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Of Funnels, Cylinders & Walls

Jess Lundie — Fri, 07 May 2010 20:16:18 +0000

Here’s a nice little clip of Rob Hopkins at TED, speaking about the Transition Initiative, peak oil, climate change, and cultural narrative. For those interested but not well-versed in Transition, it’s a really nice intro.

In the video, Hopkins mentions the idea of “running into a wall” in terms of peak oil and climate change. He showed a picture of a truck crashing into a brick wall. (Some days I feel like that. Not the world, just me. But that’s another story.)

My Intro to Sustainable Engineering class calls this concept the “illusion of the cylinder.” We (society, individuals, corporations, etc.) are traveling through a cylinder, the walls of which represent our limitations – resources, ecosystems, etc. We are trying to avoid hitting the walls, tweaking systems based on “as much as possible.” Limit our impact as much as possible. Reduce consumption as much as possible. Minimize pollution as much as possible. As long as we can either keep ourselves from hitting the walls or, as we have done in the past, push the walls outward through technological innovation, we will be okay.

Except that according to my class (and Rob Hopkins, a bunch of climate scientists, sustainability activists, environmentalists… the list goes on), we’re not really in a cylinder. We’re in a funnel. The walls of the funnel are closing in on us, propelled by positive feedback loops in ecosystems, population growth, market pressure, resource availability, etc. As the funnel narrows, our options are increasingly limited and the time frame for consideration, discussion, debate, and action grows shorter. We have to start moving, and fast.

By the way, there’s a massive oil spill going on right now…

Are we in a cylinder? Are we in a funnel? Or are we in a truck with failed brakes, hurtling towards a brick wall? Discuss.

Related Posts:

The Funnel, The Wall and the Toxic Substances Control Act

Transition: An Introduction

Transition: Relocalization

Jess Lundie — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 19:30:02 +0000

Last week I wrote a bit about resilience, what it means, and why people are talking about it so much these days. If you’re anything like me, you nodded, said “I get it, I get it…” and immediately moved on to the next obvious question: “What makes a community resilient?”

According to the Transition approach, the most important step to building community resilience is relocalization.

localize: 1. To make local. 2. To confine or restrict to a locality.

re: 1. Again: rebuild. 2. Back: react. 3. Used as an intensive: refine.

Relocalization is the reverse of globalization. Rather than having goods produced across the country or even across the world and transporting them into your community, relocalization calls for increased production of local goods. Communities where goods are produced locally or regionally are more resilient to fluctuations in oil prices as well as disruptions in the wider economic system. It doesn’t matter if gas is $10/gallon if you dinner is coming from your backyard or just down the street, or at least it won’t hit you nearly so hard.

One of the primary areas addressed by Transition is food production, which is understandable. Life goes on without new video games. It doesn’t go so well without food. Food production hits us where it hurts. Proposed steps include the development of community and residential gardens, local markets, and replacing ornamental landscaping with edible foliage, or plants that can be used for textile production or construction. In addition to food, The Transition Handbook mentions other important aims of localization such as energy systems, transportation, and medication and textile production.

Why Peak Oil Solutions Aren’t Climate Change Solutions

The Transition approach to relocalization clearly demonstrates how a peak oil response is not necessarily a climate change response. For instance, they include a photo of a residential firewood pile. The caption suggests that resilience can be measured in part by how much seasoned firewood is available in a community. And yes, a good supply of firewood is a local, resilient solution for home heating in the face of an oil shock. But from a climate change perspective, billions of people heating their homes with wood is not a solution if it is not paired with carefully designed and sustainably managed forestry programs.

Similarly, in the process of relocalizing the food system, climate change requires us to preserve existing forests, and not reallocate forests, wetlands, or other natural carbon sinks to food production. Transition proposes that land currently being used for car-related infrastructure such as parking lots be repurposed to strengthen the local foodshed. However, we have to remember that relocalization by itself doesn’t automatically address climate change. If relocalization is to address climate change, it must do so through deliberate systemic design.

Local Currency

To be honest, this is where Transition kind of lost me. But it is an important step in their plan and, as such, deserves mention.

Transition proposes the creation of a local currency that can only be used in the community. This new currency has a fixed exchange rate with the national currency and can be used just like standard money at participating vendors.

I can certainly understand the goal of keeping money within the community. According to a principle called the local multiplier, a dollar spent within the community generates $5-14 for the community. Anywhere from $0.60 to $0.80 of every dollar spent at a big box store leaves the community immediately. Who cares? Schools, fire departments, and any civic services that are funded through local tax dollars care. It will also affect the local unemployment rate and general community wellbeing. Creating a local currency keeps money within the community. One of the interesting (read: geeky) parts of the local currency plan is that each bill is tracked to see how many times and where it was spent. I’m sure the results would be fascinating and informative.

One of the reasons I struggle with the currency part of the Transition plan is that I don’t buy that we need to completely disengage from the global economic system (although here’s a compelling argument that we do). Certainly moving towards completely self-sufficient local and regional economies is one solution. But I don’t think it’s the only one, and possibly not even a preferable one. There are some advantages to ‘competitive advantage.’ And this is probably a cultural bias, but local currencies seem confrontational to me; a strategy not likely to foster cooperation on a global scale. And I think we really do need cooperation (or at least international development of best practices) at a global level.

Local in a Post-Oil World

Most importantly, Transition’s concept of relocalization is based on “powering down” – designing for a post-oil world. Bringing everything closer to home means less oil consumed in transportation costs, certainly. But Transition also looks at building local solutions that do not require oil. Privately owned generators for electricity are a local solution. Residential solar would be a local, post-oil, and therefore resilient solution. To apply a “Transition lens” to localization, it can’t just be local, it also has to be post-oil.

So… that was a lot. What do you guys think? Is local a solution to resilience? Is local a solution to climate change? Does it have to be local? Is relocalization the solution or only part of the solution? Other thoughts?

Also, because Transition is so much fun, I’ll be giving away my very lightly used copy of The Transition Handbook. Not sure what day yet, so be sure to check back .

Related Posts:

Transition: Resilience

Jess Lundie — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 20:45:24 +0000

Welcome to the next installment of Transition Friday. Transition Tuesday would be nice and alliterative, but would require me to get my act together on Tuesdays, which isn’t going to happen.

If sustainability was the buzzword for 2009, resilience is it for 2010. That was my thought at the beginning of the year, and I was excited to hear that other people were thinking it too. (It’s always nice to have outside confirmation that you’re not just babbling gibberish. Or at least if you are, you’re not doing it alone.)

Part of the reason the Transition Initiative focuses on resilience is the peak oil PLUS climate change equation. On the climate change side, you may hear some discussion about resilience, but they probably don’t call it that. They are probably calling it “adaptation,” and it’s probably used in discussions about how developing countries and particularly “at risk” communities are going to survive the impacts of climate change. They are also most likely discussing it in terms of how many billions of dollars successful adaptation will require.

The peak oil types talk a lot about resilience, but frequently omit societal and global solutions to climate change. As I mentioned in Transition: An Introduction, not all responses to peak oil address climate change. However, most of the responses to peak oil are fundamentally about building resilience.

What Is Resilience?

resilient: adj. 1. Marked by the ability to recover readily, as from misfortune. 2. Capable of returning to an original shape or position, as after having been compressed.

The first definition is most relevant to discussions of community in terms of peak oil, climate change, and transition. (Although I am intrigued by the connotations of the second definition as it pertains to civic planning – developing the “shape” of communities in a way that fosters sustainability and resilience.) Resilient communities are able to withstand and recover from shocks to “the system.” “The system” can be the food system, the energy system, the distribution system for basic consumer necessities, or pretty much any other system you can think of. Resilience is also measured by a community’s capacity to respond and adapt to rapid change.

Shocks can take many different forms. From oil shocks to natural disasters to health crises to terrorist attacks, resilient communities will be more effective at responding to and recovering from these events.

Why Do We Care?

“Civilization is only three meals deep.”

“We are always nine meals away from anarchy.”

Whichever way you say it, the idea is the same.

The Transition Initiative addresses resilience on all levels, but particularly compelling are their arguments about food security. Food crises hit us where it hurts. Cold snaps, trucking strikes and rising staple crop prices are present-day examples – we’re talking within the last couple years! – of how fragile our food system is. Highly centralized (a very small number of large companies dominate grocery store retail), but spread over a great distance (the average meal in the US travels 1500 miles to reach your plate), it takes very little to jeopardize our food security.

The Transition Initiative is based on the idea that these kind of changes could happen more quickly than our systems can adapt to them. If oil prices spike, making food significantly more expensive to transport, we may not have the decades needed to establish alternate shipping methods or the technological advances to fuel trucks with something other than oil.

Have you ever been to a store at the beginning of a blizzard? Remember the empty shelves? If all the trucks stopped running tomorrow, where would you get your food? What about clothing and other basic necessities? How would you heat your house? How expensive would oil have to get before you could not afford to drive to work, or have to choose between putting gas in your car and buying increasingly expensive and scarce food? Transition proposes that the answer to these concerns is the development of resilient communities.

So what do you think? Is resilience an important consideration in the face of volatile systems?

More on Transition:

The Transition Handbook by Rob Hopkins
Transition Towns Wiki

Transition: An Introduction

Jess Lundie — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 18:25:41 +0000

One of the (too many) books I’ve been reading lately is The Transition Handbook by Rob Hopkins. I read it as part of the Hyperlocavore book club, which turned out to be really fantastic. (The chat logs from our weekly sessions are still available, although the conversations have mostly wrapped up.) The book was a compelling read, and the fundamental concepts seem to have implanted themselves firmly in my brain. I’ll post a full review once I finish the last several chapters.

An interesting phenomenon of the human mind is that the better we understand something, the worse we get at explaining it. We also become less capable of understanding that others do not share our knowledge. Lately I’ve found myself mentioning Transition Initiative concepts, only to be met by the blank stares of my family and friends. Oops! I guess Transition sunk in more than I realized – the Curse of Knowledge in action. In a deliberate attempt to counteract the Curse of Knowledge, I’ve decided to do a short series of posts on the basics of the Transition Initiative, as well as some of the continuing dialogue about Transition and how it fits with other visions of a sustainable future.

What Is Transition?

The Transition Initiative is an organized response to the dual threats of climate change and peak oil. It is important to distinguish between the two issues and their associated solutions, because many of the solutions proposed for climate change would not address the issue of peak oil, and vice versa. Transition is designed to confront both problems simultaneously, and argues that they must be addressed in tandem if we are to move confidently into the future.

What Is Peak Oil?

By now most of us are familiar with the concept of climate change, and even the term “anthropogenic global warming,” or the understanding that human action is responsible for the changing climate. But only occasionally do you hear mention of peak oil in discussions of climate change policy or activism. This is a little surprising, as the two issues are fundamentally connected.

Peak oil refers to the moment when global oil production is at its maximum. From that point forward, we will be able to extract decreasing amounts of oil at an increasing cost. This cost can be financial, technological, or environmental. The costs begin to climb, quickly and (theoretically) irreversibly. Some experts believe that we have already reached peak oil, and are now accelerating on the downhill slope, slowed only by inaccurate inflation of stated oil reserves and natural short term market fluctuations. In other words, the people with the oil know we don’t have enough, but are lying both to keep things stable and present a strong front internationally, and markets have little up and down blips while they generally trend in whatever direction they’re headed.

Why Transition?

As I mentioned, the Transition Initiative approach was created to address climate change and peak oil together. Hopkins argues that not only does addressing the two issues separately generate ineffective solutions, but that they actually may be more compelling motivators when addressed together. Climate change asks us to change. Peak oil forces us to change.

A Transition Initiative is designed to address the future through a localized message of community empowerment. The goal is for communities to work together to develop in such a way that they will be resilient to future economic contraction and/or crisis. This resilience is created through relocalisation, reskilling, regenerative efforts and a few other “re’s,” which I’ll babble about in more depth over the next several weeks.

In the mean time, what do you think? Should we be worried about peak oil now? Are climate change and peak oil more effectively addressed separately or together?