 The world of Green seems to be going in two opposite directions. Firstly, there is the ‘green is the new black’ world, which is transforming our attitude towards cosmetics, clothes, food, transport etc etc. This is still a world of consumerism, of the relentless drive to produce (and of course sell) more ‘stuff’, except it is the wolf dressed up in sustainably managed fleeces, not a chemical sheep dip in sight.
Short-term conscience clearing
This world is driven by the mainstream media who are daily telling us about oil resources peaking, rising energy costs and the accompanied financial implications of climate change; floods, droughts, rocketing grain prices, world food shortages. It’s all pretty grim. By inference, if we shop green we can carry on consuming as usual, assuage our conscience and so feel better shorter-term. The problems facing us, however, are so vast – like a supertanker – we can’t turn it around, so why try? There is little room in this world for real hope, let alone a sense of one’s own destiny making a difference. This is a world that I don’t want to spend too much time in. It erodes the spirit.
Co-operating in collective consciousness
By contrast there is another, more creative and beautiful world. This is a world in which we do make a difference by our actions, however incrementally small. This world understands collective consciousness and the power people have when they learn to co-operate and share their visions in a practical and intelligent way.
I recently watched a tribute to Nelson Mandela that described the run-up to the first elections in which all South Africans, regardless of race, were allowed to vote. It showed the violence on both sides, the assassinations of Mandela’s friends and comrades, the rioting, the machine-gunning of Black African crowds and the tear gas. It also showed how Mandela refused to subvert the democratic process or demonise the ruling government. His message was of peace and democracy, of integration, and the possibility of the building of a great country for all races. It is as relevant and urgent today as it was in the 1980s.
The pervasive nature of oil
In a different, perhaps more peculiar way, we humans are collectively at war with our planet and ourselves. We have designed a world run almost entirely on fossil fuels that is inequitable, short-term and astonishingly destructive.
So insidious is this world, that almost all of us have inter-woven our lives on it and are dependent on oil for everything; agriculture (food), plastics, pharmaceuticals, transport, textiles, building materials… The pervasive nature of oil is quite incredible. We can be excused for feeling like flies caught in a spider’s web.
Yet, amid our realisations of our limits to growth, our collective impact on planetary climate disruption, and the reality that time is running out for our fossil fuel world, is the dawning possibility of another world. There are now many, many people and groups working with these ideas all over the planet, the so-called ‘cultural creatives’, but I am intrigued and inspired to watch the burgeoning of the Transition Movement which has taken root in such a fertile way in Britain.
The power of leavening
I like the idea that each one of us is like a grain of yeast in a great cultural bread-making session. We all have the capacity to contribute to the process of leavening, thereby participating in social change, and we have our individual talents and skills to contribute to the leavening. Transition culture is all about creating community resilience and identifying resources for a post-oil world. To extend the metaphor, this is artisan bread-making we are engaged in, not the characterless sliced white ‘plastic’ loaf of the mass produced mind, and the leavening process isn’t meant to happen overnight.
Transition culture is about redesigning how we grow and supply our food, how we heat our homes, how we get to work, indeed the work we do, our education, our arts and crafts, how we care for the socially vulnerable, our politics… It is our ‘song’ for a sustainable future and it is sung from the grassroots up, arising through society in a yeasty and positive way. As each person opens his or her lives to this movement the power of the leavening becomes more and more unstoppable. Hey, even BBC Radio 4's The Archers have their own transition town in the fictional parallel universe, such is the force of this collective imagination!
So I invite you, if you haven’t read The Transition Handbook, to read it now. If you have already, pass on a copy to your local councillor, MP, friends, local farmer… anyone who shows concern for the state of our world or interest in positive social change. If you have internet access, look at www.transitionnetwork.org and go and read a free issue of Permaculture Magazine at www.exacteditions.com/exact/magazine/409/460 and learn about how we can achieve a Zero Carbon Britain.
Much love, Maddy
Maddy Harland is the editor of Permaculture Magazine – solutions for sustainable living. 01730 823311.
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