The Power of the Arts

I was invited to participate in Transition Pecha Kucha in Montpelier. 20 slides/20 seconds each, talking about working towards a world without oil.

Thanks to Ben, Kate, and the great folks at Transition Town Montpelier and Yestermorrow (not to mention the other presenters) for making this wonderful night happen!

The Vermont Guide to Global Living

I was asked to give the keynote address at a recent meeting of the Vermont Climate Collaborative. They're a partnership between the University of Vermont and the Agency of Natural Resources designed to help Vermont make the transition to a post-carbon world.

The charge from the organizers: Do Something Inspiring. Oh, well, all right...

For you literary types, you can read it here.

Transition Town Commentary on VPR

I've started doing commentaries on Vermont Public Radio, and my first one airs tomorrow at 5:55pm. Seems like an auspicious time, though I'm not exactly sure why.

It's on Transition Towns as a positive, proactive model for addressing climate change and peak oil.

Hopefully, it'll be the first of many. In case you're a reader, as opposed to a listener, here's the text. Enjoy.

Star Sighting

I had a heady star-sighting last month. Actually it was more like an audience. After all, he knew we were coming to meet him – me and a couple of friends.

But, like bringing a white scarf when you go to meet the Dalai Lama, we did show up with a ritual offering of homage and respect. In our case it was carrot cake and elderberry fizz.

This recipient of our culinary kata was a tall, skinny, big-eared fellow…whom you’ve probably never heard of. Which means it wasn’t Barack Obama.

No, his name is Rob Hopkins and he lives in the southwest corner of England in an adorable little town called Totnes.

Totnes is the hub of something called the Transition Town movement, and Rob Hopkins is the soul behind the vision.

A few years ago, Rob took a hard look at the reality of climate change, and then coupled it with the fact that, plus or minus a couple years, we are at the moment of peak oil.

Peak oil – which the US Department of Defense says we’ll hit in 2012 – is the point when we’ve maximized worldwide oil production. All the cheap, easy-to-find stuff has been found, so demand starts to outstrip production, and the cost of oil starts to rise permanently.

Given that we use oil for everything - energy, transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, medicine – a reduction in supply, as global demand increases, will have a profound effect not just on our economy, but on almost every facet of the way we live our lives.

So, in the spirit of Fatih Birol, chief economist of the International Energy Agency, who said “We should leave oil before oil leaves us,” Rob Hopkins and a group of compatriots decided to help Totnes begin the process of what they call “powering down.” Powering down means relocalizing food and energy production, working to transform fossil-fueled behaviors, and increasing the community’s capacity to deal with any systemic shocks caused by climate change or disruptions in fuel availability.

And thus, the Transition Town movement was born.

It’s a fantastic methodology they’ve developed, and has a lot to do with tapping into the inherent wisdom of a community, and the belief that ordinary people have tremendous creative problem-solving capacity – as long as they know what the problem is.

Rob and his team also have a profound belief in developing a positive vision towards which people can work, rather than just giving them a big, scary nightmare from which to run. In fact, of the seven Principles of Transition, the first one is Positive Visioning, which focuses on the possibilities and opportunities inherent in what is a admittedly a deeply challenging global situation.

In only a few years, Transition initiatives have spread all over the world. Here in Vermont, we’ve already got about 18 different groups across the state. They’re a dynamic network of concerned-yet-hopeful people striving for a resilient, engaging, and sustainable future. And they not only welcome everyone’s participation, they consider it vital. Essential. Because, simply put, we are all in this together.

Transition Tabling

with Nancy Severance

I helped staff the Transition Charlotte table at the Charlotte Town Party, and it was an illuminating experience. For one thing, we learned that in order to draw more people to us, we should have either had a plateful of free snacks or teamed up with the Pug Rescue folks because those curly-tailed little snorters were getting all the love.

What was interesting about the day, though, other than coining the new adjective “pugly” (meaning gone so far around the homely bend you’re back into cute before you know it), were the responses we got from all the passers-by.

Some folks ignored us (no interest/no snacks/no Pugs), others took a flier and moved on, a number of people stopped to chat and share stories of their own eco-activism. But the really juicy encounters were with the people who wanted to challenge us, who approached with either cynicism, defensiveness, or even anger.

To be honest, I can understand where that kind of reaction might come from. Here’s the town of Charlotte, trying to have a fun little summer celebration, and over in the corner are a bunch of folks who seem to be saying, “Hey everyone! The world is sliding rapidly towards runaway global warming and serious ecological collapse, and also, we’re on the downslope of global oil discovery and production while demand for fossil fuels is going up, up, up, and oh, by the way, it’s all your fault so you better give up everything now, live in a yurt, and become a mule-riding potato farmer with no snacks and no Pugs. Have a nice day.”

While that’s not exactly what we were saying, the truth is that climate change and peak oil are real and they’re happening - which is a scary reality. More than scary, it’s overwhelming. It’s hard to imagine how we could even begin to address these problems, much less make any significant headway towards fixing things. It’s really no wonder that people would be aggressive or cynical – which I think is really just masking a sense of deep despair. Or as economist Paul Hawken said in a commencement address at the University of Portland, “If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data.”

But Hawken followed up that comment with an entirely different statement: “if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse.”

That’s what the Transition Town movement is really all about. It’s about acknowledging the seriousness of our situation, but believing firmly, passionately, that we are absolutely capable of addressing the problem. It’s about building community, disseminating knowledge, and coordinating action. It’s about approaching our lives on this planet with an attitude of love and compassion and caretaking and stewardship. It’s about tackling our challenges head-on, with intelligence, creativity, courage, innovation, vision, and a gigantic bucket-load of hope. It’s about knowing that you’re not alone.