Here are the notes of the talk I gave that went out just now on Radio 4′s ‘Four Thought’ programme.  You can download the podcast of the programme here (which also includes the Q&A that followed as a bonus feature).  I hope you enjoy(ed) it.

“It’s generally considered unwise to use props when speaking on radio, especially on your first appearance on Radio 4.  However, this talk will contain two props, and here’s the first.  It’s a £10 note from Brixton in London, but it’s a Brixton Pound.  Rather than the Queen’s head, it features David Bowie’s.  I’ll tell you more about it later, but it matters because it leads us into what I want to discuss this evening, the question of resilience. 

The former Crystal Palace manager Iain Dowie once described resilience as ‘bouncebackability’.  In our own lives, and in the lives of those around us, when we encounter difficulties, we either respond with resilience, or we don’t.  Sometimes we are able to adapt to enforced changes, to ‘go with the flow’ as it were, and at other times everything falls apart.  This applies to us as individuals, as communities, and as entire economies.  The degree to which we are resilient matters very much.

But one key question is “resilient to what?”  There’s a conventional view of resilience, but I take a very different view.  The UK Cabinet Office argues that it is up to each community to determine what they build resilience to, but then sets out what it sees as being the key areas of risk the nation faces: floods, pandemics, terrorist attacks.  In this context, resilience is a very practical matter of ensuring we have enough medicines, emergency responders and sandbags in the event of a disaster.  In this context, resilience is about the ability to adapt.  It’s about having the flexibility to get back on our feet.

I take a different perspective though, and what I am presenting in this talk is a kind of ‘Resilience 2.0’ (to use computer language).  The World Economic Forum, whose job it is to advise governments on risk, are clear about what they see as being the key ones: climate change, volatility of energy prices and the economic crisis.  These require very different, and more far-reaching responses, responses that go far beyond sandbags.

Here’s what I think we need to be building resilience to.  Oil prices have quadrupled since 2003, and prices are becoming increasingly volatile.  At the same time, North Sea oil production fell 22.5% last year, a record fall.  The cost of importing oil into the EU has risen from $280bn in 2010 to over $400bn in 2011, and it is clear that the price of oil will strangle any possibility of a revival of economic growth.  Cheap energy underpins most of the goods and services that we depend on in our everyday lives.  You can’t do economic growth without cheap energy, however many bailouts we throw at it.  The two go hand in hand.

Without cheap energy, globalisation goes into reverse.  If petrol and diesel becoming more expensive teaches us anything, it is that far away really is quite far away.  5 years ago, I found myself deeply worried about these issues, and about the kind of world I was leaving for my children.  I wondered whether in seeing resilience just as something we do in order to be prepared for a crisis, we were missing a trick: that we might instead see it as an opportunity.  How might our settlements look if we began to think in terms of resilient food, resilient energy, resilient economies?  Might this shift in thinking actually contain the potential for an economic and cultural renaissance for the places we live?  It felt to me to be a powerful question.

So, I looked around for people to work with to kick off an experiment.  It is clear, when the government argues that the supply of cheap oil to the UK isn’t even an issue for another 20 years, that they are not going to take the lead here.  So, myself and a few others set out a simple template, a simple set of principles and tools, and more importantly, an invitation; an invitation to be part of an historic experiment.  You may have heard of the result, Transition initiatives, or, as they are more popularly known ‘Transition Towns’.  The ‘towns’ bit is a bit of a misnomer: there are now Transition villages, cities, islands, hamlets, streets, schools.  It has spread like wildfire.  There are now many hundreds in the UK, and thousands around the world, in 34 countries.  The idea at its heart is that of ‘resilience-building as economic development’, that by keeping things local we can build richer, stronger and more resilient communities.   It is inspired in part by my friend, the economist David Fleming who died last year, who said:

“localisation stands at best at the limits of practical possibility, but it has the decisive argument in its favour that there will be no alternative”.

Many people have ideas, theories, models.  Those who have helped to shape this approach have been fortunate enough to have see it gain some traction, indeed to go viral around the world.  It has been a self-organised process, and like Open Source software, has been shaped, refined, deepened and evolved by those who pick it up and try it out.  It’s not our idea any more, and that’s how it should be.  It’s an exploration of what ‘engaged optimism’ looks like as the driver for change.

The idea that making our communities more resilient is the opportunity to also make them more skilled, more diverse, more grounded, better connected, more entrepreneurial, is an idea whose time has come.  Indeed, when I look around myself today, as the economic unravelling gathers increasing pace, it often looks to me like the only viable idea on the table.  I want to tell you some stories of initiatives you may not have heard of but which have arisen from Transition groups around the country and which I think hold the seed of our economic future, one which still trades, but mostly in things that can’t be produced closer to home.

A few months ago I stood in a field on the edge of Norwich as the sun went down, visiting Farmshare, a Community Supported Agriculture project started by Transition Norwich, from an idea that emerged at their launch three years earlier.  The farm has 70 members, and it produces local, seasonal produce for them.  They are recreating the model that supported us until relatively recently, farms on the edges of our towns and cities, sited close to where people live. It has been a steep learning curve, but here they are, modelling in practice a key part of a resilient food system, learning a huge amount by doing so, and building a strong sense of community at the same time.

And now to our Brixton Pound.  3 years ago, I stood in Lambeth Town Hall, watching the launch of the Brixton Pound, (“money that sticks to Brixton”).  It is a local currency that operates only in that part of South London.  The idea is that it is a tool that helps to plug the leaks in the local economy, supporting local businesses and traders.  Brixton Pounds cannot be taken out of Brixton as they instantly lose their value, they can only recirculate.  They cannot be traded internationally, nor banked offshore in tax havens.  During that event, the then leader of the local council told the packed hall “I want the Brixton Pound to become the currency of choice for Brixton”.  More recently they launched a new set of notes and also an innovative system where you can, believe it or not, pay for your shopping by text.  The next development is that later this year, the Bristol Pound will be launched, a combination of pay-by-text and printed notes for the whole city of Bristol, keenly supported by the City Council. It is an experiment in what a resilient economy looks like in practice that could have huge repercussions elsewhere.

At an event in Bath a while ago, a member of Transition Bath excitedly told me of their very ambitious plans for starting a community energy company.  Many months later, Bath and West Community Energy held its first share launch.  They raised over £700,000 in shares and have plans for a range of renewables in the city and its surroundings, and have begun with installing solar photovoltaics on the roofs of local schools.

So, to my second prop.  This is a bottle of beer, called ‘Sunshine Ale’, brewed by Harveys Brewery in Lewes in Sussex.  It was brewed to celebrate the installation of 544 solar PV panels on their roof by the Ouse Valley Energy Services Company, one of the spin-offs from Transition Town Lewes.  They raised over £300,000 in shares from local people.  We are talking here about new renewable energy, but owned by, and for the benefit of, the communities affected by it.

In November 2009 I went to Slaithwaite in Yorkshire for a coming-together of Transition initiatives from across the north of England.  On a noticeboard at the back of the hall was a poster that read “a fresh idea: a new community-owned fresh local food shop for Slaithwaite”.  The local greengrocer was about to close, and members of Marsden & Slaithwaite Transition Town and others were considering taking it on as a community business.  Shortly afterwards, they successfully raised £15,000 in shares from local people to do so, and The Green Valley Grocer was born.  Business is thriving.  The shop has acted as a catalyst, inspiring the creation of a local food-growing co-operative which now supplies the shop, and more recently they, along with other local food businesses, announced ‘A declaration of independence from the global food system’!  Although perhaps a tad premature, it highlights the scale of their ambition.

What we are seeing happen in communities across the country is deeply exciting.  It is enterprise, but it is enterprise in a context.  They are implementing what Lloyds wrote in a report about why businesses need to take oil depletion into consideration. They wrote:

“Energy security is now inseparable from the transition to a low-carbon economy and businesses plans should prepare for this new reality”.

They are going beyond this though, and seeing this change of direction as a huge opportunity.  They are not just creating standalone one-off businesses, rather businesses emerging to meet what they see as a very real need to build community resilience.  They are not hoping that the challenges outlined by the World Economic Forum will simply go away, they are, without waiting for permission, rolling up their sleeves and getting on with it.

Another key function that many of these enterprises offer is the ability for people to invest inwards into their communities.  I visit many of these communities, for their launch events, or other public events they have organised.  These are ordinary people, coming together in extraordinary times, to do extraordinary things.  To know and meet these people has been one of the greatest honours of my life.

The recent Review by Mary Portas which looked at the future of the UK’s High Streets stated:

“a pound spent in a retailer with a localised supply chain that employs local people has far greater domestic impact than a pound spent in a supermarket or national chain.  What’s more, out-of-town developments are often presented as major new sources of employment, but we need to recognise that this ‘job creation’ is often just job displacement”.

Herein lies the tension.  The current push for economic growth at all costs fails to determine between job creation and job displacement.  It also fails to distinguish between strategies that build community resilience and strategies that undermine it.  There is a Big Idea here I think, a vital one, and I hope I have managed to excite you with its possibilities this evening.

I often end talks I give with Arundhati Roy’s quote “another world is not only possible, she is on her way.  On a quiet day I can hear her breathing”.  I think we might adapt her quote, so that, in the context of this bottom-up drive for more resilient communities, communities better prepared for uncertain times, it is not only a case of hearing another world breathing, but being able to see her around us, already setting up local businesses, reviving her local economy, setting up bakeries, breweries, food hubs, mentoring scores of young people with business ideas, attracting inward social investment finance, creating the models whereby people can invest in their communities and see them being strengthened and supported.

That’s why I get out of bed in the morning, because I feel that the potential in our getting this right is so exquisite that it’s all I can do, and because the grim predictability of what will happen if we do nothing is just unthinkable, especially in relation to the challenge of climate change.  If we are able to turn things around on the scale we need to turn them around on, to replace vulnerability, carbon intensity and fragility with resilience, it will be an achievement our children will tell tales about, sing songs about.  I hope I am there to hear them.  Thank you.

Many of these stories are told in more detail in The Transition Companion and in the forthcoming film ‘In Transition 2.0′.  

http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/7057

One of the thoughts I have been pondering for a while now is should we push to hold a town show, something that celebrates Harboroughs rural character and reflects its history.

Now, some of us may have wondered what was being planned for the show ground on the Airfield farm development but I believe this article kills two birds with one stone.

The Leicestershire County Show has been scrapped for at least two years and is also having to find a new home, the organisers have revealed.

The show is one of the biggest agricultural events in the county's calendar.

Organisers, the Leicestershire Agricultural Society, initially said the reasons were "unforeseen circumstances".

Chairman James Webb has since revealed landowners Barratt Homes pulled the plug on the last five years of a 10-year lease on the former airfield it uses on the outskirts of Melton.

The event has also been hit by varying attendances, which it is claimed are due to the weather, and the failure to get planning permission for events to help subsidise the show.

Mr Webb said the show would go ahead in 2012, but on land owned by William Davis in Market Harborough.

In a statement, Barratt said it was happy for the show to go ahead this May, because the lease would run until the end of that month.

However, the organisers said they were reliant on holding fund-raising events after May which was not now possible.

The two-day event attracts around 20,000 visitors, and has been held near Melton since 2006.

Mr Webb said: "Barratt's terminated the contract. We had a 10-year lease with a five-year break clause. They've not told us why, but they don't need to give us a reason.

"More recently, we've had the opportunity to move to Market Harborough and thought we would be able to have a show in 2011, but it looks like things won't be ready for us to stage a show there before 2012.

"The show relied on staging other events to help subsidise it but we were unable to hold anything after May."

He added: "Numbers at the show in Melton have been all over the place, it really is a weather thing.

"I'm not saying we didn't do well at Melton and I'm disappointed we've had to come away this year."

Mr Webb said the airfield site next to the prison at Market Harborough – being developed by William Davis – would include a showground with permanent show office and rings.

Melton borough councillor Matthew O'Callaghan said: "They've struggled to make money because they're limited by the number of events they can hold. The 21 days they're allowed includes setting up and taking down."

Martin Leyland, director of Barratt Strategic Land, said: "We understand the Leicestershire Agricultural Society had scheduled the County Show for the beginning of May.

"The lease does not expire until May 31 so we are not aware of any reason why the event could not have been held on the airfield this year. If the society would like to extend the lease beyond 2010 we would be happy to re-negotiate it with them."

Will there be an appetite for two shows in Harborough I wonder?

​Darren

We are counting down the days to the event now and the excitement levels are increasing. Today Judith and I did our first radio interview at Harborough FM. After a shakey start we finally got into the swing of things and hopefully got the message across to the listening public. We could still do with more publicity though so I you haven't already received the poster or newsletter then let me know and I can email them to you. I have put my poster up outside my house so even passers by have a chance to see the invitation.

We have several exhibitors coming to the event. Community groups sharing their experience and their projects include Morsbags, the Harborough Improvement Team Environment Group, Whetstone Pastures - Community Agriculture, Master Composter, Harborough Action for Justice and Peace, the Harborough Buying Group, Village Energy from North Kilworth, Fair Trade and of course Transition Harborough. We are also providing childrens actvities and refreshments. The event is free entry to all.

Posters around town are inviting people to come and bring apples for juicing if they have any going spare. The fruit press will be on open display outside and in front of the Methodist Church Hall. We hope to be apple to produce about 30 - 50 litres of apple juice during the afternoon. Members of the public will be encouraged to join in making the juice and will therefore be able to take some home with them. If we are left with a surplus of apples then the apple pressing will continue at my place the following day. An apple expert will also be available to help identify apple varieties  and tree care tips. We also want to map where Harborough is growing apples and generate interest in getting a community apple press for Harborough.  We are doing this by doing an apple mapping exercise.

There are a few big asks I have of you to help make this event a big success.

Firstly we need volunteers on the day, if you haven't done so already then please let me know when you are available and what you might want to have a go at.

Secondly, we need a few cakes, biscuits, scones donating so that we sell can make this event cost neutral to the group. If you could make something applely then even better. Please contact me with what it is you are making and send me the recipe for the Harborough Community Apple Recipe Book. (There is a prize for the winning recipe).

Thirdly we need you to start talking about the event to people you meet, neighbours, work colleagues and friends.

Fourthly we need apples and clean dry glass bottles without their labels to put the delicious apple juice in.

Finally come on the day and have some fun.

Don't hesitate to find out more by contacting me as soon as possible or come along to an apple day taster on Saturday 22nd October 10 - 4pm. Drop me an email for further details.

Gillian Baverstock

This was the first opportunity to try out the 2nd commissioned Apple Press by the Transition Town Movement in Leicestershire. Lots of passers-by had the opportunity to taste the juice prepared. Some lingered to have a go and helped to cut the apples collected from a local farmer. Many remarked on what a great tasting apple juice it was and what a great idea it was to use up excess apples which otherwise would have been left to rot. Many people took fliers inviting them to the first Haborough Apple Day on the 29th October.

This event was very satisfying in lots of ways and made enjoyable by the number of people we talked to. The only down side to the 2 days was the wasps however only 1 person got stung. The event definately achieved it's aims of making people aware of fruit pressing and was successful in highlighting cooperative working and provoked further thought for many.

Don't miss out on tasting a great quality Leicestershire Transition product - come and join in on 29th October. 

Enjoy

Darren

I just been reading your transition town website. I live in Shropshire and
like you I am trying to find ways of going forward positively into the
future. For me at the moment my focus is on growing food in a sustainable
way and in particular I am experimenting with a range of perennial
vegetables. They can be grown as part of a forest garden, integrated in a
permaculture veg garden or a more traditional veg patch or grown in
polycultures (which is how I grow them). I think they are part of the answer
to growing local food sustainably.

I have a blog about my exploits which is at
http://annisveggies.wordpress.com/ for anyone who is interested and I am
happy to help with any queries people may have.

Best wishes

Anni Kelsey

starting to think about the Apple Day in October. See my posts on the Forum and Abundance Group Looking for Volunteers.

Have made contact with Chris Seward at the Harborough Improvement Team and starting to think about venues.

Interested to hear your thoughts

Love Gillian

Lionel Badal was working on his undergraduate dissertation when he suddenly found himself privy to information that he knew must be made public

When will we reach the peak of global oil production? It’s a question of crucial importance as governments around the world prepare for a world of declining oil resources, in which we will be much more reliant on alternative sources of energy.

The body on which the UK and others rely heavily to make that assessment is the International Energy Agency (IEA) based in Paris and set up in the aftermath of the oil crisis between 1973 and 1974.

For years, IEA reports have been reiterating the conclusion that peak oil was not a problem. Behind the scenes however, it is now clear that senior staff thought otherwise.

It was only through the work of 22-year-old Lionel Badal, a politics student at Exeter University, that the truth about this cover-up finally emerged.

First enquiries...

It started innocently enough, as Lionel, working on his undergraduate dissertation on peak oil, set about trying to arrange interviews with politicians and figures working inside and outside the oil industry.

He was surprised when the IEA agreed to allow him to interview one of their top officials.

In the end the first official pulled out of the interview but he was replaced by one of his colleagues, a senior economist at the organisation. The new interviewee turned out to be far more forthcoming than his superiors might have wanted.

December 2008...

Lionel met the official at the IEA’s Paris headquarters. His interviewee was initially a reluctant speaker.

‘He was very concerned about how I would quote him and where it would appear – just from this I knew the meeting could be interesting,’ says Lionel.

‘He then asked if he was the first person I had interviewed still working in the industry. I replied that yes he was (I had tried speaking to OPEC but had been told they did not do interviews). After hearing this he said this was a problem.

‘He didn’t say why but it was obvious he did not want to be the only one speaking out.’

Most of the interview was ‘interesting but nothing revelatory’, remembers Lionel, but that changed towards the end when the official was asked for his opinion on predictions for peak oil.

The IEA has repeatedly said oil output can increase until at least 2030 as long as 'adequate investments are made in exploration and development'. Other analysts, including those behind the UK Energy Research Centre report on peak oil, say this is 'wildly optimistic' and that the IEA does not have the evidence to back up this prediction.

Far from sticking to the IEA line, the official said he was actually very worried about peak oil and shared some of the more pessimistic concerns.


‘From that meeting I understood there was a problem,’ says Lionel, ‘as publicly the IEA did not say this type of thing.’

Over the next few months Lionel continued his research and met with politicians in France.

Spring 2009…

By early 2009 he had finished his research and contacted the IEA official to send him his dissertation. He also told him about the contact he had had so far with French MPs concerned about peak oil.

 The IEA official told him that he respected one of the politicians with whom Lionel had met and later agreed to testify to other politicians about the problem.
 

It was a pivotal moment - through his involvement in an undergraduate disseration, a key IEA official was prepared to go public about what his organisation really thought about peak oil.

July 2009…

By July, Lionel had managed to arrange a meeting between himself, the IEA official and the MEP Corrine Lepage, a former French environment minister and well-known figure in French politics. 

Clearly pleased to meet such a respected figure, the IEA official became much more open about the downplaying of peak oil concerns at the agency.

‘He told her reports had been modified and that there were pressures on the IEA from the US not to make too pessimistic predictions,' Lionel remembers. 'He said just as peak oil theorists claimed, there was a big problem with oil.’

By the end of the meeting the IEA official had agreed to write a briefing note for the MEP on the issue. But by then Lionel thought the issue needed to be made public.

‘I knew on her own the MEP could not do anything about the problem. But I also knew that some British journalists were writing a lot about the issue, so a few weeks later I asked the IEA official whether he would be willing to testify anonymously to journalists.

The official was initially sceptical, preferring to inform politicians in a discreet way. But a few weeks later, Lionel pressed him again on the issue and he agreed.

‘I think arranging the meeting with the French MP definitely helped. It gave me some credibility as she was well known. He was certainly not naïve about the whole process and understood that his career could be at risk.’

September 2009…

Having been given the green light, Lionel contacted two journalists at the Economist and the Independent.

The Independent was slow to respond and did not seem convinced by the story, remembers Lionel, but the Economist journalist agreed to meet the following month when he was in London. However, at the meeting he said he could not immediately write about the issue as he was working on other stories.

‘I also got the feeling his position was isolated at the Economist and that the magazine would not want to take a stance by running such a story on peak oil,’ says Lionel.

October 2009…

Soon after these first attempts to make the issue public, the respected NGO Global Witness released a report on peak oil, Heads in the Sand. 

Reading Guardian journalist Ashley Seager's article on this report, Lionel decided to contact him and sent information about his IEA whistleblower to both Seager and the paper’s environment columnist, George Monbiot.

Seager forwarded it onto the Guardian’s energy editor, Terry Macalister. 

By coincidence the IEA was preparing to publish its latest annual report on oil supply and demand in early November. With the launch scheduled to take place in London, the Guardian had the perfect opportunity to maximise exposure of the story.

November 2009…


Macalister spoke to Lionel’s IEA official, and on November 10th, 2009 - the same day that the IEA’s chief economist Dr Fatih Birol was launching the agency’s major annual report - the story appeared on the Guardian’s frontpage.

As expected, the reaction was huge. ‘Peak oil whistleblower’ stories were splashed across the media.

 The IEA attempted to downplay the idea of a peak oil cover-up, arguing that their reports were peer-reviewed by international experts. But since the story broke, further reports from Uppsala University and the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security have been critical of IEA predictions.

Next step…


Lionel himself says the allegations from the whistleblower and reports from Global Witness are too serious for governments to ignore. He is lobbying politicians to launch an independent inquiry into predictions being made by the IEA.

‘We have to know what is really going on behind the walls of the so-called global oil watchdog,' he says. ‘If the Agency deliberately covers up the seriousness of the situation and provides misleading information, then the consequences could be world-shaking.

‘By not knowing that peak oil will happen within 10 or even five years, governments and businesses around the world are not preparing adequately. And this could have dramatic effects for everyone in a not too distant future,’ he says. 

Read this in the Ecologist and thought would stick it on here for posterity !!
 

Retired mechanic Jose Alano invented a simple, cheap, energy saving rooftop solar water heater which is benefiting thousands of people. Here's how it's done...

José Alano is a model of creativity in tackling environmental problems in Brazil. In 2002, the retired mechanic transformed a pile of plastic bottles and cartons into a solar water heater. Since then, thousands of people in southern Brazil have benefited from Alano's invention, saving money while reducing waste.

The idea came from the lack of recycling collection services in his small home town of Tubarão. Refusing to throw plastic bottle, carton and other recyclable waste into the landfill, José Alano soon realised he had a problem: a room full of rubbish.

'Being 59 years old, I have had the opportunity to witness the technological advances of science, which improved food storage. But nowadays, some packaging weighs almost the same than the food itself! Years ago, my wife and I realised that we were not prepared for this new form of consumption.'

Using his basic knowledge on solar water heating systems, he and his wife built an alternative version using 100 plastic bottles and 100 milk cartons. 'It worked perfectly well, and we got rid of our waste in a responsible way,' he says.

A winning invention

Alano's initiative became widely known in Brazil after winning the Superecologia prize, offered by the Superinteressante magazine for renewable projects in the not-for-profit sector. Since then, the retired mechanic has been busy with workshops and lectures in community centres and schools, particularly in the Brazilian southern state of Santa Catarina, where he lives.

Yet, Alano never wanted to profit from it, and explains why: 'I am a simple person, but I am very aware of my own responsibilities as a consumer. The recycled solar water heater was just my small contribution to the environment, and to improve the lives of people who need to save money. I registered the invention, so nobody else could copy and profit from it. Although the information on how to build it is in the public domain and anybody can access it, there are two restrictions: to its industrial production and to its use by politicians during electoral campaigns.'

The information on how to build the recycled solar heater has reached communities through the support of local governments, media, state-owned and private electricity companies, which also donated pipes and other materials.

Alano says that now it is difficult to keep track of all the projects being developed across Brazil, but he mentions some figures from the southern states: 'More than 7,000 people are already benefitting from the solar heaters in Santa Catarina state alone. There are two cooperatives, one in Tubarão and other in Florianópolis, the last producing 437 solar heaters to be installed in council houses. In Paraná state, the number of solar heaters had reached 6,000 in 2008, thanks to the DIY leaflets and workshops that the governmental body SEMA organised there.'

Big savings

The alternative water heater can provide power savings of up to 30 per cent, but apart from that, Alano notes that every recycled solar water heater built also means less plastic bottles and cartons finding their way to landfill. Since Alano's invention, Tubarão has been benefiting from regular collection of recyclable waste, something that unfortunately still doesn't happen in many Brazilian towns.

Alano has lost count of the number of times he has lectured or been visited by groups of students, eager to learn about the invention. However, this is not his only one. Alano designed a low cost multifunctional bed for disabled people, but he is struggling to find a business partnership. Although there has been much interest to put it into production, Alano says that the problem is always to keep profits lower in order to benefit the consumers.

Eight years after its creation, the solar heater still takes a lot of his time, but he believes that now he will finally be able to focus on the multifunctional bed and other projects: 'The recycled solar water heater is only the result of persistence over frustration', he explains. 'I don't consider myself an inventor. I am just a citizen trying to find solutions to problems.' 

Do it yourself
Despite latitude and climate differences between southern Brazil and Britain, the solar water heater designed by Alano is based on the principle of thermosyphon, used in many commercial heaters sold in the UK for as much as £6,000. In this system, neither pumps nor electricity are used to induce circulation. The different water densities are enough to cause a cyclic movement from the collector panel to the tank: less dense hot water upwards, more dense cold water downwards.

The assembly is straightforward, and can be better understood through the illustrations contained in the DIY leaflet (text only in Portuguese). Obviously, size does mater. Alano reckons that to heat water for a shower of one person, a 1m² panel would be enough.

If you are interested in building up your own, these are the basic materials needed: 2L plastic bottles (60), cartons (50), 100mm PVC pipe (70 cm), 20mm PVC pipe (11.7m), 90-degree 20 mm PVC elbows (4), 20mm PVC T-connectors (20), 20 mm PVC end caps (2), PVC glue, black matt paint and roller, sand paper, self-amalgamating tape, rubber hammer, saw, wood or other material for the support.

With the diagrams in the DIY leaflet as a guide, use the 100mm PVC pipe as a mould and cut off the bottom of the bottles. Cut the 20mm PVC pipes into 10 x 1m and 20 x 8.5 cm pieces, and assemble with the T-connectors. Cut and paint the cartons (pag.10-12), as well as the one-meter long pipes. Assemble according to figure B.

The panels must be placed at least 30 cm below the tank and be sited on a south facing wall or roof. To optimise heat absorption, the panels must be mounted at the angle of your latitude, plus 10°. In London, for instance, the panel's inclination should be 61°. Alano recommends that the plastic bottles in the panels should be swapped for new ones every 5 years: 'Over time, the plastic becomes opaque, which reduces the heat caption, while the black cartons can be repainted.'

Giovana Zilli is a freelance journalist 

  These are precarious and unprecedented times. Our economies crumble, while beyond the chaos of markets, the ecological foundations of our way of living near collapse. Little that we have taken for granted is likely to come through this century intact.

We don’t believe that anyone – not politicians, not economists, not environmentalists, not writers – is really facing up to the scale of this. As a society, we are all still hooked on a vision of the future as an upgraded version of the present. Somehow, technology or political agreements or ethical shopping or mass protest are meant to save our civilisation from self-destruction.

Well, we don’t buy it. This project starts with our sense that civilisation as we have known it is coming to an end; brought down by a rapidly changing climate, a cancerous economic system and the ongoing mass destruction of the non-human world. But it is driven by our belief that this age of collapse – which is already beginning – could also offer a new start, if we are careful in our choices.

The end of the world as we know it is not the end of the world full stop.

Deeper than oil, steel or bullets, a civilisation is built on stories: on the myths that shape it and the tales told of its origins and destiny. We have herded ourselves to the edge of a precipice with the stories we have told ourselves about who we are: the stories of ‘progress’, of the conquest of ‘nature’, of the centrality and supremacy of the human species.

It is time for new stories. The Dark Mountain Project intends to conjure into being new ways of seeing and writing about the world. We call this Uncivilisation .

Our aim is to bring together writers and artists, thinkers and doers, to assault the established citadels of literature and thought, and to begin to redraw the maps by which we navigate the places and times in which we find ourselves. 

The initial aim of the meeting was to raise the profile of transition Harborough with Steve and obviously to highlight and describe the issue of Peak Oil with them both.

While a rather nice hot beverage was rustled up we discussed the subject of the districts Waste contracts and received some interesting insights before we introduced Transition Harborough to them both.

We discussed the issues of sustainability and community resilience and our desire to lead some projects which we have now been given the change by John Parrott last week.

We also discussed that we wished to have some means of representation and how the future of the Local Strategic Partnership is up in the air, in response we were informed that the Climate Change Strategy was in the process of being formulated and would be out for consultation in Jan/Feb and we would be invited into the process.

Both wished to be kept involved in the community gardens process (Whatever the project ends up being called).

Al in all, another useful contact with the council. Let us hope that we manage to prove our metal in these projects

Darren
 

We were both plesently surprised to be offered the opportunity to build some projects with full consultation of the local residents on 10 plots of land held by the council, with an option of more if things work well.

The restrictions are that a full consultation must be made with the residents/stakeholders and the the maintenance contractors must be able to gain access for maintenance work.

The initial list is as follows:

• Farndon road (Opposite MRM)
• Farndale View x 2
• Rhodes Close
• Brookfield road
• Monroe Close
• Scott Close
• Albany Road
• Stablegate way
• Middledale Road 

The Farndon Road plot is long and thin with only one adjacent residential property, opposite are MRM and Francis Willey's and to the side a scout hut. These could all be useful resources for this particular project.

We look forward to hearing your views on these projects and what can be done.

Darren

The International Energy Agency, the Paris-based organization that provides energy analysis to 28 industrialized nations has changed its mind. In line with many other analysts, they now agree that peak oil has already happened!

The agency concludes in its latest annual report, released in November, that production of conventional crude oil probably peaked  for good in 2006 at about 70 million barrels a day. Production from currently producing oil fields will drop sharply in coming decades, the report suggests.

At the same time strong demand growth from China, now the world’s largest energy user, and elsewhere will require liquid energy supplies not just to hold steady, but to climb by more than 20 percent.

According to Nobuo Tanaka, the IEA’s exec director,  it is far from certain that tar sands and  increased production of natural gas liquids can compensate for decreasing crude production. At the IEA reports press launch Tanaka said , “Recent events have cast a veil of uncertainty over our energy future …We need to use energy more efficiently and we need to wean ourselves off fossil fuels by adopting technologies that leave a much smaller carbon footprint”.

IEA forecasts that oil prices should continue to climb in coming decades, reaching $135 a barrel by 2035, a price level that some economists believe contributed to the global economic collapse of 2008.

Some experts found the report’s projections troubling.

“It’s a perfect storm headed our way — a steady rise in global demand for oil crashing up against an increasingly limited supply of economically recoverable oil,” William Chameides, professor of environmental science at Duke University, wrote on his blog. 

I was lucky enough to be able to attend the ENABLE http://www.leics.gov.uk/enable.htm conference again this year which is held in the NSPCC building in Leicester. For those of you that do not know ENABLE is a fusion of environmental interests that forms the environmental voice of the Leicestershire Local Strategic partnership and every year of so it produces a list of twenty or so priorities that the County Council should weave into their policies.

The event was started by a presentation by Trewin Restorick from the organisation Global Action plan http://www.globalactionplan.org.uk/who gave an entertaining presentation on Behavioural change... the theme of this years conference which links in nicely with the Transition Networks work on Pattern Language which I still have no idea of what that is about.

I attended two workshops while I was there. The first was by Haydn Young of Gaia Active http://www.gaiaactive.com/ (and also the Harborough Cinema campaign) which is a training consultancy (for want of a better term) who specialise in energy consumption reduction through behavioural change. We have all sat through presentations on energy savings and will probably have lived through various well intentioned initiatives in our work places but once they finish things revert back to the status Quo.

A very energetic Haydn described their basic processes and being Harborough based he had a few examples of their work and compared the energy consumption profiles of a couple of typical councils including Harborough District Council. During his presentation he stated that HDC through their facilitation had reduced its energy consumption by 14%.

He also showed how business structure can play a part where he cited two Germanic discount supermarkets that are in close proximity to each other and reputedly owned by two warring brothers. These stores use different models one is just part of the group and the other has to maintain its own profit and loss accounts, as such in the evenings one shuts and leaves its lights on as it has not imperative to switch them off and the other switches them off to save money and reduce its bottom line in its accounts.

Haydn’s organisation is in the process of producing a book on their process which I am keenly awaiting and hope that we have the chance to work with Gaia Active in the near future.

The second presentation was from an officer of the North West Leicestershire district council about their Green Footprints campaign http://footprints.nwleics.gov.uk/. This is a very impressive effort by a small team of three officers to spread change in the behavior of their residents. They have created community forums as part of the Eco Teams process and also a business forum for local businesses to get together and work out what they could do and need to reduce their operational impact. An impressive presentation that just left me wondering if HDC does anything like this.

In the wrap up talk the chair explained that the future of ENABLE and its aims are currently in flux as a review is in progress but that they will let all the attendees know what is happening in due course.

 

We had two professionals from a local architects firm who have formed a sustainable design consultancy who mingled with local clergy and volunteers from community groups. The tone of the evening was informal as hoped and at least a couple of new network links were formed as well as a re-acquaintance of two people that last met at University back in the swinging sixties.

The meetings will be held on the first Wednesday of each month with the next meeting scheduled for Wednesday October 6^th. 

The first think that strikes you about this book is its readability, some chapters are only a couple of pages long and I found that I was able to pick up and put this book down inbetween chores. Written by a journalist about how he started off researching an article for a magazine and ended up on a journey of discovery.

Initially he started by trying to outsource his life and engaged the services of an agency in India to arrange his social calendar, shop for clothing etc., but he soon came to the realisation that both this and the pursuit of the best price for his clothes meant that someone somewhere else had to be taken of advantage of.
 

Although glaringly obvious having followed his journey here you find yourself amazed and shocked by this revelation. What follows is a humorous story of discovery where the Author seeks to find meaning in politics, religion, pest control and clothes.

An excellent book that left me wanting to buy a treadle powered sewing machine, not that I have anywhere to put one.

My copy is available to borrow

The book is divided into three main sections, the first attempts to outline the details of Climate Change and Peak oil. Next comes the bones of Transition and then your next steps for example start or join a Transition initiative.

As someone who has been an environmentalist for many years the first section I thought would be a case of sucking eggs but Robs written word, as with his spoken words, is hypnotic and enchanting and I soon devoured this section.

The second section pays attention to the psychology of change and and makes for an intriguing read, it has been a couple of months since I read this book now and the ideas have faded in my mind already so I think I will make the time to read this section again :o)

All in all a great and inspirational read which I can recommend to you all, my copy is free for anyone to borrow if they want to do so.

Having just returned from a seminar on Feed in Tariffs and how wind is the best option for starting an ESCO Energy Services Company (More about that another time) I was a little perturbed to come across this little morsel

First there was 'peak oil'... then 'peak lithium.' Now we're hearing the supply of neodymium, the rare earth metal essential of the high-power magnets found in electric vehicle motors, is tightening as China -- the largest supplier (95%) -- has begun limiting exports and raising its tariff. So reports Aaron Sichel in a white paper entitled, "The Story of Neodymium - Motors, Materials and the Search for Supply Security."

In his 14-page report, Sichel writes...

The worldwide yield of neodymium oxide in 2006 was 18,000 metric tons. Permanent magnets required virtually all of it: over 20,000 metric tons of all rare earth oxides (REOs) combined, mostly neodymium but also including dysprosium. By 2010, permanent magnets will require about 29,000 metric tons of neodymium oxide alone, and about 4,000 metric tons of other rare earth metals including dysprosium.

That’s less than 18 months from now, and it doesn't look like China can deliver.

With an estimated global demand of over 180,000 tons for all REEs combined by 2010, Chinese REE production and exports would have to rise by several hundred percent just to keep pace.

Instead, the opposite is happening.

He notes that there are other supplies outside of China -- Lemhi Pass, Idaho; Mt. Weld, Australia; Mountain Pass, California; Hoidas Lake and Thor Lake, Canada -- but they will "only supplement, not supplant China’s tightly controlled neodymium exports when they come on line in the "next several years."

Man, when it rains, it pours.

Have we as a nation just left it a little too late again?

Read the report to the Dept of Transport here

Darren