by Shaun Chamberlin | Mar 7, 2009 | All Posts, Cultural stories, The Transition Timeline, Transition Movement
Transition Town Kingston are hosting a pre-launch celebration of my new book, The Transition Timeline, at the Kingston Odeon on the 15th March (this Sunday) from 5:30pm.
This event will also form part of the nationwide People's Premiere of new film The Age of Stupid, directed by the inspirational Franny Armstrong, produced by Oscar-winning John Battsek, and starring Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite. Tickets for the event are £10 and can be ordered here. For this you will be amongst the first to see The Age of Stupid, enjoy a live satellite link-up to the simultaneous premiere taking place in a solar tent in Leicester Square(!), witness the launch of the international "Not Stupid" campaign, and have the opportunity to discuss the film with both me and Hilary Gander, one of the founding members of the Campaign against Climate Change. I will also be selling and signing copies of The Transition Timeline at the Kingston screening, which will be the first opportunity for anyone to get their hands on a copy!
Over 100 tickets, of a capacity of 337, have been sold even before the main announcements, so make sure you book soon if you want to come support me and The Age of Stupid. Also bear in mind that the faster tickets sell for the premiere and opening weekend of the film, the more cinemas will show it as it is rolled out nationwide, so you can play your part in the success of this important and brilliant film, which I believe has the potential to radically shift popular conceptions of climate change. Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth had a major impact, and this is a much better film. You won't regret seeing it.
After the events at the Odeon we have an area reserved at the Acorn 20 bar just across the road, from 8:15pm. Food can be purchased there, and those who cannot make the Odeon screening are welcome to join the celebrations there or pick up a copy of the book - 20 Richmond Rd, Kingston, KT2 5EB.
I know that a number of people who were keen to come will be unable to attend these events in Kingston as they are attending The Age of Stupid People's Premiere in another of the 65 participating cinemas around the country, so they will be welcome at my official book launch at The Totnes Bookshop in Totnes High Street, Devon from 7pm on Wednesday 1st April.
For those who can't make either event The Transition Timeline is now available to order here, or can be secured at the special price of £10 from me in person.
I will post again soon with more details of the book itself, but for now I will leave you with the design for the back and front covers respectively, and some of the endorsements already received.
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“Peak oil and climate change are two of the greatest challenges we face today; the Transition Town movement is firmly rooted in the idea that people taking action now in their communities can not only tackle these environmental threats but also, in the process of doing so, lead more fulfilling lives. It is about hope in an otherwise bleak seeming future. Above all, it's about the power of an alternative vision for how society could be and not waiting for government or politicians to get it right.
The Transition Timeline is designed to bring that vision to life – with stories of what communities have already achieved, with updates on the latest scientific data, and with ‘maps’ that highlight key landmarks on the journey towards a zero carbon future. It's a hugely valuable manual for anyone committed to turning dreams into reality. Don't just read this book – use it to change your world.”
~ Caroline Lucas MEP, leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, and co-author of Green Alternatives to Globalisation: A Manifesto.
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“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
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“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
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“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
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“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
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“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
by Shaun Chamberlin | Dec 13, 2008 | All Posts, Cultural stories, Philosophy, The Transition Timeline, Transition Movement
"A person will worship something, have no doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have often written on the topic of cultural stories, but I am told I have never explicitly addressed on this blog why I feel they are so critically important in our struggle for a future.
I am on record as stating that climate change and peak oil represent perhaps the most urgent and significant forces shaping our age, yet in an important sense even these trends are only symptoms of an underlying issue. They are consequences of the choices we have collectively made and continue to make, and these choices are formed by our understanding of the world – by our stories.
It is the stories that we tell ourselves about life – both individually and in our wider cultures – that allow us to make sense of the bewildering array of sensory experiences and phenomena that we encounter. They tell us what is important, and they shape our perceptions and thoughts. This is why we use fairy stories to educate our children, why politicians present both positive and negative visions and narratives to win our votes, and why advertisers pay such extraordinary sums to present their perspectives.
As John Michael Greer put it,
"When people treat, say, fizzy brown sugar water as a source of their identity and human value, their resemblance to fairy-tale characters under an enchantment isn’t accidental"
Our cultural stories help to define who we are and they strongly impact our behaviours. One example of a dominant story in our present culture is that of “progress” – the story that we currently live in one of the most advanced civilisations the world has ever known, and that we are advancing further and faster all the time. The definition of ‘advancement’ is vague – though tied in with concepts like scientific and technological progress – but the story is powerfully held. And if we hold to this cultural story then ‘business as usual’ is an attractive prospect – a continuation of this astonishing advancement.
The problem with stories comes when they shape our thinking in ways that do not reflect reality and yet we refuse to change them. The evidence might support the view that this ‘advanced’ culture is not making us happy and is rapidly destroying our environment's ability to support us, but dominant cultural stories are powerful things, and those who challenge them tend to meet resistance and even ridicule. Yet as Richard Heinberg comments,
"Once we lived with a sense of our own limits. We may have been a hubristic kind of animal, but we knew that our precocity was contained within a universe that was overwhelmingly beyond our influence. That sensibility is about to return. Along with it will come a sense of frustration at finding many expectations dashed."
The developing physical reality of 'Peak Climate' will surely change our cultural stories, whether we like it or not, but we can choose whether to actively engage with this process or to simply be subject to it.
The powerful cultural story that "real change is impossible" makes it seem inevitable that current trends will continue inexorably on, yet in reality cultural stories are always shifting and changing, often subtly, but sometimes dramatically. Given their importance, then, we should pay close attention when Sharon Astyk argues that there are certain key historical moments at which it is possible to reshape cultural stories rapidly and dramatically, by advancing one’s agenda as a logical response to events:
"I think it is true that had Americans been told after 9/11, “We want you to go out and grow a victory garden and cut back on energy usage” the response would have been tremendous – it would absolutely have been possible to harness the anger and pain and frustration of those moments, and a people who desperately wanted something to do"
As Naomi Klein highlights in her book The Shock Doctrine, this insight has until now mostly been used to advance cultural stories that benefit a few at the expense of many. Astyk though contends convincingly that as understanding continues to spread, there is no reason why we could not challenge those voices and ensure that we face the next 'threshold moment' with a dominant narrative linking it to the energy and climate context (to which it will almost inevitably be related) and so urging the kinds of attitudinal and lifestyle changes that reality demands.
Our work in spreading awareness and understanding until then could give us that chance.
This article is a slightly modified extract from my forthcoming book The Transition Timeline, produced in partnership with the Transition Network and set for publication in March 2009 and available now, published by Green Books.
by Shaun Chamberlin | Dec 7, 2008 | All Posts, Cultural stories, The Transition Timeline, Transition Movement
Last month I discussed some of the national and international developments that are shaping our future, but in spite of the ongoing climate talks in Poznan, today I'd like to focus on the importance of local-level action.
Amidst all the focus on global climate agreements it's easy to forget that agreeing a tightening global cap on emissions is not a solution in itself - such a cap would be meaningless without on-the-ground solutions and lifestyle changes at the local and individual levels. This is why I see the tremendously rapid spread of the Transition movement as such a hopeful sign.
It is only two years ago that Rob Hopkins was explaining this new concept to around twenty of us down at Schumacher College and wondering where it might go, yet here we are in 2008 with 120 official Transition initiatives around the world and almost 1,000 more who have made contact to say that they are considering getting involved.
Here in Kingston the first meeting to discuss the idea was held in May this year, and we became an official Transition initiative in August. We are now holding regular events and have six action groups working to raise awareness of climate change, peak oil and the Transition movement in our local community.
For me personally the sense of being supported as a member of the team is invaluable. I will admit to an unfortunate predisposition to take projects away and work on them on my own, and regular meetings with my fellow Transitioners provide a vital antidote.
This week we marked six months since the genesis of Transition Town Kingston (TTK) with a talk by Dr. David Fleming on the theme of 'Transition Carnival', discussing his impressive research on the critical importance of wild parties to the development of resilient communities!
Our efforts to heed his advice may have been less raucous than his ideal, but his wonderful talk brought home the sense that the significance of the Transition movement runs deeper than its essential role in a sufficient response to 'Peak Climate' or its apparent power to strengthen community ties - deeper even than the fine excuse it provides for good times.
The true test of its influence will lie in its contribution to shifting the cultural stories which have led us to this Last Chance Saloon. As I emphasise in my forthcoming book The Transition Timeline, our individual and collective decisions about what is important to us will determine our future. I hope that the legacy of the Transition movement will be to play its part in empowering us to choose anew. I am fortunate and proud to be a part of it.
by Shaun Chamberlin | Sep 27, 2008 | All Posts, Cultural stories, Favourite posts, Peak Oil, Politics, Reviews and recommendations, TEQs (Tradable Energy Quotas)
[audio mp3="https://www.darkoptimism.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/Radio4.mp3"][/audio]
The "You and Yours" programme on BBC Radio 4 this week held a studio discussion on Peak Oil, with energy investment banker Matt Simmons, peak oil educator Richard Heinberg and the Chair of the UK All Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil, John Hemming MP. The 12 minute discussion can be heard above or here and includes discussion of the options open to the UK government, including Tradable Energy Quotas (TEQs).
by Shaun Chamberlin | Jul 27, 2008 | All Posts, Climate Change, Cultural stories, Favourite posts, Philosophy, Politics
Since my earlier review of Burn Up I have discovered a comment on the film posted yesterday by Jeremy Leggett, one of the few with any media profile to openly discuss the interplay of peak oil and climate change.
In his piece Leggett asks: "Why do the carbon-club lobbyists and contrarians do what they do? What is in their heads as they go about their work? Surely they must see the power of the emerging evidence that the threat is real, and massive? ... I don't have an explanation."
This is a question I have devoted a lot of thought to, and I will venture an answer.
Those who are benefiting most from the current 'business as usual' in the global economy are, by definition, extremely wealthy, and thus very influential. Yet it is these people for whom it may be hardest to acknowledge the reality of climate change and energy depletion.
The reason is that everything and everyone around them tells them that they have made an incredible success of their lives. Their ability to acquire whatever material possessions they desire, their exclusive social groups, their desirable romantic partners and respectful business colleagues - so much in their lives speaks to them of their triumphant prosperity.
Quite apart from the challenge of changing the habits of thought and reasoning that have appeared to serve them so well, what we are asking is that they shift the story they hold of their own life from one of heroic progress and success to one in which they are complicit in the end of civilisation and perhaps even higher life on Earth.
We should not underestimate the level of commitment and bravery such an internal transformation requires, especially when their peer groups provide them with all the encouragement in the world to resist it. And so we should not be surprised when many instead indulge in desperately contorted logic or straight-out denial (and bring their considerable resources to bear) in the attempt to resist losing the glorious tale of themselves they worked so hard to earn.
Yet despite all this, there are those who have braved the dark night of the soul. Ray Anderson, the founder and chairman of vast multinational corporation Interface Carpets has been telling his story to fellow industrialists:
"One day it dawned on me that the way I'd been running Interface Carpets is the way of the plunderer. Plundering something that is not mine, that belongs to every creature.
I stand convicted by me, myself alone, not by anyone else, as a plunderer of Earth, but not by our civilisation's definition. By our civilisation's definition I'm a captain of industry, in the eyes of many a kind of modern-day hero."
He deserves our respect for embracing this difficult epiphany (he has described the experience as "the point of a spear into my chest"), and if we can better understand the deeply personal challenges facing his fellow plunderers then perhaps we can help them in changing the story of their lives, so that they may come to measure their success very differently, but again become heroes.
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