my planet too

I’ve finally come to terms with something that plagued me for the whole of January: blaming so many of my friends for taking long-distance flights. It was for the usual reasons: spiritual gatherings, second homes, conferences, filming, swimming with dolphins (really)... I have sympathy with people who fly to visit family: Love Miles, they’re called. But non-essential flying at this time, especially by people in the know, is questionable. You might say it’s none of my business, but it is: it’s my planet too, you see.

Part of the problem is that the very people who’ve been flying are the light bringers, friends who are on a psycho-spiritual path or profession. While many of my practical friends are being mindful about flying, these light bringers seem to feel some kind of absolution. I’m hearing some bizarre reasons: that nature is so ‘old paradigm’, that the spiritual work they are doing somehow offsets the damage of the flight. The reasons boil down to ‘God will sort it out.’ So I wonder, is the New Age betraying nature, by transcending rather than transitioning?

I’ve been Theodore Rozak’s fascinating Ecopsychology, in which author Ralph Metzner writes that the the big problem of modern man is that the human-nature bond has been so broken – through the religious beliefs that we have to overcome our ‘lower’ animal instincts and conquer our body to become spiritual and attain ‘heaven’ or enlightenment. ‘For most in the West, their highest values, their noblest ideals, their images of themselves as spiritual beings striving to be good and come closer to God, have been deeply associated with a sense of having to overcome and separate from nature.’

But, he writes, ‘We are part of nature, we are in the earth, not on it. We are like the cells of the body of the vast living organism that is planet Earth. An organism cannot continue to function healthily if one of its cells decides to dominate and cannibalise the other energy systems of the body.’

The fact is that we 20% richest westerners are consuming 80% of the world’s finite resources, and thereby creating 80% of the pollution. So, it’s clear that we need to consume less, especially flying, which increases our personal carbon footprint so massively. Yet much of the New Age/psychospiritual, ‘Ask and it shall be Given’ thinking reinforces this sense of abundance in a closed system. I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and while I totally agree with the main idea, which is to align ourselves with what makes our heart sing in order to manifest abundance, flow and health, I feel we need to combine that with practical action. Not from fear or scarcity, but because we’re mature and wise enough to see that not just our thought and feeling but also our behaviour is totally linked to the whole. Trust in God and tie up your camel, as the Sufi saying goes.

As a communicator I’ve felt constrained in the way I talk about such things. I don’t want to perpetuate the sense of doom and fear, yet I want to convey the facts authentically, without blame. So now I’m trying out a new tack: whenever someone tells me they’re flying, instead of bottling up my response or flaming them, I invite them to have an experimental conversation. So far I’ve had two chats, and so far I haven’t lost any friends. Probably.

fear of flying

I’ve just returned from Paris, where I was visiting my daughter Anna. I took the scenic route – on the Newhaven ferry to Dieppe and then by train to Paris. Including a leisurely lunch in Dieppe with a fellow passenger, the trip took about 10 hours, during which I worked on my permaculture diploma and read a good novel. And for £70 return door to door, it probably cost less than any other public transport.

There’s so much to be said in favour of slow travel, and I needed to get away from Lewes and my own head and heart, feeling deeply upset this month about so many of my caring, intelligent friends flying long-distance despite everything we know about the real cost of flying. I despair for our future if we can’t let go of such things. Anyway, going away helped me get away from this great shadow and get some perspective and physical ease.

I love Paris. The sound of the French talking, the smell of rubber in the metro, the fuggy bistros, the awesomely beautiful architecture. Perhaps because I was born there and lived there the first year of my life, I feel completely at home in a visceral sort of way. Anna and I figured out how to work the fantastic Velib system, a bicycle hire with banks of cycles on every other block. You just swipe your card over the dock and the bike is released; the bikes are free for the first half hour. We whizzed around Paris, which is pretty compact, down the dedicated cycle lanes and weaving through the traffic jams. On Sunday, a crazy bookshop on the Left Bank where Anna hangs out, called Shakespeare and Company, has open teas in an upstairs room crowded with books and people. Our 70-year-old poet hostess, PanMella, poured us cups of china tea with ‘a dose of love’ while the resident Brit and Yank writers read their latest stories and poems.

There’s a daily fruit and veg market round the corner from Anna’s tiny apartment, which comes with her au pair job. We visited the organic stall in the market daily, then did the round of the flea market. Not that she can afford to shop; she’s living on 20 Euros a week, about £18. But, she told me, ‘I’d rather be poor in Paris than rich anywhere else in the world.’

power to the people

In April this year it’s going to be possible for a typical household to generate much of their domestic electricity needs from their own rooftops, with a payback period that’s very reasonable. The reason why this is suddenly possible is that our government is introducing a Feed In Tariff for household energy generation. That means that for every kilowatt hour I generate, I will be paid 36.5p, as opposed to the 14p per kWh I currently pay my electricity supplier. Not only that, but I get to keep what I generate, as well as be paid for it, effectively earning myself roughly 50p per kilowatt. And, during this first year that the tariffs are introduced, that level of tariff will be guaranteed for 25 years.

The British government, obsessed as it is with central as opposed to local power (and that’s political as well as energetic) has definitely dragged its heels behind other countries, but this move could revolutionise the way we generate electricity. The German government introduced FITs in 2000, and 5% percent of Germany’s electricity is already generated from solar.

I was told this news by the good people at Ovesco, the company (which has just become an Industrial Provident Society) set up by Transition Town Lewes’s energy group and who are funded by Lewes District Council to give advice and grants to Lewes residents. I’ve just received a quote from our local supplier, Southern Solar, for 8 solar photovoltaic cells on my average-sized Lewes terraced roof. With those panels at our particular pitch and orientation, the company estimates that we will generate a peak of 1.7kw, or 1,382 kw hours per year, earning me roughly £700 per year (untaxed, it was recently announced). This means at a cost of £9,337 (after an installation grant of £2,500, available nationally until April this year) the payback period would be roughly 13 years, a fabulous return rate of 7% and, perhaps most importantly, would insulate me against future fossil fuel price rises. For those who don’t have a flexible mortgage or imminent lottery win, watch out for forthcoming loans and mortgages to help people make that investment.

I’ve started to become energy literate this year, with the help of an Owl Energy monitor (£37 from Argos), which is surprisingly engaging gadget. With its help, we’ve nearly halved our electricity bills, mainly through replacing and turning off lightbulbs, though we still use about 2,500 kWh per year, which is about twice what we’d have the capacity to generate. I’m pretty confident we could reduce our needs quite a lot further, through using less of the big machines such as our oven and dishwasher, and because our children are leaving home. Apparently, it’s immensely empowering to watch one’s meter go backwards and to know that we’re producing our own energy and making money at the same time.

Now, the only question is whether the LDC planning officers and committee have the vision to allow Lewesians to generate electricity from our roofs visibly in a conservation area/national park-to-be. I guess I’m about to find out.

jam today...

The organic Seville oranges have arrived at Bills and I’m making marmalade. For the past decade I’ve made a batch that lasts at least until July’s pick-your-own blackcurrants get turned into summer jam. My kitchen store cupboards are stacked with honey and pickles, my basement cold-store shelves still house home-grown pumpkins and Jerusalem artichokes, supplemented with bags of onions, potatoes and carrots from local farms. Plus the sacks of rice, lentils, oats and olive oil delivered by Infinity Foods. Yesterday, before the snow came, I picked kale, rocket and leeks from the allotment. Next week the veg box resumes. I have a good log store in my basement, from wood from our woodland, and my curtains are now interlined. I’ve been doing all this because it makes me feel more happy and more resilient, more interdependent, and because I want to help others be resilient.
As we enter a new decade, many commentators are predicting great change, uncertainties around money, livelihoods, food crops, energy, water, fish, weather (!), and other climate- and energy-related issues. Snugly snowed in with not much to do, it’s is a good time to review our resilience, our flexibility to change. Right now I’m looking into much-needed draughtproofing.
For me, there’s another imperative, and that’s one of justice. If we, the 20% of the world’s population who consume 80% of its resources, are living on 3-8 planets - or more if we fly - that means that on our one planet, other people’s lives are at stake as a result of our overconsumption. As the activist Joanna Macy, writes, it’s quite appropriate to feel the deep emotions that arise when I consider the effect of my life on other beings such as the tiger, the Maasai people and the butterflies in my wood. It’s from that raw emotion that I can then take action and not remain numb and paralysed.
In the absence of other solutions, the most obvious way about this is, I believe, is to gradually, over the next decade, reduce our living costs to one planet: to a third to an eighth of current levels, depending on the size of our current carbon footprint. That’s doable, without any loss of real needs. Yet, despite it being accepted in green circles, who embrace the idea as being something we’d want to do anyway for a wide range of reasons, the idea of consuming less and rethinking our economic growth paradigm, is still hugely unpopular, as reflected by our world leaders’ inability to reach consensus in Copenhagen. It seems that this fear of having to live with less accounts for a large part of the denial, excuses and obfuscation going on.
But I know plenty of people aiming to live locally and simply in Lewes; that inspires me. As does this short video by Eckhart Tolle.

the darkest hour

Pretty much everyone agreed that the Climate Talks at Copenhagen failed. Although it was brilliant to have all the world's leaders agree, in one room, the scientific imperative of keeping our global temperature under 2 degrees, they failed to make an agreement that would make it happen.

The commonly agreed target for safe levels of CO2 in the atmosphere is 350 parts per million (ppm). We've already overshot that: there is currently around 388 ppm in the atmosphere, with a need to reduce emissions as soon as possible to safe levels. According to my daughter Sophia, a calculation of emissions agreed in Copenhagen would lead to a very unsafe level of CO2 of over 700ppm by the end of the century and we'd have reached the point of no return long before that.

Two commentators have this to say today in the aftermath of Copenhagen.

In Requiem for a Crowded Planet, the Guardian's George Monbiot gives us some bitter medicine

Johann Hari wrote in the Independent that we're finally realising that Daddy is not going to look after us and only grassroots practical and even protest action will get us the changes needed.


I've been struggling with despair for the planet for again lately, which is not good for my new-refound physical health nor my mental health. I don't know where to put this information, and I wonder if anyone does. My belief in God has transformed into worship and gratitude more akin to that of indigenous people so that's no help. Perhpas, as Philip Carr-Gomm said on the solstice on the tump yesterday, when it's dark, just wait. The light will come.

I will have 10 days off with my family and friends over Christmas. I'll eat and laugh and sit by the fire and walk in the cold. I'll love my wonderful life. And then, come the new year, I'll start again to do whatever I can, anything in my power, to Be the Change I want to see. I've seen this coming and, alongside many others, I'll see it through.

the joy of socks

I recently visited the Land Girls exhibition at Brighton's Pavilion museum. It's a vivid illustration of how a group of people respond to a sudden change in circumstances. The general message was that although life was tough for the young women volunteering to feed the nation during the wars, good times were had. Freed from the binds of domestic life, some women, certainly, seemed to come into their power, driving huge tractors, managing teams of workhorses, barrowing muck from dawn to dusk. There are some hilarious stories, some from videoed interviews, of sharing bath water between several people and parties at the local officer's mess.

The girls were issued uniforms, with strict instructions about how to maintain them. Along with three pairs of socks came the advice to darn them using the gusset of old pairs of socks. Those well-worn socks looked so robust, so much better than the flimsy socks I get from M&S, on which darning hasn't worked, and which need constant replacing. So when I walked past Cathy Darcy's excellent Vintage Shirt Company on Mount Place, and saw some very fine pairs of English socks in the window, I had to buy a pair.

Made of Shetland wool in subtle colours, these socks are a wonder to behold and, frankly, I haven't taken them off since buying them. Along with a warm head, warm feet are important in winter. And although they cost £22, they are eminently darn-able, so these socks and I, we're going a long way together.

Behind the white noise

In the lead up to the UN's Copenhagen Climate Conference this month I'm feeling a sense of awe and prayerfulness. The understanding of our planet's situation deepens and matures, with some insightful pieces of writing. Behind the white noise of Christmas advertising, some of us are starting painfully to understand the degree to which we are all complicit, as western consumers, in an unstable world, of which climate change - waves of rain, flood, heat - is only one symptom. And we're slowly, achingly, waking up to the idea that a better future is within our reach.
Last week, around 100 people of all shapes and sizes turned up at Lewes New School to discuss the future of North Street, since the developer's companies, who bought the acres of riverfront land, have gone bankrupt. In the Open Space discussion that ensued, lots and lots of fabulous ideas emerged, which will be presented to the town for discussion. Ideas for the land, healthy, sane, useful, inclusive ideas are emerging from people who live and work in Lewes, including those really essential people who work on North Street. These acres, surely, should be kept for a resilient, practical transition, rather than to feed one person's greedy neediness.
And despite all the western world's displacement activity, which includes flying here, there and everywhere for crazy reasons - holidays, spiritual retreats, sunshine, weddings, last chance to see... - some people, many people, are discovering that slow and simple are what we want anyway. Slow and simple. Breathe. Relax. The poet, Wendell Berry, says it all.