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03/30/2006
Community Peak Oil Prep
It’s becoming more and more apparent that living in a small town might be the best bet for coping with Peak Oil and Steven over at Deconsumption has just written a useful article outlining the criteria by which someone might choose a small town to live in. However, for those of us who already live in a small town that fits the bill there is the next stage to consider.
My town Raglan (score 9.5 out of 10 on Steven’s criteria) is indeed well suited. I’ve talked before about the changes that Raglan needs to make to get ready. Essentially they can be listed as; Ensure a wide spread of permaculture knowledge, start seedbanking, start a farmer’s market, get a few people exploring alternative fuels, start a green dollar system and take the banking system out of the picture by extracting locally owned investment money from the corporate system and investing it in local people. Continue the great recycling scheme we already have.
What’s great about this stuff is that even without peak oil we’d be better off making these changes. What’s also great is that many of these changes/initiatives can be made without having to waste energy on getting the local council on board.
Having said that though there is a small town in Ireland that is preparing for peak oil and they do have the local council on board. My hat’s well-off to Rob Hopkins and the students of Kinsale Further Education College for their Energy Decent Action Plan and especially for the community consultation process that they used and especially-especially for being able to communicate their ideas to the council.
The section on food is particularly good with ideas like planting food forests on every available patch of public land (another thing that would make a town a better place right now) and encouraging slow-food and organic agriculture - with a detailed strategy.
I do have some criticisms but as the report was successful at swaying their local council the following comments must be read with the understanding that they are the sort of ideas that might put a council off and even though its important to consider them I myself would take them out if I was having to deal with an organisation like that.
The best example of what I am talking about is in their youth section. I’m not happy with some of their plans to ‘engage’ youth in the changes that need to be made – especially the ‘young mayor’ idea. This is exactly the sort of fakery that is a contributing factor in the troubled lives of young people in our culture. Teenagers are dying for something real to do and here we are with an emergency on our hands and we’re giving them more pretend stuff. I would rather see their energy put in to something that matters.
Most of the ideas are very directive which is typical of civilised thinking. I’m not sure how quickly teenagers raised in civilisation can get out of old habits (probably quite quickly if they are taken seriously) but I’d prefer to see them given a lot more leeway to come up with creative solutions to peak oil problems. Then rather than adults expending energy to keep them busy the teenagers (who have the most spare time and energy anyway) could be a net contributor to the problem solving. I’m not sure how this would work in practice but I know that we need to change our approach to this age group if we want to have a successful community.
As for Education – I’d love to see the schools closed down, the kids put through a permaculture course and the school grounds planted with a food forest. I don’t expect many people would agree with that but at the very least the teaching of permaculture could become a focus of the curriculum and rather than leaving it to the transition year like the Action Plan suggests I’d start teaching it at kindergarten age - judging by my 3 year old’s enthusiasm for the garden this would be very successful (do we need reminding that ‘garten’ is German for garden?). This way the children could plant their school grounds into a food forest themselves. Once they’d done that each class could also become responsible for getting a food forest planted on a patch of public land near the school. This would be a wonderful way of getting permaculture knowledge into all the homes in the town too, the kids could teach their parents! – how’s that for a revolution?
I don’t know what to do with their Housing section. I think what they suggest is good but the building industry is so closely tied to the economic growth engine that I think this area is going to be a really unpredictable one. I also worry that too many of our houses will be impossible to get right for a low/no energy future. Even here in the north of New Zealand where we have a benign temperate climate I feel that some houses will become dangerously cold in winter. I shudder to think what will happen in other parts of the world.
I have no major complaints about the rest of the report, I was surprised to see a section on tourism but upon reading it I can see what they are planning makes some sense. What I really should do now is get off my butt and start talking to other like minded people in town about the report and see what we can get happening.
11:48 Posted in Crash | Permalink | Email this
Comments
There's one concern you left out...
Raglan is on the coast of New Zealand, which could get flooded if sea levels rise.
Posted by: Jim | 03/31/2006
Yes Raglan is on the coast but there is very little flat land at sea level - most of the town would be fine. Also it is situated in an inlet so is protected from wave damage during storms - even tsunami damage would be limited I should think.
Still, I won't be investing in beach front property.
Posted by: Aaron | 03/31/2006
Thank you for telling me.
Again, I don't live in New Zealand, and I suspected you were aware of possible issues like that.
However, I personally believe that if you want to reach people about preparing for a sustainable future, you need to focus more on practical changes and issues like "Peak Oil" or "global warming" rather than anti-civ ideologies. As I said in another post, many people who are preparing for these events are not against civilization and do not share the ideologies of people who are anti-civ, yet are doing the same preparations. Ideologies can drive people away, but the preparations are sometimes the same.
Posted by: Jim | 03/31/2006
Put it this way. If I talk to people about permaculture, they are quite interested. But if I talk to people about anti-civ ideologies, they are driven away. Yet many anti-civ believers are pro-permaculture.
Posted by: Jim | 03/31/2006
Yeah, if I was talking about peak oil to people in my town I wouldn't bother complicating things with anti-civ ideas. It would be hard enough to get through to some people anyway. If on the other hand I was talking about forming a community of some kind then anti civ ideas are much more relavant since civilisation is so destructive toward communities. At my recent council hearing on GE I only talked about mainstream ideas like 'the economy' because of that audience. This blog is the place where I get to talk about whatever I like and because the world is such a large place there are actually a few people who are interested.
Now that you've bought this up I wonder if I'm too careful with what I talk about to people - some times I find it hard to have a conversation with 'normal' people because I'm constantly having to sift through all the possible responses I could give in order to find one that is suitably mainstream
Posted by: Aaron | 03/31/2006
"Yeah, if I was talking about peak oil to people in my town I wouldn't bother complicating things with anti-civ ideas. It would be hard enough to get through to some people anyway. If on the other hand I was talking about forming a community of some kind then anti civ ideas are much more relavant since civilisation is so destructive toward communities. At my recent council hearing on GE I only talked about mainstream ideas like 'the economy' because of that audience. This blog is the place where I get to talk about whatever I like and because the world is such a large place there are actually a few people who are interested."
Of course. All I am arguing is that while you may have your anti-civ ideas, many people involved in your efforts (permaculture, peak oil, etc.) are not anti-civ. They need to form their communities as well.
Posted by: Jim | 03/31/2006
Jim, have you come up against very ideological anti-civ types in the past? You seem very concerned that my ideology might interfere with other 'causes'. For the record I would never use the label anti-civ to describe myself. What I have done is incorporated anti-civ analysis into my world view. If I appear to be talking about civilisation a lot it's probably because I'm surrounded by it
Posted by: Aaron | 04/01/2006
"Jim, have you come up against very ideological anti-civ types in the past? You seem very concerned that my ideology might interfere with other 'causes'. For the record I would never use the label anti-civ to describe myself. What I have done is incorporated anti-civ analysis into my world view. If I appear to be talking about civilisation a lot it's probably because I'm surrounded by it"
Exactly. When I first got involved in this movement, I got involved in people so anti-civ they even were against things that predated civ, and were thought of as extremists by even other anti-civ members. Many people are quite extreme, and I don't even bother posting comments on their websites, since other people have and their arguments have just been shot down over ridiculous debates.
Thus, I'm talking more about the "anti-civ" ideology in general versus your ideology. You are quite moderate by comparison to other people, I must admit. I admire you for that. Compared to other extremists out there, you are not anti-civ. (I'm referring, primarily, to John Zerzan and his followers, whose critiques of symbolic culture are so outlandish that it's hard to know what the guy is for.) And I don't try to convert others. Believe what you want. Understand alternative views, however, regardless of whether or not you agree.
Aaron, I apologize for looking like I was bashing you. I wasn't. I was just trying to argue that while a diversity of ideas toward something is an ideal, that we need to acknowledge that there is a wide anti-civ spectrum, as well as a wide pro-civ spectrum. When you were commenting about the failure of ecovillages, I was just arguing that one of the problems that might occur is the disagreements between these ideologies. There are moderates, extremists, and people in between. This diversity is not bad. The problem is when it gets in the way of more practical issues, like survival.
Posted by: Jim | 04/01/2006
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