In this second part of a two part interview, Rob Hopkins and I discuss the apolitical nature of transition culture, the construction of parallel systems, and the potential for confrontation with existing power structures. Also discussed is the feasibility of permaculture in a suburban environment.
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4 responses to “Episode #70: The (a)Politics of Transition Culture (Part II)”
Hi Frank,
Great podcast! I read the Transition Handbook by Rob Hopkins a few months back and it is a great model for “going live” with sustainable practices globally.
I wanted to follow up on the discussion that you and Rob had about Suburbia and its uncertain future. As a suburban dweller, this is a problem that I am tackling in my own life and I would have to agree with Rob’s view on their potential. I haven’t heard Kunstler expound on the death of suburbia, but as an active member of a suburban ecosystem I think that structurally they have a lot of viability for the future. The privately owned plots can become micro-farms, while driveways, streets and sidewalks can be pulled up and used as communal space, wildlife corridors or as farms, depending on the needs of the community. In my mind, the suburbs actually will become the food safety net for the cities that they surround. As you said, it is the mindset that is the greatest hinderance in the suburban landscape. The greatest challenge for suburban permaculture designers like myself, is to stack the added “style and pizzaz” function to whatever we are doing so that our neighbors and communities can see that we are saving the planet, enjoying our lives and looking awesome while doing it!
If/When we hit a state of intense collapse, the need for pizazz will greatly diminish. But right now, I think it is absolutely essential for any urban and suburban design (if you want to draw positive attention to the design). People need to know that sustainable design can be as beautiful as it is beneficial.
Yes, I concur with most of what you have said, but there are still some big issues of infrastructure maintenance looming, and again most importantly the issue of human behavior.
Behavior, like paradigms in science and culture, changes through generations. So we certainly need to be involving young people and children in this process; they can be powerful agents to change the behavior of parents as well.
I’m organizing a show about this very topic with some of the best thinkers in the area, so hopefully that will be published soon.
While I would like to think that the Kunstler’s of this world are way off the mark and that people will be just fine during a transitional phase my experience informs me differently. In some kind of rural setting things may be OK, or at least defendable but the cities will become battle grounds. Like America the British are coming into this transition phase at what may be the worst time in our history and like America we have a hundred and fifty years of infrastructure to reorganize. Worse still is that we have to achieve this without creating ever more debilitating cycles of debt. While often I see reports of some model house or Eco-Village that uses infinitesimally small amounts of energy it is a wholly different thing to deck out a country of 70,000,000 in the same fashion. To fundamentally change peoples core principles, beliefs, ideas and so on requires time, like stopping or steering an oil tanker. With regard to how willing the authorities will be to adopt new methods that threaten the status quo I have my doubts. Look at the example of the last two years, our governments have done everything to ensure that the survival of the current system despite the ever massing debt. They want the impossible to carry on and despite the fact that it cannot continue for long they are willing to bankrupt the country to do so. Do these seem like the kind of people running the kind of economy that are likely to want to do business with a group of people, who have come the intellectual conclusion that capitalism’s love affair with the growth model will no longer be viable? No, what our lords and masters want are big solutions that will allow them to carry on just the way they are, thank you very much. As a for instance of this, during this week a House of Commons committee has reported that the third runway at Heathrow airport should go ahead, increasing flights by something like 75%. This they say will only work if they also go ahead with the High-speed train system for main routes and vastly more efficient jet engines. This comes on the eve of Copenhagen and also in the light of the British government wish to exempt air travel from their accepted duties under Kyoto. At the same time no mention is made of reestablishing local train services for rural areas which would take much of the commercial and private traffic off the roads. Last but not least is the report that the treasury is looking into ways to sell Britain’s waterway infrastructure that finances the upkeep of the canal system. A canal system that could be reconfigured to carry vast amounts of trade goods around Britain at a fraction of the cost of road transport and the government are considering its demise just to pay debts of banks for whom we owe nothing. Although transition offers a solution it also invokes fear and these are people obviously unable and unwilling to think outside the current paradigm.
I think while Transitionists will be left to themselves for now but if they ever begin to be effective the philosophies of the movement will be seen as a political threat. Exactly how is all the money we have borrowed going to be paid back in a transition economy which effectively can only hope to support itself. You yourself have done a program on local money, just how willing will the tax man be to adopt a system of deferrable favors for instance? What kind of sanctions do you think the authorities may use if a section of society begin to achieve self-sufficiency?
Dude, Frank, you talked too much again. Got to get back to the craft of interviewing, with a few well-chosen words from you to elicit a great response from the speaker. Used to do this as a rule. Allan Savory, Bill Mollison, John Aberth, and a dozen others, would talk for 90% of the podcast. You’re up to 30-50% recently. You’ve gotten away from letting others speak in detail about their craft, and into having them respond to quotes from doomer hacks. Let KMO do that. You could stick to showcasing technical knowledge on permaculture, open-source appropriate tech, and working people’s histories, culminating in strategies of creative non-violent resistance in pursuit of the “parallel infrastructure”. Rob Hopkins would have had loads of stories on this subject, but was batting away questions about pitfalls and “Zeitgeist” paranoia.
I love the permaculture “trojan horse” though, like “Food Not Lawns”. No one is shutting down Willie Smits or Mondragon or Paul Hawken, Stamets, Savory, Will Allen, or anyone else doing remotely practical work. Get over the paranoia, find a lawyer and a merchant banker and a composter, and get on with it!