by Shaun Chamberlin | Nov 30, 2014 | All Posts, Articles
Originally published as the editorial of the Fall/Winter 2014 edition of the
Kosmos journal.
The online version of the editorial can be found here.
If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. And if you want to transform…?
---
Sometimes we meet a young person who continues to hold a deep place in our minds and hearts long afterwards. I met Shaun briefly at the New Story Summit. It felt as though I had known him forever. The future of humanity and the hope of the world is with such talented and dedicated youth. I want to honor his work by sharing one of his essays.
~ Nancy Roof, editor, Kosmos journal
---
Like all the best tales, ours opens with music, and with Mark Kidel's Resurgence article Conversation and Crossroads: "Some of the most powerful - and healing - forms of music combine strict 'ways' of doing things with free expression and the possibilities of interpretation or improvisation… Wisdom and experience have suggested, in every corner of the world, that excessive self-expression is self-defeating and just as destructive as an over-zealous observance of rules and regulations. There is a need for a middle way which balances 'hot' and 'cool': the release of deep emotion with the articulacy and sophistication of formal aesthetic structures…
Whereas the enjoyment of pleasure was never frowned upon in the African context, it was set within a deeply rooted sense of ethical and aesthetic 'right behaviour' (as well as a strongly hierarchical community structure which held potential excess in check, and understood, in a highly sophisticated way, the need to balance creative self-expression with collective interaction and mutual support). In the African and African-American context, the dancer who goes into trance is always being controlled in some sense by a divinity or spirits, so there is an element of ritual theatre which contains the fragility of the individual ego. Similarly, at celebrations, no dancer hogs the floor for longer than a minute or two, reaching a brief climax, but not prolonging the transcendent thrill of near-ecstatic movement and expression beyond what is in some way 'safe' or acceptable in terms of strictly personal as opposed to collective expression."
Upon reading this I was powerfully struck by the concept of a community holding an artist safe while he or she explores the wilder reaches of individual expression. As Kidel goes on to argue, the absence of this protective tradition around Western rock music can be seen in the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison, who in the context of a culture entranced by individualism, found their lives overwhelmed and consumed by the awesome powers unrestrained artistic expression can unleash.
But these ideas have a far wider application. Rock music has merely reflected western philosophy and culture in its deification of the individual. When existentialism announced that 'existence precedes essence' - that we simply exist, and that any meaning we might then attribute to this 'blank slate' existence is solely created by ourselves and our own choices - we assumed that the 'we' in question must be our individual selves.
Our culture has moved further and further away from any sense of the collective, let alone concepts like oneness with Nature, or with all of creation, or even (Science forbid) God.
And it is this philosophy of 'individualist existentialism' - deeply embedded in our culture - that leads to the pervasive story that while some might find their meaning and fulfillment in trying to assure the future of endangered species, or disadvantaged humans, or even life itself, others may find theirs in greed, gluttony and destructiveness. For the true believer, there is no contradiction here because there is no underlying meaning to seek - only individual constructs.
Within the tenets of Western philosophy it appears a logically unassailable position given that everything is fundamentally meaningless and the freedom of the individual is simply self-evident, what possible reason could there be to cease doing whatever I may fancy?
There seem to me to be two key answers to this question. The first is consequences. What I fancy now may not produce what I fancy tomorrow. If I choose to attach meaning or desirability to a reliable electricity supply, or food supply, then there are certain things I should really pay attention to.
But the second is empathy. While we may feel less empathy with beings more different or distant from ourselves, few of us would claim to feel no empathy at all. There is perhaps a sliding scale from total individualism to the sense of oneness with everything that is described in many of the Eastern mystical traditions, as well as among earlier representatives of the Abrahamic religions like Christianity. It is no coincidence that we tend to find individualists despoiling our common environment and those at the holistic end of the scale defending it.
Existentialist individualism argues that one's position on this scale is a fundamentally meaningless personal decision. Our innate sense of empathy might whisper otherwise, but our scientific understanding of collective consequences like climate change forces us to recognise that even if individual freedom is our sole aim, we still have to change course, as the consequences of our actions will seriously curtail the future choices facing both ourselves and the rest of life on Earth.
Viewed from this perspective, climate change represents the death of passive individualism as a coherent philosophy.
So when Kidel speaks of the highly sophisticated understanding African cultures have of "the need to balance creative self-expression with collective interaction and mutual support", he is not just talking about a better way to dance, he is speaking of the very cultural wisdom we need to build the future we deserve.
-
An extended version of this piece was first published on Dark Optimism in 2008, with this abridged version first appearing in The Future We Deserve in 2012.
by Shaun Chamberlin | Jan 31, 2013 | All Posts, Articles
Published in the January 2013 issue of Country Smallholding magazine.
A PDF of the full illustrated feature (including comment pieces from others) can be found here. The magazine's editorial also concerned itself with the topics raised.
A shorter version of the article was previously published in the Winter 2012 issue of Permaculture magazine. A PDF of that illustrated article can be found here.
And the Spring 2015 issue of STIR magazine featured an updated version, taking a different slant, which can be found here.
An imaginative and exciting scheme was launched to provide would-be smallholders with affordable land and low-impact dwellings. But then it was blocked by a local council, and has now gone to appeal. The story highlights how our planning process can frustrate so many 'good life' dreams. Shaun Chamberlin, who helped launch the scheme, explains
---
Nearly half of the UK's land is owned by just 40,000 people (0.06% of the population).1 For those Country Smallholding readers only too familiar with the difficulties in securing affordable access to land, this will not be a comforting statistic.
Such land ownership 'by the few' tends to favour uniform, large-scale, mechanised agriculture, yet with the UK population having swelled by 4 million over the past decade, it becomes ever more pertinent that such farms have long been known to produce far less food per acre than smaller holdings (let's not even mention the relative productivity of grouse moors or golf courses!).2
This may seem counter-intuitive - we all know that many smaller farms have been forced out of business due to being economically uncompetitive - but in fact it is not a lack of productivity that causes small farms to suffer in our modern economy. Their first problem is that although they can produce substantially more food per acre, the big farms can produce more of a given monoculture crop per acre, which suits the large-scale centralised buyers (the supermarkets, who, incidentally, reportedly receive planning permission for a new UK store every working day of the year). The greater challenge facing smallholders, however, is that their higher productivity per acre relies on higher employment. Just as the most productive parts of large farms famously tend to be the farmers' gardens, where more time and attention is lavished on each plant among a diverse crop, smallholdings rely on careful human attention, which can be a major expense. Large-scale mechanised farms, on the other hand, have echoed other industries in taking advantage of fuel prices over recent decades to replace human care with cheap fossil energy, standardisation and monoculture. Yet with finite fossil fuel supplies depleting and oil prices having tripled over the past decade, the balance is shifting.
Smallholdings and horticulture, then, offer a crucial contribution towards higher employment, a reliable, home-grown food supply for the UK (rising energy prices are also a threat to cheap imports) and a diverse and thus more ecologically healthy countryside.
Unfortunately though, this welcome initiative was launched in 1934, and was wound up - with all the holdings privatised - in 1983, by which point the LSA was producing around 40% of English home grown salad crops. The subsidies (and research funding) in place today are far more supportive of big agribusiness than of any modern equivalent of the LSA, but it nevertheless provides a practical example of what could be done.3
Back in the 1930s the primary motivation for supporting smallholdings in this way was to provide jobs for the unemployed, but the need for similar provision is perhaps more acute than ever today in the face of our profound environmental crisis. Industrialised agriculture is a major contributor to climate destabilisation, soil depletion and numerous other problems, while smallholdings provide an ideal context for diverse, low-carbon, localised lifestyles that could provide a desperately needed model for true sustainability.
Meanwhile, UK agriculture is suffering from a lack of new blood - the average age of a UK farm holder is now 58 - since private farms are now generally far too large for would-be new farmers to afford, and the 'County Farms' made available to new entrants by local authorities (around 40% of which are under 50 acres in size) are gradually being sold off as the austerity funding cuts bite ever harder.
Fair to say, then, that productive smallholdings could represent a key response to many of our most pressing social, economic and ecological problems. And, as the popularity of Country Smallholding attests, there is also a great appetite for the lifestyle they provide. Yet extortionate land prices and the intricate absurdities of the planning permission system combine to make the simple aim of living on and working a piece of land seem an unattainable dream for most of us.
What is to be done?
This collective plight led to energetic discussions in the spring of 2005 between members of Chapter 7, the ecological planning consultancy; Radical Routes, a secondary co-operative of co-operatives working for social change; Somerset Co-operative Services, a co-op development body; and farms and eco-communities like Landmatters, Lammas, Highbury Farm and Five Penny Farm.
We were yearning for a vibrant, living countryside in which humans flourish alongside our cherished landscapes and natural biodiversity, with small land-based enterprises providing meaningful employment while allowing residents to be rooted in rural communities and play a crucial role in ensuring food and energy sovereignty. We were longing for a proliferation of happy rural lifestyles, helping to maintain traditional skills and improve ecological literacy while providing access to local, sustainable crafts and food, as well as educational opportunities for urban visitors.
And, as so often when such breathy, passionate desires are unleashed, a child was eventually born - the Ecological Land Co-operative, a project created to provide affordable opportunities for new viable, ecologically beneficial projects to find land.
The basic idea of the Co-operative is that it buys land that has been, or is at risk of being, intensively managed, then uses its expertise and experience to oversee the process of securing planning permission for low-impact residences on site. Once this is achieved, the land is made available at an affordable price to people that have the skills to manage it ecologically but who could not otherwise afford to do so. The money received when the new residents buy their land is then used to purchase another intensively managed site, where the same process can begin, allowing more land to be 'rescued' from industrialised agriculture.
Prospective residents of a piece of land are only asked to buy in once planning permission for their homes is secured, but they do have to sign up to a strict management plan which requires that the land is always managed so as to maintain and enhance habitats, species diversity and landscape quality, and to facilitate the provision of low-impact livelihoods. There are also conditions stipulating that if they ever want to sell up and move on, the land must be sold on at an affordable price, so that the land is never priced out of reach. Beyond that, the land will be theirs to run as they see fit.
That was the idea. How about the reality?
Well, as an informal group, we received some early funding from the Co-operative Group in the South West for scoping and feasibility work, and at later stages in our development from the Co-operative Fund, Business Link and the Polden-Puckham Charitable Foundation. These helped us find our feet and put basic organisational structures in place.
In 2009 we sold community shares to finance the purchase of our first land, a 22-acre site on the Devon/Somerset border which we christened Greenham Reach. We have divided this land into three plots, in order to allow each of three 'clustered' smallholdings the independence to build their own dwelling and manage their land as they wish, while also enjoying the benefits of a small community for tool-sharing, sociability, mutual support etc. Accordingly, we also plan to provide some infrastructure to be shared between the three smallholdings - a timber barn with solar PV array and rainwater collection; improved access; a biological waste water treatment system and internal pathways linking the plots.
Unfortunately, shortly after our land purchase, the setbacks began, firstly in working with a planning agent who appears to have misled us and who failed to submit valid planning applications on our behalf on three separate occasions. This depressing episode set the project back by around a year, but we will definitely be wiser next time around.
Our original hopes to secure planning permission for the site before inviting applications from potential plotholders were also thwarted, as the District Council informed us that they wanted to see individual business plans from the prospective residents before they would consider granting permission. Accordingly, we advertised and went through a selection process last year, selecting from the applicants on a number of criteria including their farming and horticultural experience, vision and plans for the land, experience of low impact living and connection with the locality.
Together with our new intended plotholders, we then submitted the full applications for the three plots at the turn of the year, doing it ourselves this time. They ran to over 400 pages of careful documentation, and more than sixty letters of support were also received by the Council, including from experienced organic smallholders; local residents; the Soil Association; the Transition Network; Sustrans; Colin Tudge's Campaign for Real Farming; Food Policy Professor Tim Lang and other academics; three MPs and even the Scottish Crofting Federation. A particularly heartening letter came from a planner of over 30 years' experience, who described our work as "by some way the most carefully prepared applications for either an agricultural and/or low impact dwelling I have considered".
Nonetheless, much like every other similar low-impact proposal, in June we attended a hearing to witness the rejection of our applications by the councillors on Mid Devon District Council's planning committee. The vote for rejection (by a six to two majority, with three abstaining) was based on their vague statements that smallholdings are not "serious farming", that the business plans (despite being carefully reviewed by a number of agricultural experts) "do not stack up" and that off-grid renewables are "not practical". None of these are valid planning considerations, and we have good reasons to believe that we may win on appeal, as others have; not least because we are one of the few applications of this type to win the support of both the local Parish Council and the planning officers who spent the best part of a year carefully going through our applications. Going through the appeal process is of course more work and more delay, but it will all be worth it to ultimately see (quite literally) the fruits of our labours.
Small Is Successful
Our spirits have also been bolstered by grateful contact from others who have found it helpful to use and amend the documentation that we have produced for our applications (available on our website) in their own efforts to secure planning permission for land-based projects. We have also produced the Small is Successful report, which examined eight existing smallholdings with land-based businesses on ten acres or less. These documented examples demonstrate that economically viable and highly sustainable land based livelihoods can be created on such smallholdings, without the need for the subsidies on which large farms so often rely. The Research Council UK showcased Small is Successful as one of a hundred pieces of UK research "that will have a profound effect on our future", and we have also presented our message at the House of Commons, to the All Party Parliamentary Group for Agroecology.
All in all, it has been a long struggle since those idealistic conversations seven years ago, but we believe that we are now closing in on the great satisfaction of having something simple and solid to show for our efforts - smallholders living on and working the land who would otherwise have been unable to do so. Appeal inspector permitting, we expect to reach this landmark early next year.
It will be a small beginning, perhaps, but we are already looking to apply the invaluable experience gained to date by finding further suitable land to make available in future. We dare to dream that it could be the start of a real solution to the thorny problem of land access here in the UK.
---
To find out more, take a look at our website: http://ecologicalland.coop/ Or follow us on Twitter: @EcoLandCoop You can also join our mailing list by emailing: zoe@ecologicalland.coop Any offers of time or assistance in our efforts also greatly appreciated, to the same email address.~~~
Endnotes
1) Kevin Cahill, Who Owns Britain, Canongate, 2001.
2) See e.g. Peter Rossett (1999), "The Multiple Functions and Benefits of Small-Scale Agriculture", The Institute for Food and Development Policy, 1999.
Gershon Feder (1985), "The Relationship between Farm Size and Farm Productivity", Journal of Development Economics 18: 297-313.
Parviz Koohafkan, Miguel A. Altieri & Eric Holt Gimenez (2011), "Green Agriculture: foundations for biodiverse, resilient and productive agricultural systems", International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability.
3) Dr. Peter Clarke, The Land Settlement Association: The return of the unemployed to the land 1934 - 1982.
by Shaun Chamberlin | Jun 30, 2012 | All Posts, Articles
Originally published in the June 2012 issue of Transition Free Press.
The full edition of the paper can be read here. This interview appears on pages 8-9.
In the first in our series of conversations with key thinkers and activists within the Transition movement, Charlotte Du Cann talks with Shaun Chamberlin about cultural stories, collaboration and the future.
---
In 2000 Shaun Chamberlin, a student of philosophy, received an email from his father out of the blue. By the way that future you were expecting is not going to happen. Here's a link showing how the next decade is going to be all about resource wars and energy depletion. Just thought you ought to know, hope you are well...
It was, he said, his 'peak oil moment'. The moment he started to immerse himself in what was then an obscure subject and that led him six years later to a course at Schumacher College called Life After Oil. Here he met the environmental and alternative economics thinker, David Fleming, whom he would work alongside until Fleming's death in 2010. He also met Rob Hopkins, who soon commissioned him to write a report on the UK climate/energy crisis that became the book, The Transition Timeline.
"Many communities were finding it difficult to produce their local Energy Descent Action Plan (on which Transition is based)," he told me in a conversation we held on Skype, speaking from his home town of Kingston. "They knew about their local resources and skills, but needed help understanding the big scale things that were likely to affect them, such as climate change or UK food supply or national policy. How can we plan for our communities if we don't know the context we are moving into? Without the bigger picture how can we know what we are grappling with?"
Three years ago most Transition initiatives were immersed in practical issues like alternative energy or awareness raising. The one change we had not anticipated was the way we would think and speak about the world:
"What ties everything together and makes meaning are our cultural stories. For the book I talked to hundreds of people and found that the dominant narratives of our future fell into three categories: business as usual (nothing really changes), doom of one kind of another (our time is up) and the myth of progress (we are the most advanced society ever known and our manifest destiny leads to some perfect Star Trek future).
"It's easy to see why people are most drawn to this last story, Technotopia. The problem is the reality doesn't bear it out. This Most Advanced Culture Ever has higher levels of depression and inequality than ever and is destroying the ecological systems that support everything that is alive on the planet, so it's hard to justify the idea we are moving towards a better future.
"So we thought what we needed was another positive narrative about the future which is just as embedded as the other stories in our everyday culture, but one that reflects scientific evidence and the reality of what is happening in our world. A Transition vision. That's what the book is about."
Much of Shaun's own story is set within this fourth narrative. As well as co-founding Transition Town Kingston (TTK), he has contributed chapters to several books, served as an advisor to the Department of Energy and Climate Change, co-authored the latest report from the All Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil and Gas, and helped both edit Mark Boyle's upcoming The Moneyless Manifesto and bring David Fleming's encyclopedic Lean Logic into print.
Fleming also invented a system known as Tradable Energy Quotas (TEQs), a rationing scheme that works to ensure energy for all in times of scarcity. Subtle and clever in its design, Shaun explained, but easy to use (much like an Oyster card).
"It would guarantee that we meet our emission reductions and most importantly support the active co-operation of all the energy users in a society in rapidly reducing their reliance on fossil fuels. David once said: large scale problems like climate change and peak oil do not require large scale solutions; they require small scale solutions within a large scale framework. Emissions ultimately come from people's lifestyles, so you could have a perfect global agreement, but if no one actually acted on the local level, nothing would happen. What you need is a framework that stimulates and supports that local action in a fair way. TEQs provides that framework and sense of common purpose."
I'm aware the conversation has shifted radically since I first met Shaun when he was the key speaker at an event organised by our local Transition group in Suffolk. We are now talking far more about the collective picture: the economic system, activist movements that work alongside Transition, like Occupy, and land rights co-operatives. But most of all about how this shift brings us all together as people:
"Robert Newman, the comic, once told me that the worst possible thing is feeling alone with the apocalypse. It causes you to doubt your sanity and slip into a doom mindset. As soon as you start actually doing something and facing reality, you realise you are not alone and there are people working world-wide for a better future.
"Transition doesn't work in isolation. It's part of an enormous movement that Paul Hawken once described as the earth's immune system rising up to protect itself. What Transition does uniquely well within that is its outreach role, the way it can share that fourth, hopeful, narrative. It meets people where they are at and exposes them to ideas that maybe they haven't come across before.
"One thing we need to challenge is the idealisation of financial independence in our culture. You are never truly independent, because your food and your services are still produced by someone, it's just someone you don't meet or care about. The Green Movement has its own version of this idealised independence, called self-sufficiency.
"What makes us happy though is interdependence, and the loneliness that pervades modern culture is in great part because people are 'financially independent'. If they fall out with someone they can just pay someone else instead. It's why community building often fails: we think if we go along every Tuesday at 7pm and do community it will create one. It doesn't work like that."
So our conversation centred on what interdependence might look like, what TTK has achieved in the last 5 years, but mostly about the future. "What is the ultimate time line?" I asked him. Shaun laughed. "I guess there a difference between what I see is the most likely scenario and the one I'm working for.
"As Hawken said, 'If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren't pessimistic, you don't understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren't optimistic, you haven't got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world.'
"I think that sums it up: scientifically speaking, it's not pretty, but if you look at the response of that 'immune system' it is deeply inspiring. Spiritually speaking, I believe I chose on some level to come into history at this particular juncture, to be what I believe in, to try and make things better, and be the most loving, hopeful and inspiring I can be and ultimately none of the stuff that is going on in the world stops me doing that, so in that way it's a wonderful time to be alive."
That's dark optimism for you.
-
Charlotte Du Cann is the Editor of Transition Free Press. A writer and community activist, involved with both Sustainable Bungay and Transition Norwich, she has also been the driving force behind the Transition Social Reporters Project.
by Shaun Chamberlin | Jan 24, 2011 | All Posts, Articles
Originally published at The Oil Drum on Jan 24, 2011.
Reaction and comments on the article can be found here.
On the 18th January 2011, the UK's All Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil (APPGOPO) launched their report into the TEQs (Tradable Energy Quotas) system of energy rationing.
Speakers included two Members of Parliament - John Hemming MP, Chair of APPGOPO and Caroline Lucas MP, author of the 2006 peak oil report Fuelling a Fuel Crisis. Also speaking were Jeremy Leggett, convenor of the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security and Shaun Chamberlin, co-author of the new report. Copies of the report, answers to Frequently Asked Questions, video footage of the launch event and links to the media coverage can be found at: http://www.teqs.net/
John Hemming MP, Chair of APPGOPO: "I believe TEQs provide the fairest and most productive way to deal with the oil crisis and to simultaneously guarantee reductions in fossil fuel use to meet climate change targets" (the UK Climate Change Act mandates 80% emissions cuts by 2050).
Political progress
APPGOPO's endorsement of TEQs comes at an interesting time in the rationing system's progress towards political acceptability. The inventor of TEQs, Dr. David Fleming (who passed away in November 2010), was a close friend of ASPO's Colin Campbell and one of the early whistleblowers on peak oil, and designed TEQs explicitly to address peak oil as well as climate change. He first published on the system in 1996, but its profile has grown in tandem with that of the challenges it was designed to address.
TEQs first received a Ten Minute Rule Bill reading at Parliament in 2004, before extensive interest from research centres led to a Government-funded scoping study in 2006. This reached positive conclusions, and was followed by expressions of interest from successive Secretaries of State for the Environment.
Accordingly, the Government commissioned a pre-feasibility study into the system, which concluded in May 2008. The headline finding of this was that TEQs "has potential to engage individuals in taking action to combat climate change, but is essentially ahead of its time and expected costs for implementation are high... The Government remains interested in the concept and, although it will not be continuing its research programme at this stage, it will monitor the wealth of research focusing on this area and may introduce (TEQs) if the value of savings and cost implications change".
The new APPGOPO report pulls together an impressive range of research to demonstrate conclusively that this condition has now been met, with bodies such as the Institute for Public Policy Research, the Lean Economy Connection, the Centre for Sustainable Energy and the UK Parliament's own Environmental Audit Committee all having criticised the pre-feasibility study's methodology and the decision to delay further moves towards implementation. One of the key criticisms is that the pre-feasibility study's cost-benefit analysis was overly focused on carbon emissions, and entirely failed to take into account the benefits of ensuring fair access to energy.
More detail on the political progress to date is in Chapter 6 of the report, and links to the various reports and articles examining TEQs have been collected on the TEQs website here, including details of the world's first tradable carbon rationing system in a 'closed system' island environment, being run by Australia's Southern Cross University and starting in 2011.
Caroline Lucas MP, Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, and author of Fuelling a Food Crisis: "The TEQs system would guarantee that the UK's targeted carbon reductions are actually achieved, while ensuring fair shares of available energy".
How TEQs would work
So how does TEQs work, and how does it deal with the challenges that all rationing systems face?
TEQs is an energy rationing system designed to cover a nation's whole economy, within which individual adults would receive an equal per capita Entitlement of electronic TEQs units, free-of-charge. Organisations, the government and all other energy users would have to buy their units at a Tender, or auction. The number of units issued into the economy via the weekly Entitlement and Tender would be determined by either the availability of energy resources or the national carbon budget - whichever represents the tighter constraint on the national economy at any given time.
The weekly auction would also generate a price for TEQs units, and all buying and selling of units within the nation would take place at that price (which would, of course, fluctuate in line with demand).
The purchase of any fuel or electricity within the national economy would require the surrender of TEQs units, alongside the usual monetary payment. Each TEQs unit would allow for the purchase of a set quantity of fuel or electricity. If the system were being used to address energy resource shortages, this quantity would simply be a proportion of the total resource available. If used to implement a carbon budget, it would be dependent on the lifecycle emissions associated with that energy source.
The TEQs design is based on the insight that all emissions from energy use within a national economy can be measured simply and efficiently by assigning a 'carbon rating' (e.g. 0.2 units per kWh, or 2.3 units per litre) to fuels and electricity, based on the quantity of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases generated by their production and use. Once this is established, the total emissions attributable to a given purchase becomes implicit in the quantities listed as usual on invoices, utility bills and till receipts.
The TEQs system simply uses this information, making it unnecessary to measure carbon emissions directly, or to grapple with the endless costs, complexities and compromises of embodied emissions calculations and carbon labelling. This 'carbon rating' for fuels and energy also provides a competitive advantage to retailers of more efficiently or renewably generated energy, who would not have to require their customers to surrender so
many units.
The purchase of goods other than energy would not require the surrender of TEQs units, since the producers of those goods would have already surrendered units for the energy used in the production of the goods. Producers would then pass on the cost of buying these units to consumers, who would simply find that certain goods (those produced in a more energy-intensive manner) cost more.
Lord Smith of Finsbury, Chairman of the UK Environment Agency: "Rationing is the fairest and most effective way of meeting Britain's legally binding targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions".
Rationing? Really?
Rationing has acquired a bad name with the public due to its obvious association with shortage, yet it is clearly a response to shortage, not the cause of it. It might be argued that the word rationing contains two intertwined meanings. The first is limits to what people are allowed to consume, the second is guaranteed minimum shares for all. The first of these can cause resentment, but in times of shortage populations cry out for the second.
TEQs are rationing in the second sense as they guarantee an Entitlement to minimum shares for all, but they are not rationing in the first sense as they allow individuals to exceed their basic Entitlement (if they are willing to pay those who choose not to for the privilege). The purpose of TEQs is not to limit the consumption of individuals per se, but rather to share out fairly the shrinking energy budget required by national circumstances, and to allow maximum freedom of choice within that.
In the absence of such a framework, resources in short supply would simply go to the richest ("rationing by price"), strongest or quickest, creating massive inequity and attendant resentment. With TEQs everyone is guaranteed a basic Entitlement.
The reasons for making TEQs units tradable are twofold. Firstly, prohibiting the exchange of rations in the past has always led to substantial black market activity, unnecessarily criminalising otherwise law-abiding individuals. Secondly, energy demand differs from food demand (the most commonly quoted example of rationing, at least here in the UK); while we all require comparable amounts of food, certain vocations intrinsically require more energy. For this reason a non-tradable equal Entitlement would simply destroy many professions.
With tradable rations those who live within their TEQs Entitlement can sell their surplus onto the market, rewarding their energy-thrift and increasing the supply for those who want or need to purchase additional units. Since the poor use less energy than the rich, the system would also be redistributive.
The actual use of TEQs units would be very straightforward. As units are only required for direct purchases of energy, utility bills and fuel purchases are likely to be most people's main direct engagement with the system. Utility bills are already easily paid by direct debit, and the TEQs cost of fuel purchases could either be paid together with the cash cost via a credit card linked to an individual's TEQs account, or a separate TEQs card could be carried and swiped alongside the money transaction. If an individual had no card and needed to buy additional TEQs units the cost of these (at the current national price) would simply be added to their bill at the point of energy purchase.
Jeremy Leggett, convenor of the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security: "What I like about TEQs is the fairness of it. When the energy crunch hits us, it will behove government and industry to ensure equitable access to available energy, within a national budget. TEQs is a route to synergisitic efforts of the kind we will need if we are to mobilise the infrastructure of a zero-carbon future fast, under pressure. It would increase the chances of working our way through the grim times to renaissance-through-resilience."
Popular engagement
TEQs would have a price-balancing effect that would benefit the planning of energy consumers. The price of energy and the price of TEQs units will tend to move in opposite directions. When oil prices increase, this will reduce the demand for oil (at least to some degree), therefore reducing the demand for units and thus their price, so that the net price paid by consumers (oil + units) is more stable than the price of either oil or units alone.
Since the system covers the entire national economy, the variations in the national price of TEQs units would be of interest to all. And since lower demand means lower prices the population would be encouraged not only to reduce their own energy use, but also to work with other individuals and organisations and urge them to do so. Additionally, the substantial income from the weekly auction of units to organisations would be accessible to communities to fund the building of new local infrastructure or otherwise support their energy transition.
It would be transparently in the collective interest to work together in finding ingenious ways to increase low-carbon energy supplies, reduce demand and move towards the shared goal of living happily within our energy and emissions constraints, with the TEQs price providing a clear indicator of how well the nation is doing.
This cooperation is essential, since the rapid transformation in infrastructures necessitated by peak oil and climate change requires collaboration between the different sectors of society, united in a single system easily understood by all. It is a critical feature of TEQs that it encourages constructive interaction between households, businesses, local authorities, transport providers, national government, and so on. In short, the system is explicitly designed to stimulate common purpose in a nation.
The public may often be tempted to hold fossil-fuel companies and governments responsible for all our ills, but it must be recognised that even if these bodies wished to, they could not solve our energy problems without the engagement of the wider public. Our individual and community lifestyles need transformation too, and this cannot be done for us.
Jonathon Porritt, Founder Director, Forum for the Future: "This eloquently presented proposal merits very serious consideration by all political parties. There remains an undeniable gap between the current policy mix and what we actually need to do urgently both to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and to avoid the potentially devastating consequences of declining fossil fuels. Tradable Energy Quotas offer significant policy advantages in addressing both those pressing imperatives".
Policy advantages
As is widely recognised, we currently have a contradiction at the heart of our energy/climate policy, with proposals for emissions caps to deal with climate change sitting alongside support for coal, tar sands and the like to address our energy challenges. It is increasingly clear that the common solution is to reduce fossil fuel usage, but the key approach to this thus far has been to focus on raising the carbon price.
Unsurprisingly, it has been hard to gain popular support for increasing the cost of fossil fuels, since people rightly perceive that this increases their cost of living. And this approach also leads us towards the self-contradictory pursuit of trying to raise the carbon price while striving to keep energy prices low.
TEQs offer a fundamentally different approach. Rather than raising the price of carbon/energy and hoping that this reduces demand sufficiently, TEQs start from a strict quantity-based budget, and allow price to find its level in response to that. This restores straightforward motivation for individuals, organisations and nations. Once you guarantee people a fair Entitlement, in line with a declining cap, society can then collectively focus its attention on finding ways to thrive on reduced demand, and thus keep the price of energy/carbon as low as possible. This is a simply-understood task that everyone can buy into with enthusiasm.
TEQs might also make a difference to negotiations at the international level, where agreements are proving so elusive. Introducing national TEQs systems would allow leaders to have confidence that the national emissions reductions they are discussing will actually happen, emboldening them to throw down the powerful challenge: "we are acting, so must you".
* * *
More detail on every aspect of TEQs, the system's fit with existing UK and European policies and the energy and climate challenges it is designed to address can be found in the APPGOPO report, with Chapter 2 focused entirely on TEQs' role in assuring entitlements to energy.
by Shaun Chamberlin | Dec 21, 2010 | All Posts, Articles
Originally published in The Ecologist on the 21st December 2010.
The online version of the article can be found here.
Dr. David Fleming, a visionary Green thinker and one of the key whistleblowers on peak oil, has died aged 70. He was a significant figure in the genesis of the UK Green Party, the New Economics Foundation and the Transition Towns movement. His legacy also includes TEQs (Tradable Energy Quotas), the energy rationing scheme currently under consideration by the UK Government, his influential book Lean Logic and the real delight and inspiration he gave so freely to all who met him.
David was born on the 2nd January 1940 at Chiddingfold, Surrey, to Norman Bell Beatie Fleming, a Harley Street eye surgeon, and Joan Margaret Fleming, an award-winning crime writer.
After reading History at Trinity College, Oxford from 1959 to 1963, he went on to work in manufacturing, marketing and financial PR before earning an MBA from Cranfield University in 1968.
Despite being an avowed Conservative voter, he was a significant figure in the development of the UK Ecology/Green Party - his flat in Hampstead serving as its party office in the late 70s and early 80s - and urged his contemporaries to learn the language and concepts of economics in order to confound the arguments of their opponents. He practiced what he preached, and in 1979 began studies in economics at Birkbeck College, University of London, completing an MSc in 1983 and his PhD in 1988.
But Fleming's true passion and genius was for exploring and understanding that mysterious thing 'community', in all its disparate forms. He admired tradition and ceremony for their ability to engender cultural stability, and was a lifelong member of deep-rooted groups as diverse as the English Folk Dance and Song Society, his local church in Hampstead, the Oxford and Cambridge Club, and ancient guild The Worshipful Company of Fishmongers. He was a passionate advocate for the critical importance of pubs, and memorably, when once asked how best to improve the resilience of one's local community, he answered "join the choir".
Always something of an intellectual whirlwind, Fleming found time to be Honorary Treasurer and then Chairman of the Soil Association between 1984 and 1991; to help organise 'The Other Economic Summit' (TOES); and to edit the 1997 book The Countryside in 2097 before making a major contribution to the world's awakening to peak oil.
"The next oil shock?", Fleming's April 1999 article for Prospect magazine, argued that the International Energy Agency (IEA)'s most recent report represented a coded message, warning of an impending energy crunch with potentially profound impacts. After publication, to Fleming's surprise, Fatih Birol - the future Chief Economist of the IEA - suggested a meeting, at which Birol intimated that "you are right... there are maybe six people in the world who understand this". This encounter gave greater impetus to Fleming's drive to see an effective energy rationing scheme put in place. Having first published on his TEQs scheme in 1996, 2008 saw a UK Government funded pre-feasibility study into the idea, which will be followed by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil's report in January 2011.
Yet perhaps Fleming's key focus over recent years has been the preparation of his magnum opus, Lean Logic: A Dictionary for the Future and How to Survive It, the work that pulls the various strands of his thinking together into one cohesive vision. As those who knew him recall with sighs and smiles, his perfectionism had led to numerous delays in the publication date, but Fleming was making final preparations for publication before his death. It will now be published posthumously, thanks to the determination of the many readers Fleming asked to comment on early drafts, many of whom claim it as a key influence on their work and thought. A good example is Transition Towns movement founder Rob Hopkins, who once humbly described his own work as "simply taking Heinberg's insights into peak oil, Holmgren on permaculture and Fleming on community resilience, rolling them together and making the whole thing comprehensible".
Indeed, so many of the seeds Fleming planted will continue to bear fruit long after his untimely passing. In his wry way, he would often describe himself as having failed at everything he turned his hand to, but the truth was anything but. As a young Transitioner put it, remembering his first meeting with Fleming, "I was left thinking that this was the sort of man I would aspire to be".
Fleming was a sparkling conversationalist, an often hilarious writer and a remarkably attentive listener. Compassionate and encouraging, almost all who met him were utterly charmed. The vast wealth of reading and knowledge he could call upon, and the unusual connections he drew in the course of any conversation (or helter-skelter lecture) led him to produce content fit for weeks of dissection, if sometimes too rich for immediate absorption. Fortunately, Lean Logic should preserve his thought in a format well suited to lengthy contemplation.
Fleming is survived by his sister Penelope, his niece Lucy, nephew Ben and his extended family.
Dr. David Fleming (2 January 1940 - 28 November 2010)
More on Fleming's work at: www.theleaneconomyconnection.net
The All Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil launch their report into TEQs on January 18th 2011.
My more personal tribute to David, and links to the other tributes paid online, can be found here.
by Shaun Chamberlin | Mar 31, 2010 | All Posts, Articles
Originally published in the March/April 2010 issue of Resurgence magazine.
The online version of the article can be found here.
Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it.
---
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 those of us responding to these challenges may be considered part of 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 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.
Recent Comments