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.

See Dan Dennett on “Belief in belief” here

Updates: I’ve just put a couple of updates for clarification and a couple more links. I’ve marked them in the text.

I also want to say, whatever about my concerns regarding the ideology behind Transition, there is heaps of great work being done in the movement, which is hugely influential in exploring  responses to Peak Oil and Climate Change. I am particularly looking forward to reading the “Can Totnes District Feed Itself” report- I hope it has some recipes in it!

I paid a visit to a forum on Transition and permaculture over at Transition Culture recently- wow, I only just got out in time before they lynched me! Apparently, post-modern lunacy is alive and well in the Transition Land where in a very interesting discussion on Transition, Permaculture, inclusiveness and the like, it became apparent that some things are just not on the table for discussion- yes you guessed it, yours truly raised the old chestnut of the evils of faith and all Hell broke loose. I quickly found myself embroiled in a disappear-up-your-own backside post- modern attack on my freedom of speech and left the forum just before the hounds were let out to accuse me of “bashing people of faith”.

The trouble started because of my comment:

“Faith is the one thing that will not help us deal with what is coming down the line!”

To which Rob replied:

“As fascinating observation, but, to my thinking, complete nonsense, and a somewhat dangerous perspective. I understand where you are coming from, that religion is not based on science, that it is irrational, ‘The God Delusion’ etc. etc. That is as maybe.

However,there are many many people around the world in crisis right now, whether it be through illness, war or whatever, for whom their faith is one of the key things that gets them through, logical or not. Of course one can construct an intellectual argument that says that we should be aiming to move people away from that, but there is, I would suggest, a deep arrogance to that.”

Now the charge of arrogance is predictable coming from Rob- all to easy a put-down and way of avoiding the issue. It should not be hard however to think of some of the evil consequences of faith (belief without reason):

-suicide bombings

-jihadism

-oppression of women

-institutional child abuse spanning decades in Irish industrial schools

-promotion of and support for quack medicines that dont work and might put people’s lives at risk;

-support for Man U FC (just joking- that’s not really evil, just demented).

I’m sure you can easily think of more.

Update: Here are a few more:

-the cynical exploitation of the bereaved by charlatan spiritualists;

-the dumbing down of education by the insistence on teaching Creationism as a theory of equal standing with the facts of evolution;

-the stiffling of stem-cell research

OK, you could argue that not all of these are a direct result of the faith in question, but in the case of the kind of institutional child abuse of the kind described in The Ryan Report- which has been widely referred to in the public debates as the Irish Holocaust- it is the special treatment demanded by churches over the years and the deference paid to “people of faith” as a special category who should somehow be revered and exempt from scrutiny and criticism which allows such horrors to continue unchallenged for so long.

On a forum such as Rob’s it seems a sad day that I should have to defend my right to criticize faith in a general sense and ask for more rational approaches to life, but this just shows that there is still a strong post-modern influence in the Transition movement.

This could be described as the “mean green meme”- a phrase from the stages of consciousness model Spiral Dynamics, which I have written about before here:

Instead of looking ahead to what the next Emergent meme may be, Green thinks it has found Nirvana already and in a paroxysm of narcissism and naïve romantic views of what life used to be like back in the good old days it destroys the goose that laid the golden egg- the very scientific method that lead to the deeper Green ecological understanding in the first place.

Incidentally, I don’t subscribe to SD as an accurate model and feel that it has cultish aspects itself; however it does provide a useful framework to discuss  cultural values and attitudes.

The Green or Post-modern Meme has certain characteristics which actually work towards oppression and restriction of free speech:

-over concern of political correctness and concern about how things are said rather than what is being said;

-a contradictory stance that claims all beliefs are equal -but some (their own) are more equal than others;

-a rejection of science- usually selective- as being “just another belief system”;

-this can lead to for example a tolerance and even promotion of pseudoscience and superstition which claim “equal status”;

-an over-sensitivity and concern with feelings over facts which tends to take offense at the first opportunity, thereby making intelligent debate impossible;

Update: The insistence that I drop my arguments or modify my tone because “I am so sure I am right but my view is really only one amongst many” is a particularly insidious argument that could be seen to be the hallmark of post-modern hypocrisy and delusion. It is only, note, used as a defense against the requirement of evidence for beliefs, never with regard to beliefs that we all know to be true: climate change is mainly man-made; peak oil will usher in an energy descent we are ill-prepared for.

When considering the evidence for climate change, for example, we are not likely to hear the objection:

“Ah, no man, you’re so arrogant!! You seem to think you’re right!! Why can’t you see you’re view is just one amongst many- and all views deserve equal respect.”

Honestly, if I were to give climate deniers some advice, I would say, take a page out of the New Age book- throw the “scientism” or “science is just another belief system” argument at them! Failing that, just claim your climate -denying beliefs are sacred -they are part of your religion and therefore cannot be challenged.

(Ironically, I just found this story of a climate change activist using the special priveledge afforded religion to defend his case!)

Do we really have to still have this corrupt and turgid debate about epistimology, even amongst ourselves as we prepare for the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced?

Let’s all join hands in a circle and repeat after me:

-not all beliefs are equal

-evidence is better than faith

Really, our future may depend on this. The views of New Agers regarding science as “another belief system” that cannot answer “holistic questions” are false. This is not a matter of opinion, it is a fact. You would think really that we should be able to state that in the context of a debate on Transition without being dismissed as being “arrogant”.

These Post-modern positions have had many dire consequences for society over the last several decades and have been criticized for such things as

-giving more resources for perpetrators of crime rather than their victims;

-a complete inability to deal with extreme beliefs and fundamentalism which are explicitly opposed to the post-modern agenda itself (“I’m sure if we could just bring Al Quaeda to the Heart and Soul Group, reach out to them and really show that we respect their beliefs they will be happy to work with us”);

-the existence of homeopathy degrees.

In the forum- which was Rob’s response to Sharon Astyk’s astute critique of Permaculture and Transition- the discussion covered many interesting topics and many opinions, but several people clearly had issues on the “hold-hands-in-a-circle-and-share-your-feelings” aspects of the inner work often found within Transition groups, which is strongly influenced by the work of Joanna Macey.

The comment that best sums up the issues raised here- which were also common on Sharon’s forum- was this brilliant piece from Julian on Rob’s forum, in response to a commentator who complained that the discussion on faith in a debate on inclusiveness in Transition was not appropriate:

Maybe you could provide a profile of the type of chaps/chapesses that you would like to “wander” in and join the circle and be made to feel welcome in to the light of the infinite sun.I have already witnessed inquisitive folk “wander”off from transition meetings for the foreseeable even before the enlightened ones hands have clasped one another.Perhaps the speed at which this debate has moved from circles to religion to exclusion should tell us something!

Clearly this is a divisive issue and both forums had many interesting and useful comments on it. My own perspective on this is, yes circles and feelings can take many forms and can be very useful for personal growth work etc, and some people get a huge amount out of them. For myself, I have done more than my fair share of this kind of thing and no longer feel the need. I worked with Joanna Macey many years ago and at the time was hugely influenced and inspired by her work; however I do feel it is ideological and lacks a critical component- hence the “cultish” aspects that can put people off (including people of other faiths.)

Sharon has already discussed this in her blog, personal development work is important for some but there should be more  models available.

I am not claiming TT is a cult, far from it, but this represents a “cultish aspect” that maybe should be avoided- or at least made less prominent. The ideological basis for Transition is hard to deny – and the New Age influence, particularly in regard to the promotion of Alternative Therapies in the Transition Timeline should be of concern to everyone who undertands the movement is dependent on a good understanding of the science that underpins climate change and peak oil.

Nor am I “bashing people of faith”- I have no problem working with “people of faith” but I do take strong issue with ascribing them a special privilege with ring-fences their beliefs putting them above critical appraisal. You want arrogance? Hard to beat an inviolable and unchallengeable belief in the Supernatural.

And that is the whole problem with Faith- by its very nature it demands that it is not questioned- believe in it and it and it will be true is I think the  basis of New Age pseudoscience- ie that your feelings thoughts and consciousness create physical reality- but underpins much more traditional religious belief also, eg the Power of Prayer- God will answer your prayers if you just believe in him enough.

I was accused on the forum of making assumptions about people’s faith, that they must be stupid or something. Sharon herself kindly responded and did not seem to find me arrogant but made a couple of very revealing observations:

I know few really religious people who haven’t experience with atheism. I’m sure there are some who don’t, but I don’t think it is a majority experience – how could it be, if you are a reasonably thoughtful person who has reasonably thoughtful considerations of the question of G-d? The reality is that more people go through atheism and come out at faith than vice versa – and far more in times of difficulty. To some, I’m sure this looks like an irrational strategy, or an inability to tolerate the truth. To others it will look different.

Most people of faith may question their faith; it is often seen as a virtue to struggle with these doubts and overcome them, thereby strengthening the faith. Maybe, though, many who profess faiths do not hold them strongly if at all- it seems clear that the “faith communities” are at least as much about community as about faith, but even so, the faith- aspect is surely a hindrance than a help precisely because these communities do not presumably foster and help develop critical approaches- the faith is a given even if you are struggling with it.

I dont assume people with faith are stupid or have not considered atheism; it is not hard to find other reasons why they may be reluctant or unable to make the leap:

-as said already, the need for the community may be stronger than the need for critical thinking;

-the nature of faith itself- and especially the post-modern culture of political correctness and false concepts of “equality” suppresses the emergence of a strong secular alternative, which is largely absent from public debate;

-we have an evolutionary predisposition to irrational beliefs

(see also the work of Susan Blackmore)

-historically, the church has been very powerful and effective at indoctrinating us and scaring us as children with visions of hell which may still contribute to our reticence to take on beliefs in adulthood;

-it is also possible that they are, well, stupid… Update: or perhaps more vulnerable to exploitation by powerful groups who use the “faith is a virtue” card to manipulate and control and extort.

I have consistently tried to draw parallels between the kind of thinking that denies climate change or fails to recognize our dependence on oil and its depletion and the psychology of faith; this is why I see these issues as so important for Transition. This may translates into the transition movement as being an over-reliance on “vision” and less on realism and substance; and while it does not advocate any particular  faith (other than in Transition itself) there is a promotion of pseudoscience (which undermines people’s understanding of climate science etc) ; a tolerance of the Faith Communities as somehow privileged; and an intolerance of secular values and critical thought.

Rob says:

Is it a tenable perspective to suggest that we only work with and engage those that have renounced any world view based on anything other than rational science? Of course not.

Of course that is not what I am suggesting. The post-modern idea that we can work with anyone who supports the need for Transition doesnt work, because we wont work with the BNP and that is NOT because they dont believe in climate change; equally we might not tolerate female oppression per se, but what if there is a “faith-based group” which treats women as second class citizens but is very strong on adaptive strategies to PO and GW?

I balk at Rob’s idea of:

I am particularly taken with the idea, which has got me thinking feverishly over the weekend, about what Transition trainings might look like if the inner aspects were developed with people from different faith groups, and if those elements of the trainings were based in that culture and language. Doesn’t feel like we disagreed on the need for some element of an inner aspect to the Transition training, rather on where it is coming from, how accessible it is and how comfortable it feels…

There is an alternative. Transition could adopt specifically secular values, and have a Critical Thinking Class alongside every heart and Soul Group. This would educate people about science and the scientific method, an essential part I would have thought of transition.

Udate: The public understanding of science is very poor, which is one of the reasons people are still reluctant to accept the inconvenient truth- they are easily swayed by the deniers who use some of the same methods to discredit climate science as quacks use to confuse the public about medical evidence. The parallels should be obvious; but by exposing one, we cannot ignore the other.

There is no need to avoid faith-groups or in any way demonize them- although we must be bold enough to accept that some of them are indeed diabolical, but we must not give them special status because of their faiths.

The promotion of pseudo-science should be dropped and explicitly avoided especially with reference to health care.

Rational, secular and atheist approaches should be welcomed and promoted, they should not be dismissed as “arrogance”; with tools to develop critical faculties added to the tools for inner work.

The whole area of faith and the freedom to challenge it; of the public understanding of science and rationality, and evidence-based approaches are issues not just for Transition, but for society as a whole and for democracy. These issues concern what kind of values we hold and what kind of world we want to live in.

Update: Inner work -personal development- can be done in a secular fashion, and in fact Transition could be positioned to play a great role in developing this. There is already models out there; for any seeker of truth who is dabbling with religion, spiritual practice or personal development, I would invite you to try the work of Eric Maisel. I found his book The Atheists’ Way- Living Well without Gods- wonderful and I wish I had come across it years ago.It should be much more widely known.

The website Point of Inquiry has regular interviews on the subject of secular humanism.

There is plenty more material available once you start looking for it. The “inner work” bit does not have to be done in any context of religion or spirtituality, or ideologies of any kind, and would be far more effective and useful to people if it were not.

There are no gods, no spirits, the supernatural is a delusion- one we are however, all susceptible to believe at times.

Whether you can accept this or not, you should at least join me in making it normal and acceptible to have people express this view.

Ironic and appropriate then for us in Ireland that this debate takes place the week a Balsphemy Law is passed here- which has in turn spawned a new religion of Dermotology!

Not only that, but Sharon is quite correct: in times of crisis, people may turn in desperation to irrational faiths to save them- it was widely reported in the Irish media this week that hundreds of people are gathering at a tree stump near Rathkeel in Co.Limerick to pray around a tree stump where has appeared the face of the Virgin Mary. One commentator made the point that we should not mock these people -they are the same ones who put their faith previously in the Irish Banking system!

Ah the many angles and aspects of Faith- faith we can succeed; faith we are doing the right thing (are we?); faith things will be alright.

If we are to have Faith in transition, we must be free to speak out against the problems caused by faith. And if we succeed in this, maybe we will find a future world where faith itself  moves into transition, away from its privileged status which has held humanity in chains for so long.

Further Reading

The End of Faith Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris

For an alternative view, Dmitri Orlov, author of the acclaimed Reinventing Collapse puts the case for sudden collapse very well in his recent post The Slope of Dysfunction

What, then, of our canonical Peak Oil scenario, which is that global crude oil (and natural gas condensate) production will rise to a lofty peak sometime soon, and then gently waft down, over several decades, until, by the year 2050 or some other distant date, less than half as much oil will be produced globally? Ever eager to present a hopeful vision, I will say here and now that I believe this scenario to be entirely plausible… but it requires alien intervention. As Russian oil production was saved by foreigners, so Earthling oil production must be be saved by aliens from outer space.

Orlov’s basic premise is that sudden collapse can only be mitigated once a country’s indigenous oil has peaked by making up the difference with increased imports, something that will not be possible after global oil peak.

The Soviet Union provides a historical model for this-

“There, production declined 43% between 1987 and 1996. The decline was arrested and reversed by the introduction of foreign investment and technology”.

It could be argued that the Soviet Union is not a good model because of other reasons such as its political system, but in fact, as he shows in his book, parts of the West, especially North America, are much less well placed to withstand abrupt declines in oil supply.

If Orlov is correct, our efforts at creating Energy Descent Plans and Transition Strategies would be better spent flashing SOS signals up into the night sky or hanging around those crop circles in the hope their alien authors will return with a few barrels of crude.

It will be very hard to mitigate any such sudden collapse, but Orlov links oil peak directly with financial collapse, which he predicts will be followed by political collapse, and then social collapse; these scenarios could be just around the corner, judging by the gathering speed of financial and political decline.

All is not lost however, and to read Orlov’s unique and side-ways look at how we might prepare (and how we might not) essential reading is here in his adress to last month’s Feasta Conference in Dublin Definancialisation, Deglobalisation, Relocalisation.

See especially slide no. 19 on this post “Collapse” or “Transition” ? for his sardonic view of the Transition movement.

Slide no. 2 helps explain why I take issue with Chamberlin’s views on population in my review of The Transition Timeline. On paper of course it may be possible to argue as he does that if we all did the right thing and reduced our consumption to, say, half of what it is now- the level of energy consumption of Cuba- reducing population might not be so urgent; in reality, it is incredibly difficult for us to voluntarily reduce our energy consumption. Most people living at the level of Cubans would love to increase their consumption and have an easier life!

I probably have a lower energy cosumption thatn average for ireland (not by much, mind you) and earn my living teaching how to reduce consumption, but the one thing I could do right now that would make a significant difference would be to get rid of the van, something that is not currently an option for financial reasons.

See also the comment from Andy Wilson at the end of the Transition Timeline review -we may be heading for just of 1/10 energy availability by 2040 which would be closer to the per capita consumption of India, not Cuba. Great for a gap year back-packing trip, but not something most of us would choose voluntarily no matter how motivated we are.

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.

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 8  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

Subject

The concept of “energy descent” was first proposed by Howard Odum who recognized that the human economy is governed by the Laws of thermodynamics and energy and resource availability.

Odum believed that if we were guided by geologists and ecologists as much as by economists, we would be able to safely navigate our way across the inevitable peaking of world oil production and find “a prosperous way down”.

David Holmgren drew on Odum’s thesis in creating the permaculture concept in the 1970s, and more recently proposed a set of “Energy Future Scenarios” to allow us to peak into the future and gain an image of where we may be heading.

“I use the term ‘descent’ as the least loaded word that honestly conveys the inevitable, radical reduction of material consumption and/or human numbers that will characterise the declining decades and centuries of fossil fuel abundance and availability.” -Davie Holmgren

The ‘industrial ascent’  of Hubert’s curve over the past 150 years has given us a one-time energy bonanza allowing the industrialisation of almost every aspect of our life and the globalisation of our economies. Continual economic growth has required an assumption of continuing increase of energy availability, a myth we can now see as we sink into a post oil-peak world and the commencement of global recession.

The first scenario, then, would be to continue with ‘Business as Usual’, anticipating a simple continuation of the upward curve of energy consumption we have seen in recent history. This path takes us ‘to infinity and beyond’ as we continue to try to grow our economy and keep society going just as it is. However, Holmgren refers to this scenario as “techno-fantasy” because, despite decades of talk and research on new energy forms such as hydrogen or nuclear fusion, our economies have become inexorably more dependent on dwindling supplies of fossil fuels. There seems no technological revolution on the horizon

The second scenario -‘green tech stability’ -is assumed by mainstream environmentalists and progressive politicians: as oil supplies fall away we carry on as before with a high-energy lifestyle, only switch everything to run off renewables.

Systems theory would suggest that this is unlikely because running at such high levels of energy consumption is inherently unstable and, as we have seen, renewables will fall far short of plugging the supply gap left after oil peak.

The third option, and the one Holmgren proposes as the most likely, is ‘Earth Stewardship’: a rapid powerdown with a radical localisation of our food and energy systems, a revitalising of community, and the adoption of values that promote the careful husbandry of natural resources.

“Energy Descent, where available energy and resulting organizational complexity progressively decline over many generations, is the most ignored of the four possible long-term futures, but I think the evidence is strong and increasing that it is the most likely in some form or other.” –Holmgren, Future Scenarios (2009).

In this scenario, we will use the foresight of energy descent planning year on year and generation on generation to adapt to progressively reduced energy supplies, not by looking for the magic elixir of new energy sources, but by the careful implementation of passive solar design, permaculture and frugal living, and the building of community resilience.

We should not ignore however the possibility of a fourth scenario, that of ‘collapse’ which becomes more likely the more we try to grow our economies on a contracting energy base without understanding the ecological and social limits. The ‘die off’ which would result in this hubris has been well chronicled by authors such as Jared Diamond in his book ‘Collapse’ and Homer Dixon in ‘The Up Side Of Down’.

Barriers… The extraordinary changes in society that technology and the availability of cheap fossil fuel has given us, particularly in the last 20 years, has radically changed the way we understand and interact with the world.  The energy issue is perhaps the biggest challenge as we will have no choice but to design ways of living with less in the future.

The barriers to planning our energy descent are many: •    Short term and selfish thinking •    The belief that technology will save us •    The dominance of centralised and globalised energy and food systems •    A society based on consumption •    And an economic system dependent on economic growth

Response

Rob Hopkins describes Energy Descent as : “The continual decline in net energy supporting humanity, a decline that mirrors the ascent in net energy that has taken place since the Industrial Revolution. It also refers to a future scenario in which humanity has successfully adapted to declining net fossil fuel energy availability and has become more localised and self-reliant. It is a term favoured by people looking towards energy peak as an opportunity for positive change rather than an inevitable disaster.”

The prototype at the heart of the process was developed in Kinsale, Ireland as part of the 2 year Permaculture course taught by Rob Hopkins.  It became known as Energy Descent Action Planning, and it aims to set out a timetabled plan for moving a community beyond fossil fuel dependence towards local resilience. In this report, a range of proposals for creating local resilience are outlined in each of the areas of transport, energy, housing, food and the local community.

… and opportunities

Transition Towns In response to converging challenges of an unraveling global economy, peak oil and climate change, some pioneering communities in the UK, Ireland and beyond are adopting the Transition process. These initiatives are taking an integrated and inclusive approach to increase our ability to look after itself into the long term and to adapt to the shocks that energy, food, economic and climate crises will bring. Networks have been established in the UK, Ireland, Australia, Japan and most recently in the United States. The role of these Transition Networks is to accelerate change through inspiring, encouraging, and supporting communities as they consider how they will build resilience in the face of these challenges.

The 12th step in the Transition process is to ‘Create an Energy Descent Action Plan EDAP’. This plan is the culmination of the learning, the networking and the work done so far by a Transition Initiative’s activities. Each of the initiative’s working groups will have been developing actions to build resilience; it is these actions that form the Energy Descent Action Plan. One of the first detailed attempts to assess the energy needs of a whole region and make proposals for meeting those needs from local sources in the future has been written by The Sustainability Institute in Ireland for County of Mayo in Ireland. References

The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience. by Rob Hopkins (2008) Green Books  2008 http://transitionculture.org/shop/the-transition-handbook/

Kinsale 2021: An Energy Descent Action Plan Download from http://transitionculture.org/essential-info/pdf-downloads/kinsale-energy-descent-action-plan-2005/

Collapse, Jared Diamond, Penguin Books, London. 2006

The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization by Thomas Homer-Dixon http://www.theupsideofdown.com/ A Prosperous Way Down: Principles and Policies by Howard, T. Odum , Elisabeth, C. Odum Mayo Energy Audit 2009-2020 The Sustainability Institute, http://www.sustainability.ie/auditorder.html

Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability by David Holmgren

Future Scenarios: How Communities can adapt to Peak Oil and Climate Change by David Holmgren (2009)

The Transition Timeline for a local, resilient future by Shaun Chamberlin (2009)

Subject: “Community powerdown”.

“Community” is often dismissed as a romantic notion, “harking back a golden age that never existed”. Traditional rural communities tended to be held together by the absence of choice: you were your mother’s daughter or your father’s son, and the range of possible futures – opportunities for travel, education, and employment- were limited.

From an ecological perspective, such opportunities were limited essentially by the availability of energy. This may have lead to a sense of being stifled by the conservative norms of the community, and their  parochial and sometimes oppressive nature. The community became something to escape from once the opportunity arose.

In the industrial world, for the developed nations at least, the influx of energy and the cheap resources that came with it lead to a dramatic increase in opportunities for education and travel, but at a cost: as people became more mobile, and came into contact with a greater range of ideas and influences, traditional values tended to break down and along with them the “glue” of religion, family and place that may have held them together for so long.

The 1960s saw the emergence of “post-modern” feelings of loss of community and a yearning for a return to a sense of place- this can be seen in the experiments in communal living that began with hippy communes and has now evolved into the eco-village movement.

Intentional communities such as these will probably be only ever possible for small numbers of people; for the majority, we will have to rebuild community from where we find ourselves now. In effect, the resilience of the local community will be the most efficient way of making up for the decline of energy supplies. Convivial and reciprocal relationships with our neighbours will become more important as global trade links disintegrate, and many of the tasks now performed by corporations with no vested interest in the local community will need to be done instead by people with a common interest and a common purpose rooted in the resources of their locality.

There are many reasons why local community needs now to be recovered and rebuilt, and the two main reasons are as follows:

1.  Energy solutions.

After Peak Oil, the energy needed to sustain the centralised urban economy will not be available.  The decentralised local economy, with some productive land around it, needs far less energy than the centralised urban pattern of living which we have now.  Here are some reasons: 1.    It does not depend on long-distance transport for almost all its daily needs and activities.  This alone is decisive. 2.    It is better able to reduce its material needs, saving the energy required to sustained material flows – the production, transport, processing and disposal of materials:

• -    It can reduce the quantity of materials it needs (less packaging, less material needed for transport).
• -    It can re-use its materials (the re-use of – for instance – bottles is complicated and impractical on a very large centralised scale, but quite easy on a local scale).
• -    It can recycle its waste easily.  For example, sorting waste carefully by type is more easily done locally, where there is a chance to give attention to individual items, than when the materials arrive at a central depot in bulk.  It also becomes practical to recycle organic materials on a small scale; people are better motivated to get results which are close-at-hand, and which they can see; it becomes easier to control what goes into the waste when it is done on a small scale; and quantities of organic waste (compost) need to be limited in scale to have contact with the air.

2.  Practical economics

The great disadvantage of a globalised economy is that banks will tend to invest their depositors money wherever in the world they believe they can get the best return; they are unlikely to have much interest in re-investing the profits they make in a local community.

When things go wrong, as we have seen on a global scale recently with the credit crash, the small communities are the first to suffer, with “bailouts” being reserved for the banks that lost their gambles. What will be needed is locally owned banks and financial institutions who will not bring the whole global economy down with them if they make bad decisions, but who are much more likely to invest in the resilience of their own community, for example by supporting regional energy schemes.

Many communities around the world have held intact local currencies and locally owned credit agencies, and often these communities find that they can both prosper as the surplus wealth is reinvested in the community, as well as be resilient to the vagaries of the international financial markets. { Douthwaite 1996}

Response

The success of Community Powerdown depends upon the successful integration of the interests of the local community and its ability to husband in a sustainable manner the local resources- the natural capital of soil, energy, biodiversity, skills and knowledge- it has available in its locality.

In addition, many “services” that have been progressively “outsourced” to corporations may be done much more efficiently in the home or community. An increased sense of community involvement may have tremendous healing effects on individuals and help them find a sense of purpose. This could have great benefits in terms of public health, levels of crime, and social justice. For example, a study for Feasta in 2004 found that a range of Quality of Life indicators including increased alcoholism, income disparity, poverty in old age and others increased during the very years of the Celtic Tiger. {Cullen, E. 2004}

People’s willingness to do things for each other, and to trust, depends on (amongst other things) how well they know each other and how often they see them.  The fullest collaboration takes place within families, close relations and households.  On this scale, people may be willing to provide care and services for each other over long periods and without expecting any return beyond the courtesies and affection which hold a family together. At the next level – the neighbourhood, consisting of some 150 adults – people are prepared to cooperate fully and persistently, without necessarily balancing up how much they get in return.  The priority is to sustain the health and well-being of your street – or, it may be, of the 150 people living in houses scattered over a rural area. {Alexander 1977}

Every household maintains its own private sphere and individuality, but there will be some common assets in the neighbourhood: some shared land, some equipment and buildings, calling for a shared response. Then there is the larger scale of the parish, the village, or a small town.  At this hometown level, the community meets (e.g.) to plan its future, to celebrate, to go church, or for sports.  This is the level at which most interesting initiatives take place; strategy is considered at the level of the town, village or rural area, but it is put into effect by smaller groups and neighbourhoods.  It is also the scale on which local currencies operate: they protect local trades, making it possible for local producers to trade with each other even though their prices would rule out competition in the open market.

Above that, there is the nation.  It is vital that the community/transition movement should be understood at the level of the nation; it would be hard to get results if the nation were not an ally, and it has fundamental tasks, such as keeping the peace, and enabling the law to evolve in response to the needs of community. If all this is to happen, there needs to be a basic atmosphere of good faith, shared humour, a sense of shared destiny, a common culture, a shared identity.  This is fragile.  Groups or factions committed to the view that it is “us or them”, could make the existence of community hard, or impossible.

When that shared identity and a commitment to community-building does exist, however, it brings some critical assets.  First, it brings common purpose, the alignment of incentives between you and the community you live in: its members’ own interests are advanced by the well-being of the community as a whole; the community’s interests are advanced by the well-being of its members.  Secondly, common capability: the opportunities that open up for the individual to get results if the whole community is doing the same thing.  When those results consist of developing local food production and designing mini-grids for the generation and distribution of energy, there can be no question: you are only going to make progress when the community as a whole is committed to the same aim.

Barriers

We have left it very late.  We should have been building community – and preventing the decline of the communities we inherited – fifty years ago, but we have barely started.  Land, housing, relevant skills, and understanding of the character and capability of community – to think about any of these, is to realise how far there is to go.   We all depend on our current jobs, which most of us cannot afford to leave; and when the oil peak has happened it will be hard indeed to start the long process of transforming the communities we live in, or choosing a site to start afresh.  Deep rifts of faction and divided loyalties have been allowed to develop in many nations, especially in northern Europe.  For most of us, the choice is obvious: carry on as we are and see what happens.

Opportunities

On the other hand, there are some things going the other way. The most encouraging recent development is the Transition Town movement.  This started in Kinsale in 2001; it started again on  larger scale in Totnes, (England) in 2006, and it is spreading.

Transition Towns provide the most visible manifestation of the kind of thinking that underpins this course, including such fundamentals as producing food locally and organising local energy grids.

Crucially, everything they are doing is set in the context of community as a place to enjoy, with its own culture, its celebrations, its loyalties and rivalries, its sense of being interesting in its own way.  A living, participative culture is an essential condition, not just for becoming self-reliant, but for becoming a person.

Community-building on the local scale forms the corner-stone of the transition to a post-oil future, and it has in its favour the reality that there will be no alternative.

References

Douthwaite, R. 1996 Short Circuit Online edition : http://www.feasta.org/documents/shortcircuit/index.htm

Cullen, E 2004 Unprecedented growth, but for whose benefit? http://www.feasta.org/documents/review2/cullen.htm

Alexander, C. 1977 A Pattern Language

The course has been run in Dublin and Kinsale a few times already and will be available as a community learning course throughout Ireland. In conjunction with this course, a series of 10 TV shows have been made for Dublin Community TV which are due to be aired starting next month.

Over the next few weeks I will post up the 10 Introductions for the course which I have co-written with David Fleming and edited.

Below is the general introduction.

Cultivate Community Powerdown Energy Use, Carbon Reduction and Resilience

The Cultivate Community Powerdown Toolkit is designed to support communities in their responses to the converging crises of the 21st Century: Climate change and Peak Oil; global social justice and equity; resource wars and development; loss of biodiversity and pollution. As we shall see, many if not all of these issues stem from our use and abuse of non-renewable fossil fuels: coal, oil and gas. While Peak Oil concerns the availability of energy and how we will adjust to a decline in supply after a century and a half of growth, climate change is being caused by pollution from this energy-intensive lifestyle in the form of greenhouse gas emissions. While the world reels from the onset of the worst financial crisis since the 1930s, and the bursting of a speculative bubble sends oil prices tumbling, the temporary reprieve of cheaper oil masks the underlying reality of progressive resource depletion. As human population heads towards 7 billion, we continue to demand ever more supplies of non-renewable resources, particularly fossil energy, and regardless of the price, the future will mean there is less to go around.

The USA with 4.5% of the world’s population consumes more than 23% of the world’s energy and produces 22% of the world’s carbon emissions. {1} This extreme disparity between resource consumption and pollution means also that those least responsible for climate change will have the fewest resources to help contend with it. Other environmental problems can also be seen as a result of energy use: use of fossil fuels has lead to a rapid increase in global population, with a corresponding increase in consumption and environmental destruction.{2}

Over the past 20 years, almost every indicator of the planet’s health has deteriorated, while energy consumption and human population has continued to increase. {3} Moreover, attempts at curtailing our impact are so far failing: Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are now growing more rapidly than “business-as-usual”, the most pessimistic of the IPCC scenarios. {4} Much mainstream commentary focuses on how to replace oil with renewables and new technologies as a way of adapting to declining supplies and to reduce carbon emissions, the assumption is that we will be able to continue with much the same lifestyles as we have now and continue to grow the economy and further develop technology to overcome our environmental problems.

Community Powerdown is an attempt to show an alternative approach that is at once more sustainable and more fulfilling. By redesigning our lives and adopting a different set of values to those advocated by the industrial growth society over the past 50-60 years, we can learn to live well –but with vastly reduced energy consumption, and therefore, a much smaller ecological footprint.{5} Meeting the challenges of Peak Oil and Climate change may be the greatest project humanity can undertake; for the community, it provides an unparalleled opportunity for resurgence. Already around the world thousands of communities –such as the Transition Network in the UK and Ireland, and the Post-Carbon Cities movement in North America are planning their Energy Descent Pathways and are finding renewal and a new sense of abundance in their local communities. As you work through this course and begin to think how much energy permeates our lives, and how vulnerable we are to energy and climate disruption, you will also become aware of the resources you have in your community and of many other possibilities for creating community self-reliance.

{1}http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions

{2} http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100303_eating_oil.html

{3} www.unep.org/GEO/geo4/

{4} http://www.carbonequity.info/docs/arctic.html

{5} Murphy, P. Plan C- Community Survival Strategies for Peak Oil and Climate Change

When did you first move to Ireland?

I moved in September 1996, from Bristol. I had just finished my degree and my second child was about 6 months old. From a house in the middle of Bristol to a mouse-overrun farmhouse up a lane near Skibbereen. I had lived in cold houses before, but this one was COLD. From the moment I arrived though, I absolutely loved it.

Did you already have the idea of starting the course when you first came over?

No, not at all. When I moved I hadn’t yet done any teaching. I had done my Design Course in 1992, and had been involved in the Bristol Permaculture Group for a few years. I had assisted on a couple of Patrick Whitefield’s Design Courses, but hadn’t done any teaching as such. It was about 6 months after we moved that I taught my first permaculture course, an introductory weekend, at my in-laws’ house. Our plan when we moved was to set up an eco-village, and to build strawbale houses…

How did you go about approaching colleges- was Kinsale the first one you tried?

Actually the precursor to the Kinsale course was a Design Course done as an evening class that I did at Rossa College in Skibbereen 1999-2000. It was the first Design Course I ever taught, and it was a wonderful experience. They often say that the best way to learn something is to tell yourself that you are going to be teaching it in 3 weeks time… I remember that I had always avoided the section on Pattern in the Designers Manual, and I had to read everything I could get my hands on about patterns, it was great.

There were some fascinating people did that course, some are still off doing interesting stuff. It was a real baptism by fire but the feedback was very encouraging, and like these courses usually do, it created a dynamic community of people. I asked the college there if they would be interested in running a full time version, but the Principal was unconvinced, he really didn’t understand what I was talking about! I also approached Colaiste Stiofan Naoife (sorry, Graham, you’ll have to check that spelling for me, it’s been a while!) in Cork, who were kind of interested, but they wanted it to be part of their Horticulture course, and the head of that department made it pretty clear that if the course ran there, he was the boss. Then I talked to Belinda Wild, a friend of mine, who was teaching Drama at Kinsale, and she suggested I talk to John.

I rang him up and he was keen to meet, so we met for about half an hour, and he got it straight away. I remember I asked him how many people we’d need for it to be viable. He said 15, did I think we’d get that many? The first year we had 24, and from then on it was overbooked every year.

It was the first course of its kind to be tried in ireland, especially the permaculture modules- how did you first sell the concept to John?

Great question! I don’t remember. I think I rang him first and said that it was a design system that brought together food, building, energy, economics and so on. I don’t remember what was the key thing that ‘sold’ it to him… be interesting to hear from him. Would be helpful in developing a permaculture ‘elevator pitch’.. how to sell permaculture in 20 seconds!

I do remember him telling me that if we were to run it we would need an official permaculture module, which was something I had been developing already for Skibbereen, so I think he was impressed by the fact that I had already started working on that and had done my NCVA homework!

What was his response? In what ways did John help develop the course in its first year?

Without John the course would never have happened. Not just in terms of giving it the go-ahead, but also in his management. The wonderful thing about John was that he never told me I couldn’t do any of the projects I suggested to him. Can we dig up the lawn? Grand. Can we build a strawbale house? Grand. Can we hemp and lime plaster our classroom?

Grand. Can we build this amphitheatre on the strength of this sketch on the back of an envelope? Grand. I think he proved to be an extraordinary manager in that way. He trusted that you would do something unless you proved otherwise.

He also took a creative approach to interpreting the rules without which the course would have been very difficult. That first year we got funded teaching time for 3 days a week with just one module! Impossible now, but he bent over backwards to make sure that course got a fair chance. I think the main thing was that he trusted the teacher (ie. me) and he trusted the idea, and he was genuinely excited about what the course was doing, and how it was affecting people. It created a buzz from pretty early on and my sense was that he was very proud that that buzz was eminating from his college. I also felt that as someone with many years in education, it was that buzz that he most wanted to encourage, and indeed it was what he felt education to be about, so he was delighted to see this odd new course generating it.

How did you go about building the team of tutors?

Well the first year it was just me and Philip, who was already there, but we seldom met as we were in on different days. Paul O’Flynn was the boyfriend of one of the students from the first year, Chloe, so I came to know of the work he had been doing. Thomas I knew, of course, as we lived together at The Hollies, and he had been doing lots of work on consensus stuff. We didn’t really advertise for the teaching posts, again, John trusted me to bring in the people I thought would do a good job. That also went for people I brought in as guest speakers or all the visits we went on. It was wonderful, as the course grew, to be able to assemble people whose teaching expertise I respected, and to give them the status, both in terms of being more formally recognised as teachers, and in the fact that they got paid, which they deserved.

The course has become the largest course in the college- we have 40 booked and as many as that again on the waiting list- did you envisage that it would become so popular?

No, not at all. I was flabbergasted every year. It was full earlier and earlier. By the end of my time there, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see people auction their places on the course on Ebay! It felt like such a great testament to John’s gamble in putting the course on. I had told him that we could get enough people, and did we ever! The fact that the course developed such a reputation, and continues to do so to this day, is one of the things in my life I am most proud of. And what a wonderful collection of people too, from all over the place, and I still bump into them in the most unusual places, and I always fascinated and delighted to hear what they are doing now and how their time in Kinsale changed their lives.

At the same time there needs to be more courses on Permaculture elsewhere and this has not yet happened- what needs to be done to help roll out permaculture courses through the education system?

We need to tell the Kinsale story more. We need to create careers for people so that there are jobs to go into with a permaculture qualification. We need to make the point, clearly and in academic/educational circles, that education is preparing people for a world that no longer exists. You want a course that actually does prepare people, reskills them, inspires them, gives them the thinking and design tools for a post-oil world? We’ve already designed it, and been testing it for 8 years. It works, and it is urgently needed everywhere. I think also that we need, if it is to spread virally across the education system, to be mindful of the fact that many of the things that attract some of the students actively turn off many thousands more, i.e. the more blatantly ‘alternative’ aspects. If we are to mainstream this stuff we need to take a long, sober look at that I think, and see that some of the barriers to its wider disemination may be of our own making.

Have there been any similar attempts to start such courses in the UK?

There is the Sustainable Land Use course at Worcester College of Agriculture and the MSc at CAT. However, it is only since returning here that I have really become aware of how extraordinary what we did in Kinsale is. It would be hard to set something up here that was so generalist, ran for so long, allowed such a free reign in terms of the practical/academic balance, and all for £150! The Kinsale course found a particularly fertile piece of edge in the Irish education system. I’m sure it would be possible here, but I have really come to appreciate how extraordinarily lucky it was that I picked up the phone to John after chatting with Belinda.

**How did your time in Kinsale help prepare you for launching the Transition Movement in the UK?

Teaching in Kinsale allowed me, I think, to design the permaculture course I always wished I had done myself (the Design Course I did was pretty disappointing, but still succeeded in changing my life). I also had trememdous freedom there to play around with ideas, and to invite guest teachers along who I wanted to learn from. The Kinsale Energy Descent Action Plan only really came about because I was able to design the projects for the students which I felt passionate about, and because, as second years, they already had a great grounding in permaculture thinking.

Its funny, because when I was in Ireland, I often looked back to the UK and saw that as being a place where lots of amazing ‘green’ stuff was happening, whereas it felt much harder to get people interested in Ireland. Since returning here though, I found that the freedom to do things and try things out that I had in Ireland actually gives me the kind of wildly eclectic CV that something like Transition can only emerge from. It is often said that permaculture is about becoming a generalist, not an expert, and Transition is very much based on that too, so my time in Kinsale allowed me very much to deepen my generalism and to become, as Albert Bates puts it, a well qualified post-petroleumologist.

In what areas do you think permaculture has proved itself in practice?

My sense is that where permaculture is coming more and more to the fore is not as techniques but as guiding design principles. My thinking with Transition was to design a way of making those principles implicit but not explicit. David Holmgren’s book on permaculture principles makes clear that for many permaculture is about herb spirals or forest gardens, and many of those practical applications, such as edible landscaping,

have become increasingly adopted although rarely credited to permaculture. I think permaculture has proved to have the insights in terms of design and how we pull together the disparate elements of a post oil society which are desparately needed at this time. I do think that permaculture hasn’t been great at documenting, testing and researching. Where are the good examples, what are the yields, what definitely works and what doesn’t? Why are there still only a handful of professional permaculture design consultancies out there? Goodness knows we need them…

What is the most important contribution permaculture can make as we travel down the learning curve?

It can retrain an astonishingly useless culture, it can help take the fear out of this transition by re-empowering people and showing them the energy that there is in working with other people, it can offer principles to underpin what we do and it can create tangible models, demonstrations of post-oil living. We should remember that permaculture first emerged in the first oil shocks of the 1970s, and it is now, as we enter the second oil shocks, that we will increasingly need it again, and that more and more people will see the relevance of it.

Any other thoughts as we say goodbye to John and Margaret?

What John and Margaret did in Kinsale was amazing. They created a space in which eccentric but highly creative people could explore things they would have struggled to do elsewhere. They felt passionately that education should be about discovery, about collective exploration and about getting your hands dirty. I always loved the fact that when we would have spent the day building something, and would be filthy dirty, tired but ecstatic,

they would come out at say “wow, well done”, and John would sometimes jig from foot to foot with excitement at what we were doing. If we are going to model the change we need to see, and if we are going to have the inspired, skilled, creative leaders we need, then courses like the Kinsale course are desparately important. It was always an honour to work with John and Margaret, and I wish them all the best in their retirement.

Rob Hopkins, once again, many thanks!

The meeting was organised by Oonagh Comerford who did a great job in inspiring people to come out. I gave a short talk about Peak Oil, the Kinsale college and permaculture, and how the Energy Descent Plan came to be written, sowing the seeds for the Transition network in the UK and now Ireland. We also watched an Australian documentary Four Corners- Peak Oil? which includes a trip to Ballydehob and an interview with Colin Campbell. It was great to see a thicket of hands go up when I asked how many had home gardens- Kenmare is clearly well placed and ahead of the game in that respect. And there is already a small group who have started a community garden so congratulations all for that. Discussions during the meeting included asking how much land precisely would each person need to feed themselves- “five acres and a cow” was one response- to what might we substitute for wheat as supplies decline. There will be a follow-up meeting on June 4th when the film The Power of Community- How Cuba Survived peak Oil will be shown -we promise!