Transition Towns Reloaded - a reminder of the importance of our work a year after it all began

Green Blog: “Transition Towns” Reloaded

An article written for the Coromandel Town Chronicle. September 09

A year ago, amidst the phenomenal rise of oil and gas prices, the “Transition Town” concept was introduced to Coromandel by the national co-ordinator of the movement, James Samuel from Waiheke, to a packed Hauraki House Theatre. With Oil then trading at just about US$150 per barrel and fuel prices breaching the pain level, the spectre of the world’s coming predicaments had left the realm of “maybe” and had become palpable to everyone. The world economy, until then still growing at exponential levels but fiscally leveraged to braking point, was soon after running head-long into a wall. Trillions in paper assets, mortgages, retirement funds and real estate values evaporated in giant fireworks throughout the world when it became clear that the future could be leveraged no further like a bottomless ATM machine to fund the largesse of the present. Many New Zealanders too lost some of their retirement savings when NZ’s most leveraged of the so called “Finance Companies” collapsed.

Our economic activities and growth predictions had been predicated by abundant, cheap and ever-growing flows of energy and resources. And with the reality sinking in that this would no longer be forthcoming in the way it did, the house of cards came crashing down. The Emperor, as it became obvious, had been naked for a quite a while already, just as predicted by those who saw it coming all along, starting with the seminal book “Limits to Growth”, published by the “Club of Rome” in the 70ties.

Now, according to most pundits, the world finds itself in the biggest calamity since the so-called “Great Depression”. The comparison however seems flawed. Back then, the world’s oil wells were largely undiscovered, our mines were still full of easy accessible ores, fresh water reserves were abundant and the most wondrous times of exponential economic and population growth were still to come. Today’s “Great Depression” does not share this outlook. The “Peak Oil” theory is now accepted gospel even in the circles of the conservative “International Energy Agency”. A few years ago the IEA did not consider geological supply side issues to be a problem for the better part of this century. But now it warns sternly that the availability of oil will begin to shrink much faster and much sooner than our governments assume. The combination of ageing oil wells with the explosive evaporation of investment capital, which would have been required for exploration and especially the development of alternatives, makes for a sobering perspective. The collapse of the oil price from $150 to $30 per barrel in late 2008 was short lived. Oil is now steadily climbing again past the $70 level, even though the world economy seems to be far from over the worst and especially the USA appears stuck in an endless downward spiral. The official “US Debt Clock” website www.usdebtclock.org provides a live update on this situation. A truly dizzying sight!

And if all this was not enough already, climate scientists have grown more and more alarmed at the abundant harbingers of future catastrophic runaway warming and call for a 40% reduction in CO2 emissions as the only way to prevent the worst. How will we cope with such a reduction in fossil fuel energy flows? Where is the money going to come from that we need now to invest in alternative technologies and how can we create “credit” to invest into the necessary technologies when there will likely be no growth but contraction of global economic activities? Do we need a new monetary system?

At the moment governments around the world seem in denial and desperately try to jumpstart another round of debt leveraged consumption growth by betting the farm and the future in the gambling halls of Wall Street one more time; perhaps the last time. 23 Trillion US$ is so far said to be the total in pledged US federal government support and guarantees, mostly to broke financial institutions and a sickening amount is sucked up into further bonus payments to those who gambled away our money in the past. The pipe dream of economic prosperity through growing debt financed consumption still trumps all else or perhaps the alternatives are too painful to be officially considered by those at the helm?

We will likely witness a succession of modest economic recoveries based on enormous deficit spending followed by renewed rises in energy and commodity prices triggering another economic contraction followed by partial recoveries and so on, the spiral winding downward on each round. All this has been eloquently and thoroughly discussed and amply referenced by researcher and author Richard Heinberg in his latest “Museletter” paper (August ’09) entitled “Temporary Recession or the End of Growth?” You can find it by clicking the link above or by visiting www.richardheinberg.com and looking for his “Museletter” blog. I highly recommend reading this article.

New Zealand, with its ample natural resources and comparatively low population density may well be a partial exception to all this and in my view is perhaps the best of places. It might even see some growth ahead if we play our cards right, invest into alternative energy wherever possible and curb our foreign debt exposure.

Globally, the path forward will involve a major rethinking of the way our world works: from reliance on exponential consumption growth on credit back to local resilience and commerce where we can meet our daily needs from reliable and sustainable local sources. The “Transition Town” movement has focussed on this as a community based project and all over the world communities are now engaged in planning for a better future based on their local resources. Some communities are even issuing their own local currencies in order to de-couple from the unfolding global events.

The New Zealand website of the “Transition Town” movement can be found here: www.transitiontowns.org.nz and offers a wealth of information, contacts and blue prints for engaging in a meaningful way with a path to a more sustainable future. Coromandel’s own “Transition Town” group successfully started a local farmers market, Fridays in front of the “Pepper Tree Restaurant”, as a small first step. The message of the “Transition Town” movement is today more relevant than ever in our search for a sustainable future.

Thomas Everth