Some ideas are born fully formed and so ready for implementation; others have a gestation period of days, weeks, months or years. The idea that we should Live Where We Live is of the latter variety.
The idea has been little more than a few unanchored thoughts for several years, but involvement with the Melbourne based Urban Design Forum in 2007 gave the idea substance, and reason, and helped me understand that humanity’s future well-being hinged on an understanding, and adoption, of the idea.
The idea has been little more than a few unanchored thoughts for several years, but involvement with the Melbourne based Urban Design Forum in 2007 gave the idea substance, and reason, and helped me understand that humanity’s future well-being hinged on an understanding, and adoption, of the idea.
Muddling toward an answer
If the concern about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere turns out to be correct, for example, and the burning of fossil fuels had to be cut down it is hard to imagine how it could be accomplished without bringing down industrial society in the process – Warren Johnson, Muddling Toward Frugality (1978).
As I sit to write the news has just broken that the Government of Queensland plans to create three major cities in the south-east of the state with each to be master-planned from the ground up to accommodate 250 000 people.
Already some are claiming an understanding of how these new communities should evolve, how they should operate and how their first priority should the creation of an infrastructure that enables people live, work and play in the one area.
Honourable ambitions that warrant applause, but the whole concept (that is the planning of the three cities) appears to be restricted by the ‘business as usual’ paradigm.
In other words, there appears an assumption that life tomorrow will be similar to that we have today – it won’t be.
There appears to broad agreement that climate change will bring substantial changes to our lives and along with that people, certainly those who are aware of the emerging difficulty, understand those changes will be made significantly more difficult, and life changing, by oil scarcity or peak oil, that moment when humans have discovered, and used, half the world’s oil resource. Estimates of that moment, what year it was or when it will be, change depending on who dominates the discussion. Some argue it is decades away, others suggest it happened in 2010 and the world is now on an increasing cost spiral. I stand with those who find comfort in the latter argument; “comfort” from the perspective that it now puts us in a position to actively react positively and to set about evolving strategies that will enable us to live positively in a post-petroleum world.
It is commonly understood that it matters not what happens to us, rather how we react to what happens – peak oil along with the complications and implications of climate change is exactly another of those instances. However, it comes with a decided twist as the combination of those events brings circumstances of the type that we have never experienced before and so any reaction will need to different, innovative and decidedly people focussed.
Technology impaled us on this difficulty, but many continue to believe that fresh technology will enable escape allowing us to live equally easily and well in an oil-free world while at the same time alleviating the damaging effects of a changing climate. The answer they believe exists is not to be found, interestingly, in technology as it is bankrupt as one damaging technology depends on another, equally damaging, to answer human wants, rather than needs.
Already some are claiming an understanding of how these new communities should evolve, how they should operate and how their first priority should the creation of an infrastructure that enables people live, work and play in the one area.
Honourable ambitions that warrant applause, but the whole concept (that is the planning of the three cities) appears to be restricted by the ‘business as usual’ paradigm.
In other words, there appears an assumption that life tomorrow will be similar to that we have today – it won’t be.
There appears to broad agreement that climate change will bring substantial changes to our lives and along with that people, certainly those who are aware of the emerging difficulty, understand those changes will be made significantly more difficult, and life changing, by oil scarcity or peak oil, that moment when humans have discovered, and used, half the world’s oil resource. Estimates of that moment, what year it was or when it will be, change depending on who dominates the discussion. Some argue it is decades away, others suggest it happened in 2010 and the world is now on an increasing cost spiral. I stand with those who find comfort in the latter argument; “comfort” from the perspective that it now puts us in a position to actively react positively and to set about evolving strategies that will enable us to live positively in a post-petroleum world.
It is commonly understood that it matters not what happens to us, rather how we react to what happens – peak oil along with the complications and implications of climate change is exactly another of those instances. However, it comes with a decided twist as the combination of those events brings circumstances of the type that we have never experienced before and so any reaction will need to different, innovative and decidedly people focussed.
Technology impaled us on this difficulty, but many continue to believe that fresh technology will enable escape allowing us to live equally easily and well in an oil-free world while at the same time alleviating the damaging effects of a changing climate. The answer they believe exists is not to be found, interestingly, in technology as it is bankrupt as one damaging technology depends on another, equally damaging, to answer human wants, rather than needs.
To sugar coat such impending difficulties, as seems to be want of many influential people, is both misleading and doing nought but giving people false hope and failing, in every sense, to help us prepare for a future that will not necessarily be worse than what we enjoy in our oil-laden world, but so different from what exists that few can comprehend what it will be like.
Consider all the material joys of life today and they will be gone or in stupendously short supply as we learn to live in a world altered beyond recognition through climate change and hobbled as our supplies of oil dry up and so becomes prohibitively expensive.
Humans, I am absolutely sure, can cope with such a dramatic change, but first it will be psychological and once that challenge is met, the next step will be physical and history illustrates that when helped understand what must be done – a surviving through tomorrow to live successfully the day after is undoubtedly a “must” – humans appear to be particularly well equipped at confronting and dealing with new, and unknown, challenges. The challenges of tomorrow will undoubtedly be unknown.
Psychologist Dr Elisabeth Kulbers-Ross discussed human emotions that are traversed as people personally deal with death and tragedy – climate change, implicated and worsened by oil scarcity is a form of death and most certainly a human tragedy. Dr Klubers-Ross narrowed that process to five steps – first there was outright denial; that was followed by anger; then came bargaining; depression followed; and, finally, people generally accepted the change, or changes, in their life.
The idea of a post petroleum life, complicated by climate change, broadly sees most people in denial, some quite angry and a few moving into the bargaining scenario. Personally, while acceptance has enabled me to write this and so I no longer deny our destination, however anger about the loss of a way of life I love continues to invade my thinking, I still privately bargain about how I should live and when I see things that will become increasingly difficult to realise in my lifetime and impossible for my grandchildren to experience, I become depressed.
However, optimism returns when I reflect on how I can work with my fellows to create a new and exciting world based on values that are shaped around the well-being of people as opposed to things.
Nothing in our world happens by luck as everything, no matter how bizarre or seemingly inexplicable, it can be explained. No supernatural being influences events rather, what we experience is the result of a chain of happenings, no matter how complex, that can be explained through close and scientific examination. Most of what impacts on our world results from anthropocentric doings and although nature can have an effect, sometimes dramatic, much of what we are experiencing now through climate change is human induced, although we see it as just nature doing what it has always done. However, what is new, is the absolutely unpredictability of this chaotic “nature”. We have been fortunate to live through a golden climatic age – a sort of goldilocks era when it wasn’t too hot, not too cold, but just right – and so we have prospered, multiplied and so plundered the earth of its rich resources and have been living in a sumptuous fashion consuming earth’s fossil fuel capital, rather than sustaining ourselves on the interest arising from that capital.
Hunger can move people to revolt, but even more fundamental to the causes of revolution is an absence of hope and meaning as when they are missing from a person’s life then he or she experiences emptiness and a strange barrenness that often drives them to strike out. The evolving changes settling on the world community resulting from climate change and peak oil erase hope and meaning and being addicted to the present values that drive our lives in the 21st century, many experience the first symptom of the Dr Klubers-Ross thesis and so become angry as they struggle to find hope and meaning in a post-petroleum life. Most everything they have loved and enjoyed throughout their lives is gone, or going.
The lost hope and meaning can be regained through understanding and embracing the concept of Living Where You Live.
Consider all the material joys of life today and they will be gone or in stupendously short supply as we learn to live in a world altered beyond recognition through climate change and hobbled as our supplies of oil dry up and so becomes prohibitively expensive.
Humans, I am absolutely sure, can cope with such a dramatic change, but first it will be psychological and once that challenge is met, the next step will be physical and history illustrates that when helped understand what must be done – a surviving through tomorrow to live successfully the day after is undoubtedly a “must” – humans appear to be particularly well equipped at confronting and dealing with new, and unknown, challenges. The challenges of tomorrow will undoubtedly be unknown.
Psychologist Dr Elisabeth Kulbers-Ross discussed human emotions that are traversed as people personally deal with death and tragedy – climate change, implicated and worsened by oil scarcity is a form of death and most certainly a human tragedy. Dr Klubers-Ross narrowed that process to five steps – first there was outright denial; that was followed by anger; then came bargaining; depression followed; and, finally, people generally accepted the change, or changes, in their life.
The idea of a post petroleum life, complicated by climate change, broadly sees most people in denial, some quite angry and a few moving into the bargaining scenario. Personally, while acceptance has enabled me to write this and so I no longer deny our destination, however anger about the loss of a way of life I love continues to invade my thinking, I still privately bargain about how I should live and when I see things that will become increasingly difficult to realise in my lifetime and impossible for my grandchildren to experience, I become depressed.
However, optimism returns when I reflect on how I can work with my fellows to create a new and exciting world based on values that are shaped around the well-being of people as opposed to things.
Nothing in our world happens by luck as everything, no matter how bizarre or seemingly inexplicable, it can be explained. No supernatural being influences events rather, what we experience is the result of a chain of happenings, no matter how complex, that can be explained through close and scientific examination. Most of what impacts on our world results from anthropocentric doings and although nature can have an effect, sometimes dramatic, much of what we are experiencing now through climate change is human induced, although we see it as just nature doing what it has always done. However, what is new, is the absolutely unpredictability of this chaotic “nature”. We have been fortunate to live through a golden climatic age – a sort of goldilocks era when it wasn’t too hot, not too cold, but just right – and so we have prospered, multiplied and so plundered the earth of its rich resources and have been living in a sumptuous fashion consuming earth’s fossil fuel capital, rather than sustaining ourselves on the interest arising from that capital.
Hunger can move people to revolt, but even more fundamental to the causes of revolution is an absence of hope and meaning as when they are missing from a person’s life then he or she experiences emptiness and a strange barrenness that often drives them to strike out. The evolving changes settling on the world community resulting from climate change and peak oil erase hope and meaning and being addicted to the present values that drive our lives in the 21st century, many experience the first symptom of the Dr Klubers-Ross thesis and so become angry as they struggle to find hope and meaning in a post-petroleum life. Most everything they have loved and enjoyed throughout their lives is gone, or going.
The lost hope and meaning can be regained through understanding and embracing the concept of Living Where You Live.
Chapter Two:
Britain’s Rob Hopkins has developed the idea of Transition Towns and many throughout the world have warmed to the concept encouraging people in their respective towns work at understanding how they could live in a post-petroleum world and create a local resilient community willing and able to address a low energy future, has created an energy reduction program that ultimately will enable to community to feed itself to ensure its contentment and so live happily, having both hope and meaning. Hopkins’ Transition Town concept is a critical intermediate step in the journey toward a destination that would allow us to live equally contented and happy lives as we build private and public lives around the concept that we should Live Where We Live.
In a nutshell if we were to Live Where We Live our lives would revolve around our immediate neighbourhood; we could walk or cycle most everywhere we needed to go; our work would be within that same range; our shopping would be equally nearby; leisure and recreational pursuits would be in our neighbourhood; community services, be they health, law, education, administrative and various emergency services would also be within just a few kilometres. Because we would have a human energy based society, rather than one that is propelled by fossil-fuelled energy the issues that presently trouble our communities, such as obesity and depression brought on by lifestyles that sees us look inward and frequently remain in social isolation as opposed to engaging with others and so living an active social life encouraged through a meaningful dialog with those around us.
Sadly, many believe they have that dialog as they are intimately linked to others through various social networks on the internet, through seemingly endless messaging or telephone calls to others and a busy life of sending and receiving emails. What is missing, of course, in all that is face to face contact and it is not until we are in the same space as another person are we able to truly understand and experience the subtleties of our relationship – most everything we know about another person is conveyed to us, and how we feel to them, via the complexities of body language. Such vital information is absolutely absent when we communicate with others electronically.
The world we are moving toward, one where we will Live Where We Live, will be primarily without electronic connections and if we, and our community, is to grow towards consolidation, become truly resilient, self-reliant as opposed to self-sufficient and have a broad underlying contentment, it will be built on and around people dealing with each other in a genuine human way, talking face to face with others and moving beyond the technological age that, despite the claims of many, is robbing us of community.
Our towns and cities of tomorrow will be planned, built and lived-in so that in some sense they will resemble what existed in the 19th century – they will be more compact, they will be walkable, houses will be smaller, housing will be denser, our homes will be intergenerational, everything that it is important to our lives will be nearby. Public transport will allow us to travel further afield.
In a nutshell if we were to Live Where We Live our lives would revolve around our immediate neighbourhood; we could walk or cycle most everywhere we needed to go; our work would be within that same range; our shopping would be equally nearby; leisure and recreational pursuits would be in our neighbourhood; community services, be they health, law, education, administrative and various emergency services would also be within just a few kilometres. Because we would have a human energy based society, rather than one that is propelled by fossil-fuelled energy the issues that presently trouble our communities, such as obesity and depression brought on by lifestyles that sees us look inward and frequently remain in social isolation as opposed to engaging with others and so living an active social life encouraged through a meaningful dialog with those around us.
Sadly, many believe they have that dialog as they are intimately linked to others through various social networks on the internet, through seemingly endless messaging or telephone calls to others and a busy life of sending and receiving emails. What is missing, of course, in all that is face to face contact and it is not until we are in the same space as another person are we able to truly understand and experience the subtleties of our relationship – most everything we know about another person is conveyed to us, and how we feel to them, via the complexities of body language. Such vital information is absolutely absent when we communicate with others electronically.
The world we are moving toward, one where we will Live Where We Live, will be primarily without electronic connections and if we, and our community, is to grow towards consolidation, become truly resilient, self-reliant as opposed to self-sufficient and have a broad underlying contentment, it will be built on and around people dealing with each other in a genuine human way, talking face to face with others and moving beyond the technological age that, despite the claims of many, is robbing us of community.
Our towns and cities of tomorrow will be planned, built and lived-in so that in some sense they will resemble what existed in the 19th century – they will be more compact, they will be walkable, houses will be smaller, housing will be denser, our homes will be intergenerational, everything that it is important to our lives will be nearby. Public transport will allow us to travel further afield.
Chapter Three:
In a quality city, a person should be able to live their entire life without a car, and not feel deprived. - Paul Bedford.
Understanding and embracing the concept of Living Where We Live is a journey that begins with a world that is largely in trouble as we are busily consuming our ecological capital in that we live with expectations driven by a consumerist paradigm that sees as gouging at the world’s finite fossil fuels, be they oil, coal, metals of all sorts and in so doing we are polluting the atmosphere and degrading the earth’s top soil, to the point where some are predicting a “peak soil” scenario in which the earth’s top soil, on which all life depends, will be useless, or gone, by the end of this century.
That journey, which will not be easy and demand the best that humanity has to offer, should see us arrive at a destination that will be a world that is sustainable and more peaceful.
Living Where We Live is, as a concept, not an awaiting nirvana for although it will rescue us from many of the world’s existing ills, it will not end death, suffering and pain, or many of the other human difficulties that communities presently wrestle with, although stronger communities dependent largely on human muscle for energy and movement will be broadly healthier, both physically and emotionally.
The way ahead is to be found in many things, among them the planning, design and creation of our new communities in which we have to examine the fundamental matters of how and where we live, how we move about, where we work, the governance of our communities, the provision of various public services and what we do about leisure and recreation.
The first question – planning and design – is critical, but will not be appropriate, or work unless we take it as said that everything important to our lives must be within our immediate community – that is work, some food supplies, shopping, public services, schooling, health and leisure.
In considering design, it is essential that every building be multi-use in that they provide living space, a place in which a business can operate, room for a small vegetable garden and, with careful thought, room for several egg producing fowls that rid the home of many kitchens scraps. The building needs to be constructed to suit its environment, using solar power and wind generated electricity as energy for some aspects of running the home and insulation to keep it cool in summer and warm in winter and, of course, correct positioning to take advantage of the winter sun and avoid the extremes of the summer sun.
And while that same building needs to be small, simply large enough for its purpose and no room for egos, it needs to be designed in a fashion that would allow for easy expansion and the family grew in number or older – houses should therefore be multigenerational. That is, rather than parents being farmed out to nursing homes, that their needs be embraced by younger members and so cared for. In the present environment, and in being locked into contemporary values, most would simply see this as an imposition on their lives, but in fact it would be an immeasurable benefit as children are a little like empty sponges just waiting to soak up the knowledge and wisdom of their elders.
Design is about making certain your community is for people as opposed to machines and it is worth remembering, always, what the founder of Project for Public Spaces, Fred Kent, said: “If you plan for cars and traffic you get more cars and traffic, but when you design your community around people, you get more people”. And so design needs to concentrate on creating beautiful public spaces – places where people can gather and interact, and so enrich the community and see that through such communication people instinctively become more confident and have an improved self-esteem. We are by nature social animals and so our well-being is strengthened when we mix and share our lives with others, even through a casual conversation in a public space. That public space, need to be just as beautiful as it can be.
The second - The era of the motor car – a man-made machine that has captivated so many, eroding their lives and ending that of many others – is effectively over, challenging most everything we presently understand, how we go about and maintain our lives. An escape from the car is possible, but only with a radical understanding of how we can maintain our lives without the imagined convenience of travelling several kilometres to work, driving our car to go shopping and again use motor vehicles to enjoy our relaxation or leisure. Looked at analytically that “convenience” is, considered broadly, actually an inconvenience.
Should our work, shopping, the various services we need and our leisure are all within easy walking or cycling distance then a motor car becomes an encumbrance, rather than a convenience. Imagine, if you can, a community without motor vehicles – gone immediately is an infrastructure that is costly in every sense – lives, money, health (both ours and that of the planet) along with the killing of our ingenuity, which would be heightened and enriched as we learned about and understood how to live equally happily and expansively in a world without cars.
Gone would be anything that demanded national travel, such as is now the case
with Australian Football League that sees players, and supporters, involved in games throughout Australia that require people to first get to the airport and then fly across the country, two things that would be impossible in our post-petroleum world. All other sport that hinged on national, or international travel, would face a similar fate. Understanding that, we should now be focusing our energies, and money, on creating local versions of the same thing. Any other event that also required national “just in time” travel would also have to be seriously re-jigged. Tourism, as we understand it today, would be doomed as no more would people, or families, travel for weekends to distant places that required them to use private cars and the popular past-time of towing a caravan would be little more than a memory.
No longer would the motor car be our principle means of mobility underlining, subsequently, the need for us to ensure that everything important to our lives was within easy walking or cycling distance. In fact, even something as rudimentary at cycling will vanish once scarcity brought on by vanishing fossil fuel-energy becomes a reality with many of the resources that presently allow us to build a bicycle become increasingly difficult to access.
The third - Where we work is probably the most difficult of aspect of this conversation.
The idea we now understand as work evolved over thousands of years from a point where it wasn’t even considered work, rather simply just a daily undertaking that made life possible and research suggests what might have been considered “work” took just a few hours out of every day. Our modern industrialized world has turned that few hours of work into long exhausting days that mostly took up all our daylight hours, and often longer. Society as we know and understand it now would not function unless we continue to devote our lives to ensuring our consumerist way of living is maintained and that means working long hours frequently at the expense of other important aspects of our lives, primarily spending time with our families and friends.
A return to the hunter and gatherer style of life is simply not possible, but this new life, which will be punctuated by a scarcity of resources we now consume at an alarming rate, demanding that we relegate the issue of raw economics to a lower rank of importance on life’s landscape allowing us to escape from a style of work that simple allows us to gather goods around us that do little or nothing boost ongoing happiness, rather simply appeals to our distorted egos.
That journey, which will not be easy and demand the best that humanity has to offer, should see us arrive at a destination that will be a world that is sustainable and more peaceful.
Living Where We Live is, as a concept, not an awaiting nirvana for although it will rescue us from many of the world’s existing ills, it will not end death, suffering and pain, or many of the other human difficulties that communities presently wrestle with, although stronger communities dependent largely on human muscle for energy and movement will be broadly healthier, both physically and emotionally.
The way ahead is to be found in many things, among them the planning, design and creation of our new communities in which we have to examine the fundamental matters of how and where we live, how we move about, where we work, the governance of our communities, the provision of various public services and what we do about leisure and recreation.
The first question – planning and design – is critical, but will not be appropriate, or work unless we take it as said that everything important to our lives must be within our immediate community – that is work, some food supplies, shopping, public services, schooling, health and leisure.
In considering design, it is essential that every building be multi-use in that they provide living space, a place in which a business can operate, room for a small vegetable garden and, with careful thought, room for several egg producing fowls that rid the home of many kitchens scraps. The building needs to be constructed to suit its environment, using solar power and wind generated electricity as energy for some aspects of running the home and insulation to keep it cool in summer and warm in winter and, of course, correct positioning to take advantage of the winter sun and avoid the extremes of the summer sun.
And while that same building needs to be small, simply large enough for its purpose and no room for egos, it needs to be designed in a fashion that would allow for easy expansion and the family grew in number or older – houses should therefore be multigenerational. That is, rather than parents being farmed out to nursing homes, that their needs be embraced by younger members and so cared for. In the present environment, and in being locked into contemporary values, most would simply see this as an imposition on their lives, but in fact it would be an immeasurable benefit as children are a little like empty sponges just waiting to soak up the knowledge and wisdom of their elders.
Design is about making certain your community is for people as opposed to machines and it is worth remembering, always, what the founder of Project for Public Spaces, Fred Kent, said: “If you plan for cars and traffic you get more cars and traffic, but when you design your community around people, you get more people”. And so design needs to concentrate on creating beautiful public spaces – places where people can gather and interact, and so enrich the community and see that through such communication people instinctively become more confident and have an improved self-esteem. We are by nature social animals and so our well-being is strengthened when we mix and share our lives with others, even through a casual conversation in a public space. That public space, need to be just as beautiful as it can be.
The second - The era of the motor car – a man-made machine that has captivated so many, eroding their lives and ending that of many others – is effectively over, challenging most everything we presently understand, how we go about and maintain our lives. An escape from the car is possible, but only with a radical understanding of how we can maintain our lives without the imagined convenience of travelling several kilometres to work, driving our car to go shopping and again use motor vehicles to enjoy our relaxation or leisure. Looked at analytically that “convenience” is, considered broadly, actually an inconvenience.
Should our work, shopping, the various services we need and our leisure are all within easy walking or cycling distance then a motor car becomes an encumbrance, rather than a convenience. Imagine, if you can, a community without motor vehicles – gone immediately is an infrastructure that is costly in every sense – lives, money, health (both ours and that of the planet) along with the killing of our ingenuity, which would be heightened and enriched as we learned about and understood how to live equally happily and expansively in a world without cars.
Gone would be anything that demanded national travel, such as is now the case
with Australian Football League that sees players, and supporters, involved in games throughout Australia that require people to first get to the airport and then fly across the country, two things that would be impossible in our post-petroleum world. All other sport that hinged on national, or international travel, would face a similar fate. Understanding that, we should now be focusing our energies, and money, on creating local versions of the same thing. Any other event that also required national “just in time” travel would also have to be seriously re-jigged. Tourism, as we understand it today, would be doomed as no more would people, or families, travel for weekends to distant places that required them to use private cars and the popular past-time of towing a caravan would be little more than a memory.
No longer would the motor car be our principle means of mobility underlining, subsequently, the need for us to ensure that everything important to our lives was within easy walking or cycling distance. In fact, even something as rudimentary at cycling will vanish once scarcity brought on by vanishing fossil fuel-energy becomes a reality with many of the resources that presently allow us to build a bicycle become increasingly difficult to access.
The third - Where we work is probably the most difficult of aspect of this conversation.
The idea we now understand as work evolved over thousands of years from a point where it wasn’t even considered work, rather simply just a daily undertaking that made life possible and research suggests what might have been considered “work” took just a few hours out of every day. Our modern industrialized world has turned that few hours of work into long exhausting days that mostly took up all our daylight hours, and often longer. Society as we know and understand it now would not function unless we continue to devote our lives to ensuring our consumerist way of living is maintained and that means working long hours frequently at the expense of other important aspects of our lives, primarily spending time with our families and friends.
A return to the hunter and gatherer style of life is simply not possible, but this new life, which will be punctuated by a scarcity of resources we now consume at an alarming rate, demanding that we relegate the issue of raw economics to a lower rank of importance on life’s landscape allowing us to escape from a style of work that simple allows us to gather goods around us that do little or nothing boost ongoing happiness, rather simply appeals to our distorted egos.
Progress, a recent meeting in Melbourne seemed to agree, was invariably linked to our economy. Nothing, not even an idea, could be advanced, it was noddingly agreed, until it could be demonstrated that what was proposed would financially enrich the community, or particular individuals.
Money followed barter and is one of civilization’s earliest inventions and its implications have troubled man ever since as his or her success has long been measured by the amount of financial capital they controlled or could influence.
However, while there is no denying the power of such capital, it is always social capital that is overlooked and rarely valued.
With the world locked onto a trajectory that will see us progress into damnably difficult times in which financial capital will be of little value and social capital will have values never seen before or understood.
In times past, and in some countries, your affluence was measured by the size of your woodpile, but as we venture into circumstances unknown, affluence will be more about your social network than the size of your woodpile, although that would undoubtedly be useful.
The adage suggesting it is who you know rather than what you know is what matters will become increasingly important, but for reasons different to those that have added meat to the adage.
Finding and securing affluence in society as we know and understand it was linked, sometimes to knowledge in a chosen field, but frequently from links within the same social stratum – nepotism was at play.
Rather than preferential treatment for a few, the community of tomorrow will need to be interwoven, appreciate and work for equality and accept that real wealth is in social capital and not in accumulated goods or bigger bank balances.
So again it will be about who you know, but in this case it will be your neighbours and your immediate community and, importantly, what they know about living in a low-energy and sustainable way.
It will not be about money rather, it will be about a rich social capital in which the wealth of the community will be measured by the fertility of relationships.
Money followed barter and is one of civilization’s earliest inventions and its implications have troubled man ever since as his or her success has long been measured by the amount of financial capital they controlled or could influence.
However, while there is no denying the power of such capital, it is always social capital that is overlooked and rarely valued.
With the world locked onto a trajectory that will see us progress into damnably difficult times in which financial capital will be of little value and social capital will have values never seen before or understood.
In times past, and in some countries, your affluence was measured by the size of your woodpile, but as we venture into circumstances unknown, affluence will be more about your social network than the size of your woodpile, although that would undoubtedly be useful.
The adage suggesting it is who you know rather than what you know is what matters will become increasingly important, but for reasons different to those that have added meat to the adage.
Finding and securing affluence in society as we know and understand it was linked, sometimes to knowledge in a chosen field, but frequently from links within the same social stratum – nepotism was at play.
Rather than preferential treatment for a few, the community of tomorrow will need to be interwoven, appreciate and work for equality and accept that real wealth is in social capital and not in accumulated goods or bigger bank balances.
So again it will be about who you know, but in this case it will be your neighbours and your immediate community and, importantly, what they know about living in a low-energy and sustainable way.
It will not be about money rather, it will be about a rich social capital in which the wealth of the community will be measured by the fertility of relationships.
In fact most everything about industrialism has been about individualism, considered by some to be “the pursuit of loneliness”, with the idea of public and community falling broadly out of favour and being celebrated in only relatively few ways and with both frequently being seconded inappropriatelyto further enhance the commercial world.
Work in the years ahead will be about enriching the life of our community – that tight group of people all within easy cycling or walking distance. It will be about growing your own food, helping your neighbour, refurbishing what already exists, doing what you can to help maintain a community resource of tools, building materials and helping organize social and recreational activities that don’t need the energy of fossil fuels.
The skills that many have developed and accumulated in the 20th century and the early part of this century will not be irrelevant for although scarcity will make many things useless in terms of their design, the skills that brought them into being will be useful, first, in understanding how the equipment, or machine, works and, second, adapting them to our new low-energy world.
Our work will be in enlisting the remains of the industrial age, adapting it and making it useful for our community in our low-energy future. Also our work will be in using our human muscle to secure food for our community and that might need travel, under our own power, to nearby farms to participate in community assisted agriculture, that being physically helping plant the crops, or crops, contributing to their maintenance and then participating in their harvesting – their reward? – sharing in what is grown.
Communities, by their nature will be small, but within that they will be part of a grander picture and although they only need to be self-sufficient in terms of necessities, they will need to be self-reliant when it comes to governance.
That, in itself, is loaded with difficulties and that is when the idea of “muddling through” becomes pre-eminent as there is no accounting for human nature and governance of simply one of those matters that can only be resolved, so to speak, on the run. Governance of a community and in turn its co-operation with neighbouring communities demands a generosity of spirit that far exceeds anything that exists today. Simple survival removes ego driven individualism and there will be no room for any hierarchal structure based on wealth (which will be largely eliminated anyway), perceived class or birth. Rather, those who best illustrate an understanding of scarcity, how the community can survive in the post-petroleum environment, are humble, illustrate courtesy to others and seek nought but the well-being of those around them will find their way to the top of the community.
Frugality will be the catch-cry of the era and so fiefdoms built on exploitation of others that allow just a few to accumulate possessions would be unlikely, although not impossible as humans frequently do irrational, and improbable, things, particularly when survival is at stake.
Like cream, good people will rise to the top and they, authorized by their community, will talk with their counterparts from adjoining communities to discuss how processes that cross each other’s boundaries could best serve the needs of the respective communities and those even further afield. Many of the skills that allow society to operate today will be useful, but at the same time and equal number of high-earning well-credentialed workers will find themselves in roles quite unlike that they held in the old fossil-fuel powered industrial world that has eroded, or is collapsing.
Just as few of us could imagine a post-petroleum world, equally only a few can imagine how the huge populations of today can be fed, housed, clothed and administered in a world that lacks those things considered essential in 2010. Nothing about the decent from here to there – that is a life of abundance to a life or scarcity – will be easy or obvious and it will be a journey that will flirt with collapse and disaster as we wrestle with realities that will be different in every respect from the life we enjoy now.
The machines of the affluent industrial age and its accompanied mass production will be replaced by workers, many of them, in our low-energy future.
The fourth - Public services as we know and enjoy them today will collapse over time and that will allow us the opportunity to understand how best they can be replaced – the technological skills of today will be generally useless in the decades to come, but as the decent into a post-petroleum world happens we will be able to distil those that we can use and so pass those onto others. Each community will learn from the others and so education will be a community-based affair with the wisdom of those understand living with scarcity being shared with those around them, particularly the young.
Health will be made easier for two important reasons – first, scarcity will mean diets that are more in keeping with what today is generally considered healthy eating and, second, subsequently obesity because of that will largely be history. The importance of human muscle ensuring the viability of the community will generally lead to improved health for most and, of course, ease the difficulty we presently face with burgeoning obesity. Beyond that, it has been noted that physical effort or exercise has a positive impact on our psychological well-being and so along with be fitter and healthier we will also be mentally in better shape.
Law and order is something that could easily descend into chaos as fossil fuels become rarer and so more expensive, but with circumstances meaning people will largely live, in every sense, in a limited area and so although many people by nature challenge the status quo, their daily doings will nearly always be under the watchful eye of the fellows meaning crime as we know it will be reduced. Passive observation has been shown to effectively reduce crime and general anti-social behaviour and so the simple fact that people live, work, shop and socialize in the one area means that contrary to today most of us will be aware of another’s life and so be conscious of any significant difference in the daily activities.
Trouble will still, of course, be a reality and with our communities being largely self-contained it is likely that the administration of justice will be a community responsibility. Much crime today results from greed, envy and the desire to have more of the baubles that the industrial society has put before us, and spiced by individualism, many experience frustration, and certain anger, and set to assuage that emotion by pursuing what it is they feel is missing from their life. A low-energy society wrestling with scarcity will live with a completely different mindset that will give precedence to survival, rather than the accumulation of material goods that mark the affluent and aspirational society.
People will continue to be people and the laws of the community will still be violated and an understanding of how it should, and can, deal with those who step outside those laws will need to emerge over time – this is a hugely difficult concept and although I have something of utopian view, it seems to me that with the promises of our affluent society gone our communities will generally be friendlier and more kindly places. Beyond that, bonds arising from richer family connections and a greater sense of tradition will make people more likely to act in a way that is about support and co-operation rather than act in a fashion that is contrary to the community’s well-being and more about the financial and social enrichment of the individual.
Work in the years ahead will be about enriching the life of our community – that tight group of people all within easy cycling or walking distance. It will be about growing your own food, helping your neighbour, refurbishing what already exists, doing what you can to help maintain a community resource of tools, building materials and helping organize social and recreational activities that don’t need the energy of fossil fuels.
The skills that many have developed and accumulated in the 20th century and the early part of this century will not be irrelevant for although scarcity will make many things useless in terms of their design, the skills that brought them into being will be useful, first, in understanding how the equipment, or machine, works and, second, adapting them to our new low-energy world.
Our work will be in enlisting the remains of the industrial age, adapting it and making it useful for our community in our low-energy future. Also our work will be in using our human muscle to secure food for our community and that might need travel, under our own power, to nearby farms to participate in community assisted agriculture, that being physically helping plant the crops, or crops, contributing to their maintenance and then participating in their harvesting – their reward? – sharing in what is grown.
Communities, by their nature will be small, but within that they will be part of a grander picture and although they only need to be self-sufficient in terms of necessities, they will need to be self-reliant when it comes to governance.
That, in itself, is loaded with difficulties and that is when the idea of “muddling through” becomes pre-eminent as there is no accounting for human nature and governance of simply one of those matters that can only be resolved, so to speak, on the run. Governance of a community and in turn its co-operation with neighbouring communities demands a generosity of spirit that far exceeds anything that exists today. Simple survival removes ego driven individualism and there will be no room for any hierarchal structure based on wealth (which will be largely eliminated anyway), perceived class or birth. Rather, those who best illustrate an understanding of scarcity, how the community can survive in the post-petroleum environment, are humble, illustrate courtesy to others and seek nought but the well-being of those around them will find their way to the top of the community.
Frugality will be the catch-cry of the era and so fiefdoms built on exploitation of others that allow just a few to accumulate possessions would be unlikely, although not impossible as humans frequently do irrational, and improbable, things, particularly when survival is at stake.
Like cream, good people will rise to the top and they, authorized by their community, will talk with their counterparts from adjoining communities to discuss how processes that cross each other’s boundaries could best serve the needs of the respective communities and those even further afield. Many of the skills that allow society to operate today will be useful, but at the same time and equal number of high-earning well-credentialed workers will find themselves in roles quite unlike that they held in the old fossil-fuel powered industrial world that has eroded, or is collapsing.
Just as few of us could imagine a post-petroleum world, equally only a few can imagine how the huge populations of today can be fed, housed, clothed and administered in a world that lacks those things considered essential in 2010. Nothing about the decent from here to there – that is a life of abundance to a life or scarcity – will be easy or obvious and it will be a journey that will flirt with collapse and disaster as we wrestle with realities that will be different in every respect from the life we enjoy now.
The machines of the affluent industrial age and its accompanied mass production will be replaced by workers, many of them, in our low-energy future.
The fourth - Public services as we know and enjoy them today will collapse over time and that will allow us the opportunity to understand how best they can be replaced – the technological skills of today will be generally useless in the decades to come, but as the decent into a post-petroleum world happens we will be able to distil those that we can use and so pass those onto others. Each community will learn from the others and so education will be a community-based affair with the wisdom of those understand living with scarcity being shared with those around them, particularly the young.
Health will be made easier for two important reasons – first, scarcity will mean diets that are more in keeping with what today is generally considered healthy eating and, second, subsequently obesity because of that will largely be history. The importance of human muscle ensuring the viability of the community will generally lead to improved health for most and, of course, ease the difficulty we presently face with burgeoning obesity. Beyond that, it has been noted that physical effort or exercise has a positive impact on our psychological well-being and so along with be fitter and healthier we will also be mentally in better shape.
Law and order is something that could easily descend into chaos as fossil fuels become rarer and so more expensive, but with circumstances meaning people will largely live, in every sense, in a limited area and so although many people by nature challenge the status quo, their daily doings will nearly always be under the watchful eye of the fellows meaning crime as we know it will be reduced. Passive observation has been shown to effectively reduce crime and general anti-social behaviour and so the simple fact that people live, work, shop and socialize in the one area means that contrary to today most of us will be aware of another’s life and so be conscious of any significant difference in the daily activities.
Trouble will still, of course, be a reality and with our communities being largely self-contained it is likely that the administration of justice will be a community responsibility. Much crime today results from greed, envy and the desire to have more of the baubles that the industrial society has put before us, and spiced by individualism, many experience frustration, and certain anger, and set to assuage that emotion by pursuing what it is they feel is missing from their life. A low-energy society wrestling with scarcity will live with a completely different mindset that will give precedence to survival, rather than the accumulation of material goods that mark the affluent and aspirational society.
People will continue to be people and the laws of the community will still be violated and an understanding of how it should, and can, deal with those who step outside those laws will need to emerge over time – this is a hugely difficult concept and although I have something of utopian view, it seems to me that with the promises of our affluent society gone our communities will generally be friendlier and more kindly places. Beyond that, bonds arising from richer family connections and a greater sense of tradition will make people more likely to act in a way that is about support and co-operation rather than act in a fashion that is contrary to the community’s well-being and more about the financial and social enrichment of the individual.
The fifth - leisure and recreation of the future will be a little like stepping back into the 1800s. All that we find enjoyable and relaxing will be within our community and so conscious of that we need to be investing time, effort and money into the enrichment of our communities, and more particularly our neighbourhoods. Much of what is national or international will be gone, the first, and most obvious, being any sort of activity that hinges, for its survival, on fossil fuels and that is most every international event, entertainment or past-time that presently occupies the passions of humans, be it sport, entertainment or even the seemingly passiveness that is art as it will be impossible to move major art exhibitions from city to city. Simply cherry-picking somewhat, gone will be international motor racing, tennis, bicycle racing, football and locally, the Australian Football League. International conferences will be little more than a side-bar in history.
Our addiction to national activities will be little different with those also fading away as our fossil fuels are consumed. Subsequently, our emphasis will need to be on duplicating, in some way, the excitement of those national and international events at a truly local level – something most will declare impossible and so it will be if we adhere to the values, practices and the mindset of the fossil fuel dependent industrial society.
Our addiction to national activities will be little different with those also fading away as our fossil fuels are consumed. Subsequently, our emphasis will need to be on duplicating, in some way, the excitement of those national and international events at a truly local level – something most will declare impossible and so it will be if we adhere to the values, practices and the mindset of the fossil fuel dependent industrial society.
Chapter Four:
Most days my optimism about the future is wounded when I encounter others who appear to be unaware of the descending difficulties – young people full of living and expecting the bounty of life; young parents guiding their children with the ambition of securing the best that our industrial society has to offer; people moving through life discussing the new house they are building, the material goods they are gathering around them, the new job they are hoping for; the retired people chatting about the performance of their superannuation fund, their next overseas trip, their plans to drive around Australia towing a caravan, moving into a new town house, or visiting family, friends and grandchildren in a distant state.
While people seem to broadly acknowledge the challenges ahead brought upon by climate change, only a minority seem ready, willing or prepared to act, meaning that although the warning sirens are screaming, almost no-one appears prepared to take action. Watch or read the news reports and almost without exception for the decision makers it is business as usual as we continue to mine the fossil resources of our planet to maintain the dream, a dream that took shape as our industrial society evolved, a dream built on the exploitation of earth’s resources, rather than careful building of our society on the interest from that capital we have lived like rambunctious teenagers with little or no concern for our future.
A personal illustration of society’s inability to accept the certain changes ahead, or even worse its blunt denial of those coming days, came only weeks before I decided to write this book, or maybe it was the reason.
For several years I had written a weekly column, which was restricted to 350 words – somewhat brief when you have to introduce your topic, canvass arguments for against and then reach a conclusion, for the daily newspaper serving the Goulburn Valley, The Shepparton News. Knowing the newspaper planned to introduce a Saturday edition, I offered to write a weekly column and believing a weekend paper would have room for a longer articles, I wrote and submitted a one thousand word piece that until now has not been published.
Conscious that most are doing nothing about climate change and many have never heard about peak oil, and therefore have no understanding of how it will affect our lives, I wrote the following in the hope people would engage in an enlightened dialog about how the future will unfold and because of that how we will and should react.
The first edition of the new Saturday paper was published on the first Saturday in May and so the reference to May -
Welcome to Saturday, May 7, 2050.
The journey of the past 50 years here has been a little like the 20th century in reverse.
That troubled 100 years saw the world ripped apart by violence taking it to the brink of extinction in that it was assaulted by industrialism, consumerism, globalization and around that there was a distinct misunderstanding by all about what it was we really wanted, along with an absence of ideas about anything that might be good for the human race in the centuries ahead.
Fortunately, and in a geological sense, only seconds before certain disaster, we realized that the endless pursuit of our wants as opposed to our needs was to come with a cost that humans would have been unable to pay.
The deterioration that would have ended with human extinction fortunately eased in late 2010 when we realized that our appetite for fossils fuels had unleashed a dynamic that at the start of this century few understood.
Fortunately some far-seeing souls could envision what was ahead, understanding that if our addiction continued unabated, they overcame powerful resistance with a promise of a more fulfilling life for all leading through living in sustainable and resilient communities.
The sweeping changes to our society from one that knew only fragility and violence to one that we have now that is sustainable, peaceful and embedded in localism as opposed to globalization has been completed, by necessity, swiftly and is the outcome of wonderful world-wide co-operation.
We now understand that industrialism, consumerism and globalization, giving us among other distasteful things violence, were about short-termism, answering only human wants and ignoring, largely, the human needs that are at the top of our survival hierarchy.
The insistence that growth and profit were the hallmarks of success, whatever the human cost, have been replaced by a vastly more humanitarian ideal that celebrates intellectual achievement, rather than the knock-down drag ‘em out testosterone ignited confrontational way of living that had come to permeate society.
Climate change was, and still is, troubling the world, but our reliance on fossil fuels is almost only a memory now as our reshaped and restructured communities use primarily sustainable energy.
Peak oil in 2010 changed most everything about how we live with fossil fuels being used now only for our public transport system and that being so good that motor vehicles, of any sort, are a rare sight and of little use considering that our road network is gradually collapsing because of negligible or non-existent, and unneeded, maintenance..
Everything is in reverse – what once were villages, but which then disappeared through the onslaught of the motor car, are returning.
Our communities are again just that, each with its own government infrastructure; a governance system responding to the needs of three or four thousand people; work within easy cycling or walking distance; shopping and schooling in the same area and entertainment and leisure both nearby.
Community gardens are common, nearby farms have developed community supported agriculture, little is imported and most everything the community needs is produced here – we are self-reliant as opposed to self-sufficient.
Local farms are no longer attuned to the needs of a global market; rather to the needs of local markets hence they grow a variety of crops contrary to the fossil-fuel era of mono-cropping where vulnerability was high unlike the security inherent through the farming of many different crops.
Most backyards have several chooks ensuring families have a regular supply of eggs to supplement the regular supply of vegetables from their prolific gardens.
Shepparton’s Rotary Clubs have combined forces and, after negotiating with the Greater Shepparton City Council, has taken control of several of the city’s major car-parks and having ripped up the bitumen, now operate them as community gardens.
Other city service clubs have also stepped into help the community and have planted and are maintaining an array of food trees throughout the city.
Small general stores are returning to our community and they are the place where people can sell or trade overflow from their gardens or chook yards.
Health is now becoming less of a problem as our more physical way of living – growing your own vegetables, walking or cycling most of the time and largely replacing oil-fired energy with human muscle – has almost ended the need for large centralized hospitals with smaller health care centres dotted throughout our communities.
The change, while challenging, has had a huge positive impact on our communities psychological health – depression is much less of an issue.
Shepparton’s railway station is now easily accessible from both Hoskin and Purcell Streets and each day is alive with activity with people from throughout the district coming and going as the train is the transport of choice, or more accurately the only viable way of moving about.
Water shortages continue to produce difficulties – climate change is not just a passing fad – but with more Australians having a better understanding of its more effective and efficient use, we are now finding we actually have more water available.
We have enhanced our understanding of community and we know that resilience and strength comes from creating things on a human scale and so we have more beautiful public spaces and they are surrounded by a compact and denser style of residences that blend with the environment, depend upon sustainable energy and built to allow for family growth and ultimately cater for extended and aging families, ending our need for what in the 20th century became the traditional nursing home.
This century opened with an emphasis on learning about and understanding modern technology, but in the past four decades there has been a huge shift to both comprehending and employing the techniques that allowed people to live comfortably and happily in the 19th century.
Ideas have been at the forefront of this different, but unique opportunity, and those ideas have enabled us to preserve much that was good from early this century to combine them with ideas from the past to ensure the decades, and centuries, ahead will be bountiful, fulfilling and rewarding.
I guess you know it is not really 2050, but actually May 1, 2010.
That four decade journey is one we must make and faced with the certain difficulties of climate change and the complications of peak oil, it needs to be undertaken thoughtfully and carefully.
Chapter Five:
While people seem to broadly acknowledge the challenges ahead brought upon by climate change, only a minority seem ready, willing or prepared to act, meaning that although the warning sirens are screaming, almost no-one appears prepared to take action. Watch or read the news reports and almost without exception for the decision makers it is business as usual as we continue to mine the fossil resources of our planet to maintain the dream, a dream that took shape as our industrial society evolved, a dream built on the exploitation of earth’s resources, rather than careful building of our society on the interest from that capital we have lived like rambunctious teenagers with little or no concern for our future.
A personal illustration of society’s inability to accept the certain changes ahead, or even worse its blunt denial of those coming days, came only weeks before I decided to write this book, or maybe it was the reason.
For several years I had written a weekly column, which was restricted to 350 words – somewhat brief when you have to introduce your topic, canvass arguments for against and then reach a conclusion, for the daily newspaper serving the Goulburn Valley, The Shepparton News. Knowing the newspaper planned to introduce a Saturday edition, I offered to write a weekly column and believing a weekend paper would have room for a longer articles, I wrote and submitted a one thousand word piece that until now has not been published.
Conscious that most are doing nothing about climate change and many have never heard about peak oil, and therefore have no understanding of how it will affect our lives, I wrote the following in the hope people would engage in an enlightened dialog about how the future will unfold and because of that how we will and should react.
The first edition of the new Saturday paper was published on the first Saturday in May and so the reference to May -
Welcome to Saturday, May 7, 2050.
The journey of the past 50 years here has been a little like the 20th century in reverse.
That troubled 100 years saw the world ripped apart by violence taking it to the brink of extinction in that it was assaulted by industrialism, consumerism, globalization and around that there was a distinct misunderstanding by all about what it was we really wanted, along with an absence of ideas about anything that might be good for the human race in the centuries ahead.
Fortunately, and in a geological sense, only seconds before certain disaster, we realized that the endless pursuit of our wants as opposed to our needs was to come with a cost that humans would have been unable to pay.
The deterioration that would have ended with human extinction fortunately eased in late 2010 when we realized that our appetite for fossils fuels had unleashed a dynamic that at the start of this century few understood.
Fortunately some far-seeing souls could envision what was ahead, understanding that if our addiction continued unabated, they overcame powerful resistance with a promise of a more fulfilling life for all leading through living in sustainable and resilient communities.
The sweeping changes to our society from one that knew only fragility and violence to one that we have now that is sustainable, peaceful and embedded in localism as opposed to globalization has been completed, by necessity, swiftly and is the outcome of wonderful world-wide co-operation.
We now understand that industrialism, consumerism and globalization, giving us among other distasteful things violence, were about short-termism, answering only human wants and ignoring, largely, the human needs that are at the top of our survival hierarchy.
The insistence that growth and profit were the hallmarks of success, whatever the human cost, have been replaced by a vastly more humanitarian ideal that celebrates intellectual achievement, rather than the knock-down drag ‘em out testosterone ignited confrontational way of living that had come to permeate society.
Climate change was, and still is, troubling the world, but our reliance on fossil fuels is almost only a memory now as our reshaped and restructured communities use primarily sustainable energy.
Peak oil in 2010 changed most everything about how we live with fossil fuels being used now only for our public transport system and that being so good that motor vehicles, of any sort, are a rare sight and of little use considering that our road network is gradually collapsing because of negligible or non-existent, and unneeded, maintenance..
Everything is in reverse – what once were villages, but which then disappeared through the onslaught of the motor car, are returning.
Our communities are again just that, each with its own government infrastructure; a governance system responding to the needs of three or four thousand people; work within easy cycling or walking distance; shopping and schooling in the same area and entertainment and leisure both nearby.
Community gardens are common, nearby farms have developed community supported agriculture, little is imported and most everything the community needs is produced here – we are self-reliant as opposed to self-sufficient.
Local farms are no longer attuned to the needs of a global market; rather to the needs of local markets hence they grow a variety of crops contrary to the fossil-fuel era of mono-cropping where vulnerability was high unlike the security inherent through the farming of many different crops.
Most backyards have several chooks ensuring families have a regular supply of eggs to supplement the regular supply of vegetables from their prolific gardens.
Shepparton’s Rotary Clubs have combined forces and, after negotiating with the Greater Shepparton City Council, has taken control of several of the city’s major car-parks and having ripped up the bitumen, now operate them as community gardens.
Other city service clubs have also stepped into help the community and have planted and are maintaining an array of food trees throughout the city.
Small general stores are returning to our community and they are the place where people can sell or trade overflow from their gardens or chook yards.
Health is now becoming less of a problem as our more physical way of living – growing your own vegetables, walking or cycling most of the time and largely replacing oil-fired energy with human muscle – has almost ended the need for large centralized hospitals with smaller health care centres dotted throughout our communities.
The change, while challenging, has had a huge positive impact on our communities psychological health – depression is much less of an issue.
Shepparton’s railway station is now easily accessible from both Hoskin and Purcell Streets and each day is alive with activity with people from throughout the district coming and going as the train is the transport of choice, or more accurately the only viable way of moving about.
Water shortages continue to produce difficulties – climate change is not just a passing fad – but with more Australians having a better understanding of its more effective and efficient use, we are now finding we actually have more water available.
We have enhanced our understanding of community and we know that resilience and strength comes from creating things on a human scale and so we have more beautiful public spaces and they are surrounded by a compact and denser style of residences that blend with the environment, depend upon sustainable energy and built to allow for family growth and ultimately cater for extended and aging families, ending our need for what in the 20th century became the traditional nursing home.
This century opened with an emphasis on learning about and understanding modern technology, but in the past four decades there has been a huge shift to both comprehending and employing the techniques that allowed people to live comfortably and happily in the 19th century.
Ideas have been at the forefront of this different, but unique opportunity, and those ideas have enabled us to preserve much that was good from early this century to combine them with ideas from the past to ensure the decades, and centuries, ahead will be bountiful, fulfilling and rewarding.
I guess you know it is not really 2050, but actually May 1, 2010.
That four decade journey is one we must make and faced with the certain difficulties of climate change and the complications of peak oil, it needs to be undertaken thoughtfully and carefully.
Chapter Five:
Human ingenuity combined with a general laissez-faire approach to life and a decided unwillingness among most to do or say anything that might be interpreted as being a restriction to the lives of individuals has led to a world that has reached the end of its leash.
Governmental planning on an international or national level seems to be fundamentally frowned on, but planning is applauded when corporately or personally applied in such a way that it leverages every aspect of the existing industrial society.
In the early 1940s the author F.A. Hayek wrote in the “Road to Serfdom” while discussing planning: “It is no exaggeration to say that if we had to rely on conscious planning for the growth of our industrial system, it would never have reached the degree of differentiation, complexity, and flexibility it has attained”. Hayek was, and is, probably right, but in acknowledging that success it seems only reasonable to observe that the differentiation, complexity, and flexibility he refers to also warrants indictment when we consider the world’s present difficulties with climate change and peak oil as they suggest the way ahead, or at least any solution to them, is through some sort of conscious and centralized planning.
Any suggestion of planning that might infringe on individual freedoms is usually greeted with criticism, suspicion and is frequently considered an unwarranted impost that robs those enriched by the industrial society of their spontaneity and freedom and so their prosperity. Interestingly, it is that very spontaneity and freedom, combined with ingenuity that has sent the industrial world spiralling out of control to the point that humanity is poised for collapse, either partial or complete, it is a collapse that will bring on unprecedented difficulties.
Again, that same spontaneity, freedom and ingenuity, but applied with a view to achieving sustainability rather that the fiscal profitability that has been the indicator of success for centuries of the industrial society, will need to be unleashed in what will be the most exciting and rewarding change in social evolution.
Although humanity appears poised for collapse, it is equally poised, I believe, for a renaissance; a time when it will abandon the values of the industrial society that have been primarily about exploitation and warmongering nearly always at the expense of the “other” and a shift to ideas that are about understanding how we live off the interest from the world’s resources rather than living sumptuously, and irresponsibly, by gouging at those same resources like a hungry man gobbling down his last meal.
Forethought, or planning, is what makes man different from all other life forms on earth for what appears in other organisms to be planning is nothing but instinct so planning for humans is as natural as breathing, although history illustrates that some are clearly better at planning, while some have such finely-honed instincts that it appears planning is what enables them to survive. Interestingly, for many, matters which were once planned became so common that they appear to be instinct.
Controversy about planning erupts when it becomes a group activity, that is when a community, society or nation decides that we should live in a particular manner and that limits, or restricts, personal spontaneity, freedom and so individualism. Liberty is an inheritance treasured by all, but misunderstood by most as generally it seems to be understood that liberty brings a freedom to do what you please, when you please and as often as you please. That is a gross misunderstanding of the concept, often one that is purposively employed for individual or corporative advantage, is true liberty is really shaped by the responsibility each of us has, in a broad sense, to the continued maintenance and sustainability of life on earth. Yes, we do have, of should have, the liberty to do what we like, when we like, as often as we like, but always being mindful of the well-being of those around us and long-term sustainability of life – “long-term” means thousands of years, not the 25 years some boast about when they plan or develop something or a particular process. The difficulty most of us are burdened with is our inability to think beyond our life-time or, at most, those of our grandchildren – success today and in the future hinges on us discovering how to imagine life in 10 000 years time. A book on that topic that warrants a read is The Clock Of The Long Now by Stuart Brand. Pamille Berg, who played a significant role in the design of Australia’s new parliament house in Canberra, that was created to be serviceable for at least 200 years, recommended the book.
Governmental planning on an international or national level seems to be fundamentally frowned on, but planning is applauded when corporately or personally applied in such a way that it leverages every aspect of the existing industrial society.
In the early 1940s the author F.A. Hayek wrote in the “Road to Serfdom” while discussing planning: “It is no exaggeration to say that if we had to rely on conscious planning for the growth of our industrial system, it would never have reached the degree of differentiation, complexity, and flexibility it has attained”. Hayek was, and is, probably right, but in acknowledging that success it seems only reasonable to observe that the differentiation, complexity, and flexibility he refers to also warrants indictment when we consider the world’s present difficulties with climate change and peak oil as they suggest the way ahead, or at least any solution to them, is through some sort of conscious and centralized planning.
Any suggestion of planning that might infringe on individual freedoms is usually greeted with criticism, suspicion and is frequently considered an unwarranted impost that robs those enriched by the industrial society of their spontaneity and freedom and so their prosperity. Interestingly, it is that very spontaneity and freedom, combined with ingenuity that has sent the industrial world spiralling out of control to the point that humanity is poised for collapse, either partial or complete, it is a collapse that will bring on unprecedented difficulties.
Again, that same spontaneity, freedom and ingenuity, but applied with a view to achieving sustainability rather that the fiscal profitability that has been the indicator of success for centuries of the industrial society, will need to be unleashed in what will be the most exciting and rewarding change in social evolution.
Although humanity appears poised for collapse, it is equally poised, I believe, for a renaissance; a time when it will abandon the values of the industrial society that have been primarily about exploitation and warmongering nearly always at the expense of the “other” and a shift to ideas that are about understanding how we live off the interest from the world’s resources rather than living sumptuously, and irresponsibly, by gouging at those same resources like a hungry man gobbling down his last meal.
Forethought, or planning, is what makes man different from all other life forms on earth for what appears in other organisms to be planning is nothing but instinct so planning for humans is as natural as breathing, although history illustrates that some are clearly better at planning, while some have such finely-honed instincts that it appears planning is what enables them to survive. Interestingly, for many, matters which were once planned became so common that they appear to be instinct.
Controversy about planning erupts when it becomes a group activity, that is when a community, society or nation decides that we should live in a particular manner and that limits, or restricts, personal spontaneity, freedom and so individualism. Liberty is an inheritance treasured by all, but misunderstood by most as generally it seems to be understood that liberty brings a freedom to do what you please, when you please and as often as you please. That is a gross misunderstanding of the concept, often one that is purposively employed for individual or corporative advantage, is true liberty is really shaped by the responsibility each of us has, in a broad sense, to the continued maintenance and sustainability of life on earth. Yes, we do have, of should have, the liberty to do what we like, when we like, as often as we like, but always being mindful of the well-being of those around us and long-term sustainability of life – “long-term” means thousands of years, not the 25 years some boast about when they plan or develop something or a particular process. The difficulty most of us are burdened with is our inability to think beyond our life-time or, at most, those of our grandchildren – success today and in the future hinges on us discovering how to imagine life in 10 000 years time. A book on that topic that warrants a read is The Clock Of The Long Now by Stuart Brand. Pamille Berg, who played a significant role in the design of Australia’s new parliament house in Canberra, that was created to be serviceable for at least 200 years, recommended the book.
Chapter Six:
A friend recently suggested that I am particularly good at arguing for what needs to be done when, he says, is the “how” that is critical. He has argued that most anyone can point to what needs to be done, but real skill is illustrated when a person can explain, and detail, how a task can be undertaken and completed, illustrating he has a true understanding of what it is that needs to be done. Throwaway suggestions on what needs to be done, in my friend’s view, are somewhat shallow and so superficial.
That view is, however, an unfair judgement on humanity generally as once it is clear what it is that needs to be completed, human ingenuity kicks in and the how naturally evolves. The classic contemporary example of that being the taking of a decision in the 60s by America to put a man on the moon – no-one knew how to do that, but the ingenuity of those on the project embraced the idea and in 1969 Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon. Once the what – putting a man on the moon - had been decided on the how naturally evolved.
Sadly, man’s ingenuity has been misappropriated and although it has produced much of value and worth, it has also taken the world down as destructive path that over centuries has been building in it destructiveness to the point where in 1945 one bomb dropped on Hiroshima killed hundreds of thousands of people and left an equal number desperately injured and the world emotionally numbed. The devastating power of that weapon was obvious to all and for decades the world was locked into a “cold war” where mutual assured destruction (MAD) pretty much froze the ingenuity that would make the world a better place and the minds of men seemed obsessed by profits that could be secured though the exercise of the industrial society’s values – the militarization of the industrial world gathered strength and today it still marches ahead to the beat of a drum attuned to the needs of consumption and the maintenance of a lifestyle that world can no longer support. It is argued that should China, India and other developing countries adopt the lifestyle of the Western World, some ten planets would be required to support the populations.
Conscious of the challenges ahead and the frightful waste of our ingenuity, it seems reasonable that we should abandon the values of the industrial world, a world that is obviously not working, stop pandering to the wants of a few and those who obvious care little about the well-being of many and then stand as one as we accept that climate change is a product of the industrial state and we now face, beyond that, particular difficulties through the terminal decline of the world’s oil resources.
I’m unsure of the “how” but have absolute confidence in human ingenuity to arrive at a workable and successful process just as soon as we agree as a planet on what is happening – climate change and oil scarcity, not to mention peak soil and peak population and distinct water shortages . Should the world stand as one and declare that these are what the future holds and agree that an unwillingness to address them then we face devastation on as scale we cannot comprehend. Just as soon as that is understood and broadly accepted, humanity will pool its intellectual resources and arrive at a workable solution and in short-time arrive at the solution and so demonstrate the “how”.
That view is, however, an unfair judgement on humanity generally as once it is clear what it is that needs to be completed, human ingenuity kicks in and the how naturally evolves. The classic contemporary example of that being the taking of a decision in the 60s by America to put a man on the moon – no-one knew how to do that, but the ingenuity of those on the project embraced the idea and in 1969 Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon. Once the what – putting a man on the moon - had been decided on the how naturally evolved.
Sadly, man’s ingenuity has been misappropriated and although it has produced much of value and worth, it has also taken the world down as destructive path that over centuries has been building in it destructiveness to the point where in 1945 one bomb dropped on Hiroshima killed hundreds of thousands of people and left an equal number desperately injured and the world emotionally numbed. The devastating power of that weapon was obvious to all and for decades the world was locked into a “cold war” where mutual assured destruction (MAD) pretty much froze the ingenuity that would make the world a better place and the minds of men seemed obsessed by profits that could be secured though the exercise of the industrial society’s values – the militarization of the industrial world gathered strength and today it still marches ahead to the beat of a drum attuned to the needs of consumption and the maintenance of a lifestyle that world can no longer support. It is argued that should China, India and other developing countries adopt the lifestyle of the Western World, some ten planets would be required to support the populations.
Conscious of the challenges ahead and the frightful waste of our ingenuity, it seems reasonable that we should abandon the values of the industrial world, a world that is obviously not working, stop pandering to the wants of a few and those who obvious care little about the well-being of many and then stand as one as we accept that climate change is a product of the industrial state and we now face, beyond that, particular difficulties through the terminal decline of the world’s oil resources.
I’m unsure of the “how” but have absolute confidence in human ingenuity to arrive at a workable and successful process just as soon as we agree as a planet on what is happening – climate change and oil scarcity, not to mention peak soil and peak population and distinct water shortages . Should the world stand as one and declare that these are what the future holds and agree that an unwillingness to address them then we face devastation on as scale we cannot comprehend. Just as soon as that is understood and broadly accepted, humanity will pool its intellectual resources and arrive at a workable solution and in short-time arrive at the solution and so demonstrate the “how”.
Chapter Seven:
Nothing, regardless of it naivety of innocence, can escape the broad sweep of politics, in its general sense. The idea of Living Where You Live was conceived remote from politics, but it is such an embracing idea with ramifications impacting on al stratum of society that the power of opinion, and so the implication of politics, infiltrates most every aspect of its intention. Interestingly though, taken to their extreme, the impact of climate change, oil scarcity and the many other peaks the world faces, will see politics relegated to the back stalls as the simple survival of humanity takes the spotlight on centre stage.
Earth, despite man’s efforts, will become sort of a totalitarian dictator in which it will call the shots and each of us, from presently rich nations to the poorest individuals will simply be bit players in a Gaia driven bid for survival and so in the greater scheme of things, politics will have no role to play, except as history illustrates, they will still attempt to influence the behaviour of men everywhere.
I live in an idealistic utopian world in which people everywhere understand their world is under threat and so bury personal wants, bind together in a collective as some nations do during wartime to strengthen and defend themselves against an outside threat – what we face now is the ultimate outside threat and so politics need to be ignored and consigned to the scap heap in the name of ensuring the maintenance of human life.
It is impossible to eliminate politics from life as every act of living demands a decision, is therefore emotional and so by implication a political act as the person making that decision suggests a “rightness” about what it is they are doing and within that, and again by implication, indicate that those who feel or believe otherwise are ill-directed and so on the opposite side of the political divide – life, even in its most simplified form is political.
The idea that we should Live Where We Live will be political from the beginning, even from when the concept is first promulgated as it calls into question most everything upon which our modern lives rest. Most everything we know and understand, and love, about our modern way of living will be gone and the slow motion shipwreck brought on by climate change, oil scarcity, food and water shortages and our burgeoning population will almost certainly ignite powerful views from most about how best we should address these changes and when we should and if we should.
Whether or not business as usual will result in unliveable conditions for humans on earth is the first of these political questions; questions that have the potential to divide society and produce disagreements that will lead to people taking such trenchant and irreversible positions that the difficulties the world faces will become insurmountable as the moment at which preservation is possible will pass while we argue. Politics will prevail, reason and imagination suffer and humankind will lose it foothold.
Threats to man’s survival that have arisen from discussions about climate change, peak oil and the various other difficulties are inherently controversial for many doubt the science behind what is being suggested, arguing that man is not responsible for what is happening to our weather, rather what the world is experiencing now is nothing more than normal metrological changes. Such an argument has some merit, except that the changes we have seen in the last decade or more, have in the past taken thousands of years to evolve.
So while it is happening quickly, in a geological sense, it is still moving somewhat slowly, defying human recognition and so there is an acceptance of what has been described as “creeping normalcy”; changes so slow that humans seem unable to identify them and so the incremental rises in earth’s mean temperature go largely unnoticed and so for many it is a continuation of business as usual, but with allowance for what appear to be minor changes to our way of living, but which in an earth-wide sense are significant and of such magnitude that they warrant our attention and so action.
A look at why past societies have collapsed is particularly instructive for while there have been a multitude of reason, linked to most was a strange, and misplaced, as time was to show, addiction to certain aspects of their way of living to creeping normalcy.
Inherent in most every case was suspicion of change, a powerful desire to cling to the way of life that had brought them to where they were and an inability to see and understand that what is normal for life today was not the case as little as five years ago. Should those doubters sense that something is changing, that change is reasoned away. Along with that, tradition also stood in the way and so what worked in society for decades, if not centuries, would, in the view of many continue to enrich society in the future – history illustrates that is not true and what once worked for a particular society is no longer appropriate.
Others often turn to technology in the hope of finding an answer to the difficulties facing humanity.
Earth, despite man’s efforts, will become sort of a totalitarian dictator in which it will call the shots and each of us, from presently rich nations to the poorest individuals will simply be bit players in a Gaia driven bid for survival and so in the greater scheme of things, politics will have no role to play, except as history illustrates, they will still attempt to influence the behaviour of men everywhere.
I live in an idealistic utopian world in which people everywhere understand their world is under threat and so bury personal wants, bind together in a collective as some nations do during wartime to strengthen and defend themselves against an outside threat – what we face now is the ultimate outside threat and so politics need to be ignored and consigned to the scap heap in the name of ensuring the maintenance of human life.
It is impossible to eliminate politics from life as every act of living demands a decision, is therefore emotional and so by implication a political act as the person making that decision suggests a “rightness” about what it is they are doing and within that, and again by implication, indicate that those who feel or believe otherwise are ill-directed and so on the opposite side of the political divide – life, even in its most simplified form is political.
The idea that we should Live Where We Live will be political from the beginning, even from when the concept is first promulgated as it calls into question most everything upon which our modern lives rest. Most everything we know and understand, and love, about our modern way of living will be gone and the slow motion shipwreck brought on by climate change, oil scarcity, food and water shortages and our burgeoning population will almost certainly ignite powerful views from most about how best we should address these changes and when we should and if we should.
Whether or not business as usual will result in unliveable conditions for humans on earth is the first of these political questions; questions that have the potential to divide society and produce disagreements that will lead to people taking such trenchant and irreversible positions that the difficulties the world faces will become insurmountable as the moment at which preservation is possible will pass while we argue. Politics will prevail, reason and imagination suffer and humankind will lose it foothold.
Threats to man’s survival that have arisen from discussions about climate change, peak oil and the various other difficulties are inherently controversial for many doubt the science behind what is being suggested, arguing that man is not responsible for what is happening to our weather, rather what the world is experiencing now is nothing more than normal metrological changes. Such an argument has some merit, except that the changes we have seen in the last decade or more, have in the past taken thousands of years to evolve.
So while it is happening quickly, in a geological sense, it is still moving somewhat slowly, defying human recognition and so there is an acceptance of what has been described as “creeping normalcy”; changes so slow that humans seem unable to identify them and so the incremental rises in earth’s mean temperature go largely unnoticed and so for many it is a continuation of business as usual, but with allowance for what appear to be minor changes to our way of living, but which in an earth-wide sense are significant and of such magnitude that they warrant our attention and so action.
A look at why past societies have collapsed is particularly instructive for while there have been a multitude of reason, linked to most was a strange, and misplaced, as time was to show, addiction to certain aspects of their way of living to creeping normalcy.
Inherent in most every case was suspicion of change, a powerful desire to cling to the way of life that had brought them to where they were and an inability to see and understand that what is normal for life today was not the case as little as five years ago. Should those doubters sense that something is changing, that change is reasoned away. Along with that, tradition also stood in the way and so what worked in society for decades, if not centuries, would, in the view of many continue to enrich society in the future – history illustrates that is not true and what once worked for a particular society is no longer appropriate.
Others often turn to technology in the hope of finding an answer to the difficulties facing humanity.
Technology, a friend recently argued, will resolve humanity’s present difficulties.
He pointed to the amazing technological developments enjoyed by people around the world, illustrating a faith that something new would soon emerge easing the present shortages of space, food, water, fossil fuels and ease conflict.
It is a mistaken belief as what the world really needs as opposed to fresh technological ideas is a richer understanding of who and what we are; of how to live in a restrained way and yet fulfill man’s aspirations.
The difficulty with any technological solution is that its successful application, or use, generally depends upon another technology for it success and that technology depends upon another as so it goes in an ever expanding circle that will eventually become an all-consuming black hole.
Rather than enlist technology to ease our burdens we need to turn back to a belief in human skills and so engage humanity rather than technology to resolve those significant challenges.
The idea that is progress has been hijacked and so we see any technological advancement be they faster planes and cars, increased sales and production of just about anything, grand building ventures, huge industrial projects and sweeping freeways as growth deserving praise, when real progress is about each of us being a better person who engages with their community to make it a more peaceful and broadly a better place to live.
Real progress is about psychologically enriching ourselves and in doing so give material concerns a markedly lower priority and adopting a philosophy that gives our fellows precedence.
Mankind seems to be frittering away its opportunities as it indulges in superstitions and passions driven by a perverted understanding of progress that pays homage to competition ignited by imagination and will.
Technology is bankrupt - pointing to the Internet claiming that technology is alive and well is futile as although it plays a rich role in the modern world, it feeds on many other technologies, including the villain in climate change, coal fired power, for it sustenance.
Technology, as it is popularly understood, will not ease mankind’s difficulties, but our embrace of wisdom, kindness and more restrained living will.
Understanding and accepting the concept of Living Where You Live, along with our embrace of wisdom, kindness and more restrained living, and avoiding, as much as possible, the often misplaced politics that inhibit an intelligent approach to life.
