More video clips from the Conference can be found here, and audio here (including a quick interview with me on Energy Descent Planning for communities).

Edit – Indymedia have posted the audio and slides from the three hour workshop Jacqi Hodgson (Totnes EDAP coordinator) and I gave on community Energy Descent Planning. This is in fact the workshop pictured above, in the video’s freeze-frame.

This post was originally written by me as a guest post for Rob Hopkins’ Transition Culture blog, but I have kindly given myself permission to reproduce it here

So here I am. I fully intended to be giving the England match my full attention right now, but I’ve been left distinctly restive by this afternoon’s long session by Stoneleigh of The Automatic Earth, and feel the need to put some thoughts down.

Including the extensive Q&A session her talk lasted virtually three hours and covered a lot of ground, starting from a good runthrough of the ‘peak energy’ situation, but quickly focusing in on finance, as she believes that this is the factor that will most dramatically shape our immediate future. Notably, the talk attracted almost half the attendees of the Transition Conference, despite the numerous other Open Space sessions taking place at the same time.

For me her analysis helped to bridge the gap between comprehension and real understanding. I always feel that I don’t have a genuine opinion on something until I can listen to someone argue one point of view, then listen to someone argue the opposite, and truly understand what the root of their disagreement is, so that I can make up my own mind. With finance I have always felt unable to get to the root of the disagreement between those who forecast a cataclysm in the coming years, and those who argue that the system is far more resilient than some give it credit for.

That feeling has not been totally banished, but Stoneleigh (both today and in a bar-room chat until 2am last night) really helped me to close some big gaps.

She has agreed to email me her slides, but essentially her position is that we are just slipping over the edge into the greatest financial Depression the world has ever seen, off the back of the biggest financial bubble the world has ever seen. This will, of course, bring significant personal consequences for individuals, families and communities.

Consequently, her absolute #1 piece of advice to all and sundry is to get out of debt, as debts that may seem manageable now are unlikely to remain so as interest rates soar and property prices plummet (perhaps back to somewhere in the region of their 1970 values). Meanwhile, existing mortgage debts will stubbornly remain just as large, leaving many people in the ordeal of negative equity – their mortgage debt being bigger than the value of their house.

She also explained the ‘derivatives’ market in a usefully clear way. Whereas many of the world’s money-making schemes are based on cutting the proverbial cake into smaller and smaller slices, this system is based on giving more and more people rights over a single slice of cake. As this system unravels (as it surely must at some point, since not every claimant can have their cake to eat it), the bulk of the world’s money will essentially disappear, creating huge deflation. There will be less money in circulation relative to the amount of stuff, so the value of the money that people do have will actually go up, while earnings drop. As she pointed out, the key issue to be concerned with is ‘affordability’ not inflation, deflation, wages or anything else. How much useful stuff can you buy with what you have?

While not explicit about it as such, she seemed to be ranking the kinds of assets we might hold in terms of risk. In order, starting with the most desirable, that list was:

Useful assets – e.g. tools, land, a home that you want to live in, and that can supply what you need etc…

Cash – as deflation is likely to raise the value of cash, it’s a good thing to have, but cash in bank accounts is quite liable to evaporate. In response to the inevitable question of where we should keep cash, her repeated answer was “be creative”.

Gilts – Given that holding massive amounts of cash is both impractical and likely to arouse suspicion, she suggested gilts as the next least-risky place to put money.

Interestingly though, she believes that while useful productive assets are the most important thing (these are, after all, the source of our ability to support our communities and ourselves), she also pointed out that the price of such assets is likely to drop as the crisis tightens.

Accordingly, she counselled that one possible course of action for those unable to afford the productive assets they need (land, say) without going into debt, could be to minimise their exposure to the crash, preserve any cash that they can, and then buy more cheaply further down the slope. Those who can afford to buy outright now though, would be well-advised to do so, as while their assets, land etc. may decrease in value, this is of less significance if they plan to hold on to these assets long-term anyway, and in return they are buying themselves time to learn to use these ‘tools’, before they are relying on them.

As she spoke, the room was hushed and fiercely attentive, and you could see people absorbing the implications of what she said for their own financial plans, and those of their communities and families.

One very interesting question was from a Transitioner who is considering setting up a community-owned renewables project, based on taking out a loan to install PV, and paying back the loan on the basis of the Government’s feed-in tariffs. Stoneleigh argued that in the current situation, any Government guarantee to do anything over the next 20-25 years is barely worth the paper it’s written on, and so she would advise that such projects should be undertaken either without going into debt or not at all.

Above all, she stressed the urgency of the situation, and that we should not expect the financial situation to look at all like it does now in just a couple of years time.

In my one-to-one chat with her on Friday night, I asked her about my Student Loan, which is currently about the most benign loan imaginable, with a rate of interest generally lower than that available on tax-free savings accounts. She argued that I should pay it off as soon as possible nonetheless, even if that takes all the money I have, as savings in the bank are at a significant risk of disappearing, whereas loans never die. Indeed, they tend to be sold on down the line until you find yourself in debt to someone rather unpleasant.

We also talked about the best ways forward, given the difficult situation in which we find ourselves. We both believe that social ties are the most valuable asset we can possibly have, and that building these networks of trust is the most important work we can do.

She spoke of the example of the Great Depression of the 1930s, in which despite an abundance of food, fuel, resources and manpower, the whole system ground to a halt due to the unavailability of money to connect buyers and sellers. It reached the point where farmers were pouring away perfectly good milk while people starved up the road.

This put me in mind of Mark Boyle, the Moneyless Man, who I finally met for the first time at the Uncivilisation festival a couple of weeks ago. It strikes me that the simple idea of the gift economy – or Freeconomy – that he is practising, is exactly what was needed in that situation. If the farmers and the hungry had trusted each other, then without money, or indeed any other kind of transaction, a human can give another human food just for the love of it. And if the farmer needed help on his farm, then others might help for similar reasons. Perhaps if those needs coincide then barter might take place, but where they do not, the simple desire to help each other, and the trust that others will help out when you need something, could have got that society functioning again.

But as Stoneleigh pointed out, the key is building that trust ahead of time. In difficult times, your bonds with those you trust naturally becomes even tighter, as you rely on each other more, but your mistrust for those outside your circle can also increase, as you worry that perhaps they are just after what little you have.

Transition has always sought to widen and strengthen those circles, and that still looks like the most important work we can be doing, but Stoneleigh hopes to suggest a few tweaks to our tactics, as well as underscoring the sense of urgency.

A number of other Transitioners have already spoken to me about being rather shaken by Stoneleigh’s talk, but as she kept emphasising, we are doing the right work. Critical work.

(Stoneleigh’s powerful talk is now available here – link removed at request of The Automatic Earth, see comments below)

ps And England drew 1-1, but somehow that doesn’t seem like the most important thing I learnt today!

Shaun is a co-founder of Transition Town Kingston and the author of The Transition Timeline. He writes at www.darkoptimism.org

Christopher Fraser of London Transition has kindly transcribed the popular interview with Canada’s Radio Ecoshock that I posted a couple of months back. I’ve also added links at a few pertinent points.

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Alex Smith, Radio Ecoshock: [addressing audience] You know we’re going to run out of civilisation’s lifeblood, fossil fuels. And if we burn what’s left, the climate may tip into a mass extinction event. Meanwhile barking madness seems to be the only growth industry in some places. Is it time for more pills, booze or Endtime religion?

Our next guest says there may be some hope left. Shaun Chamberlin’s blog is called Dark Optimism, and that may be as good as it gets. Shaun is part of the Transition Movement in Britain; he’s the author of the new book The Transition Timeline for a local, resilient future, and co-author of an upcoming report for the British Parliament on a scheme to give everyone an energy quota. Shaun, welcome to Radio Ecoshock.

Shaun Chamberlin, Dark Optimism: Thanks for having me, Alex.

AS: OK, well let’s start with what is Dark Optimism?

SC: [Laughs] Well, it all started talking with a friend of mine who was trying to work what kind of person I am, what kind of a thinker I am, and I was lying in bed that night thinking about it and it sort of came to me in a flash that I’m a dark optimist. And over time it became the title for the work that I do, but really it’s looking at life and not being afraid to look at it when it’s dark, when it scary, which as you well know if you look into the future it certainly can be at the moment, but with a faith that if we explore the unknown we often find that when things are unknown they are more scary than when we look at them. In all the horror movies you will find the scariest monsters are the ones you never see and you just imagine, so looking into the darkness is a tool that brings us realism that we can then use to create a better future than the one that we’re left with by running away from that darkness.

AS: Yes, and you’ve been looking less for a technical fix and more to some of the stories we tell ourselves. How can that help us out?

SC: Yeah, well this ties in a lot with my book. When I was doing the research for that it was a project that came out of the Transition movement, and various of the transition communities were trying to write their Energy Descent Action Plans – looking 20 years into the future of their own communities. And they found that was very difficult because they needed to know about some of the big scale issues that were going to affect their communities, but which maybe they couldn’t themselves directly affect. So things like climate change and peak oil, but also government policy decisions, national food supply, things like this.

And as I looked at the shape of our future I realised that it’s really shaped by the cultural stories that we tell ourselves, the narratives which flow throughout our culture, and really I found in my opinion there are three dominant stories which really shape our ideas. And one is the idea that the future will basically look like today, that we’ll just carry on much the same, and you see that a lot in government documents for example that assume this has happened up until so we assume that this line, that trend, will carry on into the future. And a second story that is very powerful is the apocalypse story, whatever that looks like, whether that’s religious apocalypse or The Terminator, or the Age Of Stupid. Whatever form that takes that’s a narrative that we see throughout our culture. And the third one I think, as you have just hinted, is the techno-utopia idea that science and progress will save us all and that we’ll move onto this maybe Star Trek kind of a future. And those three stories I’ve found when I was talking to a huge diversity of people about our future I could usually categorise them quite easily into one, or more than one sometimes, sometimes there’s a compound vision based on a couple of those. And so one of the things that we are trying to do in the Transition movement is create a fourth story of our future – a story that is based around realistically looking at the limits, the environmental limits, that we’re starting to really bump up against and creating a better future within that realist context.

AS: It seems to me at times that the denial movement or just letting things keep on going the way it is, may be the way it turns out. Did you work out in your book what that world would look like in 2020 or 2030?

SC: Absolutely. I mean one of the things I really learned in writing the book was about Resilience – which is one of the core concepts in Transition – that it is very important not to just create a single vision of the future but rather to explore adequately a set of different visions. And so what we did in the writing of the book was explore four of those scenarios, based on each of the four stories I’ve just talked about, and look at a timeline for each of those out to 2030. I like to say resilience is humility in action. We have to accept that as the Chinese say “when men speak of the future the Gods laugh.” We have to accept that we don’t know what’s coming and the most sensible things that we can do are things which are useful in a range of possible futures. So absolutely, that’s something we explored, looking at how each of those cultural stories would pan out taken to its logical conclusion, but then looking in a lot more depth at the Transition Vision, for the simple reason that that doesn’t have a lot of traction in our society at the moment, and I think it really needs fleshing out so that people can feel that’s it’s a real vision that can get them out of bed in the morning.

AS: I find it interesting that while you’re advocating and talking about joining a community movement at the local level to get away from fossil fuel dependency, you’re also helping with a national action plan by the UK government. Can you give us a peek into the upcoming report on Tradable Energy Quotas (TEQs) and maybe start by explaining that those are?

SC: Well Tradable Energy Quotas is a concept which has gone by a lot of names, things like carbon rationing and energy rationing very much among then. I think at the moment, certainly among green circles, there is a lot of backlash against this idea of “tradable” in that with good reason carbon trading is something which is deeply mistrusted. But when it comes to looking at the practical detail of how an energy or carbon rationing scheme would operate, tradability becomes essential to the concept, because unlike something like food which certainly here in the UK we have living memory experience of food rationing, but food is something that people need basically the same amount of each, roughly speaking. Energy is not quite like that in that certain professions, a country doctor, say, or perhaps a farmer, require more energy than other lifestyles, and so if we just gave everyone a [strict] equal entitlement of energy then we would end up with all the above-average energy use professions in the country ceasing to exist overnight, which obviously would not be of great advantage to the society.

So the idea of Tradable Energy Quotas is essentially that once you’ve got your constraint, whether that’s a nation carbon budget or whether that’s a national oil depletion or gas depletion problem perhaps, that gives you a declining budget which you can then lay out over say a 20 year period. Then that budget is turned into essentially rations for the economy, and those are giving out on an equal per capita basis to every individual in the country, while the proportion that is relevant to industry and organisations is auctioned to those organisations. And this means that all the energy and carbon within the economy can be captured and accounted for and the carbon budget can actually be achieved, which is something which is really lacking in our international negotiations at the moment — there are all sorts of promises with very little idea of how to achieve them. So those can actually be achieved without the need to measure tailgate emissions on cars or specific emissions from a particular factory because it’s done at the national scale. [for more information see www.teqs.net]

And as you say it sort of does seem like there is a contradiction between addressing things at that level and the community scale, and I think my personal journey was that maybe five years ago or so when I was wonder what I could do about this global situation my first thought was I need to get involved in the Conference Of Parties process, the UN Copenhagen, Kyoto type process because that seemed to me where the big action is at, that’s where I can really make a difference. And there was a quote from my now-colleague David Fleming which really changed my whole perspective on that. He said “large scale problems do not require large scale solutions, they require small scale solutions within a large scale framework” and the more I think about that the more I see the truth in it. And so really what I’ve been doing since then in my life is working at the small scale, working on those small scale solutions, trying to support the wonderful diversity of solutions, not just Transition Towns, but the huge diversity of local solutions that are out there, but also recognising that we really do need those frameworks to harness all those individual efforts and ensure they are sufficient for the scale of the challenges that we face. Otherwise, you know, obviously something like climate change is a problem where if one group does their bit and another group doesn’t then we don’t have a solution.

So we do need these frameworks, but I really feel that without a focus on the local and individual levels the frameworks are empty. Actually, the real realisation for me was when I thought ‘what is the point of something like Copenhagen?’, I mean if Copenhagen had produced the kind of treaty we all dreamed of, really that would have meant nothing if it didn’t stimulate change at the local level. I mean that’s where all the emissions come from, that’s where all the energy demand comes from. So all of the international and national level stuff only exists as a way to stimulate and support changes at the community level and once that sort of clicked in my head it became very obvious that the community level would become the focus of my efforts, while still trying to contribute to getting some kind of reasonable framework at that level.

AS: I can see how these Tradable Energy Quotas would give the individual more of a chance to figure out their own solutions, but I think we all have the worry, and does this address it, that somehow the fat cats are going to keep flying around and driving in limousines and wasting energy in huge houses, while the poorest among us will have trouble getting enough energy for heating their homes if peak oil comes around and if there’s a shortage of supply. How do we get around that?

SC: Sure, I mean that’s obviously the fear with the tradable ration rather than absolute rationing. I think the key thing to remember is that in such a scheme it’s absolutely true that the rich would be able to buy surplus rations from the poor if the poor found that they had surplus rations. And really that is just a consequence of the fact that we live in a capitalist system. This is not a suggestion that overthrows capitalism, and it is a fundamental fact of capitalism that if you’re richer you can consume more stuff – but really the critical thing about this scheme is that it changes the current picture. Whereas currently if oil for example is in short supply it goes to either the person who can bid the most or the person who moves the quickest and gets to the gas station first. Under this scheme, if the rich did consume more [than their equal share] they would actually be paying the poor directly for the privilege, so it would actually be redistributing the wealth from the high consumers to the low. So not only would it create a very strong incentive for people at all income levels to reduce their [consumption] it would also ensure that people were compensated directly if there was an imbalance in energy usage throughout the economy.

AS: Recently in the United States there are been threats of revolution and rage over a very basic plan for health care coverage. Imagine the furore if gas happy citizens are told that big government is going to ration your energy supplies. That’s going to be real problem, and yet when I look at Saudi Arabia and Kuwait building up their own energy and using their own oil supplies and I look at what’s happening in China – all the car sales and everything – it looks like rationing is almost inevitable sooner or later.

SC: Well absolutely, this is the fundamental problem that environmental thinkers have had for a very long time – really what we’re doing here is recognising pre-existing natural limits and trying to address them in a rational way. And again this comes back to the issue of cultural stories. If our cultural story tells us that there is infinite abundance and that human ingenuity will continue to create energy sources out of nothing forever more, than if anyone comes along and tells you that they want to ration it then obviously they are an enemy and must be opposed.

On the other hand if our stories tell us that we’re moving into a period where we’re really approaching our environmental limits and we need to address that in the most sensible, painless, rational way possible, then suddenly sharing out what is available in the fairest possible way becomes a no-brainer. So really this is why a lot of my work focuses on shifting these cultural perspectives, because as you say the political battles needed to implement something like a national rationing scheme will never be won while the current cultural stories that shape the discourse are in place.

AS: Your report for The Lean Economy Connection gives two reasons for tackling carbon: we’re bound to run out of supplies and it’s wrecking the atmosphere. But I’ve just read in the Guardian newspaper, March 22nd, about a government advisory board giving a third reason – one I’ve been harping on about – the pollution from burning carbon, mostly from cars, is killing city dwellers by the thousands. The committee of MPs estimate up to 50,000 people die prematurely in Britain alone every year due to smog. Will you add that list of motivations to clean up the system?

SC: Well, absolutely. That is a critical thing. It’s very interesting at the moment that our UK Government is seemingly having a bit of a change of heart on its attitude towards fossil fuels. There’s that report you’ve just mentioned and there’s also, just yesterday, a report by a group called the Peak Oil Taskforce, which is an industry group made up of some of our biggest companies, including Virgin — whose chairman Richard Branson is very well known here, I don’t know how well his fame has spread across the Atlantic — and some of our big transportation groups, our rail companies, have launched a report basically stating that as an industry they are deeply, deeply worried that Governments aren’t taking peak oil seriously enough and that they really need some support on this from the government level. And the government put out a statement yesterday essentially saying that they’re a bit confused because on one hand they’ve got the likes of Shell telling them there’s nothing to worry about, on the other they’ve got some of their biggest industry representatives saying that they’re terribly worried about it. So they have now called together a ‘Colloquium’ I think they’ve called it, pulling together some of their biggest stakeholders on this issue to try to get to the bottom of why there is so much disagreement. And we’ve got a couple of representatives from the UK Transition movement going along to that meeting.

It is interesting that whereas a few years ago you were laughed out of the room for talking about the need to get off fossil fuels, these days it seems almost zeitgeisty.

AS: Yes. This is Radio Ecoshock, we’re talking with Shaun Chamberlin, a British author and thinker who’s deeply involved with the Transition movement. And I want to ask you now, how can we use this Transition Movement to turn what looks like despair into better lives around us?

SC: Wow – there’s a big question! I suppose despair, in a strange way, has a certain motivation within it, in that despair is looking at what we expect the future to look like and realising that it isn’t what we want. And I think we can channel that part of despair and if we can make people understand that a different future is possible then suddenly that despair becomes not a sort of motivation to inaction, but a huge motivation to action. I suppose that really is the dark optimism idea in practice. So again it’s about this Transition Vision of what our future could look like, and trying to make that a visible reality that people can see and feel that they can get involved with.

I think part of the beauty of Transition is that it operates on a human scale, and you’re getting together with a group of maybe 15 other people from your local community to work on a particular practical project, and there’s something in us that just functions on that scale. You know, the people who are thinking about the kind of topics that are maybe often talked about on Radio Ecoshock, we’re used to thinking about how can we feed 7 billion people or whatever, but it’s a very hard job to get a human brain to think on that kind of scale. Whereas operating at the human scale soothes that despair by saying ‘well here I am doing something practical, doing something real, and doing it with my community’, and while there’s part of your brain saying “oh, but is that enough, is it sufficient?” that’s soothed by the knowledge that there’s this movement of thousands of communities around the world that are doing the same thing. And given the abject failure of the international political process to deal with the scale of the problems we’re looking at, that’s where the relief from despair can come.

AS: Yes, there’s some healing from learning to grow food or learning a skill or meeting with others to get something done. I was wondering if you can give us some specifics from the Transition community that you’ve been working with?

SC: Yeah, I’m based in Kingston Upon Thames, which is a suburb in south west London. And some of the things we’ve been doing, we’ve had quite an engagement with our local allotment group and we’ve people who are working to try and expand the space that is available for food growing locally both through getting more land allocated to that but also things like working with our local council here, trying to get flower beds and things turned into edible flower beds which are still as attractive but also creating more usefulness and creating more local resilience through that. That would be one example where our local groups have been working to do something which feels engaging, which feels pleasurable, which feels like it’s tangible and is building something, but also which creates a demonstration for the rest of the community of what Transition is about. And of course builds up food resilience so that if we do come to a situation where we’re really struggling to get by then we’re creating more resilience to that. For me personally one of the things that I find most important about Transition is that it’s a process which makes sense whether or not we win the fight on climate change, if you like. Whether we’re fighting to avoid the tipping points into unstoppable runaway climate change, Transition has a very important role in trying to win that fight. But equally, if we lose that fight Transition is going to have a very important role to play in creating that resilience against the kind of situations we’re likely to find ourselves in. And I think for a lot of people who are deeply troubled by the fact that we could be losing that fight that is one of the most powerful aspects of it.

AS: You’ve just answered one of the questions I had which was that I’ve heard you say Climate Change may be unstoppable as early as 2016. That only give us five years, so a critic might say the Transition movement is going to be too slow to make significant changes by then, and ditto the slow drop by Tradable Energy Quotas – it might take years just to get public acceptance – so are you finding that you can overcome those fears and still get people going on these projects?

SC: Yeah, as I say I think the crucial thing is if that’s something which is a fear – and it certainly is a fear that I’ve spoken to lots of people who find it quite paralyzing – I think the key thing is to work on projects which, as I say, make sense either way. And Tradable Energy Quotas, yes, absolutely has a role in allowing nations to be able to meet the incredibly stringent carbon targets that are going to be necessary if we are going to avoid unstoppable runaway [climate change]. But equally, even if we cross those tipping points, we’re still going to have an energy problem, we’re still going to have this situation to deal with, and having those systems in place is going to make the response to that an awful lot more rational and sane. I think this two-pronged approach is the thing which can help people remain sane in times which, as you say, can be quite despair-filled for a lot of people who are trying to engage with these issues.

AS: There must be people in these communities who are very apathetic or even outright hostile to changes in their lifestyle? How do we handle that?

SC: Listening, I think, is the straightforward answer. Here in Kingston it’s a fairly affluent suburb on the whole, but equally we have council estates which are some of the most deprived areas of London. And trying to find common ground between the very different perspectives on life here has been one of our real challenges, and I think listening to each other and not feeling like “Oh, I’ve listened to Radio Ecoshock and I’ve heard this answer and I’m going to go out and apply it” but actually respecting the opinions of the different people and the stories that the different people bring and recognising that a diversity of outlooks and stories is a real strength. We don’t need to agree on every aspect of what the future is going to look like, what we need to do is have a diversity of stories from which we can choose and apply the most appropriate if we’re going to create the most positive future that we can.

AS: I sometimes see all these things – Transition, local community building, local food production – as sort of a lifeboat building process. But then again is there anything wrong with lifeboats if we think the ship might be sinking? Is that dark optimism?

SC: [Laughs] I think dark optimism would say there’s nothing wrong with lifeboats whether you think the ship is sinking or you think it will stay floating. Either way they’re good things, so there’s no harm in building them.

AS: [Laughs] OK. We’re starting to run out of time. Is there something else you would like tell our listeners at this point?

SC: Ah, that’s always a difficult question… I think the key thing is really to follow your passions, regardless of where it leads. I mean, if you feel like “ah, this climate change thing really just leaves me cold, and I can see that it’s incredibly important and I can see that it’s this huge world changing thing that is coming, but what I really want to be doing is making documentaries” or whatever that person’s passion is… creating great art… I think it’s very important that we do follow our passions.

There’s a quote that always inspired me which is “don’t ask what the world needs, ask what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive”. There’s a guy here called David Attenborough who is a wildlife documentary maker for the BBC, and he has been doing that for his whole life – he’s getting on a bit now – and he’s generally regarded in all the polls on such things as the most trusted figure in Britain because we all learned about nature by watching his programmes. And when he came out in one of his programmes and said something like “the only question remaining on climate change now is whether it’s going to be a disaster or an outright catastrophe”, that was one of the key moments in our country for shifting the whole debate, the whole perspective, because everyone is so used to his word being law on the things he talks about. And I found that so interesting because I thought if he’d given up his passion to be a wildlife documentary maker and gone and spent his life campaigning on climate he might never had made as much impact on that very different issue as he did by doing the thing which made him come alive. So I think would be my one thing for people to take home. Don’t give up on what you’re passionate about. It’ll be useful.

AS: That is a beautiful vision.

I’m Alex Smith for Radio Ecoshock. Our guest has been Shaun Chamberlin. He’s working on a report to the British Parliament on energy rationing, his latest book is The Transition Timeline for a local, resilient future. And you can get that book, and a lot more of his stimulating views, at his blog: www.darkoptimism.org. Shaun, thank you so much for sharing all of this with us.

SC: Thanks, it’s been a pleasure.

(Alex Smith’s writeup can be found here)

So the big day finally came and went, and glorious it was too. I’m still smiling from the wonderful energy of it all. Pause a moment to take in the brilliance of the TTK cake (TT Kake?) before clicking through to a peek at the many-splendoured event itself, including a chance to see the accomplished and inspired short movie of TTK‘s story to date that premièred on the night.

The energy levels never dropped after the buzz of the children’s hour that kicked the day off, with gleeful kids seeing a real bee hive, making puppets out of plastic bags, writing poetry, getting faces painted etc etc while the parents browsed the stalls of local green businesses and organisations…

Next, local inspiration Robin Hutchinson entertainingly introduced talks from our local MPs (although this close to the election he had to describe them as “Parliamentary candidates who you may remember from their previous jobs”!), our mayor, the head of the Council, me and the ever-entertaining David Fleming, back by popular demand, who hesitated to despoil the cake by doing us the honour of cutting it.

We also received a congratulatory video message from Rob Hopkins before a planned Open Space session, in which we faced the real challenge of getting everyone to stop having passionate, deeply involved conversations long enough so that we could explain to them how wonderfully Open Space could facilitate such conversations.

With Prisca Baron singing to a rapt audience of children and adults alike, DJ Matt providing the soundtrack late into the night and Toni Izard and family laying on an amazing spread of food and refreshments, it felt like a real triumph of community spirit, with smiles on the faces of old stalwarts and total newcomers alike.

I didn’t manage to get a handle on the numbers there (perhaps 250??), but it was great to see so many unfamiliar faces mingling happily, and contributing to the Kingston Timeline that we pinned to the wall (see some of the ideas it produced here).

Even the venue itself felt like a new ally, as almost everyone attending had never set foot in Kingston Working Men’s Club before, despite its location tucked away right in the heart of Kingston. A great many more people know it’s there now, and hopefully a few lasting connections have been forged.

For me personally, the two particular highlights in a night of delights were the deliciously brilliant (and brilliantly delicious!) cake – or actually three cakes – and the TTK movie. Credit for the first, and for the photos featured here, goes to our talented trio Libby, Jonny and Maria, AKA Caking Agent.

The second was the work of Elise Toogood and Nick Barron of Tenth Egg, and you can see it in all its glory below. As both cake and film were only finished in the early hours of the morning of the event, both were genuine surprises even for those of us heavily involved in pulling the event together.

Films at their best have a wonderful way of evoking a sense of overarching narrative, and for me personally it was a delight to feel this as I watched it. Despite knowing all of the projects featured – or perhaps because of that – it was deeply satisfying to see the different threads pulled together into this tapestry.

Many thanks too to those who organised the surprise for the six of us on TTK’s Temporary Steering Group, pulling us on stage to present each of us with our very own blueberry bush! It would be impossible to mention everyone who made the event possible, but hopefully they all enjoyed it as much as I did.

I will add more photos below as they come in, including the happy crowds and impressive before and after pics from the decoration efforts on Friday evening.

My apologies if this post is rather excitable – I can only confess that I’m still excited! Just as an Unleashing should, this has reminded me what a marvellous community I live in, and feels like a historic launchpad to a happier, more thrivacious Kingston!

picture courtesy of Simone Kay

Poetry workshop

Bags created on the day, picture courtesy of Simone Kay

Making puppets from plastic bags

Stalls and info from TTK groups, local businesses and organisations

Me speaking about the origins of Transition and TTK

Our local MPs, Ed Davey and Susan Kramer

David Fleming speaking

Closeups of the magnificent cake

David Fleming does the honours

Rob Hopkins’ video message

Kingston’s Mayor addresses the crowd

Organising the Open Space, raffle etc.

The fantastic spread put on by Toni Izard and family

Prisca Baron singing

Visitors from other Transition initiatives

TTK give a gift to the Steering Group – thanks all!

Libby and Maria – two of the cake conjurers!

Dancing late into the night

Photos from TTK’s history to date, mixed with relevant and inspiring quotes

The Kingston timeline, created by Big Launch attendees

Above is an interview I did last week with Canada’s excellent Radio Ecoshock. The full 60 minute show can be heard on Energy Bulletin here.

Dark Optimism readers may also be particularly interested in Ecoshock’s recent “Expecting Collapse” edition, featuring interviews with Dmitry Orlov and John Michael Greer, as well as clips from Professor Joseph Tainter.

Apologies to all those who’ve been visiting looking for this, I’ve been laid up in bed for the past couple of days.

Edit – Christopher Fraser of London Transition has kindly transcribed this interview in full. Available here.

Following on from our success in the local Green Awards, TTK has won ‘Green Group of the Year’ at the South London Awards. I was also highly commended in the Green Champion category, with my indefatigable friend Lucy Neal of Transition Town Tooting the deserving new holder of the title of Southwest London Green Champion.

With the groundbreaking Our Kingston, Our Future documentary-creation and workshops also set to take place on the weekend of March 20th and 21st, our list of things to celebrate is now in desperate need of some attention, so thank heavens the Great Unleashing of TTK (AKA The Big Launch Party) on Sat 17th April is edging ever closer. Old stalwarts and total strangers equally welcome at the party!

Despite the seemingly unnecessary opulence of the 5-star setting, the awards event itself was fairly enjoyable, as TTK’s Temporary Steering Group (that’s the six of us to the right of the photo, with Lucy Siegle) rarely get together without seventeen thousand items on the agenda, so it was nice to kick back and relax for once. Having said that, I skilfully avoided the moral dilemma of the HSBC-sponsored drinks bash by the expedient of a delayed train, so I didn’t do quite as much relaxing as the others!

So here it is, the final proof that all Transitioners (me included) have been brainwashed to think alike! Two other vids, and an explanation of where they all came from, below the cut.

Transition: What’s that all about then?

What’s your ‘Transition Vision’?

These three videos were made by Andreas Teuchert via a simple process. He roamed the 2009 Transition Conference, pouncing on unsuspecting passers by and dragging us into a dark room to point a camera at us and probe us with questions. Then he took the footage away and edited it up into the finished videos you see before you. Good work!

For those who may be interested in attending, details of this year’s Transition Conference(s) can be found here.

Last night saw this year’s local Green Awards ceremony, organised by the Royal Borough of Kingston and the Kingston Guardian newspaper.

We were delighted that Transition Town Kingston beat off around twenty nominees to win the Green Group award, and that I am now Kingston’s ‘Green Champion’!

(If they try to send me out to battle the mighty Red Champion of a neighbouring borough I’ll point out that they have the wrong man, as evidenced by the typo below)

Last year we were also nominated for both awards, but demurred, as we felt that we hadn’t yet done enough to deserve them, and that there were more worthy recipients. This year we were happy to accept our nominations, and even happier to win! Two other members of TTK also received commendations for their individual efforts over the past year (congratulations Marilyn and Elise!), and it was great to see how intertwined TTK has already become with other Green initiatives across the Borough.

The prize of an apple tree was very well-chosen too, and I will soon be planting mine in pride of place in our front garden. Any suggestions from locals as to where the TTK tree should go are very welcome.

I must confess I have sometimes wondered what the usefulness of such awards ceremonies is, but nonetheless I found I was gladdened by both wins, and have decided to abandon cynicism and treat the awards as tools for raising the profile of the work we are doing, and hopefully amplifying our impact.

As local winners we now go forward to the regional awards in February. I will admit to more misgivings about that, featuring as it does a lavish dinner at a five star hotel, an HSBC sponsorship and a range of prizes including the most surreal ‘green’ prize I’ve yet come across…

“A picnic activity bench made from recycled Waitrose ‘Bags for Life’ bags, worth £500″ (to who, one wonders?)

Still, we’ll see how it goes!

Above is a recording of a quick interview I gave immediately after speaking at the Scottish Parliament earlier this year, as part of the Holyrood 350 campaign.

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!