What might we learn from the construction, between1438 and 1448 of the Hospital of St. John in Sherborne (see above) that might shape the way we think about construction in the 21st century?  While the bulk of the building was built using local oolitic limestone, it was dressed with Lias stone from Ham Hill, some 12 miles from the building site.  However, in those days, without the internal combustion engine, 12 miles was a long way to carry stone (you try it).  The meticulous accounts kept of the project at the time show that the cost of transporting the stone by cart cost more than the stone itself.  As Alec Clifton-Taylor says in his seminal ‘The Pattern of English Building’, “it was the great difficulty of transporting heavy materials which led all but the most affluent until the end of the eighteenth century to build with the materials that were most readily available near the site, even when not very durable”.  

I often use the analogy, in terms of food, of a cake.  Until recently, local production provided the cake (the bulk of our needs) and what was imported was the ‘icing’ and cherry on top, nice to have but we didn’t depend on it.  What cheap energy and globalisation has created is a situation where now the cake is imported from wherever in the world it can be found cheapest, and local production is just the icing.  In the same way that for food we need to urgently reverse this, for many reasons that will be only too familiar to regular readers of this blog, the same can be argued for building materials.

In the case of these alms houses in Sherborne, it literally was the building’s ‘icing’ that caused the difficulties.  With about 30% of UK road freight now due to the movement of construction materials, many of which already have a high level of embodied energy, I’d like to argue here that we need to think about construction in the same way we are starting to think about food, specifically in the context of the Atmos Project, a community initiative I am involved in in Totnes.

Historically, as well as being the only option people had, the use of local materials also led to the evolution of vernacular styles of building, so that each region had its own distinct styles of building, rooted in materials, culture and tradition.  As John and Jane Penoyre note in ‘Houses in the Landscape’ “in these simple buildings the available materials are the principal dictators of style”.  Mark Gorgolewski writes in The Green Building Bible:

“… as materials closer to their natural state will tend to have had less processing, which often means less energy use, less waste and less pollution.  Local materials can reduce the need for transport and benefits the local economy and community”.

Christopher Day writes that “local materials minimise transport energy, suit local climate, support local employment and society and reinforce locality identity, anchoring buildings into local culture … so roundwood instead of sawn, adobe or brick instead of concrete”.  As well as having far less embodied energy due to requiring so little transportation, they also often have far less embodied energy in their manufacturre, as the graph below showing overall CO2 emissions by weight [kg] released by production of 1 kg of twenty-four common building materials demonstrates (source).  Note that those materials on the right hand side actually lock up more carbon than they emit (depending on how far they are transported of course, a strawbale house in the UK built with Turkish bales would clearly not qualify):

Then there’s also the aesthetics.  The other day I was in Marlborough in Wiltshire, and took a walk around the town.  It is easy to be nostalgic about old buildings, and to assume that they are so characterful and attractive simply because they are old.  I would argue that the ambience that comes through in some of the photos below has more to do with the materials than with the age of the building.

The combination of brick, timber and cobbles is far more attractive than just one single material.

Clay wall tiles that were fired in kilns with variable temperatures produced tiles of a range of colours, from black to orange, which gives the tiled surface much more richness.

This timber frame house is a beautiful example of how the materials available locally dictated the design of the building and its character.

There has been a resurgence in interest in the use of natural and local building materials in recent years.  Cob building, strawbale, lime plasters, roundwood timber, hemp, clay plasters, have all experienced a renewal of energy, but are still almost only ever used in self build projects, and have yet to cross over into mainstream construction.  Yet, as Gill Seyfang points out, they are still very much in a niche and what is needed is “scaling up the existing small-scale, one-off housing projects to industrial mass production”.  She argues for the natural/local building niche “adapting itself to resemble the regime”.  Key to that will be scale.

Of course, running alongside the discussions about materials is the need to create truly low carbon buildings, in their construction, their inhabitation and eventual demolition/recycling.  The Larch and Lime houses built recently in Ebbw Vale are passivhauses (Larch House right), that is they are built in such a way as to require no space heating.  When I talked to the architect behind them, Justin Bere, he told me that most of the materials were local (stone, slate, locally made Rockwool etc) but hadn’t veered too far into the world of very local and natural materials.  Part of the reason for that is that for the kind of accurate modelling needed for passivhaus certification, data for many of these materials doesn’t yet exist.  I would argue that this is a pressingly urgent area for new research.

Enter the Atmos Project.   For the past couple of months, as well as my Transition Network stuff, I have been working a day a week on the Atmos Totnes campaign.  Atmos has been running for the past 5 years, since Dairy Crest closed their 8 acre site next to Totnes station, and since when it has sat and become more and more of an eyesore (you can read the story so far here).  The Atmos Project, as it became known, due to it being home to a building built to house Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s experimental ‘atmospheric railway’, has sought to bring the site into community ownership to develop it as a catalyst for new businesses in the town and as a demonstration of Transition in action.

The initiative did a lot of work, raised bits of funding to do design work, business planning and so on, but seemed to be getting nowhere due to the site’s owners’ unwillingness to engage seriously with the community.  So a couple of months ago we started a campaign, aimed to bring sufficient pressure to bear on the site’s owners.  We gathered voices from around the community, got a lot of media exposure, got people in the town out for a big photo opportunity and for a public meeting, and a couple of weeks ago, had a very positive meeting with Dairy Crest, and all of a sudden the project is moving forward with an energy that is a delight to see.

The tagline for the campaign has been ‘the heart of a new economy’, and it is seen as a development that in all that it does is focused on skills, training, the creation of new businesses and the boosting of the local economy.  It is of a scale where it can do some very exciting things in terms of construction.  One of the founding ideas is that the place that the development starts its very first question, is what are the local materials that we have to hand?  In the same way that I always used to teach on permaculture courses that the question should be “I’m going to cook a meal, what’s in the garden”, rather than “what’s in the fridge?”, that same principle could and should apply to building materials.

So, as the first part of the design process, and as part of what will form a key part of the brief for whoever ends up being the project’s architect, will be a list of the local materials available to such a project in Totnes.  We have commissioned a specialist in this to draw this up, including the places locally where they would be sourced.  My initial list off the top of my head is:

Timber: for construction grade timber, internal studwork, window and door frames, roofing shingles, laths, panelling, flooring, wattles, wood fibre insulation.

Clay: for rammed earth construction, cob walling, daubs, clay plasters, cob bricks, clay paints

Hemp: for use in hemp/lime construction, to make insulation, for hemp/lime or hemp/clay plasters and bricks

Slate: for roofing

Stone: for foundations, walls,

Reed: for thatching roofs, and also to make ‘reedboards’, an alternative to plasterboard

Lime: for plasters, mortars, renders, as well as in construction systems such as hemp/lime

Straw: baled, and used in ‘straw bale building’, chopped as an ingredient in plasters

Sheepswool: insulation

Horse hair/other fibres: used to strengthen plasters

Recycled Materials:  newspaper processed as an insulation product, car tyres, recycled bricks

It used to be that when a cathedral was built, a temporary village was built around it, with a stone masons’ quarter, a timber framers’ quarter and so on.  On the scale of something like the Atmos project, it may well be possible to do something very similar, processing the timber needed on site, making cob blocks, even hand-making tiles for external cladding.  If done skilfully enough, integrating training and apprenticeships, it could be a vitally needed new approach to development, especially when combined with the potential for the community to invest into the development.

Panels at Charing Cross tube station in London showing the various trades associated with the construction of Charing Cross in the late 1200s.

A development that from the outset seeks to source it’s metaphorical cake locally.  As the Euro crisis continues to unravel at a pace, as the academics are telling us that the only thing that will halt climate change is a massive economic downturn, or at least a huge rethink about how we make economic activity happen, we need a new approach to development.

Work in progress: Cob walls, hemp plaster on the walls, clay plaster onto lath on the ceiling, local timber window frames...

Could it be that we could create new housing, and new work spaces in such a way that each new development produces houses that lock up a lot of carbon in terms of their materials, generate very little carbon during their inhabitation, which create a diversity of new enterprises and livelihoods, show what deep public consultation in relation to development really looks like, all kinds of trainings, opportunities for people to invest in and benefit from the development, which create a huge sense of excitement and anticipation, invites the local community to get involved at regular stages and which create buildings and developments that feel timeless, rather than bound to a particular short-lived era of architectural fashion?  I think so.  I think the time is right for that, and that’s what we want to do with Atmos.  Watch this space.

In a recent interview with Transition trainer Sophy Banks she talks about how doing Transition can feel like having two feet on different conveyor belts moving in different directions.  She says “it’s like we have these two systems that are going in opposite directions, the system that’s still trying to get more growth, more material consumption, sell us more stuff … and another system that’s saying we need to put the brakes on, we need to slow down, and living in Transition means you’ve got a foot on both conveyor belts, and there’s a psychological stress in inhabiting those two world views at the same time”.  The other day I spotted a great example of this in an unlikely medium, Lego.   Lego pride themselves on being able to model most things in Lego, from Hogwarts to Atlantis, but I was fascinated to see that everyone’s favourite plastic block producers and vacuum cleaner bunger-uppers have succeeded beautifully but unwittingly in modelling the tension outlined by Sophy.  In the latest Lego catalogue, picked up by one of my kids in a toy shop recently, is the ‘Hillside House’.

It is a house, presented as, I imagine, the perfect modern home. But what struck me was that this is the first time I have ever seen a Lego house with solar panels on the roof.  It felt to me to be one of those junctures, one of those historic moments where you get a sense of a cultural shift beginning to move, the moment when Lego started fitting solar panels to their houses.  I feel honoured to be here to see it.

Perhaps, I thought when I first spotted it, Lego have ‘got’ Transition, have ‘got’ the need to model low carbon living in their creations, and are using their new models to subliminally promote a vision of a post oil world.  Although the level of clarity one is able to get with plastic blocks doesn’t really allow you to tell if they are photovoltaic cells or solar thermal panels, there they are, unmistakably gleaming on the roof.

However, look closer, and our new, enlightened Transition Lego Town starts to come a bit unstuck. They have a barbecue, fair enough, there’s nothing like a good bit of locally produced Lego charcoal, but ah, what’s that behind our smiling Lego man (who isn’t showing much sign of psychological distress)?

A Lego paraffin patio heater! (see right).  Gah!  All of a sudden, this whole Lego setup sets off the feeling of being on the two conveyor belts.  Of course it could be a rather odd and angular tree, but it certainly looks far more patio heater to me.

It is hard to tell if the car in the picture is a highly efficient electric vehicle charging from the Lego solar panels on the roof, or a gas guzzler, as the size of its tyres might suggest.  The windows of the house could indeed be triple-glazed Passivehaus windows, indeed the house could be built to that standard, but the whole picture feels to me to firmly have both feet on different belts, modelling the tension Sophy refers to.  We know that the world is changing, that we are entering a ‘new normal’, where renewable energy is becoming a part of everyday life, more woven into the culture, but at the same time things like patio heaters sit alongside them.

Personally, I’m looking forward to the Lego raised beds, where you can arrange your produce in the beds.  Rocket?  Mizuna?  Purple sprouting broccoli?  It’s all possible with the Lego Incredible Edible range.  Vertical veg growing up the walls?  No bother.  Indeed, it would then enable you to grow food on the roof of your Lego Hogwarts, or on the Death Star.  Some nice espalier fruit trees could be good too.  Some Lego blocks that look like wany-edged sweet chestnut boards would be great too.  You could give your Millenium Falcon some nice rustic touches.

Or of course you could just bin it, and build stuff out of mud and sticks.  Much more scope for creativity and you could always use old mobile phones as solar panels (or something).  The big question though, is whether the recent changes to the Feed in Tariff, which many argue has damaged the future of the solar industry, will lead to a reduction in Lego solar installations?  I will watch future catalogues with great interest.

“Sunday May 13th 2012 will be declared “In Transition 2.0 film and information day” in Germany, Austria and Switzerland!  We kindly ask all German, Swiss & Austrian Transition initiatives to self-organize screenings of the movie at that date in their regions/towns/cities.  More info for the organizers (in German) & about the coordination here.

A screening in Bielefeld is already fixed; see details here.  We would love to generate a lot of broad, positive reviews and excitement about the movie and Transition in general at that date in the German-speaking region(s) of the world”.

From Transition Town Hannover, here is a short film called “Im Rausch der Rohstoffe”  which according to Google Translate means “In the intoxication of the raw materials”, which, erm, doesn’t really tell us very much.  Anyway, here it is:

… and here is an interview with Fabian from the local group:

From Holland, here is Paul Hendricksen speaking about a project he is involved with to build a new settlement of Earthships near Deventer:

From Ireland, Davie Philip from Transition Ireland and Northern Ireland National Hub reports that on March 22nd as part of the Ashoka Change Nation event, a number of Irish Transition catalysts met Rob Hopkins to discuss progressing a number of new Transition projects in Ireland.

While at Change Nation (which he wrote about here) Rob was interviewed for Ireland’s RTE Television:

Also, this Easter, Dermot Higgins and his son Fionn (from Rush, Fingal) will attempt to paddle across Ireland by kayak, from Dublin to Donegal (330km) in just six days.  The money they raise from their exciting expedition will go to their local Transition Town – Rush Open Organisation for Transition Status  (ROOTS). Read more in The Final Independent. Good Luck Dermot and Fionn!

From Portugal, here is a piece from the newsletter sent in by the Transition Portugal (a National Hub), entitled “In Portugal, creativity is used to find alternative ways of financing the 2-day Transition Launch Course”.   

Celebrating Spring, Transition Portugal stepped a little further towards a more sustainable and inspiring paradigm: during the weekend of 23/24th of March, the Linda-Velha Transition Initiative organized the 3rd Transition Launch Course in Portugal, the first led by Portuguese Trainers.

Adding to this special occasion, the organizing team and trainers decided to step outside of their comfort zone and test an alternative financing model inspired by the “Gift Economy”. Participants, who were also co-responsible for the course logistics (food and props), registered in the course paying a basic registration fee of €30 (confirming the intention and interest to enroll). At the end of the course, all people involved (including participants, trainers and organizers) were faced with the following question: “how much did this course worth for me; what are my true financial capacities; and how much am I going to offer to this course as a way of gratitude, supporting its continuity in the future?”

At the same time, the organizing team and trainers presented their ‘dream budget’ on the blackboard, specifying not only the real costs of goods acquired (mainly stationary) but also how much the organization and trainers would like to get for their work. The dream budget was €1290 … and a couple of minutes after… the sum collected was €1211 … Waw!!!… A dream came true… It did work!… Congratulations to everybody!

So in this time of change, notably for a country like Portugal, our recent experience demonstrates that blooming and flowering are here to stay. Lets show our dreams and colours! Trust we will be pollinated and tasty fruit will develop… Lets believe that bees will spread our pollen … Let’s create that magnificent Garden we envision to live in!

Reading Transition Town volunteers Charlotte Selvey, Sabrina Piergorossi and Ornella Trevisan in Palmer Park.

Over to the UK now, and TT-Reading have been busy planning sweet chestnut and walnut trees as part of their edible planting project in the town (see right).  In Cheshire, T-Wilmslow who were recently awarded a substantial grant from the Governments Local Energy Assessment Fund (LEAF), held a public meeting inviting local residents to share thoughts about the future resilience of the town.  In Derbyshire, T-Belper want to transform a local church car park in to an allotment and have met with a plethora of reactions from the towns councillors! Read more in the Ripley and Heanor News.

On the subject of tree planting, TT-Exmouth in Devon planted almost 50 trees opposite local Greenfingers Garden Centre who kindly provided a soup lunch to the many volunteers who turned out to dig.

TT-Honiton held a Seedy Saturday to mark Climate Week and to encourage people to swap and grow seeds. Hugh Fearnley- Whittingstall (who wrote the foreword to The Transition Companion) just happened to be in the neighbourhood and popped in (see left).  See a full write up and more pictures on the TT-Honiton website by Rufus Duffin.  Here’s a film about the Seedy Saturday:

Rufus also writes here about a successful evening of lively discussion with Rebecca Hosking and Tim Green after a viewing A Farm for the Future.  Here are Rebecca and Tim and some of the group at the event:

L to R: Rufus Duffin (TTH), Rebecca Hosking, Tim Green, Geoff Wilmot (TTH), Christine Planel (TTH). Photo copyright M.Wilmot 2012

Transition Town Honiton also held a big tree planting event:

Transition Town Totnes (TTT) with the Totnes Development Trust have launched a 6 month campaign called the Atmos Project in a bid to transform a derelict site in the town to a low-carbon mixed development for the community. If you missed Rob’s blog on the launch, you can read it here. This story was also picked up This is South Devon, and as part of the campaign, every day a new ‘Atmos Voice’, a member of the community speaking about the campaign, is posted on the site.  Jonathan Dimbleby popped by to launch the campaign outside the site itself:

Here is a great video of A Little Patch of Ground, by Encounters-Arts, a Transition supported inter-generational food growing and performance project which took place just outside Totnes, on the Dartington Estate.  TTT also held, together with Transition Network’s REconomy Project, a ‘Local Entrepreneurs’ Forum’ at the town’s Civic Hall, which brought together entrepreneurs, mentors and potential investors.  You can read about how it went here, or watch this film of the occasion:

In Ashburton, Totnes’ neighbouring town, Ashburton Futures, part of the Transition Network, recently, thanks to the LEAF Fund which many Transition initiatives have benefitted from, have made a series of films about how to make a diversity of local house types more energy efficient.  One of the hosts is Fraser Durham of Anahat Energy, who is also an active member of TTT.  Here are a few of them:

To neighbouring Dorset, where in Blandford, the relatively fledgling TT group held a Local Food Evening to engage the community.  The picture below shows an activity to map all their local food producers and suppliers:

Also in Dorset, TT-Dorchester’s energy group held an information road show on retrofitting and much more.

Penrith Action for Community Transition (PACT) organised a ‘Big Spring Clean’, in association with Eden District Council, Churches Together and Soroptimists (who I must confess I’ve never heard of, but Google reveals is “an international organization for business and professional women who work to improve the lives of women and girls, in local communities and throughout the world”).  Here is a film about it:

In London, Transition Kensal to Kilburn held a ‘Big Dig’, at Queens Park Allotment where a group of volunteers prepared an allotment ready to plant vegetables.  Here is a great time-lapse film of it:

In Hertfordshire, TT-Berkhamsted held an event during Climate Week called ‘What On Earth should we do about Climate Change?‘, and in Kent, Tunbridge Wells just got its first electric vehicle charging point in the town.  Transition Harborough and the Rural Community Council are hoping to gain a substantial investment from the Big Lottery’s Communities Living Sustainably Fund. In this Green Building Press article you can read their many proposals for positively transforming the town.  There’s more on this story in the local Lutterworth Mail.

Transition Town Leamington's 'Wool Day'

TT-Leamington held a wool day where people could learn to the crafts of spinning and felting.  Also in Warwickshire, T-Shipston are saying no to a proposed supermarket moving in to their town.  Marsden and Slaithwaite Transition Town (MASTT) are running a ‘Warmer Homes’ campaign, looking at how to make the area’s hard to treat houses more energy efficient.  As part of that, the Green Building Store made the following video to promote the campaign:

Thanks to Anita van Rossum of T-Chichester, in West Sussex, for sharing this great video of some of their activities.

Over now to Canada.  TT Sooke on Vancouver Island, hold a regular Transition Town Café to discuss ideas and engage the local community.  TT-Powell River featured this great Self-Repair Manifesto on their website – a must for any Transition up cyclers and fix-it fanatics (see poster, right)!

Also in British Columbia, Nancy Hofer of TT Comox Valley recently presented to the CVEC. The Comox Valley Environmental Council is a 21 year old ‘Not for Profit Society’ which acts as an umbrella organization for 20 local environmental organizations and local Municipal and Regional representatives. Read more about the meeting here in Canada.com.  In Ontario, T-Guelph held their second Resilience Festival over two days, read more in the Guelph Mercury.

From Barrie, Canada, comes this presentation, seemingly filmed on a phone from the back of the hall, about Transition in Barrie:

… and also to mention, in case you missed it, the launch of Transition Prince Rupert’s new website and fantastic Transition crash-course they developed.  You can read about it here, or here is Lee Brain from the group to tell you all about it:

In Tasmania, Derek Leahy ponders five thought bubbles (one of which is Transition) and tries to connect the dots regarding the forthcoming Day of Action on tar sands on May 5^th.  TT-Guilford in Western Australia held a successful weekend to build community resilience with over 100 attendees.  From Victoria, while browsing  the TT-Maroondah website, we came across this wonderful banner:

To Brazil.  Thanks for Isabela Maria Gomez de Menezes for this wonderful story and picture from T-Brasilândia who celebrated a Beauty Day dedicated to the beauty and strength of the women of Brasilândia.

Here is the story in English:

The beauty day, was a day totally dedicated to the beauty and strength of the women’s of Brasilândia. The event honoring the month of women was organized by women of the Transition Brasilândia, in the community of Vila Teresinha in Brasilandia.

Throughout the day the visitors could enjoy the hairstylist and treatments offered by Institute Embelleze, and also learned how to make turbans and braids with the girls of the collective ”Manifesto Crespo”or the Curly manifest, with the project ”weaving and braiding art”, which enhances and strengthens the memory and afro brazilian self-esteem. They also had massage available and the women from the “Brasilianas”,  selling their products made with recyclable materials.

During the event, an street art artist from the community,   painted a wall with themes of the event.  Closing the day they raffle a free registration in a Gym Club and distributed seasonings seedlings provided by the Office of Sustainability, to promote the habit of cultivating food crops at home.

For the Transition US March roundup of what’s happening in Transition in the US, click here.  In California, TT- Berkeley celebrated their first birthday with a Potluck meal.  The event also doubled up as an informative get together for those wanting to know more about Transition and how to get involved.  Frances Bigda-Peyton of Bedford-TT (MA) writes an article following her attendance at a recent comprehensive plan workshop and suggests that resilience is crucial for the towns’ future. 

Also in MA, T-Ashland have started a new programme called Grounds around Town which is a fantastic and innovative way to make use of the towns used coffee grounds.  Jamaica Plain New Economy Transition held an event called Education not Deportation.  Canton Public Library in Michigan has been hosting a Transition Towns series and this month was Getting Started in Organic Gardening with Bettylou who says you don’t need lots of space to start growing food.  T-Keene (NH) has launched a Neighbourhood Food Security (NFS) program which has a very specific goal – to produce 30% of food locally by the year 2030.

T-Staunton Augusta (VA) are transforming an unkempt lot in to a New Town Community Garden. Co-founder Lindsay Curren (also of Transition Voice) is excited by the amazing response she’s had so far (see right).  T-Port Angeles (WA) held their first public meeting and over 100 people turned up!

Thanks to Trish Knox of T-Woodinville (suburb of Seattle, WA) for sharing this fantastic Valley Vegetables Demonstrate story:

Saturday morning at the old Hollywood Hill Schoolhouse roundabout, valley vegetables crisply demonstrated their concerns over the threat to farming and rural character posed by a recent Woodinville City Council vote. The carrot was heard to sprout that soon urban sprawl would overtake the vegetable’s precious valley and destroy farmers’ ability to purchase land at a reasonable price. Standing in support of the vegetables to squash the vote and beet back urban sprawl were Sammamish Valley Alliance, Transition Woodinville and The Hollywood Hill Association.  Trish is second from left in the picture below:

Photo: Lincoln Potter.

Finally, we’ll keep one of the best to last.  Here is a great film from Chile about Transition in a town called Pucon:

To keep up with developments in Transition between these monthly roundups, keep an eye on Transition Network News, Transition Network Projects and Transition Voice.  If you would like to hear more about any of these stories in the next podcast, please let us know. 

Here are some photos to accompany the podcast….

Information about the Tres Hombres

Captain Jorne Langelaan telling the assembled visitors about the ship.

Exeter Brewery's beer stowed safely in the hold.

http://vimeo.com/21206037

“I was invited to make an installation on the theme of ‘cars’ in the city of roundabouts. Through thinking around and beyond this theme, I learned a lot about the implications of the way we live, and how our ravenous culture is feasting on our own planet. Pumping ourselves to a peak. I created a ‘ghost road’ of cars within a vacant supermarket as an informative portrait of that mind set, and how we can change it. The exhibition reveals how I became enlightened towards making a difference personally, and also waking up those around me to move to a more sustainable way of living and thinking. I am not perfect, but I am now awake.

Asleep at the wheel… is a metaphor for how we are culturally careering down the fast lane of life in charge of a lethal weapon with our head in a daydream and our foot to the floor with the expectation that the road goes on forever.

The exhibition is a thought provoking and immersive sound installation for multiple car radios, that contemplates our future. Exhibited in a vast disused supermarket, three-lanes of cars dissect the darkened interior, as the multiple hazard lights illuminate the space, revealing the finite road of our consumer driven daydream. ‘More more more’ is no longer a desirable destination.

You are invited to be a passenger in the back seats, as the in-car sound systems broadcast a collage of moving music and motivating sound-bites. On the return journey the Lay-by Library area encourages you to explore positive ways to improve our future together. Society’s pedal to the metal attitude to our world is not sustainable and is running out of road. We need to change gear, before we overtake ourselves . . . our windows of opportunity are slowly winding shut. Come and celebrate new beginnings”.

Here’s the trailer:

Some have arrived at the idea from working on traditional farms, and others from a commitment to farming as sustainably as possible, but all share a sense that the farming of the future will be smaller scale, more closely linked to their community, and will involve, in part at least, working horses.  One of them, when asked why he likes working with horses replies “because it just feels right, it just feels good – when everything’s clicking together”.

Until the 1930s, the horse was an essential part of any farming operation.  Then as tractors arrived, they vanished within a very short time period.  The knowledge, the infrastructure, the skills that made horsepower possible largely disappeared, surviving, in the US, only with the Amish, a handful of enthusiasts, and historic ‘museum’ farms run as tourist attractions.  The film follows three quite different young people, all of whom have come into contact with working horses and feel that learning to work with them is an important thing to do.  It visits them over the space of the year as they try to work out, through hard work, early mornings and frustrating relationships with farm-owners, whether this is what they really want to do.

It is often said that in Cuba, during the Special Period, the country went from needing 1% of its population working in farming to 20%.  If the same thing is applied to the UK in the event of an energy famine, we would need around 8 million new farmers.  There are already a number of young farmers inspired by the possibilities of more localised food production and by the idea of rethinking farming for a leaner future, but there need to be a lot more.  What needs to happen, it seems to me, is for farming to become something that young people care about, are inspired by and intrigued about.  That, for me, is the most moving aspect of this film.  These are ordinary people, seized by a deep sense of what farming could be.

‘Escape from Suburbia’, the sequel to ‘The End of Suburbia’, followed several people through their own peak oil preparation efforts.  For me, the problem was that apart from one, within the first few minutes of the film I found that I wasn’t really engaged by them, and not really that interested in their stories.  ‘The Farmer and the Horse’ is very much the opposite, each of the people followed are fascinating in their own way, and Flesher leaves in enough detail about their lives to keep the viewer intrigued.  I found by the end I cared very much about them and what they did next, because I felt like that had put so much effort and passion into learning these skills that I actually wanted the farming of the future to stand on them as foundations, with their passion, commitment, determination that smaller scale, lower impact farming can be viable, and with their dedication to acquiring the skills and to seeking out those who can teach them.

This is a film that doesn’t romanticise horsework.  One of the most memorable sections is from a horsepower course somewhere where we see a number of people having their first experience of ploughing with horses with hilarious results.  All of the people in the film know that working with horses is hard work, that they have good days and bad days, and that getting into farming in a way that is viable is going to be hard work.  But in a world where getting into farming requires not just land, but a huge amount of start-up capital, working with horses offers a lower-cost way in and makes the difference between being able to get started or not.

I can’t recommend this film highly enough.  As a reality TV show following three people in pursuit of a dream understood by few of their family and peers it is compelling, as a vision of how farming might be in a lower-energy world as a new generation of young farmers come to the fore it is fascinating, and as a chronicle of how cheap energy has changed and indebted agriculture it is sobering and thought provoking.  I enjoyed every minute of it, and it certainly presents the story of what farming may well look like in the future, as well as what the first steps towards getting there might look like, in a very entertaining and accessible way.  It felt like a film you could show to anyone, interested in peak oil/Transition/sustainable farming or not, and they would find it fascinating and thought-provoking.

You can order DVDs of the film here.

Copies of the report were distributed to the Town Council and last week I attended a meeting where I gave a brief presentation about it, following which the Councillors talked about how proud they were of TTT, and then unanimously passed a resolution supporting our work (here is a report from the local press).  The resultant report can be downloaded here (it’s a big file, about 5.5MB).  As TTT is a community organisation with no core funding, we are offering this report for free, but we hope that having read it you might feel inspired to make a donation to support our vital work:

My favourite bit of the report, the Executive Summary, sets out in numbers the impacts of TTT thus far:

People visiting Totnes to find out about Transition have brought an estimated £122,000 to the local economy • over 300 people have visited the town to undertake Transition Training • TTT raised the funding for the 74 solar panels on Totnes Civic Hall which will generate around 13,000kWh (a third of its demand, leading to the Council saving over £5,500) • 186 hybrid nut trees have been planted throughout the town • over 4000 Local Food Guides (in 2 editions) have been distributed • our Garden Share scheme means that now 30 gardeners in 13 gardens are able to grow food, providing food to over 50 families • over 70 businesses now accept the Totnes Pound • organised over 140 public events • more than 1,000 students at King Edward VI Community College have now participated in our ‘Transition Tales’ programme • over 75% of people in Totnes and Dartington are aware of TTT’s work • more than 600 people attended 4 workshops on renewable energy • there are now 59 ‘Transition Together’ groups in and around the town, who will each reduce their carbon emissions by 1.2 tonnes, each saving £601 per year • over 50% of those households are low-income • ‘Transition Tours’, a structured tour designed for those who want to visit the town to learn about Transition has, so far, had a local impact of £52,166 • The work of TTT  has inspired an international network of thousands of Transition initiatives • TTT has formed partnerships with 25 other organisations • the creation of the Energy Descent Action Plan engaged over 800 local people, gave talks to 35 local organisations and held 27 public meetings • 50 people have learnt to garden through our basic gardening course • over 400 people attended ‘Winterfest’, a one-day celebration of the work of TTT • 3 annual ‘Edible Garden Crawls’ have been attended by over 500 people • the 2010 ‘Energy Fair’ was attended by over 400 people • TTT’s email newsletter is received by over 2,000 people • TTT’s Garden Share scheme was the inspiration for Hugh Fearnley-Wittingstall’s national ‘Landshare’ campaign • Produced 10 short films about various TTT events • ‘Estates in Transition’, a day conference co-organised with Dartington, brought 65 local landowners and managers together to explore the impacts of peak oil and climate change • 57.2% of local people feel TTT’s work is either ‘highly relevant’ or ‘relevant’ to their lives • the Heart and Soul group provides support to 15 people working in TTT so as to minimise incidents of burn-out • TTT’s website has over 4,500 registered users • our annual Seedy Sunday events each attract at least 200 people • a recent grant of £75,000 from Community Builders is supporting our efforts to bring the derelict Dairy Crest site back into community ownership • TTT has generated a great deal of media coverage, including BBC’s The One Show, Al Jazeera TV, ‘In Business’ on Radio 4, and pieces in most daily papers, as well as regularly attracting international media attention….

Owing to its size (475 pages) and to printing costs, it is being made available only in PDF format (3.7MB) which will be sent out by email.  Some tasters from this thesis have already been posted here at Transition Culture, such as Local Food and Relocalisation, and Localism or Localisation?.  More will be posted over the coming weeks.  Personally speaking, I am delighted to have completed it, and even more delighted to be able to make it available, as I think it is something that explores Transition in a depth which people will find really useful.  I tried very hard to write something un-dusty and un-overacademic, and had a wonderful compliment the other day, when a local historian who had contributed to it, told me that he was two-thirds of the way through the book and that he found it ‘rivetting’.  Not many PhDs out there that find themselves attached to that particular adjective.

Here is the Abstract, which gives a more detailed overview of what to expect:

“This thesis provides a critical review of the Transition movement, a grassroots response to peak oil and climate change, co-founded by this author. It focuses on two key aspects of the Transition approach, resilience and economic relocalisation, with the aim of analysing whether and how they can be implemented in a locality based on the Transition approach, and assessing what socio-economic and community-related structures would be necessary to implement such a process. The focus of the research is Totnes, Devon, which because of its status as the UK’s first Transition initiative and the longer history of various initiatives to promote local resilience, offers a valuable case study of attempts to practically implement resilience and localisation. A variety of research methods were employed, including surveys, focus groups, oral history and in-depth interviews, as well less conventional public participation methods such as Open Space and World Café.

The first major finding was that Transition Town Totnes (TTT) has become a significant organisation in the town, with a high level of popular support. It was also found that the obstacles to resilience and relocalisation lie not, as was hypothesised, in a lack of skills or an absence of community cohesion, but in issues of governance and the need for increased social entrepreneurship. It was found that what researchers call the ‘Value Action Gap’ (i.e. the gap between people’s declared sympathies and intentions and their actions) exists in Totnes as much as anywhere else, but that some of TTT’s projects, such as Transition Together, are working imaginatively to overcome this and to reduce emissions.

From this evidence is it concluded that Transition’s approach towards relocalisation and reducing carbon emissions can be argued to be effective in, generating engagement and initiating new enterprises. Like other ‘green’ initiatives, it struggles to engage those from more disadvantaged backgrounds, but some of its initiatives are showing promise for overcoming this. Its primary contribution is in suggesting a redefining of resilience, not as a state of preparedness for disaster, but as a desired characteristic of a sustainable society. A more resilient community, it is argued, would be one more in control of its food and energy production, as well as being one that enables inward financial investment. It also argues that the government focus on ‘localism’, the devolving of political power to the local level, ought to be expanded to include ‘localisation’, the strengthening of local production to meet local needs, a shift which would financially benefit local communities. It argues that the key challenge for Transition initiatives such as TTT is going to be scaling up from being ‘niche’ organisations to become economically viable organisations with a broad appeal and engagement, and also articulates the need for ‘Resilience Indicators’ which would allow communities to measure the degree to which their levels of resilience are increasing”.

We can expect dramatic changes in the energy sector in the coming decades. This report encourages businesses, both in the energy sector and beyond, to look at how this will impact on their firms. The transition towards a lowcarbon economy and the interim volatility in traditional fossil fuel markets presents businesses with numerous risks but also opportunities. In order to reduce potential vulnerability and seize opportunities, business should be aware that:

1. Energy security is now inseparable from the transition to a low-carbon economy and businesses plans should prepare for this new reality. Security of supply and emissions reduction objectives should be addressed equally, as prioritising one over the other will increase the risk of stranded investments or requirements for expensive retro-fitting.

2. Traditional fossil fuel resources face serious supply constraints and an oil supply crunch is likely in the short-to-medium term with profound consequences for the way in which business functions today. Businesses would benefit from taking note of the impacts of the oil price spikes and shocks in 2008 and implementing the appropriate mitigation actions. A scenario planning approach may also help assess potential future outcomes and help inform strategic business decisions.

3. A ‘third industrial revolution’ in the energy sector presents huge opportunities but also brings new risks. Of particular importance for new technologies is the risk of constraints on raw materials such as rare earth metals, as scarcity may drive up costs. The rapid and  widespread diffusion of some new technologies may also incur negative environmental implications.

4. Energy infrastructure will be increasingly vulnerable to unanticipated severe weather events caused by changing climate patterns leading to a greater frequency of brownouts and supply disruptions for business. This throws out a critical challenge to energy providers, investors and planners in terms of choosing the location of new infrastructure and fortifying existing plants and networks.  Those businesses for which uninterrupted access to energy is of fundamental importance should actively consider investing in alternative energy supply systems.

5. Increasing energy costs as a result of reduced availability, higher global demand and carbon pricing are best tackled in the short term by changes in practices or via the use of technology to reduce energy consumption. The wider use of renewable energy and even self generation, bring added price and supply security benefits.

6. The sooner that businesses reassess global supply chains and just-in-time models, and increase the resilience of their logistics against energy supply disruptions, the better. The current system is increasingly vulnerable to disruption, given the trends outlined in this  report.

7. While the vast majority of investment in the energy transition will come from the private sector, governments have an important role in delivering policies and measures that create the necessary investment conditions and incentives. If the global carbon market is to become a reality then government action must be taken to bring additional price stability and transparency. Investing in a secure, low-carbon energy future may have higher upfront costs, but will deliver lower cost energy in the future.  Sound renewable energy and demand side measures are crucial elements in delivering the necessary energy services for businesses and the expected return on investments.

Ladies and Gentlemen.  It gives me the greatest pleasure this morning to launch the Totnes Energy Descent Action Plan website.  The site makes the full version of the UK’s first EDAP freely available, invites comments and discussion, and will act as a dynamic portal for people to discuss the Plan and reshape subsequent revisions.  It is the creation of the good folks at LumpyLemon, to whom we are greatly indebted.  Highlights include the oral history section, Liv Torc’s poem in the section on stories, the Totnes Energy Budget, the photoshopped visions of the future and, if one might suggest a sample chapter, the food section.  Copies of the printed EDAP are available here, and will be formally launched on Friday (do come).  God Bless Her and All Who Sail in Her (sound of tinkling glass as champagne bottle is smashed against the side of the website)….

Two days ago, 400,000 Britons were stranded around the world, 268,000 across Europe, the rest mainly in the US, Home Secretary David Miliband calling for the ‘great British spirit’ to be invoked by stranded tourists.  The navy fleet was on standby for a Dunkirk style ‘rescuing’ of Brits from the European mainland to get them home.  A Royal Navy ship picked up tourists from Spain, the captain saying “it’s a warship so the civilians won’t be used to the austere conditions, but they will get fresh rations, fish and chips for dinner tonight and curry tomorrow.  We will provide as many camp beds as we can, but it’s not a 5 star hotel.  An Englishman who organised a flotilla of boats to sail to Dunkirk to pick up tourists in a restaging of the Dunkirk evacuations of World War 2, was turned back by French authorities who told him that such behaviour was anti-commercial and could affect the viability of French ferries (at least that’s the story as it was told to me, true or not, it’s a great story).

Kenya’s horticulture industry, mostly flowers such as roses, grown for the UK market, has been losing $2 million a day in exports, with tonnes of roses and other fresh produce being thrown away each day (at least they were ‘composted’, according to the Guardian).  One of the tabloids headlines yesterday was “TFI Flyday!” such was the media jubilation at the return to the skies.  However, as Heading Out at the Oil Drum notes, this might just be the beginning of a series of eruptions, this may be just the beginning, rather than just the end of a week-long interruption to business-as-usual.

As a result of the grounding of the UK’s planes, Europe’s carbon emissions from aviation fell by 60%.  This great graphic from informationisbeautiful.net answers the question of what produces more CO2, the volcano, or aviation?  In spite of the huge amount of carbon pumped out by Eyjafjallajokull, aviation is still a far greater polluter.

Of course that was partly offset by the rather large amount of carbon belched forth by the unpronounceable volcano, but I spent Monday reading a fascinating piece of research by Meinshausen et.al.(1).  It puts into context what ‘misery’ actually means, and it goes way beyond a few days stuck in a foreign airport or composting roses.  Runaway climate change, accompanied by 2 metre sea level rise, crippling impacts on agriculture and most other aspects of modern life, would be utterly catastrophic.  While not wishing in any way to denigrate the experience of those who have had a stressful, costly and disruptive few days, perhaps looking at this experience as a dry run for an oil-strapped near future might be healthier.

Of course we have had these ‘wake-up’ moments before.  In 2000 the lorry drivers went on strike, blocking refineries, and the UK was a few days away from a major food crisis.  The same thing was threatened a few years later when Grangemouth refinery was blockaded.  Then there was the oil price spike of July 2008, and the impacts of the oil price rises.  There was the snow of last winter, many communities cut off and distribution of essential goods made rather tricky.  Oh and I think there was the world nearly coming to the brink of economic meltdown quite recently if I remember rightly, although I’m told that is all fine and sorted out now.

Now we have the grounding of the entire UK air fleet, and still the press coverage focused on newly-weds stranded in their honeymoon locations, or school choirs stuck in the US, rather than questioning how utterly reliant we have become on aviation, and how perilously unresilient we have grown as a culture.  One minor interruption and everything starts coming unstuck at the edges rather quickly, developing countries find their agricultural sectors on the edge of bankruptcy, school exams might have to be scheduled, we will be short of fruit and other imports, etc.etc.

Meinshausen et.al. look at what level of cuts in emissions we need to make if we are actually going to avoid runaway and catastrophic climate change.  They estimate that there is about a 70% chance of staying under 2°C if global emissions are cut by 50% from 1990 levels by 2050, and that emissions would need to have peaked and started to decline by 2020, and that they would need to continue being cut beyond 2050, and would need to have reached zero before 2100.  A cut of 72% by 2050 would give us an 84% chance of avoiding runaway climate change.

They suggest that a programme of reductions capable of producing cuts in emissions necessary to avoid a 2°C rise, would mean that by 2050, the annual UK personal carbon allowance would need to be between 1.96 and 1.10 tonnes of CO2e per year, a cut of between 86% and 92% on 1990 levels, a level of emissions similar to that of Mozambique today.  In this context, there really is little or no place for aviation, and that’s before we add in the question of what, by then, planes would even be running on.

We are talking about reducing emissions, personally and societally, by over 90%.  Personally I don’t think future generations will be especially bothered that I had a few days over Easter chilling out in Rome or snorkelling in Thailand as they come to grips with the irreversible nightmare they have inherited from us.  They will almost certainly look at any interruption to our “Fly, fly again” collective madness as having been a good thing, and would have hoped that we might have learnt something instructive from it.

Profoundly thought-provoking though the implications of Meinshausen’s study is, it is seen by some as being the optimistic scenario.  A different study by Helm et.al. argues that even this scale of cuts is unrealistic, because presently the emissions of different nations are based on production rather than consumption, that is, they don’t factor in the carbon emissions that go into making imported consumer goods, which could be seen as ‘outsourced emissions’.  If emissions were allocated to countries on the basis on consumption rather than production, the UK’s emissions would increase by 50%.  Then there’s the fact, as set out so clearly in the recent Climate Safety report, that we haven’t even reached 2°C yet, we have gone up 0. 8°C and are already seeing feedbacks starting that the IPCC didn’t think we’d see for many years yet.

A re-immersion in the climate change literature is always a chilling experience (the word ‘sobering’ doesn’t somehow feel anywhere near strong enough). We are talking about a profound shift, such as that set out in the excellent forthcoming ‘Zero Carbon Britain 2030’ report, that takes as its basis the need to cut emissions to zero by 2030.  In that context, in spite of all the wonders that aviation brings to our lives, whether it be 2 weeks in Rome over the Easter hols or early spring broccoli, roses and green beans airfreighted from Kenya, we are going to have to let it go.

The Department of Transport argue that air passenger numbers will have grown by 200% by 2030 (this is, of course, the same government that argues that peak oil won’t be a concern until 2030 at the earliest), and 21% of all the UK’s transport emissions come from aviation.  It is, however, the key element of our transport infrastructure that defies decarbonisation.  The aviation industry is already nearly as fuel efficient as it could become, electric planes are a non-started, hydrogen powered planes put 2.6 times the water vapour that ordinary planes put into the upper atmosphere, and biofuels for planes would be a humanitarian disaster, hitting food security hard.  We have no option than to consciously, intentionally and urgently design for the end of the aviation industry.

Listening to 5 Live yesterday morning the speculation was all about whether or not planes would get into the air today, like a ‘which-airport-gets-planes-back-in-the-air-first’ competition.  Gave me a mental picture of Boeing 737s on runways up and down the country, white knuckles clenching joysticks, revving their engines ready to reconquer the skies as soon as they get the green light.  The sky with no planes is clearly seen by some as abhorrent, like a football match with no players, or, in my own case, a garden with no vegetables growing in it.

Alain de Botton wrote a beautiful piece for the BBC, a Transition Tale in effect, writing about life in 2050 with no planes, and people thinking back to the day when people flew.  Writing in yesterday’s Guardian, George Monbiot wrote that “over the past few days, people living under the flight paths have seen the future and they like it”.  Would it really be that bad to have a vastly scaled back aviation industry?  Of course not.  I haven’t flown for four years, and it has had no adverse impact on my quality of life at all.

In talks I sometimes use the analogy of the 7 League Boots, how people in the world before oil couldn’t imagine being able to travel long distances in any way other than by foot or travelling on an animal.  Now we have lost any sense that distant places are, well, quite distant.  The Canaries is actually a long long way from the UK, it’s an island in the middle of the sea.  New York is also really a very, very long way from London.  Cheap oil and not giving a toss about our carbon emissions has enabled us to shrink distances and as George Monbiot put it yesterday;

“it made everywhere feel local, interchangeable.  Nature interjects, and we encounter – tragically for many – the reality of thousands of miles of separation.  We discover that we have not escaped from the physical world after all”.

Rather than seeing the past few days as an interruption to our inherent right to go wherever in the world we want to whenever we want to, perhaps we ought to reflect on the awesome power that fossil fuels have brought, albeit temporarily, to our lives.

Helm et.al. argue, as does James Hansen, that the ‘tipping point’ for the Earth’s climate was a 0.5°C increase on pre-industrial levels.  Given that the global climate is already committed to a 1.4°C increase, this might seem an impossible task.  As Spratt & Sutton write in ‘Climate Code Red’, “the fact that we have long passed this point in no way detracts from its importance as a policy goal, and a state to which we should wholeheartedly endeavour to return the planet”.  The Climate Safety Report and the forthcoming second edition of Zero Carbon Britain argue that this means nothing less than a target of zero carbon within the next three decades, a target clearly far in advance of current UK government policy, which, as set out in the 2008 Climate Change Act, is to cut UK emissions by 34% by 2020 and at least 80% by 2050.

Is such an ambition feasible without some major rethinking of many of the assumptions that underpin a business-as-usual approach?  I for one struggle to imagine that aviation has any place whatsoever in a world of volatile oil prices, liquid fuel shortages, where biofuels have taken a backseat to actually feeding the world’s population and where avoiding the undermining and irrevocable destabilisation of the world’s climate systems is afforded the seriousness it deserves.

As Rosie Boycott wrote in today’s Guardian, #

“… perhaps this cloud of ash will have a genuine silver lining.  Maybe we’ll wake up to where our food comes from, the real price it costs to get here, and the vulnerability of the systems in place.  By ramming home the message that what we eat is now at the mercy of acts of God – as well as dwindling resources such as oil and the threat of climate change – I sincerely hope we’ll all start to reconsider how and what we eat”.

Indeed.  As George Monbiot concluded yesterday in his typically forthright style:

“we have a choice.  We can start decommissioning this industry (aviation) while there is time and find ways of living happily with less of it.  Or we can sit and wait for physical reality to simplify the system by more brutal means”.

Designing creatively for this inevitable transition will require a shift in our expectations, shifting what we think of as being the best thing to do when the kids have 2 weeks off school, and what we expect to find on supermarket shelves.

However, as Rafa Benitez, Liverpool manager, told 5Live yesterday after expressing his disapproval with UEFA for making them play their tie in Madrid in spite of the flying ban, and contemplating a very long journey made up to coaches, trains, and at the end, a plane, “we will adapt”.  Of course we will, and be healthier, leaner and better connected for it, and we may just, still avoid runaway climate change.  Let’s just not have a bank style bail-out for airlines please.

References.

(1). Meinshausen, M. Meinshausen, N. Hare, W. Raper, S. C. B. Frieler, K. Knutti, R. Frame, D. J. Allen, M. R. (2009) Greenhouse-gas emission targets for limiting global warming to 2 degrees C. Nature 458, 1158-1162

Hi Rob;

This is really a difficult one, as we both are fully aware of the necessity to reduce our carbon footprint and that flying has enabled a whole new level of energy and carbon over use. I don’t fly for pleasure or holidays; the only exceptions I make are what George Monbiot calls ‘love miles’ However as far as Transition Network goes should we ban flying? I will lay out the pros and cons as I see them….

Allow flying:

* We can do things that would not be possible without it.
o A good example was our world tour. We couldn’t have done that in a sensible time frame by any other transport option. And our strategy worked! We enabled more training to happen faster and we have stopped the steady stream of people from abroad who came to the UK to do our training.
* It makes us more effective, we can do things in less time.
* It enables face to face meetings which maybe have unquantifiable benefits over and above video conferencing or other forms of communication.
* It forces us to live in the world as it is facing the myriad, often bad, choices that everyone has in everything we do. This in turn gives us an opportunity to face ourselves and the choices we make (while we still have choice) and live with the moral consequences thereof.
* Allow the field to self organise. The banning route would lead to hierarchical control a bad precedent and in a almost paradoxical way leave us open to not walking our talk.
* High carbon
* Leaves us open to we are not walking our talk finger pointing.

Ban flying:

* Lowers our carbon footprint
* We walk our talk, leading by example.
* It stimulates us, and those we work with, to be more creative and or cutting edge in our use of technology such as webinars or video conferencing.
* Take choice out of our hands a big brother approach – David Holmgren calls this the brown tech path.
* Hinders our efforts in ability to have face to face meetings and makes us less effective in the ways listed above in allow flying.

Where this leaves me is that to be a truly alive organisation we need to be living Transition, and that means we- all of us- having to face making the sorts of (often) least bad choices in living everyday life. I would hope we all have the awareness and understanding that this is what ‘living Transition’ means; at least while we still have choice. When we no longer have a choice then Transition turns into something else.

I personally think that there are times you should go somewhere and speak even if it means flying, as you can be very inspirational (as it is having a deeply held belief- as you do- that you don’t fly) but that’s only my opinion and any case I can see the pros and cons. As Joanna Macy says, “That’s how it goes in the Great Turning!”

Naresh

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Dear Naresh,

Thanks for your thoughtful opening to this discussion. Your arguments, many of which I agree with, seem to me to boil down to arguing that of course we ought not fly, but for Transition Network to say that no-one who represents it should ever fly is a draconian removal of free choice, and that there are times when it is the most effective thing to do. I would seek to disagree with that (this wouldn’t be much of a debate if I didn’t!), and here’s why.

I haven’t flown since I formally decided to give it up 3 years, 1 month and 20 days ago, having resolved, mid-’An Inconvenient Truth’, that I just couldn’t do it anymore. I don’t rule it out for life and death situations, but in all other circumstances, that’s it. At least twice a week I get requests to travel to different parts of the world to teach, give talks, meet Transition groups. Any that would necessitate plane travel are politely told that I don’t fly, but we would be delighted to set up some sort of video link, or to use the technology we have now. Of course, as you say, it’s not quite the same quality of experience as my being there in person, but it does, for me, have the strong advantage of being low carbon, replicable, far less time consuming than flying (given that travelling by train taking longer is a reason you give for flying), and it sends a powerful message as well as setting an example.

I clearly don’t try in any sense to fool myself that my giving up flying is going to reverse climate change. I don’t think as I cycle to work or as I stand on Cologne train station that by doing so somehow some miraculous process is taking place, ice sheets magically refreezing and glaciers expanding. For me, the question about not flying is not so much one of thinking that by giving up flying I am having a big impact on the world. Rather it is underpinned by Vandana Shiva’s thought that “these systems exist because we give them our support, and if we withdraw that support they can no longer function”. My not flying makes little difference, but Ryan Air no longer existing would make some difference. It’s the bit I can do. Withdrawal of support is a powerful tool the impact of which we often underestimate.

Recently I was a finalist in the CurryStone Design prize (see below), and they initially wanted me to go to Kentucky for the award ceremony. When I said I didn’t fly, they went off and thought about it, and came back saying that all the finalists would now be presenting by videolink. That meant 3 peoples worth of CO2 saved, enough for 3 people living within their carbon allowance for a year as well as, I got the impression, quite a strong learning experience for the organisation (plus we didn’t actually win!).

I am writing this on my way home from a meeting of European Ashoka Fellows in Austria, I travelled there and back by train, the only person who did. Everyone attending had been told in advance about this mad bloke who was travelling there by train from England, and it was the subject of a lot of conversation, with lots of people really admiring the stance.

The key point here, it seems to me, is that what Transition is about, at its core, is preparing, positively and imaginatively, as well as with a considerable sense of urgency, for a world beyond fossil fuel dependency. Therefore, it feels to me that we need to be modelling, as best we can, that organisational infrastructure now. As Heinberg puts it, the sooner we start living as though we were free from oil dependency, the easier the Transition will be. That, for me, is why not flying sets an important example. Of course, as you say, our daily lives are full of choices, and is often a process of seeking the ‘least bad’ option, but flying is a real biggie, and I think that is a key point here.

We can compromise on not buying local food, take the odd unnecessary car journey, leave lights on, have baths, but one return flight to the US wipes out all the good we may have done elsewhere in our lives, emitting carbon equivalent to 2 year’s carbon allowance in terms of what we should be emitting. This idea of striving to live as though we were already there feels like an important one to me, and that we get ahead of the curve in terms of thinking and modelling how an organisation might work which has an international reach but in which no-one flies. I don’t know of another organisation that does that, but it feels like a vitally important thing to model. Surely your argument that everyone ought to be able to do what feels like the right thing to them, and that we ought not intervene, is a bit like corporations arguing at Copenhagen for voluntary cuts in emissions?

Of course, were we to decide collectively that no-one representing the Network should ever fly, we would need to wear that with pride. If a tree falls in a forest and nobody sees it, it may just as well have not bothered. In the same way, if I spent hours on trains to Austria and back and don’t tell people about it, it has a fraction of the impact. I heard from several people who saw the talk I did by DVD at the IGF conference in Washington who told me afterwards that they had given up flying as a result. If the Network decides collectively to have a no flying policy, it should be writ bold and large that so concerned are we about climate change, and so determined to start modelling post-oil practices today, that we have collectively decided not to fly, and how it has improved our quality of life as an organisation. We would be like the organisational equivalent of The Man at Seat 61, our experience of how to function effectively without flying would be a first, and would be very inspiring.

I find myself increasingly disillusioned by the army of climate experts and sustainability advisers who are continually flying from conference to conference. Surely Transition Network should be modelling a different approach, if for no other reason than because nobody else is? I feel we need to set an example. Saying “we think in principle that flying isn’t great, but everyone should be able to decide on a case by case basis” is reminiscent of lots of corporate green wish lists, voluntary green commitments, ‘carbon friendly’ type greenwash. It can be used to cover a multitude of sins, and it hardly represents the best practice that Transition Network aspires to. Surely we can do better than that? You argue that such an approach ‘forces us to live in the world as it is’, but to me that feels like a cop-out. We all live in the world as it is on a daily basis, but that ought not be an excuse for not leading by example and walking our talk.

What I am suggesting isn’t a ban, rather it is that those who currently represent Transition Network, whether the core organisation, the Training and/or Consulting arm, or whatever, decide collectively that we need to lead by example. You wrote that “I would hope we all have the awareness and understanding that this is what ‘living Transition’ means; at least while we still have choice. When we no longer have a choice then Transition turns into something else”. I disagree. It is the setting of an inspiring example now while we still do have a choice that is where the leading by example, the breaking new and innovative ground happens. We have a position of considerable thought leadership at this stage, and, I feel, a duty to be bold and deliberate. That is, after all, why Transition has generated the respect it has so far. Of course your Training Tour was great, and set up a great infrastructure, but had we decided to try and do such things without flying, might we have been able to apply some innovative creative design and resilience thinking to the question, and come up with something actually more innovative, replicable and appropriate than the flying around the world model.

If we take this decision, it needs to be writ large, and we need to discuss how else we got places. It needs to be a central aspect of Transition Network, one we are all capable to wear with pride. Having already dipped my toes in the life-after-flying pool, I can confidently say “come on in, the water’s lovely!”

Rob

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After this exchange, Naresh got in touch to say that he pretty much agreed with the points I had made, and that it would be good to throw it open for wider debate.  So, what do you think?  Would a decision to no longer fly make Transition Network naive, ineffectual, less effective, more isolated, or alternatively, more effective, more inspirational and enable it to do some powerful walking of its talk?

Michael Portillo

One funny thing happened while we were waiting for filming to start.  I was stood chatting with his researcher, and I gave her a copy of Transition Handbook to give to him.  As we were talking, a somewhat gruff elderly gentleman who was passing by stopped and looked over his shoulder.  “What’s the name of that book?” he said.  She showed him, and he said “I have something to say, but carry on”.  We continued our conversation with him standing right next to us, following the conversation, clearly with something important to say.  It made me feel very nervous, expecting him to say, “let me tell you young lady, this Transition thing is all a load of old rubbish”, and to launch into some great tirade about what a malign influence TTT is on the town.  Eventually we finished our conversation, and she turned to him and asked him what it was he wanted to ask.

“I’m from Braidwood, New South Wales in Australia”, he said, “I am part of the steering group of Transition Braidwood, can you tell me where the TTT office is please?”  Instantly from making a potentially dreadful impression, instantly she had a sense of the scale of interest being generated in other places, and how people visit the place because of its Transition status!  ‘Great British Rail Journeys’ is due to air January/February next year.

How, and how far, will we travel if we make the changes we need to in order to thrive in a carbon constrained society? For a range of interlocking reasons, the conclusion of this paper is that we will be happier, healthier and more resilient if we radically change from our current patterns to ones that fit into a relocalised world. In that world we will travel far less far and fast, overwhelmingly walking, cycling and using public transport.

Background: why do we make the travel choices we do?
Underlying our choices about how to travel is why we choose to travel at all. Although some of us on occasion travel for its own sake, in fact the majority of the trips we make are to access something we need (schools, shops, workplaces, parks etc). A quick trawl of travel data from the National Travel Survey reveals that we are not going anywhere different from where we used to 50 years ago, but we are travelling further to get there. A case in point is the school journey; as the government extends our choice as to which school is attended, we end up with less choice on how to get there – the average school journey has increased from 2.9 to 3.3 miles in the last few years.

This means that if we want to move to a world in which sustainable modes of transport dominate, we have to ensure that the locations we all need to access in order to prosper and thrive are within reach by foot, bike or public transport. At the same time we have to think very hard about the kinds of physical infrastructure we create, as the environment we create impacts enormously on the choices we then (feel able to) make. And, of course, we need governments to have coherent, joined up policies that address people’s needs rather than just national budgets. A survey by Which? showed that, overwhelmingly, when it comes to health care people don’t want to travel a long way to get to a better hospital – they just want good provision nearby.

If, in addition to having a long way to go to reach our destination, we encounter a hostile environment when we step out of our front doors, we’ll tend to react defensively, often retreating into what seems to be a safe refuge of a car. On the other hand if we emerge into a space which welcomes people generally (not just travelling but also for example socialising and playing) then we’ll tend to react expansively, feeling able to walk or cycle. But of course it won’t help if that welcoming environment comes to an abrupt stop at the end of our street – so it needs to continue all the way to our destination.

What are the results of our current travel infrastructure and choices?
The climate change implications of our travel choices are clear. In the UK car use alone accounts for 13% of our total CO2 emissions and the forecast around the world is for transport emissions (even ignoring aviation) to continue increasing. This stands in very stark contrast to the emerging scientific view that targets for safe levels of greenhouse gases must be lower even than becoming carbon neutral – we actually need to lower existing concentrations of these gases from the atmosphere.

Climate change emissions resulting from actually moving people and goods come overwhelmingly from oil. As well as these, if we examine the entire manufacturing chain for transport, from building and maintaining roads, through to mining raw materials for making cars, and the running of factories and everything else along the supply chain, we find that coal is a another significant contributor to climate change emissions in the sector in addition to oil. And our dependence on oil for travel is another huge concern. The implications of this are explored further below in the “energy and money” section; in short we’re significantly far down the depletion curve for North Sea oil (with it having peaked in production a decade ago), meaning that we are going to have to import an ever increasing proportion of whatever we use.

Getting people out of cars and onto their feet, bikes or public transport doesn’t only reduce climate change emissions and our reliance on imported oil. Other additional benefits include increased health and also cleaner, safer streets, more freedom for young people to roam and communities less divided by roads.

Are there technological solutions?
Dramatically cutting emissions while still continuing to travel further and faster demands a technological fix. When the International Energy Agency (“Energy Technologies for a Sustainable Future: transport”) reviewed this subject, it concluded that such a fix would have to be one or a mix of:

“… there are only 3 basic approaches to achieving a transport system with very low emissions of greenhouse gases and low reliance on fossil fuels:

… a hydrogen fuel-cell system,
… a purely electric vehicle system, or
… relying on liquid fuels … derived from biomass”

Any system based on one or a mix of these measures would take time to implement, when the need for very significant reductions is urgent. In addition, technical solutions may create new, even worse problems. For example, demand for agrofuels as the substitute for oil based fuels plummeted as it became clear how they compete with food production. in 2006, the first year in which the US turned more of its corn into ethanol than it exported, tortilla prices in Mexico tripled, and food riots followed. Similarly, the switch to agrofuels led to a rush to establish palm plantations for purportedly “climate friendly” palm oil. The result was very significant rainforest destruction, and all that implies for biodiversity, and enormously increased (up to 15 times) overall climate change emissions from the clearing and burning of the forests.

Similarly visions of enormous fleets of “clean” electric or hydrogen or hydrogen fuel cell powered cars raise a range of questions, such as just how much extra energy will be needed to construct the necessary new infrastructure? A truly clean car would require all stages of its life to have been powered by renewable energy from the mining of raw materials, through its manufacture, shipping, sale and disposal, as well as for each and every electric charge used to power it. In an energy constrained world would we really choose to power cars over hospitals and homes?

All of these questions ignore another crucial issue – investment and purchase of all new technologies will inevitably include a front-load of fossil fuels. Do we know whether this could actually just be the final straw which pushes us over the edge of a climate tipping point?

Underpinning it all: energy and money
If we are to build new zero carbon transport infrastructures like that envisaged in the Centre for Alternative Technology’s Zero Carbon Britain then we need to be sure that we have sufficient energy and money to do so.

As North Sea oil and gas are rapidly depleted, the UK will move, in about a decade, from importing about 20% of our total energy to about 80%. How will we afford to pay for this? Interestingly, no other major industrial nation imports such a high proportion of its energy needs other than Japan. Japan of course is in a very different position to the UK; it has a healthy current account and balance of payments and a heavily export focussed economy earning, in theory, plenty of currency with which to buy energy.

As international fossil-fuel energy supplies become increasingly expensive and scarce and have to be sourced from either currently or potentially hostile geographic and political environments, how will the UK fund a rapidly growing deficit in its energy balance of payments? Until recently the Government argued that it did not matter that the UK economy has lost much of its manufacturing export base that once enabled it to pay its way, as our financial services sector would earn sufficient to balance the nation’s books. Recent developments in the financial services sector make that look like a particularly unrealistic and, frankly, dangerous position.

Energy literacy
Understanding national energy security issues and taking into account the total embodied energy in any system as well as its running costs is only a first step towards the energy literacy we need to acquire if we’re to make truly informed decisions about our future. We also need to become literate regarding energy returned on energy invested (“EROEI”).

EROEI is a simple equation. If it takes one barrel of oil in energy to produce 100 barrels (because all you need to do is drill a hole in the ground for the oil to gush out), then the EROEI is 100:1. Historically we’ve worked our way through easy to access or high grade supplies first, and, as you would expect, as we move to the less easy and lower grade supplies, the EROEI on fossil fuels is falling. For example, the EROI of oil and gas extraction in the U.S. has decreased from 100:1 in the 1930’s to 30:1 in the 1970’s to roughly 11:1 as of 2000.

This has serious implications, well beyond just understanding that we’ll be using ever increasing amounts of the energy we produce to get more energy, trapping ourselves in a cycle of using more and more energy to produce an ever lower energy surplus. Applying this to the classic peak oil Hubbert curve yields interesting results:

“…The Hubbert curve represents the total gross quantity of energy available, and, as it is calculated, there are equal quantities of energy available on the left and right side of the peak. This, however, is only true in a gross sense. The net energy available (i.e. discretionary energy) is less. In other words, declining EROEI means that there will be much less net energy extracted post-peak than pre-peak on the Hubbert curve. … Due to declining EROI, by the time peak production is reached, 73% of the net energy available is already used …” (ref)

The energy and financial position we now face in the UK doesn’t just come down to an increasing energy balance of payments deficit at a time of declining EROEI and rapidly falling net energy availability, as these factors will both impact greatly on economic growth. In fact, an energy literate analysis of US economic growth found that that increases in energy productivity were responsible for 70% of economic growth. If this applies to the UK, then the circumstances we face mean no foreseeable end to our current recession; where then will we find the funding to completely transform our car fleets?

Relocalisation
Around the world, on average people make about 1000 trips (eg from home to work – that’s one trip) per person per year. Travel behaviour research from across Europe, the United States and Australia consistently shows that 10% of people’s car trips are shorter than 1km, 30% are shorter than 3km and 50% are shorter than 5km. This large number of small trips means that, even before relocalisation really starts to take hold, we have the potential to immediately intervene to support more cycling and walking trips – much more quickly than for any technological development and at a fraction of the cost. In fact, even under current conditions about half of the car trips we make could we switched immediately to sustainable modes (ref).

A transformation moment for transport
There are simple and transformational decisions which we could take. We could decide to invest in local sustainable transport and improve the physical infrastructure of our environments to make walking, cycling and local public transport the obvious, easy and safe choice.

If however, we are to consider technology based solutions, we need to learn to ask ourselves far harder questions than we’ve managed so far, including:

• what is the full energy cost of this transport intervention, including all of the embodied energy in the infrastructure needed as well as that from running the system?
• how long will it take to implement; could carbon reductions be achieved any faster with a different intervention?
• do we, as a society, have enough energy overall to carry through our decision?
• similarly, do we have enough money to carry out our decision?

Applying such an analysis might result in a transformed UK, in which we’ve maximised the use of our existing infrastructure and:

• nearly all urban trips are on foot, by bike or by bio-gas fuelled public transport
• rural trips which can’t be done on foot or by bike are mainly by community owned demand responsive vehicles, again bio-gas fuelled
• longer trips are mainly on an electrified rail network or by coach.

We don’t know whether humanity’s climate change emissions so far have caused a soluble problem or an insoluble predicament. We may already have pumped sufficient carbon into the atmosphere to have triggered feedback loops which will lead us well beyond a 2 degree temperature increase – and even a 2 degree increase could turn out to be far more dangerous than mainstream climate literature predicts.

Accordingly, applying the precautionary principle and minimising unquantified risks, we should be seeking urgently to move to zero carbon travel, which could happen fastest in a relocalised world. Does this mean forgoing the attempt to somehow find a technological fix through which we could continue travelling as far, and as fast, as we want? While that might seem hard to contemplate, we probably don’t have the choice – and in addition, we’d also address the fact that a result of current travel patterns is that we’re rapidly getting less healthy and less, rather than more, happy.

(Peter Lipman is Policy Director of Sustrans and Chair of Trustees, Transition Network)

The ‘P’ Word

While the terms ‘Transition’ (with a small T) and ‘climate change’ are used liberally, the term ‘peak oil’ never makes an appearance.  Clearly this Plan is based on the assumption that economic growth is still feasible and that the cheap energy exists to make it possible, and that a gentle descent of the UK’s oil dependency is possible.  In this context, peak oil is a bit like the drunken ex-partner who turns up at the wedding, who everyone tries to ignore, but their being ignored doesn’t mean that they aren’t there, or that they aren’t going to do something mortifying at some unspecified moment.  However, given that the UK Government seems to have an inbuilt inability to ever mention the ‘P’ word, it does open the Plan with a sentence which comes as close as we seem likely to get;

“In Britain, as our own reserves in the North Sea decline, we have a choice; replace them with ever-increasing imports, be subject to price fluctuations and disturbances in the world market and stick with high carbon, or make the necessary transition to a low carbon, right for climate change, energy security and jobs”.

The focus seems to be, however, purely on the depletion of North Sea production, not global production.  This is in spite of the IEA’s recent upgrading of global depletion rates, which the Government, which bases its take on peak oil on the IEA, has yet to respond to.  The impact of the depletion of North Sea gas is also clearly at the front of the authors’ minds, although their take that by 2020 imports will have risen to 60% (although supposedly reduced to 45% by the actions of this Plan), is an optimistic take on previous figures produced by the Government.  The 2007 White Paper on Energy stated that by 2020 80% of the UK’s gas would be imported, yet no explanation is given for this somewhat revised and more optimistic figure.

Another aspect that is not given consideration in the Plan’s assertion that “the immediate risk to oil production is not how much oil is left in the ground, but the world’s ability to convert these reserves into production now and in the future”, is the issue of EROEI (Energy Returned on Energy Invested.  As David Murphy has so brilliantly shown over at The Oil Drum recently (see left) the energy we can extract from fossil fuels on the downward half of the Hubbert Curve are far lower than what we extracted on the upside.  The implications of this are alarming for the assumptions that underpin this document.

Peak oil is conspicious by its absence, as a result of which the Plan misses many opportunities.  While strong, ground breaking and ambitious in its carbon reduction strategies, it is in failing to address issues of resilience building that the Plan falls short. It states that over the coming months, former UK Energy Secretary Malcolm Wicks (who once famously ended a reply to a question about peak oil from ‘Last Oil Shock’ author David Strahan by saying “but when it’s going to run out, do you know, can you tell us? I mean, I don’t know”) will prepare a report on how the UK is going to secure its energy supplies during the transition to a lower carbon economy.  Don’t hold your breath.

1 out of 10.

Energy

There is, as one might expect, much to praise, but also a good deal to damn. Much has been made in the popular press of this Plan leading to hikes in energy bills, but of course, as George Monbiot has pointed out,  it is remaining dependent on imported fossil fuels that will lead to the real price volatility.  The target of 40% of electricity from renewables by 2020 is ambitious, and is to be welcomed. The creation of an Office for Renewable Energy Deployment is also a good idea.  There are great initiatives around retrofitting existing houses, a target of all houses in the UK to have their cavity walls and lofts insulated by 2015 is admirable (my kitchen still needs doing guys when you’re passing), the commitment to investing £120 million in offshore wind is great, the commitment to feed in tarriffs by 2010 is long overdue, and the placing of smart metres in all homes by 2020 and the schemes to roll retrofitting up into peoples’ bills is a good idea.

There is little talk of microrenewables however, and certainly no whiff of any possible new support for that, although the economics of domestic scale generation are now significantly improved by the feed in tarriffs, meaning that a 3Kw photovoltaic system could earn around £1000 a year for the owner, significantly reducing payback times.  The Plan also puts, alongside the rollout of wind, nuclear (which it calls a ‘clean source’, and also refers to as ‘affordable’!) and Carbon Capture and Storage (which, just to remind you, doesn’t actually exist yet).  Given the precarious nature of the UK’s energy supplies, I would think that any reliance on Carbon Capture and Storage, given that the Plan merely promises the development of demonstration examples, is going to be woefully insufficient, and can only serve to increase our dependence on imported coal, as well as lead to the kind of disastrous new open cast mining we are seeing in Wales.  Also, the diagram showing how CCS works (see right), shows it being pumped underground in order to enable enhanced oil recovery, which surely makes a mockery, at least in part, of its role as a low carbon technology?

A key failure for me is around how the increase in wind is to actually be achieved through the planning system.  Here in Devon, all but a tiny minority of planning applications for wind turbines are routinely refused. Although the Plan outlines how the planning system will be changed in order to steamroller nuclear power applications through, there is little talk of something similar for wind.  Many of the wind turbines proposed are off shore, which are considerably more costly than putting them on land.  It is a particular bullet this Plan avoids biting.  There is also no talk of community ownership of wind and other renewables, or the role of locally owned energy companies, which could do a great deal to make onshore wind more acceptable. The Plan also reiterates the Government’s brilliant plan of inviting communities to ‘express an interest in becoming nuclear waste sites’.  I’m fascinated to know how that particular list is coming on.

7 out of 10.

Transport

Much is made of the role of the electric car.  20% of the cuts in emissions are set to come from the transport sector, with an anticipated 40% hike in the efficiency of new cars in 11 years time.  This is very ambitious.  It talks of installing an “ultra low carbon vehicle infrastructure” and spending £30 million on several hundred low carbon buses.  6 cities are set to have the infrastructure for electric vehicles installed.  There is some support for cycling and walking, but the focus is on an electric car revolution.  Although the vision set out here is bold and ambitious, I would have very real concerns about its viability.  In the current economic climate which looks set only to worsen, how achievable is an electric car network beyond those 6 pilot cities?  And where will the electricity come from?  Running all the UK’s cars on nuclear generated electricity would require 64 new nuclear power stations, yet I would be very surprised if more than one or two ever get built.  Also, by focusing the 6 pilots in the cities, where there should be a strong public transport infrastructure, ignore rural areas, who, it could be argued, have a far stronger case for saying that their car use is essential and unavoidable.

Little is written here about reducing the need to travel.  There is nothing in the way of guidance for planners about designing towns and cities so as to obviate the need for car use.  There is nothing about out-of-town shopping, or the need for planners to place all key needs within walking distance of peoples’ homes.  By 2030, we are to presume, we are all still whizzing up and down the country in our electric cars, passing the electric lorries that are still bringing us cheap trainers and toothbrushes, as well as thousands of tons of food we could just as easily have grown ourselves.  As Richard Heinberg is fond of saying, we need to be exploring “not alternative cars, rather alternatives to cars”.  There is no talk of Alan Storkey’s idea, which George Monbiot promoted in his book ‘Heat’, for coach lanes on the motorway, which always seemed like rather a good idea to me.  Private car ownership remains sacrosanct.

It is interesting too to see how little talk there is of biofuels.  In an intriguing statement, the Plan states that it won’t support biofuels that “excessively compete for land with existing food crops”.  The word ‘excessively’ is open to all kinds of interpretation.  Either biofuels compete with land for existing food crops, or they don’t.  The other really weak point here is aviation.  The Plan believes that it can cut carbon emissions from aviation while at the same time growing passenger numbers.  This is surely a nonsense.  Aviation, when the continued economic contraction and peak oil are factored in, is a dying industry, not one that need draw any more of the country’s precious resources.  Shipping is also expected to grow in terms of emissions, due to “the ongoing increase in demand for global trade”.  This is where the failure to factor peak oil into this Plan from the start is a problem.  By assuming continued economic growth, more trade, more demand, more of everything, and then trying to satisfy it, there is a surrendering of control to what it sees as inevitable market forces.

4 out of 10

Housing

The Plan restates 2016 of the date by which all new housing will be zero carbon, which is entirely laudable, although Wales has actually managed to introduce this 5 years earlier, by 2011.  It might have provided a good push to this had it been brought forward to, say, 2014.  Much of this part of the report is as you would imagine, but it does contain the intriguing statement that “the Government is investing up to £6 million to construct 60 more low carbon affordable homes built with innovative, highly insulating, renewable materials”.

Does this mean that there is now £6 million for hands-on research into strawbale, hemp construction, earth plasters and so on?  Or does ‘highly insulating, renewable materials’ refer to Kingspan and other industrial oil-derived building materials?  At the moment ‘zero carbon homes’ refers only to a building’s performance once built, not the embodied energy of the materials it contains.  The role of local and natural materials in strengthening local economies is key.  This Plan also doesn’t question the idea that we have to build homes to meet the insatiable demand for housing, something that in the current climate is increasingly looking like an utterly redundant idea.

6 out of 10.

The Role of Communities

Given that Milliband has clearly explored the Transition approach, and told me at the Transition Network conference that he has a copy of the Transition Handbook by his bed, the elements of the Plan that address community are strangely disappointing.  While it is extraordinary that after less than 3 years of existence as a concept, Transition has spread so far as clearly having an influence on a Government Secretary of State, he also still doesn’t quite get it.  The Plan states;

“It is not always easy for people to see how small individual actions can make a difference.  Sometimes people can be more effective by working together as a community”.

Indeed.  They also state;

“the Government wants to take community transition to the next level, announcing £10 million for ‘Green villages, towns and cities’– a challenge for communities to be at the forefront of pioneering green initiatives”.

Here is where my frustration comes in.  In Scotland, the Low Carbon Communities Fund, which has been allocated £23 million, is what funds, among many other things, Transition Scotland, and a range of other community initiatives.  What the UK Government is proposing is £10 million in a pot that communities across the UK will be invited to bid for as a competition, somewhat akin to the very frustrating Big Green Challenge.  While Government tends to love this approach of getting communities bidding against each other, it is a deeply flawed approach.  What Transition and Low Carbon Community groups need is support for core services, and for specific projects.  They don’t necessarily need vast pots of money, if the community responses to climate change are to be resilient and able to do what they aspire to, they need  something closer to the Scottish model.  Transition groups need some core funding and support, funding for trainings and inputs of skills that they identify that they need.

This competition model is not the way forward, and is a huge missed opportunity. It does not ‘help communuties to act together’, it means that community groups use huge amounts of time and energy going through a convoluted application process where they are pitched against other equally noble community groups, and the vast majority of them end up losing out and feeling embittered by the whole thing (that was certainly many peoples’ experience of Big Green Challenge).  Something more like the Local Food Fund would have been a far better model.

2 out of 10.

Food and Farming

Although it is good to see food and farming being given consideration in such a document, this is probably the most disappointing section of the whole thing.  It sets the target of getting agriculture to reduce its emissions by 6% by 2020, but does so in such a hands-off, uninspired way that one can imagine the meeting with the NFU where it was made clear that agriculture was largely offlimits for this Plan.  The UK Cabinet Office wrote last year that “existing patterns of food production are not fit for a low-carbon, more resource constrained-future”.So what might that ‘pattern of food production’ actually look like?  This paper offers no vision or consideration of this.  Much of the reduction in emissions is expected to arise from “encouraging farmers to take action themselves to reduce emissions”.  The bite and determination of other chapters of the report evaporates here, the onus being left to farmers, with some training and support being offered, to magically come over all dedicated and get on with reducing their emissions.

The word ‘organic’ doesn’t appear once, in spite of the fact that any dependable system of food production will, at the very least, be organic in a low carbon future.  Does the Plan really believe that our dependence on nitrogen fertilisers, with their major contribution to greenhouse gas emissions, and their draw on the depleting natural gas resource, is actually sensible and/or feasible?  There is also nothing about the role of local food, urban agriculture, (and this in the week that the Mayor of San Francisco ordered an audit of all possible food growing spaces in the city, including rooftops and windowboxes), or community supported farming.  It does acknowledge the role of soils as carbon stores, but then says nothing about how organic farming is a more reliable way of ensuring that it stays there.  Peter Melchett, Policy Director at the Soil Association, put it beautifully in his analysis of this part of the Plan, “the Government are certainly understating the case when they say that, for farming, they do not yet “have all the answers””.

1 out of 10.

Overall?

Overall, I think this is as bold and brave a plan as could be expected given the circumstances under which it was no doubt written.  Here is a government approaching an election, having been in charge during a spectacular economic unravelling, with Milliband having to fit within and keep on board a Cabinet obsessed with economic growth (the Mandelson/Brown effect).  The brief set for it was to create a low carbon economy in the context of economic growth, in complete contradiction to all the indications to the contrary.  I think Milliband is a dynamic young politician who wanted to do something very far-reaching here, but he has had to do so in a very difficult context.  Within the context of what he can actually do, I think it is very good.  In terms of being a plan that will enable and underpin this country’s inevitable energy descent and relocalisation, it is inadequate.

Praise where it’s due; on the positive side, the Plan takes many decisive steps forward and puts mechanisms in place to ensure that the various Government departments actually carry them through.  It is nothing if not ambitious, although its starting assumptions are such that it is designing for a world that will almost certainly not be possible.  However, it is, of course, the victim of a degree of inevitable compromises (especially in the farming area) which hamper the effectiveness of such a wide ranging proposal.  I do think that as a plan produced by government it is as good as we are likely to get, indeed some parts of it are much better than one might have expected.

From my perspective, it throws the challenge back to Transition groups and others.  The Government has set out an unprecedented dedication to the low carbon agenda, and thrown considerable weight behind it.  The role of communities is seen as being vital, and encouraged, but the ball is in our court. We often say communities can’t do this on their own, they need Government working to support the low carbon agenda.  Now they have gone some way towards that.  What is missing from this Plan is the local detail, the stuff that central Government can’t do;  the locally owned energy companies, the local food networks, the groundswell of desire for change, what Jeremy Leggett calls the ‘scaleable microcosms of hope’.  This is what Transition can do, and I feel, having read this report, and having heard Milliband’s endorsements of the Transition Network, that the door to real and deep change feels significantly more open than it did last week.

Overall 6/10