The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality (45 page)

At the same time, it’s important to recognize that there is only so much that individuals can do on their own. Some of the disruptions we may be facing would not be of short duration. A few weeks’ worth of stored food and water, though essential, will be of only temporary help. Over longer time frames, our most valuable personal assets will be functioning local communities composed of people who, despite their differences, are willing and able to work together to solve problems and maximize opportunities. The maintenance of social cohesion must be our single highest priority in a future of mounting economic and environmental challenges.

The challenge of building or maintaining community solidarity will be greater in some places than others. Rebecca Solnit’s book
A Paradise
Built in Hell
cites examples showing that in crisis people often re-discover community and what is intrinsically important in life.
¹
However, Lewis Aptekar’s
Environmental Disasters in Global Perspective
adds layers of complexity: People’s responses to crisis seem to depend on the duration of the crisis, whether it can be blamed on other people, and on pre-crisis social and economic conditions.
²

During the past few decades North Americans created a way of life in which people moved frequently, saw their homes as investments rather than just as places to live, and learned to ferry children around by van and SUV to soccer games and ballet lessons rather than encouraging them to spontaneously organize their own outdoor pastimes. The result: throughout the vast, sprawling suburbs of the US and Canada, most people simply don’t know their neighbors. Any of them. At all. This is a bizarre situation, and it will probably be a dangerous one in the case of crisis.
³

It’s hard to emphasize this point sufficiently: Get to know your neighbors. These may be people with whom you share very little in terms of politics, religion, or cultural interests; that fact is beside the point. When push comes to shove, these are people you may need to depend on. Find ways — perhaps innocuous ones at first, such as a discussion about pruning a common shade tree or the sharing of surplus summer garden veggies — to make contact and to begin to build trust.

The remainder of this chapter is devoted to suggestions for what you can do to help your community become more resilient and better able to weather the approaching storms.

Transition Towns

Given the looming energy and environmental threats outlined in this book, it’s evident that something like the following is called for. We need a grassroots movement that educates people about these challenges and helps them develop strategies to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels. It should aim to build community resilience, taking account of local vulnerabilities and opportunities. Ideally, this movement should frame its vision of the future in positive, inviting terms. It should aim to build a cooperative spirit among people with differing backgrounds and interests. While this movement should be rooted in local communities, its effectiveness would increase if it were loosely coordinated through national hubs and a global information center. The work of local groups should include the sharing of practical skills such as food production and storage, home insulation, and the development and use of energy conserving technologies. The movement should be non-authoritarian but should hold efficient meetings, training participants in effective, inclusive decision-making methods.

That may sound like a tall order. But here’s some good news: that movement already exists. It’s called Transition Initiatives, and communities that have one of these initiatives often call themselves Transition Towns.
⁴
The “transition” that’s being referred to is away from our current growth-based, fossil-fueled economy and toward a future economy that is not only sustainable but also fulfilling and interesting for all concerned.

Transition Initiatives got their start in 2005 in Britain through the work of a Permaculture teacher named Rob Hopkins. In his
Transition
Handbook
, Hopkins tells how he came up with the strategy, and sets forth a range of useful guidelines for groups.
⁵
Nearly all of Rob’s prose is saturated with irrepressible optimism:

Transition Initiatives are not the only response to peak oil and climate change; any coherent national response will also need government and business responses at all levels. However, unless we can create this sense of anticipation, elation and a collective call to adventure on a wider scale, any government responses will be doomed to failure, or will need to battle proactively against the will of the people.... Rebuilding local agriculture and food production, localizing energy production, rethinking healthcare, rediscovering local building materials in the context of zero energy building, rethinking how we manage waste, all build resilience and offer the potential of an extraordinary renaissance — economic, cultural and spiritual.
⁶

Hopkins is careful to call Transition a “research project”; in a “cheerful disclaimer” on the Transition website he points out that there is no guarantee of success, because what is being attempted is unprecedented.

We truly don’t know if this will work. Transition is a social experiment on a massive scale. What we are convinced of is this:

• if we wait for the governments, it’ll be too little, too late

• if we act as individuals, it’ll be too little

• but if we act as communities, it might just be enough, just in time.
⁷

Hopkins lives in the old market town of Totnes in the southwest of England; with a population of 7,444, it is the most advanced of all Transition Towns.
⁸
There, over 30 projects have started and nine themed groups meet regularly to discuss food, buildings and housing, arts, transport, and education, among other topics. In 2009, as a result of Transition efforts, Totnes was awarded a grant of £625,000 for a program called “Transition Streets,” a street-by-street approach to energy efficiency, community building, and domestic micro-generation. Totnes now has its own local currency, as well as a
Renewable Energy Society that is charged with owning
and profitably running the renewable energy generating capacity of the
region
. The Totnes Food Hub is a co-operative, member-owned alternative food distribution system; members can order fresh food from local producers at affordable prices and have it delivered, ready for collection, to a convenient location in the center of town. Transitioners also host clothes swaps, based on the idea that most of us have in our closets new-ish clothes that we never wear and that others may be able to use. One of Transition Totnes’s biggest accomplishments was the development of a town-approved Energy Descent Action Plan — a multi-decade staged plan for reducing dependence on fossil fuels in all significant areas (transport, food, home heating, etc.).

After the successful “unleashing” of Transition Totnes in 2006, the idea spread rapidly (though the pace seems to have leveled off in the past year); there are now 350 recognized Transition Initiatives in over 30 countries, with about 80 in the US (and about 150 more groups in America now forming). A team of trainers travels the globe offering help in getting Initiatives started, and thousands of people in over a dozen countries have taken the two-day Transition Training.

In Whidbey, WA, the local Transition Initiative features a Local Economy Action Group (a community think tank for creating a sustainable economy on Whidbey Island), a Clean Energies Cooperative (that focuses on alternative-fueled transportation), a Whidbey Citizens Climate Lobby, a Local Food Action Group (with subgroups that map the island’s food resources, glean and distribute surplus fruit, and prune trees for better yields), a bi-weekly discussion group on Alternative Building, and a support group for people who want to discuss how the economic crisis is impacting them.

There are limits and obstacles to the Transition strategy. In the worst instance, Transition can manifest as merely another talk shop for lefties and aging former hippies. However, Hopkins recognizes that it must be something very different from this if it is to succeed, and that Transition must address practical matters having to do with infrastructure and practical economics. In a recent essay he noted:

The infrastructure required for a more localized and resilient future, the energy systems, the mills, the food systems and the abattoirs, has been largely ripped out over the past 50 years as oil made it cheaper to work on an ever-increasingly large scale, and their reinstallation will not arise by accident. They will need to be economically viable, supported by their local communities, owned and operated by people with the appropriate skills, and linked together.
⁹

Hopkins went on to list the various infrastructure elements required to enable a town-sized economy function. At least Transition sees what’s needed, even if it’s not yet entirely up to the task.

Common Security Clubs

In addition to Transition Initiatives, something more is called for. As we work together on getting beyond oil and other fossil fuels, we also need to find mutually supportive ways to deal with immediate impacts from the fracturing of the economy. Joblessness, home foreclosures, and business failures are leaving a wake of destruction in communities, neighborhoods, and families. How are we to cope? Must we shoulder these losses household by household, or does it make more sense to get together with friends and neighbors to find shared ways to come to terms with the economic impacts of the end of growth?

Once again there is good news. A program already exists called Common Security Clubs with exactly this mandate.
¹⁰
The program was started by a team of economic justice and ecological transition activists connected to the Institute for Policy Studies and On the Commons, who put together a pilot curriculum in January 2009. Over 55 clubs have followed the suggested program, while another 100 or so groups have been inspired and informed by it and have adopted other names. The Clubs have a three-pronged strategy:

Learning together: Using popular education tools, videos and shared readings, participants deepen their understanding of economic issues and explore questions like: Why is the economy in distress? What are the ecological factors contributing to the economic crisis? What is our vision for a healthy, sustainable economy? How can I reduce my economic vulnerability? How can I get out of debt?

Mutual aid: Through stories, examples, web-based resources, a workbook, and mutual support, participants reflect on what makes them secure. How can I help both myself and my neighbor if either of us faces foreclosure, unemployment, or economic insecurity? What can we do together to increase our economic security?

Social action: Common Security Clubs recognize that many of our challenges won’t be overcome through personal or local efforts. State, national, and even global economic reforms are needed. What state and federal policies will increase our personal security? How can we become politically engaged so as to further those policies? Many clubs, animated by “break up with your bank” and “move your money” reform efforts, have relocated personal, congregational, and other funds out of Wall Street and into local banks and credit unions.

The Common Security Clubs website offers tools for facilitators who want to start a group, as well as stories from existing Clubs.
¹¹
One story is from a “Resource Sharing Group” in rural Maine started by Connie Allen.
¹²
Connie writes: “I knew several people who were living with limited income either because of unemployment, under-employment, retirement or voluntary simplicity. And I thought, if we put this group together, we could all benefit from it. It would make life easier for all of us.”

And she was right. But what she didn’t expect was how much fun they would have. “We used to meet in the basement of the local library, about twelve of us, each week,” explains Connie. “The librarian was always asking us what we were laughing at. Somehow we just always had a lot of fun when we met. And we helped each other in all kinds of ways.”

“We would bulk shop together,” Connie says. “And we’d tell each other about sales and ways we had saved money and time each week.”

The group shared lawn mowers, books, and tools; helped one member set up her new office; organized a yard and craft sale for forty people; set up a website to share information and list items to sell; offered tutorials in a variety of subjects; brainstormed job possibilities; met for potlucks; and shared inexpensive recipe ideas and savings tips.

They even kept an “emergency jar” at the center of the table. People would often put 50 cents or a dollar into it at meetings, though it wasn’t required. The money didn’t get used very often, but much like the group itself, it “provided a sense of security just in knowing it was there.”

Common Security Clubs could gain effectiveness if they were supported by a national PR campaign — but who would pay for it? Certainly not the Federal government, which continues to spin the fiction that our national goal must be to return to a life of carefree motoring through anonymous suburbs. It is only as that ideal fades, along with the government’s ability to continue bailing out banks, that necessity might conceivably lead to support for what is essentially a no-cost partial solution to burgeoning household financial crises.

Putting the New Economy on the Map

As important and helpful as Transition Initiatives and Common Security Clubs are, they share an annoying shortcoming: they tend to be invisible to the majority of people even in the towns and cities where they happen to be flourishing. Transition Los Angeles has been holding meetings since 2008; by all accounts it is a successful Initiative that is now spinning off a series of smaller and more localized chapters in the dozens of towns that make up the greater Los Angeles conurbation. Still, one wonders what proportion of the overall populace in that region has any awareness whatever of its existence: if the figure exceeds one percent, that would be pleasantly surprising. Even fewer Angelinos are likely to know they have the option of forming or joining a Common Security Club.