All Party Parliamentary TEQs report – rationing, not carbon trading

All Party Parliamentary TEQs report – rationing, not carbon trading

As the evidence for the utter inapplicability of free market carbon trading to our climate emergency continues to pile up, interest continues to grow in the less PR-friendly alternative - the rationing of carbon-rated energy. Yesterday, the UK Government's All Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil and Gas previewed a draft report commissioned from The Lean Economy Connection. The report, which I co-authored with Dr. David Fleming, emphasises the necessity of considering our pressing energy challenges alongside climate change, and argues that national energy rationing systems on the model of TEQs (Tradable Energy Quotas) will be essential to the fair distribution of fuel as shortages unfold, with implementation now an urgent priority for the UK. John Hemming MP, Chairman of the All Party group, stated that the UK government remains unprepared for peak oil: "The evidence is now strong that peak oil is either upon us or just over the horizon. Even the International Energy Agency accepts that an oil supply crunch seems to be on its way. The UK government should urgently consider the TEQs system, as I believe it's the only comprehensive and fair way to tackle climate change and the coming oil crisis." "The alternative to rationing by tradable quotas is to hold back consumption through massive price increases. This gives economic instability, unemployment and fuel poverty. We need to plan for a system to give some stability in what will soon be a sellers market for fossil fuels rather than a buyers market." Alternative route TEQs were also the subject of a Parliamentary Westminster Hall debate on the 18th June, called by the Chairman of the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee, after the EAC came out firmly in favour of what they term 'Personal Carbon Trading' (PCT) following DEFRA's pre-feasibility study in May 2008. Despite their welcome enthusiasm, I do find this 're-branding' of the debate somewhat pernicious. Of course it is to some extent understandable - politicians deal in public consent, and words like "quotas" and "rationing" bring with them the distinctly unwelcome connotations of shortage and war. Indeed, perhaps only truly horrific words like "taxation" would rank lower in a popularity contest. Yet a moment's thought shows us that this bad name is undeserved - rationing is a response to hard times, not the cause of them, and in times of shortage we cry out for fair shares. We need only imagine wartime Britain without a rationing system. The difficulty today is perhaps that the electorate do not yet recognise the scale or urgency of the energy/climate problem we face, and so are more than happy to do without the inconvenience a solution might bring. WWII travel poster Still, politics is politics, we might think, and in a democracy ideas must be 'sold' to the electorate (here H.L. Mencken comes to mind: "Democracy is the system where everybody gets what the majority deserve"). Yet despite the names "PCT" and "TEQs" often being used interchangeably, the distinction between the two is not merely a matter of marketing, it is the distinction between two discrete schemes, and between two very different cultural approaches. It is the distinction between a system that maximises economic growth and hopes to reduce emissions, and one that guarantees emissions reductions and lets the market (and citizens, businesses, communities...) figure out the best solutions within that context. It is the distinction between a 'market-based framework' (a la the ineffectual EU ETS) and a framework within which the market is constrained. When it comes down to it, there is no getting away from the fact that it is not PCT - an extension of the discredited carbon trading model to the level of the individual - that we need, but TEQs - energy rationing - with the size of our rations determined by energy availability and the latest science on retaining a hospitable climate. It is true that trading is a necessary part of such a scheme (both since prohibiting the exchange of rations in the past has always led to substantial black market activity, and since certain vocations intrinsically require more energy, meaning that a non-tradable equal entitlement would simply destroy many professions) but it is not the essence of the scheme. The heart of the scheme is a non-negotiable respect for the limits set by physical reality, and a desire to harness the collective genius of the populace in thriving within those limits. Sadly, the slightly subtle distinction between the necessity of utilising trading in an energy rationing scheme, and the insanity of 'trading as replacement for solution', leaves plenty of ground for the professional spin doctors to confuse those who don't have time to unpick the differences, leading us ever closer to the non-solution of a scheme designed to pander to the popular pretence that we can simply ignore the realities of our time. Indifference --- The Dutch edition of David Fleming's seminal description of TEQs - Energy and the Common Purpose - has also recently been published.
Despairing of Ed Miliband, Becoming a Filmstar, and Other Adventures

Despairing of Ed Miliband, Becoming a Filmstar, and Other Adventures

It has been another crazy whirlwind of a month, with this weekend set to be the first in five which I get to spend in Transition Town Home, having spoken recently in Bungay, Glastonbury, Belsize Park and the Forest of Dean, as well at the Transition Conference (I hate that name, can't we call it a 'Gathering' or something?) in Battersea, and at the Sunrise Celebration Festival. 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. Ed Miliband at the Transition Conference 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). Ed Miliband at the Transition Conference 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!
Kew Gardens
The Transition Timeline – a closer look

The Transition Timeline – a closer look

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. Timeline Four Scenarios 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. Road Ahead Closed - BAU 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. Morning - http://www.pbfcomics.com/ 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
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. Consumption vs 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 opportunity to support my work by ordering a signed copy see here. The Transition Timeline - back cover and spine “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 MP, 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
The Crash Course at Christmas

The Crash Course at Christmas

I spent a few hours this Christmas watching former Pfizer Vice President Chris Martenson's Crash Course, which undertakes the daunting task of presenting the overarching interplay of economics, energy and environment in today's world, and doing it in a friendly, accessible way. He does an impressive job, and it's all broken down into easily digestible videos from 2-15 minutes long. His simple indisputable explanations of topics such as why economic growth does not equal prosperity are invaluable, but most impressive to me was the clarity with which Chris distinguishes between his own beliefs and the facts he is sharing which have shaped those beliefs. For example, he states up front his belief that "the next twenty years are going to be completely unlike the past twenty years", and then shows us just which facts have led him to that belief. It becomes hard to disagree. Chris has utterly reshaped his own life in the light of these understandings, and his website is a free and invaluable resource for those of us who see the turmoil in the economic system, but perhaps as yet lack an in-depth understanding of the underlying trends, laws and habits that have driven us into utterly uncharted territory and mortgaged our right to a future. For me personally it is also a launchpad for my New Year's resolution to gain a deeper understanding of the economic systems which are determining our society's key decisions in these critical times. Wherever you are, I hope you have enjoyed a delightful Christmas, but if you share the common assumption that coming Christmases will look similar for you and your family, I recommend sitting back and re-examining that dangerous belief in the company of the Crash Course. The Bailout - coming soon to the UK
Why our cultural stories matter

Why our cultural stories matter

"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. If voting changed anything... 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. Buy Consume Waste! 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.