8 Oct 2013
I just reached the end of my first full week in the US, and to say it’s been hectic would be an understatement. After two days in New Orleans, Peter (Lipman, Chair of Transition Network and my travelling companion) and I headed to Boston. That evening I spoke at an event, at Tufts University, which was very well attended. It brought together students, Transitioners from quite a radius around Boston, and others too.
After I spoke, Medford Mayor Michael McGlynn and Mayor Lisa Wong of Fitchburg also spoke about what they are doing to make their places more sustainable. It was actually rather impressive, with initiatives from recycling to renewable energy to urban agriculture. The talk was streamed live online. You can read an article about it from the university paper, with the unlikely title of Hopkins, local mayors discuss community here.
That night we stayed that night in the home of Chuck Collins of Jamaica Plain New Economy Transition and his family. Very delightful to sleep in a proper bed in a proper home after the sterile anonymity of hotels. The next morning Peter and I co-presented a talk to a breakfast gathering of community activists, funders and others at the Brewery, home to a number of innovative local businesses, which was well attended and went really well.
After that, I went on a group guided tour of JPNet’s work, led by Chuck. The group’s work is a fascinating manifestation of Transition and will be the subject of a future, more detailed post.
We then drove to Portland in Maine, initially along highways lined with sprawl, shops, restaurants and so on, all strung out along the side of the road for mile after mile. After a while this tailed away and we were driving through landscapes lined with amazing autumn-coloured forests: vibrant reds and orange, all shades of yellow, vibrant dark burgundy. Incredibly beautiful, especially when reflected in the lakes we passed.
When we reached Portland, we went to The Resilience Hub, a centre for permaculture, Transition and other local resilience initiatives and met Rachel Lyn Rumson and Lisa Fernandes, permaculture teachers based there. Then it was off to the Unitarian Church, venue of the evening’s talk, entitled Local Action Can Change The World. We arrived and got set up before people started arriving. The event was a sell out, and by 7.30 was absolutely packed. It was introduced by Rachel and Lisa, and I was joined on stage by John Rooks of the SOAP Group who talked about what Transition looks like in the business world.
I really enjoyed giving the talk, and it seemed to go down well, with a standing ovation, lots of book signing and lots of talking to people. We then went to a bar in the middle of Portland which was having some sort of craft beer festival taking place, with all sorts of amazing beers on offer. To hear about the craft brewing revolution taking place in the US is one thing. To be handed the menu at the bar is quite another.
After a couple of delicious brews, we headed to the ferry, and crossed to Peaks Island, off the coast of Portland. We were staying the night at the home of Mark Swain, a permaculturist whose garden had been designed with old friends Charles and Julia Yelton, international permaculture designers/teachers, who were also there. His home was set deep in the woods, alive with autumn colours.
The following morning we had a tour of the garden, with its ponds, protected cropping beds, fruit trees and much more, before heading back across on the ferry to pick up a hire car in order to drive to Rhinebeck (NY) to the Omega Institute to speak as part of the Where Do We Go From Here? Conference. Omega is a kind of upmarket spirituality/activism kind of retreat centre place, set in the woods in a beautiful place. Bill Clinton had spoken the day before me, and I was on after Paul Hawken and Janine Benyus (the biomimicry author).
Omega did feel slightly (in terms of buildings) like the Dharma Initiative in Lost, but it was very beautiful, with amazing food, some fascinating people, and a chorus of cicadas from the surrounding forest. It felt very relaxed and friendly. I met up with Paul Hawken and did an interview with him which will be posted here soon, and then had a very good night’s sleep.
Next morning we were up and off for the train to New York. Nothing quite prepares you for New York. Once you get over the heady bouquet of urine that follows you everywhere in the city (I did check, it wasn’t me), what strikes you most is the sheer scale of it. A visit to Time Square revealed that in the planters along the street were cabbages and kale! An unexpected surprise.
We had a bike ride through the city with a few local cycling enthusiasts who had kindly offered to show us the sights, sampling the recently-added cycle lanes and green corridors added to the city. Most remarkable was the Highline, a length of elevated train line turned into a forest corridor running through the city for about 30 blocks. It is planted up with trees and shrubs and is quite gorgeous. I even spotted some chokeberries ready for harvest. At one point there was an orchestra playing surrounded by a big crowd which was a delight.
While in New York we went to a couple meetings with gatherings of funders, including one the following morning that was also attended by Michael Shuman, expert in local economies, and author of a number of books on the subject. I had spoken to Michael via Skype before but this was the first time we met in person. I enjoyed it when he said “local economic development is the only form of economic development that works”. Fascinating discussions ensued about what it might look like if philanthropy were to get behind Transition.
On our way to that meeting we passed again through Time Square and enjoyed Steve Lambert’s “Capitalism works for me!” installation in the square. It’s a huge illuminated sign which allows people to vote yes or no. At the time of visiting, the no votes were in the lead by 247 to 217.
That lunchtime we spoke at a Resilience Roundtable at the Municipal Arts Society of New York which was great fun. All sorts of community resilience activists from across the city. The microphone didn’t work, so given that it was a long thin room, we had to stand halfway down the hall and shout. All added to the resilience theme of the event! Great questions and discussions.
To visit New York was a fascinating experience. Buildings so tall that in the cloudy misty weather that featured most of the time we were there meant you often couldn’t see the tops of the tallest buildings. New York somehow embodies the worst excess of economic disparity, what happens when the free market is allowed to rule unfettered, but at the same time some of the best, in terms of the spirit of the people, the diversity, the food, the sheer breathtaking enormity of everything. I’m delighted not to live there though.
And that was that for our New York experience. Peter headed home and I headed for Houston for the next leg of the trip. More to follow.
I must just give some thanks here, to Maggie, Asher, Irene, Carolyne, Amber, Desiree and everyone who has made this whole trip work. Thanks so much.
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6 Oct 2013
Coming from England, one of my first impressions of the US is how the word “awesome” is, to my ears at least, somewhat overused. To my English sensibilities, the Karakorum mountains at sunrise are awesome. The Grand Canyon, I imagine, is awesome. To be able to see all of Van Gogh’s paintings in one place would be awesome. A pancake, or a TV programme, or a new phone app, don’t really warrant “awesome” for me. But there is something about New Orleans, the city I just left as the first stop on my dash around the US, and the thinking it introduces you to, that actually is rather awesome.
Time spent here, and talking to people, gives a sense of just how powerful the forces of nature are, and how we tamper with them at our peril. Here’s a city which basically floats on a swamp, many parts of which were completely trashed by the floods that took place following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 with extensive accompanying human suffering, and which is now clawing its way back to vibrancy. As one person I spoke to told me, during Katrina, most of the residents of New Orleans left and were scattered across the country (the year after Katrina, the population was 56% of what it was before the flooding). Many of them chose not to return, although population is now pretty much back to what it was before 2005. One of the key changes to the place has been a sense that everyone who is here made a conscious decision that they wanted to be here, that New Orleans was a place they wanted to be. That can change how a city feels about itself.
It’s a place that pulsates with music, culture, a passion of the human spirit that is, really, quite awesome. During my time here I heard from a woman who represents Vietnamese fishing communities impacted by Katrina and then by the BP oil spill, who find themselves increasingly impacted by changes to the water courses, inflows of fresh water, and a general sense that they don’t matter much.
I heard from a woman representing a Native American people, indigenous to the area for many generations, for whom rising sea levels and changes to waterways made by large oil and gas companies mean that it is a very real possibility that they will lose their land to the sea and have to relocate within her lifetime (she was in her 50s). “When I grew up”, she said, “from my window all I could see were fields and trees. Now it’s mostly open water”.
I heard from the guy who had left New Orleans the day before Katrina hit, persuaded by his family to leave (he had been planning to stay home and have a ‘Hurricane Party’), who had come back to live in the city after four years in Houston because that’s where his family was. I saw a group of musicians performing a piece about their experience of Katrina which included the line “I no longer trust in the water”. The Hurricane Party guy mentioned that one of the big changes since Katrina had been that before it, news of a hurricane would be greeted with a shrug of the shoulders and a sense that it would blow over. Now word of a hurricane coming and most people up and leave.
I met with social entrepreneurs who had started an incubator for social enterprises (The Propeller, see above), a place buzzing with young people ambitious and positive about the city’s future and its potential to embed sustainability and resilience on a number of levels. New Orleans pulses with music, food, colour, smells. On our last night here, walking around, we saw this fantastic street band of local kids playing on a corner in Frenchmen Street:
There has been much written about the IPCC report published a week or so ago (here is a great succinct summary of it). Transition Network’s Social Reporters have been giving their personal reflections on it over the past week. As usual, the contrarians have been trying to pick holes in what is probably one of the most extensively peer-reviewed pieces of science ever created, trying to make out that it is alarmist, that it exaggerates the risks.
In reality though, it is a relatively conservative take on things, usually a couple of years behind the science due to its extensive process of peer review. Take, for example, the report published by the International Programme on the State of the Oceans recently which concluded, according to the chilling article in the Guardian, that:
“The oceans are more acidic now than they have been for at least 300 million years, due to carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels, and a mass extinction of key species may already be almost inevitable as a result”
It also stated:
The report says that world governments’ current pledges to curb carbon emissions would not go far enough or fast enough to save many of the world’s reefs. There is a time lag of several decades between the carbon being emitted and the effects on seas, meaning that further acidification and further warming of the oceans are inevitable, even if we drastically reduce emissions very quickly. There is as yet little sign of that, with global greenhouse gas output still rising.
Now that’s awesome. And not in a good way. The UK’s idiotic new Environment Minister Owen Patterson told the Conservative Party conference that the IPCC Report “is not as catastrophic in its forecast as we had been led to believe early on” and “remember that for humans, the biggest cause of death is cold in winter, far bigger than heat in summer … it would also lead to longer growing seasons and you could extend growing a little further north into some of the colder areas”. As Adam Vaughan points out in his demolition of Patterson’s stupid statements, he feels able to make such statements because his focus is just on the UK, not elsewhere, the politics of pure self-interest.
But the oceans report made me think that I’m guilty of that too. My sense until now had been to focus on the impacts of climate change on the parts of the world that I see: the air, the land, the soils, the climate. But it may well be that the most acute impacts that will hit us hardest, initially at least, will be on the sea, given that at least a third of all the CO2 we produce goes into the oceans. Spending time in a city built on the sea, dependent economically on the sea, culturally connected to the sea, and recently left reeling from the sheer unbridled power of the sea, this moves from an abstract concept to a tangible reality.
But equally awesome is the sense of human resilience that comes through in the people rebuilding their lives, setting up new businesses, giving their time and passion to the future of the city. Given the scale of what the city suffered so recently, that was quite remarkable. As the seas rise, some very hard decisions will have to be made. The city is also facing that challenges, identified in Naomi Klein’s book The Shock Doctrine, of ‘crisis capitalism’ taking the shock of Katrina and buying up cheap real estate and land in and around the city. The Native American woman told of how many of their houses were damaged by Katrina, but nearby fishing holiday homes, built by wealthy city-dwellers, built in far stronger ways unaffordable to her people, withstood the storms. And of course there’s the ever-present risk of future hurricanes.
The challenges are real, but from the people I spoke to in my brief visit, the spirit is there to turn it round and to heal the city. My time in New Orleans left me reflecting on the concept of resilience. It is often defined as relating to somehow “bouncing back” from a crisis, a somewhat silly notion in the context of the ‘New Normal’ of climate change, energy scarcity and the impending end of the age of economic growth. We couldn’t ‘bounce back’ even if we wanted to. In Resilience by Andrew Zolli and Ann Marie Healy, resilience is defined as:
“The capacity of a system, enterprise, or a person to maintain its core purpose and integrity in the face of dramatically changed circumstances”.
While there is much that could be discussed in terms of the extent to which the rebuilding of New Orleans is being done with a consciousness that it is being done in “dramatically changed circumstances”, what shines through is a resilience of the human spirit. As Paul Hawken told me in an interview I did with him today after a conference we were both speaking at (transcript coming soon):
“No matter what you do to nature, burn it, scorch it, scrape it, clearcut it, extract it, poison it, the moment you stop, the life starts to regenerate. There’s nothing you can do about it. It’s the default mode of life. And we’re life. That’s our default mode”.
That’s resilience. And that’s awesome.
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1 Oct 2013
Transition Network and Post Carbon Institute have just come together to publish a new report, Climate After Growth: Why Environmentalists Must Embrace Post-Growth Economics & Community Resilience. The report is published to co-incide with Rob Hopkins’ visit to the US, and is co-authored by him and Asher Miller. You can download it here. Below is the Executive Summary.
“The nearly ubiquitous belief of our elected officials is that addressing the climate crisis must come second to ensuring economic growth. This is wrongheaded—both because it underestimates the severity of the climate crisis, and because it presupposes that the old economic “normal” of robust growth can be revived. It can’t.
In fact, we have entered an era of “new normals”—not only in our economy, but in our energy and climate systems, as well. The implications are profound:
- The New Energy Normal. The era of cheap and easy fossil fuels is over, leading the industry to resort to extreme fossil fuel resources (tar sands, mountaintop removal coal mining, shale gas, tight oil, and deepwater oil) to meet demand. Unfortunately, these resources come with enormous environmental and economic costs, and in most instances provide far less net energy to the rest of society. They also require much higher prices to make production worthwhile, creating a drag effect on the economy. As a result, high energy prices and economic contraction are likely to continue a back-and-forth dance in the coming years.
- The New Climate Normal. Climate stability is now a thing of the past. As extreme weather events grow in severity, communities are increasingly adopting strategies that build resilience against the effect of these and other climate shocks. At the same time, we must take dramatic steps if we hope to avoid raising global temperatures more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels. According to Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre, this would require a 10% reduction in CO2 emissions per year, starting now—a rate so significant that it can only be achieved through dramatic reductions in energy use.
- The New Economic Normal. We’ve reached the end of economic growth as we’ve known it in the US. Despite unprecedented interventions on the part of central banks and governments, the so-called economic recovery in the US and Europe has been anemic and has failed to benefit the majority of citizens. The debate between stimulus and austerity is a distraction, as neither can fully address the factors that spell the end of economic growth—the end of the age of cheap oil, the vast mountains of debt that we have incurred, the diminishing economic impacts of new technologies, and the snowballing costs of climate change impacts.
These fundamental changes in our energy, climate, and economic systems require unprecedented (and previously politically untenable) strategies. Yet this new reality is still largely unrecognized. As long as our leaders’ predominant focus remains on getting back to the days of robust economic growth, no national or international climate policies will be enacted to do what is required: cut fossil fuel use dramatically.
Instead of focusing on achieving climate policy within the economic growth paradigm, the US environmental community must embrace strategies that are appropriate to these “new normals.”
Responding to each of these new energy, climate, and economic “normals” will require one common strategy: building community resilience. Efforts that build community resilience enhance our ability to navigate the energy, climate, and economic crises of the 21st century. Done right, they can also serve as the foundation of a whole new economy—an economy comprised of people and communities that thrive within the real limits of our beautiful but finite planet.
Thankfully, innovations that build community resilience are cropping up everywhere, and in many forms: community-owned, distributed, renewable energy production; sustainable local food systems; new cooperative business models; sharing economies, re-skilling, and more. While relatively small and inherently local, these projects are spreading rapidly and creating tangible impacts.
Growing the community resilience movement to the national and global scale that’s needed will require the full support and participation of the US environmental community. Specifically we need to:
- build the capacity of groups—large and small—who are leading these efforts;
- support the growth of a global learning network; and
- enable local investments to flow into community resilience enterprises.
By making community resilience a top priority, environmentalists can offer an alternative to the “growth at all costs” story, one in which taking control of our basic needs locally has multiple benefits. Community resilience-building can create new enterprises and meaningful work, and increase well-being even as GDP inevitably falters. It can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and dependence on fossil fuels, while addressing social and economic inequities. And it can strengthen the social cohesion necessary to withstand periods of crisis.
On their own, community resilience projects can’t overcome all the environmental, energy, economic, and social equity challenges facing us. That will require coordinated global, national, regional, community, business, neighborhood, household and individual efforts. But the community resilience movement can help create the conditions in which what is now “politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.”
How the environmental community responds to the risks and opportunities of the new energy, climate, and economic “normals” will make an enormous difference in its success, and in the fate of humankind.
Here is the whole report in a readable format:
My thanks to Asher Miller for being such a proactive co-author!
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29 Sep 2013
In this guest blog, Transition trainer Tina Clarke, also of Transition Amherst, Massachusetts, USA, gives a report on a recent training given by Nick Osborne which turned out to be way more successful than anyone could have imagined. Over to Tina…
“Within two days after Nick Osborne gave his first Effective Collaboration Training on the North American Continent, my email box was full of enthusiastic messages from participants:
“A huge boat load of thanks for…[bringing] Nick to our area. In hindsight, I wish I had …recruit[ed] more participants as the training was excellent!” — Dyan, Organizational Development Consultant, Trainer, and Cohousing Community Facilitator in Consensus and Sociocracy
“I’m already integrating what I learned at the training into many aspects of my life.” – Shana, Teacher
“Great time, great information, great people!” – Paul, retired professor, Transition Initiator, Way of Council Trainer
“Awesome. Thanks..!” – Steve, Graduate School Professor, Transition Initiator, public speaker
I agree. Last weekend was one of the best trainings I’ve ever attended. For over 30 years, I’ve been creating and delivering outreach, awareness and mobilization training to the public. Nick Osborne’s Effective Collaboration training was top-notch. I wish everyone could attend his workshop. Participants in the Amherst, Massachusetts training agreed that Nick has done the equivalent of two PhDs worth of research and analysis.
Nick’s mission is to help us work together more effectively in groups. We left inspired and better equipped to do so. Workshop participants included professional trainers, consultants, educators, professors, businesspeople and activists. Most were leaders or key instigators of Transition Initiatives. We came with the usual complaints and needs: People don’t communicate enough. Some people communicate too much. It’s not clear who is responsible. Some people take on too much responsibility. It’s not clear who is making decisions.
Some people grab power and make too many decisions. Or, everyone is trying to make all the decisions, and we’re not getting much done. We’re not having enough fun in our group. We’re having so much fun in our group that we don’t want to reach out, or include anyone new. We have a lot of different personalities. We’re too alike and don’t have enough different people. The trials and tribulations of group life seem to be endless.
How to make sense of it all? Are group problems the result of the “wrong” personalities? Or of communication problems? Or of lack of information or skills?
Nick has collected and synthesized insights, information and tools to help voluntary groups and organizations to work together with less stress, more productivity, and more fun. We were amazed to discover that this modest, unassuming man has devoted decades to learning from business management, eco-villages, intentional communities, non-profit charities, and academics and practitioners. He’s scoured the English-speaking world to find the best models, tools and analyses, and to share them with Transition Initiatives and social change groups. [Here is a recent tele-seminar he gave with Transition US …]
Nick has organized the information into four stages, eight themes, and dozens of tools. The Transition Network has created a series of web pages for his volumes of information. Naresh Giangrande of the Transition Network is supporting Nick to write and produce a series of cartoons about the key issues facing groups. The cartoons are designed to be shared in groups, to help members of a group realize the value of spending time developing better group collaboration skills.
I confess that I had not made time to explore Nick’s treasure chest of resources on the Transition Network site. What a gift he has given! Nick has condensed over 50 books and uncountable schools of thought into neat and tidy, colorful, comprehensible and comprehensive summaries.
Some of Nick’s helpful distinctions include:
- Groups need “action” time and “reflection” time.
- Groups need “Ground Rules” and Agreements for how to work together.
- Conflict is normal, essential and beneficial. When we expect differences and welcome them, we strengthen our work.
- Groups often get into trouble when they think they’re operating by consensus, but don’t understand it, or when some group members unconsciously operate as if they were in a hierarchy.
Nick created lots of participatory exercises to help us deepen our skills in collaboration. One exercise helped us identify which method of decision-making might work best for different types of decisions. At one extreme was consensus decision-making, and at the other was authoritarian hierarchical decision-making, with five more options arrayed between.
As someone trained in classic Quaker consensus process, which we used in the cohousing community where I lived for eight years, consensus can be a relationship-building tool for values clarification and creating superior decisions. However, consensus is often over-used, and used poorly. Throwing it out doesn’t work. Nor does it work to throw out bits of hierarchical authority – where decisive action is sometimes needed or wanted. By delegating decisions to people carrying responsibilities, we increase group efficiency.
Instead of choosing consensus over hierarchy, or vice-versa, Nick suggested a third option – the “Agile” group that is a blend of the two. Different types of structures yield different benefits. Consensus can help build group functioning and trust when it is used for important questions of values, purpose, priorities and mutual understanding. Sometimes small issues are the mask for a much deeper issue. Consensus can help us recognize the deeper issues. By choosing to avoid quick judgments, and instead listening deeply, we can more quickly recognize root problems and issues that may underlie a seemingly inconsequential topic.
Hierarchy saves time and can move our work forward more efficiently. I always think of weather disasters as often benefiting from decisions made using hierarchical, directive authority. If you know where the sandbags are to pile up on the river bank, I’m following you to help get them.
Once a mission or purpose is clear, identifying tasks and roles, and working to implement them, vary according to the task, the roles people create, and the personalities at hand. Communication skills become paramount. Nick helped us understand the big picture, the small pieces, and a flow of questions and topics to help us navigate the sometimes rough seas of creating vibrant communities, and sustainable culture.
Nick, you’ve got a strong and growing fan club on this side of the Atlantic. We can’t wait to hear more about Holocracy — your third PhD research and training project! Melissa, the Brit who hosted you misses you already. So come back soon! We’ll make up for the greenhouse gas emissions once again by using trains, bikes, buses, and car-pooling, by achieving zero hotel-footprint by everyone staying with Transition hosts, and by eating all local food (except for those pleasures of coffee, chocolate, sugar, coconut, walnuts, tea and peanut butter!) Thanks for all you give!
You can read more about Transition Network’s Effective Groups training here.
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25 Sep 2013
During August, at the peak of the campaign against the fracking for natural gas at Balcombe, West Sussex, the BBC ran a story called Dorking ‘green’ group in favour of fracking. It stated, “One group in Surrey set up to encourage sustainable living has come out in favour of exploration and fracking, the process which may have to be used in future to extract the oil and gas. Transition Dorking says it has surprised even itself”.
What the BBC said
Although the article ran with the mention of the Transition group in its headline, the bulk of the article featured quotes from other people, Transition Dorking only appearing in the opening section, presumably because it was a green group taking a different approach on fracking was the most headline-worthy.
It quoted the group’s Nick Wright as arguing that locally-produced fuels could be less damaging than imported fossil fuels:
“We can’t move straight away to a future in which a very high proportion of our power requirements are generated by renewable resources. Renewables are about 11% of electricity generation now but a much bigger proportion – about 40% – is being generated by imported coal burnt in British power stations.
In addition to that, gas is being brought in in liquefied form from the Middle East. When you burn it, the impact on the environment isn’t only to do with burning the fuel, it is to do with how you got hold of it and how you shipped it to where you are. There’s no reason why fracking, if it is properly regulated, should not be a perfectly normal part of oil industry operations.”
Clearly for the BBC, a local green group being seen to be in favour of fracking is a great story. But is that really what they said? In the days after the story ran, Transition Network received many emails and tweets from people expressing their dismay and asking what is our official position on fracking. That’s an interesting question, and one that we’ll explore in this piece.
Reaction
Unsurprisingly, as well as anti-fracking activists who expressed their dismay at Transition Dorking’s stance, the story was also seized on by those in favour of the approach. Priti Patel, Conservative MP for nearby Witham, wrote on her blog:
“Although some environmental groups, such as Transition Dorking have shown they can take a more moderate and pragmatic approach to shale gas opportunities, it is shocking to see so many groups taking a hostile approach”.
The Surrey Advertiser ran a headline Unity over fracking starts to fracture, and stating that Transition Dorking “is broadly in favour of at least looking into the viability of fracking”. It quoted Sally Elias from the group as saying:
“That view has created quite a stir in the town and some people have come up to me and are quite angry, asking why Transition Dorking has taken this position. But we need to get people to think very seriously – we have to look at other sources of power in the transition to the post peak oil era”.
So is Transition Dorking really “in favour of fracking?” It turns out that the reality behind the Dorking story is far less black and white than the BBC and Patel might have us believe.
What Transition Dorking said
I spoke to Nick Wright of Transition Dorking, who has a background in the oil and gas industry and who used to work with Dr Colin Campbell, one of the founders of the peak oil movement, to find out more.
One of the first things I wondered, given some of the comments on Twitter as to how someone with a background in the oil and gas industry was spokesperson for a Transition group, and suggestions that somehow the group had been “hijacked”, was how did he end up getting involved in Transition?
“There’s a terribly easy answer to that. You’ll find that people who really fundamentally understand the reality of climate change will include a large number of geologists because that’s been part of our training, our background, and our experience in the field. We have always known that climate change is a fact. You also have, among geologists, a high proportion of people who love the outdoors, who know the mountains, who know the Arctic, who know the world from a more environmental point of view, who understand its resource base, and understand the complexities of energy supply. That seems like perfectly good qualifications for getting involved in the Transition movement. Personally I don’t see any contradiction at all”.
I asked him what it was that had led to Transition Dorking taking this public stance. The group write a regular column in their local paper, and had used one to set out their argument that we ought not rush to dismiss fracking out of hand without a reasoned look at the whole issue. This was then picked up by another local paper, then by local radio, then BBC Surrey, and then the BBC nationally. By then it had developed a life of its own. But why, I wondered, had they felt drawn to raising the issue in the first place?
“When it (the fracking issue) pops up suddenly with grossly exaggerated claims appearing in the press as to what the resource potential for shale gas might be in the country, and suddenly people start imagining a world where it looks like Baku, with rigs everywhere, and they just don’t know. You get people leaping onto the bandwagon with their own agendas and using that insubstantiated fear to whip up public emotion, and it starts to get the characteristics of a witchhunt. It’s very odd. That’s not to say fracking for shale gas doesn’t have risks or we shouldn’t have concerns, all these other things are true, but it’s not helpful to get diverted onto fear-based arguments that are not grounded in fact, we need a better-informed debate”.
I wanted to hear, from the horse’s mouth, what was the argument that underpinned Transition Dorking’s position?
“Coal now accounts for 40% of the UK’s electricity generation, a disgrace, but this is being driven by the fact that our natural gas supply is declining. Unless we do something, that will be replaced by coal. Of course we’d like to see it replaced by renewables, but we also have to live in the real world. To offset gas declines over the next 5 years with wind, we will need to quadruple, at least, the number of wind turbines that we currently have in this country. I would love to believe that could happen, but I’m sorry, I’m a realist, I just don’t think it will.
I don’t think we’re capable, as a country, of quadrupling, or sextupling, the number of wind turbines we have in this timeframe. Apart from anything else, I don’t think the population will stand it from a landscape point of view. We’re also starting to run out of easily accessible shallow water marine locations that would allow another 6 Thames Arrays to be built. Unless we do something about it, she shortfall is going to be clearly taken up with coal. That’s what’s happening. Why would we not therefore consider a source to replace declining North Sea gas. That’s really what we’re talking about. Why would we not at least try to minimise that decline in domestic gas production?”
Ultimately, as Nick put it, the question is “how do we get to the zero carbon future we all aspire to?”
Transition Dorking’s letter to the local paper
This more nuanced position is most clearly set out in the letter they wrote to their local paper, the Dorking Advertiser, who first ran the “local group supports fracking” story. Their letter read:
Dear Sir,
Transition Dorking seems to have caused a stir by suggesting that the exploitation of shale gas resources, using the technology known as “fracking”, might provide part of the solution of the energy crisis which this country will be facing over the next decade – a crisis which is already resulting in a big increase in the use of high carbon emission coal in UK power stations. Perhaps we need to re-state our position:
1) Our primary concern is the global emissions of greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere, which are driving the planet inexorably towards a full-blown climate crisis.
2) We share the aim of a “Zero Carbon Britain”, but we recognize that what happens in China, India, Brazil, USA etc. will have the dominant global impact.
3) The question is – how to we get from where we are currently (40% coal burning in UK power stations, only 11% renewables, gas from the North Sea declining rapidly) to the Zero Carbon future we all desire? A massive increase in investment in wind, tidal and solar energy will be necessary, although we see little sign of support for this from the present government. It will take an enormous commitment from society and from business, but already local opposition to wind farms in particular is a significant negative factor.
4) At a local level, we must focus on reducing our direct and indirect energy consumption through better home insulation, local PV and hydro-electric systems, car-share schemes, supporting local food sources, re-cycling, eating less meat etc, and Transition Dorking has active projects in many of these areas.
5) It is doubtful, however, that these local or UK-wide efforts will have a sufficient impact in the short term to prevent the “tipping point” of atmospheric carbon being reached within the next decade or so. The “elephant in the room” is the world-wide burning of coal for power generation, particularly in China and India which between them are building hundreds of new coal power stations and planning hundreds more . Replacing this massive and increasing consumption of coal with gas would significantly reduce carbon emissions, as has been seen in the USA over the past few years, and might start to provide an “energy bridge” as renewable alternatives are developed. The Chinese, it should be noted, are putting a lot of effort into both renewables and shale gas exploration – and we should all hope for the sake of the planet that they are successful.
6) We recognize that there are concerns over the safety and environmental impact of potential shale gas operations, but there have been a lot of exaggerated and ill-informed claims bandied around in the press and on the internet. Much of this fear is based on un-familiarity with the Oil & Gas industry, which if tightly regulated and following best engineering practice is perfectly capable of conducting its operations safely and sensitively – and has done so in the UK for many years under one of the strictest regulatory regimes in the world. We should make sure that Government and DECC (Department of Energy and Climate Change) devise and enforce the best possible regulations for the nascent shale gas industry, particularly in key areas such as methane venting during well clean-up, and wellbore integrity to prevent cross-contamination of aquifers.
7) We desperately need a long term, realistic and achievable national energy strategy, which sets out how we can move from the present un-sustainable situation to a Zero Carbon future. Only government can provide this. But we believe that this strategy will have to consider both the whole range of energy conservation measures and all potential energy sources – North Sea gas, imported gas, Liquified Natural Gas, coal, hydro, PV, wind, tidal, AND shale gas – in order to achieve the transition to Zero Carbon without massive economic and social disruption.
8) Transition Dorking is working to make fracking for shale gas unnecessary, but in the nearer term we need to know whether we even have a significant shale gas resource in this country – something which remains to be proven. We should not simply reject this potential resource out of hand. We need to find out more, encourage an informed debate on the subject, and ensure that government provides the best possible regulatory environment for any possible future development.
Yours sincerely,
Nick Wright. Energy Consultant and Member of Transition Dorking Energy Group
It’s clear that Transition Dorking have given this a lot of thought.
So what is Transition Network’s position on fracking?
What does all this mean for Transition Network? Should we have a formal stance on fracking? If some Transition groups are coming out in public in favour of gas fracking, should Transition Network somehow issue a three-line whip and bring them all to account behind a standard party line, or is it OK for each group to come to its own position based on its own evaluation of the arguments for and against? Nick Wright put it like this:
“What is Transition? We’re a network, not a hierarchical political party with a party line that needs to be followed, policies and platforms that get debated and then agreed on, we are a collection of individuals and individual projects. People need to calm down a bit, and let’s have a reasoned debate. I don’t know if it’s appropriate for Transition Network to have a position, a view, a party line. Is that the sort of thing Transition Network should be about, or is it more to do with having an agreed set of objectives and a forum for an open, reasoned and grown up discussion around the best way to achieve that objective? People say “you’re not representing the Transition point of view”? And we say “what is the Transition point of view?”
Already a number of Transition initiatives have made their positions on the subject clearly known. Transition Louth have come out strongly opposed to fracking, and have featured extensive resources on the issue on their website. Transition Cowbridge ran a successful campaign to stop a fracking application near them, and remain vigilant for follow-up applications. Transition Llantwit, Transition Culver City, Buckingham in Transition, Transition Forest Row and Transition Morecambe have all strongly come out against fracking. Cuckmere Valley Transition screened the recent film Split Estate (Matt Damon’s recent drama about a community confronted by fracking).
Transition Keynsham has taken a similar position, declaring:
“Transition Keynsham believes the evidence and risks related to fracking and coal bed methane extraction make them unacceptable energy options for Keynsham and Somerset. We feel that they threaten safety, health, landscape and water quality for our community and communities across Somerset. We also feel that in the short, medium and long term coal bed methane extraction and fracking are not sustainable sources of energy”.
HKD Transition, an initiative covering the villages of Hassocks, Hurstpierpoint, Keymer and Ditching in Sussex, ran a piece by member Felicity Tanous condemning fracking, but stressed it represented her own point of view. Transition Lancaster in the US went on their own fracking fact-finding mission. They write:
“Concerned citizens from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, trek up to Northern PA to witness natural gas rigs, well pads, storage facilities, and transport trucks in action. They visit with fellow Pennsylvanian land owners effected by the drilling and subsequent contamination of local waterways and diminishing air quality; who are standing up for their constitutional and human rights to clean air and clean water”.
They made a video about the trip too:
Transition Network serves to represent the views and opinions of Transition initiatives. So is it safe to assume that all Transition initiatives are opposed to fracking like those mentioned above? Not necessarily. There is as yet no survey or research on this. The only thing I have been able to find was an online poll run by Transition Buckingham. Here are the results.
If it is the case that 21% of those involved in Transition think there might be some merit in discussing fracking as an option, where does that leave Transition Network and an ‘official view’ on fracking?
A Transition Network stance
Can it be said that there is a view on the issue within Transition Network? Perhaps the best place to start in considering this is the following, taken from Transition Network’s most recent Annual Report which sets out our founding thinking in relation to fossil fuels and their extraction.
“Our original analysis that we have reached the end of the age of cheap energy has held up very well. A recent report by the Ministry of Defence (2012) warned of the depletion of cheap, conventional, ‘easy oil’ and rocketing oil prices, predicting oil prices of $500 a barrel by 2040. A peer-reviewed paper in the journal EOS by James Murray and Jim Hansen (2013) stated that crude oil production has been on a plateau since 2005, with older fields now declining at 5% a year.
What hope that unconventional fossil fuels can fill the gap? While there is much hype, a study by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) (2013) found that “these shale oil and shale gas resource estimates are highly uncertain and will remain so until they are extensively tested with production wells”.
Central to Transition Network’s analysis is the reality that extraction techniques such as unconventional gas are only viable because oil prices are high, indeed the fact that expensive, difficult approaches such as shale gas are now seen as ushering in a new ‘Golden Age of Gas’, are as clear an indicator as we could wish for that the age of cheap energy is now well and truly over. The idea that it is a ‘bridge fuel’ to a low carbon economy, as President Obama stated in his speech on climate change, is also an argument in ribbons. As journalist George Monbiot put it recently, “using shale gas as a ‘bridge’ to a low-carbon economy is like using chocolate fudge cake as a bridge to a low-calorie diet.”
In terms of climate change, the fact remains that, as the International Energy Agency (2013) warned recently, the world is currently on a path that will lead to between a 3.6°C and 5.3°C rise in global temperature. PricewaterhouseCoopers (2012) have warned that “even doubling our current rate of decarbonisation would still lead to emissions consistent with 6 degrees of warming by the end of the century”. Climate scientist James Hansen notes that even if just one-third of known fossil fuel reserves are exploited, catastrophic runaway climate change is guaranteed.
The Carbon Tracker report Unburnable Carbon 2013: Wasted Capital and Stranded Assets argues that the next stock market bubble is being created; a carbon bubble. It assesses that 80% of the carbon already ‘booked’ on fossil fuel company accounts cannot be burned if we are to limit global temperature rises to 2°C over pre industrial levels. The report urges fund managers and financial regulators to question planned spending of over $600 billion per year for the next decade by fossil fuel companies in finding and developing more carbon based fuels, if we can’t burn the ones we already know about.
The Transition perspective has always been, and remains, that an economy able to actually stay below 2°C and which has some degree of resilience to energy shortages or price spikes, needs to go far beyond changing lightbulbs and introducing more efficient vehicles. What we need is a fast response programme of breaking our addiction to fossil fuels, and of building resilience to shocks, and of seeing both as an historic opportunity for creativity, entrepreneurship and bringing communities back together.
Perhaps from this we might extract a checklist of questions we might like to ask of a new extraction technology such as fracking.
- Will it exacerbate climate change? Will it add more fossil fuels to the ‘pile’ of burnable carbon at a time when we need to urgently cutting emissions?
- Is it helping us build renewable energy infrastructure?
- Does it move us closer towards, or further away from, a global agreement on putting a cap on emissions?
- Does it involve externalities (pollution, environmental damage, unintended impacts) that someone other than the resource-extracting company will have to pay for?
- What is the impact on local resilience, both economic and ecological?
- What is the impact from a social justice perspective?
- Does the decision to use or not use any given fuel or technology include an analysis of the power relationships of those involved? (i.e. the power of large fossil fuel companies to influence government policy)
- Does it form a decisive part of the push towards the kind of more socially just, fair, resilient future we so urgently need to see?
Ultimately, for me it boils down to this graph, redrawn from Mike Berners-Lee and Duncan Clark’s new book The Burning Question, which clearly sets out the amount of potential carbon emissions are contained in the world’s known reserves, and the amount we can safely burn if we are serious about staying below 2 degrees.
The ‘50% safety’ refers to an approach (which is the UK government’s position) to staying below 2 degrees rise in temperatures which carries a 50% risk that we will go over 2 degrees (think playing Russian Roulette with bullets in half the chambers), and ‘75% safety’ to a 25% risk of going over (bullets in a quarter of the chambers). Both give a clear sense of the scale of the challenge, and how rather than extracting more fossil fuels we need to be leaving them in the ground as a matter of huge urgency. If that doesn’t seem challenging enough, a new report suggests that even those scenarios might be an underestimate.
In response to the questions asked above, it is clear that fracking unlocks new fossil fuels at a time when, globally, they are the last thing we need. Will shale gas reduce emissions? The experience from the US is that although it has brought down US gas prices and carbon emissions (to their lowest point since 1992), it has also led to a boom in coal use around the world, up from 25% of the world’s energy mix to 30%, the highest level since 1969. The US using less coal led to flooding of the global markets with cheap coal, and the world economy responded accordingly, burning as much of it as it could. Whatever new fossil fuels are put into the world will get burnt.
Is it correct to say that shale gas can be a ‘bridge fuel’ because it has lower emissions than coal? Not necessarily. According to the first comprehensive study of emissions from shale gas published in the journal Climatic Change:
“The footprint for shale gas is greater than that for conventional gas or oil when viewed on any time horizon, but particularly so over 20 years. Compared to coal, the footprint of shale gas is at least 20% greater and perhaps more than twice as great on the 20-year horizon and is comparable when compared over 100 years.”
It should be pointed out though that this study is challenged by another study that produced lower figures for methane leaks. It also appears to be moving us further away from a renewable energy economy, as investment and public support goes into tax breaks for fracking companies, and the political opinion, in the UK at least, is that we can get back to a growth economy powered by shale gas. Does it move us closer to a global agreement on emissions? It wouldn’t appear so. Does it involve externalities? The experience from the US is that it does, whether it’s groundwater pollution, pollution from the high number of lorry trips it necessitates, the disposal of the toxic waste water and so on. The recent flooding in Colorado highlights the difficulties of always being able to deal with toxic substances in a reliable way.
The impact on local resilience, both economic and ecological is still unknown. It could be argued that the £100,000 being offered to communities where drilling takes place could help to make communities more resilient, but it’s not going to go far, most likely would result in non resilience-building expenditure, and wouldn’t even come close to clearing up potential pollution. From a social justice perspective shale gas extraction is conducted by large companies, creates little work, and leaves those with least economic clout to live with what it leaves behind (as the film Gasland so powerfully highlighted). Although it is being argued by some that fracking will lead to lower bills, there is little evidence of that. Lord Stern recently said:
“It’s a bit odd to say you know that it will bring the price of gas down. That doesn’t look like sound economics to me. It’s baseless economics.”
Stern’s view is supported by the International Energy Agency and Deutsche Bank. So all in all, it looks like fracking isn’t something that comes up well in response to the questions we might ask of it.
Closing thoughts
Where does that leave Transition? At present, Transition Network itself takes a position that leans towards opposing shale gas and fracking for the reasons set out above. However, we are delighted to see that there is meaningful debate around these issues, and would wish to represent the views of those on the ground doing Transition, informed by the best evidence available. The Surrey Advertiser quoted Nick Wright as saying:
“All we’ve said is we’re not absolutely convinced that shale gas is unequivocally a bad thing. It might be a medium-term solution to the growing energy crisis in this country”.
If Transition initiatives feel that they are able to argue that fracking can contribute positively to the transition to a low carbon and fossil fuel-free future, then that is absolutely a debate that needs to take place. Rather than just taking a dogmatic position that just dismisses the very idea out of hand without debate, we salute Transition Dorking in calling for a discussion around the idea that fracking “is unequivocally a bad thing”. It is to be celebrated that the Transition movement is sufficiently broad that people with a range of views on the subject feel able to come together at the local level to try and do their bit in the push to make fossil fuels of all kinds, and the damage they cause, a thing of the past.
In the past, energy generation and extraction is something that tended to happen ‘out there’: out in the North Sea; in distant nuclear power stations; in mining communities. One of the features of how rapidly our energy situation is changing is how energy generation is coming closer to home. If we have to live closer to our energy sources, would we rather they were wind, solar or fracking? Or perhaps one of Stewart Brand’s community scale nuclear power plants (which he once told me could be about the size of a postbox and funded through a community share option). We need to decide one way or another, rather than just rejecting them all out of hand.
If a conformity of opinion is expected with regards to fracking, should we expect, for example, that all Transition initiatives will also be completely opposed to GM? To all new supermarket developments under all circumstances? To always be in favour of every wind turbine application? Do we want Transition to be like Greenpeace where local groups are informed of what the new campaign is and sent all the materials they need in order to argue it? As Nick Wright told me:
“I am very keen on Transition Dorking being a broad church. There would be a danger, especially in this part of the country, of being typecast as an arm of the Green Party (not that I’m opposed to the Green Party, they do an awful lot of good things) but we are not part of the Green Party. We include people who would be politically aligned in lots of different directions. We try to include people of all ages, from teenagers to retirement age, we want to be inclusive. By being inclusive it includes people like me who have an industry background, and don’t see any contradiction in that.
In the pursuit of trying to build a cross-community consensus on the need for community resilience and wellbeing, there is a strong argument that part of the power in that lies in not doing what is expected, not unquestioningly conforming to “green” expectations. The ability to do this has been one of the things that has, for example, enabled the recent Local Economic Blueprints to happen, and for Transition to have grown at the speed it has. I hope this piece will generate a lively debate and discussion, and we’d love to hear your views.
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