What is Transition?

If I were given just one word to describe Transition, what would it be?

Relocalization.

Relocalization is the antithesis of globalization, which means it is the sine qua non of democracy. It is an essential precondition for democracy. It is also a deliberately buoyant response to the tripartite challenge that is peak oil / climate change / financial collapse. Relocalizers say "hey, more of the same probably won't work. Let's try something different. Let's disengage from this global clusterf@#k and chart our own course." Thanks to James Howard Kuntsler, by the way, for that wonderfully descriptive word. I tried hard to think of another, equally eloquent descriptor -- and failed.

If I were given two words to describe Transition, what would the second one be?

Resilience.

Resilience builds on relocalization. It qualifies it. It says that simply getting back to here isn't quite enough. It acknowledges directly that this isn't going to be a Sunday walk in the park. This Transition business is serious. Just as in Maslow's hierarchy of needs self-actualization comes after physiological and safety needs like food, water, shelter, security, in Transition we can't expect to maintain or improve our quality of life if we don't secure those basic needs that are under direct and concerted assault by peak oil, climate change, and slow-motion financial collapse. We know it must be possible to build resilience to these threats because these threats have faces -- ours. Peak oil is a fundamentally human phenomenon because (though the amount of oil is determined by geology) we have a choice in how we respond to it. There's nothing inherent in the laws of nature that humankind bury its head in the sand upon being confronted with the entirely prosaic fact that a non-renewable resource will eventually be exhausted. We could acknowledge it as a fact and then move on. Climate change is a fundamentally human phenomenon because the present bout of it is a direct and completely predictable result of evaporating billions of tons of ancient carbon into the atmosphere in what amounts to the blink of an eye. We've known for well over a hundred years that carbon dioxide (CO₂) is a greenhouse gas. And financial collapse? Despite mainstream economists' protestations to the contrary, economics as a science is a far cry from, say, geology, physics or chemistry. It has much more in common with sociology or political science than anything. This means it is a fundamentally human problem and, thus, amenable to human intervention. Screw the invisible hand.

Finally, if I had a third word with which to describe Transition? What would it be? This is the easiest:

Restoration.

Relocalization and resilience are necessary but not, as they say, sufficient conditions for saving our buts from the many-horned dilemma that is today's world. The final, and ultimately most necessary condition, is restoration. Even though I referred to climate change as an inherently human phenomenon, there will come a point, if it hasn't already, that the train set in motion by human hands will stop responding to those hands and start listening to higher-order beings: gravity, for example. And thermodynamics. Try getting into an argument, with thermodynamics, over who should be conducting the train: we'll see who wins.

At the risk of sounding terribly cheesy, we need to restore our connection with our planet, with the Earth. Against all reason, we've come to believe that we live outside of nature. Anyone paying attention can see the daily examples to the contrary, supplied by our apparently contrarian universe. We were able to believe, for a short while, in our invincibility, thanks to the discovery of seemingly endless free energy in the form of coal, oil, and natural gas. That was a blessing for some and a curse for most. Now we've got to deal with the consequences. We need to restore our planet's damaged life-support systems.

It is my belief that, doing so, we will find new purpose and new fulfilment. I believe there is no other way. This is what Transition means to me.

Oh, by the way -- there are a few other 'R'-words out there that I might use, but I'll leave them to your imaginations ;-)

City of Trees

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This is the first in a new series I'm calling Lancaster 2030. In it, we'll be taking a look back on Lancaster from a vantage point 20 years in the future. What will Lancaster be like? How did it get to be this way (in 2030)? It's impossible to know for sure, but one thing is certain: "you've got to be very careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there." Let's figure out where we're going, then aim to get there.

Lancaster City (PA) -- Hard to believe, but not even 20 years ago, Queen Street was twice as wide -- twice as much asphalt! I almost didn't believe it myself, but the old satellite photos are not to be denied.

Now, as we all know, Queen Street is dominated by the verdant and beautiful -- and invaluable -- Queen Forest Corridor, which itself is part of the much larger Lancaster Urban Forest Reserve. Well, that's what the planners call it, anyway. To the rest of us, who've grown up with it, tended it, walked in it, ate from it, heated our homes from it and studied in it, it's just another part of our home, our beloved Lancaster.

This is the first in a series of retrospectives on the evolution of Lancaster since the Great Transition began nearly 20 years ago. In this inaugural report, we'll look at what many consider to be the foundation of Lancaster's Renaissance -- our very own Queen's Forest.

Some history
In the Spring of 2012, the second oil shock in four years hit hard. While, in 2008, the price of oil ran up to US$147 per barrel, the 2012 price was much more muted -- not even US$130. However, with the US economy still limping through a half-hearted -- and much disputed -- recovery from the "Great Recession," and many nations around the world experiencing cascading economic crises (what commentators today call "the death throes of the infinite growth paradigm"), even a muted oil shock was a big enough straw to finally break the camel's back. Economic activity came to a screeching halt nearly everywhere. Many were declaring it a second Great Depression.

Paradoxically, this moment proved a liberating one for many older American cities, particularly Lancaster, with its access to high-quality farmland, fresh water, and relative immunity (unlike the old coastal cities of New York, Miami and, to a lesser extent, Philadelphia) from sea-level rise (though we have had our share of coastal refugees). Although the price of gasoline had dropped back below US$2, it turned out that most couldn't afford the gas at any price (and with hardly anyone buying gas, there was simply no incentive to invest in new oil infrastructure, exacerbating the problem). We were a city unemployed, and if what little money available wasn't going to food, it was going to housing and other necessities.

The boom in home gardening, which began after the 2008 financial collapse, really picked up in 2012, til it seemed like nearly everyone was growing food in any sunlit corner of the Earth they could find. Community gardens, such as at County Park and some School District property, really began to take off, particularly among renters.

Late in 2012, Mayor Gray took a decisive step when he imposed a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions. Though decried by the banks, this action was very popular and has been credited with averting  a new homeless crisis and preserving the burgeoning spirit of solidarity among the citizens of Lancaster.

Studies from that time show that many had less leisure time than before, yet since they were now working from home, they were reporting higher levels of satisfaction.

A brutal winter
The winter of 2012-'13 proved a devastating one. Though 2012 was, worldwide, the hottest year (yet) on record, one of the counter-intuitive effects of global climate change was that winter temperatures could be as extreme as summer temperatures. In the Northeast, the immediate cause was the disruption of Arctic weather patterns which resulted in occasional spikes of frigid Arctic air lashing southwards, coating the land in ice and snow for months on end. Compounding this was that many could no longer afford the natural gas or oil they needed to warm their homes. It was a crisis. Riots very nearly broke out at one point when, during one very cold morning after an even colder night, over a dozen sick and elderly people were found dead in their homes. The cause? Exposure.

The people were demanding action, but what could anyone do? It later came out that city staff, along with several non-profits worked feverishly throughout the winter months on a plan to save the city. "Those were some cold meetings," said one staffer, in an interview a decade later. "Even the city couldn't afford much heat and, besides, we all felt strongly we had to share the pain with the vast majority of Lancastrians, or live as hypocrites."

The Queen's Forest Working Group, or simply the Group, as they came to be known, had realized something many had yet come to accept: times had changed, and the traffic that was would never return. The city simply had too many miles of useless roadways. With most people now walking or bicycling, the streets were now eerily quiet -- and eerily empty. Recognizing the changed shape of the world, the Group hatched an ambitious plan: they would tear up half the city's roads.

And they'd begin with Queen Street.

Though brutal, the Winter of '12-'13 was mercifully short, with Spring coming a full two weeks early. This was the Group's cue. They quickly unleashed over three thousand residents in a massive public works project -- tearing up twenty feet of road down the entire length of Queen Street, from just north of the bridge over the Conestoga to the train station in the north. Many workers were paid in food, which the city and county had begun to accept in lieu of the old US dollars for property taxes. Many more, though, joined in for the sheer joy of tearing up the macadam, and the satisfaction of doing something with their hands for the greater good. The city then used a substantial portion of its ration of diesel fuel to haul in nearly 30,000 cubic yards of top soil, compost and mulch. And then they began to plant trees.

A forest born and a city reborn
Half-planned, half-wild, Queen's Forest became an icon for a city reborn. The plan was for the forest, stewarded by a corps of trained permaculturists, to provide food, fuel, stormwater management, cool air in the increasingly hot summers, wildlife habitat and a salve for a city in deep need of healing.

In just a few years' time, the planners and foresters expected the new Queen's Forest (the core of a planned city-wide system) to provide a substantial portion of the city's heating needs through a combination of a new centralized boiler system and the production of synthetic gas, or syngas, from sustainably charring biomass from the forest. The syngas would be a nearly 1:1 replacement for the now hard-to-get natural gas.

The next few years were tough, but the spirit of self-help and community action cultivated in those early days proved resilient.

Amazing how much a simple idea can change things, isn't it?

Small is Sustainable

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I had this epiphany while on a walk a few weeks ago, but have been too busy till now to write it down. It is dovetailing with my renewed appreciation for planning, which is, by nature, an incremental art. I was pondering the ever-unfolding economic collapse, and arrived at the conclusion that having limited resources might actually increase the odds of making "sustainable"^* decisions.
This is a point easiest to explain by counter-example (if "small is sustainable", then is large unsustainable?). Consider the national highway system. It took (and is taking) the federal government hundreds of billions of dollars to build and maintain that monstrosity. Only a large, centralized body with access to vast resources (and apparently untapped reserves of hubris) could have conceived of something like that, let alone have built it. And the building of it is one of the many drivers that has set our nation, literally, on the road to ruin.

^*I am uninterested, at this time, in defining the word "sustainable."

So: small is sustainable. With limited resources, one is forced to be creative, resourceful... small. If a mistake is made, terrifying amounts of wealth are not extinguished thereby; it remains a mistake, rather than a catastrophe: one is free to learn and try again. If one succeeds, then others, also of limited means, may learn of that good practice, adapt it to their particular circumstances, and try it themselves. Their success -- or failure -- contributes to the breadth and depth of our collective well of wisdom.

Many small groups experimenting is much better than one centralized entity pooling resources from a large area and rolling the dice. I would not suggest it is never advisable to pool resources, but I am asserting that this ought to be the exception rather than the rule. And just because I'm a hopeless romantic who loves lost causes, here's one exception: universal, single-payer healthcare. This would support small solutions by granting working people and entrepreneurs the freedom to try and fail and move on if and when they choose; there would no longer be a need to stay in a job out of fear of losing all-important health coverage. This enables small enterprise in another way: it lifts the burden of one of the heaviest costs of business, which is caring for employees' health. This is but one example of risk management which, in general, is a sector that benefits from the pooling together of large groups.

Smallness is resilient. The failure of one does not precipitate the failure of another; to the contrary, it may stimulate their improvement by the example of what not to do. Further, the failed, having committed relatively few resources, and presumably surrounded by non-failures, may recover with less delay. Smallness also, by nature, is less interdependent (and more, but not completely, independent). Smallness can't draw on limitless territories for natural and human capital: it must make do with what is close at hand. This contributes to the diversity of experimental solution-finding, but also limits the small's vulnerability to drawn-out resource chains. Consider our situation today, when, by a hilariously perverse (perversely hilarious?) turn of events, the Pentagon finds itself reliant on Chinese rare-earths for key components to its "advanced" weapons systems. Not so "advanced" when they rely on the goodwill of a creditor and powerful economic competitor, eh? Smallness doesn't have that problem... and not least because it probably wouldn't be in the habit of dropping "smart" bombs on some faraway desert to secure the oil it doesn't need.

So, smallness is resilient. But what about the case of systemic failure? This would most likely be the result of neglecting the advice above and tending too far in the direction of centralization of resources and power. As this seems to be where we're trending, however, the question may be worth essaying an answer: in the case of systemic failure, save what's worth saving, discard what's not, and start again. It wouldn't be the first time.