The Great Turning

A group of us took the 4.20 to London on Monday to hear Joanna Macy talk. It was the first warm evening of the year, and walking through St James’s Park at dusk, we breathed deeply the first scents, and were dazzled by the thick white cherry blossoms. Even the pigeons were nuzzling each other romantically. It was magic to experience natural wellbeing in the middle of a city.

Macy is an 80 year old deep ecologist. We are, she said, living in an extraordinary time: our generation is participating in the necessary and unavoidable transition from an Industrial Growth society to a Life Sustaining society. And like so many life ventures, like sowing seeds or giving birth, it’s not certain we’re going to make it.

There is, Macy says, a taboo about talking of such things, and people often say, don’t worry; it will be all right. But, she says, that’s because so many of us are afraid of the feelings that might come up on accepting the problem. It is totally appropriate to feel both deep gratitude for and connection with all that is, as well as the great sadness of the earth. Having powerful emotional responses can help us move out of overwhelm to discover untapped sources of creativity, courage and power, says Macy.

Let us start to listen to the voices of all beings. Let us listen to the voices of our ancestors, who lived embedded in the web of life; they are speaking to us now and we are hearing them. If we were to listen to the voices of our children seven generations ahead, what choices would they want us to make now?Joanna Macy calls her approach the Work that Reconnects. That for me sums up the Transition Towns work and the emotional place I live in order to remain sane and effective during this extraordinary Great Turning.

For more information about a weekend in Sussex woodlands exploring the Work that Reconnects please see www.changingworlds.info/courses

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.

The Upside of Down

When Jeremy Leggett spoke to Transition Town Lewes about peak oil and climate change a year ago, he told us that when peak oil hit, the economy would take a nosedive, recover temporarily and then go into a terminal decline. I never understood the reasoning behind that; surely markets adjust slowly and evolve to new ways of doing things?

I’m not an economist, but I’m starting to put the pieces together. Nobody’s spelling it out, but could the soaring price of oil and the collapsing economy be linked? Oil keeps hitting progressive price milestones, and just going up, which is what Leggett said would be a sign that Peak Oil had come in to the traders’ consciousness. If something is likely to be in shorter supply in the future, its price will go up, right? Meanwhile, our economy is, like a pack of cards, based on debt on the assumption of future economic growth. That assumption is based on ever increasing supplies of oil and other natural resources which, we all know, is the fatal dream that we’re starting to wake up from.

So if we are indeed witnessing the beginning of a systemic collapse, as many commentators are saying, the prevailing culture can either Keep the Show on the Road at any cost (including building runways and nuclear power stations and invading countries with the remaining fossil fuels) or Live within our Means. This will mean a radical although probably life saving rethink of all the assumptions of the Western Empire. As Richard Heinberg, who is talking in Lewes on 25 March, writes, ‘Economic contraction may be bitter medicine, but it's part of the cure for what ails our planetary home. However, we can manage this contraction either foolishly or intelligently.’

I just don't buy it

What I call the Reality Gap is widening daily and I’m in danger of falling in it. On one side, there’s a growing sense of huge approaching change. On the other side, you switch channels and there’s business as usual: buy, buy, buy; drive, drive drive; blah, blah, blah.

So it’s very comforting to meet other people who are quietly Minding the Gap. I recently discovered my friends Oliver and Sacha were doing this when I tried to flog them a copy of Transition Handbook at the Farmer’s Market. This is what Sacha told me (and bear in mind that she is one of the most stylish women around town):

‘We’re not buying anything new. We started in January with a six-month pledge. We can buy basic day-to-day stuff like underwear, floor cleaner, presents and food. But the other stuff like books, cds, clothes, coats: you can buy anything second hand. Just after we started our fridge broke down; we bought a great second-hand fridge for half its normal value.

‘I also started a clothes swap five years ago. I had a big bag of clothes I was going to take to the charity shop. I called up about 15 friends who brought clothes they didn’t want and we dumped them on my living room floor. We put a pound in for each item we took and gave that to charity. Now I do the clothes swaps in Iford Village Hall with more people; last time we made £265. I come away with wonderful stuff I could never have afforded to buy new, like a silk shirt from Joseph.’

‘My biggest learning is that I don’t need to buy things I thought I needed. I’ve found it liberating. I feel better about myself because I’m living by the values I feel are important. This experiment has made me really look at life in a different way.’

(Insider information: check out the Story of Stuff, a humorous animated story told by Annie Lennard)

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

The alchemy of compost

It’s the time of year when, seeds ready, buds swelling and air warming, the growing season beckons. The ancestral memory stirs in our bones, drawing us outside into the garden. Though our ancestors would never have grown lupins or petunias – silly floozy bedding flowers that have no use at all. Being a permaculturalist, I like to eat my garden.

Each year before I plant I go through the ritual of emptying the compost heap on to the beds, to add to the soil that will feed my food this season. I’ve been hooked on composting since my twenties. It’s the ultimate closing of the life cycle loop, death feeding life. Like most living things, compost improves with age. What goes in the compost heap a mess of waste - vegbox peelings, Guardians, hair, hooverings, wood ash, old clothes, cardboard and whatnots from the bathroom - comes out sweet smelling, crumbly, fine soil.

My preference is for an open bin, about a metre cubed capacity. The compost doesn’t turn sour or smelly and you can make the bin out of natural things like pallets. As a result, I have a rat issue. I don’t say, Problem, because the rat is brilliant at turning the compost. But my neighbour’s son saw the rat climbing their back steps the other day. Sorry rat; you will have to die.

Insider information: for free composting advice contact the Compost Doctor

The rooks are nesting

I was passing time with a man outside Waitrose yesterday. I don’t know his name but I like being with him because he makes me speak honestly. When I ask him how he is he never answers, ‘fine’, and I only stop and chat when I know I have the time. Yesterday, he said he’d been thinking about things. I said I was loving the weather but I felt sad because it was too warm for February. ‘In the old country,’ he said – he’s Irish – ‘the country people had a saying: The rooks don’t nest before March, unless the first of March falls on a Sunday.’ (An odd saying, I know, but could you make it up?) He looked up at the rooks cawing noisily in the bare branches of the old Horse Chestnut. ‘Those rooks are nesting,’ he said. It did appear so; one of them had a twig in its beak.

I told him I was thinking of giving up Waitrose and all supermarkets - even the little I do shop there. Yes, he agreed, they’re a problem. The food they sell is all wrong. But, he said, he could get great bargains on food, especially meat as it is approaches its sell by date. He told me about the shelves, scattered about Waitrose, where the cheap deals could be had. He told me about his all-time favourite food and how the Waitrose version was so much superior than that sold by the other supermarkets. After a long pause (sometimes he gives me one if his poems) I bid him goodbye.

(Insider information: There is now a recycling bin on North Street for Tetrapak juice, milk and soya milk cartons)