One Saturday morning in February, a small group of people huddled together beneath crisp morning skies in the Westchester area of Los Angeles. They focused on the words of an 85 year old man as he fingered the burgundy colored branches of a bare-limbed peach tree. He spoke gruffly of growth buds and cutting tools, sharing tips about fruit tree pruning techniques that he had learned from his father at the time of the Great Depression. Then, hesitantly, they began. One at a time, people stepped forward, angling their pruning clippers as instructed. A sharp “snip” was followed by a brief smile of victory, and a surge of confidence emerged.

In the Transition Movement, we call this a “reskilling” workshop. We are relearning the basic skills needed for everyday living – skills like growing, preserving, and pickling food; rainwater harvesting; composting and building fertile soils; crafting functional items; building structures; and making basic clothing. In the past 150 years of energy plenty – the brief “age of oil” – we have gleefully outsourced these basic needs to distant continents. But as we enter the declining second half of our planetary oil supply, as we begin to glimpse the extent to which climate change will impact agriculture and fresh water supplies, and as we fathom the far reaching repercussions of economic contraction and the end of economic “growth,” we find we are going to need these basic skills.

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The Millennium Development Goals (MDG) were created by the United Nations as a way of explaining in simple fashion the progress needed, particularly in third-world countries, to end poverty.  The UN is aspiring to realize the MDG by 2015.  Many social justice groups (including faith communities) recognize and embrace the MDG as a universal standard.

Often MDG campaigns focus on collecting cash for third-world countries.  In many cases, people simply give cash, and figure that takes care of their obligation.  “Out of sight, out of mind.”  There is no pressure to change their lifestyle.

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[Originally published on Transition United States in October 2009]

Myrto wrote about Raising Funds for Transition.  Several months ago, here in Los Angeles, we were discussing similar issues.  But thoughts which began with “how do we get money” soon ventured into a different realm:  “What does a sustainable service organization look like in this powerdown era and time of economic contraction?”

Here in the Transition movement, we understand that with the end of cheap oil, we will experience an inevitable (and likely severe) economic contraction.  In our Transition Trainings we discuss the fallacies of the Industrial Growth Complex.  We know what lies ahead:  simpler times, less affluent times, less cash available, and necessarily more community participation in every single aspect of life.

Nonprofit organizations won’t be immune.  Already, most nonprofits are struggling for funding, and the fun’s just beginning.  Just like the energy surplus which is disappearing with the end of cheap oil, the cash surplus which used to fund nonprofits is disappearing with the credit/banking/economic crunch.  We have witnessed “peak nonprofit.”  (more…)

[Originally published on Transition United States in December 2009]

Solidarity

It’s so foreign to our American experience that I had to look it up in the dictionary to get it right.  In a session from Copenhagen’s Klimaforum, May East (of Findhorn, Scotland and Sao Paulo, Brazil) asserts that lack of solidarity is precisely what is missing in our communities in the developed nations of the northern hemisphere.

We use the word “community” a lot, and we readilly agree that we don’t have tight-knit “communities.”  But when we boil it down, what does lack of community mean?  May East identifies it: lack of solidarity. (more…)

[Originally published on Transition United States in October 2009]

Climate change says we should change
whereas peak oil says we will be forced to change.

– Rob Hopkins

Here in the U.S., the film “An Inconvenient Truth” made awesome strides in informing the general public about the reality of global warming.  The April 2007 Step It Up campaign got people in 1,400 U.S. sites involved in activism.  This month’s 350.org campaign  will advance public awareness in two ways:  Firstly, the Oct 2009 350.org Day of Action is unfolding internationally, so it is an opportunity for citizens in non-U.S. countries to get involved, and secondly, it informs the general public about the target, the end goal.

350 is aptly being called “the most important number on the planet.”  350 parts-per-million carbon dioxide concentration in the upper atmosphere is what NASA and Columbia University scientists say we must attain.  We’re currently at 385ppm and climbing.  All these figures tell us that we’d better severely reduce our carbon emissions immediately, in order to have any hope of preserving the type of planetary climate upon which all life forms on the planet are dependent for survival.  (See the 350 animation.)

But how do we do it?

All of these programs — “An Inconvenient Truth,” Step It Up, 350.org — are marvelous awareness-raisers.  However when it comes to solutions, they dodge the real answers.

The “solutions” which rolled with the credits to “An Inconvenient Truth” are painfully inadequate when compared to the magnitude of the gap (385ppm vs 350ppm).  Changing to CFL bulbs is important, but it isn’t nearly enough. (more…)

[Originally published on Transition United States in November 2009]

One of the most brilliant, well-written pieces I have read about the economy is “The Wrong Tree” (as in “Barking up the …”). Written by Jerry Mander of the International Forum on Globalization, it is found as part of the introduction to the the latest publication of peak oil sage Richard Heinberg.

First, about Heinberg: Richard Heinberg ’s Searching for a Miracle: ‘Net Energy’ Limits and the Fate of Industrialized Society is a serious analysis of just about every form of alternative energy and its potential (read: lack of potential) to fulfill our energy demands as we devour the declining second half of our planetary oil supply. (more…)

Murders, political scandals, celebrity escapades … mainstream media feeds a willing public a steady diet of it.  The American public spends hours on the stuff, immersed in the horror tales and vapid sagas all played out on bigger-bigger-still-bigger plasma screens.

But in the early 1990s I figured it out:  you don’t have to read the news.  You don’t have to watch the TV, you don’t have to listen to the radio, you don’t have to take the “news” as media dishes it out.  You can turn it off.  You can step aside.  (more…)

As the economic contraction gets underway, there has been increasing interest in local currencies.  Local currencies made the pages of the Los Angeles Times last month, and within the Transition communities we make a great deal about the Totnes pound.  But there are many additional ways of sharing finances within communities, including time banks, LETS systems, barter, and all kinds of other creative sharing arrangements. Some of these are ways to meet our needs cash-free.  Others are ways to reduce costs or to access things we might not get alone.
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That was exciting news on the phone Monday!

You said you were contemplating what you felt were the most important issues of the day and formulating your platform.   Here is some background and my personal opinion.
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Last week, at the national convention in Anaheim, the Episcopal Church of the United States embraced the Genesis Covenant.

THE PROMISE

The Genesis Covenant is a multi-faith invitation to join the action in curtailing global warming:

We will reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from every facility that we maintain by 50% in 10 years.

We applaud these faith communities for taking an aggressive stance in the drive to curb global warming.

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