17 Nov 2014
Reading a Naomi Klein book is always a deeply absorbing experience. In a sense, the sheer size of them means you have no choice other than to be absorbed (This Changes Everything runs to almost 600 pages). Her two previous masterworks, No Logo and The Shock Doctrine were mind-altering and life-changing for me. This Changes Everything is Klein’s climate change book. It is a powerful, deeply felt, painstakingly-researched book which takes the reader on an incredible journey and makes a radical yet common-sense case. So why is it that by the end I felt underwhelmed?
There is much about the book that is fantastic. She brilliantly unpicks the complexities of our headlong plunge into climate chaos. She destroys the “austerity or extraction” myth, reframing it as “poverty or poisoning”. She sets out the passionate case that:
“climate change is, in fact, a massive job creator, as well as a community rebuilder, and a source of hope in moments when hope is a scarce commodity indeed”.
She identifies capitalism, in particular our current what she calls “extractivist” version, as the central driver of the crisis, but argues that climate change should be the rallying call around which the alternative is built. We’ve tried it the neo-liberals’ way for the last 20 years, she says, and “the soaring emissions speak for themselves”.
We meet the climate denying Heartland Institute, we meet scientists proposing geoengineering (mirrors in space, sulphur pumped into the upper atmosphere, iron filings in the sea etc) and the billionaires claiming to be doing something about it while doing very little (this is not a book Richard Branson will be giving to many people this Christmas). She looks into the right wing mindset behind much of this, writing:
“You would think that turning down the sun for every person on earth is a more intrusive form of big government than asking citizens to change their light bulbs. But that is to miss the point: for the fossil fuel companies and their paid champions, anything is preferable to regulating ExxonMobil, including attempts to regulate the sun”.
She takes the reader deep into the heart of the movements around the world who are doing something about it. We hear about the divestment movement that is spreading with such urgency through universities and other organisations. Her response to the criticism that it will just lead to the sold shares being picked up by other people?
“This misses the power of the strategy: every time students, professors, and faith leaders make the case for divestment, they are chipping away at the social licence with which these companies operate”.
We meet communities mobilising to fight fracking, oil extraction, pipelines and mountaintop removal around the world. We meet ordinary people of all ages standing up and putting their bodies on the line to keep the carbon in the ground and to protect their air, water and future. To me, it felt like this is where Klein feels most comfortable as a writer, reporting on demonstrations on mountainsides, blockades and the politics of resistance.
So why my reluctance to give what is, in so many ways a brilliant book, 10 out of 10? Firstly, I’m not sure how many people actually read books this big any more. It’s a sad reality that less and less people read anything of any length, given the kicking the internet has given most of our attention spans. I was reading this book on the train, and the guy sat next to me told me, almost apologetically, “I haven’t read a book for 3 years!”
Klein has stated that she wrote this book for people who don’t read books about climate change. I would be hugely surprised if any such people read this book. Surely to encourage them to read a book on climate change, making it 564 pages long with no pictures isn’t the smartest place to start? I struggled, and I read this stuff all the time.
Secondly, I had to wait until page 397 for her to write:
“…there is no more potent weapon in the battle against fossil fuels than the creation of real alternatives. Just the glimpse of another kind of economy can be enough to energise the fight against the old one”.
Those words came like water in the desert at that point. I was three quarters of the way through the book, and struggling. We get a paragraph or two on Transition (which feels about 4 years out of date and behind what is actually happening, an occupational hazard of a book that takes 5 years to write), and then we’re back into how to fight fossil fuel companies again.
The stories of native peoples in the US and Canada standing up to fossil fuel companies are inspiring stuff. But this leads to my third problem with it. The subtitle of the book is ‘Capitalism vs the Climate’, yet what I didn’t find here was a reasoned and robust alternative to capitalism. We get a strong dose of what it won’t be like, the many ways in which the current system is deeply flawed. But what might the alternative look like? We are told that a 100% renewable economy is entirely possible, as is a low carbon food system, a transport system fit for a low carbon world and so on.
None of that will come as news to anyone involved in Transition. But what is the alternative economic model to underpin it? Is it an adaptation of capitalism, or something else? We don’t get that, and that feels like a big thing that is missing. This isn’t a problem unique to Klein, a spectrum of different models exists, from Steady State models, to green growth models to complete localisation approaches. Although Transition’s REconomy work is a tool for local economic regeneration, it isn’t a new economic model, although it would form part of one. But the question of what an economic Plan B would look like goes largely unanswered.
By the time I reached page 417, I felt drained, exhausted. I had reached saturation point: “not another story about why fossil fuel companies are the bad guys, please!” We were convinced of that within the first 10 pages. She falls into the classic rational deficit strategy, i.e. if you give people enough depressing information they will respond. But it is clear now that that usually doesn’t work. Appealing to values is also really important. Writing in Transition Free Press, Tom Crompton of Common Cause (whose work is mentioned in this book) wrote:
“An understanding of values … points to the importance of not getting hung up on the issues (energy insecurity or climate change, for example). Rather, any group working for social change would do well to free itself from a narrow issues-focus and ask in more free-ranging terms: “What are the issues that matter most to the people whom we most need to engage?” and then, crucially, “How do we campaign and communicate on these more resonant issues in a way that connects with intrinsic values?”
Although there are occasional sparks, it feels to me that this approach of speaking directly to those values that will resonate across the political spectrum is somewhat lacking (at least, until the end of the book, as we shall see). She fails, it seems to me, to consider the impact on the reader of chapter after chapter of grim events, people, news and statistics. This is a surprise, given that in her brilliant Guardian Live interview she recently said, of Transition:
“The other thing that I think the Transition movement does really well is to create spaces for people to talk about the emotional side to this crisis … That it isn’t just an outer transition, but also we have to go through our own personal transformation, and that also involves expressing that grief. It’s something that the feminist movement has done well, and a lot of people in the Transition Town movement who are part of this Inner Transition piece of it, come out of the feminist movement, because there’s an understanding that if you’re going to collapse peoples’ world views, you have to stick around to pick up the pieces”.
Yet it isn’t until the penultimate chapter of the book, ‘The Right to Regenerate’, that Klein creates some space for herself to “talk about the emotional side to this crisis”. Before then it has been a relentless wave of dreadful people, ghastly things happening, and the climate science which is deeply, deeply troubling. In a very moving chapter she takes us through her numerous attempts to conceive a child, numerous miscarriages, and her own lifestyle and work patterns that were injurious to her, and potentially, to her fertility. We hear of her visits to communities so damaged by the pollution from oil and gas companies, and plastics manufacture, that fertility is being decimated.
She identifies as one of the worst side effects of the ‘extractivist’ approach, alongside climate change, as the impacts it has on fertility, and the ability of life to regenerate itself. She quotes Native American writer and educator Leanne Simpson, talking about her peoples’ teachings and governance structures: “our systems are designed to promote more life”. At this point in the book (page 442), I sat bolt upright for the first time. Here is the distinction. This is what we strive to do in Transition, and in so many other movements trying to sort this out by applying holistic thinking to problems caused by siloed institutions and linear thinking. We are all striving to create communities that create more life, rather than destroy it.
What I wish is that this was where Klein had started This Changes Everything. I would have so loved her to apply her passion, her visionary writing, her unrivalled power as a writer, to what is breaking through rather than what is breaking down (to borrow an expression from Positive News). If it’s a book written for people who don’t read books about climate change it needs a different approach, one I could only find in the last couple of chapters. In the Guardian Live interview she says:
“A lot of what we call apathy is just people not knowing how to deal with the overwhelming emotions. So you just push it away”.
My sense is that the relentless presenting of grim information, morally-bankrupt politicians and oil company executives, deranged geoengineering scientists, corrupt governance systems are something most people, on some level, already know about, as she suggests above. But as she says, people don’t know how to deal with it. This Changes Everything is heavy on numbing information, and sparse on suggestions about how to deal with it. George Marshall of COIN, in a blog sharing his thoughts on Klein’s book, wrote:
“Crucially – and where Klein’s book is surprisingly disengaged with the evidence base – we also need to have a plan for building the widespread public support necessary for getting there in the first place”.
I wondered if a better approach, and one that might have taken less of a toll on Klein personally, would have been to write a smaller, more easily-digestable book, built around the last two chapters. It would have been powerful, seminal, rousing, inspirational. As it is, I don’t know how many people would have made it that far into its abundance of pages. Klein is too valuable to this movement, and as a reader I got a clear sense in places of how much this book took out of her. It needn’t have. Less can be more.
Her comparisons at the end of the book between the battle to save the climate and the campaign to end slavery are very powerful. Abolition is the closest thing she can find historically to change on a huge scale that happened in a short time frame. It’s inspirational stuff. Her argument that climate change is the moment to push for everything that progressive movements have worked towards for hundreds of years is a persuasive one, and it was refreshing to see Owen Jones, one of few emergent voices on the Left but who has spoken little about climate change, chairing her Guardian Live event. Her argument that climate justice, social justice and ecological justice are the same thing, is timely and urgently needed. My only fear is how many people will make it that far.
My favourite bit came near the end of the book, and has powerful implications for Transition. It’s an important point, so I will quote it in full:
“Though these movements (that led to the end of slavery) all contained economic arguments as part of building their case for justice, they did not win by putting a monetary value on granting equal rights and freedoms. They won by asserting that those rights and freedoms were too valuable to be measured and were inherent to each of us. Similarly, there are plenty of solid economic arguments for moving beyond fossil fuels, as more and more patient investors are realising. And that’s worth pointing out. But we will not win the battle for a stable climate by trying to beat the bean counters at their own game – arguing, for instance, that it is more cost-effective to invest in emission reduction now than disaster response later. We will win by asserting that such calculations are morally monstrous, since they imply that there is an acceptable price for allowing entire countries to disappear, for leaving untold millions to die on parched land, for depriving today’s children of their right to live in a world teeming with the wonders and beauties of creation”.
It is an important reminder as we promote and discuss Transition, that the economic case, the REconomy side, is vital, but by also arguing that a low carbon future will meet our needs better, and that living in “a world teeming with the wonders and beauties of creation” resonates with everyone. It needs to become a self-fulfilling prophecy, in a good way. Although brilliant, insightful, powerful, timely and undoubtedly vitally-needed, This Changes Everything could have articulated that world far better, as an invitation, as a painting of what must inevitably define our future. George Marshall’s latest book, as captured in the talk he gave to launch it, offers a number of other, sometimes counter-intuitive, approaches to engage more widely around this issue.
I’ll leave the last word to the Beautiful Solutions section of the This Changes Everything website, which puts what feels missing from the book better than I have been able to above:
“Resistance is essential, but it’s not enough. As we fight the injustice around us, we also have to imagine — and create — the world we want. We have to build real alternatives in the here and now — alternatives that are not only living proof that things can be done differently, but that actively challenge, and eventually supplant, the power of the status quo”.
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6 Nov 2014
Our theme this month has been ‘Rethinking Real Estate’. It began with an editorial piece, Why I’m Proud to be a SWIMBY, which framed the month. It introduced a new term, SWIMBY (as in “Something Wonderful In My Back Yard”, as opposed to NIMBY), and outlined a ‘SWIMBY Manifesto’. It built on John Thackara’s question “is it beyond our creativity to provide our fellow human beings with shelter and sustenance without covering more of the world in concrete?”.
One of the case studies of a different approach was of Lilac Co-housing in Leeds, which is modelling a different ownership model, strawbale houses, and really offering a rethink of more conventional approaches. We talked to Paul Chatterton from Lilac who told us more. We talked to Tony Greenham of New Economics Foundation about housing bubbles: how they are created and the risk they present.
We called in to a formerly empty office block in Exeter which has been converted into the UK’s first urban mushroom farm by GroCycle, and speculated on the potential for urban agriculture in such settings. The question of urban agriculture was also explored in an interview with possibly the world’s leading authorities on the subject, Andre Viljoen and Katrin Bohn, authors of Second Nature Urban Agriculture. The interview explored both the challenges and opportunities of urban agriculture.
We also looked at the reality for communities in trying to influence the planning/development process. Two Transition initiatives shared their experience of trying to engage with planning in their community and bring a Transition perspective to it, Transition Market Harborough and Transition Chepstow. Amy Burnett shared her Transition Guide to Neighbourhood Planning, an indispensible guide to how to engage with and influence the Neighbourhood Planning process. Angus Hardie from the Scottish Community Alliance told us about the forthcoming Community Empowerment Bill in Scotland, including its rather exciting Absolute Right to Buy (a kind of Community Compulsory Purchase Order).
We heard the story of Plan B for Hay, where a community, appalled by a proposal for a new supermarket in their town, came up with an alternative scenario which ended up changing what happened on the site. We dropped into the consultation happening around the Atmos Totnes project to hear, in a podcast, what good consultation looks like (and sounds like).
Site editor Rob Hopkins has been on the road a fair bit during the month too. He told us about his trip to Paris to launch the French edition of The Power of Just Doing Stuff, to St Andrews for the first Transition Roadshow there (jointly with Mike Thomas), to the New Forest to see their ‘Live and Unleashed’ exhibition, and lastly two days in Bologna helping to shift Transition up a gear there. Transition Network’s International Co-ordinator Ben Brangwyn has also been travelling, and he wrote up his experiences at the German National (Un)Konferenz which sounded wonderful. .
Finally, not really anything to do with our theme, but Fiona Ward asked Is gender an issue in Transition?. And Rob had a rant about people who say “at the end of the day”. And that’s it for October. November is going to be a kind of “anything goes”, theme-free month, to allow us to catch up with ourselves a bit after a month’s mad dashing around. We hope you enjoyed our theme this month.
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6 Nov 2014
One of my highlights at the recent Transition Roadshow at the University of St Andrews in Scotland was a workshop led by Angus Hardie, Director of the Scottish Community Alliance. He talked about the forthcoming Community Empowerment Bill. “I like the sound of that” I thought. The workshop proved fascinating, as did some of the powers under consideration. The following week, by email, we went into it in a bit more depth, and Angus was able to tell me more about the Bill, and what it could mean for Scottish communities.
What is the current status of the Bill, and where did it come from? What has motivated it?
The Bill is currently in Stage 1 of the legislative process. A committee of the Scottish Parliament – Local Government and Regeneration Committee – is scrutinising the Bill and taking evidence, both written and oral, from a range of stakeholder groups. Stage 2 and 3 follow before it becomes law which is expected to happen early summer 2015.
In terms of what has motivated the Bill there are perhaps two answers to this. On the one hand it can be seen as just another milestone on a journey which Scottish Government started in 2009 with the publication of the Community Empowerment Action Plan – which was significant not for what it contained by way of action (wasn’t much) but because it was the first government strategy to mention community empowerment specifically. The other answer is that the Bill should be viewed as a central strand of the Government’s approach to public service reform. The Christie Commission report made it clear that radical reform was required and that communities needed to be at the heart of the design and delivery process. Austerity measure have just reduced the wiggle room for the public services to argue for the status quo.
The Minister responsible for the Bill has been very positive about its potential throughout the consultation period, frequently stating that he expects the Bill to be the single most significant transfer of power since Devolution.
What are the key new powers that it gives communities?
The headline new powers are
- the extension of the Community Right to Buy to all of Scotland – previously this had been restricted under the Land Reform legislation to rural communities with a population less than 10,000
- a new right to request the transfer of a public asset into community ownership, management or use with a presumption that such requests will be granted unless there is good cause to refuse it
- An Absolute Right to Buy (without the sellers consent) where an asset is vacant and derelict and causing blight on the local area
- A right to request to participate in a process to improve the outcome of a public service
The view is that the devil will be in the detail of the regulations that accompany the legislation. Also, in terms of ensuring that all communities are able to take advantage of these new rights, there is a serious question of what resources will be available for capacity building and support.
What new powers do communities have in relation to planning? Do these genuinely give communities additional say in shaping planning?
The Bill does not provide new direct powers in relation to planning. References in the Bill to planning are in relation to Community Planning which in itself is a bit of a misnomer. Community Planning refers to the better integration of efforts by public service providers through the mechanism of a Community Planning Partnership. The Bill has a provision within it to make it a legal requirement to formalise the structure of the CPP.
One of the key powers is the Community Right to Buy Land, which includes a Community Compulsory Purchase power. How binding is this? What are the circumstances in which it can be used? Can a community group now compulsorily purchase any piece of land if their case is strong enough?
This refers to the Absolute Right to Buy Land which has been determined as land or buildings that have become vacant and derelict ( and considered to be causing a degree of local blight). Within the written evidence submitted during Stage 1, this was one of the more contentious areas with stakeholders concerned about the lack of detail laid out in the Bill. It is not yet clear under what circumstances this power can be invoked or what will be defined as vacant and derelict. The regulations that sit under the Bill are going to be crucial in either strengthening or weakening the impact of the Bill.
What additional power does the Bill give to communities in relation to allotments?
The main impact of the Bill on allotments is that it has been used as an opportunity to modernise the existing legislation from 1892 and 1922. New responsibilities have been created for local authorities in terms of the how they manage waiting lists but there is no requirement to acquire new land for release as allotments and therefore there is concern that, in its current form it will not generate any meaningful change.
The Independence Referendum in Scotland has reportedly done a huge amount to engage people in revitalising democracy across the country. This Bill appears to reflect that spirit. What else is emerging, or close to being approved, that would add other useful new powers to this Bill? Do you feel Scotland is genuinely moving to give more meaningful powers to communities?
Prior to the referendum, the turnout at local and national elections had been consistently low and there was widespread concern that the electorate had switched off from mainstream politics. The phenomenon of widespread self-organising groups around the independence debate – mainly around the Yes side – such as Women for Independence, Radical Independence Convention, Muslims for Independence, National Collective etc was anticipated by no one and the political parties were to a large extent side lined by it.
It would be wrong to view this Bill as being connected to any of that democratic activity. It has been argued that because of the highly centralised system of local democracy that Scotland has – just 32 local authorities – this focus on community empowerment and a more participative form of democracy is actually little more than a compensatory measure for the complete lack of effective lack of representative democracy. That said there are other processes such land reform which has created a thriving movement of community land owners and the development of community owned energy that have contributed momentum to this bottom up process.
The Community Empowerment Bill needs to be seen as part of a wider portfolio of measures designed to invest local people with more resource and opportunities to have greater control over their communities. A new Land Reform Bill is expected before the end of the current Parliament which will be based on the recommendations of the Land Reform Review Group.
As someone who works for the Scottish Communities Alliance, what additional powers would you like to see in subsequent legislation?
The Smith Commission has been give the job of working out what new powers should come to Scotland. If the management of Scotland’s Crown Estate was devolved to the Scottish Parliament along with the powers that currently sit with DECC around the subsidy regime and the management of the energy distribution, this would open up a whole new range of development opportunities over and above what the CEB might propose.
You may not have an answer for this, but why don’t we have anything like this south of the border?
Who knows? Could be any one of a number of factors, such as the London-centricity of English politics, or that we have more panda bears than Tory MPs, or that we had the highland clearances for which there is residual and enduring guilt? But remember the grass is always greener…..
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1 Nov 2014
I’m just back from two days in and around the beautiful city of Bologna in Italy, participating in a series of events that felt like they generated some real traction around Transition. Italy finds itself at an interesting moment, a fork in the road. Its government is proposing a new bill to open the country up to fracking, to offshore oil and gas extraction, arguing that this is what will enable the nation’s dreadful economic situation to revive. There is much opposition to this, so part of my hope for the trip was to be able to set out an alternative path, to show what Transition can offer to these discussions.
Given that Italy has no growth, and that situation is worsening, perhaps rather than opening the country up for exploitation by fracking companies and oil executives, could it be that it instead consciously becomes the world’s first post growth economy? It is arguably better suited to do that than many other European countries, with a great solar energy resource, and is already generating a lot of renewable energy. Its local food culture is possibly more intact than in most other European countries. It could model the future that we will inevitably have to move to.
But Italy, as everyone reminded me everywhere I went, “is very complicated”. Its political system is a bewildering mess, with coalition governments that change with alarming regularity, with deeply entrenched political parties happy to do anything to undermine each other, and a sense that, as Cristiano Bottone of Transition Italy told me, “whatever you want to do as a Transition group, somewhere there is a law against it”.
So people’s common experience is that making change happen is very difficult, and that the odds, and the system, are stacked against it. Yet the spread of Transition across Italy, and the skilful way they have been building connections with people in many of the places where some of those obstacles can be removed, is a real indicator that perhaps there is another way to make things happen.
That was the background to my trip to Bologna, to try and inspire and engage people in some of the key institutions that could help to really accelerate things in Bologna, which is possibly the most progressive city in Italy, and the most likely place where such an approach might take root.
Having arrived by train, I started on Tuesday morning at the Sala Centro Fiori in the city with a meeting for students and teachers from 5 different schools from in and around Bologna. Some were students of agriculture, but also of a range of other subjects. There were around 300 of them, and it proved to be a fascinating session.
I spoke particularly about Transition and food, and what a new food culture might look like. They were all very engaged, asked some great questions, and gave the idea of growing mushrooms on spent coffee grounds a round of applause! (I imagine Bologna generates a lot more coffee grounds than Exeter, where the example I used came from …). Here’s a video of that talk:
After the talk, lots of students gathered round wanting to know how they could start doing Transition in their school, now. Teachers talked about the things that were already happening, and how they loved the idea of drawing it all together into the idea of a Transition School. I was really touched by the level of enthusiasm among the young people there, very inspiring.
Then with Cristiano of Transition Italy, my wonderful translator Deborah and Glauco, our driver from San Lazzaro Citta’ di Transizione, we headed to the fabled Monteveglio, the birthplace of Transition in Italy. A beautiful small town on the edge of a national park, my first impression was how fresh and delicious the air smelt there.
After a delicious lunch containing a delicious array of local food, and my first experience of seeing actual truffles harvested that morning from the forest, we headed to Sala Consorzio Vini, a beautiful building on the edge of town, for an informal meeting with lots of Italian Mayors and local authority officials who are, at different levels, working to integrate Transition into their work. At that meeting they all agreed to meet again and stay in touch regularly, an important step up in their working together. Then we shifted into interview mode, doing a long interview with RAI TV (Italy’s BBC) for a documentary they will be doing about Transition, as well as with Italia Che Cambia (“Italy that changes”).
The last part of the day was, having headed back into Bologna, a Transition gathering of people doing Transition in and around the city. It was a celebratory party, with a delicious potluck meal, great wine and local beer, meeting some wonderful people. It also included some improvised Transition-themed theatre, music and other forms of collective silliness which were very entertaining. By about 10, having woken up at 5 that morning having not slept well on the sleeper train, the eyelids started to droop, and it was off back to the bed and breakfast I was staying in.
It was an amazing room to wake up in. Right at the top of a tall house, it looked out across the city, across the rooftops, the churches, and the towers for which the city is famous. On a beautiful clear morning it was quite a sight. Our first event of the day was at the Sala Farnese, Bologna’s City Hall, an incredible building. I love old buildings, and it was quite something.
You enter up a set of wide stairs with odd stone ridges across each step which, it was explained to me, was because it was designed in medieval times so people could ride their horses up and down the stairs. Amazing painted ceilings, ancient frescos. The event was called ‘Verso una societa low carbon’ and was held in a beautiful room with frescos and old paintings and a very high ceiling.
It was introduced by the Mayor of Bologna Virginio Merola, here is his talk:
Then there were some speakers from the University of Bologna who also helped to set the context: Dario Braga, Patrizia Brigidi and Alessandra Bonoli. Here is Dario Braga:
Cristiano gave an introduction and then I spoke for about 40 minutes followed by some great questions and answers. Here is the film of that talk:
There was a great buzz in the room, felt like people were very inspired and enthused. Met lots of people afterwards, and then once the rest of it had drawn to a close, headed off with various Transition Italy folks for pizza in Bologna’s organic and local restaurant, very fine indeed I must say.
The afternoon’s event was at the University of Bologna, the world’s oldest university. They have recently started an ‘Alma Low Carbon’ initiative, an “integrated research team” bringing together different departments for, as they put it, “the exchange and integration of expertise of our University in the fields of the reduction of CO2 emissions and climate-changing gases”.
My talk focused on “what a Transition University might look like?” I reflected on the university I went to, and how its campus, where were studying sustainability, featured only grass and concrete and didn’t model in any way what we were learning about. What would it look like, I asked, if a university was a showcase, embedding at all levels, Transition approaches?
It would teach differently, engage the community differently, use its procurement differently, generate its own energy, and so on. Some great questions and answers followed. Once it was all over, we headed off out into the early evening air, past a statue in a corridor at the University that looked just like Billy Connolly, and then to start the long journey home.
I’ll leave the last reflection to this quote from a blog posted by Italia Che Cambia on their reflections on the trip:
How to sum up this experience? A growing network of relations, interest in Transition being expressed by high-level institutions, the idea warmly welcomed by university students and high-schoolers … all these features confirm the effectiveness of the process so far, and set the scene for scaling up so that we may see the work of so many “agents of change” in Italy evolve into a coherent system. Having said that, what we are left with today is the heartening and envigorating feeling of having found in Rob Hopkins an optimistic, friendly and humble person whose visit made felt, beyond the importance of all the research and projects showcased, the true essence of Transition.
My thanks to everyone who came, who organised it, to Deborah the Transition Translator, to Glauco for driving, to Cristiano for all his organising work, to my host, to all the wonderful Transition folks I met for all the great work they are doing, to the University for the invitation.
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Although there are occasional sparks, it feels to me that this approach of speaking directly to those values that will resonate across the political spectrum is somewhat lacking (at least, until the end of the book, as we shall see). She fails, it seems to me, to consider the impact on the reader of chapter after chapter of grim events, people, news and statistics. This is a surprise, given that in her brilliant Guardian Live interview she recently said, of Transition:
Her comparisons at the end of the book between the battle to save the climate and the campaign to end slavery are very powerful. Abolition is the closest thing she can find historically to change on a huge scale that happened in a short time frame. It’s inspirational stuff. Her argument that climate change is the moment to push for everything that progressive movements have worked towards for hundreds of years is a persuasive one, and it was refreshing to see Owen Jones, one of few emergent voices on the Left but who has spoken little about climate change, chairing her Guardian Live event. Her argument that climate justice, social justice and ecological justice are the same thing, is timely and urgently needed. My only fear is how many people will make it that far. 
