Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[pete <pete.rout@virgin.net>]

I've now heard both Richard Heinberg and last 
week Rob Hopkins speak and they show that there 
is a way forward through peak oil. If we all 
cooperate with each other and localise the future 
looks rosy, even with all the problems there will be.
Pete

> 11 Mar 2008
> Review of The Transition Handbook. By Robert Morgan.
> http://transitionculture.org/2008/03/11/a-third-review-of-the-transition-handbook/
>
> The “converging crises” of peak oil and climate 
> change are spawning an increasing number of 
> popular books. These include grim forecasts of 
> the consequences such as JH Kunstler’s The Long 
> Emergency and Mark Lynas’s Six Degrees, 
> explorations of alternative scenarios requiring 
> massive government policy change such as Richard 
> Heinberg’s Powerdown and George Monbiot’s Heat, 
> and fiction such as Kunstler’s World Made by 
> Hand. What most if not all of these lack, is any 
> clear guidance for individuals and communities 
> on what they can actually do to deal with the 
> crises which short-sighted governments and 
> profligate lifestyles look set to bring upon us. 
> Rob Hopkins, forefather of the Transition 
> movement which in two years has developed from 
> the spark of an idea to a strengthening 
> international force, has at last provided this guidance.
>
> Essentially, Hopkins’s arguments are that a 
> future with more expensive and ultimately less 
> energy is inevitable, so that localisation is 
> also inevitable. To avoid economic and social 
> meltdown, local communities need to start 
> preparing immediately to reduce their dependence 
> on cheap energy and the low-cost, 
> remotely-sourced goods it makes available. 
> Instead, they must reconstruct themselves as 
> resilient, almost self-sufficient units. As 
> explained by Hopkins, the logic is nearly 
> irrefutable and techno-fantasies of a “hydrogen 
> economy”, fusion power and life amongst the 
> stars are rapidly dismissed. Instead, the vision 
> is of people reconnecting with their fellow 
> beings and the Earth, living genuinely 
> satisfying and purposeful lives, freed from the curse of consumerism.
>
> One of Hopkins’s greatest skills is the way in 
> which he guides readers through the scientific 
> evidence for climate change and peak oil, 
> without glossing over essential details. 
> Crucially, he sees these two issues as 
> intertwined with neither being amenable to 
> solution without reference to the other. This is 
> one of the most crucial aspects of the 
> sustainability/localisation argument as most of 
> the “business-as-usual” techno-fixes suggested 
> in the last few years, deal with one of these 
> problems while making the other worse.
>
> In places, Hopkins makes himself a hostage to 
> fortune by using some predictions of near-term 
> oil production decline (for example figure 3 on 
> page 27), which can already be seen to be 
> inaccurate. As Dr. Colin Campbell, founder of 
> the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and 
> Gas (ASPO) says, the precise date of the peak is 
> not so important. What is, is the certainty that 
> it will be soon and that individuals and 
> communities planning to rely on central 
> government (in)action, will almost certainly 
> find themselves ill-prepared to deal with it. 
> Addressing this issue is the great strength of 
> this book, as it describes in almost obsessive 
> detail the precise steps groups of individuals 
> can take to alert and mobilise their communities 
> to withstand the coming shocks.
>
> In conclusion, the book succeeds brilliantly at 
> every level: as a precise, detailed, what-to-do 
> manual for those developing Transition 
> Initiatives; as a guide for those curious as to 
> what Transition is all about; and even as a 
> lay-persons guide to peak oil, climate change 
> and what to do about them. Chapters which might 
> otherwise be heavy going and earnest are 
> relieved by Hopkins’s easy-going writing style 
> and often-hilarious excerpts of supposed future 
> headlines (“Imelda Platt proudly displays a 
> bottle of her company’s new liquid gold 
> fertiliser ‘N-Pee-K’ “ ­ you can guess what it 
> is!). Seriously, this is one of the most 
> important books in the sustainability field to 
> appear in this decade. It is essential reading 
> for all environmental activists and all 
> concerned about what we can actually DO about 
> the threats now bearing down on us. The future 
> well-being of us all, depends on its success.
>
> Robert Morgan is Senior Lecturer in 
> Environmental Science at the University of 
> Glamorgan and Co-Director of The Green College.
>
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