervasive Church of Gaia.

Maybe it starts with the editor Richard Douthwaite, an excellent writer and economist whose chapter I enjoyed and he makes a lot of very sensible points about the problems with the euro and other aspects of our current economic plight. Douthwaite’s views seem however to be underpinned by a retro-romantic wish to return to the 16th century:

“I argued that the wrong turn was taken in England in the 16th Century as the population began to recover from the balck Death. The increased numbers- a rise from 1.6million to 5.5million in less than 200 years- naturally put pressure on resources and caused communities to have problems living within the limits imposed by their local environments. In 1631, Edmund Howes described how this had forced them to start burning coal…

“That was it. The thin end of the wedge. The slippery slope…” Oh dear. Just as humanity was doing OK and keeping everything nice and simple and civilized without too much technology, someone went and started digging out the smelly black stuff and its been downhill ever since.A few quick centuries later and we have those awful supermarkets stocked with cheap food and 27 types of chocolate rice crispies, Twitter, Lady Gaga and God knows what else. It’s all been a terrible mistake!

Mr. Douthwaite may well prefer to be living in the 16th century, but probably not as one of the vast majority of the population who were landless peasants with pretty much no further prospects from birth to a most likely early death. While he acknowledges that no-one was going to protest then against the shift to coal, he ignores the fact that there is no chance we will voluntarily leave fossil energy until there is a cheaper, better alternative. Thankfully, he at least accepts that individual actions like going off grid are futile and that energy solutions are better done collectively, while Corinna Byrne apparently thinks that “the installation of small wind turbines to power ones home will also help”- no it wont Corinna, dont be daft.

Douthwaite, in common with the other main authors, assume that technology will have little to offer, and hence “collapse is inevitable” as David Korowicz argues. I had the opportunity to ask David how he could be so sure that another energy transition was impossible, siting shale gas; fuel cells and breakthrough solar technology; oil from algae; and thorium reactors as potential candidates for new energy sources. He replied that a)there is no time- peak oil and financial collapse are upon us; and b)none of these (apart from oil from algae) actually replace the convenience of oil as a liquid fuel for transport. In a discussion later he recommended Vaclav Smil’s book Energy Myths and Realities. Apparently Smil does not accept the peak oil hypothesis but empasizes that an energy transition away from fossil fuels will take decades.

Clearly we have enormous challenges, but what the peak oil doomer theorists in this book fail to address is that growth, prosperity and development do not rely only on digging holes in the ground and extracting the goodies until they are all gone and collapse ensues, but also that we are clever monkeys whos defining nature is technology and innovation. This is nothing to do with the quasi-religious New Age beliefs that Davie Philip mentions in his chapter as being off-putting to some in the Transition Towns movement, and which are also clearly expressed in some of the offerings here, of having lost our way, separated from nature, fallen from Eden and having lead to the hubris of thinking we can control nature, but simply that that is what we are as human beings.

I could take the doomer prognosis expressed in this book more seriously if there wasn’t such an apparent rubbing of hands with glee at the prospect of collapse. This is clearest in Orlov’s chapter. Orlov clearly thinks that the enormous successes of the modern world at feeding people are just a huge mistake:

“What piece of technological innovation do we imagine will enable this maize-dependent population to diversify their food sources and learn to feed themselves without the use of fossil inputs?” but ignores the possible but politically incorrect answer of genetic engineering and other new plant breeding techniques which could indeed help lower the resources needed to feed the growing population. He is right of course that there should be more to life than fast food and computer games, but forgets that for the majority of human existence there has been little more to life than a rather brutal struggle for survival.

Korowicz told me he would love to be wrong, and has no wish to lose the benefits of the modern world, but finds it hard to be optimistic. This seems reasonable enough but predicting the future is still really little more than a parlor game. Other contributors seem naive beyond belief in terms of what a low-energy world where we learn to say “enough” will actually be like- not one I think we would ever chose.

While there are valuable ideas on the economy and new ways of organizing businesses and community contained in this book, it unfortunately fails to provide a credible analyses of the predicament we are in, instead providing only a hop-scotch of doomer predictions of the future and new age pap.

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.

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.

Having now reached the shortest days of the year I am in a position to evaluate its performance, and I can say it has served me very well. Obviously there has been a huge difference in power availability between summer and winter, but in fact the last 10 days here have seen constant sunshine -along with freezing temperatures- and I have probably had more power so far in December than October.

As I said in the earlier post, on a system like this you cut your cloth according to your measure, so giving an account of my energy consumption would be misleading- I would use more electricity if i had it! In fact though I use and need very little- on average 1-2Kwh/day would be loads to run computer, one or two lights, radio and some power tool use. Some days I would use more, and I made good use of an electric chainsaw during the longer days. The only major increase in power consumption is likely to come from a washing machine which I intend to get in the near future, the model I am looking at only uses 1.2kw per cycle, and would easily be achievable on any sunny day any time of the year.

I did run short of power a couple of weeks ago and have invested in a small petrol generator as a back up, mainly to protect the batteries, and to ensure I need never be without some power if I want it. I have only had to run the generator on a handful of evenings during cloudy weather when I have run the batteries down with power tools during the day; it would not however be too much of a hardship to do without the generator and only use power when available.

To increase power availability I could put up a wind turbine, but at this stage it might be better to invest in more batteries- I only have approx. 1000Amph storage at present- and maybe a couple more PV panels. This might be sufficient as I dont expect to be increasing my electricity consumption drastically any time soon. The great advantage of PV over wind is that there are no moving parts, no maintenance and they are modular- I can add in more panels whenever I have some spare cash.

In short I am satisfied that I can live just on a modest solar array even in cloudy gray Ireland. For my situation it has been a good option; for a family of four, maybe not unless supplemented by wind.

I also want to mention my new Rayburn wood burning range that I  installed in the cabin just this weekend. It replaces a cast iron stove, but I missed the range  from the roundhouse for baking, and I am delighted with it so far. Ranges are a great option, doing everything at once: space heating, water heating, oven for baking, hob for cooking. It might require a little more wood than the stove, but that is one source of fuel I have plenty of. It should mean I use less gas for cooking at least in the winter months, and increases resilience as I could do without gas altogether if I had to.

Best of all, the range was free- many thanks to Liam and Ger who were replacing it with an oil burner, and to Ciara who pointed them in my direction!

We also got to play with the PV demonstration panel we have at the Kinsale college.

The meter reads 3.19 amps from an 80watt panel.

Delivering a cool 600 watts of raw solar power at 24volts, the impressive bank of solar electric panels represents a true powering up here at Derryduff.

The panels cost me about 2000 euros on ebay- about 2/3 of the new price; they were originally from Surface Power.

I also have a bank of 4 Rolls batteries (244Ah each) bought from Wind and Sun. Cost: 1300 euros.

The 2.5Kw inverter is from Victron; I bought it a few years ago for around 1500 euros.

The controller is a  ProStar -30 from Morningstar, supplied by the Sustainability Institute for 85 euros.

Add in 24v compact fluorescent lights, cables and connectors and you are looking at over 5000 euros for this system.

(I also have another two pv panels I have had for some time which would add an extra 150watts, giving a total of 750 watts).

People often ask: does that give you enough power? but when living off the grid, this is really the wrong question- you have to cut your cloth according to your measure, and a battery system involves juggling energy supply- the amount of sunlight- with storage capacity, which determines how much power you can actually use.

In an often cloudy northern latitude country like Ireland living with just solar  means that there is a huge variation in supply, from a massive surplus in the summer- the batteries are full but the power just keeps coming in when the sun is out.

(The panels will still charge when it is overcast, but only at a small fraction of their capacity.)

The 100 shortest days of the year here generate only about 10% of the annual sunlight, giving an indication of the issue here- which is also an issue for bigger scale national solar systems.

On the other hand in the winter, when demand for lighting is highest and sunlight is lowest, I may be struggling to run my basic needs for a light, radio and laptop.

(Energy saving tip for laptop users: my Lenovo laptop uses about 50 watts, but this can be reduced by half if you take the battery out while using it, even if the battery is full.)

You can’t just keep buying more batteries or more solar panels because of the cost, so it is a completely different philosophy from living on the grid where you can just plug anything you want in any time. I will need to try to time my maximum power use- such as building work with power tools- to coincide with the longest days of sunshine.

The cheapest way of improving the system then would be to install a small wind turbine,which would make a huge difference and probably tide me over quite well through the shortest days.

Solar costs something like twice as much per kilowatt hour as wind in Ireland, but only in optimum sites; I am in a not particularly suitable site for wind, and a substantial amount of cost of wind would be in the tower, with costs increasing according to the height of the tower. The height of the tower is critical, you need it as high as possible to catch the faster wind speeds and avoid turbulence from obstacles.

It was technically much simpler to set up a solar array, and since there are no moving parts this system also has the advantage over wind of minimal maintenance.

So what can I actually run from my system? Since I am coming from a very low base of consumption with hardly any electrical appliances, for the summer at least I am in the luxurious position of being able to dream about how i would like to use my surplus power. I have already bought a small 1L electric kettle which uses 1Kw, and this I consider a very useful addition because it will save a significant amount of gas (my ususal form of cooking) during the summer.

Power tool use will be very important for building work over the summer, but the next major step will be to get… a washing machine!! in terms of labour saving devices, this has got to be tops, and only then will I be able to feel that I have left the domain of the beasts and joined the rest of the human race.

(Currently I cheat: the launderette or relying on my girlfriends; goodwill, which is probably running short by now in any case.)

Make no mistake: living off grid is hugely expensive, and requires some knowledge and skills which I only have in rudimentary fashion. It requires a quite different relationship to energy use than that which most are accustomed to as you can’t assume you can just turn on what you want when you want.Overall, it would be prohibitive in cost to have a system that approaches the profligate domestic energy consumption of the average household- I rarely have more than one light on for example!

One result of this is that you become much more aware of your energy consumption and much more cautious about increasing it and thereby increasing demand.

Maybe one day the grid will start to fail and all my investement will seem worthwhile as I am the only one in the valley still with the lights on.

Until, that is, the batteries start to fail- as the Achilles heel of an off-grid system, their life expectancy is unlikely to exceed 10 years by much, by which time who knows if society will be able to supply replacements?

In the meantime, I’m going to put the kettle on again and then go and soak up some of this glorious weather.

The present world population of 6.7 billion is projected by the United Nations to increase to 9 billion and may rise to as many as 11 billion by 2050. Even if a worldwide policy of two children per couple (instead of the current 2.8 children) were agreed on tomorrow, the world population will continue to expand for about seventy years before stabilizing at about 13 billion people.

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.

Right: Sustainability editor Andy Wilson hard at work

Andy Wilson’s creation of the Sustainability Magazine has been a remarkable achievement, bringing a much-needed serious journal into the Irish environmental landscape. Starting up a new magazine from scratch is no mean feat and the scholarly and well-researched articles on a wide range of topics is to be greatly welcomed. The third issue is out this week.

I also got a chance to see the recently refurbished cottage that Andy and Meetje have been renovating over the past couple of years. Now finished with new more insulation, hemp and lime plaster, skylights- triple glazed!!- ad many other improvements, the cottage is an impressive example of what can be done to improve energy efficiency and comfort in an old stone cottage and it is great to see Meetje and family safely ensconced once again under the new roof!

Andy is also an expert on renewable energy systems and contributed the most useful chapter of the booklet I wrote with Dr. Colin Campbell, Living Through the Energy Crisis in which he details how the household reduced its domestic energy consumption and now is run largely from onsite wind-turbine and PV cells:

A return to Clare Island was next where we repitched the yurt for the Clare Island Yoga Centre- surely one of the most spectacular views from a yurt anywhwere.

While on the island we stayed with Sean and Maggie O’Grady. Sean showed me around the farm he had grown up on which was a poignant snapshot of how island life has changed over the last two or three generations, from growing up in the pictured stone thatched cottage and living in close proximity with the animals to taking on the farm while his siblings left the island to seeing the end of the Celtic Tiger and a progressive erosion of farming life during the last few years as grants have disappeared, stocking levels been drastically reduced and turf cutting (for fuel) banned for environmental reasons.

“The island needs some new blood. Many islanders have land they can no longer use- why not invite in some young families from the cities who could make a new start here and reinvigorate the community? With the young people leaving the island and few young families left the long term prospects for the island are poor”.

Next we moved onto the Organic Centre in Leitrim where I gave a one-day intro to Permaculture course as last year. This was again well-attended and the feedback was excellent- it is always gratifying to see people curious and new to the permaculture concept be stirred by its power to help see things differently and provide real solutions. We also had the opportunity to work on the Organic Centre’s forest garden which is beginning to look very good.

One one of the course participants was Rebecca Hillman who blogs about her smallholding adventures on Sally Gardens and kindly invited us to pay a visit after the course.

Of particular interest were Rebecca’s Californian meat rabbits which she has recently blogged about.

Below: Meat rabbits- to cute to eat?

Thanks to Rebecca and dan for showing us around and good luck with all their future projects.

Charcoal will potentially play an important role in the post-oil world, with many important uses including for use on a blacksmith’s forge-i it burns much hotter than wood; I have read that it can even reach welding temperatures.

The oil drum method is quite simple- in this case I am using an old honey barrel which has a clamp lid. Punture the bottom of the drum with a pick -axe, making a few holes so as to allow air to be drawn from the base upwards. Stand the drum on three blocks. Light a fire in the bottom of the drum and as it catches, begin filling the whole drum with logs- 8-10 inces long and 4-5 inches in diameter is ideal. Place them so they sit in fairly snuggly but no need to pack really tight. Once the drum is full allow the fire to burn for a while until it is hot enough for your spit to sizzle on the side of the drum. At this point, place the lid on loosely leaving a gap and pack earth and sods around the base of the drum leaving just a 4″ gap for air to pass. Burn for about 5 hours- expect lots of smoke! It is important to do the whole operation well away from people or places that might not want to disappear in clouds of smoke.

After ta few hours you can see the smoke lessen and turn a thin bluish colour- this means that the water vapor will have burned off. At this point, close off the last of the air gap at the base with earth and sods and seal the lid tightly- it is crucial to completely seal it so no smoke escapes else you may end up with just a load of ash. Leave to cool overnight or for a few hours. If successful, the drum should be about a third full of charcoal when you come to open it.

Once you have tasted food barbecued on home-made charcoal, you will never go back to imported stuff. There is also a business opportunity here for wood-owners, as the current price of charcoal is up to 10 times the price of the wood. This makes charcoal one of the most significant incomes potentially to make a woodland financially viable, using small-diameter timber.

Improvements of efficiency can be achieved using retort kilns

Other products such as creosote can be made sing similar processes. It is also possible to collect the resulting wood-gas and use it as a fuel for generators or vehicles as was common in the first half of the 20th Century

Garrett, who has a Masters in Sustainable Energy from UCC, founded the project three years ago to promote training and facilities for bikes and pedal powered machines in Cork. From their website:

“Cork community bikes is developing a do-it-yourself bike workshop for the community to use. Our work aims to salvage unwanted bicycles from the waste stream, repair them and resell them. We work with local schools and youth groups promoting the use of bicycles and sustainable transport . We want the workshop to be a centre of training and a social focus for anybody with an interest in bicycles in the cork city.”

I had a go on their pedal-powered dynamo which can be used to power sound systems at festivals. This is something I could really do with, having limited power at home, for charging batteries. A good dynamo with a fit pedaler can generate something in the range of 100watts, enough to run a laptop computer for example.

Another good site with info on pedal powered dynamos can be found here.

Pedal power is of course a key part of any post-oil society and it is great to see projects like this springing up providing such tools and skills. All power to their pedals.

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