recent reading from scientific american points to the co2 emission for three foodstuffs oer gramme
vegetables 3013
chicken 5520
and beef a whopping 15,692
Tuesday, 28 April 2009
Monday, 27 April 2009
response to the paper - thanks M!
This just in on email - I think that the first issue is absolutely fascinating - challenging and set off a whole rack of thoughts so many thanks M.
Physical mobility has created a tendency for us to group around similarities as opposed to contrasting characteristics. We choose to be safe with people we can predict rather than be challenged by diversity in skills and thought of those who are very different from ourselves. With mobility now seriously threatened we are unlikely to be able to group physically into clusters made up of people we are comfortable with and place will return to being a more dominant influence on who we group with. Although electronic based communications will widen opportunity for interaction in the new world, we will be forced to interact with a greater diversity within place based communities....might be more productive. I am thinking now of vast number of conferences we attend and contribute to where we are preaching to the converted and despite the huge expended resources there is little productive outcome....there are many other examples.
How right you are about education, there is so much behind what you say. The one thing that dominates today is the collective (state education) forced system that removes the rich diversity of individualistic approach to teaching, justified on the basis that we trust no-one to get it right. When you remove discretion you remove ownership and responsibility. Regurgitated fact and a restricted teaching system is bound to be a lifeless experience for our young people.
Action that plans for the future is constrained by the short term political cycle.
At what scale should we be operating? Do we need state regulation because a regulatory framework will be the only thing to stimulate investment into new technologies? Can communities operate true sustainability without national or international influence? For individuals should we not place a different set of values to the parallel development of mind and body for everyone, assuming that we can no longer rely on total mechanisation and that harnessing human effort must become a norm!
Physical mobility has created a tendency for us to group around similarities as opposed to contrasting characteristics. We choose to be safe with people we can predict rather than be challenged by diversity in skills and thought of those who are very different from ourselves. With mobility now seriously threatened we are unlikely to be able to group physically into clusters made up of people we are comfortable with and place will return to being a more dominant influence on who we group with. Although electronic based communications will widen opportunity for interaction in the new world, we will be forced to interact with a greater diversity within place based communities....might be more productive. I am thinking now of vast number of conferences we attend and contribute to where we are preaching to the converted and despite the huge expended resources there is little productive outcome....there are many other examples.
How right you are about education, there is so much behind what you say. The one thing that dominates today is the collective (state education) forced system that removes the rich diversity of individualistic approach to teaching, justified on the basis that we trust no-one to get it right. When you remove discretion you remove ownership and responsibility. Regurgitated fact and a restricted teaching system is bound to be a lifeless experience for our young people.
Action that plans for the future is constrained by the short term political cycle.
At what scale should we be operating? Do we need state regulation because a regulatory framework will be the only thing to stimulate investment into new technologies? Can communities operate true sustainability without national or international influence? For individuals should we not place a different set of values to the parallel development of mind and body for everyone, assuming that we can no longer rely on total mechanisation and that harnessing human effort must become a norm!
a short list of things incredible edible has achieved in 18 months
Got permission to replace prickly things which the council planted and put herb gardens and fruit bushes at the health centre
fish farm
orchard
Bees
Local food market and open days
Proper-ganda gardens where people can come and take a good look!
market boards - new future
internet hits - loads at the website for incred ed
SDC influence on idea for action - not top down but bottom up and the top opens all the doors for us to act
Land license - changed the policy legal frame so the community can request land for food growing from council and manage it on behalf of council
every egg matters - a massive egg and chicken push to get all eggs locally sourced
diploma in land management and horticulture
harvest festival
churches together using the land they own to grow food
increased sales in locality amongst shops
schools workingon planting schemes in their own land
residntial homw old folks home all the plants now are edible and bushes and trees so that the experience of going outdoors can be enhanced
train station - fully supportive of the project - herbs, huge planting going on for this season
media coverage - getting more and more interest as it develops - Japanese TV in a few weeks!
fish farm
orchard
Bees
Local food market and open days
Proper-ganda gardens where people can come and take a good look!
market boards - new future
internet hits - loads at the website for incred ed
SDC influence on idea for action - not top down but bottom up and the top opens all the doors for us to act
Land license - changed the policy legal frame so the community can request land for food growing from council and manage it on behalf of council
every egg matters - a massive egg and chicken push to get all eggs locally sourced
diploma in land management and horticulture
harvest festival
churches together using the land they own to grow food
increased sales in locality amongst shops
schools workingon planting schemes in their own land
residntial homw old folks home all the plants now are edible and bushes and trees so that the experience of going outdoors can be enhanced
train station - fully supportive of the project - herbs, huge planting going on for this season
media coverage - getting more and more interest as it develops - Japanese TV in a few weeks!
community renaissance paper
Community renaissance
Paul Clarke
St Mary’s University College, London
Contact paul.clarke@iqea.com
There is no middle path. Do we join together to build an economy that is sustainable? Or do we stay with our environmentally unsustainable economy until it declines? It is not a goal that can be compromised. One way or another, the choice will be made by our generation. But it will affect life on earth for all generations to come. Lester Brown, Eco-economy. 2002
This chapter explores the development of community, within which our idea of ‘school’ is currently located. When we think about the future relationship between the community and school, it seems to me that community is what will be developed, and what develops it will be learning. The chapter will suggest that it is only through thinking about community as a forum for development of interdependencies that we have any real possibility of making progress with the urgent agenda for a more sustainable form of life on the planet. If we are to enhance our capability to learn new ways of living which have a reduced footprint on the environment of the planet. I think we have to consider how we re-define our relationship with a dominant community based institution – the school. This takes us beyond our current idea of building schools for the future, into an exploration of renaissance of community for the future.
I suggest that the development of community is not to be defined as new buildings and priorities imposed through government reforms, nor as recycled ideas of the old model of school, but as a set of interdependencies which may be practiced face to face, or through the new opportunities open to us through technology. These interdependencies come in the form of individual engagement, through connection with ideas and shared interests, and through collective action in the pursuit of new freedoms. As Sen (1991) argues, ‘Greater freedom enhances the ability of people to help themselves and also to influence the world, and these matters are central to the process of development’ (p.18). As such, I am interested in a new economic model, or more particularly an eco-economy (Brown 2002) or what is also called eco-eco (Kelly 2009) where development of community is the practice of sustainable development.
In the chapter I will use ‘community’ as the term which captures a set of capabilities (Sen 1999) – one where we depend upon each other to generate understanding, engagement and participation and through which we can respond to social, environmental and economic collapse (Putnam 2000, Orr 1994, Soros 2008). I describe the concept of community as a network. It is an interdependent construct of human activity. Community functions as the manifestation of a set of capabilities within and between communities of connection, communities of place, communities of interest, and communities of action. Learning plays a significant part in framing our definitions of community and the capabilities that sustain communities, sometimes impeding, sometimes enabling and focusing the development of these capabilities. Historically the school is located at the interconnect of these capabilities. However, increasingly the school is a part player, the setting is always within the wider social context of the community and as such, learning takes its place (see figure 1).
Community is both boundaried and at the same time is boundless. We live our lives largely dependent on systems which have no respect for national boundaries such as the atmosphere, oceans, ocean life, biotic provinces and the Sun, without which nothing lives. All these natural structures demonstrate forms of community interdependence which function as flow, an entangled alliance. This illustrates sufficiently that community can exist as something visible and tangible and at the same time something abstract.
This forms the basis of much of my own work, exploring the practicalities of new forms of what I have come to call ‘local dependency’ (Clarke 2009) where example can be drawn from what happens in one location and can serve as a stimulus to develop new ideas and new activity in another. Since our world is increasingly connected through cultural, economic and technological mechanisms, and proportionally ever less physical, the meaning of 'local' is not geographical, at least not only geographical, it explores the ways in which flows of ideas combine as communities in the form of practices, theories, possibilities to be realized as forms of wealth as environmental capital (Clarke 2009), human capital, social capital, spiritual capital, manufactured capital and financial capital (Porrit 2009) – the flow is between people sharing and playing with these things both in real-time together, separately, and at times virtually in their own time.
Figure one: Capabilities of an interdependent community
Sen (1999) describes the qualities of collective action which widen the opportunity for individuals to generate forms of wealth as ‘capabilities.’ It is a combination of these capabilities in the form of dependencies of what I call connection, place and action that I wish to explore when we move forward in our consideration of the role and function of a relationship between community and new forms of learning.
A community of connection
Governments, regions, communities and individuals are beginning to recognise the scale of the environmental challenge that human beings face in this century as we have to make the move from an oil based industrialized economy to an ecologically focused post-oil economy (Steffen 2008). This transition is starting to happen and recent predictions suggest that it will have to have completed within 50 years regardless of whether we want it or not, as oil is rapidly running out and a looming prospect of energy shortage and blackouts gets ever closer .
Whilst the 20th century is now well behind us, we have not as yet, learned how to live, yet alone think in terms of actions and relationships, in the mindset we might need for life in the 21st. This should not be all that difficult, as the dominant ideas of the economic and political model from the 20th century have clearly just fallen apart around us in the last two decades and the lessons are there for all to see. These models have until now been looked upon as mutually exclusive, the failure of Soviet state socialism in the 1990’s, and now Western market driven capitalism have both defined in their own ways, the failed ideologies of national systems. However, as Hobsbawn (2009) argues, both are ‘bankrupt ideas’ when we contemplate our futures. We need a progressive model to transcend the old order and respond to the new situation in which we find ourselves.
One particular feature of both of these ‘bankrupt’ models, is the reliance upon institutions to perpetuate particular ideological viewpoints. Ivan Illich (1973) argued that modern societies across the industrialized world appear to create more and more institutions, and that the consequence of them is that we live our lives in ever more institutionalized ways. This makes it difficult for people to challenge the existing order of things, or to suggest and to have taken seriously the idea that there are alternative ways of living. 'This process undermines people - it diminishes their confidence in themselves, and in their capacity to solve problems... It kills convivial relationships. Finally it colonizes life like a parasite …that kills creativity' (Finger and Asún 2001: 10).
Institutions do other things too. They create experts. In Medical Nemesis (1975) the book began, 'The medical establishment has become a major threat to health' (ibid.: 11). In much of my work, I maintain a similar argument, that the educational establishment has become a major threat to education (Clarke 2008). The case against expert systems is that they produce a form of damage which outweighs the potential benefits they offer, because they obscure and collude with the political conditions that render society schooled but ill-educated, and they perpetuate the idea that people are unable to act for themselves. They diminish the power of individuals to learn and value their personal and social experience of learning themselves the means by which they might shape and improve their own community.
This problem of expert systems becomes particularly acute when there is a need to redefine the relationships that exist between school and community. Here, the institutional boundaries and structures can compromise the institutional potential to learn from the community, its default position being that the school educates the community and not the other way around. Despite plenty of examples that refute this claim, particularly coming from recent changes in communications technology (Leadbeater 2000), the underlying cultural message from schools remains the same, ‘we know, you don’t know, how to educate.’
It seems to me that as a result, community and school are stuck in a perpetual cycle of dependency of the worst possible kind. One where professionals and the schools in which they work tend to define the activity of learning as a commodity which they call education, 'whose production they monopolize, whose distribution they restrict, and whose price they raise beyond the purse of ordinary people and nowadays, all governments' (Lister in Illich 1976), and the community receives the product. Extending an earlier notion of schooling, it might be suggested therefore that people are conditioned to believe that the self-taught community is being discriminated against; that learning and the growth of cognitive capacity, require a process of consumption of services presented in a planned, a professional form (quoted by Gajardo 1994: 715 my insert of community) In this way, learning is a commodity rather than an activity, so any way in which a community might attempt to engage with a school is inhibited by its inability to present a form of knowledge to the school in a recognizable and therefore acceptable professional manner.
Just like cigarettes, institutions and institutional practices would appear to be addictive. The fact that school is perceived to be compulsory may be significant here – as institutions, schools generate habitual activities and rituals and these are difficult to quit once people get hooked on the idea that they are the only way to behave, or to solve existing problems. If as individuals and communities, we can develop the capabilities to distinguish between what we want and what we understand to be a requirement, we can use such capability to make proactive choices acting as agents rather than consumers of learning.
Having grown conditioned to schooling of a certain type (Orr 1994), the action of individuals, communities, regions and countries to overcome the challenges we face from economic and ecological meltdown demand the cleverest of inventions, the smartest of technologies, and the most politic and decorous of societies. The current landscape of challenges offers immense potential for people to work together in new ways to form new types of economic well-being which serve both personal and societal needs (Porritt 2009). By challenging the process of institutionalization, by questioning the established notions of expertise and experts, and by critiquing the idea of learning as a form of commodity, we should be able to move towards a way of living and working in our communities where collective wisdom is captured and focused with clarity and purpose and without the embedded issues of ownership and power getting in the way; where people have a clear sense of the purpose behind the initiatives which serve self and others and indeed the well-understood needs of the community as a whole. A transition in thinking about how to live in the 21st century that redefines wealth in the form of environmental capital (Clarke 2009), human capital, social capital, spiritual capital, cultural and creative capital, manufactured capital and financial capital needs mediation. The basic ideas need to be explored and discussed from which practical actions can flow.
A ‘community of connection’ that develops capabilities to appreciate and engage with alternative solutions, designs and opportunities and which values the very process of connecting meaningfully with others, helps us to think differently and enables us to respond to the eco-eco (Kelly 2009) demands of the 21 century. This model of community serves as a frame for thinking about the contributing factors which inform a dialogue for transforming the relationship between community and school.
A community of place
In a similar way to the failings of the macro system, the micro-level is not without its problems (Klein 2001). Whilst state-led reform of ‘communities’ continues to illustrate systemic failings through the alienation and disengagement of the majority of those this hoped-for reform is intended to assist, other, equally problematic issues arise when the alternatives being pursued are for self-sufficient purposes. As an idea, the notion of self-sufficient communities has done just as much harm than as good. It perpetuates the ‘otherness’ of those beyond one’s own clique, and it generates economic inequality just as efficiently as any macro market-led solution. The self-sufficiency argument extends now into our current school model. While defined primarily through school choice, it is just as much about exclusivity and self-sufficiency. Academies, Trust and Foundation schools are quite possibly the next failed extension of the industrialized, individualized cultural obsession with privacy and isolationist solutions to large-scale problems, they are the macro solution to mico challenge and they perpetuate the myth that a new building with a new name (Academy, Foundation) will redefine the relationship between it, as an institution, and the community in which it exists. ‘We don’t need you, we are self-sufficient, we generate our own solutions’ is as much a lie as that which argues that we can only make cultural, environmental and economic progress with government. The message is clear, there is no dissectable self, we depend on each other.
It is therefore a maturation towards some other form of interdependency, one which connects rather than dissects self from community and from wider networks, that we urgently need to develop.
So a community of place is particularly important as a way of making sense of the important role school plays within a social context. When one’s environment has a ‘sustained and lasting human value’ (O’Sullivan 1999) the result of the individualized and commodified version of globalization, rootlessness, transitoriness, and dispossession become more and not less transparent (ibid p245). The dependence by people on a community of place becomes in itself a value. Place is often cited as a significantly important feature of schools in locations of economic disadvantage, where, in the best examples, students are embedded into activity which help to develop capability in the forms of environmental capital, human capital, social capital, spiritual capital, creative and cultural capital, manufactured capital and financial capital. However, just as the community of place can be a physical reality it can also demonstrate capability in the form of a virtual reality. Take for example the degree of interest young people have in facebook, Bebo and other social networking sites.
Our capability to create and maintain a sense of place within a community – school relationship therefore explores both physical and virtual realities. To be successful it needs to generate capabilities which include a sense of identity, a need for love, care, protection, affection, understanding, participation, creativity, and friendship.
Community as action
A particular form of community capability is often found in and around schools in the form of active groups who pursue specific projects on behalf of the school such as community liaison, parental outreach, after-school and breakfast clubs all of which illustrate the commodity function of school. Whist they are interesting and in some cases quite powerful examples of ways in which relationships can be developed between school and community. They do not go far enough to illustrate the capability in which I am particularly interested because it seems to me that they maintain, rather than transform the possibility of greater levels of interdependence.
However, there are some interesting examples of community as action which are showing signs of significantly contributing to the redesign of existing systems.
In one example, an action community in the form of a local food production project approached a school to form a community interest company (CIC) which is joint owned between school and community trustees. The CIC applied for and won a significant lottery fund which is establishing a sustainable fish farm eco-business on the school site. The students from the school, working with a number of local businesses and regional agencies, are actively involved in all stages of design, commissioning, construction, maintenance and development of the business. There are new school courses being established in land management and eco energy, which will run within the school and the local college. Alongside people from the immediate vicinity of the town who are helping to support and provide guidance, there are students and lecturers from University departments from other countries who have experience of developing this type of farm with associated aquaponics and filtration systems.
Furthermore, to illustrate the idea of community as connection, place and action; the town has partnerships with other communities in Ghana and Tanzania in Africa who are involved in knowledge transfer, planning and development conversations as they too are undertaking similar projects in their localities.
Conclusion
This chapter has attempted to provide a stimulus for a different way of thinking about the complicated issue of school and community. Instead of suggesting more of the same, I have argued that we need to radically realign our concept to take full advantage of the types of capabilities we might need to encourage if we are to truly transform our education system to meet the changing demands of an eco-eco society.
I have suggested that the future of sustainable economy and community depends on the connections we choose, the place we define as local, and the life we subsequently decide to live in the form of deliberate action.
The implications of this type of reform are considerable. In conclusion, it is worth thinking about some of the challenges and posing some questions.
Capability building for communities – What would need to happen if these kind of changes were to be brought about in disenfranchised communities which are characterized by an absence of collective vision, aspiration or leadership? Who would take responsibility for the development of the ‘capabilities’ that would be necessary for the first steps of positive action? This could generate a new role for school – a model of learning as community capability building, where the school has as much responsibility for developing the wider context for learning (i.e. the community and the connected members within it) as it does for the process or activity of learning (teaching).
In the chapter I have briefly referred to the radical change in the perceptions of educators of themselves as experts. Any profession under fire (as teachers always seem to be) clings onto its ‘expert’ status as a last resort in the face of change. Unless the practical and attitudinal changes required to bring about this new vision for a sustainable learning ecology are acknowledged we may find ourselves locked into the increasingly desperate version of ‘sustainability training’ as another bolt on reform. An exploration of the capabilities that teachers may need to help them to contribute to community capability seems a practical way to proceed.
It seems that a deeper consideration of values may be useful in seeking to bring about such change. Whilst a great deal of the thrust of my argument centres around the impending disaster and possible response anticipated when the oil runs out, we may usefully engage people more fully in the debate through a broader consideration of the need for change. This discussion could include:
➢ The need for greater social cohesion
➢ The need for improved physical and mental well-being
➢ The need for greater personal agency and active citizenship
➢ The need for greater social justice and equality
➢ The need to address ‘crisis’ issues such as crime, poverty etc
I would also suggest that it is through deep consideration of the values that drive and shape our education system that change might be more widely justified or rationalized. When people think about re-visioning education they often ask ‘what kind of young adults do we want to see as a result of this process?’ – and those imaginings are shaped by a set of values. At the moment the vision is limited and largely defined by government, as is the tradition in education – primarily by the values associated with economic productiveness. Perhaps the question needs to shift to ‘what kind of community do we want our schools to build as they redefine their service to others?’
We urgently need the process of learning to be meaningfully integrated into the social, the community context, and for learning transactions (the process of education) to be more closely aligned with the transactions that are more widely necessary for the development of sustainable communities and societies.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all those colleagues who generously gave me feedback on this work, especially Tony Kelly, Jane Reed and Chris May.
Further rea ding and references
Birol, F. (2008) World Energy Outlook. International Energy Agency. Paris
Brown, L. (20002) Eco-economy. Building an economy for the earth. Washington. Earth policy institute.
Clarke, P. (2008) Education and Sustainability. professional development today. Vol 11 no 1.
Clarke, P. (2009) Sustainability and Improvement: a problem of and for education. Improving Schools. Vol 12 no 1, 11-17
Finger, M. And Asún, J. M. (2001) Adult Education at the Crossroads. Learning our way out, London: Zed Books.
Gajardo, M (1994) 'Ivan Illich' in Z. Morsy (ed.) Key Thinkers in Education Volume 2, Paris: UNESCO Publishing.
Guardian 16 April 2009. Nuclear plans ‘too slow to stop lights going out.’ P.27
Hern, M. (ed.) (1996) Deschooling Our Lives, Gabriola Island BC.: New Society Publishers.
Hobsbawm, E. (2009) Socialism has failed. Now capitalism is bankrupt. So what comes next? Guardian. 10 April 2009. P.33
Illich, Ivan (1975b) Medical Nemesis: The expropriation of health, London: Marian Boyars.
Illich, Ivan and Verne, E. (1976) Imprisoned in the global classroom, London: Writers and Readers Publishing Co-operative.
Kelly, A. (2009) Education futures and schooling theory: adapting Sen’s early work on Capability to choice and sustainability. Personal correspondence
Klein, N. (2001) No Logo, London: Flamingo.
Leadbeater, C. (2000) Living on Thin Air. The new economy, London: Penguin.
Monbiot, G. (2001) Captive State. The corporate takeover of Britain, London: Pan.
Orr, D. (1994) Earth in Mind. First Island Press. New York
O’Sullivan, E. (1999) Transformative learning: Educational vision for the 21st century. London. Zed books.
Porritt, J. (2009) Living within our means: avoiding the ultimate recession. Forum for the future. London
Putnam, R. D. (2000) Bowling Alone. The collapse and revival of American community, New York: Simon and Schuster.
Reimer, E. (1971) School is Dead. An essay on alternatives in education, Harmondsworth: Penguin. 176 pages. Highly readable analysis and positing of alternatives.
Sachs, W.(1992) The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power, London: Zed Books. Schwartz, D. (1997) Who Cares? Rediscovering Community, Boulder, CO: Westview.
Sen, A. (1999) Development as Freedom. Oxford. Oxford books
Smith, L. G. and Smith, J. K. (1994) Lives in Education, New York: St. Martin's Press.
Soros, G. (2008) The new paradigm for financial markets. New York. Public Affairs Books.
Steffen, A. http://www.worldchanging.com/ sourced November 11th 2008
van de Veer, J (2008) leaked email to executive board 22 January 2008 sourced for this chapter in Preparing for Peak Oil: Local Authorities and the Energy Crisis. (2008) Oil Depletion Analysis Centre. London.
Paul Clarke
St Mary’s University College, London
Contact paul.clarke@iqea.com
There is no middle path. Do we join together to build an economy that is sustainable? Or do we stay with our environmentally unsustainable economy until it declines? It is not a goal that can be compromised. One way or another, the choice will be made by our generation. But it will affect life on earth for all generations to come. Lester Brown, Eco-economy. 2002
This chapter explores the development of community, within which our idea of ‘school’ is currently located. When we think about the future relationship between the community and school, it seems to me that community is what will be developed, and what develops it will be learning. The chapter will suggest that it is only through thinking about community as a forum for development of interdependencies that we have any real possibility of making progress with the urgent agenda for a more sustainable form of life on the planet. If we are to enhance our capability to learn new ways of living which have a reduced footprint on the environment of the planet. I think we have to consider how we re-define our relationship with a dominant community based institution – the school. This takes us beyond our current idea of building schools for the future, into an exploration of renaissance of community for the future.
I suggest that the development of community is not to be defined as new buildings and priorities imposed through government reforms, nor as recycled ideas of the old model of school, but as a set of interdependencies which may be practiced face to face, or through the new opportunities open to us through technology. These interdependencies come in the form of individual engagement, through connection with ideas and shared interests, and through collective action in the pursuit of new freedoms. As Sen (1991) argues, ‘Greater freedom enhances the ability of people to help themselves and also to influence the world, and these matters are central to the process of development’ (p.18). As such, I am interested in a new economic model, or more particularly an eco-economy (Brown 2002) or what is also called eco-eco (Kelly 2009) where development of community is the practice of sustainable development.
In the chapter I will use ‘community’ as the term which captures a set of capabilities (Sen 1999) – one where we depend upon each other to generate understanding, engagement and participation and through which we can respond to social, environmental and economic collapse (Putnam 2000, Orr 1994, Soros 2008). I describe the concept of community as a network. It is an interdependent construct of human activity. Community functions as the manifestation of a set of capabilities within and between communities of connection, communities of place, communities of interest, and communities of action. Learning plays a significant part in framing our definitions of community and the capabilities that sustain communities, sometimes impeding, sometimes enabling and focusing the development of these capabilities. Historically the school is located at the interconnect of these capabilities. However, increasingly the school is a part player, the setting is always within the wider social context of the community and as such, learning takes its place (see figure 1).
Community is both boundaried and at the same time is boundless. We live our lives largely dependent on systems which have no respect for national boundaries such as the atmosphere, oceans, ocean life, biotic provinces and the Sun, without which nothing lives. All these natural structures demonstrate forms of community interdependence which function as flow, an entangled alliance. This illustrates sufficiently that community can exist as something visible and tangible and at the same time something abstract.
This forms the basis of much of my own work, exploring the practicalities of new forms of what I have come to call ‘local dependency’ (Clarke 2009) where example can be drawn from what happens in one location and can serve as a stimulus to develop new ideas and new activity in another. Since our world is increasingly connected through cultural, economic and technological mechanisms, and proportionally ever less physical, the meaning of 'local' is not geographical, at least not only geographical, it explores the ways in which flows of ideas combine as communities in the form of practices, theories, possibilities to be realized as forms of wealth as environmental capital (Clarke 2009), human capital, social capital, spiritual capital, manufactured capital and financial capital (Porrit 2009) – the flow is between people sharing and playing with these things both in real-time together, separately, and at times virtually in their own time.
Figure one: Capabilities of an interdependent community
Sen (1999) describes the qualities of collective action which widen the opportunity for individuals to generate forms of wealth as ‘capabilities.’ It is a combination of these capabilities in the form of dependencies of what I call connection, place and action that I wish to explore when we move forward in our consideration of the role and function of a relationship between community and new forms of learning.
A community of connection
Governments, regions, communities and individuals are beginning to recognise the scale of the environmental challenge that human beings face in this century as we have to make the move from an oil based industrialized economy to an ecologically focused post-oil economy (Steffen 2008). This transition is starting to happen and recent predictions suggest that it will have to have completed within 50 years regardless of whether we want it or not, as oil is rapidly running out and a looming prospect of energy shortage and blackouts gets ever closer .
Whilst the 20th century is now well behind us, we have not as yet, learned how to live, yet alone think in terms of actions and relationships, in the mindset we might need for life in the 21st. This should not be all that difficult, as the dominant ideas of the economic and political model from the 20th century have clearly just fallen apart around us in the last two decades and the lessons are there for all to see. These models have until now been looked upon as mutually exclusive, the failure of Soviet state socialism in the 1990’s, and now Western market driven capitalism have both defined in their own ways, the failed ideologies of national systems. However, as Hobsbawn (2009) argues, both are ‘bankrupt ideas’ when we contemplate our futures. We need a progressive model to transcend the old order and respond to the new situation in which we find ourselves.
One particular feature of both of these ‘bankrupt’ models, is the reliance upon institutions to perpetuate particular ideological viewpoints. Ivan Illich (1973) argued that modern societies across the industrialized world appear to create more and more institutions, and that the consequence of them is that we live our lives in ever more institutionalized ways. This makes it difficult for people to challenge the existing order of things, or to suggest and to have taken seriously the idea that there are alternative ways of living. 'This process undermines people - it diminishes their confidence in themselves, and in their capacity to solve problems... It kills convivial relationships. Finally it colonizes life like a parasite …that kills creativity' (Finger and Asún 2001: 10).
Institutions do other things too. They create experts. In Medical Nemesis (1975) the book began, 'The medical establishment has become a major threat to health' (ibid.: 11). In much of my work, I maintain a similar argument, that the educational establishment has become a major threat to education (Clarke 2008). The case against expert systems is that they produce a form of damage which outweighs the potential benefits they offer, because they obscure and collude with the political conditions that render society schooled but ill-educated, and they perpetuate the idea that people are unable to act for themselves. They diminish the power of individuals to learn and value their personal and social experience of learning themselves the means by which they might shape and improve their own community.
This problem of expert systems becomes particularly acute when there is a need to redefine the relationships that exist between school and community. Here, the institutional boundaries and structures can compromise the institutional potential to learn from the community, its default position being that the school educates the community and not the other way around. Despite plenty of examples that refute this claim, particularly coming from recent changes in communications technology (Leadbeater 2000), the underlying cultural message from schools remains the same, ‘we know, you don’t know, how to educate.’
It seems to me that as a result, community and school are stuck in a perpetual cycle of dependency of the worst possible kind. One where professionals and the schools in which they work tend to define the activity of learning as a commodity which they call education, 'whose production they monopolize, whose distribution they restrict, and whose price they raise beyond the purse of ordinary people and nowadays, all governments' (Lister in Illich 1976), and the community receives the product. Extending an earlier notion of schooling, it might be suggested therefore that people are conditioned to believe that the self-taught community is being discriminated against; that learning and the growth of cognitive capacity, require a process of consumption of services presented in a planned, a professional form (quoted by Gajardo 1994: 715 my insert of community) In this way, learning is a commodity rather than an activity, so any way in which a community might attempt to engage with a school is inhibited by its inability to present a form of knowledge to the school in a recognizable and therefore acceptable professional manner.
Just like cigarettes, institutions and institutional practices would appear to be addictive. The fact that school is perceived to be compulsory may be significant here – as institutions, schools generate habitual activities and rituals and these are difficult to quit once people get hooked on the idea that they are the only way to behave, or to solve existing problems. If as individuals and communities, we can develop the capabilities to distinguish between what we want and what we understand to be a requirement, we can use such capability to make proactive choices acting as agents rather than consumers of learning.
Having grown conditioned to schooling of a certain type (Orr 1994), the action of individuals, communities, regions and countries to overcome the challenges we face from economic and ecological meltdown demand the cleverest of inventions, the smartest of technologies, and the most politic and decorous of societies. The current landscape of challenges offers immense potential for people to work together in new ways to form new types of economic well-being which serve both personal and societal needs (Porritt 2009). By challenging the process of institutionalization, by questioning the established notions of expertise and experts, and by critiquing the idea of learning as a form of commodity, we should be able to move towards a way of living and working in our communities where collective wisdom is captured and focused with clarity and purpose and without the embedded issues of ownership and power getting in the way; where people have a clear sense of the purpose behind the initiatives which serve self and others and indeed the well-understood needs of the community as a whole. A transition in thinking about how to live in the 21st century that redefines wealth in the form of environmental capital (Clarke 2009), human capital, social capital, spiritual capital, cultural and creative capital, manufactured capital and financial capital needs mediation. The basic ideas need to be explored and discussed from which practical actions can flow.
A ‘community of connection’ that develops capabilities to appreciate and engage with alternative solutions, designs and opportunities and which values the very process of connecting meaningfully with others, helps us to think differently and enables us to respond to the eco-eco (Kelly 2009) demands of the 21 century. This model of community serves as a frame for thinking about the contributing factors which inform a dialogue for transforming the relationship between community and school.
A community of place
In a similar way to the failings of the macro system, the micro-level is not without its problems (Klein 2001). Whilst state-led reform of ‘communities’ continues to illustrate systemic failings through the alienation and disengagement of the majority of those this hoped-for reform is intended to assist, other, equally problematic issues arise when the alternatives being pursued are for self-sufficient purposes. As an idea, the notion of self-sufficient communities has done just as much harm than as good. It perpetuates the ‘otherness’ of those beyond one’s own clique, and it generates economic inequality just as efficiently as any macro market-led solution. The self-sufficiency argument extends now into our current school model. While defined primarily through school choice, it is just as much about exclusivity and self-sufficiency. Academies, Trust and Foundation schools are quite possibly the next failed extension of the industrialized, individualized cultural obsession with privacy and isolationist solutions to large-scale problems, they are the macro solution to mico challenge and they perpetuate the myth that a new building with a new name (Academy, Foundation) will redefine the relationship between it, as an institution, and the community in which it exists. ‘We don’t need you, we are self-sufficient, we generate our own solutions’ is as much a lie as that which argues that we can only make cultural, environmental and economic progress with government. The message is clear, there is no dissectable self, we depend on each other.
It is therefore a maturation towards some other form of interdependency, one which connects rather than dissects self from community and from wider networks, that we urgently need to develop.
So a community of place is particularly important as a way of making sense of the important role school plays within a social context. When one’s environment has a ‘sustained and lasting human value’ (O’Sullivan 1999) the result of the individualized and commodified version of globalization, rootlessness, transitoriness, and dispossession become more and not less transparent (ibid p245). The dependence by people on a community of place becomes in itself a value. Place is often cited as a significantly important feature of schools in locations of economic disadvantage, where, in the best examples, students are embedded into activity which help to develop capability in the forms of environmental capital, human capital, social capital, spiritual capital, creative and cultural capital, manufactured capital and financial capital. However, just as the community of place can be a physical reality it can also demonstrate capability in the form of a virtual reality. Take for example the degree of interest young people have in facebook, Bebo and other social networking sites.
Our capability to create and maintain a sense of place within a community – school relationship therefore explores both physical and virtual realities. To be successful it needs to generate capabilities which include a sense of identity, a need for love, care, protection, affection, understanding, participation, creativity, and friendship.
Community as action
A particular form of community capability is often found in and around schools in the form of active groups who pursue specific projects on behalf of the school such as community liaison, parental outreach, after-school and breakfast clubs all of which illustrate the commodity function of school. Whist they are interesting and in some cases quite powerful examples of ways in which relationships can be developed between school and community. They do not go far enough to illustrate the capability in which I am particularly interested because it seems to me that they maintain, rather than transform the possibility of greater levels of interdependence.
However, there are some interesting examples of community as action which are showing signs of significantly contributing to the redesign of existing systems.
In one example, an action community in the form of a local food production project approached a school to form a community interest company (CIC) which is joint owned between school and community trustees. The CIC applied for and won a significant lottery fund which is establishing a sustainable fish farm eco-business on the school site. The students from the school, working with a number of local businesses and regional agencies, are actively involved in all stages of design, commissioning, construction, maintenance and development of the business. There are new school courses being established in land management and eco energy, which will run within the school and the local college. Alongside people from the immediate vicinity of the town who are helping to support and provide guidance, there are students and lecturers from University departments from other countries who have experience of developing this type of farm with associated aquaponics and filtration systems.
Furthermore, to illustrate the idea of community as connection, place and action; the town has partnerships with other communities in Ghana and Tanzania in Africa who are involved in knowledge transfer, planning and development conversations as they too are undertaking similar projects in their localities.
Conclusion
This chapter has attempted to provide a stimulus for a different way of thinking about the complicated issue of school and community. Instead of suggesting more of the same, I have argued that we need to radically realign our concept to take full advantage of the types of capabilities we might need to encourage if we are to truly transform our education system to meet the changing demands of an eco-eco society.
I have suggested that the future of sustainable economy and community depends on the connections we choose, the place we define as local, and the life we subsequently decide to live in the form of deliberate action.
The implications of this type of reform are considerable. In conclusion, it is worth thinking about some of the challenges and posing some questions.
Capability building for communities – What would need to happen if these kind of changes were to be brought about in disenfranchised communities which are characterized by an absence of collective vision, aspiration or leadership? Who would take responsibility for the development of the ‘capabilities’ that would be necessary for the first steps of positive action? This could generate a new role for school – a model of learning as community capability building, where the school has as much responsibility for developing the wider context for learning (i.e. the community and the connected members within it) as it does for the process or activity of learning (teaching).
In the chapter I have briefly referred to the radical change in the perceptions of educators of themselves as experts. Any profession under fire (as teachers always seem to be) clings onto its ‘expert’ status as a last resort in the face of change. Unless the practical and attitudinal changes required to bring about this new vision for a sustainable learning ecology are acknowledged we may find ourselves locked into the increasingly desperate version of ‘sustainability training’ as another bolt on reform. An exploration of the capabilities that teachers may need to help them to contribute to community capability seems a practical way to proceed.
It seems that a deeper consideration of values may be useful in seeking to bring about such change. Whilst a great deal of the thrust of my argument centres around the impending disaster and possible response anticipated when the oil runs out, we may usefully engage people more fully in the debate through a broader consideration of the need for change. This discussion could include:
➢ The need for greater social cohesion
➢ The need for improved physical and mental well-being
➢ The need for greater personal agency and active citizenship
➢ The need for greater social justice and equality
➢ The need to address ‘crisis’ issues such as crime, poverty etc
I would also suggest that it is through deep consideration of the values that drive and shape our education system that change might be more widely justified or rationalized. When people think about re-visioning education they often ask ‘what kind of young adults do we want to see as a result of this process?’ – and those imaginings are shaped by a set of values. At the moment the vision is limited and largely defined by government, as is the tradition in education – primarily by the values associated with economic productiveness. Perhaps the question needs to shift to ‘what kind of community do we want our schools to build as they redefine their service to others?’
We urgently need the process of learning to be meaningfully integrated into the social, the community context, and for learning transactions (the process of education) to be more closely aligned with the transactions that are more widely necessary for the development of sustainable communities and societies.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all those colleagues who generously gave me feedback on this work, especially Tony Kelly, Jane Reed and Chris May.
Further rea ding and references
Birol, F. (2008) World Energy Outlook. International Energy Agency. Paris
Brown, L. (20002) Eco-economy. Building an economy for the earth. Washington. Earth policy institute.
Clarke, P. (2008) Education and Sustainability. professional development today. Vol 11 no 1.
Clarke, P. (2009) Sustainability and Improvement: a problem of and for education. Improving Schools. Vol 12 no 1, 11-17
Finger, M. And Asún, J. M. (2001) Adult Education at the Crossroads. Learning our way out, London: Zed Books.
Gajardo, M (1994) 'Ivan Illich' in Z. Morsy (ed.) Key Thinkers in Education Volume 2, Paris: UNESCO Publishing.
Guardian 16 April 2009. Nuclear plans ‘too slow to stop lights going out.’ P.27
Hern, M. (ed.) (1996) Deschooling Our Lives, Gabriola Island BC.: New Society Publishers.
Hobsbawm, E. (2009) Socialism has failed. Now capitalism is bankrupt. So what comes next? Guardian. 10 April 2009. P.33
Illich, Ivan (1975b) Medical Nemesis: The expropriation of health, London: Marian Boyars.
Illich, Ivan and Verne, E. (1976) Imprisoned in the global classroom, London: Writers and Readers Publishing Co-operative.
Kelly, A. (2009) Education futures and schooling theory: adapting Sen’s early work on Capability to choice and sustainability. Personal correspondence
Klein, N. (2001) No Logo, London: Flamingo.
Leadbeater, C. (2000) Living on Thin Air. The new economy, London: Penguin.
Monbiot, G. (2001) Captive State. The corporate takeover of Britain, London: Pan.
Orr, D. (1994) Earth in Mind. First Island Press. New York
O’Sullivan, E. (1999) Transformative learning: Educational vision for the 21st century. London. Zed books.
Porritt, J. (2009) Living within our means: avoiding the ultimate recession. Forum for the future. London
Putnam, R. D. (2000) Bowling Alone. The collapse and revival of American community, New York: Simon and Schuster.
Reimer, E. (1971) School is Dead. An essay on alternatives in education, Harmondsworth: Penguin. 176 pages. Highly readable analysis and positing of alternatives.
Sachs, W.(1992) The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power, London: Zed Books. Schwartz, D. (1997) Who Cares? Rediscovering Community, Boulder, CO: Westview.
Sen, A. (1999) Development as Freedom. Oxford. Oxford books
Smith, L. G. and Smith, J. K. (1994) Lives in Education, New York: St. Martin's Press.
Soros, G. (2008) The new paradigm for financial markets. New York. Public Affairs Books.
Steffen, A. http://www.worldchanging.com/ sourced November 11th 2008
van de Veer, J (2008) leaked email to executive board 22 January 2008 sourced for this chapter in Preparing for Peak Oil: Local Authorities and the Energy Crisis. (2008) Oil Depletion Analysis Centre. London.
Tuesday, 21 April 2009
and another thing...
Bees research, or rather research into pollinating insects, is getting a paltry 10 million quid from the government.
The banks get billions of government money to do what exactly?
The banks get billions of government money to do what exactly?
bees - Today programme
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8009000/8009570.stm
This is very interesting. I lost my bees last year and am waiting for a new colony.
There is considerable discussion on this issue of chemical effects on bees - particularly in regard to varroa and foul brood. The arguments on destroyed habitats is a misleading issue, there is a significant problem about what the chemical industries are creating when they introduce sprays for plant production which kill bees - neonicotinoids are banned elsewhere and they havent go the decline rates of bees. Additionally, varroa has been around a long long time, the resistence level seems to be dropping to these mites, and there seems to be a connection. Listen, watch, it is really important we deal with this and don't sweep it under the carpet.
This is very interesting. I lost my bees last year and am waiting for a new colony.
There is considerable discussion on this issue of chemical effects on bees - particularly in regard to varroa and foul brood. The arguments on destroyed habitats is a misleading issue, there is a significant problem about what the chemical industries are creating when they introduce sprays for plant production which kill bees - neonicotinoids are banned elsewhere and they havent go the decline rates of bees. Additionally, varroa has been around a long long time, the resistence level seems to be dropping to these mites, and there seems to be a connection. Listen, watch, it is really important we deal with this and don't sweep it under the carpet.
The Illusive Bonanza: Oil Shale in Colorado - interesting article
http://www.aspencore.org/images/pdf/OilShale.pdf
new scientist april 09
IN THE Canadian province of Alberta the ground is skinned and gutted. Rising oil prices and dwindling reserves have pushed oil companies to exploit what was once considered unexploitable: tar sands, the dirtiest oil on Earth and the most expensive to extract.
This strip-mined landscape is bad enough, but another method of extracting the oil is on the rise, and it is even more damaging to the environment. Yet new technologies offer hope that tar sands could one day be transformed into one of the cleanest fossil fuels.
The Canadian tar sands contain an estimated 170 billion barrels of recoverable oil, second only to Saudi Arabia's reserves. As the name suggests, the fuel must be separated from sand. Today, most operations dig up the tarry bitumen in gigantic open pit mines, then separate and refine it. The process destroys habitat and creates vast lakes of toxic residues. Worst of all, processing it requires large amounts of energy. The Canadian government estimates that oil from tar sands takes three to five times as much energy to produce as conventional oil.
That carbon cost is likely to get even higher. Only about 20 per cent of the tar sands lie shallow enough to be mined. If you drive an hour south of Fort McMurray in Canada's gigantic Athabasca Tar Sands, you leave behind the vast strip mines and enormous processing plants where sandy bitumen is shovelled out of the bowels of the earth and turned into oil. The boreal forest once again dominates the landscape. In a bulldozed clearing amid the spruce trees, accompanied by the gentle hum of pumps and turbines, you will find a few low, metal-clad industrial buildings surrounded by a tangle of piping.
This is ConocoPhillips's Surmont production site, the new face of the Athabasca Tar Sands. Within a few years, most plants will probably look more like this than the strip mines. At first sight, that seems a good thing, and it is, if you live nearby. But Surmont's benign appearance belies the fact that from a global perspective, it is even worse than the strip mines.
The facility pumps huge amounts of steam at 305 °C several hundred metres underground to separate fuel from sand in situ, a process called steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD). At room temperature the bitumen is more viscous than peanut butter, but after several months of heating it becomes as runny as heavy cream and can be pumped to the surface.
Generating all that steam takes energy - more than mining, says Simon Dyer of the Pembina Institute, an environmental group based in Calgary, Alberta. In fact, if you include the energy needed to upgrade and refine the fuel, every three barrels of oil extracted with SAGD consumes nearly a whole extra barrel, says Pedro Pereira, a chemical engineer at the University of Calgary.
Matt Fox, who manages oil sands operations for ConocoPhillips, is optimistic that improvements can be made as engineers gain more experience with SAGD, which has only been in commercial use for eight years. But he admits that the process will always consume more energy than pumping conventional oil. "The oil sands have got nowhere to hide on the greenhouse gas issue," says Fox. "We have a major challenge we have to address."
There's hope on the horizon. Nascent technologies may further reduce the greenhouse gas cost of tar sands extraction. Pereira is leading a team that is trying to transform the bitumen into lighter oil underground, before it is pumped to the surface. The process requires higher temperatures than SAGD, but compensates by saving more energy further down the line when the fuel is processed. And many of the toxic sulphur and nitrogen compounds remain underground, which removes the surface pollution.
So far, the team has developed a catalyst for use in the underground deposits and is working on proving the concept in the lab. Eventually, they hope to complete most of the refining process underground, yielding usable oil at a carbon cost comparable to conventional crude oil.
A much cleaner and truly inventive solution, though, can be found in the laboratory of Stephen Larter, also at the University of Calgary. Together with colleagues at Newcastle University, UK, he thinks it might be possible to induce bacteria to digest the bitumen into methane, which could be extracted just like conventional natural gas. The process occurs naturally underground: bacteria called Syntrophus digest the oil and release hydrogen as a waste product. A second group of archaebacteria called methanogens then converts the hydrogen to methane. "They're already there. All you do is add fertiliser," says Larter.
It might be possible to induce bacteria to digest bitumen into methane, and extract it like natural gas
Last year, Larter's team showed that by adding nitrogen, phosphorus, vitamins and trace minerals to oil-field samples in the lab, they can convert the hydrocarbons to methane in about 600 days (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature06484). Their newly founded company, Profero Energy, is about to begin field tests to see whether the method can produce methane economically from a natural underground reservoir. "If it's an economic success, it is a game-changer. You have suddenly got a huge amount of a relatively clean fuel, methane," says Larter. "But it has absolutely not been proven in the field yet."
Even if Larter's microbial conversion proves practical, of course, no amount of technological trickery can get around the fact that burning any fossil fuel adds carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. But, "the oil industry is not going to disappear overnight", says Larter. "Cleaning up the tail end of the industry is a crucial thing, otherwise we'll have really serious problems." Burning methane provides more useable energy per tonne of CO2 emitted than any other fossil fuel (see chart), making it the best choice for weaning society off fossil fuels altogether.
In the long run, Larter notes, a similar process could someday offer the ultimate in clean energy: a hydrogen economy. Methanogens are very efficient at using up the hydrogen Syntrophus produces, so it does not last long enough to tap. But if the researchers could find a way of inhibiting the methanogens, their system would offer the possibility of producing immense quantities of hydrogen, a zero-carbon fuel.
This strip-mined landscape is bad enough, but another method of extracting the oil is on the rise, and it is even more damaging to the environment. Yet new technologies offer hope that tar sands could one day be transformed into one of the cleanest fossil fuels.
The Canadian tar sands contain an estimated 170 billion barrels of recoverable oil, second only to Saudi Arabia's reserves. As the name suggests, the fuel must be separated from sand. Today, most operations dig up the tarry bitumen in gigantic open pit mines, then separate and refine it. The process destroys habitat and creates vast lakes of toxic residues. Worst of all, processing it requires large amounts of energy. The Canadian government estimates that oil from tar sands takes three to five times as much energy to produce as conventional oil.
That carbon cost is likely to get even higher. Only about 20 per cent of the tar sands lie shallow enough to be mined. If you drive an hour south of Fort McMurray in Canada's gigantic Athabasca Tar Sands, you leave behind the vast strip mines and enormous processing plants where sandy bitumen is shovelled out of the bowels of the earth and turned into oil. The boreal forest once again dominates the landscape. In a bulldozed clearing amid the spruce trees, accompanied by the gentle hum of pumps and turbines, you will find a few low, metal-clad industrial buildings surrounded by a tangle of piping.
This is ConocoPhillips's Surmont production site, the new face of the Athabasca Tar Sands. Within a few years, most plants will probably look more like this than the strip mines. At first sight, that seems a good thing, and it is, if you live nearby. But Surmont's benign appearance belies the fact that from a global perspective, it is even worse than the strip mines.
The facility pumps huge amounts of steam at 305 °C several hundred metres underground to separate fuel from sand in situ, a process called steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD). At room temperature the bitumen is more viscous than peanut butter, but after several months of heating it becomes as runny as heavy cream and can be pumped to the surface.
Generating all that steam takes energy - more than mining, says Simon Dyer of the Pembina Institute, an environmental group based in Calgary, Alberta. In fact, if you include the energy needed to upgrade and refine the fuel, every three barrels of oil extracted with SAGD consumes nearly a whole extra barrel, says Pedro Pereira, a chemical engineer at the University of Calgary.
Matt Fox, who manages oil sands operations for ConocoPhillips, is optimistic that improvements can be made as engineers gain more experience with SAGD, which has only been in commercial use for eight years. But he admits that the process will always consume more energy than pumping conventional oil. "The oil sands have got nowhere to hide on the greenhouse gas issue," says Fox. "We have a major challenge we have to address."
There's hope on the horizon. Nascent technologies may further reduce the greenhouse gas cost of tar sands extraction. Pereira is leading a team that is trying to transform the bitumen into lighter oil underground, before it is pumped to the surface. The process requires higher temperatures than SAGD, but compensates by saving more energy further down the line when the fuel is processed. And many of the toxic sulphur and nitrogen compounds remain underground, which removes the surface pollution.
So far, the team has developed a catalyst for use in the underground deposits and is working on proving the concept in the lab. Eventually, they hope to complete most of the refining process underground, yielding usable oil at a carbon cost comparable to conventional crude oil.
A much cleaner and truly inventive solution, though, can be found in the laboratory of Stephen Larter, also at the University of Calgary. Together with colleagues at Newcastle University, UK, he thinks it might be possible to induce bacteria to digest the bitumen into methane, which could be extracted just like conventional natural gas. The process occurs naturally underground: bacteria called Syntrophus digest the oil and release hydrogen as a waste product. A second group of archaebacteria called methanogens then converts the hydrogen to methane. "They're already there. All you do is add fertiliser," says Larter.
It might be possible to induce bacteria to digest bitumen into methane, and extract it like natural gas
Last year, Larter's team showed that by adding nitrogen, phosphorus, vitamins and trace minerals to oil-field samples in the lab, they can convert the hydrocarbons to methane in about 600 days (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature06484). Their newly founded company, Profero Energy, is about to begin field tests to see whether the method can produce methane economically from a natural underground reservoir. "If it's an economic success, it is a game-changer. You have suddenly got a huge amount of a relatively clean fuel, methane," says Larter. "But it has absolutely not been proven in the field yet."
Even if Larter's microbial conversion proves practical, of course, no amount of technological trickery can get around the fact that burning any fossil fuel adds carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. But, "the oil industry is not going to disappear overnight", says Larter. "Cleaning up the tail end of the industry is a crucial thing, otherwise we'll have really serious problems." Burning methane provides more useable energy per tonne of CO2 emitted than any other fossil fuel (see chart), making it the best choice for weaning society off fossil fuels altogether.
In the long run, Larter notes, a similar process could someday offer the ultimate in clean energy: a hydrogen economy. Methanogens are very efficient at using up the hydrogen Syntrophus produces, so it does not last long enough to tap. But if the researchers could find a way of inhibiting the methanogens, their system would offer the possibility of producing immense quantities of hydrogen, a zero-carbon fuel.
new york times - april 2 2009
Shale Oil Estimates Grow; Likelihood of Extraction, Not So Much
By JAD MOUAWAD
The United States Geological Survey says there’s more oil shale out there than once thought.
While the Obama administration seeks to encourage cleaner energy sources, government geologists have significantly raised their estimates of how much oil is trapped in the shale rocks of Colorado’s Piceance Basin.
Back in 1989, government geologists had assessed the reserves at about one trillion barrels. But in a technical announcement Tuesday, the United States Geological Survey estimated that oil shale resources were 50 percent greater — or some 1.525 trillion barrels.
That may seem like a lot (it’s nearly six times the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia), but the reality is a bit more complicated. As the government notes, the development of the shale rocks “has significant technological and environmental challenges.”
Among them: there exists no economical method for extracting oil from these rocks in the United States today.
Indeed, oil shale does not actually contain crude oil but something called kerogen, which is an organic precursor to oil. In an energy-intensive extraction process, the rocks must be heated to 530 to 930 degrees Fahrenheit, and huge quantities of water must be driven underground at high pressure to melt the rocks and extract the kerogen for processing into shale oil.
Another problem is the presence of large quantities of nahcolite — a mineral often embedded in oil shale deposits that produces copious carbon dioxide when heated during oil shale processing.
The Piceance Basin contains one of the thickest and richest oil shale deposits in the world and is the focus of most continuing oil shale research and development extraction projects in the United States — though few expect full-scale development to happen anytime soon.
One of the first decisions by Ken Salazar, the new secretary of the interior, was to reverse a last-minute decision by the Bush administration to open up Colorado’s oil shale for development. Mr. Salazar stressed the need for “continued research” on the matter.
By JAD MOUAWAD
The United States Geological Survey says there’s more oil shale out there than once thought.
While the Obama administration seeks to encourage cleaner energy sources, government geologists have significantly raised their estimates of how much oil is trapped in the shale rocks of Colorado’s Piceance Basin.
Back in 1989, government geologists had assessed the reserves at about one trillion barrels. But in a technical announcement Tuesday, the United States Geological Survey estimated that oil shale resources were 50 percent greater — or some 1.525 trillion barrels.
That may seem like a lot (it’s nearly six times the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia), but the reality is a bit more complicated. As the government notes, the development of the shale rocks “has significant technological and environmental challenges.”
Among them: there exists no economical method for extracting oil from these rocks in the United States today.
Indeed, oil shale does not actually contain crude oil but something called kerogen, which is an organic precursor to oil. In an energy-intensive extraction process, the rocks must be heated to 530 to 930 degrees Fahrenheit, and huge quantities of water must be driven underground at high pressure to melt the rocks and extract the kerogen for processing into shale oil.
Another problem is the presence of large quantities of nahcolite — a mineral often embedded in oil shale deposits that produces copious carbon dioxide when heated during oil shale processing.
The Piceance Basin contains one of the thickest and richest oil shale deposits in the world and is the focus of most continuing oil shale research and development extraction projects in the United States — though few expect full-scale development to happen anytime soon.
One of the first decisions by Ken Salazar, the new secretary of the interior, was to reverse a last-minute decision by the Bush administration to open up Colorado’s oil shale for development. Mr. Salazar stressed the need for “continued research” on the matter.
Monday, 20 April 2009
Community - chapter for book
There is no middle path. Do we join together to build an economy that is sustainable? Or do we stay with our environmentally unsustainable economy until it declines? It is not a goal that can be compromised. One way or another, the choice will be made by our generation. But it will affect life on earth for all generations to come. Lester Brown, Eco-economy. 2002
The chapter will suggest that it is only through thinking about community as a diaspra of dependencies in the form of freedom, economies, interests and creative possibilities that we have any real possibility of making progress with the urgent agenda for a more sustainable form of life on the planet.
I suggest that community can serve as a forum for engagement, connection and ideas, a forum for local action and for representation in the democratic practice of freedom. As such, it can be a basis of new economy, or more particularly an eco-economy (Brown 2002) or eco-eco (Kelly 2009).
In the chapter I will use ‘community’ as the term which captures a set of capabilities (Sen 2002) – one where we depend upon each other to generate understanding, engagement and participation through which we can respond to social, environmental and economic collapse (Putnam 2000, Orr 1994, Soros 2008). I describe community as a network. It is an interdependent construct of human activity. It functions as a set of capabilities within and between communities of connection, communities of place, and communities of action. School plays a significant part in framing, sometimes impeding, sometimes enabling and focusing the development of these capabilities, but school is only ever a part player, the setting is always within the wider frame of the community (see figure 1).
Community is both defined and at the same time it is boundless. We live our lives in total dependency on systems which have no respect for national boundaries such as the atmosphere, oceans, ocean life, biotic provinces and the Sun, without which nothing lives. All these demonstrate forms of community which function as flow, an entangled alliance, this illustrates sufficiently that community can exist as something visible and tangible and at the same time something abstract.
So, when we think about community and school, it would seem that any form of guidance should take seriously the guidance we might get from an understanding of dependency to others and between others. We might ask what kinds of dependency we prefer, but that's our only choice.
For example, is it preferable to be dependent on institutions we don't know, and which don't know us, or on people, other organisms, and natural forces that we do know? This forms the basis of much of my own work, exploring the practicalities of new forms of what I have come to call ‘local dependency’ (Clarke 2009). Since our world is increasingly connected through cultural, economic and technological, and proportionally ever less physical, the meaning of 'local' is not geographical, at least not only geographical, it explores the ways in which flows of ideas combine as communities in the form of practices, theories, possibilities to be realized as forms of wealth as environmental capital, human capital, social capital, spiritual capital, manufactured capital and financial capital – the flow is between people sharing and playing with these things both in real-time together, and in their own time.
Figure one: Capabilities of an interdependent community
In his Nobel prize winning work, Amartya Sen (2001) describes the qualities of collective action which widen the opportunity for individuals to generate forms of wealth as ‘capabilities.’ It is a combination of these capabilities in the form of dependencies of what I call connection, place and action that I wish to explore when we move forward in our consideration of the role and function of a relationship between community and school.
A community of connection
Governments, regions, communities and individuals are beginning to recognise the scale of the environmental challenge that human beings face in this century as we have to make the move from an oil based industrialized economy to an ecologically focused post-oil economy (Steffen 2008). This transition is starting to happen and recent predictions suggest that it will have to have completed within 50 years regardless of whether we want it or not, as oil is rapidly running out and a looming prospect of energy shortage and blackouts gets ever closer .
Whilst the 20th century is now well behind us, we have not as yet, learned how to live yet alone think, in the mindset we might need for life in the 21st. This should not be all that difficult, as the dominant ideas of the economic and political model from the 20th century have clearly just fallen apart around us in the last two decades and the lessons are there for all to see. These models, have until now been looked upon as mutually exclusive. With the failure of Soviet state socialism in the 1990’s, and now Western market driven capitalism have both defined in their own ways, the ideologies of national systems. However, as Hobsbawn (2009) argues, both are ‘bankrupt ideas’ when we contemplate our futures. We need a progressive model to transcend the old order and respond to the new situation in which we find ourselves.
One particular feature of both of these ‘bankrupt’ models, is the reliance upon institution to perpetuate particular ideological viewpoints. Ivan Illich (1973) argued that modern societies across the industrialized world appear to create more and more institutions, and that the consequence of them is that we live our lives in ever more institutionalized ways. This makes it difficult for people to challenge the existing order of things, and to suggest and to have taken seriously the idea that there are alternative ways of living. 'This process undermines people - it diminishes their confidence in themselves, and in their capacity to solve problems... It kills convivial relationships. Finally it colonizes life like a parasite …that kills creativity' (Finger and Asún 2001: 10).
Institutions do other things too. They create experts, in Medical Nemesis (1975) the book began, 'The medical establishment has become a major threat to health' (ibid.: 11). In much of my work, I maintain a similar argument, that the educational establishment has become a major threat to education (Clarke 2008). The case against expert systems is that they produce damage which outweighs the potential benefits they offer, because they obscure the political conditions that render society schooled but ill-educated, and they perpetuate the idea that people are unable to act for themselves. They diminish the power of individuals to learn and value their personal and social experience of learning themselves through which they might shape their own community.
This problem becomes particularly acute when there is a need to redefine the relationships that exist between school and community. Here, the institutional boundaries can impede the institutional potential to learn from the community, its default position being that it educates the community and not the other way around. Despite plenty of examples that refute this claim particularly coming from recent changes in communications technology (Leadbeater 2000), the underlying cultural message from schools remains the same, ‘we know, you don’t know, how to educate.’
It seems to me that as a result, community and school are stuck in a perpetual cycle of dependency of the worst possible kind. One where professionals and the schools in which they work tend to define the activity of learning as a commodity which they call education, 'whose production they monopolize, whose distribution they restrict, and whose price they raise beyond the purse of ordinary people and nowadays, all governments' (Lister in Illich 1976), and the community receives the product. Extending an earlier notion of schooling, it might be suggested therefore that people are schooled to believe that the self-taught community is being discriminated against; that learning and the growth of cognitive capacity, require a process of consumption of services presented in a planned, a professional form (quoted by Gajardo 1994: 715 my insert of community) In this way, learning is a thing rather than an activity, so any way in which a community engages with a school is inhibited by its failure to present a form of knowledge to the school in a recognizable professional style.
Just like cigarettes, institutions and institutional practices would appear to be addictive. They generate habitual activities and rituals and these are difficult quit once people get hooked on the idea that they are the only way to solve existing problems.
If we are to enhance our capability to learn new ways of living which have a reduced footprint on the environment of the planet, then I think we have to consider how we re-define our relationship with a dominant community based institution – the school.
Having grown addicted to schooling of a certain type (Orr 1994), the action of individuals, communities, regions and countries to overcome the challenges we face from economic and ecological meltdown demand the cleverest of inventions, the smartest of technologies, and the most politic and decorous of societies. It offers immense potential for people to work together in new ways to form new types of economic well-being which serve both personal and societal need (Porritt 2009). By challenging the process of institutionalization, by questioning the notion of expertise and experts, and by critiquing the idea of learning as a form of commodity, we move towards a way of living and working in our communities where collective wisdom is captured and focused with clarity and purpose and without the embedded issue of ownership getting in the way; where people have a clear sense of the purpose behind the initiatives which serve self and others. A transition in thinking about how to live in the 21st century that redefines wealth in the form of environmental capital, human capital, social capital, spiritual capital, manufactured capital and financial capital needs mediation, the basic ideas need to be explored and discussed from which practical actions can flow.
A ‘community of connection’ which develops capabilities to appreciate and engage with alternative solutions, designs and opportunities, helps us to think differently to respond to the eco-eco (Kelly 2009) demands of the 21 century. It serves as a frame for thinking about the contributing factors which inform a dialogue for transforming the relationship between community and school.
A community of place
In a similar way to the failings of the macro system, the micro-level is not without its problems (Klein 2001). Whilst state-led reform of ‘communities’ continues to illustrate systemic failings through alienation and disengagement of the majority of those whom it is intended to assist, other, equally problematic issues arise when the alternatives being pursued are for self-sufficiency. As an idea, the notion of self-sufficient communities has done just as much harm than good. It perpetuates the ‘otherness’ of those beyond one’s own clique, it generates economic inequality just as efficiently as any macro market-led solution. The self-sufficient argument extends now into our current school model, whilst defined primarily through school choice, it is just as much about exclusivity and self-sufficiency. Academies, Trust and Foundation schools are quite possibly the next failed extension of the industrialized, individualized cultural obsession with privacy and isolationist solutions to large-scale problems. ‘We don’t need you, we are self-sufficient, we generate our own solutions’ is as much a lie as that which argues that we can only make cultural, environmental and economic progress with government. The message is clear, there is no dissectable self, we depend on each other.
It is therefore a move towards some other form of dependency, one which connects rather then dissects self from community and from wider networks, that we are urgently in need of developing.
So a community of place is particularly important as a way of making sense of the important role school plays within a context. When one’s environment has a ‘sustained and lasting human value’ (O’Sullivan 1999) the results of globalization, rootlessness, transitoriness, dispossession become more and not less transparent (ibid p245). The dependence on a community of place becomes in itself a value. Place is often cited as a significantly important feature of schools in locations of economic disadvantage, where, in the best examples, students are embedded into activity which demonstrate capability in the form of environmental capital (Clarke 2009), human capital, social capital, spiritual capital, manufactured capital and financial capital (Porrit 2009). However, just as the community of place can be a physical reality it can also demonstrate capability in the form of a virtual reality. Take for example the degree of interest young people have in facebook and other social networking sites.
Our capability to create and maintain a sense of place within a community – school relationship therefore explores both physical and virtual realities. To be successful it needs to generate capabilities which include a sense of identity, a need for protection, affection, understanding, participation, identity, creativity, and friendship.
Community as action
A particular form of community capability is often found in and around schools in the form of active groups who pursue specific projects on behalf of the such as community liaison, parental outreach, after-school and breakfast clubs all illustrate the commodity function of school. Whist they are interesting and in some cases quite powerful examples of ways in which relationships can be developed between school and community they do not go far enough to illustrate the capability I am particularly interested in because it seems to me that it maintains, rather than transforms the possibility of greater levels of interdependence.
However, there are some interesting examples of community as action which are showing signs of redesign of existing systems.
In one example, an action community in the form of a local food production project approached the school to form a community interest company (CIC) which is joint owned between school and community trustees. The CIC applied for and won a significant lottery fund which is establishing a sustainable fish farm eco-business on the school site. The students from the school, working with a number of local businesses and regional agencies are actively involved in all stages of design, commissioning, construction, maintenance and development of the business. There are new school courses being established in land management, eco energy, which will run within the school and the local college. Alongside people from the immediate vicinity of the town who are helping to support and provide guidance, there are students and lecturers from University departments from other countries who have experience of developing this type of farm with associated aquaponics and filtration systems.
Furthermore, to illustrate the idea of community as connection, place and action; the town has partnerships with other communities in Ghana and Tanzineer in Africa who are involved in knowledge transfer, planning and development conversations as they too are undertaking similar projects in their localities.
Conclusion
This chapter has attempted to provide a pathway for a different way of thinking about the complicated issue of school and community. Instead of suggesting more of the same, I have argued that we need to radically realign our concept to take full advantage of the types of capabilities we might need to encourage if we are to truly transform our education system to meet the changing demands of an eco-eco society.
I have suggested that the future of sustainable economy and community depends on the connections we choose, the place we define as local, and the life we subsequently decide to live in the form of deliberate action.
Further reading and references
Birol, F. (2008) World Energy Outlook. International Energy Agency. Paris
Clarke, P. (2008) Education and Sustainability. professional development today. Vol 11 no 1.
Clarke, P. (2009) Sustainability and Improvement: a problem of and for education. Improving Schools. Vol 12 no 1, 11-17
Finger, M. And Asún, J. M. (2001) Adult Education at the Crossroads. Learning our way out, London: Zed Books.
Gajardo, M (1994) 'Ivan Illich' in Z. Morsy (ed.) Key Thinkers in Education Volume 2, Paris: UNESCO Publishing.
Guardian 16 April 2009. Nuclear plans ‘too slow to stop lights going out.’ P.27
Hern, M. (ed.) (1996) Deschooling Our Lives, Gabriola Island BC.: New Society Publishers.
Illich, Ivan (1975b) Medical Nemesis: The expropriation of health, London: Marian Boyars.
Illich, Ivan and Verne, E. (1976) Imprisoned in the global classroom, London: Writers and Readers Publishing Co-operative.
Kelly, A. (2009) Education futures and schooling theory: adapting Sen’s early work on Capability to choice and sustainability. Personal correspondence
Klein, N. (2001) No Logo, London: Flamingo.
Leadbeater, C. (2000) Living on Thin Air. The new economy, London: Penguin.
Monbiot, G. (2001) Captive State. The corporate takeover of Britain, London: Pan.
Orr, D. (1994) Earth in Mind. First Island Press. New York
O’Sullivan, E. (1999) Transformative learning: Educational vision for the 21st century. London. Zed books.
Porritt, J. (2009) Living within our means: avoiding the ultimate recession. Forum for the future. London
Putnam, R. D. (2000) Bowling Alone. The collapse and revival of American community, New York: Simon and Schuster.
Reimer, E. (1971) School is Dead. An essay on alternatives in education, Harmondsworth: Penguin. 176 pages. Highly readable analysis and positing of alternatives.
Sachs, W.(1992) The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power, London: Zed Books. Schwartz, D. (1997) Who Cares? Rediscovering Community, Boulder, CO: Westview.
Sen, A. (2001) Development as Freedom. Oxford. Oxford books
Smith, L. G. and Smith, J. K. (1994) Lives in Education, New York: St. Martin's Press.
Soros, G. (2008) The new paradigm for financial markets. New York. Public Affairs Books.
Steffen, A. http://www.worldchanging.com/ sourced November 11th 2008
van de Veer, J (2008) leaked email to executive board 22 January 2008 sourced for this chapter in Preparing for Peak Oil: Local Authorities and the Energy Crisis. (2008) Oil Depletion Analysis Centre. London.
The chapter will suggest that it is only through thinking about community as a diaspra of dependencies in the form of freedom, economies, interests and creative possibilities that we have any real possibility of making progress with the urgent agenda for a more sustainable form of life on the planet.
I suggest that community can serve as a forum for engagement, connection and ideas, a forum for local action and for representation in the democratic practice of freedom. As such, it can be a basis of new economy, or more particularly an eco-economy (Brown 2002) or eco-eco (Kelly 2009).
In the chapter I will use ‘community’ as the term which captures a set of capabilities (Sen 2002) – one where we depend upon each other to generate understanding, engagement and participation through which we can respond to social, environmental and economic collapse (Putnam 2000, Orr 1994, Soros 2008). I describe community as a network. It is an interdependent construct of human activity. It functions as a set of capabilities within and between communities of connection, communities of place, and communities of action. School plays a significant part in framing, sometimes impeding, sometimes enabling and focusing the development of these capabilities, but school is only ever a part player, the setting is always within the wider frame of the community (see figure 1).
Community is both defined and at the same time it is boundless. We live our lives in total dependency on systems which have no respect for national boundaries such as the atmosphere, oceans, ocean life, biotic provinces and the Sun, without which nothing lives. All these demonstrate forms of community which function as flow, an entangled alliance, this illustrates sufficiently that community can exist as something visible and tangible and at the same time something abstract.
So, when we think about community and school, it would seem that any form of guidance should take seriously the guidance we might get from an understanding of dependency to others and between others. We might ask what kinds of dependency we prefer, but that's our only choice.
For example, is it preferable to be dependent on institutions we don't know, and which don't know us, or on people, other organisms, and natural forces that we do know? This forms the basis of much of my own work, exploring the practicalities of new forms of what I have come to call ‘local dependency’ (Clarke 2009). Since our world is increasingly connected through cultural, economic and technological, and proportionally ever less physical, the meaning of 'local' is not geographical, at least not only geographical, it explores the ways in which flows of ideas combine as communities in the form of practices, theories, possibilities to be realized as forms of wealth as environmental capital, human capital, social capital, spiritual capital, manufactured capital and financial capital – the flow is between people sharing and playing with these things both in real-time together, and in their own time.
Figure one: Capabilities of an interdependent community
In his Nobel prize winning work, Amartya Sen (2001) describes the qualities of collective action which widen the opportunity for individuals to generate forms of wealth as ‘capabilities.’ It is a combination of these capabilities in the form of dependencies of what I call connection, place and action that I wish to explore when we move forward in our consideration of the role and function of a relationship between community and school.
A community of connection
Governments, regions, communities and individuals are beginning to recognise the scale of the environmental challenge that human beings face in this century as we have to make the move from an oil based industrialized economy to an ecologically focused post-oil economy (Steffen 2008). This transition is starting to happen and recent predictions suggest that it will have to have completed within 50 years regardless of whether we want it or not, as oil is rapidly running out and a looming prospect of energy shortage and blackouts gets ever closer .
Whilst the 20th century is now well behind us, we have not as yet, learned how to live yet alone think, in the mindset we might need for life in the 21st. This should not be all that difficult, as the dominant ideas of the economic and political model from the 20th century have clearly just fallen apart around us in the last two decades and the lessons are there for all to see. These models, have until now been looked upon as mutually exclusive. With the failure of Soviet state socialism in the 1990’s, and now Western market driven capitalism have both defined in their own ways, the ideologies of national systems. However, as Hobsbawn (2009) argues, both are ‘bankrupt ideas’ when we contemplate our futures. We need a progressive model to transcend the old order and respond to the new situation in which we find ourselves.
One particular feature of both of these ‘bankrupt’ models, is the reliance upon institution to perpetuate particular ideological viewpoints. Ivan Illich (1973) argued that modern societies across the industrialized world appear to create more and more institutions, and that the consequence of them is that we live our lives in ever more institutionalized ways. This makes it difficult for people to challenge the existing order of things, and to suggest and to have taken seriously the idea that there are alternative ways of living. 'This process undermines people - it diminishes their confidence in themselves, and in their capacity to solve problems... It kills convivial relationships. Finally it colonizes life like a parasite …that kills creativity' (Finger and Asún 2001: 10).
Institutions do other things too. They create experts, in Medical Nemesis (1975) the book began, 'The medical establishment has become a major threat to health' (ibid.: 11). In much of my work, I maintain a similar argument, that the educational establishment has become a major threat to education (Clarke 2008). The case against expert systems is that they produce damage which outweighs the potential benefits they offer, because they obscure the political conditions that render society schooled but ill-educated, and they perpetuate the idea that people are unable to act for themselves. They diminish the power of individuals to learn and value their personal and social experience of learning themselves through which they might shape their own community.
This problem becomes particularly acute when there is a need to redefine the relationships that exist between school and community. Here, the institutional boundaries can impede the institutional potential to learn from the community, its default position being that it educates the community and not the other way around. Despite plenty of examples that refute this claim particularly coming from recent changes in communications technology (Leadbeater 2000), the underlying cultural message from schools remains the same, ‘we know, you don’t know, how to educate.’
It seems to me that as a result, community and school are stuck in a perpetual cycle of dependency of the worst possible kind. One where professionals and the schools in which they work tend to define the activity of learning as a commodity which they call education, 'whose production they monopolize, whose distribution they restrict, and whose price they raise beyond the purse of ordinary people and nowadays, all governments' (Lister in Illich 1976), and the community receives the product. Extending an earlier notion of schooling, it might be suggested therefore that people are schooled to believe that the self-taught community is being discriminated against; that learning and the growth of cognitive capacity, require a process of consumption of services presented in a planned, a professional form (quoted by Gajardo 1994: 715 my insert of community) In this way, learning is a thing rather than an activity, so any way in which a community engages with a school is inhibited by its failure to present a form of knowledge to the school in a recognizable professional style.
Just like cigarettes, institutions and institutional practices would appear to be addictive. They generate habitual activities and rituals and these are difficult quit once people get hooked on the idea that they are the only way to solve existing problems.
If we are to enhance our capability to learn new ways of living which have a reduced footprint on the environment of the planet, then I think we have to consider how we re-define our relationship with a dominant community based institution – the school.
Having grown addicted to schooling of a certain type (Orr 1994), the action of individuals, communities, regions and countries to overcome the challenges we face from economic and ecological meltdown demand the cleverest of inventions, the smartest of technologies, and the most politic and decorous of societies. It offers immense potential for people to work together in new ways to form new types of economic well-being which serve both personal and societal need (Porritt 2009). By challenging the process of institutionalization, by questioning the notion of expertise and experts, and by critiquing the idea of learning as a form of commodity, we move towards a way of living and working in our communities where collective wisdom is captured and focused with clarity and purpose and without the embedded issue of ownership getting in the way; where people have a clear sense of the purpose behind the initiatives which serve self and others. A transition in thinking about how to live in the 21st century that redefines wealth in the form of environmental capital, human capital, social capital, spiritual capital, manufactured capital and financial capital needs mediation, the basic ideas need to be explored and discussed from which practical actions can flow.
A ‘community of connection’ which develops capabilities to appreciate and engage with alternative solutions, designs and opportunities, helps us to think differently to respond to the eco-eco (Kelly 2009) demands of the 21 century. It serves as a frame for thinking about the contributing factors which inform a dialogue for transforming the relationship between community and school.
A community of place
In a similar way to the failings of the macro system, the micro-level is not without its problems (Klein 2001). Whilst state-led reform of ‘communities’ continues to illustrate systemic failings through alienation and disengagement of the majority of those whom it is intended to assist, other, equally problematic issues arise when the alternatives being pursued are for self-sufficiency. As an idea, the notion of self-sufficient communities has done just as much harm than good. It perpetuates the ‘otherness’ of those beyond one’s own clique, it generates economic inequality just as efficiently as any macro market-led solution. The self-sufficient argument extends now into our current school model, whilst defined primarily through school choice, it is just as much about exclusivity and self-sufficiency. Academies, Trust and Foundation schools are quite possibly the next failed extension of the industrialized, individualized cultural obsession with privacy and isolationist solutions to large-scale problems. ‘We don’t need you, we are self-sufficient, we generate our own solutions’ is as much a lie as that which argues that we can only make cultural, environmental and economic progress with government. The message is clear, there is no dissectable self, we depend on each other.
It is therefore a move towards some other form of dependency, one which connects rather then dissects self from community and from wider networks, that we are urgently in need of developing.
So a community of place is particularly important as a way of making sense of the important role school plays within a context. When one’s environment has a ‘sustained and lasting human value’ (O’Sullivan 1999) the results of globalization, rootlessness, transitoriness, dispossession become more and not less transparent (ibid p245). The dependence on a community of place becomes in itself a value. Place is often cited as a significantly important feature of schools in locations of economic disadvantage, where, in the best examples, students are embedded into activity which demonstrate capability in the form of environmental capital (Clarke 2009), human capital, social capital, spiritual capital, manufactured capital and financial capital (Porrit 2009). However, just as the community of place can be a physical reality it can also demonstrate capability in the form of a virtual reality. Take for example the degree of interest young people have in facebook and other social networking sites.
Our capability to create and maintain a sense of place within a community – school relationship therefore explores both physical and virtual realities. To be successful it needs to generate capabilities which include a sense of identity, a need for protection, affection, understanding, participation, identity, creativity, and friendship.
Community as action
A particular form of community capability is often found in and around schools in the form of active groups who pursue specific projects on behalf of the such as community liaison, parental outreach, after-school and breakfast clubs all illustrate the commodity function of school. Whist they are interesting and in some cases quite powerful examples of ways in which relationships can be developed between school and community they do not go far enough to illustrate the capability I am particularly interested in because it seems to me that it maintains, rather than transforms the possibility of greater levels of interdependence.
However, there are some interesting examples of community as action which are showing signs of redesign of existing systems.
In one example, an action community in the form of a local food production project approached the school to form a community interest company (CIC) which is joint owned between school and community trustees. The CIC applied for and won a significant lottery fund which is establishing a sustainable fish farm eco-business on the school site. The students from the school, working with a number of local businesses and regional agencies are actively involved in all stages of design, commissioning, construction, maintenance and development of the business. There are new school courses being established in land management, eco energy, which will run within the school and the local college. Alongside people from the immediate vicinity of the town who are helping to support and provide guidance, there are students and lecturers from University departments from other countries who have experience of developing this type of farm with associated aquaponics and filtration systems.
Furthermore, to illustrate the idea of community as connection, place and action; the town has partnerships with other communities in Ghana and Tanzineer in Africa who are involved in knowledge transfer, planning and development conversations as they too are undertaking similar projects in their localities.
Conclusion
This chapter has attempted to provide a pathway for a different way of thinking about the complicated issue of school and community. Instead of suggesting more of the same, I have argued that we need to radically realign our concept to take full advantage of the types of capabilities we might need to encourage if we are to truly transform our education system to meet the changing demands of an eco-eco society.
I have suggested that the future of sustainable economy and community depends on the connections we choose, the place we define as local, and the life we subsequently decide to live in the form of deliberate action.
Further reading and references
Birol, F. (2008) World Energy Outlook. International Energy Agency. Paris
Clarke, P. (2008) Education and Sustainability. professional development today. Vol 11 no 1.
Clarke, P. (2009) Sustainability and Improvement: a problem of and for education. Improving Schools. Vol 12 no 1, 11-17
Finger, M. And Asún, J. M. (2001) Adult Education at the Crossroads. Learning our way out, London: Zed Books.
Gajardo, M (1994) 'Ivan Illich' in Z. Morsy (ed.) Key Thinkers in Education Volume 2, Paris: UNESCO Publishing.
Guardian 16 April 2009. Nuclear plans ‘too slow to stop lights going out.’ P.27
Hern, M. (ed.) (1996) Deschooling Our Lives, Gabriola Island BC.: New Society Publishers.
Illich, Ivan (1975b) Medical Nemesis: The expropriation of health, London: Marian Boyars.
Illich, Ivan and Verne, E. (1976) Imprisoned in the global classroom, London: Writers and Readers Publishing Co-operative.
Kelly, A. (2009) Education futures and schooling theory: adapting Sen’s early work on Capability to choice and sustainability. Personal correspondence
Klein, N. (2001) No Logo, London: Flamingo.
Leadbeater, C. (2000) Living on Thin Air. The new economy, London: Penguin.
Monbiot, G. (2001) Captive State. The corporate takeover of Britain, London: Pan.
Orr, D. (1994) Earth in Mind. First Island Press. New York
O’Sullivan, E. (1999) Transformative learning: Educational vision for the 21st century. London. Zed books.
Porritt, J. (2009) Living within our means: avoiding the ultimate recession. Forum for the future. London
Putnam, R. D. (2000) Bowling Alone. The collapse and revival of American community, New York: Simon and Schuster.
Reimer, E. (1971) School is Dead. An essay on alternatives in education, Harmondsworth: Penguin. 176 pages. Highly readable analysis and positing of alternatives.
Sachs, W.(1992) The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power, London: Zed Books. Schwartz, D. (1997) Who Cares? Rediscovering Community, Boulder, CO: Westview.
Sen, A. (2001) Development as Freedom. Oxford. Oxford books
Smith, L. G. and Smith, J. K. (1994) Lives in Education, New York: St. Martin's Press.
Soros, G. (2008) The new paradigm for financial markets. New York. Public Affairs Books.
Steffen, A. http://www.worldchanging.com/ sourced November 11th 2008
van de Veer, J (2008) leaked email to executive board 22 January 2008 sourced for this chapter in Preparing for Peak Oil: Local Authorities and the Energy Crisis. (2008) Oil Depletion Analysis Centre. London.
Friday, 17 April 2009
quote of the day
The old saw write what you know is bullshit. Most of what people know is dull. Write what you don't know and find out as you go. Stretch yourself into new areas. Who wants to know about how you felt about your mom this morning while you were eating cornflakes?
Ken Kesey
Ken Kesey
Tuesday, 14 April 2009
from The Hindu,
Indias online paper reports
THE flow of startling information from China helps us understand why our economy cannot take us where we want to go. Not only is China the world's most populous country, with nearly 1.3 billion people, but since 1980 it has been the world's fastest-growing economy — expanding more than fourfold. In effect, China is telescoping history, demonstrating what happens when large numbers of poor people rapidly become more affluent.
As incomes have climbed in China, so has consumption. The Chinese have already caught up with Americans in pork consumption per person and they are now concentrating their energies on increasing beef production. Raising per capita beef consumption in China to that of the average American would take 49 million additional tons of beef. If all this were to come from putting cattle in feedlots, American-style, it would require 343 million tons of grain a year, an amount equal to the entire U.S. grain harvest.
* * *
In 1994, the Chinese government decided that the country would develop an automobile-centered transportation system and that the automobile industry would be one of the engines of future economic growth. Beijing invited major automobile manufacturers, such as Volkswagen, General Motors, and Toyota, to invest in China. But if Beijing's goal of an auto-centered transportation system were to materialize and the Chinese were to have one or two cars in every garage and were to consume oil at the U.S. rate, China would need over 80 million barrels of oil a day — slightly more than the 74 million barrels per day world now produces. To provide the required roads and parking lots, it would also need to pave some 16 million hectares of land, an area equal of half the size of the 31 million hectares of land currently used to produce the country's 132-million-ton annual harvest of rice, its leading food staple.
* * *
Although it has almost exactly the same amount of land as the United States, most of China's 1.3 billion people live in a 1,500-kilometer strip on the eastern and southern coasts. Reaching the equivalent population density in the United States would require squeezing the entire U.S. population into the area east of the Mississippi and then multiplying it by four.
Interestingly, the adoption of the western economic model for China is being challenged from within. A group of prominent scientists, including many in the Chinese Academy of Sciences, wrote a white paper questioning the government's decision to develop an automobile-centered transportation system.
They pointed out that China does not have enough land both to feed its people and to provide the roads, highways, and parking lots needed to accommodate the automobile. They also noted the heavy dependence on imported oil that would be required and the potential air pollution and traffic congestion that would result if they followed the U.S. path.
If the fossil-fuel-based, automobile-centered, throwaway economy will not work for China, then it will not work for India with its 1 billion people, or for the other 2 billion people in the developing world. In a world with a shared ecosystem and an increasingly integrated global economy, it will ultimately not work for the industrial economies either.
China is showing that the world cannot remain for long on the current economic path. It is underlining the urgency of restructuring the global economy, of building a new economy — an economy designed for the earth.
THE flow of startling information from China helps us understand why our economy cannot take us where we want to go. Not only is China the world's most populous country, with nearly 1.3 billion people, but since 1980 it has been the world's fastest-growing economy — expanding more than fourfold. In effect, China is telescoping history, demonstrating what happens when large numbers of poor people rapidly become more affluent.
As incomes have climbed in China, so has consumption. The Chinese have already caught up with Americans in pork consumption per person and they are now concentrating their energies on increasing beef production. Raising per capita beef consumption in China to that of the average American would take 49 million additional tons of beef. If all this were to come from putting cattle in feedlots, American-style, it would require 343 million tons of grain a year, an amount equal to the entire U.S. grain harvest.
* * *
In 1994, the Chinese government decided that the country would develop an automobile-centered transportation system and that the automobile industry would be one of the engines of future economic growth. Beijing invited major automobile manufacturers, such as Volkswagen, General Motors, and Toyota, to invest in China. But if Beijing's goal of an auto-centered transportation system were to materialize and the Chinese were to have one or two cars in every garage and were to consume oil at the U.S. rate, China would need over 80 million barrels of oil a day — slightly more than the 74 million barrels per day world now produces. To provide the required roads and parking lots, it would also need to pave some 16 million hectares of land, an area equal of half the size of the 31 million hectares of land currently used to produce the country's 132-million-ton annual harvest of rice, its leading food staple.
* * *
Although it has almost exactly the same amount of land as the United States, most of China's 1.3 billion people live in a 1,500-kilometer strip on the eastern and southern coasts. Reaching the equivalent population density in the United States would require squeezing the entire U.S. population into the area east of the Mississippi and then multiplying it by four.
Interestingly, the adoption of the western economic model for China is being challenged from within. A group of prominent scientists, including many in the Chinese Academy of Sciences, wrote a white paper questioning the government's decision to develop an automobile-centered transportation system.
They pointed out that China does not have enough land both to feed its people and to provide the roads, highways, and parking lots needed to accommodate the automobile. They also noted the heavy dependence on imported oil that would be required and the potential air pollution and traffic congestion that would result if they followed the U.S. path.
If the fossil-fuel-based, automobile-centered, throwaway economy will not work for China, then it will not work for India with its 1 billion people, or for the other 2 billion people in the developing world. In a world with a shared ecosystem and an increasingly integrated global economy, it will ultimately not work for the industrial economies either.
China is showing that the world cannot remain for long on the current economic path. It is underlining the urgency of restructuring the global economy, of building a new economy — an economy designed for the earth.
more from earth policy institute
According to the Earth Policy Institute, the following 12 indicators represent significant measures of our progress, or the lack thereof, in building an eco-economy—one that respects the principles of ecology.
All 12 indicators and accompanying data can be found on the Institute's website at http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/index.htm.
1. Population Although a social indicator, population is also a basic environmental indicator. During most of the past 4 million years, our existence as a species was precarious, our numbers small. Now we are so numerous and leave such a large ecological footprint that we threaten the existence of the millions of other species with whom we share the planet. When assessing the adequacy of basic resources such as land and water over time, population size is the universal denominator, always shrinking per capita availability as it expands. See http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/indicator1.htm
2. Economic growth Given the way the world now does business, the size of the economy is the best single measure of the mounting pressure on the earth's environment. It combines the effects of both population growth and rising individual consumption to give us a sense of how much the pressure is increasing. See http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/indicator2.htm
3. World fish catch Measures the productivity and health of the oceanic ecosystem that covers 70 percent of the earth's surface. The extent to which world demand for seafood is outrunning the sustainable yield of fisheries can be seen in shrinking fishery stocks, declining catches, and collapsing fisheries. See http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/indicator3.htm
4. Forest cover One of the best single indicators of changes in land use. Shrinking forest cover shows we are cutting more trees than we are planting. The shrinkage of forested area means not only that the forest's capacity to supply products is diminished, but also that its capacity to provide services, such as flood control, soil protection, and the purification of water, is also reduced. See http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/indicator4.htm
5. Carbon emissions As the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide changes, so does the earth's temperature. Thus carbon emissions tell us a lot about ourselves and our current habits and provide clues about the kind of world we will be leaving for future generations. Will we be leaving them a stable climate, or will it be a world of searing heat waves, more destructive storms, melting glaciers, and rising sea level—a world besieged by millions of rising-sea refugees? See http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/indicator5.htm
6. Grain production The best indicator of the adequacy of the food supply. On average, half of all the calories we consume come directly from grain and a large part of the remainder come from the indirect consumption of grain in the form of meat, milk, eggs, and farmed fish. Grain production is a useful indicator of growing food demand in that increased output reflects population growth and also rising affluence, with its associated rise in consumption of grain-fed livestock products. See http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/indicator6.htm
7. Water scarcity Water may be the most underrated resource issue the world is facing today. Because water was relatively abundant throughout most of our existence, we came to take it for granted. Now we see that water tables are falling in scores of countries. The data show that these individual countries and indeed the entire world soon will be facing "water shocks" as aquifers are depleted and the water supply is abruptly reduced. See http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/indicator7.htm
8. Global temperature Just as taking our own body temperature is one of the best measures of our health and well-being, so temperature is also a measure of how well we are taking care of the earth, the only planet known to support life. For the first time in human history, our actions are linked to changes in the global temperature. Who would have thought a generation ago that the thermometer might become the device with which we assessed the human prospect? See http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/indicator8.htm
9. Ice melting One of the most sensitive and one of the most visible effects of rising temperature. There are many other indicators of rising temperatures, such as forests beginning to migrate, tropical diseases moving into higher latitudes, or tree lines moving upward on mountains, but none are quite so visible and perhaps disturbing as the melting of glaciers and ice sheets. Since so much of the world's water is stored in ice on land, its melting raises sea level, directly influencing the human prospect. See http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/indicator9.htm
10. Wind electric-generating capacity Advances in wind turbine design have set the stage for wind power to become the foundation of the new energy economy. Because it is abundant, cheap, inexhaustible, and clean, wind energy is now growing by leaps and bounds. Examining the rate at which wind generating capacity is expanding compared with fossil fuels gives us a sense of how fast the eco-economy is unfolding. See http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/indicator10.htm
11. Bicycle production Annual sales of bicycles are more than double those of automobiles. Bicycle sales measure our ability to reduce traffic congestion, lower air pollution, increase mobility, and provide exercise—a counter to the obesity that is now engulfing urban populations everywhere. See http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/indicator11.htm
12. Solar cell production On the falling cost curve, solar cells are several years behind wind. Solar cell sales in 2001 of nearly 400 megawatts of generating capacity represent by far the largest annual sales to date, but still this is the equivalent of the output of only a single power plant. The promise lies in the future, where—as it continues to fall—the cost will cross a critical threshold where production will begin to jump. At least one major manufacturer is planning a doubling of production this year. See http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/indicator12.htm
All 12 indicators are discussed in detail in The Earth Policy Reader, the Institute's new book. You can order a copy on the web at http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/index.htm or by phone at (1 202) 496-9290 x 13.
All 12 indicators and accompanying data can be found on the Institute's website at http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/index.htm.
1. Population Although a social indicator, population is also a basic environmental indicator. During most of the past 4 million years, our existence as a species was precarious, our numbers small. Now we are so numerous and leave such a large ecological footprint that we threaten the existence of the millions of other species with whom we share the planet. When assessing the adequacy of basic resources such as land and water over time, population size is the universal denominator, always shrinking per capita availability as it expands. See http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/indicator1.htm
2. Economic growth Given the way the world now does business, the size of the economy is the best single measure of the mounting pressure on the earth's environment. It combines the effects of both population growth and rising individual consumption to give us a sense of how much the pressure is increasing. See http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/indicator2.htm
3. World fish catch Measures the productivity and health of the oceanic ecosystem that covers 70 percent of the earth's surface. The extent to which world demand for seafood is outrunning the sustainable yield of fisheries can be seen in shrinking fishery stocks, declining catches, and collapsing fisheries. See http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/indicator3.htm
4. Forest cover One of the best single indicators of changes in land use. Shrinking forest cover shows we are cutting more trees than we are planting. The shrinkage of forested area means not only that the forest's capacity to supply products is diminished, but also that its capacity to provide services, such as flood control, soil protection, and the purification of water, is also reduced. See http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/indicator4.htm
5. Carbon emissions As the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide changes, so does the earth's temperature. Thus carbon emissions tell us a lot about ourselves and our current habits and provide clues about the kind of world we will be leaving for future generations. Will we be leaving them a stable climate, or will it be a world of searing heat waves, more destructive storms, melting glaciers, and rising sea level—a world besieged by millions of rising-sea refugees? See http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/indicator5.htm
6. Grain production The best indicator of the adequacy of the food supply. On average, half of all the calories we consume come directly from grain and a large part of the remainder come from the indirect consumption of grain in the form of meat, milk, eggs, and farmed fish. Grain production is a useful indicator of growing food demand in that increased output reflects population growth and also rising affluence, with its associated rise in consumption of grain-fed livestock products. See http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/indicator6.htm
7. Water scarcity Water may be the most underrated resource issue the world is facing today. Because water was relatively abundant throughout most of our existence, we came to take it for granted. Now we see that water tables are falling in scores of countries. The data show that these individual countries and indeed the entire world soon will be facing "water shocks" as aquifers are depleted and the water supply is abruptly reduced. See http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/indicator7.htm
8. Global temperature Just as taking our own body temperature is one of the best measures of our health and well-being, so temperature is also a measure of how well we are taking care of the earth, the only planet known to support life. For the first time in human history, our actions are linked to changes in the global temperature. Who would have thought a generation ago that the thermometer might become the device with which we assessed the human prospect? See http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/indicator8.htm
9. Ice melting One of the most sensitive and one of the most visible effects of rising temperature. There are many other indicators of rising temperatures, such as forests beginning to migrate, tropical diseases moving into higher latitudes, or tree lines moving upward on mountains, but none are quite so visible and perhaps disturbing as the melting of glaciers and ice sheets. Since so much of the world's water is stored in ice on land, its melting raises sea level, directly influencing the human prospect. See http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/indicator9.htm
10. Wind electric-generating capacity Advances in wind turbine design have set the stage for wind power to become the foundation of the new energy economy. Because it is abundant, cheap, inexhaustible, and clean, wind energy is now growing by leaps and bounds. Examining the rate at which wind generating capacity is expanding compared with fossil fuels gives us a sense of how fast the eco-economy is unfolding. See http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/indicator10.htm
11. Bicycle production Annual sales of bicycles are more than double those of automobiles. Bicycle sales measure our ability to reduce traffic congestion, lower air pollution, increase mobility, and provide exercise—a counter to the obesity that is now engulfing urban populations everywhere. See http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/indicator11.htm
12. Solar cell production On the falling cost curve, solar cells are several years behind wind. Solar cell sales in 2001 of nearly 400 megawatts of generating capacity represent by far the largest annual sales to date, but still this is the equivalent of the output of only a single power plant. The promise lies in the future, where—as it continues to fall—the cost will cross a critical threshold where production will begin to jump. At least one major manufacturer is planning a doubling of production this year. See http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/indicator12.htm
All 12 indicators are discussed in detail in The Earth Policy Reader, the Institute's new book. You can order a copy on the web at http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/index.htm or by phone at (1 202) 496-9290 x 13.
Monday, 13 April 2009
population growth statistic to ponder on...
It takes the world's growing population less than 3 minutes to fill a jumbo jet with 400 passengers.
Saturday, 11 April 2009
social movement
Thoughts...
Many Western social movements became possible through education, and increased mobility of labour due to the industrialisation and urbanisation of 19th century societies. Education opens the door - is vital, but education which focuses in an appropriate way and builds criticality.
Earlier generations created social movement through connection of ideas, meetings, public displays and actions, and persuasive oratory and messages. It may be that the ideas we explore in the pursuit of sustainable ecology and economy need to be pitched in the way of our previous social pioneers - cooperative movement etc creating social reform through radical redefinition of the collective purpose, linking equity, fraternity and liberty.
Many Western social movements became possible through education, and increased mobility of labour due to the industrialisation and urbanisation of 19th century societies. Education opens the door - is vital, but education which focuses in an appropriate way and builds criticality.
Earlier generations created social movement through connection of ideas, meetings, public displays and actions, and persuasive oratory and messages. It may be that the ideas we explore in the pursuit of sustainable ecology and economy need to be pitched in the way of our previous social pioneers - cooperative movement etc creating social reform through radical redefinition of the collective purpose, linking equity, fraternity and liberty.
Thursday, 9 April 2009
ok - time for a reality check - with thanks to TK
Oil is a social prob, you're right, and it's not personal, but it is individual [as well as social]. Individual and social are not mutually exclusive. There is no society without the individual and I don't see the problem. Surely none of this matter a shit unless I turn off my stand-by light on the tv? If there were no cows in the UK, and no electricity use and no economic activity, it wouldn't make a jot of difference to C or global warming or oil usage if we still all finished work at 5pm. How can the solution not lie with individuals to change their behaviour? [Are you suggesting the state force them to change their behaviour? If so, none of the problems you mention is difficult to solve].
I don't get this "solutions need to be found and shared from the local level". Why? What is local - Todmorton, Lancs, England? I wish you well, of course, in the Edible project, but are you seriously suggesting you are not having a negative impact on other 'locals'? What is your footprint like as a result of getting the 500k and your activities generally? Is East Lancs a more sustainable place in nett terms? Is England? When you sign up everyone in Tod, what will they do when the crops fail? Will the 'local' support you? What will they do when the land is lying fallow every third year. What will happen when it is exhausted of nutrients [I assume you are not importing fertiliser from Yorkshire, and that nobody has to increase their unsustainable activities so that you can have fewer]? What protocols have you to stop 'everyone' engaging in the most profitable / exciting / attractive / convenient activities? This is all economics; it's 100% economic theory, nothing else. It is your theory that a pre-industrial revolution / neo-luddite model will survive the oil running out?!
Brazil went 'sustainable' in terms of food production in the late 90s, or sought to. They chopped down the rain forest to grow grain [and rape seed as an alternative fuel] on arable land, and grazing on pasture [so that they wouldn't have to buy beef from Argentina]. It was considered very 'local' at the time - but they totally frigged up not only the planet but their biggest natural resource and have started to desert-ify the interior. It wasn't a sustainable economic model, and despite decades of violent ecological activism which made not a jot of difference, the crap was only stopped when Argentine beef became cheaper than Brazilian beef. The forest has now reseeded itself on the pasture land - or 70% of it anyway, according to my Brazilian PhD student. There was no solution to this ecological meltdown beyond the economic.
Now if you were suggesting flattening Todmorton and moving everyone to Manchester; or raising the cost of travel to/from Tod by 1000%; or allowing only odd / even reg'd cars on the roads in Tod every other day; or banning divorced couples with kids in Tod from owning more than one home; or getting the council to subsidise electric cars to the tune of £3000 each; or replacing all power stations that supply Tod with electricity with nuclear power; or banning economic migration to Tod; or refusing to trade with Chinese goods; or turning off the mains at midnight every day, then you might be on to something [as long as you could model it of course so that people didn't just get pissed off and move the problem somewhere else].
You do know that if everyone in Tod did nothing else but refuse to buy goods from China and India, the town would make 100 times more difference? Why is all this activity not just a bunch of middle-class, aging-hippy, Waitrose Beaujolais types engaged in comfort activity? [I'm not being altogether serious, but you get the point]. Why choose to do something comforting but trivial, when you could do something uncomfortable but solving of the problem [at least if copied elsewhere]. If everywhere replicated Tod's activities, would you solve the problem?
Finally, there is a danger of confusing 'economic' with 'consumerist'; and 'growth' with 'capitalism'. Your dislike of 'economics' is like blaming doctors for the existence of disease. Anyway, all your efforts have growth at their core - growth of sustainability. Why is 'growth' a problem? Of course you can have prosperity without growth because prosperity doesn't have to be measured in consumerist-growth terms - this is why i keep saying to you that new metrics are the key. [p.s. You can get used to zero growth for the next ten years because the world's economy is frigged for the rest of our working lives anyway, but there will be no decline in our relative prosperity after about 4 years. Japan has had zero growth since the mid-80s, but they are more prosperous now than they were in 1990 [because these things are measured that way].
The reason I don't like the Gaia nonsense is that it masks reality behind a system of new-age, quasi-religious beliefs. It gives the chattering classes something to believe in and offers a continuum with their already-failed hippy ideals of peace and love and mother earth. It's all bollocks to make the green-wellington brigade, who explain things like The da Vinci Code to one another, feel better, while Mummy drives little Tarquin to his prep school in her 4x4 on the way to a free-trade coffee morning. The reality is that she is served her coffee by someone earning minimum wage and her little brat is taught by a teacher getting 18k a year and three ulcers, which the local doctor doesn't diagnose because she has just finished a 110 hour shift that week. The doctor can't get tenure because competition is fierce from Korean medical interns who can afford to come to the UK because they make the 4x4 that Mummy drives. Tell the check-out girl in Tesco that economic sustainability doesn't matter and that she is better off now that she can grow her carrots and trade them for biodegradable posters of Razorlight. Tell the teacher and the doctor that economics don't matter.
The Ancient Greeks were here having these 'nature of the earth' discussions two thousand years ago. It was bollocks then and it's still bollocks. The hills are not alive [with the sound of music or anything else] and we are not set on any course that two volcanic eruptions in Indonesia wouldn't change and that some lucky geezer in Cambridge science park cannot solve simply because he went for a beer at 7pm instead of 8pm. The quicker the oil runs out the better.
Where people want to go, politicians will follow [not the other way round].
mmmm. This probably isn't the kind of thing that's on your blog!
I don't get this "solutions need to be found and shared from the local level". Why? What is local - Todmorton, Lancs, England? I wish you well, of course, in the Edible project, but are you seriously suggesting you are not having a negative impact on other 'locals'? What is your footprint like as a result of getting the 500k and your activities generally? Is East Lancs a more sustainable place in nett terms? Is England? When you sign up everyone in Tod, what will they do when the crops fail? Will the 'local' support you? What will they do when the land is lying fallow every third year. What will happen when it is exhausted of nutrients [I assume you are not importing fertiliser from Yorkshire, and that nobody has to increase their unsustainable activities so that you can have fewer]? What protocols have you to stop 'everyone' engaging in the most profitable / exciting / attractive / convenient activities? This is all economics; it's 100% economic theory, nothing else. It is your theory that a pre-industrial revolution / neo-luddite model will survive the oil running out?!
Brazil went 'sustainable' in terms of food production in the late 90s, or sought to. They chopped down the rain forest to grow grain [and rape seed as an alternative fuel] on arable land, and grazing on pasture [so that they wouldn't have to buy beef from Argentina]. It was considered very 'local' at the time - but they totally frigged up not only the planet but their biggest natural resource and have started to desert-ify the interior. It wasn't a sustainable economic model, and despite decades of violent ecological activism which made not a jot of difference, the crap was only stopped when Argentine beef became cheaper than Brazilian beef. The forest has now reseeded itself on the pasture land - or 70% of it anyway, according to my Brazilian PhD student. There was no solution to this ecological meltdown beyond the economic.
Now if you were suggesting flattening Todmorton and moving everyone to Manchester; or raising the cost of travel to/from Tod by 1000%; or allowing only odd / even reg'd cars on the roads in Tod every other day; or banning divorced couples with kids in Tod from owning more than one home; or getting the council to subsidise electric cars to the tune of £3000 each; or replacing all power stations that supply Tod with electricity with nuclear power; or banning economic migration to Tod; or refusing to trade with Chinese goods; or turning off the mains at midnight every day, then you might be on to something [as long as you could model it of course so that people didn't just get pissed off and move the problem somewhere else].
You do know that if everyone in Tod did nothing else but refuse to buy goods from China and India, the town would make 100 times more difference? Why is all this activity not just a bunch of middle-class, aging-hippy, Waitrose Beaujolais types engaged in comfort activity? [I'm not being altogether serious, but you get the point]. Why choose to do something comforting but trivial, when you could do something uncomfortable but solving of the problem [at least if copied elsewhere]. If everywhere replicated Tod's activities, would you solve the problem?
Finally, there is a danger of confusing 'economic' with 'consumerist'; and 'growth' with 'capitalism'. Your dislike of 'economics' is like blaming doctors for the existence of disease. Anyway, all your efforts have growth at their core - growth of sustainability. Why is 'growth' a problem? Of course you can have prosperity without growth because prosperity doesn't have to be measured in consumerist-growth terms - this is why i keep saying to you that new metrics are the key. [p.s. You can get used to zero growth for the next ten years because the world's economy is frigged for the rest of our working lives anyway, but there will be no decline in our relative prosperity after about 4 years. Japan has had zero growth since the mid-80s, but they are more prosperous now than they were in 1990 [because these things are measured that way].
The reason I don't like the Gaia nonsense is that it masks reality behind a system of new-age, quasi-religious beliefs. It gives the chattering classes something to believe in and offers a continuum with their already-failed hippy ideals of peace and love and mother earth. It's all bollocks to make the green-wellington brigade, who explain things like The da Vinci Code to one another, feel better, while Mummy drives little Tarquin to his prep school in her 4x4 on the way to a free-trade coffee morning. The reality is that she is served her coffee by someone earning minimum wage and her little brat is taught by a teacher getting 18k a year and three ulcers, which the local doctor doesn't diagnose because she has just finished a 110 hour shift that week. The doctor can't get tenure because competition is fierce from Korean medical interns who can afford to come to the UK because they make the 4x4 that Mummy drives. Tell the check-out girl in Tesco that economic sustainability doesn't matter and that she is better off now that she can grow her carrots and trade them for biodegradable posters of Razorlight. Tell the teacher and the doctor that economics don't matter.
The Ancient Greeks were here having these 'nature of the earth' discussions two thousand years ago. It was bollocks then and it's still bollocks. The hills are not alive [with the sound of music or anything else] and we are not set on any course that two volcanic eruptions in Indonesia wouldn't change and that some lucky geezer in Cambridge science park cannot solve simply because he went for a beer at 7pm instead of 8pm. The quicker the oil runs out the better.
Where people want to go, politicians will follow [not the other way round].
mmmm. This probably isn't the kind of thing that's on your blog!
Wednesday, 8 April 2009
email thoughts...
Ok, I am quite open about my lack of knowledge in the science of the arguments for ecological challenges that will arise from climate change - I read it and interpret what I can and the cumulative picture I have constructed suggests that there is an environmental problem which we as a species would appear to be converging on four fronts a) through our carbon useage we are adding to an already unprecedented level of atmosheric co2 levels b) higher average planetary temperature has direct effect on crop outcomes - recent study from a US govt institute identified that above 34oc plants photosynthesis level drops, above 37oc they effectively close down - this has serious implications for crop volumes particularly in northern China, and across the USA - both being the largest producers of grain it pushes food prices ever higher globally c) the additional challenge of temperature has led farmers to pump water from ever deeper sources of aquifiers - technology has certainly helped them here, and this has maintained higher than expected yields at times when drought conditions would be expected otherwise, however, the water in the aquifiers is running out - in Norther China this is such a serious problem that they are losing vast areas of once fertile farmland to desert - the double whammy of loss of food production, and the need to move large numbers of people to already overstressed cities is a tricky issue. d) Population - projected to rise to 9 billion by 2050 - that is 50% above what it was in 1975 e) Oil - and this is my particular starting point (not from lifestyle, not from green politics, not from science even, but from a concern of the social consequences) oil is running out, all the reports converge on a limited resource being used at ever greater levels of consumption and less and less of it being found around the planet to feed supply. This is what got me refocused on this in the first place, single solutions rarely work - simple fact that we rely so much on oil across the planet, and particularly in the western industrial nations, that we have to ask is it sensible to presume that we can continue to function with business as usual given that our food is hugely oil dependent from production, ploughing, cropping, packaging, to distribution, to cooking, to disposal mechanisms. We have a real problem. If we add to this the recent findings from the new economics forum which bring together three sets of findings one on poverty, one on the 'social' and one on access then it is becoming clear to me that unless we pay very careful attention to the local production of food, and ensure that participation in establishing and sustaining the local production of food across diverse communities of people, we are in great danger of doubly disadvantaging the poor who cannot afford to buy food and who have no access to resource where they might be able to grow some. I really don't know how this pans out, but it seems to me that the logical thing to do is to start somewhere, hence our food project in Todmorden. It seems to me that this is not a personal problem, it is a social one, sustainability is a social issue, it needs people to connect on this at local, regional, national and international levels - but solutions need to be found and shared from the local level, governments have a dire track record in innovation - that is why I am not surprised in the response from folks at the meeting - even if they responded positively - what would they do?
Yes its economic - but to assume its economic with growth at its core is to maintain the idea that we can just continue to systematically deplete the resources available to us, we may need an economic model that looks at no growth in conventional terms - sustainable economics - prosperity without growth? there seems to be an intersteting connection between sustainability - growth and well being - particularly at a moment of recession.
Yes its economic - but to assume its economic with growth at its core is to maintain the idea that we can just continue to systematically deplete the resources available to us, we may need an economic model that looks at no growth in conventional terms - sustainable economics - prosperity without growth? there seems to be an intersteting connection between sustainability - growth and well being - particularly at a moment of recession.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)