Going beyond oil

Transition is defined in part as a community response to peak oil and climate change. Often those two forces go hand in hand. Now as the era of "Goldilocks" fossil fuels comes to an end, and extreme unconventional energy comes into play, I'd like to cross-post this latest message from Greenpeace - as part of an occasional series on associated movements. Greenpeace are taking action today in the UK against Shell, who plan to start drilling for oil this month in the pristine and fragile ecosystems of the Arctic:

Right now, Shell petrol stations are being shut down across London and Edinburgh.

Teams of Greenpeace volunteers are fanning out across the two cities, going station to station shutting down the pumps. In total, over 100 forecourts will be out of action. We're broadcasting live throughout the day on a special online TV channel – watch live now.

Why are we doing this? Because you wrote to Shell, asking it to halt risky plans to drill in the Arctic. Thank you so much for doing that, but the bad news is that Shell didn't listen.

Instead, the oil giant is lining up a fleet of huge oil drilling vessels and later this month will start drilling for oil in the frozen north off the coast of Alaska.

There isn't much time to stop Shell's plans, so Shell needs to hear from you again.

Shell has its own loyalty card for regular customers. So we're offering you the chance to get a Disloyalty Card and send it Shell to register your outrage. . You can print it off, fill it in and post it free of charge, using Shell's own freepost address.

You already know how the Arctic is a dangerous place to go drilling, and how an oil spill would wreak havoc on the fragile, vulnerable environment. Shell's own plans show how difficult it will be to mop up if a spill happens in the Arctic.

By chasing after hard-to-reach oil in remote and dangerous places, Shell is putting polar bears, walruses and other Arctic wildlife at risk.

That's why you wrote to Shell, and why we're shutting down the pumps at so many Shell petrol stations.

But you can help protect them. You can stop Shell. Send in your Disloyalty Card now and tell Shell you won't let it destroy the Arctic.

Let's go!

Jamie Woolley
Greenpeace UK

PS Tune in to our live online TV channel to get the latest updates from the closed Shell forecourts, throughout the day.

Imagea; Go beyond oil (Greenpeace); June hottest record in Arctic (Creative Commons)

Forging Alliance – Transition Themes Week #10

Welcome to our tenth Transition Themes Week! We’ve been running these weeks for a year now, in order to showcase and feed back what the different TN groups and projects have been engaged in. By the end of 2011 it’s clear that the shape and the style of the original theme groups has shifted. When we began in 2008, the “comms” group spent a good deal of time debating how to organise stalls, what our message should be, taking part in local events, setting up a website, We sat in intense circles at the Playhouse, upstairs at Take 5, debating where that “message” should go, taking minutes, introducing ourselves and our ideas.

Two years later we are less involved in marketing Transition than in creating a resilient culture and alternative media. There are the people who organise events and there are the people who co-ordinate and contribute to the news blog and This Low Carbon Life. Simeon Jackson wrote an excellent roadmap recently for establishing a new Outreach Programme, but this is on the back burner right now because there are other things at play in the world, in which Transition has a distinctive role.

One of the main functions of communication is to forge and maintain connections. It has a singular ability to be fluid and enter many spheres of activity and to cross-reference and make dynamic links.

In a recent social reporting week on Navigating Community Chaos Mike Grenville described how during the process of transformation the imaginal buds of the emerging butterfly link up. They do this in order to resist attack by the immune system of the caterpillar, which is holding on to its old form. This metaphor appeared many times in TN’s early Heart and Soul meetings, as a way of understanding what was happening on the planet. But there is one thing voicing a spiritual idea and another undergoing it in the real world. One thing to breezily state: well hey, we’ll just go into our cocoon and dissolve!, and another actually allowing those old caterpillar forms to break down, uncomfortably, inside ourselves and our social groups, to forge alliances without allowing our own allegiance to the ancien regime to destroy us from within.

One Saturday last month the Bloggers met, as they do each quarter, to discuss the upcoming rota for Winter and Spring, We sat round a table at The Greenhouse and jammed about themes and topics and how to reduce the enormously long list of subjects we have been covering for the last two years (see right hand column!).

But before the meeting began three of us attended a lobbying session upstairs, organised by StopClimateChaos Coalition, to present 8 different questions to Simon Wright MP, ranging from FITs for community solar panels (Norwich City Council) to biofuel power plants (Greenpeace/Norwich Carbon Reduction Trust). The meeting was chaired by Michael Uwins (Friend of the Earth) and networked by Trevor Phillips (Norfolk Coalition Against the Cuts) to mark the start of the present talks in Durban. After our meeting I went to the General Assembly at Occupy Norwich and heard about the upcoming Kett's Rebellion march this Wednesday and feedback

from the Climate Change working group and the recent Occupy UK conference at St Paul's. If you could step out and see from a bird's perspective you would see amongst the thronging restless shoppers on an ordinary Saturday in Norwich, these small still circles of people, discussing the future against all odds. What characterises all them is their intensity of focus and their coherence.

These alliances are happening all over the world. The old consumer caterpillar culture carries on voraciously eating all the resources at its disposal and resisting that dissolve. It is lashing back violently against the butterfly protest and peaceful assembly, breaking its agreements, infringing civil rights and environment protection. At the same time grassroots and environmental groups are holding together and responding in a way not seen for decades. Last week in response to George Osborne's autumn statement and the Government's deregulation planning laws that will put vast areas of our countryside into developers hands, an extraordinary alliance of countryside campaigners, wildlife groups and green activists delivered a powerful push back.

So one of the function of “comms” within Transition is to cohere and to bring to light some of our own local, national and international alliances. Because Transition cannot be all things to all people. It can’t do the specific work that single issues campaign groups such as BiofuelWatch do, it doesn’t have the edge of activism, or a connection with the bigger frame of the natural wild world, as Jeppe Graugaard pointed out in his post on Re-imagining the Future. It doesn’t have the intellectual or creative edge of the Dark Mountain Project, or the full-on engagement of

Occupy. And conversely these groups do not provide the drivers for community resilience, the building of an alternative low-carbon infrastructure, or individual ways people can reconfigure themselves. Our strength lies in our working together as a composite and the harmonious exchange between our networks. To engage in meetings and actions in full awareness of their significance, as if life really mattered.

If we are serious about social justice, about creating a fair and equitable world, about the consequences of peak oil and climate change, we would be wise not to separate and attack, to criticise ourselves or each other, not to call ourselves usual suspects or hippies or middle class or a bunch of amateurs. We would be wise to see ourselves as an emergent new collective form, to celebrate our own integrity and intelligence, to do everything we do as if our lives depended on it. Because our lives do depend on it. And our hardest task is to keep communicating with one another in a hostile world that encourages everyone to remain separated and silent and superficial, whose media keeps informing us that if we just keep shopping everything will be all right.

So here is our week from Transitioners who know that that is not the truth of the matter, who all work intensely in their singular areas and write in alliance on this blog: Chris on a new carbon-cutting incentive, Norwich Energy Lookouts group, Simeon Jackson on Occupy Norwich and Monetary Reform, Elena on local food production at Norwich FarmShare, Mark on working together on a Permaculture Norfolk Workday, John on "sustainable" housing development and Transition Circle Hethersett. Keep that conversation going!

Photos: Nov 26 meetings - stopclimate chaoas, Norwich bloggers, Occupy Norwich GA; poster for Occupy Everything; recent Heathrow map for expansion plus graffiti; video of Nov 30 fair pensions public workers's strike march.

We Are Here

Today I'm writing a post in solidarity with my fellow Transitioners at GrowHeathrow, who are going to court tomorrow to defend their home. For people who don't know about this key Transition initiative, do visit their website and look at everything they have been engaged in in the last two years. I visited everyone there last month (Joe Rake in their communications crew is one of our Social Reporters) and it is really a dynamic and friendly place. The group have cleared 30 tonnes of rubble and made a lush and vibrant garden. It is totally off-grid and the first Tarsands-free community in the UK. They have installed a wind turbine and solar panels and cook with wood donated by a local tree surgeon. It's a true community space where they hold frequent workshops and decide everything by consensus. If you wanted a vision of how the future could be, the kind of future Transitioners frequently talk about or imagine might be possible, you need to look no further. Everyone is welcome.

GrowHeathrow is also on squatted land. Their kitchen, living space and workrooms have been converted from two ruined greenhouses, their garden from derelict and poisoned earth, and tomorrow the owners are taking the group to court to try and evict them (in spite of the fact that the local community and residents' associations support the initiative and attend many of their events).

So today I'm writing about ownership and property, alongside our Social Reporting week on Economics, and to question the violence which those who own and possess use against the people who wish only to live on the earth as real human beings together (the brutality of the US police against the Occupy protestes, for example or the UK police evicting the travellers at Dale Farm). And how, as the banking system puts a stranglehold around the resources of every country, we are being challenged to come together and defend our right to live peaceably.

And also to rethink our attitude.

Everywhere, from corporate land grabs in Africa to the IMF seizure of assets in countries such as Greece, the rights to common ownership are being eroded. Indigenous people are being evicted from their ancestral lands, small farmers from land they have cultivated for centuries. In Britain new laws around squatting are now going through Parliament just at the point that many are losing their homes. To stand up against these measures we need to overcome any fear and hostility we might hold towards the dispossessed. We need to see our heartless attitude as a result of centuries of indoctrination by the Empire, as the 1% have systematically and violently seized common lands and native territories everywhere and asserted their rights to domination.

How does this fit with Transition? Why am I writing about the activist initiative GrowHeathrow when I live in East Anglia? Because the resilience of communities everywhere in the future will be measured insofar as they can embrace a culture of shared space and fellow feeling.

As Rob Hopkins said last night, summing up his talk at Transition Norwich's Third Birthday Celebration, most of the projects within the Transition movement are based on co-operatives and community-held assets. A brief look at The Transition Companion will immediately show you a wealth of social enterprises, community gardens, farms, energy companies, bakeries, breweries. Shared knowledge, shared meals. At the heart of the movement is our radical breakout from individualism, a relinquishing of a culture that champions private and exclusive property, to embracing one that celebrates shared neighbourhoods and shared lives. Habitats made for the benefit of all beings, not just for 1% of the human population. Our challenge is to let go of our addiction to possessing things and instead hold those same things in common - tools, cars, food, land, space.

You might not want to sleep in a tent at Occupy Norwich, nor live in a converted greenhouse in Sipson, but the spirit that Occupy and GrowHeathrow embody is core to Transition initiatives everywhere. Ours not yours.

Watch this video. Be with them tomorrow.

Defend Grow Heathrow! from Joshua Bregman on Vimeo

GrowHeathrow; Poster for The Garden, a documentary about the 14-acre community farm, South Central, in Los Angeles. the largest of its kind in the United States. In 2006 the owners sent in bulldozers and razed it to the ground; well wishing photo sent to the GrowHeathrow photo campaign; OccupyBeloMonte (Dam), Brazil.

Welcome to book week!

This week we'll be talking about books. We then also decided to hold a book swap on Saturday 24 September 3pm at Nectar cafe, 16 Onley Street, NR2 2EB. We'll also start an Official Bookcrossing Zone, so from then on you can come and take and bring books there. For free, there aren't even penalties for returning your books late.

To provide the context for what I'm reading at the moment (4.), let me go back a few years, when I found a feminist book in a second hand bookshop: Gyn/Ecology (no, it doesn't actually talk about ecology, which somewhat blunts the pun, but it's a powerful book anyway). In it, Mary Daly laments the lack of historical sense amongst feminist students of literature, and recommends some classics that span 3 centuries.

1. Some reflections upon marriage, Mary Astell (1700)
2. A vindication of the rights of woman, Mary Wollstonecraft (1792)
3. A room of one's own, Virginia Woolf (1929)
4. The second sex, Simone de Beauvoir (1949)
5. The feminine mystique, Betty Friedan (1963)
I thought the sixth book that she recommends isn't as good as the others, which I mostly blame on the fact that not enough time had passed to distinguish what was presumably at the cutting edge at the time, but that has now lost much of its expressive power. (Sisterhood is powerful, various (1970)) I would therefore recommend:
6. Gyn/Ecology: metaethics of radical feminism, Mary Daly (1975)

In 1995 the women's conference in Beijing calculated that it would take until the year 2745 for women's emancipation to be completed. Reading these books that span 275 years, and that must have been part of the basis for this calculation, really brought home to me what we've let ourselves in for, in transition as well, as I've argued when talking of rebalancing the carbon cycle, and also what I was thinking of when I proposed a new pattern: the Moral yardstick.

P.S. Bonus track for anyone who reads Dutch: Er is een land waar vrouwen willen wonen, Joke Smit (1984)

She's alive . . .beautiful . . . finite . . . hurting . . . worth dying for . . .

Earth shorts: juxtaposing an article written by Mark Crutchley of Norwich Greenpeace and the OneWorldColumn with a video put together by Vivek Chauhan, a young film maker, together with naturalists working with the Sanctuary Asia network (www.sanctuaryasia.com).

It’s Oil or the Planet

We live in a society so addicted to oil and the cheap travel it makes available that we are prepared to take enormous risks with the very planet on which we live to maintain the supply of this precious commodity.

The US government has just given Shell permission to drill in the Arctic, while Cairn Energy is already prospecting off the coast of Greenland and Russia is gearing up to exploit the resources off its Arctic coast.

Yes that is the same Shell which a UN investigation has just criticised for inadequate control and maintenance of its operations in Nigeria. These have created such disastrous pollution that it will take 30 years and billions of dollars to clean up. The same Shell spilling, admittedly smaller quantities, oil into the North Sea as I write.

Meanwhile in Canada BP and Shell again, are amongst the companies involved in the Tar Sands industry which produces oil by mining low quality bitumen deposits. In doing so the companies involved are going to rip up an area of forest the size of England and turn it into an industrial wasteland, complete with polluted watercourses.

What can we do? Well the Co-op has long led a campaign against the tar sands industry and Greenpeace amongst others is campaigning against both Arctic drilling and proposals to allow deep water drilling in UK waters. Those who propose putting the planet before the oil industry need your help and support. Mark Crutchley

Video: This is a non-commercial attempt to highlight the fact that world leaders, irresponsible corporates and mindless 'consumers' are combining to destroy life on earth. It is dedicated to all who died fighting for the planet and those whose lives are on the line today.

Alchemy 2 (the Micro Picture) - Revisited

For today's Deep Nature post we revisit one originally published by Erik on 1 September last year:

My father came to visit last week. When I said that now that I grow 12 months per year of fruit and vegetables, I've started growing carbohydrates, he asked why. I was tempted to quote the dào dé jīng:
"The dao that can be expressed is not the eternal dao."
But that is the first sentence of the dào dé jīng, so what I said instead is because of the way it connects me up. To the circle of life (find the common element in the picture above and the Alchemy picture). I could also have said because I signed up to 10:10, and I thought this would be both the nicest and easiest way to decrease my carbon footprint by 10% in 2010. Or because it eliminates waste. A word or two about this connecting. Reconnection to Nature is the most talked about topic on this blog. What I like about these posts is the implicit recognition that the spiritual side of this reconnection is inseparable from the practical side. To paraphrase Robert Pirsig: Talk about spirituality can get very confusing unless the topics with which spirituality is concerned are also included. So in this series of posts I would break a lance for talking more about closing the elemental cycles (carbon, nitrogen, etc.). This is one of the strengths of home gardening. My vision for the year 2100 is that there will be no more flush toilets. Erik Buitenhuis

Original article here

lock on - notes towards an article on activism and transition

To take in what is happening an inter-disciplinary vision is necessary in order to connect ‘the fields’ that are institutionally kept separate. John Berger, Hold Everything Dear

“No is one of the most honourable words in the English language,” said Deepak. “It needs to be reclaimed.” Deepak Rughani is a campaigner and co-director of Biofuelwatch and he's talking about the defence of natural ecosystems, an area he feels the Transition movement ignores. Without action to prevent the exploitation of the wild lands reduction of carbon emissions becomes meaningless. Without stringent protection of the pristine grasslands and rain forest in the Amazon basin the world’s rainfall patterns are dramatically disturbed and thus our ability to feed ourselves.

I’m researching a piece for the Transition newsletter about the relationship between activism and Transition and finding it’s a giant subject. Too large really for one voice and one blog. People are finding it hard to put their experiences into one pithy sentence. And when we say activism what exactly do we mean? Does this include strategic campaigning and grassroots community activism, as well as direct action and civil disobedience?

I had met Deepak at our recent meeting to discuss Nicole Foss's talk on financial deflation and the economic future where he had given an introductory overview. That’s when I noticed a shift that was happening in Transition. We had been working diligently on our community projects, building culture and infrastructure, when BAM! the world stormed right back into the room. Although we were talking about local solutions we were also debating the big global issues: civil liberties, civil disobedience. The cafe was packed. There was a buzz in the air I hadn’t felt in a long while. It brought a reality and an urgency into play that had been missing.

2011 is not 2010. It is the year when politics came back into all our lives, as we found ourselves marching against the Government's public spending cuts, watching the uprisings in the Middle East with fast-beating hearts - a time when we are being challenged to take a stand in a way that was no longer just about saying Yes

It's frustrating that (activism) is usually framed as "negative" campaigning, as it's all about making a more positive world and those positive messages are usually there but just not heard as loudly. For example the campaign "against" GM crops also pushed the alternatives of organic very heavily, campaigners "against" nuclear power sing the praises of renewables, and "anti"-incineration campaigners promote reduction of waste, effective recycling etc. Climate Camp not only highlighted problems but modeled a sustainable eco-village of thousands with its own energy production, grey water, compost loos, vegan food, democratic decision making structures etc. Far more than just opposing stuff. As I said before - holistic. (Rhizome Co-op from the Transition Network Forum on Activism and Transition

The fact is many people in Transition are also activists and campaigners and as I began speaking with some of them I realised that we don’t talk about it much. We live our lives in separate stories. In our meetings we are Transitioners and in the “outside world” we are someone else. It’s a phenomenon of our culture that Paul Kingsnorth writes about in the second issue of Dark Mountain. In Transition Norwich there are people who are activists for Greenpeace, for CND, who go on climate actions and marches, who sign petitions, who organise flash mobs, who fight for the NHS, for higher eduction, for the forests, for the libraries, who protest against Tescos, against the Northern Distributor road, who lobby politicians and councillors, who are those councillors, who are the people who speak with everyone and do not close down.

Some of us find that saying yes inevitably means saying no. Chris Hull, a founder of TN and also an active anti-Tesco campaigner (see right as Darth Vadar!) observes that being involved in local business and local food production means you will be against supermarkets by default and no matter how far you go to speak with those in power and civic office, "you get to a point where you are pulling in different directions in subtle and sometimes in subliminal ways, where the business-as-usual model is directly conflicting with Transition."

Christine Way has just returned from successfully blockading a port in Scotland to bring attention to the containers of “green” bio-mass woodchips from Brazil for conversion into electricity. A fellow founder of TN she has always maintained that both forces for change need to work together. And that just as Transition needs to keep the bigger picture in mind in all it does – those drivers of climate change, peak oil and economics – so activism needs to include the positive moves that Transition works hard to provide, and not become snared up in battling against the Establishment.

What alternatives are you providing?

One of Transition's strengths is its fluidity and I’m becoming aware of this fluidity the more I speak with everyone. You can, as a Transitioner (as I've found out) be as much at ease talking with a Tory politician as you can with a TUC shop steward, a local Green Party mayor or an anti-nuclear activist. The movement is not stuck in ideology or dogma and deliberately doesn’t fight the enemy, or struggle for power. The empire divides and conquers. Transition works within the same complex dynamics as an eco-system: within diversity In this it has a unique ability to connect and work alongside the many incentives for change that already exist.

To embrace activism as a dynamic force within the whole pattern of Transition strengthens it. We need to include those dramatic actions that bring planetary dilemmas into the limelight because our consciousness is shifting towards what Jeremy Rifkind in The Empathic Civilization calls the dramaturgical and the bio-spheric. Acting within the collective consciousness of the earth. This is a radically different position from the one of control and safety most of us have adopted. And it means making moves in real life, not just in our heads. BecauseThis Is It is not longer a slogan on the workshop wall.

For a long time we have been able to be the audience to history, to live our lives theoretically. We can watch the world on our screens and shut out its inconvenient truth at the click of a switch. But now history is coming into our streets and into our lives and we need to know how to act, or support those who act on our behalf. If we cheer for those bold protesters in Tahrir Square, in Wisconsin, for the thousands of campaign groups that Paul Hawken wrote about in Blessed Unrest, we need also to cheer for those who occupy Fortnum and Masons and the Royal Bank of Scotland, who protest against the corporations who threaten those fragile eco-systems on which we depend. The people who climb nuclear power stations and coal smokestacks and oil rigs to bring attention to the crucial debate about energy and the citizen journalists that write and blog about them.

In the current forum on the Transition Network you can find Ghandi's famous quote: Be the change you wish to see in the world to illustrate the positive-only nature of Transition. Many people have fled environmentalism and activism and joined initiatives because they felt to say only NO was an exhausting and often deeply negative experience. Many decided to turn their backs on any overtly political activity, even to forget they had once taken part.

However in this desire to get away from the bad stuff we forget that Ghandi was an activist par excellence and encouraged people to put their bodies before the brute force of Empire. And went to prison for it more than once. We forget that The Guardian newspaper was created when the media of the day failed to report the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester in which 60,000 peaceful protesters were attacked by the army. We live in a society that is the end result of thousands of civil uprisings and direct actions: thousands of people whose names we do not know who have put themselves on the line. Understandably we would rather be working steadily on our energy descent action plans over the next 2o years and shifting happily towards a low carbon way of life.

But 2011 is not 2010. And Transition is changing its tempo. We’re not in the slow movement right now. We have to see that the strength of Transition initiatives lies in its secure root within communities, in its network of communications and that these provide a stable base for changes in the way single-issue actions, existing as they do on the edge of society, over a short time, do not. We have to see equally that our ability to think in many disciplines at once, which we have practiced over these years, puts us at an advantage, gives us an ability to resist splitting into polarity, the kind of polarity that causes the violence and hatred that activism and protests can descend into.

The recent riots in Bristol were right in the middle of Transition Montpelier's neighbourhood. They focused around the new Tesco, although there was a lot more to it. A local campaigning group (No Tesco in Stokes Croft) had been peacefully protesting against the supermarket for well over a year.

The riots weren't really about the Tesco, but it became 'the story' that the media hung their hats on. They began when the police raided a squat across the road on an unfounded suspicion at rush hour on Maundy Thursday. They then stayed there for hours, winding everyone up, and everyone got very over-excited and it ended up in a big punch up. Tesco was only involved when the police mysteriously retreated, and left an unlocked police car outside the un-loved store at 1 am, after hours of street punch ups. Unsurprisingly, the crowd, left to their own aggravated devices, smashed up the car and then laid into the store. Then the police came back and the fighting continued.

The campaigning group had nothing to do with the riots, and everyone was saddened by the riots.The campaigning group became involved in the media storm that followed the riots; they were bombarded with calls and emails from journalists, and tried to present a balanced response under a huge amount of pressure.Some of the stories painted un-favourable pictures about the campaigning group, as you might imagine! A few local papers used the story as a
way to stir controversy.

Transition Montpelier had supported the peaceful protest from the beginning, as we weren't that keen on Tesco, and the campaigning group had always been suggesting positive alternatives to it.They still are - food hubs are underway, local cafes and more. And they are our friends and neighbours. We did have discussions about whether we should support the campaign as we're not a 'campaigning organisation', and agreed to share news and so forth about the campaign.

The riots, unsurprisingly, scared a lot of residents. The stories in the media, particularly the negative ones about the campaign, made a few of the residents feel that the campaign was negative and causally related to the riots. Transition Montpelier's support of the campaign was therefore seen in not a great light by these folks. Naturally, we don't know how many people it is, but didn't feel great about it all. It's all very complicated! We continue to support the campaign group and local food groups. (Ed Mitchell, Transition Montpelier)

Being rooted in neighbourhood, in place, people and plants, is what Transition Heathrow discovered after running a successful campaign against the third runway at Heathrow. When they began to grow plants in a deserted greenhouse in the once-threatened village of Sipson with the explicit support of most of the locals, the local MP and a spokesman for the local police. Here's a spokesman from the highly active initiative that has brought a fresh burst of energy into the movement

Before the Transition Heathrow project had even begun, one of our initial key aims was to combine climate activism with local community initiatives by adding a more radical edge to the Transition Towns movement. The co-founders of Transition Heathrow all had a background of taking direct action with anti airport expansion group Plane Stupid and so we had experienced the massive success and impact that direct action had on framing the debate around aviation in the UK. It was off the back of Plane Stupid's successful work around the third runway at Heathrow that Transition Heathrow was born. Although everyone in the movement against the 3rd runway was extremely proud that the runway was cancelled, as individuals we wanted to go beyond putting our bodies on the line for a day, to a way of creating change that lasts way longer than front page headlines in newspapers the day after an action. This is where the transition movement comes in and has a big part to play.

What was most appealing about the transition model for us is that it is about the direct action of everyday life. We all know that governments and corporations are failing us when it comes to environmental issues and so clearly we need to take matters into our own hands. This is why transitioners “just do it themselves.” So when we wanted to plant stuff - we did some guerrilla gardening. And when we wanted a site we squatted some abandoned land and brought it back into use. When we wanted to support the BA cabin crew strikes we took part in a solidarity bike ride through terminal 5.

Whatever we're doing it seems to be working. What was encouraging about the shocking police raid of our community market garden Grow Heathrow was the recognition that we are clearly getting to those who hold the power. A revolution disguised by gardening perhaps. Bring it on! (Joe Ryle, Transition Heathrow).

It takes a lot of courage to take direct action, to cross the line, to look the public and the policeman in the eye as you challenge the status quo. Even in small ways. The first time I took part in an action was a simple thing: we were a group defending a patch of green land in Oxford against developers and rode in a barge up the canal to paint the builder’s hoardings with our loud protest. But my hands were shaking as I wrote William Blake’s lines on the wall:

Bring me my bow of burning gold, bring me my arrows of desire.

That day something changed utterly within me. I had taken a step that a whole lifetime of well-behaved conditioning had tried to prevent. We all have those preventions in place inside. Our cultural conditioning keeps our minds compartmentalised, our emotions trained to seek security at all costs, to appear to be moral and upstanding citizens at all times. We have to see that without talking about our actions, without coming out about our radical nature, without sharing our private thoughts about the future, all our self-education that includes Marxist theory, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, the history of Levellers and Diggers, without connecting with all the land sovereignty movements that now exist around the world, Transition does not have the strength or wit or daring to challenge the dominant worldview. It runs the risk of becoming stifled by the tyranny of what Blake called "the polite society", by conventional good behaviours and small talk, and fragmenting as has happened in some initiatives. We are in danger of living in a never-never land of allotments and spiritual cliches. Thinking about the change we want to see as a result, rather than the being change that is the (often messy) process.

Not all activists who are also Transitioners agree with this premise however. In Lewes in Sussex there are currently two projects running alongside each other: the construction of the UK's first community-owned 98kW solar power station, and the occupation of three acres of green land near the centre of town. The first is seen as a Transition project and the second is not. Superficially unrelated but in fact close in aim (localisation of production), the two activities have many people involved in common including councillors, Transition members and residents:

This is quite hard for most people to grasp in my experience. Long- term strategic planning and R&D are understood in terms of industry but not in terms of cultural and social change which mostly comes about through single-issue campaigns resulting in pieces of legislation which can also unfortunately be reversed. Transition is a design framework for cultural change which does not require changes in the law.

Which is not to say that designers can't also be campaigners and vice versa. Many initiatives have convergent aims but differ in methodology. These range across political, philosophical, economic, social and psychospiritual pursuits. So for example someone who protests in London against tax evasion can also be setting up a local food group in her home town and developing personal effectiveness and empowerment. She's engaging in activism, transition and transformation! While these categories overlap and provide mutual positive reinforcement, they preserve functionality best by remaining distinct (Dirk Campbell, Transition Lewes).

This is a working document. It's an ongoing conversation that's happening in Transition at the moment, one that has only really just begun. It’s a radical conversation because we are trained by our civilization to think and work in separate “fields” and not make connections when we speak to one another. To talk within the narrow confines of the room and the present moment. rather than engage with the full breadth of our physical experiences, through time, in relationship with the living, breathing world outside the door. It’s a vital discourse because we’ll be speaking not only within the deep frame of change, but also of liberation.

So I’ll end this (rather long!) inquiry with a review of a documentary that brings home the kind of courage and energy and risks many people take on our behalf to to free the world from its “mind-forged manacles". It’s a grassroots film that like Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change is a story told from the people who take part - the actors in this bio-spheric drama some call evolution. It’s not Hollywood, it’s not the BBC but it is what is happening right now in a town near you. Lock on.

Just Do It reviewed by Adrienne Campbell (Transition Lewes)

Just Do It is a new documentary film that follows the lives of several environmental activists over a year of civil disbedience and direct action.

Watching the various actions, I started to feel involved and even concerned for some of the young people as they put their bodies in the way for the sake of what they believed in. Although I'm a dyed in the wool transitoner, I've done a little playful, lawful activism on the side, and was inspired and emboldened.

I recommend this film to transition groups who might want to attract a younger audience and who also might wish to explore the wide, largely unexplored zone of playful activism, which sits beween normal behaviour and unlawful behaviour. Of course, Transition isn't about campaigning or activism but there is significant overlap and perhaps attitudes and skills to be learned.

The world launch of the film, which was funded through crowdsourcing, at the Sheffield Documentary Film Festival in June will be followed by showings at local cinemas. If your transition group would like to encourage your local cinema to show it, please contact the film makers from the informative website here

Holding the banner at The Wave, 2009 (Mark Watson); protest banner, Greenpeace USA; Writing on the Wall, Bristol (Ed Mitchell); Poster from Grow Heathrow; ZAD (Zone a Defendre) demonstration, France; South East climate camp, St Anne's School, Lewes.

Reduce, Reuse and... Resist?

I'm continually inspired by some of the really great writers out there in the blogosphere and Jon Barrett's blog, the brilliantly titled "Resistance is Fertile" is one of my favourites.

In a recent article, he talks about an extension to the conventional "three Rs" of Reduce, Reuse and Recycle:

some additional ‘Rs’ – such as to Refuse (social pressure and the temptations of advertising), to ‘Repair’ (rather than renew or replace) and ultimately to ‘Return’ (our waste to the earth as ‘food’).

These three are so core to some of the things we've been talking about on the blog - Helen and I fighting in our own ways the lure of the shopping culture with Easter presents, and Stuff.   Kerry and Mark on Repairing bicycles and shoes.  Erik eloquent on Waste.  And these are just some of the many, many posts on these subjects.

Jon Barrett goes on to talk about a new "R" to add to these six:

Repeated incongruities between the rhetoric and actions of our leaders and manipulative disinformation campaigns by powerful oil and coal interests have undermined such meagre top-down efforts to engender public engagement as have been attempted, let alone the prospects for a widespread public mobilisation anytime soon. If we are ever to achieve the necessary scale of social change, then those of us who have comprehended the enormity of our predicament must do much more now than simply seek to inform and persuade. We must be willing to actively ‘Resist’ the intractable forces that are marshalled against us.

Powerful stuff in uncertain times.

parliament of bees

Yesterday I saw my first bee. I bent down and smelled the winter hellebore and it flew out of the fragrant green and pink petals. One of those huge bumble bees that buzz loudly around the first flowers of the year. Spring is coming and I’m feeling torn in my attentions. My eye glancing up at pussy willow unfurling golden fronds, down at the henbit amongst the growing grass. The flowers are coming back. You can feel their presence and the sap rising in the trees.

This picture is of an exotic hellebore that I liberated from a well-heeled garden nearby and planted down the lane under a holly tree. A spot of guerrilla gardening in the back country. It’s a hard time for bees right now and any flowers that provide early nectar and pollen are in need of a propagating hand. The UN has just published a report about the plight of world bees and are calling for wide-ranging protection of wild and feral flowers everywhere.

Today though my attention is focused on human affairs. I’m prepping for a meeting with Peter Aldous MP with fellow members of Sustainable Bungay. We're taking part in the Big Climate Reconnection, organised by the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition and I’m reading up on the Energy Bill and Renewable Heat Incentives and getting ready for the three asks, relevant to the Climate Change Act. Later we're going to a public meeting with Therese Coffey MP down in Southwold regarding the ship-to-ship oil transfers between tankers in Sole Bay. It's all about politics this week. Watch this space!

part two This is a picture of us having breakfast and a debrief at the Buttercross Tea Rooms. 30 minutes goes quickly when you're considering all the ramifications of Climate Change. Aldous is on the Environmental Audit Committee which is a cross-party group that monitors environmental and sustainability issues in all departments. All of us spoke about what kind of real-time actions a 60% carbon reduction by 2030 would require at local, national and international levels, including creating a low-carbon “powerdown” culture.

Josiah asked about TEQs and the suggestion of a sustainable development post in response to DEFRA’s recent (very woolly) report on “sustainable growth”. Nick asked about the Green Investment Bank, Daphne about the funding of fuel cells (which her father had invented). His agent – leader of the Conservative group at Waveney District Council – eyed us watchfully. One of the amendments to the Energy Bill the SCC Coalition recommended was that the carbon reduction target should be endorsed by local councils (after the once Transition-friendly Somerset CC cancelled all its climate change work this week we were keen to emphasise this). We can’t interfere with local councils, Aldous said. And went on to inform us that the official definition of fuel poverty was about to be changed.

What struck me was how our positions had shifted. At our meeting in November there was an element of excitement and tension. Aldous was behind his new office desk, most of us sat on the floor. Now we were stable and focused and sitting around a table in a community centre. The coalition government have since shown their colours. We have signed petitions and held placards, met up in the spirit of resistance. We know what is at stake. And not just those of us in Transition.

Down in Southwold the hall was packed and the people were in a rebellious mood. Therese Coffey was being held to account for preventing the ban on Russian oil tankers using the bay as a “lorry park” and putting the heritage coastline at risk. Two years ago the ship-to-ship transfers rose from 13 a year to 250. Instead of coming to port and paying harbour fees they transfer oil at sea (Sole Bay is shallow and calm and unhampered by shipping lanes). This is a conservative town but the Tory MP for Suffolk Coastal was given no quarter.

Are you on our side? asked the floor. Coffey slid away from the question. It was clear she was not. It’s becoming transparently clear, in spite of the complexity of most issues, whose side the Government is on. Not the small businesses of local towns, the economy that creates the green jobs that Kerry was writing about, the alternative wind and solar manufacturers (and certainly not the environment), but the oil business, agri-business, the nuclear business. Corporate power. Famously these corporations work by being invisible, but as we come together, as we swarm to defend our colony and our hive we’re bringing to light exactly who and what is raiding it. There’s a buzz in the air. Spring is coming on earth, and not just for the flowers.

Photo: guerilla hellebore; Sustainable Bungay climate action team from left, Daphne, Josiah, Mark, Nick and Lesley. Oil tankers off the Suffolk coast by Mike Page (EADT)

Starting Somewhere

I’ve had some really interesting conversations over the last week or so, inspired, no doubt, in part by the ongoing “austerity measures” that are really starting to to be felt by the ordinary person in the street.  The conversations run along the line of “I really want to do something but I don’t know where to start”.

There’s a feeling that it’s all too much for people – they don’t know what to do and feel paralysed.  Classic shock syndrome.

I don’t pretend to know all the answers, far from it.  But, for those guys, and you know who you are, here is my personal top ten of where to start.

1. Pay attention – to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, it’s very difficult to know what you don’t know.  So you have to get out there and find out what’s really going on in the world.  Read the news (real news, not the slop that passes for news on much of the TV and the tabloids), read magazines, blogs and books.  Norwich library has hundreds of books on various subjects, and some great “dummy guide to” style books.  It’ll take a bit of effort, but once you learn about some of the things happening in the world – happening in your name - you will Get Angry.

2. Get Angry – research suggests that people will only make a change in their lives once they reach a certain point of anger and frustration.  That point is different for different people, but we all have it.  To actually want to do something, you’ll need to get angry. One of my favourite cartoons of last year reminded me that so much is interlinked – peak oil, climate change, economics, social justice, respect for people and planet.  So whichever subject floats your anger-boat, you’ll be in good company.  But anger can be very unfocussed, so it’s important to Arm Yourself.

3. Arm Yourself – with facts (not guns, obviously).  There are lots of people out there who will tell you that a) you’re wrong, or b) that you’re just a dreamer and it won’t make any difference.  Prove them wrong.  Learn some facts about climate change, about economics, whatever.  The more you learn, the more you’ll want to learn.  And also, make sure you learn the counter-arguments.  Learn the rhetoric of the other side of the argument; some arguments you’ll never win, but you may give the other person something to think about.  The important thing is to Get Involved in the debate.

4. Get involved – this should be an easy one in the sense that the country is buzzing with debate around the economy at the moment and the government’s various proposals of how to deal with it, from tax reform to selling off the forests, to restructuring the NHS.  People will want to know your opinion, so let them know.  Not just colleagues and friends, but also your MPs, councillors etc.  Make sure these last two know what you want from them, regardless of the party they represent.  Remember, they don’t represent a party, they represent you.  Make sure they remember that too.

5. Build Resilience – one of the challenges to getting started is feeling that you’re just one insignificant person facing a sea of indifference at best, strong resistance at worst.  But you’re not alone; look around you, there are hundreds of groups, thousands of people all wanting to make a difference; make things better for the many, not just for the few.  Transition Norwich is one such group, and there are many more, big and small.  Working with others will remind you that you’re not alone, and that together, people can work wonders.  If you don’t believe me, think of the suffragist movement, the trade union movement, the fall of the Berlin Wall; look at what’s happening in Cairo at the moment.  Think about the growth of Fairtrade or the Transition movement. Working together will build your personal resilience and inspire you. So, be inspired, and then take action.  If you’re not ready yet to jump right in, you could dip a toe in the water and Start with the Small Things.

6. Start with the Small Things – magazines and Sunday supplements are full of articles on the “ten things” that will save the planet, save the environment etc.  I’m fairly sceptical of these top tens, because they all tend to be pretty similar in subject and in scale.  Changing your lightbulbs to energy-saving ones and lagging the loft are all small things, and to my mind, lack ambition.  But hey, we’ve all got to start somewhere, and let’s start with the easy wins.  Have a look at your house and lifestyle and see what you can change. The plus side is that a lot of these Sunday supplement suggestions will also save you money, so you’ll get a warm fuzzy feeling from your bank statement as well as your conscience.  And, hopefully, as with learning to walk, once you’ve taken your first tottering steps, you’ll soon want to learn to run.

But before we embark on the big changes, it’s worth pausing to take a Look Behind the Curtain.

7. Look behind the Curtain – the world is a complex place, and what seems clear cause and effect isn’t always the case.  There are hundreds of examples, but one of my favourites is that of the Somali pirates.  Quick caveat – I’m not condoning piracy or the violence that goes with it.  Obviously…  However, there’s a view that the rise in piracy off the coast of east Africa was directly related to the overfishing and subsequent depletion of our own fish stocks.  Once we’d fished out the North Sea, then the North Atlantic, we in Europe sought new fishing grounds to keep the supermarket ice-counters full.  The industrial fleets moved into the Indian Ocean, and displaced the traditional fishing lifecycles of the people already living there.  So, skilled sailors with boats suddenly had no jobs, no income, and no way of supporting or feeding their families.  Next thing, Saga cruises are being held up by pirates. That’s a simplistic assessment of the situation, but the kind of scenario that you see when you look behind the curtain of the traditional media explanations.  There are many, many similar stories.

So if that kind of thing really hacks you off, maybe it’s time to start doing the Big Things.

8. Do the Big Things – you know the kinds of things I’m talking about – the things we discuss a lot on this blog.  Flying, shopping local, buying organic, making things, reusing things, changing your personal financial model, cutting down on consumption, challenging the economic growth model.  These are the things that can frighten people, but they’re actually the things that really mean something.  They can require personal sacrifice, or sometimes they just feel like they require personal sacrifice.  Once you make a change, you might wonder why you hadn’t done it before.

9. Live like you Mean It – we had a laugh at work on Friday as I said I wouldn’t get a bacon bap for breakfast unless I knew where the bacon had come from.  I was kind of joking as I’d already had my breakfast, but there was a serious point too.  I do have a personal code that guides the decisions I make.  I don’t always make the right choices; other things get in the way and I have to compromise – that’s life.  But I try and I think we have to keep trying. I want to leave the world a little better than it was when I entered it; leave a legacy for my children and grandchildren that I can be proud of.  I won’t Give Up.

10. Enjoy Yourself and Don’t Give Up – my children constantly remind me that you can’t take yourself – and life –too seriously.  The challenges facing us are great, but working towards solutions can be a lot of fun – that’s one thing that Transition Norwich has taught me.  There’s a great bunch of people working towards a better, more equitable future, so join in.  Don’t give up, and have some fun on the way.

*****

So there it is – a very personal view.  What do people think?  What have I missed?  What would be in your top ten, or even top three?  Leave a comment and let us know.

Pic from www.businesszone.co.uk

Our National Heritage

Annette sent me a link today that filled me with longing - a site where you can buy your very own piece of woodland. I love trees and forests for all sorts of practical and personal reasons, and I've always wanted to own some. They're not just part of our planet's lungs, but fabulous and beautiful places to get back in touch with nature.

Of course, £40 odd grand isn't that easy to get my hands on so I'll have to put that one on the back burner, as it were.

However, I already own a huge chunk of woodland. In fact, so do you. We all do. Our nation's forests. Which is why I was particularly peeved to find out that our current government is planning to sell off vast areas of state-owned forest to private enterprises, effectively giving the carte blanche do do whatever they like with them, including chopping them down.

Just in case I didn't state my feeling clearly enough: that forest belongs to all of us. And our children, and their children too. I'm not at all happy about it being sold off!

So far, 123472 people have signed the petition on the fabulous 38 degrees campaigning website protesting about the proposed sell-off. Please send the link to anyone you know who you think is likely to sign up.

As I'm unlikely to come up with the £40k needed to buy my own little bit of arboreal heaven, I've just signed up to help the Norwich Community Agriculture group with tree planting on their site on Sunday 30th January. If you'd like to be part of it, check out the Transition Norwich website here. Maybe I'll see you there!

Picture from Guardian Blog site as linked above.

Don't panic - let's escape!

A friend of mine's 10 year old son told me recently that he (the son) had recently written something at school about climate change and its solution. The solution, he said with some confidence, was that out there in the dark sky in a neighbouring constellation there sits a planet very similar to our earth, and to which most of the Earth's population is going to escape when the going gets too hot or tough on our resident planet.

The alarming thing came at the end - this was going to happen in 2012! He didn't say anything about what the existing residents of said planet might do or look like, but let's hope it isn't like this guy above.

Maybe more like this one? :

What children, and indeed young people, are really thinking about the future, can be very revealing. Whilst all sorts of fantasies are not uncommon, so too is the sense that our generation have messed up so badly there is not much chance of recovery - this goes as much in the current situation for pensions as it does for climate change.

So this week us adults have been blogging about our pet subject, and have come up with our own interesting images - including carrots and woolly hats, population graphs, Joint Core Strategies, Cancun, and a 'don't panic' slogan that might just pop up on someone's fancy mobile screen if they google for a lift across to Betelguese 5.

Maybe I am getting carried away here - whatever is happening in Cancun? As John said yesterday, it isn't exactly front page news. We do know that Japan appear to be blocking a renewal of the Kyoto treaty, which expires in 2012 ( oh dear, maybe that's where my friend's child got his idea from). And as ever, it is the developing countries who are pushing for binding agreements, as distinct from the rather loose accords that were agreed last year in Copenhagen. And the World Meteorological Organisation has just declared:

"The year 2010 is almost certain to rank in the top 3 warmest years since the beginning of instrumental climate records in 1850."

And..."Over the ten years from 2001 to 2010, global temperatures have averaged 0.46 C (0.82 F) above the 1961-1990 average" .

So here we go again... all the alarm bells, and none of the action it seems. Well, maybe not much of the internationally agreed action, but there is plenty of action being taken by ordinary people worldwide, including in Transition groups. Even in Cancun itself, local 'scavengers' - those who live off the huge rubbish dumps - have made themselves very visible and protested at the proposals to introduce an incineration process there, which would burn all the stuff that they both re-use and recycle, but also make a livelihood out of. This story, interestingly, only seems to have been reported in The Times of India. Hmmmm.... They point out that burning this 'rubbish', apart from depriving them of a livelihood, is also in one swoop increasing carbon emissions. I digress - although this story shows how interwoven the issues of poverty, carbon emissions, and waste are.

So we really don't need to escape - we really need to do more of the things we have already started in the transition movement, more of the things that have come so creatively from people locally and worldwide, projects that we have actually begun ( like the food projects), and projects that we have planned and will come.... as they always do when inspirational and creative and committed people come together.

Inspector Runs Rule on High Carbon Plans

As a Green Party councillor on Norfolk County Council, I am in a constant dilemma of how to spend my time. Do I focus on building a better future or opposing what’s preventing it? Joanna Macy has written that both are part of a whole: we need both the transition type work of creating a life-sustaining civilization and the resistance actions that slow down the high carbon “industrial growth” society.

The last three weeks I have spent considerable time, doing the latter, speaking out against the high carbon growth plans in the Local Development Framework (LDF) for the Norwich area. To get the acronyms over with, our local LDF is actually called a Joint Core Strategy (JCS) – “joint” because it’s been developed by four councils (Norfolk County Council, Norwich City Council, Broadland and South Norfolk) in partnership. The partnership organisation is the Greater Norwich Development Partnership (GNDP).

The forum for resistance was the Examination in Public (EiP) of the JCS a three week marathon during which a Planning Inspector looks at every aspect of the plans for their ‘soundness’.

Whilst governments grapple at Cancun to find an international agreement for decisive action on climate change, we know that we can make changes from the personal to the global. I went into local politics five years ago because I saw a need to promote low carbon development within local Government. I hoped that the processes such as writing LDFs would enable local government to take a serious, publically accountable, evidence based approach to climate, which takes me to the first theme … carbon doesn’t count and isn’t counted.

This is where I start: any plan now has to balance how more people can come into the Norwich area, live and work, whilst we overall cut emissions across the whole area year-on-year. Squeezing carbon out of the system is not easy and therefore carbon reduction must be the number 1 planning objective. More than that, the JCS needs to set out targets for carbon reduction across the plan area and then work out how new housing, people and jobs can be accommodated. To be ‘sound’, the JCS needs a carbon accounting mechanism so progress against targets could be checked.

The JCS does the opposite. It builds growth around a high carbon infrastructure, and does not attempt to even consider carbon targets or any carbon accounting. Yet in the bizarre ‘Alice in Wonderland’ world of modern planning, amazingly, Policy 1 of the JCS is ‘Addressing climate change and protecting environmental assets’.

Without apparent embarrassment, the GNDP proclaim this Policy 1, despite the fact that the ‘most critical’ piece of infrastructure for the JCS is the proposed Northern Distributor Road (NDR). This is modelled by the Council themselves to produce 25,000 tonnes of CO2 per year in addition to current levels – equivalent to 6% of Norwich’s current transport emissions. There couldn’t be a clearer carbon disbenefit working against Policy 1.

A key component for LDFs is the Sustainability Appraisal (SA), but the JCS SA does not mention carbon reduction targets or accounting, nor seek to use any quantifiable data on emissions within its appraisal methodology. Nor, at any point, does the SA mention the emissions associated with the NDR. As I said in my evidence:

“This is not only a major omission, but in this author’s view a profound methodological flaw, in appraising sustainability at this time, when this country has had a Climate Change Act already on the statute for 2 years, and Carbon Budgets established up to 2023.”

Through my evidence, I kept trying to make the point that unless there is a genuine carbon-centric strategy to start with, Policy 1 and other ‘climate aspirations’ are just bound to fail. It’s not rocket science, but if GNDP started to think carbon-centrically, the NDR would just drop out of the options. Other more interesting options would come in too like bringing back empty properties into use, creating communities where people can live and work locally, building more such communities in existing areas, ensuring good and supply for local food growing and initiatives such as community support agriculture (CSA).

You might ask how did all this happen? How did a plan so out of kilter on carbon change come in being? Theme two: secrecy and public exclusion …

During the first day of the EiP, on the overall theme of ‘legitimacy’ of the JCS, several representations were made by community stakeholders on the very major concerns about lack of public transparency, democratic process, political inclusion and fair political representation, in other words the secrecy that has dogged the development of the JCS. My own evidence to the EiP gives 4 pages of detailed representation on this alone.

The key point is that the GNDP has developed its plan behind closed doors, at meetings closed to the public and the majority of locally elected councillors. It has refused calls to open its meetings to the public and for agendas and minutes of its meetings to be placed in the public domain. All of this is in contravention to the UNECE Aarhus Convention that is based on the principle that sustainable development can be achieved only through the involvement of all stakeholders.

Theme three biodiversity ... A notion that was flying around the EiP was that biodiversity can be increased by building houses. I couldn’t help the word ‘greenwash’ reverberating around my head each time this was mentioned. Looking into it, it’s actually enshrined in the Planning Policy for Eco-towns which states that "Eco-towns should demonstrate a net gain in local biodiversity". The Biodiversity Design Guidance for the Ecotown proposed for NE Norwich demonstrates how this would be achieved through building in ‘green infrastructure’ – hedges, ponds, orchards, gardens etc.

Now, there are good things about this: it does increase some species, will tend create a nice liveable environment, and helps to protect areas that have special biodiversity features. At least, the GNDP are thinking about it and have worked with the likes of Natural England and Norfolk Wildlife Trust on a Biodiversity Working Group (unlike Climate Change where they do not appear to have even thought about it).

Question – which photo has more biodiversity? which photo has more nature?

Above: Current arable at Rackheath (from http://www.snubcampaign.org/)

Below: proposed Rackheath eco-town (from http://www.rackheatheco-community.com/)

However, I found the zeal for it worrying. Isn’t there a hidden level of suggested meaning, that one can replace nature and somehow land up with something more natural? This rankles. It’s a sort of charter to build on green belt despite common sense is that you can’t build an artificial environment, basically a small town even if an ‘eco’ one, and make it more natural than the natural landscape that was there before. It makes no consideration of the wider impacts of development: using a reductionist approach, it essentially says let’s add up the bits of biodiversity that we can measure and value in a certain way, and see if we can get a bigger number after than before. However, there’s no similar calculus given for natural value: space, sense of space, light, noise etc. It doesn’t look at wider impacts – for example, what will be the impact of thousands of new houses close to the Broads be on the Broads themselves?

I raise this as a flag. We need to be careful of terms like ‘green infrastructure’ and ‘net biodiversity gain’, and remember that more holistic experiences of landscape, nature and space are also crucial elements of our environment.

So after 3 weeks where did all this get to? During the last week, the Inspector ran the rule over the JCS and indicated that he wanted to explore a Plan B without an NDR. This is on the basis of the ‘planning technicality’ that the road may not get adequate funding from Government, not on whether it is a good idea or not. Even so, this is huge breakthrough against the fixed position of the GNDP of only Plan A being possible. He asked the GNDP to consider a Plan B and there will be a further day of Hearings on December 9^th around the NDR and Norwich North East.

Once again, the four council leaders of the GNDP will make their response behind closed doors. However, what ever happens we can continue to tell the GNDP that it is no longer acceptable for decisions on how the Norwich area grows over the next twenty five years to be made by a handful of people behind closed doors, and that we demand that all councillors and the public are involved in further developments. And, that carbon reduction must now be built in as a main plank of the plans. Andrew Boswell