Below the cut is the text of my latest article for the highly-recommended Resurgence magazine. They asked me to tell the story of my own personal journey thus far, and how I ended up doing what I do. Thanks to Resurgence for permission to reproduce it here (and on my articles page).

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For me, there was a definite moment when my environmental awakening began in earnest. I was studying philosophy at the University of York a decade ago when, out of the blue, I received an email from my father alerting me that “a long-term survey of oil and gas resources shows that demand for oil will exceed the maximum possible supply by 2010 and the oil price will sky-rocket”. This was followed by his (enduringly plausible) outline of the likely consequences – economic collapse, mass starvation and war.

I took a deep breath.

My initial reaction, like that of so many in their ‘peak oil moment’, was one of shock, rapidly followed by disbelief. I wondered how there could be near-universal silence on this issue if it truly had such vast implications, and tried to assure myself that ‘they’ would surely find some solution. Nonetheless, I resolved to look into it, partly in the hope of reassuring my father. Needless to say, what I learned wasn’t particularly reassuring.

As my studies came to an end, I quickly found myself with some appropriately philosophical questions to answer. The familiar post-university concerns of finding a way to earn some money, enjoying myself and caring for friends and family had to be balanced with two added factors – a sense that a ‘sound career path’ might not prove so sound in a civilisation that might be heading for the buffers, and an understanding that the world desperately needed all hands on deck if it was to have a future at all.

My attempts to discuss all this with my peers met with limited success. They reminded me that many people, both in our culture and around the world, are struggling to get by, and that I would need all the time I had just to look after myself and my family. Some suggested that I should be wary of having my life derailed by all this environmentalist rubbish, which had predicted ‘the end of the world’ so often before.

Others argued sadly that we must accept that it is simply human nature to go on being short-sighted and environmentally destructive. But that just sounded like a self-fulfilling prophecy. The many inspiring historical examples of human selflessness, wisdom and foresight must, if nothing else, show that we have a choice in these matters. Indeed, it seemed to me that those of us fortunate enough to have the time, education and mental health to perceive and face the circumstances of our world have a responsibility to act. If many others cannot, that is all the more reason why we must.

As Paul Hawken has since put it, maybe we are the world’s immune system. And where would any of us be if our own immune system got distracted seeking its personal fortune, say, or pursuing hedonistic diversions?

But while this musing was all very fine sitting in my university common room, how could I apply it to my life? My degree had failed to provide a helpful module on such ‘Applied Philosophy’ so, like everyone else, I had to make it up as I went along.

Time for another deep breath.

I did find one useful touchstone, a quote from the American theologian Howard Thurman:

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

Wonderful stuff, but to ‘come alive’ I also needed to stay alive, so when a job offer came on the very day my bank account hit empty, I decided to take it, working as an administrator at a project for marginalised groups where I had previously volunteered.

Over the next few years I worked my way up to a position I loved – managing the project’s learning centre – paid off my student debts, and spent much of my spare time learning more about the state of our world. Unfortunately, these investigations led to a growing sense that ultimately there wasn’t much point in helping people to reintegrate with society if that society itself really was running off a cliff. I realised this job was no longer helping me to come alive. I felt called to something else, but what?

I didn’t know, but I left the job anyway, and spent my time reading everything I could get my hands on regarding peak oil and climate change, attending events and asking questions. Where could I best put my energies to create a peaceful, creative, resilient and diverse world?

I slowly came to see that those common room discussions about human nature were touching on just one of a wide set of cultural stories that shape and define our perception of the world. That, despite its severity and urgency, ‘Peak Climate’ is just a symptom, a product of the ways of thinking we value, respect and adopt. And that it is at this level that radical change is both necessary and assured. Of course, many have discussed the need for a rapid paradigm shift – the Age of Aquarius, the Great Turning – but I was still struggling to find my role in supporting and shaping it.

The resolution came when I found myself at Schumacher College in 2006, where I studied for a fortnight and felt more intensely alive than I had in a long time. This was surely a good sign, and here I had my first encounter with the fledgling Transition movement, which even at that early stage recognised the innate importance of stories and visions in building thriving, resilient communities.

Over the last few years I have become ever more involved with this work, and 2009 saw the publication of my first book, The Transition Timeline, which grew out of requests from Transition communities to flesh out what a realistic, positive vision for our future might look like, and for more input on the major challenges we are likely to face as we try to create it.

This allowed me to explore my fear that the Transition movement may struggle to match up to the scale of these challenges, and I also found that the process shifted my own perspective. Whereas I probably started out trying to resolve all of the world’s problems single-handedly (and demanded the same of such initiatives), I have since noticed that the people and projects I respect most aren’t those who’ve tried to do everything, but those who have done the thing that they love rather brilliantly. In so doing they have, sometimes quite by accident, contributed to shifting the stories on which cultures are built.

So now I see myself not only as part of a team in my local Transition Town, but as part of a global movement to which we all lend our passions. Transition may not single-handedly ’save the world’, but those who are trying to do so are certainly glad of its contribution, which seems a decent test of whether it is a worthwhile project.

As my book has made its way into the world, I have found myself invited to speak and write for local groups, parliaments and everything in between, and it is good to feel that I am contributing. Yet somewhere in my soul I can feel my next move gestating. At some important level, I feel called again to re-examine my role in the world.

It is time for another deep breath.

I’ve just been sent this footage from a debate on carbon trading and offsetting I took part in at the Cheat Neutral event at the Science Museum’s Dana Centre (video of the full event available at link, more on Cheat Neutral here). As will be obvious, this all took place in December, just prior to the Copenhagen conference.

Eagle-eyed readers will also notice that I have created a new page on this website with full details of The Transition Timeline, pulling together the various online reviews etc, and including the means to buy signed copies. This is something I’ve been meaning to do for some time, but I was nudged into action by receiving the happy news that the book has been selling over a hundred copies a week thus far!

One highlight for me was watching the world première of the movie “In Transition” and being surprised and delighted to find that I was in it (having completely forgotten the quick interview they grabbed with me at my book launch!). Another was meeting an A-Level teacher who is already using my book as a teaching aid for his Environmental Design students.

But perhaps of wider interest was the fact that Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, turned up at the Transition Conference as a ‘keynote listener’, but still managed to drop a few bombshells.

When we buttonholed him for a bit of a chat (audio here, courtesy of Traydio.com), I was pleased to hear that he understood the need for Government to remain a step removed from the Transition movement in order to avoid “strangling” it. However, I must confess I had to refrain from gasping as he declared that:

“If you think about the history of the debate on peak oil as I understand it, climate change makes debate about peak oil a bit of a second-order debate, because we have to start making the transition to low carbon forms of energy in any case. Whether you think that peak oil’s in 2020, 2030 or 2040… I don’t need to have the debate about peak oil… to know that we have to start making the transition as quickly as possible.”

Where to begin? Clearly Ed’s understanding of the history of the peak oil debate differs a little from mine. Let’s start with the obvious – with many experts agreeing that we likely saw peak oil last year, for our Minister for Energy to be pondering how many decades in the future it might lie is, frankly, terrifying.

But what I personally find even more worrying is that he (and thus presumably his department) has not yet grasped that climate change and peak oil often pull in opposite directions. Perhaps Ed should cast his eyes across the Atlantic to the US Congress, where the advocates of Climate Change Bills (to implement strict carbon budgets) are doing battle with the champions of Energy Independence Bills (to subsidise carbon-intensive tar sands and coal-to-liquids projects).

As I wrote here last year, and more recently in The Transition Timeline, there is a very real tension between addressing climate change and addressing peak oil, and policy based purely on one side of this equation could be very destructive indeed. Unfortunately, our government is still caught on the horns of this ’supply side dilemma’, and is desperately casting around for more rapidly-deployable low-carbon energy supplies.

It is only slowly dawning on them that renewable supply cannot increase as fast as oil and gas are declining, that nuclear only makes the problem worse, and that coal is not an option if we want a habitable planet. The inescapable conclusion is that if we are to treat climate change with the seriousness which it undoubtedly deserves, then we may well have already entered our years of energy descent. The only reasonable response is to find ways to thrive in this context – to reduce energy demand in line with the reducing supply – but as yet Ed still believes that only Denial sells to the voting public:

“In a way I’m less optimistic than you are… you’re optimistic that you can persuade people to adopt a sort of “no growth” model of society – I’m pretty convinced that you couldn’t persuade people of that… Even if you were right about your model of society, I just don’t believe that you’re going to convince people of that”

Actually, I do agree with Ed that we need to think long and hard about what “economic growth” actually means before we debate whether we want it, though I’m not sure we’ll see eye-to-eye when that debate reaches its head.

Of course it doesn’t come as an overwhelming surprise to see my perspective deemed darker yet more optimistic than the Government view, but since the Transition Vision of the future seems about the only desirable outcome out there to shoot for, I think I’ll just keep right on shooting, whether Ed rates our chances or not.

Having said that, with Rob’s recent post on ‘burn out’ in mind, it’s definitely time for a day off for me. Tomorrow is my birthday, and I will be taking a hard-earned breather at Kew Gardens with my beautiful and inspirational girlfriend. Back soon!

The last month has been a bit of a blur, with very well-attended book launch events all over Britain, a two-day seminar at the Centre for Alternative Technology scoping out Zero Carbon Britain 2, more radio interviews, and even being caught on film for the first time (more practice required methinks!).

While I’ve been zipping around, a number of people have requested a more detailed write-up on The Transition Timeline than I have so far provided online, so let’s take a closer look.

In overview, then, the first half of the book explores four different visions of how the next twenty years could pan out for the UK and world, before focusing on what might be considered the most desirable of these, the Transition Vision, and examining the practical details of this in depth. There is also a chapter here provided by Rob Hopkins, the originator of the Transition movement, in which he outlines the progress Transition initiatives have made to date, and provides a set of tools for communities working towards their local Energy Descent Action Plans (a key aspect of the Transition process).

The second half of the book provides a thoroughly researched yet readable exploration of the latest evidence and thinking on climate change and peak oil, and the interactions between the two, including a section focused on their present and future impacts in the UK, and on our Government’s responses to date.

The book itself initially grew out of three motivations. Firstly, it was requested by existing Transition initiatives, who were trying to produce realistic positive visions of the future for their communities, but needed some input on the major trends facing the UK in our near-future – the kinds of things which are going to affect them but which may be hard for individual communities to directly affect (e.g. peak oil, government policy or UK food supply). Accordingly, the book provides a readable summary of the existing research in key areas of concern (e.g. population, food and water, energy, healthcare…), outlining the present position and trends before exploring possible futures.

The second impetus for the book was my personal concern about whether the Transition process is adequate to dealing with the sheer scale of the challenges we collectively face. This is a theme that runs throughout the book, as the process of writing was intimately bound up with my own exploration of this.

The final energy behind the book’s creation was the desire to flesh out the Transition Vision. This concept was touched on in Rob’s Transition Handbook, but Rob and I felt strongly that it needed to be developed further. Core to Transition is the idea that we need a positive realistic vision of the future to get us all out of bed in the morning, and I was very keen to make this feel more tangible and real by exploring the possibilities and challenges in more detail.

This importance of this was reinforced for me mid-way through the drafting process when the Age of Stupid team brought a sneak preview of their film to the Transition Conference last year. The response was generally that it was a brilliant film, but that it was still focused on the “Denial” scenario and the awful places that could lead, without showing the audience the positive alternative.

Franny Armstrong, the film’s director, agreed, and challenged us to flesh out that alternative vision to set alongside her film, so that people could clearly perceive the real choices we face. Those discussions stayed with me throughout the drafting process, and ultimately led to the tie-in between the launch of the film and the book, and Franny’s comment that: “There is obviously no single, magic bullet solution to climate change. But if I was forced to choose one – our best hope of averting the crisis – it would definitely be Transition Towns.”

The Transition Vision we developed, then, is of a future in which we create a resilient, more localised society which avoids the worst potential of climate change and peak oil through building thriving lower-energy communities teeming with satisfying lifestyles and fulfilled people.

In the book I track this vision through a ‘history of the next twenty years’, examining population, demographics, food, water, energy, transport and healthcare, and then drawing together the common threads which appear to run through our near-future in all of these areas.

I should emphasise at this point that as the author I make no claim to any ‘ownership’ of this vision or timeline. It was developed in collaboration with as many Transitioners as I could manage to speak to, and represents and supports the learning and practical progress of the Transition movement as it continues to spread and mature. Now that I have pulled together a first draft, the never-ending process of developing the vision of the future we want to co-create for our communities and world is intended to continue as a collaborative project. This has already begun over at the Transition Forums, and in the near-future we plan to put the content of my book up on Appropedia, so that as many people as possible can collaborate in developing the second edition, just as has already been done with The Transition Handbook. We need as many heads, hearts and hands as possible working on our best responses to this unprecedented historical situation.

For me personally, one thing that has come out of the many long train journeys that I have taken this month has been a chance to actually read my own book! That may sound strange, but I found it is a very different experience to approach the book as a general reader than as a writer, proofreader etc. From this new perspective it seemed to me that the graph reproduced below represents perhaps the core shift in cultural perspective underlying the Transition Vision – that there is not a simple direct relationship between consumption and fulfilment.

Reading through, and relying on my earlier research legwork, I found it was easy enough to trace our society’s progression along this curve in each of the areas examined in the book, but what really struck me was the shift in the underlying message of this graph. I originally found the image in the 2002 essay The Great Transition, which in turn credits the 1992 book Your Money or Your Life, and the concepts behind it clearly hold a far longer heritage than that, yet there is a distinctly modern twist. While this graph used to make perhaps a fairly abstract point about the nature of fulfilment and well-being, in our modern world we can recognise that continuing on down the path of ever-greater consumption of energy and material resources now not only leads to lower levels of heartfelt satisfaction, but also to environmental devastation, massive mortality rates and widespread outright misery.

Working on The Transition Timeline has made it ever clearer to me that our choice now is between taking perhaps our last chance to enjoy a far happier, more satisfying world, or experiencing a vastly less desirable one – more of the same simply isn’t an option. Here I am put in mind of Paul Wellstone’s words, “If we don’t fight hard enough for the things we stand for, at some point we have to recognise that we don’t really stand for them”.

This book was written for those communities who have already taken the brave decision to work for the future we all hope to live in, and I very much hope that it fills its intended role as a key tool supporting them – I feel privileged to have been entrusted with it.

–

Edit – for the range of online reviews and the chance to get hold of a signed copy see here.

“Peak oil and climate change are two of the greatest challenges we face today; the Transition Town movement is firmly rooted in the idea that people taking action now in their communities can not only tackle these environmental threats but also, in the process of doing so, lead more fulfilling lives. It is about hope in an otherwise bleak seeming future. Above all, it’s about the power of an alternative vision for how society could be and not waiting for government or politicians to get it right.

The Transition Timeline is designed to bring that vision to life – with stories of what communities have already achieved, with updates on the latest scientific data, and with ‘maps’ that highlight key landmarks on the journey towards a zero carbon future. It’s a hugely valuable manual for anyone committed to turning dreams into reality. Don’t just read this book – use it to change your world.”
~ Caroline Lucas MEP, leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, and co-author of Green Alternatives to Globalisation: A Manifesto.

–

“Shaun Chamberlin ties down the uncertainties about climate, energy, food, water and population, the big scene-setters of our future, with no-nonsense authority. What we get with The Transition Timeline is a map of the landscape we have to find a way through. Map-making is a risky business: sooner or later someone is going to use your map and come across a treacherous swamp that isn’t marked. So you need to be alert to revisions and reports from travellers. But what matters is that someone has got the key characteristics of the landscape drawn out. This is what we have to make sense of – not in the distant future, but right now.

Don’t set out without The Transition Timeline. Take a biro. Scribble updates, comments, expressions of shock and horror, notes to cheer yourself up. By the time your copy has been rained on, stained with blackberry juice, consulted, annotated, used to press and preserve a leaf of our autumnal world, you will have a good idea of where you are, and inspiration about where you are going. It is almost as good as getting there.”
~ Dr. David Fleming, director of The Lean Economy Connection, and author of Energy and the Common Purpose

–

“There is obviously no single, magic bullet solution to climate change. But if I was forced to choose one – our best hope of averting the crisis – it would definitely be Transition Towns.”
~ Franny Armstrong, Director of The Age of Stupid film

–

“Transition has emerged as perhaps the only real model we have for addressing our current crisis – a new, if vital, format for reconsidering our future. The Transition Timeline strengthens a fragile form, something that might, without a trace of irony, be called one of the last, best hopes for all of us.”
~ Sharon Astyk, author of Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front and A Nation of Farmers: Defeating the Food Crisis on American Soil

–

“Will the future be as rosy as The Transition Timeline suggests it might be? Will the people of Britain and the rest of the world begin immediately to make better decisions, taking the welfare of future generations into account? The answer to both questions is probably no.

Will serious repercussions of decisions already taken (regarding fossil fuel consumption and the structuring of our economy to depend on perpetual growth for its viability) come to bite us hard before we even have a chance to implement some of the excellent recommendations contained in this book? The answer to that one is certainly yes – we are already seeing dire consequences of past economic and energy decisions.

Nevertheless, without a vision of what can be, there is no alternative to a future completely constrained by the past. The ideal future set forth herein is not a useless pipe-dream. There is not a single outcome described in this book that could not realistically be achieved IF we all do things beginning now that are entirely within our ability to do.

So here it is: the map and timeline of how to save our world and ourselves. Whether we WILL take up these suggestions as scheduled is a question for the cynics and dreamers to debate. For us realists, the only relevant questions are, Where do we start?, and, Will you join us? ”
~ Richard Heinberg, Senior fellow of the Post Carbon Institute, and author of eight books, including The Party’s Over and Peak Everything

–

“The next 100 months will be a very special time for humanity. On numerous fronts, the consequences of the past 150 years of industrialisation are all simultaneously coming home to roost. Even senior experts, scientists, NGOs and political leaders fail to appreciate that the most recent evidence reveals a situation more urgent than had been expected, even by those who have been following it closely for decades. The Transition Timeline provides an invaluable set of innovative approaches, new narratives and creative thinking tools that will prove vital in enabling us to shape a new kind of society and a new kind of economy; stable in the long term, locally resilient, but still active in a global context, rich in quality jobs, a strong sense of purpose and reliant on indigenous, in-exhaustible energy. It should be read by everyone, immediately!”
~ Paul Allen, director of the Centre for Alternative Technology, and project director of Zero Carbon Britain

Transition Town Kingston are hosting a pre-launch celebration of my new book, The Transition Timeline, at the Kingston Odeon on the 15th March (this Sunday) from 5:30pm.

This event will also form part of the nationwide People’s Premiere of new film The Age of Stupid, directed by the inspirational Franny Armstrong, produced by Oscar-winning John Battsek, and starring Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite. Tickets for the event are £10 and can be ordered here. For this you will be amongst the first to see The Age of Stupid, enjoy a live satellite link-up to the simultaneous premiere taking place in a solar tent in Leicester Square(!), witness the launch of the international “Not Stupid” campaign, and have the opportunity to discuss the film with both me and Hilary Gander, one of the founding members of the Campaign against Climate Change. I will also be selling and signing copies of The Transition Timeline at the Kingston screening, which will be the first opportunity for anyone to get their hands on a copy!

Over 100 tickets, of a capacity of 337, have been sold even before the main announcements, so make sure you book soon if you want to come support me and The Age of Stupid. Also bear in mind that the faster tickets sell for the premiere and opening weekend of the film, the more cinemas will show it as it is rolled out nationwide, so you can play your part in the success of this important and brilliant film, which I believe has the potential to radically shift popular conceptions of climate change. Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth had a major impact, and this is a much better film. You won’t regret seeing it.

After the events at the Odeon we have an area reserved at the Acorn 20 bar just across the road, from 8:15pm. Food can be purchased there, and those who cannot make the Odeon screening are welcome to join the celebrations there or pick up a copy of the book – 20 Richmond Rd, Kingston, KT2 5EB.

I know that a number of people who were keen to come will be unable to attend these events in Kingston as they are attending The Age of Stupid People’s Premiere in another of the 65 participating cinemas around the country, so they will be welcome at my official book launch at The Totnes Bookshop in Totnes High Street, Devon from 7pm on Wednesday 1st April.

For those who can’t make either event The Transition Timeline is now available to order here, or can be secured at the special price of £10 from me in person.

I will post again soon with more details of the book itself, but for now I will leave you with the design for the back and front covers respectively, and some of the endorsements already received.

–

“Peak oil and climate change are two of the greatest challenges we face today; the Transition Town movement is firmly rooted in the idea that people taking action now in their communities can not only tackle these environmental threats but also, in the process of doing so, lead more fulfilling lives. It is about hope in an otherwise bleak seeming future. Above all, it’s about the power of an alternative vision for how society could be and not waiting for government or politicians to get it right.

The Transition Timeline is designed to bring that vision to life – with stories of what communities have already achieved, with updates on the latest scientific data, and with ‘maps’ that highlight key landmarks on the journey towards a zero carbon future. It’s a hugely valuable manual for anyone committed to turning dreams into reality. Don’t just read this book – use it to change your world.”
~ Caroline Lucas MEP, leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, and co-author of Green Alternatives to Globalisation: A Manifesto.

–

“Shaun Chamberlin ties down the uncertainties about climate, energy, food, water and population, the big scene-setters of our future, with no-nonsense authority. What we get with The Transition Timeline is a map of the landscape we have to find a way through. Map-making is a risky business: sooner or later someone is going to use your map and come across a treacherous swamp that isn’t marked. So you need to be alert to revisions and reports from travellers. But what matters is that someone has got the key characteristics of the landscape drawn out. This is what we have to make sense of – not in the distant future, but right now.

Don’t set out without The Transition Timeline. Take a biro. Scribble updates, comments, expressions of shock and horror, notes to cheer yourself up. By the time your copy has been rained on, stained with blackberry juice, consulted, annotated, used to press and preserve a leaf of our autumnal world, you will have a good idea of where you are, and inspiration about where you are going. It is almost as good as getting there.”
~ Dr. David Fleming, director of The Lean Economy Connection, and author of Energy and the Common Purpose

–

“There is obviously no single, magic bullet solution to climate change. But if I was forced to choose one – our best hope of averting the crisis – it would definitely be Transition Towns.”
~ Franny Armstrong, Director of The Age of Stupid film

–

“Transition has emerged as perhaps the only real model we have for addressing our current crisis – a new, if vital, format for reconsidering our future. The Transition Timeline strengthens a fragile form, something that might, without a trace of irony, be called one of the last, best hopes for all of us.”
~ Sharon Astyk, author of Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front and A Nation of Farmers: Defeating the Food Crisis on American Soil

–

“Will the future be as rosy as The Transition Timeline suggests it might be? Will the people of Britain and the rest of the world begin immediately to make better decisions, taking the welfare of future generations into account? The answer to both questions is probably no.

Will serious repercussions of decisions already taken (regarding fossil fuel consumption and the structuring of our economy to depend on perpetual growth for its viability) come to bite us hard before we even have a chance to implement some of the excellent recommendations contained in this book? The answer to that one is certainly yes – we are already seeing dire consequences of past economic and energy decisions.

Nevertheless, without a vision of what can be, there is no alternative to a future completely constrained by the past. The ideal future set forth herein is not a useless pipe-dream. There is not a single outcome described in this book that could not realistically be achieved IF we all do things beginning now that are entirely within our ability to do.

So here it is: the map and timeline of how to save our world and ourselves. Whether we WILL take up these suggestions as scheduled is a question for the cynics and dreamers to debate. For us realists, the only relevant questions are, Where do we start?, and, Will you join us? ”
~ Richard Heinberg, Senior fellow of the Post Carbon Institute, and author of eight books, including The Party’s Over and Peak Everything

–

“The next 100 months will be a very special time for humanity. On numerous fronts, the consequences of the past 150 years of industrialisation are all simultaneously coming home to roost. Even senior experts, scientists, NGOs and political leaders fail to appreciate that the most recent evidence reveals a situation more urgent than had been expected, even by those who have been following it closely for decades. The Transition Timeline provides an invaluable set of innovative approaches, new narratives and creative thinking tools that will prove vital in enabling us to shape a new kind of society and a new kind of economy; stable in the long term, locally resilient, but still active in a global context, rich in quality jobs, a strong sense of purpose and reliant on indigenous, in-exhaustible energy. It should be read by everyone, immediately!”
~ Paul Allen, director of the Centre for Alternative Technology, and project director of Zero Carbon Britain

“A person will worship something, have no doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have often written on the topic of cultural stories, but I am told I have never explicitly addressed on this blog why I feel they are so critically important in our struggle for a future.

I am on record as stating that climate change and peak oil represent perhaps the most urgent and significant forces shaping our age, yet in an important sense even these trends are only symptoms of an underlying issue. They are consequences of the choices we have collectively made and continue to make, and these choices are formed by our understanding of the world – by our stories.

It is the stories that we tell ourselves about life – both individually and in our wider cultures – that allow us to make sense of the bewildering array of sensory experiences and phenomena that we encounter. They tell us what is important, and they shape our perceptions and thoughts. This is why we use fairy stories to educate our children, why politicians present both positive and negative visions and narratives to win our votes, and why advertisers pay such extraordinary sums to present their perspectives.

As John Michael Greer put it,

“When people treat, say, fizzy brown sugar water as a source of their identity and human value, their resemblance to fairy-tale characters under an enchantment isn’t accidental”

Our cultural stories help to define who we are and they strongly impact our behaviours. One example of a dominant story in our present culture is that of “progress” – the story that we currently live in one of the most advanced civilisations the world has ever known, and that we are advancing further and faster all the time. The definition of ‘advancement’ is vague – though tied in with concepts like scientific and technological progress – but the story is powerfully held. And if we hold to this cultural story then ‘business as usual’ is an attractive prospect – a continuation of this astonishing advancement.

The problem with stories comes when they shape our thinking in ways that do not reflect reality and yet we refuse to change them. The evidence might support the view that this ‘advanced’ culture is not making us happy and is rapidly destroying our environment’s ability to support us, but dominant cultural stories are powerful things, and those who challenge them tend to meet resistance and even ridicule. Yet as Richard Heinberg comments,

“Once we lived with a sense of our own limits. We may have been a hubristic kind of animal, but we knew that our precocity was contained within a universe that was overwhelmingly beyond our influence. That sensibility is about to return. Along with it will come a sense of frustration at finding many expectations dashed.”

The developing physical reality of ‘Peak Climate’ will surely change our cultural stories, whether we like it or not, but we can choose whether to actively engage with this process or to simply be subject to it.

The powerful cultural story that “real change is impossible” makes it seem inevitable that current trends will continue inexorably on, yet in reality cultural stories are always shifting and changing, often subtly, but sometimes dramatically. Given their importance, then, we should pay close attention when Sharon Astyk argues that there are certain key historical moments at which it is possible to reshape cultural stories rapidly and dramatically, by advancing one’s agenda as a logical response to events:

“I think it is true that had Americans been told after 9/11, “We want you to go out and grow a victory garden and cut back on energy usage” the response would have been tremendous – it would absolutely have been possible to harness the anger and pain and frustration of those moments, and a people who desperately wanted something to do”

As Naomi Klein highlights in her book The Shock Doctrine, this insight has until now mostly been used to advance cultural stories that benefit a few at the expense of many. Astyk though contends convincingly that as understanding continues to spread, there is no reason why we could not challenge those voices and ensure that we face the next ‘threshold moment’ with a dominant narrative linking it to the energy and climate context (to which it will almost inevitably be related) and so urging the kinds of attitudinal and lifestyle changes that reality demands.

Our work in spreading awareness and understanding until then could give us that chance.

This article is a slightly modified extract from my forthcoming book The Transition Timeline, produced in partnership with the Transition Network and set for publication in March 2009 and available now, published by Green Books.

Last month I discussed some of the national and international developments that are shaping our future, but in spite of the ongoing climate talks in Poznan, today I’d like to focus on the importance of local-level action.

Amidst all the focus on global climate agreements it’s easy to forget that agreeing a tightening global cap on emissions is not a solution in itself – such a cap would be meaningless without on-the-ground solutions and lifestyle changes at the local and individual levels. This is why I see the tremendously rapid spread of the Transition movement as such a hopeful sign.

It is only two years ago that Rob Hopkins was explaining this new concept to around twenty of us down at Schumacher College and wondering where it might go, yet here we are in 2008 with 120 official Transition initiatives around the world and almost 1,000 more who have made contact to say that they are considering getting involved.

Here in Kingston the first meeting to discuss the idea was held in May this year, and we became an official Transition initiative in August. We are now holding regular events and have six action groups working to raise awareness of climate change, peak oil and the Transition movement in our local community.

For me personally the sense of being supported as a member of the team is invaluable. I will admit to an unfortunate predisposition to take projects away and work on them on my own, and regular meetings with my fellow Transitioners provide a vital antidote.

This week we marked six months since the genesis of Transition Town Kingston (TTK) with a talk by Dr. David Fleming on the theme of ‘Transition Carnival’, discussing his impressive research on the critical importance of wild parties to the development of resilient communities!

Our efforts to heed his advice may have been less raucous than his ideal, but his wonderful talk brought home the sense that the significance of the Transition movement runs deeper than its essential role in a sufficient response to ‘Peak Climate’ or its apparent power to strengthen community ties – deeper even than the fine excuse it provides for good times.

The true test of its influence will lie in its contribution to shifting the cultural stories which have led us to this Last Chance Saloon. As I emphasise in my forthcoming book The Transition Timeline, our individual and collective decisions about what is important to us will determine our future. I hope that the legacy of the Transition movement will be to play its part in empowering us to choose anew. I am fortunate and proud to be a part of it.

We are all familiar with the concept of climate change, and the need for reduced carbon emissions, but really getting a handle on the scale of the problem can be difficult, thanks to all the confusing terminology.

I looked all over the web for a straightforward comprehensive explanation of terms like Global Warming Potential (GWP) and the different meanings of CO₂equivalent but I couldn’t find it, so eventually I decided to spend some of my time (and the time of many helpful friends and colleagues) on creating one.

I didn’t count on quite how intricate the underlying science is (it became ever clearer to me why there is so much confusion in this area), so the process took some considerable time, but I believe that this post is now something that many will find useful. It has been checked for accuracy by qualified experts.

In order to fully understand the relationship between greenhouse gas emissions and global temperature increase then, we first need to consider the concept of radiative forcing.

The Earth is continually receiving energy from the Sun, and continually losing energy into space (as space is much cooler than the Earth). Radiative forcing is simply the difference (measured in watts per square metre) between the amount of energy received and the amount of energy re-radiated back into space. In other words it is the rate at which the planet’s surface is either warming or cooling. [1]

If the planet were losing energy at the same rate it was gaining it then the radiative forcing would be zero and the temperature would remain stable at its current level – this state is called thermal equilibrium. Since a hotter planet loses more energy into space, the natural system tends to move towards thermal equilibrium.

However, rising greenhouse gas concentrations (measured in parts per million – ppm [2]) in the atmosphere act like an insulating blanket, reducing the rate at which energy can escape into space, and so affecting radiative forcing, which in turn affects the temperature. The rough illustrative graphs below give an idea of these relationships and show the time delay between changes in emissions rates (up or down) and temperature changes. [3]

The graph below shows that if we can bring anthropogenic (human-caused) emissions back down we can stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations and bring radiative forcing back towards equilibrium, but at a higher temperature. [4]

So, emissions contribute to greenhouse gas concentrations which in turn contribute to radiative forcing, but it is radiative forcing that determines the rate of change in temperature. Armed with this understanding, the terms below become clearer:

Global warming potential (GWP) is an estimate of how much a given greenhouse gas contributes to Earth’s radiative forcing. Carbon dioxide (CO₂) has a GWP of 1, by definition, so a gas with a GWP of 50 would increase radiative forcing by 50 times as much as the same amount (mass) of CO₂. A GWP value is defined over a specific time interval, so the length of this time interval must be stated to make the value meaningful (most researchers and regulators use 100 years).

For example, methane has a GWP of 72 over 20 years, but a lower GWP of 25 over 100 years. This is because it is very potent in the short-term but then breaks down to CO₂ and water in the atmosphere, meaning that the longer the period you consider it over, the more similar its effect is to that of CO₂ alone. [5]

Equivalent carbon dioxide (CO₂e) is an estimate of the concentration of CO₂ (in ppm) that would cause a given level of radiative forcing. [6]

For example, the IPCC’s[7] latest report in 2007 considered the effects of the main greenhouse gases currently present in our atmosphere and calculated a CO₂e for these of around 455ppm (and rising). This means that (over a defined period) the radiative forcing effect of these gases at current concentrations is roughly equal to the effect a 455ppm concentration of CO₂ alone would cause. This particular CO₂e calculation takes into account the six major greenhouse gases considered under the Kyoto Protocol, and so may be labelled CO₂e(Kyoto). [8]

However, the orange line in the graphs above represents the total radiative forcing of the planet. This is the important figure – the one that determines the rate of change in Earth’s temperature – and as well as the Kyoto gases it is also affected by other factors such as the effects of sulphate aerosols, ozone and cloud formations. The chart below quantifies the effect of each of these factors, and we can see that a number of them (those coloured blue) are actually negative forcings, which act to reduce the total radiative forcing. Because of these, the equivalent CO₂ for all forcings combined - CO₂e(Total) – is, thankfully, lower than CO₂e(Kyoto). The IPCC’s latest figures give CO₂e(Total) as roughly 375ppm. [9]

When we hear scientific debates between stabilisation scenarios of, say, 350ppm, 450ppm or 550ppm it is CO₂e(Total) which is under discussion. So this 375ppm is the key number, but it has a far wider margin of error than the others. This is because it is relatively easy to measure the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, and the GWP of those gases, but considerably more difficult to account for all the effects that contribute to the ultimate CO₂e(Total) radiative forcing over a given period. The column in the below chart labelled LOSU stands for the “Level Of Scientific Understanding” of the various forcings, and as we can see it is not universally high. [10]

Radiative forcing is the fundamental issue, but it is easy to see why most discussions revolve only around emissions – not only are CO₂ emissions much the largest way in which humanity is changing the planet’s radiative forcing, but they are also easier to understand conceptually and easier to quantify than radiative forcing.

According to the IPCC atmospheric CO₂ concentrations were 379ppm in 2005, which coincidentally happens to be close to our best estimate of 375ppm CO₂e(Total). Unfortunately this coincidence also creates a good deal of confusion, as it is not always clear which measure an author is referring to – scientists often assume that this is obvious to their audience, and many others do not themselves fully understand the distinctions between CO₂, CO₂e(Kyoto) and CO₂e(Total). [11]

The other source of confusion is that all of the numbers we have discussed are based on evolving science, and many can only be given approximately. For example, these are the IPCC’s given figures for the GWP of methane over 100 years, taken from their last three reports:

1995 – 2nd Assessment Report (SAR): Methane 100 year GWP = 21
2001 – 3rd Assessment Report (TAR): Methane 100 year GWP = 23
2007 – 4th Assessment Report (AR4): Methane 100 year GWP = 25

These changes are entirely appropriate – the values should become more accurate over time as new measurement methods or changes in scientific understanding develop – but it makes it important to check where any figures are sourced from. [12]

Where we are today

So let’s take stock. Below are the latest IPCC figures, which define the situation as it was in 2005:

CO₂ = 379ppm (error range: minimal)
CO₂e(Kyoto) = 455ppm (error range: 433-477ppm)
CO₂e(Total) = 375ppm (error range: 311-435 ppm) [13]

Emissions are still increasing year-on-year (faster than projected in any of the IPCC’s scenarios) and atmospheric CO₂ concentrations are currently rising by between 1.5 and 3 ppm each year. They are at roughly 385ppm in mid-2008. It is worth noting that the pre-industrial concentration of CO₂ in our atmosphere was 278ppm and did not vary by more than 7ppm between the years 1000 and 1800 C.E. [14]

Global average (mean) temperature has already risen by around 0.8°C since pre-industrial times, and a minimum additional 0.6°C of warming is still due from emissions to date – the delay in warming being a consequence of the time-lags in the system discussed above. [15]

Ok, that’s it! If you followed everything here you should be well-equipped to consider the scientific discussion of climate change. Indeed, you may find you understand it better than some of those who write and speak about it!

Hopefully this post will provide a resource to aid wider understanding of the changes we are causing to our global climate system and the climate emergency we are facing. Should any inaccuracies come to light I will of course amend them.

This work forms part of my forthcoming book The Transition Timeline, produced in partnership with the Transition Network, and set for publication in March 2009 and available now, published by Green Books. It uses the understanding outlined here to examine the wider context of climate change and peak oil, discuss the options facing our communities and consider the cultural stories which underlie our choices.

Footnotes

1. There is also a warming effect from the geothermal energy at the Earth’s core, but this is sufficiently small and stable that for our purposes we can ignore it.

2. Parts per million is the ratio of the number of greenhouse gas molecules to the total number of molecules of dry air. For example, 300ppm means 300 molecules of a greenhouse gas per million molecules of dry air. Strictly speaking concentrations are measured in parts per million by volume (ppmv), but this is widely abbreviated to ppm. Don’t be confused if some papers refer to ppmv.

3. Emissions are not the sole determinant of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations due to the Earth’s natural ‘carbon sinks’ which soak up some of our emissions. Concentrations are not the sole determinants of radiative forcing due to other forcings which will be discussed shortly. The time delay between radiative forcing and temperature increase is caused by the thermal inertia of the planet – it has great mass (with much of the heat initially being used to warm the deep oceans) and therefore takes some time to warm or cool. Of the (equilibrium) temperature increase ultimately produced by a given increase in radiative forcing, only about half manifests within 25 years, the next quarter takes 150 years to manifest, and the last quarter many centuries.

4. These illustrative graphs do not include the effects of climate feedbacks such as carbon sink degradation. Also see the MIT Climate Online ‘Greenhouse Gas Emissions Simulator’

5. Figures from: IPCC AR4 Working Group I Report, Chapter 2 , Table 2.14, p. 212.
More detail on GWP available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential – note that the GWP for a mixture of gases cannot be determined from the GWP of the constituent gases by any form of simple linear addition.

6. There is also a separate but related concept called Carbon Dioxide equivalent. This gives the amount of CO₂ that would have the same GWP as a given amount of a given gas (or mixture of gases). It is simply calculated by multiplying the GWP of the gas by the given amount (mass) of gas. For example, over a 100 year period methane has a GWP of 25, so 1 gram of methane has a Carbon Dioxide equivalent value of 25 grams.
In practice, since Carbon Dioxide equivalent is expressed as a mass (grams, tonnes etc.), and Equivalent Carbon Dioxide (CO₂e) is expressed as a concentration (usually in parts per million), they are not easily confused, despite the similar names.
You may also encounter references to the “carbon equivalent”, especially when discussing carbon that is not in gaseous form (e.g. carbon in coal deposits). A carbon equivalent figure can be converted to carbon dioxide equivalent by multiplying by 3.644 to account for the different molecular weights (3.644 tonnes of CO₂ contains 1 tonne of carbon).

7. The IPCC is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – the body established jointly by the United Nations and the World Meteorological Organisation in 1988 to assess the available scientific evidence.

8. The IPCC considered the so-called ‘Kyoto basket’ of greenhouse gases (GHGs). Under the Kyoto Protocol, signatories committed to control emissions of a ‘basket’ of six GHGs – carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, HFCs, PFCs and SF6.
455ppm figure from e.g.: IPCC AR4 Working Group III Report, Chapter 1 , p.102
The IPCC estimate of CO₂e(Kyoto) is detailed by Gavin Schmidt of NASA in a post at Real Climate

9. These negative forcings include the so-called ‘global dimming’ effect. For more on this crucial consideration see: “On avoiding dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system: Formidable challenges ahead”, V. Ramanathan and Y. Feng, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 105, 23 September 2008, pp. 14245-14250
IPCC CO₂e(Total) figure: IPCC AR4 Synthesis Report, notes to Table 5.1, p.67

10. Table source: IPCC AR4 Working Group I Report, Summary for Policymakers, Figure SPM.2, p.4

11. IPCC 2005 CO₂ levels: IPCC AR4 Synthesis Report, Summary for Policymakers, p. 5

12. IPCC 2001 figures: IPCC TAR Working Group I Report, Chapter 6, Table 6.7
1995/2007: IPCC AR4 Working Group I Report, Chapter 2 , Table 2.14, p. 212

13. Error ranges: IPCC AR4 Working Group III Report, Chapter 1 , p.102

14. Up-to-date measurements of atmospheric CO₂ concentrations are always subject to revisions, pending recalibrations of reference gases and other quality control checks. Trends and 2008 figure taken from: NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory – Global Monitoring Division (site accessed August 2008)
Pre-industrial CO₂ levels from: NOAA (US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)

15. See footnote [3] above for details on climate time-lags. Figure for warming from emissions to date taken from the Climate Code Red report by Carbon Equity, p.22.
Also see IPCC AR4 Working Group III Report, Summary for Policymakers, Table SPM.5, p.15 for ultimate (equilibrium) warming from current atmospheric concentrations.
Finally, note that a 2008 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examined the impacts of air pollution (which blocks sunlight and thus reduces temperatures – the effect known as ‘global dimming’) and found that this is masking the full extent of the warming effect from greenhouse gas concentrations. Building on the IPCC’s work, the paper finds that if air pollution reduces – as it is expected to do – then 2005 atmospheric concentrations could commit us to around 2.4 degrees of warming above pre-industrial temperatures, with about 90% of this warming taking place this century.

Images

1. Climate-o-meter used (in edited form) with permission from http://www.ageofstupid.net/

2. Radiative forcing illustration used with permission from David Wasdell

3. Indicative climate graph created by author in partnership with David Wasdell, and with assistance gratefully acknowledged from Ben Brangwyn.

4. Indicative climate graph created by author in partnership with David Wasdell, and with assistance gratefully acknowledged from Ben Brangwyn.

5. Radiative forcings table from: IPCC AR4 Working Group I Report, Summary for Policymakers, Figure SPM.2, p.4

6. Indicative climate graph created by author in partnership with David Wasdell, and with assistance gratefully acknowledged from Ben Brangwyn.

Lately I seem to be encountering many climate change activists who have a blind spot when it comes to peak oil. At present, Friends of the Earth appear to be particularly prone to this.

They assert that climate change is overwhelmingly urgent (no arguments from me there) and so that the depletion of fossil fuels is largely irrelevant. In fact they argue that it can only be good news, limiting the availability of these dangerous substances which have the potential to destabilise our climate.

But this ignores the reason why humanity is so loathe to wean itself off these fuels in the first place. They are exceptionally potent energy sources which greatly increase our ability to change our human infrastructure and shape the world around us. Energy is perhaps best defined as the ability to do work, and there is much work to be done in the transition to a low-carbon way of life.

Imagine that we simply immediately ceased the extraction of fossil fuels – as the climate change imperative might appear to demand. We would see unbelievable human suffering as the lifeblood of our fossil fuel based societies dried up. Our critical infrastructure for food supply, transportation, heating, irrigation, electricity and so on would all fail catastrophically.

So there is clearly a tension between addressing climate change and addressing peak oil. The earlier we reach fossil fuel supply limits – whether geological or voluntary – the better for climate change, but the more painful the ‘peak oil’ adaptation problems, and the higher the oil price.

As supply limitations prompt oil price rises, more and more countries (and ultimately individuals) are priced out of the market, leaving only those with enough money able to get the oil their lifestyles demand. Economists call this ‘demand destruction’, and it is the mechanism the market uses to close the widening gap between supply and demand.

Unfortunately, markets do not distinguish between more and less essential uses of oil – if we in the UK are willing and able to pay more to run our cars than people elsewhere are able to pay to heat their homes or power their hospitals then the limited supply of oil will flow here. Demand destruction can be very cruel or even fatal for those whose demand is ‘destroyed’.

In early 2007, with oil prices at less than half their current level, the U.N. wrote:

“Recent oil price increases have had devastating effects on many of the world’s poor countries, some of which now spend as much as six times as much on fuel as they do on health. Others spend twice the money on fuel as they do on poverty alleviation. And in still others, the foreign exchange drain from higher oil prices is five times the gain from recent debt relief.

Of the world’s 50 poorest countries, 38 are net importers of oil, and 25 import all of their oil requirements.”

The more limited the supply the more demand destruction is necessary and the higher the price goes. $140 per barrel means many are simply having to go without altogether. The international oil price, then, is effectively a rough measure of how much of this cruel demand destruction is going on.

The ’supply side dilemma’

The question of whether we should leave some of the available fossil fuels in the ground, then, in reality becomes a question of whether the effects of increased oil demand destruction are more or less desirable than the effects of increased emissions and the resultant climate change.

This is what we might call the ’supply side dilemma’ – attempting to choose the lesser of two evils. Not much of a choice some might say, and it is easy to see why there are passionate advocates on both sides of the debate. But if we campaign on climate change without any acknowledgement of this tension we are easily (and probably correctly) dismissed as naively advocating the suffering and deaths of hundreds of millions of people.

Thankfully though, there are things we can do to ameliorate both climate change and peak oil simultaneously. If we begin to wean our communities off their oil addiction voluntarily then we reduce demand, and thus reduce the need for the more painful varieties of demand destruction. We lessen the desperation for increased oil supplies and so make it easier to consider the necessary step of leaving some of it where it is as a response to climate change. The more ways we can find to reduce demand, the less difficult the global supply side dilemma becomes.

It is these win-win solutions that climate change campaigners should be fighting for, and in fact they might well find that peak oil helps their cause.

Try as we might to ignore peak oil, the stark reality is that the world will be getting by on around half its current level of oil production in 20 years time. And like it or not, some who are unmoved by moral arguments on climate change become rather proactive when they recognise the reality of such a severe impending threat to their way of life.

Activists on peak oil and climate change should be indistinguishable – it really is one problem, and we all need to be working together to ensure that the motivation it generates is channelled in the most constructive directions.