The joys of resilience

One of the cornerstone ideas of the Transition movement is resilience. It means the ability to recover from shock, illness or misfortune. My preferred definition is the quality of flexibility, springiness, suppleness. It’s a concept worth mulling over. In the transition context it mainly means reducing our dependence on oil: working closer to home, replacing electric goods with good quality hand tools, using money wisely, producing our own energy and food where possible, learning new skills, etc. Our family has been building resilience, in this positive way, in to our life since we first realised that big change was ahead.

But it’s working with nature where I’ve had the greatest learning. Last night I harvested a salad of perennials and self-seeding annuals. The rocket, fennel, chives, young kale, red orach, sweet cicely and various flower petals are rich in minerals, taste, life zest and ease of growing. Those and a dozen others yield the family salads for nine months of the year. They are also resilient to slug and snail attack. Compared to these permaculture plants, the lettuce seedlings are simply rich pickings for the armies of pests roaming my small patch, and will probably not even make it out of the ground. Far from being a doomy reaction to what’s ahead, resilience building is creative, life affirming, and downright common sense.

changing the dream

Last week my friend Chris interviewed Professor Richard Heinberg in Lewes about appropriate responses to climate change and peak oil. Not the ‘peak oil theory’ but the real effects of rising energy prices on ordinary people. In many countries, Heinberg said, peak oil is already happening in the form of electricity blackouts and transport fuels being beyond the means of the man in the street. People in the West who recognise the problem early on, he said, are the ones who will be more resilient and be at an advantage in a world with rising energy prices. These are families and businesses who are proactively changing their habits to be less dependent on fossil fuels.

So we set the scene for our old dishwasher breaking down over Easter. We’d managed to resuscitate it several times, but we finally had to admit it was destined for the scrap heap. We’ve spent the last week starting to make the transition away from a dishwasher. Blimey, there are a lot of dirty plates. I’ve realised that a dishwasher is as much for storing unwashed dishes as for cleaning them. We’re still trying to negotiate the choppy territories of ‘who washes’ in a family of six. We are ill-equipped. But hang on, dishwashers are a recent luxury. As a child, it was my job was to wash and hand dry the plates for a family of eight. In Finland, apparently (see photo) they build cupboards above the sink to drain the plates.

So now I’ve sent a challenge out to Sue Fleming, who co-runs Woodworks of Lewes, a hand-made kitchen design company. Sue’s in the Transition Town Lewes business group with me. Can your company, I asked, design and make an above-sink dishwashing/drying/storage system that’s easy to use and looks elegant in our town house? I believe in frugality but not austerity.

This story sums up my reluctance as a rich white polluter to let go of modern luxuries in order to build resilience and save us all from extinction.

Bag banning

I practically fell over in the aisle at Waitrose last Friday when I was asked whether I would like a bag. A glance to my left confirmed a strange absence of plastic bags. The checkout girl gleefully told me that management that day had issued instructions to hide the bags, and assume customers would bring their own. Suddenly plastic bags are uncool. How did this happen, I wondered? Was this the result of competitor M&S’s announcement the previous day that it was to charge for bags? Was it Gordon Brown’s plan to get tough on plastic bags? Was it Lewes Town Council’s decision last week to step up efforts to help Lewes go plastic bag free? Or was it a compelling (or rather shaming) growing presence on the streets of Lewes of cotton and hessian alternatives?

You could say that plastic bags are a paltry distraction from the devilish things Gordon Brown and co are pushing through: What matter the odd bag in the face of a new Heathrow runway or coal powered station? Complacency is the new denial, and we could be sleepwalking towards our own demise by believing that plastic bags, composting and eating organically are together enough to get us through the survival bottleneck ahead. But perhaps the plastic bag phenomenon illustrates the power of the 100th monkey. This year plastic bags are the new drink driving; next year flying might be. Can we save the world one bag at a time?

Insider information: some of the places generating their own beautiful bags are Lansdown Foods, Harvey’s shop, Bill’s, Wickle, Lewes New School, Gossypium and the Farmer’s Market

Empowering the power down

In my family’s experiment to reduce our impact on the planet by pushing gently against comfort zones, solutions sometimes serendipitously present themselves to us. Last week our analogue cordless phone gave up the ghost so we’ve reverted for a while to a couple of old Bakelite dial phones, which I’d mothballed for sentimental reasons. It turns out these phones are only slightly more inconvenient to use, plus they don’t use electricity to fuel an answer phone - we may have to subscribe to BT’s version if this experiment sticks. Kerching!

Then the light in our trusty fridge also went, and after realising I could remove the unit and order another, I decided that I can perfectly easily see the contents of my fridge without artificial light. Saving two: Kerching!

How about a bigger gesture then? After much contemplation my son and I flipped the trip and changed our dimmer switches to normal old- fashioned ones (most low energy lights don’t work on dimmers). I’ve been putting off this step for years as I’m deeply attached to that sparkly light given off my spotlights, so have cunningly planned the changeover this midsummer to make it relatively painless. Next step is to replace those lovely halogen lights in my kitchen and bedrooms - Megaman does a version but I’ll have to budget in changing the fittings too… soon, I promise! Changing my light bulbs has been more uncomfortable to contemplate than giving up a car. Although, once through the momentary pain barrier you get that pleasure of becoming part of the solution as well as an increasing feeling of empowerment through powering down.

The hundredth monkey

I’ve never written about the title of this column before. It’s based on a story about monkeys on a Pacific island who started to wash their fruit in the river before eating it. Once a critical mass of monkeys (say 100) had cottoned on to this improvement in their standard of living, monkeys on neighbouring islands started to do the same, even though they were not communicating in any obvious way.

This story - the Hundredth Monkey - is one of the great Urban Myths, made up by a sixties philosopher, Lyall Watson, to illustrate a phenomenon called morphic resonance, a term coined by the scientist Rupert Sheldrake. Sheldrake himself carried out experiments to prove morphic resonance, which explains why, for example, dogs know when their owners are about to return, and why the more rats complete a maze, the easier it becomes for succeeding and different rats to complete the maze, and so on. Humans also communicate through morphic resonance, or as Karl Jung called it, the collective unconscious. Viva Lewes might call it the zeitgeist. Malcomlm Gladwell writes about it as the Tipping Point. I see myself as one of the first hundred monkeys (or rats) creating new pathways, new stories, to help us live more humanly and within our collective means. Our society desperately needs a new story - or maybe we should revisit some of the great fairy tales and native traditions. Transition Town Lewes is a process of designing a story, or pathway - together - towards a more viable reality. I hope at least 100 monkeys will be at the Official Unleashing of Transition Town Lewes next Tuesday.

How low can I go?

How low can I go? How much can I reduce my impact on our gorgeous, precious planet? Last September, I wrote about a self-imposed zero waste week in our household. That experiment was so eye-opening that our family life has continued to move in this low-impact direction. Here are some things I did this week that seem quite sensible, from the perspective of the polar bears and the endangered small pearl-bordered fritillary butterflies in our woods. I pruned a rampant Virginia creeper in our garden, cut and bundled up the pieces with twine and stored them away for next winter’s kindling. OK, it took an hour, but all that bending did wonders for my stiff back. I started to dig up our paved garden (15 ft square) to make vegetable beds. We used newspaper to line our compost bin. We talked to neighbours about newspaper sharing. We shopped mostly locally and walked a lot. I had several long conversations. I didn’t do any printouts. We only ate meat twice. I didn’t buy much, apart from food. On Sunday, six friends stacked coppiced wood that will fire our stoves for the next five years. I used a mooncup for my period instead of tampons.

Mooncups are a great local product invented by women from Brighton. I look forward to all re-localisation of crafts and manufacturing, and I support and thank with all my heart those who have weathered the era of oil: our blacksmith/toolmaker on Fisher Street, our potters, clothes makers and menders, guitar makers, cheese makers, basket makers and brewers.

The citizen consumer

It’s happening! In this week’s Draft Climate Change Bill we’re now witnessing our government’s transition from paying lip service to climate change to a willingness to tie itself to targets and even vie for being the greenest party in town. This may just be rhetoric but the shift towards action is welcome to many environmentalists.

The Sussex Energy Group debate at Brighton Library on Tuesday addressed our responsibility not just as consumers but as citizens, who influence the way our politicians behave. As individuals we have more power than we realise in both roles. So here’s Step One. As consumer, the single most effective easy step I’ve taken to reduce dependence on fossil fuels has been to change our family’s electricity supplier to one that gets energy only from wind. The companies (slightly more costly than standard fare) are Ecotricity and Good Energy - Kerching! towards fossil fuel liberation and a little smugness too. As educated citizens, we can influence our leaders to do the right thing for the community, regardless of national, corporate or party political agendas. We need to understand the process of local government and help inform it.

So two steps for the citizen here: join Transition Town Lewes in attending Lewes Town Council meetings and (two) write to the Lewes District Council planning committee to support the first wind turbine application in Glynde, the first proposal in East Sussex. Lovely natural wind is limitless, and becoming ‘zero carbon’ is part of our post-oil economy - towards which we are making a transition, said Sec of State for the Environment David Miliband last week. Those exact words.

We live on planet bliss

I have a keen sense of smell. As I walked through Lewes last night I smelled at least five wood fires. I have a woodburning stove, installed by Home Heat last month and partly funded by a grant from Lewes District Council. It’s a British stove, a Dovre, and it’s specified for smokeless zones. It gives off a glowing sort of heat that gently seeps up the house. I have a woodland near Laughton where I go once a week in the community car. Sometimes I stay the night in a bender. I love the woodland, wholeheartedly; I keep bees there. And there are rare colonies of Pearl Bordered Fritillary butterflies so I’m helping support them and the other insects by gently clearing a heathy glade in the young oaks. A forester called Harvey Malthouse is coppicing the overstood chestnut this week with a grant from the Forestry Commission and I plan to form a group of people in Lewes with woodburning stoves to log together the coppiced wood. I have a life of beauty. Dirk and I started to realise a while ago that we humans are co-creating our lives, with the help of the Great Life Force, in a miraculous way we cannot really understand. And that life, especially nature, reflects it all back. My friends Alinah and Leo have this on their fridge: ‘Who you are in the present is given by the future you are living into.’ I am living into a future when we have all realised that we are living on planet bliss.

We belong to the earth

I’ve just had an Emperor's New Clothes moment. In deep despair this weekend over the UN report, I was thinking and dreaming about how we humans were going to turn this beast around in time to avert unimaginable cross-species suffering by 2100. With our leaders not only in denial but in the case of Bush and his neocons, appearing to be deliberately ‘bringing on’ Armageddon, things look bleak.

It’s not a great stretch to understand that cutting CO2 emissions means a planned descent from fossil fuel use. And unless we move en masse to nuclear or renewables (both of which are problematic large-scale) this means the economy - so closely linked to oil and gas production - has to turn the peak towards terminal decline. But that very solution for the biosphere is also the greatest fear of governments and corporations, whose lifeblood is economic growth. I spoke to Chris Skrebowski, Editor of the Petroleum Review, on Sunday inviting him to speak about peak oil in the Transition Town Lewes programme later this spring. He confirmed this and more: our leaders will not make the first move. Many people have been saying, and it was reiterated at the Soil Association conference: change will start from the individuals, communities and organisations who don't have as vested an interest in endless growth.Which is what gives me the greatest hope: we are moving towards a paradigm shift or turning point, into a new era, when we stop believing that the earth belongs to us and start realising that we belong to the earth.

New Year habit changing

I had a nasty shock last autumn when I measured my eco-footprint and realised that my standard of living would require three planets to sustain it. This is one of those virus-like pieces of information that sits in your brain until you have time to relax, at which point it unravels and reveals its full power. I think I was in the woods when the penny dropped. First, this standard of living (average for Lewes, apparently) is unsustainable: It-Has-To-Stop. Second it is unfair: I easily imagined a sister, across the world, unable to feed herself. Third, it leaves me, my family, and most people I know, in rather a vulnerable position during these changing times.

Al Gore (yes, him again) warns us not to go from Denial to Despair, a very convenient segue. So I decided to take action instead. Apparently it’s all about changing habits. At the Climate Change March last November, George Monbiot urged everyone there to give up watching telly and dedicate that time instead to campaign for the environment. It’s one of the best things I’ve done. New Year is an excellent time for fresh starts. I’m working on cutting down on alcohol, my personal fuel addiction (hmmmm), and have pledged to not fly this year. Lewes District Council has published a draft report: Taking Action in a Changing Climate, which has a lot of excellent ideas for commitments we can make at home and work. The great thing about all this habit changing is that it’ll make us more robust, physically, emotionally and financially.

Flight pledge

I adore travelling. I was weaned on it. Literally (I was once the youngest baby to fly transatlantic to New York, to my christening). But I’ve reached the point where my actions can no longer coexist with my beliefs. This world is changing and I want to be part of the solution, not the problem. So I’ve done it. I’ve taken a FlightPledge as an early New Year’s resolution. This means not travelling by air in 2007, apart from family emergencies. It’s taken me the best part of 2006 to decide this and in the process I’ve gone through anger, denial, fear, guilt and grief (what an addict!)

How to ‘Be the change you want to see’, as Gandhi put it? It boils down to changing my habits; there’s no other non-deluded way around it. Giving up air travel is the best thing we can do (George Monbiot’s Heat goes through all the reasons). The silver FlightPledge, by the way, means you can cut down slowly. For something closer to home, East Sussex County Council is giving away recycled Christmas baubles for the 50 most interesting Reduce/Reuse/Recycle Green Christmas pledges received by this Friday.

Pledges, or promises - commitments, really, are wonderful things. They push you to the edge of your comfort zone. And the amazing thing is that on the other side of ‘letting go’ are huge reservoirs of freedom, power and pleasure. Letting go generates time and money and many other hidden treasures.

Blokes who fix bikes

I have a deep respect for people who love what they do and are really good at it. Exactly what ‘it’ is doesn’t really matter. Pete Barnes and Chris Franks are two such people: the ‘blokes who fix bikes’ in the Precinct most Saturday mornings (10 to 12). They’ve been doing it, for free, for 15 years because, says Chris, they like to see people on their bikes and, says Pete, it’s their form of civic responsibility. They’re based outside Fizroy House, the ‘front garden’ of Chris’s parents. They help some people on low income and when they get donations they resurrect old bikes and pass them on to others who need them.

People’s lack of knowledge about bikes is truly frightening, says Pete. Most people are put off riding bikes because they don’t even know how to change a tyre, and they’re not prepared to spend money on a bike, unlike a car. Pity. Bikes are on my ‘These are a few of my favourite things’ list. Without cheap fossil fuel we, like Cubans, might suddenly understand the amazing power of the bike. Chris and Pete could become recognised as the local heroes they already are. Meanwhile Chris and Pete like the fact that something can be genuinely free, with no obligations. They like Lewes. They like to be able to be informal. ‘We like to confound people’s opinions about what society should be.’

Community Wholefood

It’s official! Last week environment minister Ben Bradshaw urged shoppers to take direct action by leaving packaging at their supermarket checkout, to force the giants to cut down on excessive waste and packaging going to landfill. Let us know how you get on. (Tupperware, by the way, is very useful for carrying away your cheese, fish and meat).

There are many reasons why I’m slowly giving up supermarkets themselves: health, ethics, community, financial and time (and that’s not smug, it’s pragmatic). For a positive alternative, Just Trade is one of those great Lewes social enterprises. It’s a bulk food and goods collection organised by Common Cause, Lewes’s non-profit co-operative, and it takes place every other month at Lewes New School. Once you get your head around transport (they also deliver) and storage it’s much easier and cheaper: a 5kg sack of organic rice costs £5.41, 2kg of BioD concentrated washing powder costs £5.58, there’s less waste, and there’s that wholehearted pleasure of being part of a community process. This month there are some gorgeous things to eat, drink and give as presents. The order form can be downloaded from their website; deadline for orders is 27 November, collection is 8 December.

I discovered the power of my purse many years when through the customer suggestions book I persuaded my rural mini-supermarket to stock organic milk, then vegetables, then meat. I still like to believe that we create our own reality, one step at a time.

The Baked Bean Car Club

Luckily my growing allergy to cars and the stuff around cars has neatly dovetailed with an imperative to reduce our ecological footprint in order to save the planet. So last week we gave away our car: a Ford transit minibus, in fact, on Freeserve. It was claimed by a local charity. 

This idea has been brewing for a year. At first I felt deprived and curtailed at the thought of it. But we started using trains more, walking around town more (it helps not shopping in supermarkets and getting most of our food delivered free) and planning things differently, so we ended up not using the wheels much anyway. But I do like to go to the woods once a week. So we’ve started a car share between five people, using a friend’s car. The cost is £100 refundable deposit to pay for the initial service and insurance, and then £1 an hour or £10 per day, plus petrol. We’re reviewing and refining it as we go along. 

Car share schemes are springing up all over the country. Imagine them springing up here: a shared car/bike/minibus/van on every street in Lewes, with free parking. Imagine the council paying someone a salary to manage this. Apparently it costs £2,200 a year to keep a car on the road and it’s getting more expensive. So we’re saving loads of money. Plus we get to be smug about something we were going to do anyway!