RELATED EVENT: Guardians for the Future - discussion- 20 March

Ross Jackson (author, Occupy World Street ) and Rupert Read (author, "Guardians of the Future") discuss radical ideas for protecting the interests of future generations.

The costs of decisions we make today will be borne by future generations; the issue of intergenerational justice is at the heart of the need to act on climate change. So how might the world be different if the interests and basic needs of future generations were given legal protection?

Earlier this year, Rupert Read, a philosopher at the University of East Anglia and founder of the new Green House Think Tank, launched a proposal called Guardians of the Future at the House of Commons: A council of "Guardians of Future Generations", chosen like a jury from the general public, would sit above the existing law-making bodies and have two core powers. A power to veto legislation that threatened the basic needs and interests of future people and the power to force a review, following suitable public petition, of any existing legislation that threatens the interests of future people.

In his forthcoming book, Occupy World Street, Ross Jackson, proposes a similar, but elected, institution as one of many specific political and economic reforms that could make it possible to address climate change and protect future generations: A council of 'wise elders' would be elected ─ one from each major region of the world ─ to exercise just one power, and that to be used sparingly, the power to veto or void any resolution passed by lower powers whenever they feel things are moving in the wrong direction for the whole of humanity.Come along to hear Ross and Rupert discuss their ideas, and to join in the public debate that follows. Tuesday, 20th March at the Assembly House, Norwich, 6-7.30pm.

Ross Jackson's book Occupy World Street: A Global Roadmap for Radical Economic and Political Reform is published by Green Books on 22nd March 2012.

3 years of Transition Norwich - A celebration with Rob Hopkins - 15 November

An evening for Transition Norwich and the City of Norwich to celebrate, reconnect, remind, regenerate, share and discuss where we are and what we have achieved since the 'great unleashing' back in 2008.

The evening is set for Tuesday the 15th of November- 7.30pm at the United Reform Church (Princes Street). The plan is to have a happy and relaxed celebration, an opportunity for further dreaming and planning, with stalls to display the various projects throughout Norwich that have been a direct result of TN or link directly with TN in their ethos and vision.

Rob Hopkins will be joining our celebration, sharing the broader story of transition as he witnesses it as well as discussing his upcoming book The Transition Companion (including sections about the TN blog, Norwich FarmShare and a great pic of the NR3 Reskillers by helenofnorwich).

Plus.... there are plans to put a short 10 min film together that reflects on Transition Norwich, the place, the people, the projects.For inquiries about the event please contact Christine Way at training@transitionnorwich.org

The Transition Companion by Rob Hopkins (Green Books) was published on October 27 and now has its ingredient and tools on line.

Book swap @ Nectar - 24 September

If you love your books, set them free. Based on this motto of bookcrossing, there will be a book swap on Saturday 24 September 3pm at Nectar Cafe, 16 Onley Street, NR2 2EB. Whether transition related, written by the enemy, or a novel that is collecting dust on your bookshelf, do bring it along. We'll also start an Official Bookcrossing Zone, so from then on you can come and take and bring books there. For free, there aren't even penalties for returning your books late. Erik Buitenhuis

TN Bloggers preparing to release The Transition Timeline into the wild in Chapelfield Gardens

BOOK REVIEW - It's all about the bike

Back in August on the TN blog, I said that I would like this book for my birthday in November and sure enough it appeared - though as a Christmas present! Still, better late than never.

I've just finished reading the book and enjoyed it a lot. The book is structured around the story of how a life long cyclist decided to assemble the best components from around the world to build a dream bike that would last him the rest of his life. Rob Penn visits people who are the best at their craft - one company has been making leather saddles in the same way for 100 years - another builds frames by hand to fit the rider exactly. On the way, he covers the invention of the bicycle and its evolution from wooden boneshaker to the first form of transport that was available to the common man and enabled people to travel further to work and for leisure - which in turn shaped housing and road development in the UK. There is plenty of humour and I was pleased to learn the origin of the Jock Strap and how it got its name.

I'm not sure that travelling to the USA to get some hand made wheels is justified but that aside, I'm confident that anyone with an interest in bicycles will enjoy a book that is as unique as the finished Dream Bike that adorns its cover. (I will however not be emulating RP and spending £3000 on a bike, I will be sticking with my trusty 20 year old cross bike) (John Heaser/Transition Circle Hethersett)

BOOKS: The Empathic Civilisation by Jeremy Rifkin

It’s a hefty book weighing in at over 2 kilos. I might have passed it up, but my curiosity was piqued when Tom Harper at a Low Carbon Roadshow rehearsal spoke about how it documents a shift from psychological thinking to dramaturgical thinking – how we’re becoming actor-directors in a shared production, as opposed to analysts and controllers of a set of problems. Then Rupert Read wrote an excellent piece about our fear of mortality based on the book in the OneWorldColumn.

Why is The Empathic Civilisation relevant to Transition? Because its central debate is that empathy comes into play at the precise point when the energy that maintains a civilisation’s increasingly complex systems begins to run out. Rifkin brings this paradox to our attention because instead of total societal collapse, we could reach out to our fellows and do something different. We don’t have to go the way of Rome and entropy. Collaboration he argues always “bests” competition, as he charts the global movement towards mutual understanding between races and genders. The more advanced a civilisation becomes he argues the more co-operative and freethinking it becomes - intolerant hierarchical religions, for example, give way to egalitarian spirituality. Rifkin works methodically through Western philosophy to find our rarely-recorded “hidden history”. The book lacks the ease and economy of social reportage such as Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, but it’s well worth picking up with both hands, even if you only dip in occasionally. The passages on embodied empathy replacing a disembodied seeking of ideals and perfection (Chapter 5) is particularly good.

The Empathic Civilisation -The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis by Jeremy Rifkin (Polity Books) £17.99

BOOKS: Local Money by Peter North

Is it possible to have local money systems that would be credible to conventional business owners? That was my foremost question in reading Local Money. The answer is a very definite ‘yes’. This is an excellent book if you want to understand why local money is important for resilient communities and how it works in practice; it’s a must-read for anyone who wants to go ahead with innovative approaches to local money.

Part One of Local Money puts the case for local money and localised economies. Alternative money models are explained in Part Two. LETS (Local Exchange Trading Schemes), time banking, barter networks, regional and local currencies are assessed for their relative merits on a ‘scorecard’.

Part Three documents the experiences of introducing Transition currencies to date: Totnes, Lewes, Stroud and Brixton, which must be the most challenging of all in establishing local money in a global city. But it works! Lambeth, Brixton’s local council, accepts council tax and stallholders’ rents in Brixton Pounds – a national first. There’s also a useful step-by-step guide to starting and building a local currency.

Part Four: Towards Resilient Local Economies is a small section that’s big on inspiring ideas. Topics include local banks, with an example of Essex County Council teaming up with Santander to help small Essex businesses to prosper, and microfinance, including Norwich-based WEETU, which provides business support and loans to women setting up in business. The book concludes with some practical insights on how to make local money work locally. (Jane Chittenden/Core Group)

Book Reviews and Previews

Half Gone by Jeremy Leggett reviewed by Mark Watson

At the end of the first Carbon Conversations meeting Christine spread a selection of books and videos about peak oil and climate change on the floor for us to borrow and I picked this one, partly due to TN’s May meeting about solar PVs with Solarcentury (see report in this bulletin), which is the author’s company.

If you want a solid, accessible reminder of (or even introduction to) the facts about peak oil, global warming and the energy crisis, this is a good book to consult. Before starting up Solarcentury, Leggett worked as a geologist for Big Oil in the 80s, and was chief science advisor for Greenpeace in the 90s.

From the five geo-physical requirements for finding oil in the first place (fascinating) to the link between oil depletion and global warming to possible energy solutions via renewables, Leggett combines hard data with his extensive personal experience in the (literal) field. His analysis of the geo-political problems of oil filled in several gaps in this reader’s awareness in a personable book which still resonates five years after its publication.

Half Gone: Oil, Gas, Hot Air and the Global Energy Crisis by Jeremy Leggett (Portobello Books 2005)

A Blueprint for a Safer Planet by Lord Stern reviewed by Chris Hull

(Lord) Nicholas Stern became a household name as the author of the Government review, 'The Economics of Climate Change' (2006). This later book - published a few months ahead of the Copenhagen summit last year - is less well known yet much more accessible and useful.

Nick Stern is an economist, a former Chief Economist of The World Bank, and a strong advocate for poor countries on the world stage. In this regard the book has its roots in a drive to focus on economic management in the richer countries, in order to alleviate the worst effects of climate change on those who are least responsible for it - the poor countries.

It is solid, rather than emotive, particularly when it comes to addressing 'the deniers'. Stern explains just how complex the science is, and where deniers fall into traps by confusing cycles with trends, sea temperatures with land temperatures, short term risks with longer term more serious risks.

Having said that, I personally love the image conjured up here: Stern illustrates the dry science of probabilities of change by pointing out that the 24% probability of a 5 degree temperature rise on earth by the turn of this century (latest Hadley Centre modelling), would be simply unknown territory for a heavily populated earth. " The last time the world was 4 -5 degrees C above where we are now was 30 - 50 million years ago, in Eocene times, when much of the planet was swampy forest and there were alligators near the North Pole" .


Enough said.

A Blueprint for a Safer Planet by Nicholas Stern (2009)

Transition Books: Local Money & Transition in Action

Just out are two essential Transition reads (to be reviewed in the next bulletin). Local Money by Peter North (Transition South Liverpool) is an inspiring and practical book about local currencies, as well as an overview of money itself and how it works. As Rob Hopkins says in his introduction: "What is key is that as humanity begins its inevitable shift away from energy-intensive, globalised, corporate economics to a more human-scale, localised version, the way we ‘do’ money will need to catch up. This book identifies a number of possible tools, and doubtless there are many more yet to be thought of."

Transition in Action by Jacqi Hodgson with Rob Hopkins is based on the Totnes Energy Descent Action Plan and is the first community-based guide to reducing local dependence on fossil fuels, covering 15 key sustainability areas. The EDAP is the 12th step of Transition (known as the Resilience Plan in TN) and engages the community in the creative process of preparing for resilience and facing the biggest challenges civilisation has ever had.

Local Money, £14.95 and Transition in Action £19.99 (Green Books, 2010)

REVIEWS: Tipping Point, The Last Oil Shock and The Shock Doctrine

The Tipping Point by David Korowitz
Many peak oil commentators anticipate a gradual decline in our economy, echoing a reduction in oil supply of a few percent each year. The long-term effect might be similar to the end of the Roman Empire and other past civilisations, playing out over decades and centuries.

In this new report, available from www.feasta.org, David Korowicz argues that we should expect a much more sudden collapse. He suggests that many of the things we take for granted – from running water to computer chips to the rule of law – are hugely interdependent on each other. He explains why the financial system will break down following peak oil, followed closely by manufacturing, services, government and so on.

I find Korowicz’s analysis persuasive, and useful in thinking about what resilience really means. We ought to be planning a water supply that doesn’t depend on mains electricity, and an electricity supply that doesn’t depend on microprocessors. And we ought to be preparing ourselves for difficult times ahead. (Read Tully on the TN Blog 1-3 April)( Tully Wakeman/Core Group)

Abandoned house in Detroit by Kevin Bauman

The Last Oil Shock by David Strahan
"30 billion barrels. This is the number you need to remember from this talk," said David Strahan speaking about Peak Oil in Framlingham in March. These 30 billion barrels of oil are what the world uses each year. That’s about 82 million barrels a day. When the media reports massive new oil finds these are the numbers we need to measure them against. (In 1999, for example, Britain’s North Sea oil output ‘hit its all time high’ at 2.9 million barrels a day.)

The Last Oil Shock is the book to read for everything to do with oil discovery, production and decline, and contains not just the facts and figures (which are excellent) but interviews with those in the field, from geologists to Shell’s senior vice-president for the (Canadian) Oil Sands. Strahan reports his visits to the luminaries of the oil world in an accessible and often humorous way, and he writes as clearly about the link between oil and the present economic system as he does about the problem of biofuels. This book is for anyone who wants to understand more about peak oil and its implications for the (very near) future. Strahan's articles and updates can be seen here (http://www.davidstrahan.com/blog). (Mark Watson/TN2)

The Last Oil Shock – A Survival Guide to the Imminent Extinction of Petroleum Man by David Strahan (John Murray, 2007)

The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein
There are only a handful of books that I would recommend as ‘must read’, and apart from the Transition Handbook, this is the first non-fiction on my list. Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine is about disaster capitalism. The thesis is in a nutshell, that devastating actions will only be tolerated when people are too disoriented and traumatised to resist.Examples are given of personal breakdown (psychiatry, torture), coups in Chile and Burma, land grabs in Palestine and communities hit by Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina. Not all of these are caused by the military industrial complex, but all are taken advantage of by it.

The outcomes of these disasters are seen from this perspective not as failures, but successes. They have allowed wealth and power to concentrate in ever fewer hands – currently ‘the richest 2% of adults in the world own 50% of global household wealth’. Klein lays the blame squarely on the dominance of Chicago School economics (Milton Friedman) that preached the privatisation, deregulation and government cuts that the IMF and World Bank imposed as a condition for getting credit. Many of the individuals are now in jail or facing criminal charges from which they expected to be immune.

It's the last chapter which makes the book a real must read. 'The shock wears off' describes how communities have come together to share insights, develop independence of thought, social solidarity and economic resilience... Sound familiar? (Lesley Grahame/Communications)

The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein (Penguin 2008)

FILMS AND BOOKS

Heat - How to Stop the Planet Burning by George Monbiot

Although published in 2006, I find myself still having reason to quote or suggest reading from George Monbiot's excellent resource book, Heat - How to Stop the Planet Burning. Since the failure of Copenhagen, and a 'climategate' happening in our own backyard, even more reason to take a sober look at the denial industry so carefully and thoroughly exposed by Monbiot. The corporations funding research to fuel the doubters, that feed the household names like David Bellamy and Michael Crichton in their public refutations that there is anything to worry about.

Although a technical book in many ways - for the scientific reader there is much to feed the mind - for the non-scientific, Monbiot actually explains what a terrawatt is! One by one, Monbiot looks at each and every collective and individual carbon-based activity and shows how we can reach the target of a 90% reduction in emissions by 2030 by a mixture of behaviour change and technical innovation. Some of the solutions are indeed funny too, although he finds no solution to the highly carbon-intensive habit of flying..... so sorry guys, you'll just have to make that next trip to The Seychelles in a helium balloon. (Chris Hull/Core Group)

Social Change 2.0 by David Gershon

This book has done a lot to re-inspire me about our prospects for averting disaster. It sets out a bold vision for social change in the face of climate change and the other urgent problems facing the world. It also offers a set of tools and approaches which Gershon believes can bring about these changes.

In the first part of the book, Gershon recounts his own lifetime of experience of taking up seemingly impossible challenges, and making them work. He talks about "second-order change" - change that goes beyond the current rules and assumptions of our society, change that demands a change in culture and beliefs. He says that if people don't tell you that you're naive and your vision is impossible, you're probably not being bold enough. And he describes in practical terms how to turn that vision into a reality - by engaging other people, by focusing on the area where growth is needed next, by constantly turning around the voices in our heads that say it's not possible.

Gershon created Eco-Teams in the USA in the 1980s. Eco-Teams are similar to our Transition Circles and Carbon Conversations groups - small groups of people looking at what they can change in their own lives, and then replicating the groups so that they reach many more people. Other projects he ran had a similar approach - small groups designed to multiply. For me, reading this book has reaffirmed my personal belief that this is a really important approach for bringing about the scale of culture change we need, if we're going to solve problems like climate change and peak oil. I enthusiastically recommend this book to you! (Tully Wakeman/Core Group).

The Turning Point - A Return to Community - UK 2009

This documentary came out of the conference "positive energy", which was held in Findhorn in Scotland in 2008. It showcases many examples from the conference, the Findhorn ecovillage and its surrounding area. Practical examples include 4 community owned windmills, the ecological sewage treatment system, a car club, a CSA, and a local currency. It also presents peak oil and climate change as setting the boundaries, community as providing the impetus for change, spirituality as a way of valuing this over the consumer society, and permaculture as the glue that connects the different pieces.

In addition, the DVD contains four interviews with Joanna Macy, deep ecologist and buddhist, Megan Quinn, co-producer of The Power of Community, Rob Hopkins, co-founder of the Transition Towns movement, and Richard Heinberg, peak oil commentator. What won't surprise anybody who has been to Findhorn is that the film is permeated with not just a can-do attitude, but indeed the joy of community and connection to the cycle of life. Rob Hopkins in his interview talks about a concept I have been hoping for, but for which I hadn’t heard a word before: peak car. How I hope that also occurred in the summer of 2008. (Erik Buitenhuis/TN2)

Local Food – How to Make It Happen in Your Community

by Tamzin Pinkerton and Rob Hopkins (Green Books)

Out on the 17th, this is an invaluable guide for setting up practical and inspirational food projects - including CSAs, community orchards, garden shares, food coops and directories. Reports and tips from world-wide Transition initiatives, as well as “mission statements” from key food activists, from Growing Communities in Hackney to the fruit gleaning project, Abundance, in Sheffield.