In this post last week, I said Rob Hopkins had invited me to write something for the Transition Network. After a few false starts, I put something together over the weekend and sent it off. This morning, Rob told me he liked it (huzzah) and, a short while ago, he published it on his blog here (double huzzah – we haven’t had one of those for a while).
That should be enough good news for one post. But it isn’t.
Yesterday, we had a very positive meeting with the mayor about the yurt camp and our future plans. In the evening, I went to a very constructive meeting with our lovely local Transition group (in a straw-bale house – what’s not love to about a building you can grow and put together yourself?), this morning I landed some gardening work for the spring and, a few minutes ago, I found myself back in a band (having been bandless for just over a week) and landed a couple of website jobs to do over the next howevermany days.
If you’d spoken to me on Wednesday, I could have painted a very bleak picture of life. I was feeling like we were putting a huge amount of effort into numerous projects and getting nothing positive in return. Right now, the sun is shining and the world is full of possibilities.
Which reminds me of a Bill Connolly quote about the Scottish climate: “If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes”.
February 8, 2014 at 9:40 am
A great article Alex. It sounds like things are coming together for you guys at last. I am glad you have been so stubborn!
February 8, 2014 at 11:44 am
Thanks Ben. It’s been enough to try the patience of a stone.
February 9, 2014 at 7:37 pm
Having read most of your blog in one session (Yes, I know… I need to get more books or a life) it is good to hear things are beginning to happen. It is also a reminder to me that we are laying foundations. We’ll get there in the end.
My other thought on reading this though is that we need to get out of Carville and the Religion of Technology and to somewhere that people have a little more connection with the lands around them. Our local busineses and politicians are united in their desire to keep the unsustainable going no matter what.
February 10, 2014 at 4:21 pm
Unfortunately Andy, I think it’s too late for that. Don’t get me wrong, I grow organic, live on the land (if not exactly live off it), think BAU is a catastrophe, etc. It’s just that we’ve pushed everything beyond the point of equilibrium and things are now in motion that we cannot stop nor can we undo what we have done.
The emphasis now turns to mitigation and survival. For that we are going to need technology and lots of energy. Trying to go back to ways that were once successful will fail, because we’ve made an environment in which old ways will no longer succeed. We’ve passed a climate threshold and our weather systems are destabilising as a result. Something I mentioned on Alex’s blog a few months back. Arctic amplification is impacting the entire Northern Hemisphere and things are rapidly spinning out of control. I’m seeing things happening now I didn’t expect to see until 2020.
February 10, 2014 at 7:30 pm
The sensible thing, to me, would be to use as little fuel as possible to set ourselves up with as much renewable energy as possible and hope for the best. But it might be worth asking why we should have power at all. Animals in the wild seem to do very well without it – and this planet would be paradise if we didn’t have it. I’d love to keep the Internet, but if it’s a choice between the Internet and imminent death, my instinct for self preservation should win the day.
Currently, human beings with power seem to prefer waste over beauty, money instead of harmony. It’s always been a mystery to me. Especially when it’s been well documented that you can have huge amounts of money and be fundamentally unhappy.
February 10, 2014 at 10:06 pm
I don’t disagree with you Alex (nice article by BTW). It’s just that after watching things unfold since 2003, the year I became aware of everything, I’ve had chance to ponder on why we don’t seem to be able to alter our behaviour. My conclusion is that we’ve been captured by a process, trapped within a system of our own making and one that we’ve essentially lost control of. Technological evolution now controls us, we do not control it, our fate is in its hands.
So your choice is not between the internet and imminent death, it is actually between the internet or imminent death. Technology has altered, and is continuing to alter, our world to such a degree that we can no longer survive without it. Unfortunately for the rest of life on the planet, not having technology working on its behalf means extinction (currently 200 species a day), the environment is becoming too hostile to support life. We on the other hand, along with our domesticated animals and crops, are protected by our access to technology. So our instinct for self preservation is winning the day.
But now the climate is changing rapidly, again beyond our control, as we cannot shut down our technological civilisation without destroying ourselves nor stop the climate from changing. Yet the very same civilisation is altering the Planet’s climate to the point where we cannot survive on it. Even the ultra conservative IPCC is basically telling us that we’re all dead in 100 years time and they’re probably over optimistic by two generations. We cannot survive 4°C of warming, because our crops and domestic animals cannot survive it. We cannot live on a planet where our natural habitat has perished. And at this point in time we have crossed a threshold and there is still a further 30-40 years of warming even if we reduce our emissions to zero today due to lag between cause and effect.
So what do we do? My conclusion is that we’re going to create a survivable habitat for ourselves, crops and domesticated animals by levearging our technology. Probably via controlled environments of some kind. Anything outside these technological zones will likely not survive and that includes people also.