Transformation Moment: low carbon travel.
How, and how far, will we travel if we make the changes we need to in order to thrive in a carbon constrained society? For a range of interlocking reasons, the conclusion of this paper is that we will be happier, healthier and more resilient if we radically change from [...]

UPDATE: The Transtion Handbook is now online in a wiki!

UPDATE: download Transition-Handbook.pdf

UPDATE: download Transition-Handbook.odt

See also: Transition Primer

[amtap book:isbn=1900322188]

I really can’t recommend this book highly enough, but if you need more convincing…

“a must-read labelled, ‘immediate’ “ – Jeremy Leggett, founder of Solarcentury and SolarAid

“The Transition Handbook will come to be seen as one of the seminal books which emerged at the end of the Oil Age” – Patrick Holden, director of the Soil Association

“There is no more important book than this one for any community seeking to change toward ecological sustainability” – Jerry Mander, founder/director of the International Forum on Globalization

“There is no better call to action than this book, and no better guide to the hands-on creation of a liveable future” – Dr Stephan Harding, co-ordinator of the MSc Holistic Science at Schumacher College

“This is much more than just a book. It is a manual for a movement. And not just any movement, but one which could prove to be the most important social force humanity has ever seen” – Mark Lynas, author of Six Degrees

“The Transition movement is the best news there’s been for a long time and this manual is a goldmine of inspiration to get you started” – New Internationalist

“The most important book we have yet published” – John Elford, Green Books (publishers of LOTS of VERY good books)

“The book succeeds brilliantly at every level… Seriously, this is one of the most important books in the sustainability field to appear in this decade” – Robert Morgan, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Science at the University of Glamorgan and Co-Director, The Green College

“The newly published Transition Handbook is so important that I am tempted just to confine this review to five simple words ‘You must read this book!’” – Richard Barnett, editor of Ethical Pulse (Ethical Junction’s newletter)

Need yet more convincing?

Watch these videos!

Caroline Lucas Launches The Transition Handbook

Rob Hopkins’ on the Transition Handbook

Read these reviews…

• A Review of The Transition Handbook by Graham Strouts of Zone5.org
• The Transition Handbook Reviewed in ‘The Guardian’
• Review of Transition Handbook from New Internationalist magazine
• Another Review of The Transition Handbook by Richard Barnett, editor of Ethical Pulse
• Patrick Whitefield Reviews The Transition Handbook
• A review from Friends of the Earth Earthmatters Magazine
• Carbusters Magazine review
• Carolyn Baker’s review

Enjoy!

Josef.

A while ago a couple of peace activists who broke into a military airfield to damage B52 bombers argued they were preventing a greater crime and won their case (see http://www.b52two.org/ for the story).

At the time I wondered “what if you used a similar defense for an action to prevent climate change”?

Well, that has now happened and the jury is out, damaging property to prevent climate change is legal:

Kingsnorth trial: Coal protesters cleared of criminal damage to chimney
The trial of the six Greenpeace UK activists was the first case in which acting to prevent climate change causing damage to property formed part of a ‘lawful excuse’ defence
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/10/activists.carbonemissions

Previous victories where environmental activists have been found not guilty:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/10/activists.kingsnorthclimatecamp1

Is preventing climate change a valid defence? VOTE NOW:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/poll/2008/sep/11/climatechange.kingsnorthclimatecamp

On a more sober note, read Climate Code Red:
http://www.climatecodered.net/

Enjoy!

Josef.

This looks set to be an amazing event…

I’ve written before about the carbon offsetting con and in my update I mentioned the wonderful Cheat Neutral site.

Now I figured I should embed their splendid video here too for your delight and enjoyment:

Their about page is also great, and so I reproduce that here too…

About Cheatneutral

Cheatneutral is about offsetting infidelity. We’re the only people doing it, and Cheatneutral is a joke.

Carbon offsetting is about paying for the right to carry on emitting carbon.
The Carbon offset industry sold £60 million of offsets last year, and is
rapidly growing. Carbon offsetting is also a joke.

Find out more:

• The New Internationalist’s offset special: www.newint.org/issues/2006/07/01
• George Monbiot on offsetting: www.monbiot.com/archives/2006/10/19/selling-indulgences
• and: www.monbiot.com/archives/2006/01/17/buying-complacency
• An excellent, detailed analysis of offsetting: www.carbontradewatch.org/pubs/carbon_neutral_myths.pdf

Five ways that Cheatneutral is like carbon offsetting:

1. Cheatneutral tries to make it seem acceptable to cheat on your partner.
   In the same way, carbon offsetting tries to make it acceptable to carry
   on emitting excess carbon.
2. Cheatneutral doesn’t really do much to reduce the amount of cheating in
   the world. Carbon offsetting does very little to reduce global carbon
   emissions.
3. It seems impossible to measure how much harm cheating on someone does.
   With carbon offsetting, there is currently no practically feasible way
   of measuring how much carbon offset projects actually save.
4. Having Cheatneutral’s services available could actually encourages you
   to cheat more. If the carbon offsetters persuade you that it’s possible
   to offset your emissions, you’ll carry on emitting excess carbon through
   your lifestyle rather than think about reducing your emissions.
5. Cheatneutral is fundamentally the wrong way to go about solving problems
   with your relationships. Carbon offsetting is fundamentally the wrong
   way to go about tackling climate change.

Two ways which Cheatneutral is not like carbon offsetting:

1. We don’t make any money out of Cheatneutral. Offset companies in the
   voluntary carbon market take a cut of every transaction and make a
   profit.
2. Cheatneutral is a joke we thought up in the pub. Carbon offsetting
   presents itself as a credible solution to climate change, described by
   the government’s chief scientist Sir David King as
   “the most severe problem that we are facing today, more serious even
   than the threat of terrorism…”

What can I do instead?

• Measure your carbon footprint. There are good resources to do this online —
  visit www.resurgence.org/carboncalculator for a good, detailed analysis of your footprint. For a slightly quicker calculator try www.carbongym.co.uk, or www.chooseclimate.org to look in more depth at the CO2 emissions associated with flying.
• Think about reducing your carbon footprint. There are lots of easy ways to reduce the emissions from various areas of your life. You might want to think about your home,
  transport and what you eat and consume. There are lots of resources on the internet to help you reduce your emissions.
• Learn about Contraction and Convergence. C&C is a framework for agreeing a global cap on carbon emissions. We believe that to make our individual sacrifices count, we need a global framework that caps the amount of carbon emitted, creates a timeframe for reducing emissions to a safe level, and distributes carbon credits equitably. C&C satisfies all of these, and would make carbon trading fair and effective. Good resources are www.climatejustice.org.uk and www.gci.org.uk
• Use your influence as a citizen. You could lobby your MP for the adoption of C&C and telling them you are concerned about climate change. You can also talk to and lobby your elected representatives from local and regional and European government. You can find out who your MP is at www.theyworkforyou.com. Think about joining a pressure group, lobby group or charity that you feel shares and promotes your concerns.
• Get together with your friends or family and discuss what you think. How we face up to the new challenges of climate change should be something everyone has an opinion on. Although individual action is needed, we also need ways to make government and businesses take a lead in responsibly dealing with emission reduction.

Via Submedia

I love this series and this is one of the best episodes yet!

This Week

1. Trillionaire Debt
2. Almost $100
3. PetroChina
4. Food Riots
5. Buy Nothing Day
6. No Borders Camp
7. R.A.T.M.
8. Ron Paul, who cares
9. Ward Churchill

The International Panel on Climate Change forthcoming report, Climate Change 2007, confirms what we already knew: that human activity has caused, and is causing, the climate to change.

But as this video from the Apollo Gaia Project outlines, what gets left in IPCC reports is not the whole story. Positive feedback (such as dark pools of water in melting ice speeding up the melting) mechanisms are often down-played.

So, we’re both a day late, but Gloria and I somehow decided that every day in May was going to be inspirational!

Each day Gloria will a post about an inspirational person, and I’ll highlight an inspirational project. Her first person is Maya Angelou, and my first project is…

Transition Towns
The Transition Towns project was initiated by permaculture teacher of 10 years, Rob Hopkins.

Focussing on the central issues of peak oil and climate change, Transition Towns are “towns that are participating in the transition to a more localised post-peak-oil future”.

This process normally involves going through the following 10 steps (now 12 steps, see here):

1. Raise awareness of peak oil and climate change (often by showing films like The End of Suburbia and An Inconvenient Truth)
2. Lay the Foundations. This is about networking with existing groups and activists and stressing that this Transition Town initiative is not a process of duplicating their work but of requesting their input in a new way of looking at the future.
3. The Official Unleashing. The aim of this event is to generate a momentum which will propel your initiative forward for the next period of its work.
4. Form Groups. You can’t do this on your own. Part of the process of developing an Energy Descent Action Plan is that of tapping into the collective genius of the community. One of the most effective ways to do this is to set up a number of smaller groups to focus on specific aspects of the process.
5. Use Open Space. Open Space Technology is an extraordinary tool. It has been described as ‘a simple way to run productive meetings, for five to 2000+ people, and a powerful way to lead any kind of organization, in everyday practice and ongoing change’.
6. Develop Visible Practical Manifestations of the Project. It is easy to come up with ideas, harder to get practical things happening on the ground. It is essential that you avoid any sense that your project is just a talking shop where people sit around and draw up wish lists. Your project needs, from an early stage, to begin to create practical manifestations in the town, high visibility signals that it means business.
7. Facilitate The Great Reskilling. Very few people still have the skills a more resilient society needs. This is where your Transition Town initiative comes in.
8. Build a Bridge to Local Government. Whatever the degree of groundswell your Transition Town initiative manages to generate, however many practical projects you manage to get going on the ground and however wonderful your Energy Descent Plan is, you will not progress too far unless you have cultivated a positive and productive relationship with your local authority.
9. Honour the Elders. There is a great deal that we can learn from those who directly remember the transition to the age of cheap oil, especially the period between 1930 and 1960.
10. Let it Go Where It Wants to Go and Reflections….In essence, although you may start out developing your Transition Town process with a clear idea of where it will go, it will inevitably go elsewhere. You need to be open to it going where the energy of those who get involved want to take it. If you try and hold onto the idea that it will be a certain way it will, after a while, begin to sap the energy that is building to do certain things. It is what is so exciting about the whole thing, seeing what emerges.

So there you have it. Transition Towns (of which there are now many) are very inspiring projects.

For more info check out Rob Hopkin’s blog Transition Culture, these excellent articles on Treehugger, and have a read through the Transition Initiatives Primer (pdf) and the Kinsale Energy Decent Action Plan (pdf)

Also, check out this short video from Transition Town Lewes:

Last night, when I should’ve been asleep, I watched these video clips and was left totally inspired.

I strongly encourage you to watch them too. Its great stuff!

You should also buy the book:

[amtap book:isbn=1887208070]

UPDATE: The book in bullet points from David Korten’s new site:

An 2 minute excerpt from David Korten’s (author of “When Corporations Rule the World) inspiring and lavishly-illustrated presentation of his new book “The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community“:

A full-length DVD of this presentation is available at http://www.peakmoment.tv

David Korten on “The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community” at the Veterans for Peace 2006 National Convention in Seattle:

A 2.5 minute mash-up:

The full 30 minute presentation:

More
Peak Moment 48: A 28 minute interview with David Korten. The planet is quickly confronting us with limits to the exploitative, dominator system of the past 5000 years. David Korten implores us to replace dominator-control stories with new stories — affirming life values of cooperation, community and interdependence.

I recently watched this video and thought it was really good summary of some of the important issues it covers.

If you are a Christian you might want to get it shown in your church or invite Rev Sam Norton along for a talk.

Even if you don’t classify yourself as a Christian (I don’t), it is still very informative and interesting…

A summary of Rev Sam Norton’s recommendations found in this film can been found here