This is an excellent supplement and extension to the ideas and suggestions in Hopkins' book. It offers excellent ideas - both in content and processes - for arriving at decisions and implementations of transition plans. As with many of the current ecological challenge discussions, this one maintains a positive, optimistic tone.
As I became more involved with the rapidly-growing Transition movement, it quickly became clear to me that this sense of `pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will' was widespread among those giving their time and energy to improving the situation. (p. 14)
Chamberlin and Hopkins point out that Energy Descent Action Plans (EDAPs) require far more than technical 'fixes' for poor planning and for the uses of available resources. They point out that it is our attitudes towards our relationships with the world that require changes.
Kenneth Boulding produced what he calls his `Dismal Theorem': If the only ultimate check on the growth of population is misery, then the population will grow until it is miserable enough to stop its growth.
`Uterly Dismal Theorem': Any technical improvement can only relieve misery for a while, for so long as misery is the only check on population, the [technical] improvement will enable population to grow, and will soon enable more people to live in misery than before.
The final result of [technical] improvements, therefore, is to increase the equilibrium population which is to increase the total sum of human misery. (p. 46)
Man talks of a battle with nature, forgetting that if he won the battle, he would find himself on the losing side.
E.F. Schumacher
A few of the many simple, practical suggestions made by Chamberlin and Hopkins:
Changing our diets is a major contribution to restoring the environment. Meat production contributes to approximately 18% of the world's total greenhouse gas emissions. About one third of the world's arable land is used to grow animal feed.
Diets containing high meat and dairy content use inordinate amounts of water. A single kilo of grain-fed beef use up 15 cubic meter of water, compared to a kilo of grain that uses 0.4 to 3 cubic meters.
This is known as `embedded' or `virtual' water and we are effectively importing this water from other countries which are under much greater water stress than our own. According to the WWF, the UK effectively imports 62% of its water footprint, and in his book When The Rivers Run Dry, Fred Pearce calculates that the equivalent of 20 Nile rivers move from developing to developed countries each year. (p. 57)
What is Chamberlin and Hopkins suggest is most needed are local initiatives to develop local resources and local markets.
The most powerful energy resource we have available to us is the creative intelligence of the people.
- David Fleming,
Inventor of Tradeable Energy Quotas (TEQs)
How is this for a vision of a future car-pooling initiative?
... `E-thumbers' tapping information into their phones at the roadside. They are registering their desired hitchhiking destination to the national open source Lift-Hiker system. With GPS (Global Positioning System) technology now integrated into both mobile phones and car navigational aids, any driver who wishes to fill space in their vehicle simply presses a button, and any nearby person who wants a lift in that direction is sent the details of the driver's name, type of car, number-plate and a suggested rendezvous time and location... sharing the cost with E-thumbers picked up along the way. (p. 75)
And how is this for a vision of a holiday that saves on fuel and carbon emissions?
Staying at Home is the New going Away
Two weeks in Tuscany is just so 2010!
All the rage now for the discerning holidaygoer is staying at home. In the pursuit of the low-carbon, non-TEQ-busting, perfect two-week break, thousands are now looking no further than their own place. Holiday advisor Gisella Hawkin gave the Sunday Times her eight tips for the perfect stay-at-home holiday.
· Lock away all communication devices, laptops, palmtops, mobiles, Z-phones and chat-hats.
· Time your holiday so that it falls at a time where your home plot is brimming with vegetables.
· Visit all the local places you have never visited, museums, parks, theatres, restaurants.
· Take bike rides.
· Take some time to read the pile of books you spent the previous year putting to one side for when you had the time to read them.
· Start a list the previous year of all the things you would do if you had the time, and then design your two weeks around them.
· Use the TEQs you have saved by not traveling to treat yourself to a visit from an aromatherapist, a masseur, or even a chief for the night!
· Do a painting or study course... (p. 78)
The 12 Steps of Transition planning are clearly laid out, discussed and amply illustrated.
1. Set up a steering group and design its demise from the outset. This stage puts a core team in place to drive the project forward during the initial phases.
2. Awareness-raising. Build crucial networks and prepare the community in general for the launch of your Transition initiative.
3. Lay the foundation. This stage is about networking with existing groups and activists.
4. Organise a Great Unleashing. This stage creates a memorable milestone to mark the project's `coming of age'.
5. For sub-groups. Tapping into the collective genius of the community, for solutions that will form the backbone of the Energy Descent Action Plan.
6. Use Open Space. We've found Open Space Technology to be a highly effective approach to running meetings for Transition Town initiatives.
7. Develop visible practical manifestations of the project. It is essential that you avoid any sense that your project is just a talking shop where people sit around and draw up wish lists.
8. Facilitate the Great Reskilling. Give people a powerful realization of their own ability to solve problems, to achieve practical results and to work cooperatively alongside other people.
9. Build a bridge to Local Government. Your Energy Descent Action Plan will not progress too far unless you have cultivated a positive and productive relationship with your local authority.
10. Honour the elders. Engage with those who directly remember the transition to the age of cheap oil.
11. Let it go where it wants to go... If you try and hold onto a rigid vision, it will begin to sap your energy and appear to stall.
12. Create an Energy Descent Action Plan. Each sub-group will have been focusing on practical actions to increase community resilience and reduce the carbon footprints.
(p. 92)
While all of these suggestions might sound like contributions that are too small to make a difference, Chamberlin and Hopkins share these quotes (among many such helpful observations that counterpoint their text):
Large-scale problems do not require large-scale solutions; they require small-scale solutions within a large-scale framework.
- David Fleming (p. 151)
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is now.
- Chinese proverb (p. 167)
If we don't fight hard enough for the things we stand for, at some point we have to recognize that we don't really stand for them.
- Paul Wellstone, (p. 167)
This book and Hopkins' book (reviewed above) are very highly recommended for anyone who is looking for ways to make this world better and to help it survive the challenges that humanity is posing to it. It is a wonderfully rich resource in conceptualizations and suggestions for ways to understand and address the changes that could come upon us at any time that we exceed the unpredictable tipping points of peak oil, major financial collapses or other problems that bring our multinational, globalized commerce to a crawl or a standstill.
