What makes us free

In these happy days when one can almost believe that the Murdoch empire is finally in retreat, I come across a splendid quotation, almost two centuries old, that tells us a lot about the way we liberate ourselves from his ilk - and from other over-weaning corporate egos and the under-achieving politicians who play at representing us. It's from the radical journal Black Dwarf in 1817:

States must either proceed, or retrograde. While we contented ourselves with boasting of our advance, we have been silently, but rapidly falling back... The people ought to remember that they are the guardians of the constitution. Instead of that the simpletons expect protection from the constitution; which is in fact nothing but the recorded merits of our ancestors. The country that boasted of being free, because Magna Carta was enacted; when the least share of penetration would have taught us, that Magna Carta was enacted only because our ancestors were determined to be free. Our ancestors, with swords in their hands, and the tyrant John on his knees before them, would have been just as free, whether they had insisted on the signature of Magna Carta, or not. Their freedom was in their power, and in their will.

The author was Thomas Wooler (1786-1853). His words are quoted by Edward Vallance at the very conclusion of his Radical History of Britain.

Save the saddest dolphins

Some creepy hotel chain is trapping dolphins. As Avaaz put it:

The pod was swimming peacefully in Samoa when nets closed in from behind -- trapping 25 wild dolphins for a luxury resort's latest exhibit. They are now locked in tiny pens, starved of food -- but we can free them.

For wild dolphins captivity is torture, their powerful sonar bounces off the walls back at them -- as if they are trapped in an endless house of mirrors. Most die young from stress induced illness, but some even commit suicide. If the wealthy Resorts World Sentosa succeeds in keeping them captive then half the dolphins will die in the first 2 years -- and it will legitimise the widely banned practice of capturing dolphins in the wild. We can’t let that happen -- let's use our voices to set them free.

This is the equivalent of locking up small children to amuse the ghouls. Go to http://www.avaaz.org/en/saddest_dolphins and sign up to their petition, then pass it on.

Lovelock speaks. But I wish he wouldn't

A singularly unhelpful intervention from James Lovelock of Gaia fame (or notoriety). The Guardian reports –

‘I don't think we're yet evolved to the point where we're clever enough to handle a complex a situation as climate change,’ said Lovelock in his first in-depth interview since the theft of the UEA emails last November. ‘The inertia of humans is so huge that you can't really do anything meaningful.’

One of the main obstructions to meaningful action is ‘modern democracy’, he added. ‘Even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.’

Oh really. I don’t seem to recall Lovelock’s previous analysis of the larger-scale but little-understood and even less acknowledged structures of human activity – economic systems, global technologies, ideologies – that actually provide the basis for human ‘intelligence’ as it is conventionally understood. In that rather conspicuous absence, what exactly are Lovelock’s qualifications for having such a lovingly quoted opinion? The Gaia theory, which until the environment came back to the forefront of our collective consciousness, was treated by most scientists as a somewhat quaint, if not downright silly, model of planetary processes. And even now that planetary processes are under discussion, it’s still striking how seldom Lovelock’s theories make it into scientific discourse.

Of course, given that almost all other scientists are equally lacking in any convincing understanding of how human social and economic systems work, they are no more qualified than Lovelock to pronounce on either human ‘intelligence’ or the processes and systems that driven environmental change. But at least national newspapers aren’t asking them their opinions.

More that all that, it is about time we stopped treating people as authoritative just because they have the job ‘scientist’. It’s a job that is typically highly specialised, and having read a fair number of our most prominent scientists’ accounts of our present predicament, it does not strike me that their opinions about the situation as a whole are particularly scientific. No matter how brilliant the physicist or biologist, they are no better qualified than me to pronounce on economic systems, the power of ideologies, and especially not any but the most technical aspects of solutions to our problems.

Meanwhile, putting democracy 'on hold' is not only a very bad idea but precisely the opposite of what is needed. If there are any forces that will actively resist takintg the necessary steps to deal with our environmental problems it is the entrenched corporate forces of the economy and politicl system. Closing down democracy would only strengthen, indeed perpetuate their stranglehold over economic, political and so environmental policy.

EPT: An Environment Protection Tax

Over the weekend I meet Nick, an accountant and consultant. He has an interesting idea about dealing with the environmental externalities markets are currently unable to capture. I would call is an ‘Environment Protection Tax’ – EPT for short – that would operate like the Value-Added Tax (VAT) already familiar in many countries.

After a really interesting conversation, this how I would summarise EPT as I now see it working:

1. We have some idea of the scale of the environmental externalities caused by our economic activity. We can at least assign an approximate percentage of what is required to address the resulting environmental problems and to update our industries so that the problem goes away.
2. A great deal of this arises from primary extraction industries – mining, oil, gas, fishing, and so on.
3. So, why not add an appropriate percentage to the price of primary products, to be passed on (like VAT is now) to each successive buyer in the supply chain.
4. Also like VAT, each payment is accounted for, netted out in the EPT return, and the surplus reclaimed at each stage…
5. …until the final consumer, who cannot reclaim the tax, and thus becomes the real payer.
6. One additional detail: that there should also be a system of tax breaks that allows anyone in the supply chain to avoid EPT if they can demonstrate that they are dealing with the externality directly. They then can reclaim the relevant portion of their EPT and convert the surplus to additional profits, more competitive prices, or anything else they chose.

The benefits of such a system are clear:

1. It is a very simple system that requires no incessant calculation of precise externalities.
2. We could reuse the exist VAT system to collect and disperse it.
3. The inclusion of tax breaks would actively drive environmental improvement at every point in the supply chain.
4. If primary production were not the best starting point for such as system, it could be readily migrated to other areas of economic activity.

Such a system would not be without its problems:

1. Who owns the resulting fund? At the moment it could only be collected by national governments, but experience suggests that they could not be trusted to use it for its intended purposes. Most governments are understandably allergic to hypothecating taxes to specific purposes, but surely has to be an exception. After all, if it were used to supplement general taxation, it would soon stop being used for its intended purpose, not least because for the foreseeable future at least, environmental protection is a long-term game, and elected governments don’t generally do long term thinking. International institutions such as the IMF, the WTO and the United Nations are equally suspect.
2. It’s potentially a bit crude and insensitive to the details of how externalities are really incurred and slightly out of touch with current environmental research. But at the moment this would be a small price compared with the ease and simplicity with which such a system can be understood, implemented and adapted as the level of externalities changes.
3. The indirectness of the relationship between tax and specific externalities may leave it open to subversion. As Nick himself warned me, a whole school of accountants will spring up to take advantage of any loopholes, and they become a profession that insists on being fed and expanded even though they add nothing of social value. As to what the investment bankers could make of such a system, I shudder to think.

Economy versus environment (Part 94)

Q: What would actually happen if any significant proportion of the population suddenly took it into their head to reduce their environmental impact? A: The economy would collapse.

If you look at the recent recession, it is striking how much damage was done by relatively small changes in GDP. Of the highly developed nations, the UK (among the OECD countries, a middling performer) was so badly hit that it has experienced a loss of a little over 2.5% since the end of 2007. What? 2.5% in two years? A bit over 1% a year? What’s the big deal? Yes, I know, losing 1/80th of my income would not be a good thing in a year, but how can this be enough to do so much damage to an economy?

So what would happen if, say, 20% of the population managed to knock 50% off their environmental impact? Surely that would be an excellent start. Well, from an environmental point of view, perhaps. But if that translated into a 10% fall in consumer spending, where would that leave the economy? Consumer spending represents about 56% of German GDP, 58% of Japan’s GDP, 64% of the UK’s and 72% of the US’s (here). So a 50% fall in spending by 20% of all individuals would cut these economies by somewhere between 5.6% and 7.2% of GDP. In other words, even such a small change by a small minority would reek more economic havoc than the current recession!

So, we all get the environmental bug, and the economy folds. And with it go (as the current recession has also shown) investment in green technology and solutions of all kinds. Not everything, but far too much to support the real greening of industry. On the contrary, investors would be heading for the safe, short-term returns. And governments everywhere would be trying to compensate for the shortfall with new spending – and so shoring up the very economic activity those who had cut their impact had hoped to eliminate.

This isn’t a criticism of taking action, of course. But it is the old revision-versus-revolution problem. If you want only that the system work a bit more benignly, you need only revise the system so that it loses its more unpleasant foibles. But if the problem you are worried about is inherent in the system itself, revision isn’t the answer. The only way to fix systematic problems is to change the system in systematic ways.

That in turn is a political issue. Our politicians are of course firmly committed to growth, but that is not an irreversible condition. But two things are fundamental.

1. We must develop a credible explanation of this most fatal link between economy and environment, and make it as central a plank of future political discourse and policy-making as growth and consumerism have been since the 1970s.
2. We must define a programme for migrating our existing economy to a sustainable form. This cannot wait for 'the market' or the actions of private corporations, whose interests will never be to change themselves while there is still money to be made. Governments and local organisations must start to plan the elimination of environmentally destructive economic activity, undo the vicious circle of capital expansion that drives consumerism, obsession economic growth and the disregard of the poor and weak.

A momentary lapse into defeatism

I have always felt very ambivalent about the 10/10 campaign. It seems so very unambitious. Most people can reduce their carbon footprint and general environmental impact by 10% by little more than scrutinising their current lifestyle and cutting out the worst excesses. Turn the thermostat down a couple of degrees too high, stop wearing flimsy clothes on cold days, fix poor insulation for a small outlay, stop buying gadgets, fashion, trinkets, food from the other side of the planet, drive more thoughtfully (and if possible stop driving altogether), turn off unused lights (and stop squandering electricity for pointless lighting in the first place), remember to turn the PC off, and so on. 10%? A piece of cake.

What is more, I have probably managed 10% with disproportionately little sacrifice. It took me seconds to reset the thermostat and turn off the radiators in areas I barely use. It took about a week to get used to rooms a couple of degrees cooler. It took not time at all to remember to turn off lights and shut doors. It will take a lot longer to step back from impulse buying and toys, but it’s not impossible – I’m not so addicted to consumerism that I have to go along with the entire glitzy, grubby farrago. Nothing too it, if you really want to make a difference. 10%? Why so little?

But that isn’t the problem I have with 10/10, or any of the many other exhortations to us (as individuals) to use less. 10% is a nice idea, but the correct answer is something like 85%. So if we achieve 10% in 2010, will we achieve another 10% in 2011, and then another in 2012? It’s not inconceivable, given a truly impressive level of sign-up (which has not, as far as I can see, happened so far).

But even 30% is long way from 50%, let alone 85%. Read George Monbiot’s Heat or David McKay’s Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air for a sense of just how far we really have to go. At that level, the only sensible answer is to look seriously at our core social, political and economic systems to see how they need to be changed to deliver the goods. Or rather, stop delivering them.

But especially since Copenhagen I feel like we not only still have a very long way to go but that we have taken completely the wrong road. Down this road, no matter what a few individuals do, things do not get better – no, they get only worse.

I’m not too worried by the flagging public confidence in the reality of global warming or the tiny holes knocked in the credibility of individual environmental researchers - not even the IPCC. Such upsets will be transient and have a marginal impact. Much more serious is the decision by so many national governments to do what can only be summarised as - nothing. For how else can we understand Copenhagen (which left the world’s environmental strategy even weaker than after Kyoto), or the news that the UK government plans to take its expenditure on environmental projects in the developing world from existing budgets, or Obama’s evident fear of doing anything whatsoever about his environmental promises for the foreseeable future, or the Chinese government’s unwillingness to make any significant contribution to climate change (other than to make it much worse, of course)?

But why is this so much more important than persuading individuals to make a start on their personal environmental impact? Because the number of individuals who were ever likely to take that road was never more than a small – perhaps tiny – minority whose collective actions would have no significant effect on our fate. To have a wider impact, they had to serve as a catalyst, as a demonstration to governments that the environment was a vote-winner. Only when they had learned that would governments start to take the action needed to transform not just the footprint of individual households or even a Transition Town but the collective footprint of (in the UK’s case) 60 million people or more.

And not just 60 million individuals. Unlike you and me, governments can directly transform the country’s physical infrastructure on a national scale, coordinate similar actions on an international scale, force big business to mend its ways, and all in all make the systematic changes that no assembly of individual persons can ever bring about. Even 60 millions individuals could not change the public transport system without government action, nor how we generate electricity, nor how developing countries go about achieving a civilised level of development, nor any of the rest.

But after Copenhagen? Nothing can expected from governments any more. Or at least, far too little even to deflect the crisis by more than a smidgen. Even worse, not only have they decided against going beyond Kyoto but they have plainly decided that the only solution to the world’s economic woes is to restore the economic system that got us into our current mess – economic and environmental alike. The only adjustments they plan to make are trivial, serving only to make the economic system a little less dangerous in narrowly economic terms, without any thought for the environmental consequences of a capitalist ‘business as usual’.

In such a situation, what is the point of an individual making a personal commitment to reducing their environmental impact? Does it make sense for individuals to take action off their own bat if the great majority are not only not doing practically nothing (a situation I can live with for a decade or two) but major organisations (political and economic) are never going to be moved in an environmental direction, and have in fact decided to head straight back down the road we all know leads only to global warming, ecosystems collapse and resource wars? What can we claim that individual environmental self-control can achieve after that – that we will succeed in putting off the evil day by 10 minutes?

So even if I do manage a 10% - or 25% or 100% - reduction, exactly what have I accomplished? On a personal level, perhaps it is still a lot. At the very least, if I can get my footprint down to a sustainable level (not a very meaningful proposition while I remain a member of such a destructive society), I can say that at least it wasn’t me, guv. But on a higher level? What have ‘we’ accomplished? In the absence of a broader, systematic impact on the whole way we (at worst) conceive of the environment and (at best) the way we manage our economy, a lot less than we might imagine.

Act Now - Change the Future

Stop Climate Change March, London, 5 December 2009

I went on the Stop Climate Change March last Saturday. Depending on who you believe, so did somewhere between 20,000 and 60,000 other people.

Some interesting events straightaway. As we stand about in from Grosvenor Square, waiting for the off, I reminisce wistfully about the good old days of anti-Vietnam protests. Hoping he will share my nostalgia, I ask a middle-aged policeman whether we might not be allowed to sack the American Embassy. To my pleasant surprise, I am not arrested or (as far as I am aware) photographed. He replies simply, ‘Is it worth it?’ I am tempted to explain in some detail exactly what part the government and people of the United States currently play in our climate problems, but life is too short and the demonstration has started to roll down towards Piccadilly.

Almost immediately, we pass the Canadian High Commission and huge choruses of boos erupt – a mark of our enthusiasm for the Alberta tar sand projects. Yes, as George Monbiot noted the other day in The Guardian, the Canadians are finally the bad guys. Unimaginable in real life, of course, but then the Canadians no longer inhabit real life. Instead, their government has been hijacked by oil interests, while the great majority of real Canadians reject tar sands development as indignantly as they would slaughtering kittens. (I would say 'baby seals', but that would be a bit ironic with the Canadians.)

We pass by some of the most salubrious of London’s many salubrious properties, not to mention showrooms full of the fanciest of cars. I wonder what the average carbon footprint is around here. A bit more than the average American or Canadian, I suspect, and wonder exactly why popular protests do not focus on individuals and classes with environmentally obscene lifestyles as well as our cousins across the sea.

On down Piccadilly, skirting Trafalgar Square, and into Whitehall. As we pass Downing Street, I ask a policeman to ask Gordon Brown, our beloved Prime Minster, to come out, as his employers are here and want a word with him. The policeman is polite and at least a little amused, but feels unable to take my request forward. Apparently a delegation of representatives of the 100 or so organisations participating in the march got into No.10 to see Gordon, and no doubt reassuring platitudes were exchanged by all sides.

Which is a pity. Normally I have little confidence in our political class – not least because they still seem to be under the impression that climate change can be dealt with by the usual political wrangling. Nature, alas, does not negotiate, is unbeguiled by even the slickest of slogans and remains unimpressed by style and voter preferences. Yet I have the impression that climate change is just the sort of issue our beleaguered premier might be able to do something with, what with his apparently quite sincere (if recently wholly misplaced) moral enthusiasms.

Or maybe I should not be so easily fooled: for all his recent rhetoric, pretending to be a leader when you know full well no one is following you looks forthright and upstanding but risks little. It’s convenient for an unpopular politician facing the polls to be able to occupy the moral high ground (scarcely a position I expect the Tories to be able to occupy any time soon). I just hope he takes the problem seriously enough that millions will not have to move to a more literal high ground while he and his friends play games with the future of billions.

Prompted by a policeman remarking that if he weren’t on duty he’d join the march himself, I ask a couple of police officers whether they would join in if they weren’t on duty. Both reply that they’d be at home, looking after their children. I haven’t the presence of mind to suggest that that’s exactly what the march is all about, and I would like to know how they would have replied.

Do marches work? No. Or at least, no one could believe that they have much impact on their own, given how little was accomplished by at least twenty times as many people protesting about the war in Iraq. Will Blair ever be put on trial? No, of course not. But if he is, how many of the current crop would be up there with him? And what does that tell us about the likelihood that they will do anything substantial about climate change?

At 3 pm exactly we have the Great Blue Wave. Soon we are in Parliament Square. And straight past Parliament itself! Hang on, what’s the point of marching from one end of London to the other and then doing nothing? No great visible, audible protest? Why on earth not? Is it perhaps that the organisers couldn't get permission? Yes, that’s right, we need permission to express our opinion to our lords and masters about the way they are neglecting the planet. Which is, I suppose, as conclusive proof as you could want that they are indeed our lords and masters. And we go along with it, of course. Because, no doubt, we are British and middle class and jolly polite.

What do we want?
Modest and reasonable improvement!
When do we want it?
In due course!

Oh well. At least it’s quite interesting, having a ring side seat at the end of the world. I wonder what the average Roman senator felt like in about 450 AD?

Global solutions: effective, efficient, equitable?

A persistent theme in much writing about the coming decades is the need for global agreements that go a good deal further than the technical questions of environment management. Nicholas Stern (the author of the authoritative Stern Review on the economics of climate change) is typical of this line of thought:

But we have to act together, to create a global deal – this is a problem that is global in both its origins and its impacts.

That global deal must be effective, in that it cuts back emissions on the scale required; it must be efficient, in keeping costs down; and it must be equitable in relation to abilities and responsibilities, taking into account both the origins and impact of climate change. (From Stern's A Blueprint for Safer Planet, p.4)

Everyone seems to say as much, and as a statement of how we should approach the coming decades, it is impossible to contradict.

I just don’t believe it will happen. In fact I suspect that the most we can realistically expect is that the actions we take will be moderately effective. Civilisation will probably not collapse. But as for efficiency and equity, what is it in our performance to date that would lead anyone to expect either? I doubt that, whatever the deals we collectively agree too, our collective response will be anything of the kind. There are far too many countervailing forces for that to happen.

The efficiency of any future global strategy is almost certainly out of the question. As everyone admits, we are faced with global problems. But we do not have global systems in place to deal with them. On the contrary, our systems are not only fragmented but also full of conflict and antipathy between individual nations. There is also a profound conflict of interest between the owners and senior management of global corporations - the other most powerful economic players on the planet - and the rest of us.

Of course, in some profound sense we are all in this together, and completely failure will be fatal for all of us. But between here and complete failure there are many decisions to be made, each of which will benefit some and burden others. Reluctant though I am to say it of my fellow human beings, those who control the decision-making at each of these branching points will, more often than not, make sure that the decision is made in their own favour. That is to say, they will be decisions which are efficient for them. In Stern’s very appropriate words, they will be ‘keeping costs down’. This may mean keeping down the costs for humanity at large, but it will almost certainly involve minimising the costs of those who control the decisions. If this means increasing the ‘costs’ – the poverty, the danger, the hunger, the misery, the disease, the fear, the agony – of everyone else, then that will be presented as the best – or at least the least bad – alternative. Those who do not control these decisions will take the consequences. Which, in many cases, will be fatal.

As for equity, we have never taken this seriously in the past and I believe it will be a lot harder to take seriously in future. In the current (relatively) stable and affluent industrial world, only a handful of the most wealthy nations ever fulfils its public commitments on aid. We announce and re-announce help for long term development and short-term disaster, and then fail to live up to either. Given that the sums involved – currently just 0.7% of GDP – are so small that we would not miss them if we paid them in full, what can we expect of decisions about disasters that are not yet even visible. And in a future world of successive environmental crises, mass migrations, resource wars and much else, there will be far less concern for, let alone commitment to, equity. On the contrary, most of humanity will not even show up on the radar screens of the key decision-makers.

Why then should we expect equity from any future arrangements to curb climate change, resource depletion, ecosystems degradation, population growth and other environmental threats? I suspect that the real fount of future ‘equity’ is likely to be what it has always been - the economic power that countries like China, India, Brazil and Russia are already starting to wield. In a world of declining fossil fuels, the European Union will not be allowed to forget that Gazprom alone controls a sixth of the world’s natural gas reserves. The United States Treasury has long since started to eye nervously China’s enormous dollar holdings - they currently hold nearly $2 trillion in US Treasury bonds, whose manipulation could easily hole the entire western economy. These are people we will treat ‘equitably’ – because they come to the negotiating table as equals, not to mention rivals. But the hundred-plus countries that are each smaller than all of the world’s hundred largest companies? If GlaxoSmithKline, Cisco Systems and Wells Fargo are unlikely to be granted a seat at the top table, what can lesser economic entities like Estonia, Ethiopia, Cameroon, Trinidad and Tobago, Ivory Coast, Panama, El Salvador, Tanzania, Bahrain, Jordan, Iceland, Bolivia, Ghana, Paraguay, Zambia, Uganda, Botswana, Honduras and the many other yet smaller countries expect?

But not even the effectiveness of any future ‘global deal’ can be taken for granted. There are after all degrees of effectiveness. I previously suggested three levels of outcome for our current position: a setback comparable to a world war; an impact on our civilisation as a whole comparable to the fall of the Roman empire; and a threat to civilisation as such, comparable to a new ice age. As I have previously said, I do not know which we are really facing, but for all the reasons that we should expect neither efficiency nor equity, we should expect the effectiveness of our actions to be limited too - perhaps to the point where the twenty-first century goes down as the worst in history.

More precisely, we should expect rich and powerful countries that are situated in relatively cool regions to do as little as possible until they have no choice but to act in their own interests. That is after all what they have always done about global problems and what they have done so far about our current environmental threats. Even if they have the foresight to recognise that disaster in developing countries now will mean disaster for them later, they will almost certainly do only what is needed to forestall the later disaster to themselves. This will almost certainly be much less than preventing or remedying the original disaster to developing countries, no doubt accompanied by a great deal of hand-wringing, protestations of good intentions and dishonest claims to be taking ‘appropriate’ action. The real focus being on deflecting the negative consequences for the rich and powerful. Again going by our experience of aid, we will even find opportunities to benefit from the suffering of developing countries. Again, we always have. And then millions and millions of people will die.

The upshot of all this is simple. Simply continually asserting that our approach must be efficient or equitable will result in neither. If we want our response to the many environmental threats we face in the twenty-first century to be efficient or equitable, we must take a very firm and explicit decision that it should be so. More than that, we must create global institutions that represent humanity at large – which is to say, people rather the most powerful corporations and nation states.

It is hard to imagine what such an institution would look like. After all, none of our existing systems operate at that level. But in any case, I can still think of no compelling reason to expect any such institutions to be created even if they could be easily described, and the chances of their coming into existence will recede faster and faster as the real problems caused by 3° and 4° temperature increases start to hit us, as the global economy starts to unravel in the face of accelerating oil and gas prices and whole populations start to move in the face of poverty, hunger, disease and war.

President Obama, the Climate President

So Barack Obama has flown over to the G20 Summit in London with 500 people and several identical helicopters, most of which are flying solely as decoys to potential assassins. To talk about climate change as a small (and probably completely perfunctory) part of the agenda of a conference that will involve just 4 and a bit hours of talks.

May be a clue there about a) exactly how much difference this will make, and b) what the cause of climate change is. Thank God the protestors are there: otherwise it would seem like a complete waste of time.

Fossil Fools Day protests

In case you're inclined to join in, here is a summary (kindly provided by the security people in a neighbouring City institution) of the protests planned for the end of the month.

G20 Meltdown - April 1st and 2nd
Anarchists and anti-capitalists intend to hold a 24 hr 'Reclaim the Streets' style event in the City, starting at 12:00 hrs at the Bank of England, Bank Junction. Intelligence also suggests climate related protests) and actions (this is also 'Fossil Fools Day) at RBS, 250 Bishopsgate and the European Carbon Exchange and Carbon Exchange Plc at 62 Bishopsgate. Attendance can be expected to be between 1,000-2,000, although this cannot be confirmed.

At 11:00 hrs, several gatherings will take place at the tube / train stations of Liverpool Street, London Bridge, Cannon Street and Moorgate. Each group will then snake their way to the Bank of England at 12:00 hrs, headed by the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

Representing:

• Climate Chaos - Green Horse - Liverpool Street Station
• Anti-war - Red Horse - Moorgate Station
• Job / savings / pensions losses - Silver Horse - London Bridge Station
• Home repossessions - Black Horse - Cannon Street Station

Intelligence suggests that:

• The Liverpool Street convergence will be in the form of a FlashMob to raise public awareness, stretch police resources and avoid police 'corralling' action.
• Some anarchists may attempt an incursion into the Bank of England, using force if necessary.
• An overnight vigil in the City with attendees bringing tents to sleep in.
• Early morning attendance at the LSE on 2nd April (07:00 hrs) with a view to disrupt trading.

Other autonomous actions against banks, financial institutions and those linked to the climate industry, in particular those that have recently benefited from the government bailout and mergers (Lloyds, RBS etc).

Historically, this type of action usually takes the form of a party-type atmosphere with sound systems playing. This sometimes turns confrontational and can result in a mass rush towards the entrances of locations that they are seeking to occupy or a break out of police lines. Anarchists in the past have committed acts of criminal damage by causing graffiti or smashing windows and, therefore, encouraging looting. This should be considered due to the proximity of the Royal Exchange. Popular targets are those with a particularly capitalist image, e.g. McDonalds, Starbucks, banks, or those with Israeli links due to the recent events in Gaza.

As many will remember, the G18 actions of 10 years ago resulted in mass disorder and conflict with police. Actions included climbs, banner drops, barricades, storming of several buildings and the setting alight the Mercedes garage. Although there is no intelligence to suggest a repeat of these events, the planned days of action do bear some resemblance to those of G18.

Other related events:

• 28th March : The TUC will be holding a march & rally from Embankment to Hyde Park from 11:00- 17:00 hours. It is anticipated that up to 30,000 people will attend this event.


• 2nd April : G20 Conference, ExCEL Centre - It is possible that activists will attempt some kind of blockade or incursion at the event. There will be a robust policing plan in place.

The view from on high

One of the rewards of pontificating from a very lofty position indeed is that you get to talk complete rubbish and get away with it. Here is a brief excerpt from Michael Skapinker, one of the Financial Times' many over-opinionated gurus:

Do you remember Y2K, the millennium bomb? It was supposed to bring the world to a halt because computers could not cope with their internal calendars turning from “99” into “00”. What was that all about? Was Y2K a scam perpetrated by the information technology and consulting industries, who made a fortune out of it? A genuine danger that governments and companies averted through assiduous action? (I remember an airline office where even the radiator had a “Y2K compliant” sticker on it.) Or was it just mass corporate and official hysteria?

I suspect it was mainly the last. Perhaps a generation from now, climate change will be seen in the same light, or perhaps not. Not everything we panic about is baseless.

Really. I can only hope that Mr Skapinker's financial opinions are better grounded than his views on either Y2K or the environment. No, Y2K was no scam. I was working with a large US credit card company at the time, and I can assure Mr Skapinker that the problem was all too real. The fact that half the computers on the planet did not start to misbehave about the start of 2000 was solely down to the truly immense efforts put into dealing with it. Unlike nuclear war, which was always a matter of imponderables, there was no doubt in any IT person's mind of what would happen if we did not solve the problem in time. The fact that Mr Skapinker was not inconvenienced by it is solely to the credit of the thousands of IT engineers who worked so hard to smooth his way.

Likewise the environment. There remain many imponderables there too - but one of them is not climate change itself. Resource deletion, ecosystems damage and population growth are equally certain. Unless, of course, Mr Skapinker has sources of which the IPCC, United Nations, the CIA, World Resources Institute, most national governments and practically every climate scientist on the planet know nothing.

A summary of where I think we are now

The problems posed by the human impact on the environment are huge and extremely urgent and we have no previous experience in solving problems of this type or magnitude. The means at our disposal are not only essentially incapable of solving these problems but they are inherently inclined to make them worse. Yet there is no time to create new systems. Therefore the only realistic option is to learn to manage these systems far more radically and on a far larger scale than we do at present. But so radical are the necessary changes that they are likely to be heavily resisted, and resisted by some of the most powerful forces on the planet.

The problems posed by the human impact on the environment are huge and extremely urgent. We need to reduce the impact we are having on the environment radically. In the leading industrial countries we need to reduce our collective carbon footprint by 90% or more, or perhaps even shift to a carbon-negative economy, in which we compensate for past excesses by absorbing more carbon than we emit. We are starting to move, but even the most ambitious national and international targets commit us to probably failing to halt this process. Meanwhile, almost every worst-case scenario – Arctic melting, climate damage, habitat loss – is turning out to be the best case. At this rate, we may well be living in the last century – if not the last few decades - of industrial civilisation.

At the same time, many strategic materials on which our current economic system relies – not only oil and natural gas but many metals and minerals - will become scarce to the point that they will start to disrupt our current economic systems within the foreseeable future. A number of absolutely basic resources such as fresh water and fertile soil will also come under threat within the same timescale, affecting so many people (especially in developing countries) that their effects are imaginable only if you are prepared to imagine the very worst.

But we started to exceed the Earth’s carrying capacity about a quarter of a century ago, and we have already started to witness the consequences.

We have no previous experience in solving problems of this type or magnitude. Pundits like to compare the impending crisis with the Second World War. As the next couple of chapters will make clear, if we do not take vigorous actions quickly enough, the fall of the Roman Empire may well turn out to be a better comparison – if not the last Ice Age. We are already losing – in many cases, actively destroying - the means to solve our problems. Within a few decades the losses will trigger a sequence of environmental implosions in which the collapse of this or that area – the Amazon forests, the Siberian tundra, vast undersea methane hydrate reservoirs - will release enough additional carbon to change the question from ‘How do we manage this?’ to ‘How do we survive this?’

Other events will be equally devastating. The melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets alone will make some of the world’s most heavily populated areas uninhabitable and flood many of the world’s greatest cities. The droughts that inevitably follow the final melting of most of the world’s glaciers (which feed many of the most important rives) will turn many of the world’s most densely populated – and nuclear-armed – regions to scrublands capable of supporting only the most meagre of populations. In the same timescale we can expect some of the world’s most fertile and productive agricultural areas to fail, including the American Midwest and California’s Central Valley, several of China’s rice-growing regions$$ and the Ganges valley.

Taken together, these processes will combine to ignite civil and political conflicts on an unprecedented scale even while massively damaging the social and political systems we rely on to manage such conflicts.

Meanwhile, the means at our disposal to solve all these problems are not only essentially incapable of solving these problems but they are inherently inclined to make them worse. Faced with any global problem, our most important resource is our economy. It is this that produces the means to do anything else, especially create the new systems and technologies we will undoubtedly need to deploy to escape our predicament. More than three decades after the first credible warnings of what would happen if we continued with unabated industrial growth and almost two decades since global targets and agreements on climate change were first promulgated, we have failed to meet practically every target we have set ourselves.

The fundamental reason for this is, straightforward enough. A capitalist economy relies absolutely on the continual expansion of profits. Without continuing the cycle of profit, investment and profit, it has no rationale and will cease to function. With that, all the remainder of society that relies so entirely on capitalist relationships – employment, consumption, taxation, government – will also collapse. With such a large proportion of all capital tied up in industrial machinery, global transport systems, vast retail networks and an enormous advertising and marketing industry – not to mention an almost official post-ideology ideology of consumerism – not only is our current economic system not designed to help us cut back, but it positively demands endless expansion. Although industry as such is not a problem – any machine can be turned off – capitalist industry is an absolute catastrophe. Under a capitalist regime, turning off the machines would put an end not only to the profits but also to the only system we possess that is capable of creating the means to solve our current environmental problems. Even replacing them with more environmentally friendly alternatives before they had recouped their original investment would cripple businesses.

Yet there is no time to create a new economic system. The problem is Now, and every past transformation as radical as the replacement of capitalism has taken literally centuries. Therefore the only realistic option is to learn to manage these systems far more radically and on a far larger scale than we do at present. The famous ‘turning on a penny/dime’ at the start of the Second World War is encouraging, but the changes needed now are far more fundamental. We have longer to complete them, but there is scarcely an area of everyday life they will not touch, and unlike the changes wrought at the start of the Second World War, this is not a transient change to be made in the face of a clear and present danger. If we are to succeed, we must take far more radical steps than anything ever contemplated before, forcing an extraordinary level of change (and perhaps disruption).

But so radical are the necessary changes that they are likely to be heavily resisted, and resisted by some of the most powerful forces on the planet. The situation is essentially that the next century will be by any standards the most expensive century in human history. That is, we will be investing not so much in grow as in change – often accompanied by shrinkage. Faced with such a situation, most governments and practically all businesses will try to deal with this problem by either evading their responsibilities or making someone else pay for them. Given that at least a significant fraction of governments and businesses have demonstrated a willingness to obtain economic resources and avoid social obligations by a combination of force and fraud, this may well prove to be the most violent century in human history too.

Yet there is a great deal we can do. But only if we are prepared to face up the reality of the situation, and only if we are willing to take action. Now.

Transition Romsey

In case you live in the Romsey, Hampshire area - they are thinking of starting a Transition Town initiative.

A meeting will be held on 30th October on Transition Towns at the Abbey United Reformed Church Hall, from 7.30 to start at 8 pm. Richard Barnett from New Forest Transition Community will be speaking at the meeting.

(See http://transitiontowns.org/New-Forest/New-Forest for more info on New Forest Transition Community.)

Is there no end to Microsoft's selfishness?

Good old Microsoft. Just when you might have thought people were starting to get the message about how environmentally damaging flying is, they offer air miles to anyone using their search engine:

Under the latest plan, known as Search Perks, Microsoft said that US
internet users would be able to earn a “ticket” each time they conducted a
search on its Live Search site, then redeem those for things such as ... regular air
miles. (Financial Times, October 1 2008)

Well done. Another generation addicted to flying. Still, it serves a higher purpose - bribing Google users to jump ship.

If you are a Google user, please don't accept the Microsoft bribe. And God knows the world would scarcely be a better place if Microsoft gain control of yet another area of computing!

How to reduce what you consume

1. Do all those little things environmentalists talk about - especially the ones that involve doing less.
2. Become a vegeterian. Or at least stop eating beef.
3. Downsize your car. Now. Buy a bike. Always take public transport. Never never never fly again.
4. Stop buying gadgets.
5. Join a local Freecycle group.
6. Make your employer more environmentally aware.
7. Buy locally.
8. Get involved with local 'resilience' projects. In fact, start a local Transition Town initiative.
9. Educate yourself about your impact on the environment.
10. Have no more children. Every time someone with enough technology to read this has another child, it's the equivalent of about 50 children in the Third World. No, that's no exaggeration.

Transition Network: Newsletter Sept-08

Here's the long awaited newsletter for Sept08.

So much has happened since the last newsletter an (embarassingly long) while ago. Where to start...

"Official" initiatives and all the mullers

In the Japanese myth, the hundredth monkey represents the point at which a learned behaviour spreads instantaneously from one group of monkeys to ALL related monkeys once a critical number is reached. So it's somehow fitting that the 100th official transition initiative was Fujino in Japan.

For those at the conference earlier in the year, you may recall that we were at 50 in April. That means the number has doubled in less than 5 months - and the number of contacts on our database has just about doubled in that time too. The number of communities "mulling it over" has also pretty well doubled to nearly one thousand.

And it's not just the number that's heartening, it's the reach. Eight more "officials" from Australia, four more from the US, one from Chile and obviously, Fujino. Meanwhile, while we're busy clucking away in English, the Hungarians have been busy! For those that don't have conversational Magyar, "A 12 Lépés az Átmenethez" means 12 Step of Transition.It's starting fast, reaching far, and there's still a long, long way to go...

Software platform for Transition

We're kicking off a project to create a software platform that'll facilitate the 100th monkey syndrome and allow these initiatives to grow exponentially - a platform that will provide three main things:

• a quick and function-rich web presence for initiatives
• a community networking capability
• a knowledge collaboration and sharing system

The project programme has been drafted up, and we'll be facilitating several teams to take us through this process. So, if you'd like to get involved, here's the online form to let us know how you can help.

Let's unleash the techno genius within so our initiatives can scale up to the size and impact that's really needed to tackle the challenges and grab the opportunities that will be facing us in the coming years.

Introducing Transition Chat!

Transition Chat! is a new initiative co-ordinated by the Transition Network, which will provide a forum for people to share successes, failures, ideas, best practice and so on. Each session takes place on a Monday, between 2 and 3.30pm GMT (it can roll on if the conversation is particularly animated) and it is hosted in a web chat format. Pop them in your diary, the first one is Monday 8-Sept.

The Timetable
The first 10 have been arranged, and they offer a mixture of deepening your understanding of various aspects of Transition, the opportunity to ask the questions you struggle with to experts in the field, and chatting with other Transition folks. The timetable thus far is as follows:

• 8-Sept: Transition Network Structure Document: hosted by Rob Hopkins and Peter Lipman. An opportunity for anyone unable to make the discussion day on the 10th to input into this important document.
• 15-Sept: Transition Training Clinic session #1. An opportunity to ask all your practical questions, what is working and/or not working for you in the early stages of your initiative. Hosted by members of Transition Training.
• 22-Sept: Dr. Colin Campbell of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil answers your questions on peak oil (tbc)
• 29-Sept: The Transition Timeline. Establishing the assumptions underpinning our Energy Descent Planning. Hosted by Shaun Chamberlin, creator of the Transition Timeline
• 6-Oct: Inner Transition, Heart and Soul. Hosted by Sophy Banks
• 13-Oct: Transition Training Clinic session #2. Getting started, raising awaress, building a good head of steam.
• 20-Oct: Transition Cities. How to do this in the city? Hosted by Sarah Pugh.
• 27-Oct: Transition Training Clinic session #3 (tbc)
• 3-Nov: Peak oil and climate change: hosted by Dr. Jeremy Leggett.
• 10-Nov: Collaboration/leadership/structure. Hosted by Mike Jones of Transition Stroud.

How to Chat
To participate, follow this link, type into the box the name you want to be known as online - ideally your own name so we know who are are speaking to (not cheekymonkey18 or bigbob), and then follow the instructions. Do let us know what you think of it.

The Launch of the Lewes Pound, 9-Sept. Be There!

On Tuesday 9th September 2008 at the Foundry Gallery in Lewes, Transition Town Lewes will be launching the Lewes Pound, the second currency to be issued by a Transition initiative, the first being the Totnes Pound (although Brixton are at the early stage of planning their Brixton Brick). The evening will be hosted by the Mayor of Lewes, and will include short talks by Stewart Wallis, Executive Director, New Economics Foundation, Polly Toynbee, Guardian columnist and author and Transition Network's Rob Hopkins.

It will be followed by a celebration with music from SkaToons, food from Bills, and drinks from local brewery Harveys, who are rumoured to have brewed a beer called 'The Lewes Pound' in its honour! The evening will be your first opportunity to get your hands on the new currency… don't miss it! It's not every day that a new currency is born! They also got some great exposure in Sunday's Observer and have also got their local Barclays Bank to accept and issue the notes.

Transition Network Structure Document - we need your input!

Hopefully by now you might have had a look at the draft Transition Network Structure document. This document arose from the Strategy Day in Bristol in April, and it sets out how this vastly expanding network might organise itself. So far people have fed back their thoughts and comments via the Network forum.

Now there are two more ways to input your thoughts and help to shape it. The first is through the Transition Chat session on Monday 8th at 2pm (see above). The second is to come to a get together to discuss it in Bristol, on Wednesday 11th September between 11am and 4pm, at the Half Moon in Bristol. Details here.

There will also be the opportunity for those of you who are unable to make it on the day to follow the event online, thanks to our fab scribe for the day, Steph.

Transition Towns Come to London: Tues 16-Sept, London

Building sustainable and resilient cities will be crucial to navigating an orderly route through the coming climate and energy challenges. This event will help move the discussions forward and identify practical ways we can all contribute.

Presenting at Transition Towns come to London will be:

• Mike Grenville of Changing Worlds - discussing Peak Oil and the urgency of action required
• Rob Hopkins, author of The Transition Handbook - speaking on how communities can respond effectively to climate chaos and the end of cheap oil, and describing how to start to build local resilient networks

Panel Discussion speakers include:

• Suzy Edwards of Camden Climate Action Network
• Duncan Law of Transition Town Brixton
• Mary Fee of LETSLink
• Lucy Neal of Transition Town Tooting

Next steps and more details:

• Registration
• Where: Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1
• When: Tues 16th Sept, 6.30pm - 8.30pm
• Cost: £5 on the door (includes refreshments)

Transition Gathering Camp, 19/21-Sept, Sussex

Thanks to the sterling efforts of the South East Transition group, a transition gathering that welcomes all the family and provides a space to meet transitioners from other places will be taking place on 19/21-September-2008 in Sussex.

There will be a basic framework of activities and also space for sessions you would like to offer. Unplugged music, story telling, skills, questions, debate, open fires and much more.

It will be a time to gather together, a time to celebrate, to share good food, visions for our future, skills and knowledge, have fun, to connect and just be with each other.

The camp site is on a beautiful organic farm in the heart of Sussex at the end of the Bluebell railway line and close to the Ashdown Forest. Elena's kitchen will offer delicious food and a there will be a yurt sauna. Children most welcome.

Suggested donation for the weekend camp Friday and Saturday nights: Adult £25 and child £10 family £50 (no day tickets)

Next steps and more details:

• Registration
• Event Flyer
• Mike Grenville - contact@transitionforestrow.org
• 01342 825169
• Transition Forest Row
• South East Transition Initiatives

Transition Stroud: Open Homes for a sustainable future, 13/14-Sept

Transition Stroud have organised 12 homes around Stroud to open to the public so that they can see renewable energy in action, discuss energy efficiency and get advice on eco-renovations.

Over the weekend, in addition to a whole range of measures on different homes, there will also be a chance to see the largest PV generation in the country on private housing, see how co-housing works and there will also be tours of Tranquility House that has been dubbed by the Building Contracts Journal as 'the most energy efficient house in the world'. There are also two guided walks of the homes which are part of the Stroud's Walking Festival and a cycle route.

Here's the event flyer or check out the Stroud Open Homes website for all the details. Alternatively, contact Philip Booth, Project Coordinator - Transition Stroud, on 01453 755451.

University of Transition: development day, 11-Oct, Hereford

The focus of the day will be on Universities OF Transition. In other words, what educational structures and programs are needed to enable learning about all the technical, personal and other skills needed for the transition to a post peak oil, low carbon future.

Download the programme which sets out the purposes and objectives and outline plan for the day.

For more details, go to the Event thread on the forum.

Transition Training: going global!

If you want to get a picture of how Transition is spreading, take a look at the training schedule for the two-day "Training for Transition" course. The challenge is to build an army of trainers able to deliver this work, and a train the trainers course has already taken place and further ones are planned.

Transition for Wales: networking event, 25-Oct

There's lots of transition activity in Wales now and there's a big "all Wales" meeting on 25-Oct (probably in Builth ).

Keep an eye on the Wales forum for more information.

Low Carbon Communities Network: conference, Llangollen, North Wales, Saturday 4-October

Transition Network is working more and more closely with the groups that are aiming for low carbon or zero carbon within their community. For example, they'll be instrumental in helping us create the software platform noted above.

So we're very happy to help promote their 2008 Conference next month in Wales. All the details are on the conference website - it promises to bea highly participatory event, with a musical star turn by the wonderful Seize the Day.

On the programme are:

• Rachel Nunn, speaking about the Going Carbon Neutral Stirling Project
• Mark Lynas, Author of “Six Degrees, Our Future on a Hotter Planet”
• Ian Roderick, speaking about the Converging World (one of our main conference sponsors)
• George Marshall, Director of projects at Climate Outreach Information Network (COIN)
• Kevin Carey, Llanidloes Energy Solutions (LLES)
• Penney Poyzer (Broadcaster and journalist) will speak about the eco renovation of her home
• Jacqi Hodgson from Transition Towns Totnes will talk about energy descent planning
• Ben Brangwyn from Transition Towns
• Tracey Todhunter from Low Carbon Communities Network will present on new web based support tools for communities

Resources for your transition initiative

Lots on this page, so please add yours if you think it'll be useful to others. This includes a fully scripted peak oil, climate change and transition presentation that you may be able to slice and dice into something that suits your style of presentation.

A great little peak oil animation

And to finish off, here's a real gem, courtesy of Adrienne Campbell from TT Lewes - "... came across it in the Daily Telegraph website of all places!" Thanks Adrienne, you continue to be an inspiration to us all.

==============================================

And thanks to the rest of you, for helping take your communities on the journey beyond oil towards climate stability. It's a long road ahead, so let's remember to rest awhile, lest fatigue overburdens us. And I'm practicing what I'm preaching now, heading off for three weeks for a wedding (my own!) and a honeymoon in the mountains and gorges of Spain and France.Happy transitioning...

==============================================

Ben Brangwyn and all the rest of the gang at Transition Network==============================================
Unsubscribe rj.robinson@prometheus.org.uk from this list

Transition gathering, 19-21st September 2008

Mike Grenville of Transition Forest Row tells me that there will be a 'Transition Gathering' in September. More precisely...

"This first transition gathering will provide a space to meet transitioners from other places at an event that welcomes all the family.

The timing of the gathering leads up to the autumn equinox which will mark the emergence of transition initiatives.

From a basic framework of activities, the gathering will also provide space for sessions you would like to offer. Unplugged music, story telling, skills, questions, debate, open fires and much more. It will be a time to gather together, a time to celebrate, to share good food, visions for our future, skills and knowledge, have fun, to connect and just be with each other.

The camp site is on a beautiful organic farm in the heart of Sussex at the end of the Bluebell railway line and close to the Ashdown Forest.

Elena's kitchen will offer delicious food and a there will be a yurt sauna. Children most welcome.

Suggested donation for the weekend camp Friday and Saturday nights:

Adult £25 and child £10 family £50. (no day tickets) Register on the website: http://transitiongathering.ning.com/

Event Flyer http://www.changingworlds.info/TransitionFlyers/Tgathering-flyer.pdf

For more details contact Mike Grenville:
contact@transitionforestrow.org
http://www.transitionforestrow.org/
01342 825169

http://southeasttransitioninitatives.ning.com/ "

Go. Support them.

Accelerating the transition to transition

The time it currently takes to motivate a local community to set up an effective Transition Town group is, by conventional reckoning, a year and more. This is corroborated, I think, not only by the Transition movement’s own practical experience but also by the experience of organisational change experts.

I have recently managed a very small ‘transition’ of sorts in a well-known British company. It was only a relatively small change, that, in purely technical terms, it should have taken only about three months, even allowing for building absolutely everything from scratch. We were also fortunate in that practically all the participants understood and accepted (and in many cases actively demanded). Yet it still took more than a year to complete.

Why so long? It’s not hard to understand. Here are some factors that slowed us down.

1. There were far too few people involved. Basically it was me managing it full-time and a few part—timers doing the local changes.
2. Everyone apart from me had a day-job to do, so even when they positively wanted to join in, it was hard.
3. The important always gives place to the urgent. So every time I wanted to do something quickly, there were always a hundred other, more urgent things the people I needed to take action had to do.
4. Misalignment is another potentially fatal source of disruption. There is no shortage of other initiatives that the well motivated are also involved in. Right in the middle of my own change programme, the HR department kicked off an ‘excellence programme’, aimed at creating a qualitative leap in the company’s level of performance. I felt that this was a bit odd, given that we could not do ‘competent’ yet, but the real difficulty was that several of the key participants in my own scheme were effectively put on hold while their ‘excellence profiles’ were agreed.
5. Internal friction was another problem. Those who were actively involved were often at loggerheads about exactly what needed doing and exactly how it should be done. More delays, and in some cases a lot of muttering and unspoken resentment.
6. Resentment. Some participants ( and others who effectively refused to participate, even though the programme aimed to achieve goals they shared) resented the fact that they were not in charge.
7. Individual parts of the change programme were not well thought through, I am ashamed to say. I took too much understanding and agreement for granted. Given the Transition Network's own 7 Buts (which will resonate with every change manager in the country), there is no shortage of things of resistance points, of that need thinking through or that, conversely, can disrupt, if not sink, even a popular initiative.
8. Few of the individuals involved had any real experience of change management. Or rather, they had all been ‘changed’ by previous initiatives, often to the point of radical disillusion about the effectiveness of change itself. But they have few of the skills and knowledge needed to design, build and implement the change themselves. Again, given that the Transition process is unlikely to succeed unless it is taken up by a very large proportion of the population, this is even more of a problem for Transition than for the biggest corporate organisation.

Yet in other respects, I was very lucky. I did not have to face dissent from organised groups or the powers that be. The nature of the change was well defined in ways that had pretty much universal consent in advance. And I had done this many times before, and managed to avoid many of the standard elephant traps change programmes often fall into.

And so on. Hence the slow pace of change.

Yet this timescale can probably be cut very considerably. Each of the slowing factors mentioned above can be anticipated, prepared for and actively managed. The question is not whether such change is possible, but only how well it can be done.

Leverage, not numbers

Last night I attended the Guildford Environmental Forum (GEF), where Ben Brangwyn, one of the leading lights of the Transition Town movement and a founder the Transition Network. He talked and we asked questions for more than 2½ hours – which, bearing in mind that he had had a lousy journey from the far end of the country that day, was pretty impressive.

Late in the conversation, he discussed the ‘7 Buts’ – the reasons people give for not doing anything about the environment. No. 4 is ‘But no one in this town cares about the environment anyway’. In response to this, Ben told us about an old man who told him that, before the Second World War, almost no one had worried about what was coming. But 5% of the population could see the signs and took steps to prepare. So when war actually came, a good deal was ready. Britain’s legendary ‘turning on a sixpence’ (or the USA ‘turning on a dime’) depended heavily on the readiness created by a few.

I think this is a good metaphor for what the Transition Network should be doing. As well as actually making changes – proving the truth of the transition model by practical means – we should also be preparing to accelerate this process when suddenly not only a lot more people but also governments at every level need to get things done. As well as an ‘Energy Descent Action Plan’ (EDAP) each community should start to build a ‘Transition Mobilisation Plan’. And just as, like the EDAP, no one can tell a local community how to carry out their own transition, but they can certainly be provided with a proven toolkit for a very wide range of tasks, including plenty of built-in options and adaptability.

So part of the role of the Transition Network should, I think, be to create the readiness for when action is urgently needed and many more people are motivated to take action.