I just had this essay published on the Coalitions of the Willing's blog. Feels good to finally get my opinion aired in public. Now on to Cop16!- Paul Hawken
I have been meaning to come out of the closet for a while now, and confess that I took a very different view of what happened during the UN climate talks in Copenhagen than what has become the oft-repeated mainstream story of unmitigated failure.
I spent the bulk of my time in Copenhagen not watching the UN negotiations at the Bella Center (though giant kudos to all the activists – in particular the folks from Climate Justice Fast – who permanently lodged themselves there), but at Klimaforum.
For those of you who missed it, Klimaforum was a gathering of over 7000 people from global civil society – activists, artists, educators, farmers, freelance journalists – all coming together to talk about climate change, peak oil, and environmental justice.
It felt as if the whole world was there. I met Kenyan tree-planters and Ecuadoran Indians and Navajo social workers and Lapland Elk herders and Tibetan liberation activists. I met a Swiss shaman with a 20-foot alphorn, a Brazilian tour guide in body paint and a leopard print bikini, a handful of Danish Hare Krishnas, and not one, but two Santa Clauses.
Klimaforum had over 300 scheduled events including talks on topics ranging from preventing rainforest destruction to dismantling industrial agriculture. There were workshops on permaculture, canceling Third World debt, and Transition Towns. There were youth activist trainings, spiritual rituals honoring the climate crisis, networking rooms. There was art, music, and theater. Many of the folks who couldn’t get into the overcrowded Bella Center ended up at Klimaforum and I eavesdropped on several discussions about how “this is what COP15 should have been.”
Concurrent to COP15 and Klimaforum were two other convergences: a conference of world mayors sharing cutting edge urban planning techniques and technologies for reducing CO2 and increasing sustainability, and a gathering in Christiania of indigenous leaders (cheekily called the Climate Bottoms) working on their own tactics and solutions.
On my daily travels through Copenhagen, I was blown away by all the public art, youth activism, bloggers by the truckload at the extremely well organized TckTckTck media center, hundreds of thousands of people marching through the streets, and the endless how-do-we-fix-it conversations in all the restaurants and cafes.
In spite of the fact that for weeks beforehand the official word was that there wasn’t going to be an agreement coming out of COP15, we all still wanted a miracle. Of course we did. Climatically speaking, the hour is very, very late indeed. And thanks to people like Ian Fry, Chief Negotiator from Tuvalu, and President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives, there were at least a few dramatic mini-miracles out there.
But honestly, the real miracle for me was watching global civil society say: “While the people at the Bella Center are leaders, they are not the only leaders. Our capacity to address the climate crisis does not rest solely in their hands. We have passion and vision and immense creativity. We have profound love for the planet, and for each other. We have a vision of universal justice and the ability to collaborate across cultural lines, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”
I came away feeling – and still feel – the strength and power of the movement in which we’re all engaged. To echo Transition Town Maestro Rob Hopkins, I feel an intense sense of both humility and gratitude for being present at this remarkable, charismatic (and yes, sometimes terrifying) moment in human history. And I bow my head to the remarkable global community working like hell to weave us all a future we can anticipate with joy.
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.
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