YOU are shifting the paradigm so make sure everyone else understands this is normal and act shocked if they are stuck in their selfish fossil-fuel-driven ways. Act with astonishment if your neighbour drives a 4x4. Act as if they are driving a combine harvester covered in razor blades! Develop your own peer pressure.

When they tell you it is none of your business and it is there ‘freedom’ you are contravening and how hard they have worked to get the deserved little luxuries, blah, blah, blah just act as if they have just told you they have invested in a Death Camp. Just keep that vision in your mind. They are wrong and you are right. Think of the most socially unacceptable thing a person can do next to rape or murder. That selfish act is depriving a man of his food of his livelihood. It is the water he should be drinking. The job he should be working on. Our freedoms come at a price of other people’s slavery, suffering and death. Make the connection and make them see that too.

When it comes to the unwillingness of politicians to act on peak oil and global warming you are left wondering – do they know something we don’t? In the USA, as Al Gore perfectly pointed out in “An Inconvenient Truth” the US Administration’s refusal to enforce new automobile efficiency standards not only threatens US Energy Security but undermines their competitiveness. Why would any sane rational human being deliberately do something that is so obviously against the public interest? Why pursue such narrow self-interest even if it is so self-evidently suicidal?

The answer is simple. Politicians do not operate in the Public Interest. They operate in the interests of wealth and entrenched power. What they know is that measures to benefit untold millions on unborn children won’t fatten their pay cheques or bring them the power and prestige they crave. Research undertaken by Noam Chomsky in “Failed States” (2006) revealed how every major policy decision arising in the last US Election actually went in the opposite direction to Public Opinion. He most obvious example was Medicare. The public wanted more but the Politicians delivered less. Why? What do they know?

The truth is, although the public vote for Politicians the actual policies are largely directed by special interest groups. In the US the policy of Free Public Health Care is driven not by the needs of those polled on the street but by the Health Insurance Companies. This is not the democracy you want yet it is the democracy that is paid for. And don’t even get us started on the distortion in the media about the issues. For an appraisal of this read Robert Kennedy Jnr’s “Crimes against Nature”.

Democracy is a little more vibrant on the European side of the pond. However, the result is much the same. The continued inaction of Aviation Fuel Taxation across Europe is another indicator that those in power really seem to know something we don’t. Their message screams loudly from every orifice of Government and it is this: Business as Usual please.

This is why two forms of action are necessary. Firstly grass roots, and secondly, international. There is no future for International Trade so GATT must be scrapped and placed by International accords on Energy Security, Food Security and Energy Taxation. If every country acts in the same way then no country gains unfair advantage over any other. Hence Politicians can point to international needs for why the economy doesn’t grow or there is less choice on the shelves. Of course, no politician wants to be the first to say this unthinkable thing. Sacrifice. Who will step up to the plate? Who will go that extra mile? It is a modern marvel of our western democratic model that it is so able to over-rule the will of the people in the interest of a minority. What does the minority know that we don’t? Why doesn’t his powerful minority act in their own self-interest and seek to protect that planet and the people on it?

Methinks they have a big rocket ship and all planning to take their money and power to some other corner of the universe leaving the rest of us to burn. Absurd? Of course. But how do sane people behave so irrationally? The Documentary “The Corporation” provided an answer to this. The Corporation’s excuse is that it is legally bound to maximise profit in the present day not sustainability in the longer term. In this way it could be demonstrated that the psychology is essentially that of a psychopath. Well, if Incorporated Business’s have no collective responsibility, but are legally individuals who behave as psychopaths, where does this leave democratic Government? Are they axe murderers? They are meant to be accountable but are not.

Final analysis: the human triumph over energy shortages and Climate Change will be, essentially, triumphs in the reformation of Democracy. Either that, or the people we elect really do know something we don’t.

Please write in with your pet theories as to why Politicians won’t do anything. Here’s an example: Politician’s won’t do anything because they know they have captured Flying Saucers at Area 51. These flying saucers have some wonderful technology that replace all Fossil Fuels. As soon as Fossil Fuels run out it will be revealed to the World. Likewise with Global Warming, they have a special shield they will put around the planet to deflect excess solar radiation negating the Greenhouse Effect. However, if they have all of this why aren’t they using it? For some unnecessarily complicated reason that have to wait for it all to get really bad so that the public will give them a licence to do something about it. In the meantime they can use the chaos caused to enhance their power by going to war over scarce natural resources or blame terrorists for extra security blah blah.

You can be as conspiratorial as you like. We’ll publish the best theories right here! You never know. Some important person might actually read them and start to think that all this secrecy and inaction is really not in their best interest at all. Or we might be spot on and suddenly find that this dot com is suddenly an un-web-site. But conspiracy theories are fun aren’t they? The more you think about them rationally the more ridiculous they are. This only leaves one conclusion.

What to do? Start a journey with us. We don’t quite know how it will end but we know how it will begin. It starts here. The first day of the rest of your life with a commitment to change something new every day for the rest of your life. Making incremental steps to reduce your footprint to sustainable levels in the hope that we can salvage some of the better features of our modernity. You just can’t do nothing and live with yourself. When your children ask you ‘what did you do?’ can you look them in the eye? If you don’t do anything do you think your children’s children will have children at all? You are fighting a war for THEM. The war is with yourself. A call to arms.

It doesn’t matter if your view of the future is utterly grim (i.e., destruction of the human race kind of grim) or overly-rosy (wind-turbines and hydrogen powered cars). All that matter is that the future will be very different. Energy will be very expensive. Consumer goods will become rare. There will be no more consumerism. There will be no more fossil fuels. Energy will be clean and sustainable. There just won’t be much of it. Hence life will be simpler and slower. The economy will not be an engine for growth. There will be no time or money or energy for ambitious foreign policy, armies, warships, bomber planes or any of this paraphernalia. Things will stay the same for long periods and things will not always get better.

The greatest treasury we leave our descendents will be the contents of our landfill sites.

Free-market dogma suggests that the free hand of the market will conjure up some technological marvel to cure our ills. This is both right and wrong. The free market did indeed conjure up the early oil exploration but that was easy – you just had to drill in the right place. A free market didn’t exactly put a man on the moon. The market responds to price triggers. Technology becomes viable as the substitute's price increases. However, that substitute may require 50 years development whilst the price of oil has just gone up a million%. How quickly can a free market respond? In any changing market there is a time of social adjustment and it will be painful for many. Your economy may completely collapse and your people starve well before the price mechanism conjures up anything other than fuel poverty. Our free markets have done nothing but conjure up greed and the ever speedier gobbling up of finite resources. So we had all better hope that things happen very slowly for the free market to adjust to the new reality. The fear is that the pursuit of short term profit will lead to unwise investment decisions based upon the delusional premise of unlimited cheap oil.

Investment capital needs to be released into our futures and our commons. Not the past and the private. Failure to do so will lead to human suffering. Free markets do not always relieve human suffering if there is profit in that suffering. Hence the pain must be felt by the investment bankers, insurance firms, the WTO and financiers. Business is good. Small Business is good when the individuals running it are personally accountable for the actions of their Business activity. Likewise free markets are ‘good’ and the same is true for ‘democracy’. Sadly much of our ‘free markets’ are not free in the Adam Smith-sense of the word, nor are our ‘democracies’ democratic.

Hence the message is that you cannot wait for other people, either politicians or big business to prepare you for what has to be done. YOU must do what is necessary for YOU. And what you do is not divorced from the community, society and economy around you. Hence the wisdom in your buying power will effect the market and the Big Business. You control them, not vice versa. Likewise with politics. You vote for them. If you don’t like them find someone else to vote for or stand yourself. It is not true to say that you don’t know what to do. You have to look for the answers, and they are here.

The conclusion is that when we are all taking responsibility for our future and we all act to prepare ourselves for the future then the Market and Democracy will also work. They will not, by themselves, do anything useful. WE are the Market and we are the Politicians of this new society. They are not divorced from us. They only appear divorced because not enough people take positive actions. Not enough people care. What has to happen before you care? Do you have to be hungry, jobless or cold before you care? I would prefer to see that day off well in advance.

What will happen? Carbon rationing, i.e., fossil fuel rationing is heading to a gas pump near you. Will you be ready? And when we say ‘gas pump’ we don’t just mean the transport sector. We mean every aspect of the economy from building new homes to the food on your plate. You ration energy and you ration the economy. Hence we will need to find alternatives means of existence. If you are not ready then you will find this painful and you will suffer. If you have spent thirty years in preparation then you will find the change much easier.

How can I stop partying when everyone else is enjoying themselves? I am sacrificing something of mine and they are stealing it from me! Shouldn’t they suffer too? Oh, they will, in the longer term. Well, by doing it slowly day by day. By educating other people. It seems unfair when you have such a good habit in recycling every last item only to see your neighbours bin full to the brim. Why should you bother when they don’t? Because you ...   more »

It is not your fault, but you are responsible. If you are reading these words you are using electricity. Had a hot shower this morning? Think you will be able to have one thirty years from now? Either through political action or scarcity all Fossil Fuel-based energy is going to be EXTREMELY expensive within 30 years.

So, what did we get for throwing away our children’s inheritance? An epidemic of cancer? Are you happier for the McDonalds you ate today? Unparalleled comforts have bred unequalled levels of obesity, idleness, boredom, unhappiness, drug-taking, crime, social problems, family breakdown and over-population. Everywhere where the cheap oil disease has struck, we see human beings huddling together around the source of energy rather than their source of food. We are like moths to the candle flame. Just look at the shanty-towns of the third world or the global history of peasants leaving the land to work in the city in search of a better life.

In reality we are like an early aviation pioneer who has strapped wings to his arms. He has jumped of a cliff and is falling. The trouble is he doesn’t think he is falling. In fact he thinks he is flying. He thinks he will fly forever. In fact he is about to hit the ground. Very hard.

This must have happened to all of us at some point. You know. That moment when you wake up and wonder “Just when did the entire world go stupid?” This moment occurred about 8 years ago when my wife and I tuned in to (what we thought) was a TV documentary on weight loss. Imagine it - a bunch of people turn up to a health farm and everything seems normal until the trans-gender personality turns up and the video diaries turn into rants. Then we realised that we had been duped. It wasn’t a documentary at all. It was “Reality TV”. That was it. The age of stupid had officially begun. Endemol had won.

Every day it gets worse. Between satellite and cable we must have well over a hundred channels, but nothing is ever on. Even if you boil it down to just the documentary channels then the daily schedule looks like endless repeats of war history, monster trucks on ice, lions fighting sharks… And so on - ad nauseum. Will any of this really matter to a single soul? No. Nope. Not a jot. (Not many Russian Tanks on the High Street. No lions bugging the sharks down on the local river. No over-sized SUV’s doing hand-brake turns around the Shopping Centre.) The things that really matter…. Well, you don’t hear about them. They don’t get a lot of airplay.

Why do we tolerate this endless parade of irrelevence on our screens? It is in marked contrast to the fact that there realy is so much real “reality” out there in the world. Really interesting stuff. A couple of weeks ago the BBC showed a landbreaking documentary of the future of farming in a resource-depleted world. It was on prime time. It revealed just what kind of transformation our modern industrial agricultural system would have to undergo if it were to sustain in the second half of the age of oil. This stuff is really, really (I mean REALLY) important. But it merits less attention in our TV schedules than an update from a Dog Show. How did we get to this state of affairs? Why do we have to be so stupid? Is the real real world so terrible that we have drifted off into a fantasy version? We should be glued to our screens nightly trying to understand the intimate details of Climate Science and how it will effect our food chain. The DIY stores should be full of people hunting down solar panels and extra loft insulation.The TV schedules should be full of it as a public service. We should be realising that our lifestyles are about to change.

But isn’t that the problem? “Lifestyle”. The very word conjures up all that is ephemeral and passing. Cosmetic. Fashionible. Last week’s rubiks cube. Next week’s skateboard. We crave something that is continually changing and somehow ‘new’. We are bored of Climate Change. So bored that we don’t even want to consider what could be even worse than Climate Change. We confuse stuff we need to know with stuff we don’t. If we ignore the problem long enough then just maybe it will go away - all by itself. As humans we have a very short attention span for anything that passes in Geological time. Human life is too short. We can’t be bothered. On a planetary scale we revel in our own stupidity because focussing on what is wrong (for long enough to change it) – well, that take too much effort. We like our lifestyles of consumption. Anyone who suggest this paradigm may have to change is a kill-joy, a bore, a meany – but to ignore this problem only makes it worse. We could transition slowly and gentley to a world of scarce & expensive food and energy. Or we could change very quickly and painfully – at the last minute, when we have to, when it is of least convenience and it will cause the most damage. Gee, we are so stupid. This is like waiting until your 64^th birthday to think about saving for a pension.

By the time it is too late we will look back at the mess and wonder “What were we thinking?” Why did we have to spend so long living in the past? We could have recognised that fossil fuels were only a temporary, and highly polluting, interlude in human existence. Yet we cling to them as like a junkie to his crack pipe. It is such a tipsy-topsy-turvy world were the crazy voices (who insist that there is no alternative other than to fill our little world full of long-buried-carbon) can even dare to paint themselves as “modern”. How did they carry off that propaganda coup? So, c’mon everybody! Let’s all live in a Museum-life where everything is just fine, now and forever. It isn’t.

Technology has moved on now. Our understanding has grown. We have the tools to change. We are meant to be smart, not stupid. The opportunity is there for the taking. But we don’t transition because soft and gentle voices whisper soothingly in our ears that we have to stay firmly in the reassuring past to be futuristic. So we sit comfortably somewhere between the Steam Age and the Petroleum Age. We move through the past looking for a future… Embracing coal and rejecting wind, getting our basic foodstuffs from further and further away – it takes a peculiar form of self-censorship to maintain this delusion…. That the past is the future. This strange ability to hold two completely opposite views, of reality, inside your head, at the same time and treat both as if they are true, was a concept adopted by George Orwell in “1984” in order for Winston Smith to love Big Brother.

So here we are, full circle - back to Endemol and the advent of the age of stupid. I hope that, when you read this, you have a very non-stupid moment and decide to ...   more »

There has been a long running and subversive campaign against the Chelsea Tractor. Whatever your feelings about this it represents an idea of social action that could lead in interesting directions. Imagine a World only a few years from now when it is not only 4x4’s that earn the wrath of a growing number of the population. What kind of revolution would this be brewing?

After the 4x4 then what: Sports Cars? Any car that is Automatic? Any petrol driven vehicle? Any car longer the 4 meters? How about other sectors of the economy? How about active campaigns to shame people out of buying and using foreign holidays? Imagine coming back to your house after two weeks in the Seychelles to find a polite notice shoved through your letterbox reminding you of your poor choice of lifestyle. What other lifestyle choices could be subject to this peer pressure?

How about a leaflet campaign aimed simply against large houses? What about Supermarket Trolleys full of non-organic food? Should we organise “Parking Tickets” to be handed out outside of Supermarkets? How would people feel then? What if you had one too many lights burning at night or you used a Patio Heater? Would a knock on the door and a ‘Poor Lifestyle Choice’ poster emblazoned on your front door make you feel? Is this a vision of horror? Is this terrorism? Or is it the sign of things to come? What sort of world would this be? Is it vigilantism? Would it lead to violence. Should one breed of future-conscious people be allowed to make their anger so clear to the wasters next door?

Maybe they should. Maybe this is the next step beyond peer pressure. Maybe this is the social revolution that will save the future for our children. So let’s start that revolution. This revolution will be subtle. It will crop up in conversation. Drop a few hints here and there that you do not approve of someone’s lifestyle choice. It is not longer a question of choice. THEIR choice kills YOUR future. It is no choice at all. If Governments can’t act then everyone else should. I will not sacrifice my children on the altar of another’s selfishness. Remove the choice. Make that choice unacceptable. Don’t intimidate. Just inform, guide and educate. Create the new norm. Just be proactive. When someone switches the lights on on a bright sunny day ask them why. Then tut tut disapprovingly. Raise your eyes to heaven and think to your self “My Children will never forgive you”. Poor choices have no future. Your choices are not freedom. They are slavery. When you have no future you are a slave to your today.

Sure, there will be those die-hards who hold out and hold on to the conspicuous consumption. They will wear it as a badge of honour. The more others cut back the more they will consume. They will assume that the rules don’t apply to them. They will live a lonely existence.

In February 2009 The Transition Network published its long-awaited “Who we are and what we do” paper. I suppose I could just cut’n’paste that here and be done with this blog. However it would be lost on everyone. For a start – it was 24 pages long. Hardly a snappy advert. So let’s talk about why we are here in our own words. To explain what we ARE it is worthwhile saying what we ARE NOT.

Transition Towns are not an environmental organisation. Yes they may meet at "Environment Centres" but so do Amnesty International and the National Childbirth Trust. You wouldn’t describe either of those as environmental groups. One of this country’s leading groups working on tackling Climate Change is actually Oxfam. Funnily enough, no one describes them as an environmental group. To understand Transition Towns you have to forget what you think you know.

These groups describe themselves as community action projects working towards the decarbonisation and relocalisation of their town. If they wish to preserve some species or some specific habitat then that will be the human species and the habitat in that town. They are not here to ‘save the planet’. It will keep spinning quite well without us….. They may share a membership with both Friends of the Earth and the local The Women’s Institute, but Transition is quite different and distinct. To quote the Transition Wirral brochure “It is no longer about saving the planet, but about saving ourselves”.

So what is “decarbonisation”? It is the removal of fossil fuels from our lives. Oil, Gas & Coal. This may seem a little crazy at first but it isn’t just us. The term “decarbonisation” is now widely used within Government circles. I first read the term in Government’s ‘Stern Report’ (about the economic cost of climate change). Most Economists, Geologists, Scientists, Politicians and Civil Servants are pretty much aiming at the removal of fossil fuels (for energy & transport) from the economy by no later than 2050. Even US President Barack Obama said last year that "...what we must do now, for the sake of our economy, [and] our security, we must end the age of oil in our time... If anyone tries to tell you otherwise, they are either fooling themselves, or they're trying to fool you. “The reason why is simple: our standard of living will decline if we remain addicted to fossil fuels. I will return to that topic later on.

So what is “relocalisation”? Relocalisation is the result of breaking our addiction to fossil fuels. When you have less oil you can’t travel as far and neither can your food. Without Oil & Gas the farming system has no agro-chemicals to keep up yields. Hence more land and people will enter the food production system locally. “Local” is also more resilient. Less vulnerable. It is a mechanism of security to replace the insecurity of food, oil and gas shipped from thousands of miles away. Instead of this global insecurity we will better rely upon the security from within our own local community. We will transition to stronger communities.

So why a “Transition” movement? You might think that the Government has its grip on the issue. Think of our addiction to oil as being like alcoholism. Although you rely upon the NHS to make you well, Social Services to clean up the mess and the Government to tax vodka, we still have groups like Alcoholics Anonymous. The Government can’t make stronger communities. Only a community can do that itself. The voluntary sector always has a role as both carrot and stick. We lead Government opinion not follow. As the Minister for Energy and Climate Change, Ed Milliband, said last year “….local campaigns and action whether it’s the Transition Town movement or pioneering local authorities - are absolutely essential. ……because they can help create a movement for change. We need people not just to come with us, but to push us for more. We need popular pressure - pressure on me, on local councilors, on our public services and businesses.”

So how will our standard of living suffer without this transition? Traditional thinking (the kind we need to change) assumes that the economy will always grow and there will always be more of everything. Things will always get “better” where “better” = more stuff.  This concept is on a collision course with our finite physical resources – be it the availability of cheap energy or just places to dump our waste. Such warnings are hundreds of years old but it was not until the 1970’s that mankind first managed to exceed nature’s ability to support our population’s standard of living. What we are doing is no longer sustainable. Of course ‘wolf’ has been cried before so many times that it has left us lazy in the assumption that it will be alright again, this time, as it has always been in the past. However the evidence is now getting, let’s say, more ‘interesting’.

“Interesting” is what you might call the hole in the Ozone Layer.  “Interesting” is Climate Change. The war in Darfur is interesting, as was the war in Iraq. Even more interesting is the recent report by the International Energy Agency that predicts an oil “crunch” by 2013. (By ‘crunch’ they mean shortages and sky-high prices.) The signs are all there. There is a very slow unraveling in history. So slow we are barely noticing it happening to us. But it is happening. And in OUR time.

But we have an alternative. The continued consumption of non-renewable resource can be contained. Man is ingenious but we are not very forward looking. We are programmed to runaway from immediate threats but we struggle to prepare for anything that will happen five years from now. This takes vision…. But no more vision than it takes to save for a Pension. Pensions are somehow “normal” – a social norm. So what will it take?

If we choose a new and alternative ...   more »

How many times have you heard that such and such alternative fuel/technology/idea will never catch on? Despite the massive mountain the Hydrogen technology has to climb in order to offer the utility of oil those who say that it is a non-starter are missing the point. To judge any technology by comparing it with what is readily available today is to revel in a false concept of choice. If the choice is between starving and an organic apple you eat the apple. There is no real choice is there? The rosy, disease-free, apple flown fresh from New Zealand gives the false illusion of choice. In reality you don’t hold it as an apple in your hand. In fact you hold a barrel of oil on your shoulders and boy is all that carbon heavy! No choice. Eat the local apple.

Many forms of sustainable technology such as Wind Turbines have been condemned as non-cost justifiable on the basis that oil is so cheap. This is a false idea. Oil is heavily subsidised. Our culture, economy and society are geared towards accepting oil as the ‘norm’. It isn’t normal, it is a very brief (in geological terms) and very finite mineral resource that will be gone in the flash of an eye. Only in human life-span terms is the oil-age significant. Our Governments have engineered a system whereby oil is essential for every aspect of modern life with the false belief that oil was inexhaustible. Even if it flowed from the ground as some kind of cornucopian vision you couldn’t possibly burn it all for the damage it would do to the human life support system, i.e., our eco system.

So, please, let compare like for like. TODAY we live in a world swimming up to its necks in cheap oil. Take that away and you hit rocks. There is no substitute. When it is gone it is gone. Look at the world as if it has no oil and had no oil. Then the fog would be lifted from your eyes and you will see the world as it truly is. Far simpler, far slower, far less choice.

Some people will never change until it is too late. They will suffer the consequences. They will deny it is happening even if the evidence is staring them in the face. The reasons? Well, anyone who tries to tell them what to do is either an ‘environmentalist’ or a ‘conspiracy theorist’:

·     Environmentalists have beards (even the women) and wear open toed sandals and hair suits. They believe that human beings are scum who should rot in favour of lesser-spotted squirrels. They are against any free market or any human economic activity whatsoever. In fact the entire ‘green’ movement is Communism by the back door hence is dangerous rubbish.

·     Conspiracy theorists are wacko’s who believe that the world is controlled by a secret world government. The world is going to end and everyone will die because of tidal waves, the black death, global warming, of whatever else these guys dream up. It is all nonsense and they are trying to make us feel bad. It is a form of mental illness and is dangerous rubbish

What other excuses do we hear?

·          I can’t be bothered.

·          YOU Drive a BMW!

What’s the answer?

·     Environmentalists. The truth is this stereotype used to be a fair approximation and such people exist. However, this is less and less so because the main stream of society is now concerned about the future of their children. Hence is the human biosphere that is central to the new ‘greenies’. These are ordinary people and Business Men and Women who are very afraid that life will change for the worse. How can I invest in my Business if some economic collapse will ruin me? How should I raise my children if they have no future? Now it is the preoccupation of economists and housewives everywhere. It is mainstream so please keep up. The new mainstream care little for the ecosystem of the lesser spotted squirrel than they do about their own very survival and quality of life. What is the point of saving for a pension when I might starve to death in thirty years? Maybe I should do something useful with that money now? If everyone started to think like that you would see a sea-change in society and a breakdown in confidence.

·     Conspiracy theorists. Yes, there are grim nutcases out there for who may welcome grim news about the pending destruction of life as we know it. However, when everyone believes this is what is at stake then maybe the deniers will sit up and take notice. When the head of Corporations invest Billions in preparing for the new reality then you should probably take notice too.

·     I can’t be bothered. This is the false concept of choice. You can choose not to be bothered when there is an available substitute that means you THINK you have options. Oil is one of those substitutes. Whilst it is cheap and plentiful then you can always argue that you don’t need to grow your own food because the Supermarket does it cheaper. You will be bothered when you are hungry and by then it will probably be too late.

·     YOU drive a BMW. True but this statement is an excuse not a reason. Such people who use such excuses will never change their ways. This is a diversionary tactic. Think about it, even in a world where everyone walked these people would still have an excuse to drive. Expecting someone who educates you to be holier than thou is unrealistic. It is like a Tennis pro being coached by someone who is an ex-Tennis pro. The Coach is no longer able to do all the things the pro can but the pro doesn’t turn around and say ‘why should I listen to you?’. This, of course, would be absurd. The truth is that we all need to set a good example to others and our words will gain authority if we practice what we preach. There is nothing to say that the BMW driver has not chosen the most fuel efficient model with the six speed manual gear-box and then converted in to LPG. His or her driving style & mileage may result in lower personal yearly GHG emissions than 95% of car drivers. However, their choice will always be a symbol to those who can’t be bothered to make these changes themselves.

Conspicuous Consumption will be the death of us. The people who are quite happy to tell you that it isn’t there problem, somebody else should do something or that they are utterly helpless are the same people who switch on every light in their house or office, then leave them on, all the time. This is ignorance. This is moral blindness. It is a disease that we need to expose and eradicate by converting these poor souls to a better way.

Rampant Consumerism has no future. Many are proud of how much they can consume. It is a badge of honour. I recall from personal experience walking into a kitchen at work on a bright sunny day to find the light on. I switched it off and proceeded to make a drink. The next lady who walked in switched the light back on and demanded to know “Who KEEPS switching the light off!?” – as if this was something terrible. For the campaigners amongst us, this attitude can be quite demoralising. Maybe the thing to do is to memorise the tonnes of Carbon that light produced last year and remind that lady of her responsibility.

What is it with people and lights (& warmth)? Studies show that although we all crave light and warmth we can actually do with far less of both in many circumstances. Fretful parents believe that their baby’s rooms need to be far warmer than is actually healthy. If you are bought up in a warm house then you will always expect warmth. However that heat is not necessarily good for your health – in fact, entirely the opposite.

The same is true for light. A lot of light is essential for tasks that require visual acuity. If you are crafting in wood, making a model, writing, cleaning, shaving, etc., then you will need good light. However, watching TV needs hardly any light at all. Likewise many simple tasks such as getting dressed, making a coffee, having a chat, etc., require very little light. The problem (again) is that we are used to so much cheap light, freely available at the flick of a switch we become to expect it as a right and a literal source of our industrial “enlightenment”. We refer to the “dark ages” as if it was a time of ignorance and disease (which it was). In our new reality these concepts will be reversed. Bright lights will be seen as evidence of our ignorance and lack of civilised values. Low light and darkness will become viewed as evidence of our intelligence and wisdom. Imagine the future office where the lights ONLY come on when there is actually someone in the room, or where low light levels are chosen voluntarily by staff in areas where their tasks to not require some much light, i.e., VDU users.

However, our eyes can cope with far less. Many in military forces will be used to the idea of working in low light conditions in order to enhance their ‘night vision’. The security forces that surround VIP’s are often seen wearing sunglasses so as to preserve their visual abilities in low light conditions. Our problem is that we just THINK we need more light than we do.

That is not to say we need be stupid. Walking up and down the stairs probably should not be attempted in complete darkness! However, try and think about how Eskimos cope. Have you ever noticed how HOT your house seems when you have been outside in the ‘cold’. It is all a case of perceptions. There was a case of the ‘wolf boy’ a young feral child who was found running wild in India. He was bought back to England where he refused to wear clothes. When it snowed he happily ran around outside in temperatures that we would never let our children out in. For him it was normal and he suffered no ill health. He didn’t believe it was cold and he kept his energy levels up through exercise. That was all he needed. We feel the need for warmth because of our sedentary existence.

Death to the 4x4. Many in non-industrialised nations who are fortunate to be reading this web site (welcome) would be confused about western concepts of transport. Particularly our obsession for travelling around in transport that is completely inappropriate. In parts of the world with unpaved roads the way that produce gets to market or the Doctor comes to your village is in a toughened all terrain four-wheel-drive vehicle. There it is often a matter of survival.