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
Related Posts:
Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dreamsjung/ / CC BY-SA 2.0
What do you mean by community? Are we talking a city or a section of town? That’s what I think of when I see community but then in the context of the post I feel like I’m being to narrow in that thinking.
Ooh – good question. And one that, in my opinion, doesn’t really have a single answer. If you had to define your “community,” what would it be?
I’m surprised that this isn’t being discussed more broadly. You’ve really hit on something that most people don’t think about. In the U.S., people are accustomed to abundance and don’t really think about how precarious maintaining that abundance is, and therefore it’s very hard to change people’s habits. They just haven’t had to. And the fate of people in developing nations? Well, that seems so distant anyway.
It would be great to see state and city-wide systems in place designed for regional food production and sustainability. You could have sub groups within every major climate zone. But then I don’t see this as something that would have enough mass support for the government to take a leadership role. If we see people working towards greater sustainability and resilience, it’ll likely be through independent grassroots efforts.
Thanks for writing about this. I’m probably going to download the handbook now.
Thanks so much for your thoughtful comment. I agree that we are dangerously accustomed to abundance. I remember seeing a photo in a social studies class – maybe 4th or 5th grade? – of a grocery store in the USSR. The shelves were empty and I was shocked. It had never occurred to me that shelves might not always be full. For some reason, it stuck with me. And about the developing world, absolutely. One of the reasons the moral imperative argument for climate change is pointless. The idea that we can counteract billions of dollars in consumer advertising with a message of self-sacrifice on behalf of people on the other side of the world… even if we had the resources, I don’t know if the message would be salable on a mass scale.
I think that one of the strengths of the Transition Initiative is that (as you said) it really empowers people from a grassroots standpoint to change their own reality. The focus is not governmental involvement, and they specifically suggest that the Transition movement should not be too closely connected to the local government. It is a different kind of grassroots – less lobbying and hoping the leadership will change, more creating change yourself. It’s a very appealing idea, and easy to sell in a political space where people are increasingly disillusioned with the central government. Transition also bridges political gaps that many environmental movements fail to address effectively.
I’ll be doing a giveaway of my copy of The Transition Handbook in a week or two, if you are not desperate to read it right away
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This is a really important issue, Jess. I’m so glad you’ve written about it.
There are probably lots of reasons why this isn’t discussed more in the U.S. One reason, I believe, is that it doesn’t benefit big business. Another is that the U.S., more than most cultures, places a strong emphasis on individuality and less emphasis on community. I *think* (hope?) that is slowly starting to change.
In high school, I had the opportunity to visit the USSR (yes, before the fall of communism there). One of the things that really stuck with me was leaving the hotel early in the morning and seeing what looked like (to me) a long line outside the grocery. It was actually the end of the line, where you didn’t want to find yourself because the store routinely sold out early. Sold out.
I think you are absolutely right about big business. When you look at the amount of advertising dollars that go into mainstream media, and how much influence MSM has over dialogue, it’s not terribly surprising. Like you, I think our attitude towards community is starting to change, but I sometimes worry that I only feel that way because I deliberately connect with people for whom it is a priority…
Visiting the USSR must have been an incredible experience! I have to say, I’m really envious.
Jess,
I’m so glad I found your blog. It’s interesting to read about things like this from a thoughtful urbanite and not just our wacky right wing uncle bob.
I remember in the 70′s the oil crisis. Society stopped and everyone lined their cars up at every gas station for hours hoping to get gas. It was my dad’s gas station and I was probably 5. People were sitting there honking horns and shouting at each other and when I looked they were lined up for miles. It was really frightening to me.
I think if the government and the oil companies were more honest people would lose faith in the system that is working for government and the oil companies. When people start to panic things go south very quickly (like a run on a bank.)
The question is, how can we honestly and openly discuss and plan for things like peak oil and resilience without imparting so much fear that it makes people panic? And then if we are calmly and rationally discussing this people don’t believe in it because if it were true everyone would be panicking.
In my opinion, your question is the question of the year, and I don’t know if anyone has a good answer. Transition talks about an “End of Suburbia” moment, and really focuses on how to best cushion and support people through what fundamentally can be a traumatic shift in awareness. I like that about the Transition approach. But at the same time, I don’t know that their framing is necessarily helpful on the front end. Even the words “The End of Suburbia” are not necessarily constructive. Pretty confrontational and scary.
I wonder if maybe some piece of the answer lies in the fact that many people are fundamentally unhappy right now. Particularly with the recession, I think people are detaching from the “American Dream” en masse. When you ask many Gen Y’ers what they want, they say “quality of life.” That is a change.
I don’t know that we necessarily gain much from focusing on the end of the “old dream.” If the internal discontent people are feeling can be associated with a failing system, then maybe people will willingly and optimistically let go, rather than have to be scared and/or wrenched away. I think we’re already seeing some of this, and I want to think it’s possible on a broader level.
Very interesting post.
I actually spend a lot of time thinking about resiliency. When I am evaluation people regarding their level of need of care for drug and alcohol abuse, I really look at their resiliency. Which, in this context, means their ability to bounce back from adversity without turning to substances.
What I’ve noticed is that people who are resilient recovery more quickly. And I’d be willing to bet that extends well beyond substance abuse. Also, that resiliency is hereditary. Rigid parents who break under pressure tend to raise children who do the same.
Anyway, resiliency is important enough to mental health that it’s something I really really focus on building in myself.
Ooh! I’m so glad you brought up this other kind of resilience. I was first introduced to the term in a mental health context, and found it to be utterly compelling. It’s interesting that you bring up drug and alcohol abuse, as part of the Transition movement deals with the psychological process people must go through to deal with these issues. They use the scientific understanding of the psychology of addiction as a sort of blueprint for the emotional side of Transition on an individual level.