ISBN: 978-0-86571-614-8. "Depletion and Abundance: Life on the
new home front (or, One Woman's solutions to finding abundance for your family
while coming to terms with Peak Oil, Climate Change and hard times)" by Sharon
Astyk was published by New Society Publishers in 2008. This paperback's 273
pages include acknowledgements, six parts, fourteen chapters, two appendices and
index. Sharon's work is not familiar to us in the Europe but the accolades in
the blurb comes from the likes of Bill McKibben, Dmitry Orlov and John Michael
Greer. Early in her acknowledgements she thanks her influences who include
George Monbiot, Julian Darley, Richard Heinberg, Dale Pfeiffer and Rob Hopkins.
However this is the only mention of Rob in the book and no Transition books are
mentioned in the appendices. As this work is three years old (we write in late
2011) then this may indicate the age of this book in a fast moving field in
which Rob Hopkins has been rapidly accelerated to thought-leader. So, before Rob
there were people like Sharon. She is struggling with the very question that we
struggle with in the Transition movement and it is thus: how do we get an entire
society to move to a sustainable future of natural abundance (and away from an
unsustainable lifestyle of artificial fossil fuel "abundance") voluntarily
BEFORE it is forced upon society involuntarily? Whilst it can be a pleasure
rather than a pain?Some believe that it cannot be done voluntarily. As George Monbiot wrote in Heat: nobody every rioted FOR austerity. So Sharon setup a scheme called "Riot for Austerity" with fellow Americans online to do, voluntarily, what many believed couldn't be done without technology or unacceptable sacrifice. Their aim was to reduce their consumption footprints to levels almost unimaginable to the western mind. Unlike western Europe's Transition (later adopted in the USA too) this for of transition stressed the self-enforced pleasures of doing without. It stemmed from a very-American cultural influence. More "Little House on the Prairy" than chocolate-box-top sentimentality for olde English villages greens and thatched cottages. Hence Sharon's family moved out into the country (up-state New York) and bought a farm. The book is packed full of down to earth advice which is often very alien to anyone outside the USA. That is not to say that this is parochial but it does suffer from the very limited cultural dimensions of the author. No doubt an American reading "The Transition Handbook" may well feel the same way. It is just an observation. A reality. Whereas Rob Hopkins may wax lyrical about cob-building Sharon feels no embarrassment in suggesting her readership invest themselves into the community spirit via a barn-raising. It is difficult sometime not to chuckle at the quaintness of it all but this probably wouldn't be fair. Buried in this book there is a lot of very profound thinking butted-up against sentimental tracts on the joys of bringing up multiple children.
Sharon's view is that we are all about to become as poor as The Waltons. Her view is that technology will fail us because the oil will run out and fail to sustain hi-tech solutions. Her answer is voluntary restrain. Voluntary poverty. Not that it was easy. The "Riot for Austerity" "found that we could do it, or come very close to a 90 percent reduction in most categories, while still living in the same places and with the same dubious, imperfect family members we're dragging along on the journey". This is a very important point and one seldom addressed by other authors. It is all very well one person choosing a post-carbon life but if their family doesn't like the idea, or they are stuck in the same family home, then some compromise has to be introduced. We will have to retrofit our homes as best we can and convince our families that change will be to their advantage. This is the most difficult thing in the world. Sharon pays particular attention to sustainability and the family unit. She describes how families were torn apart by World War Two hence it is an imperfect analogy for the war on climate change and peak oil. In the future the nuclear family will be the smallest survival unit in our communities. Right-wing American survivalism is not an option.
There is not much here to disagree with even when the author does chose to pick holes in some of the central tenents of the post-carbon movement. This does not mean that she doesn't trip out on some fancies herself. She believes that some of modernism is not dependent upon fossil fuels. One such example is the demographic transition to low population growth. This is not really supported by the facts. The shift to low population growth in the former industrialised nations is largely a result of education in the face of a decline in economic power. Fossil fuel driven industrialisation lead to rapid increases in population because of the link between the green revolution and fossil fuel inputs. So it is not as easy, as the author suggests, to divorce the two.
Much of this book sounds like a lament for an older, slower world. In this it slightly misses the target: critics of this mentality will easily characterise and condemn this as primitivism. If you can label it as a reversion it is as good as calling it "anti-capitalist". From there you are one breath removed from anti-american and the entire effort will stall. And there is much anti-corporate rhetoric in this book. This is a disappointment if not a surprise. So many in the global Transition movement confuse a post-carbon-life with the end of corporatism because they see corporations as a globalising forced whereas Transition is a localising force. This is confusing abusive monopolies with a very resilient form of modern business. The modern corporation will change and localise but you may still have a McDonalds in 200 years time. It may be in a slightly different line, and style, of business than fast food - but it can adapt & survive. How many online conversation have we had over the year with zealots who refuse to believe that a supermarket can champion local food? They confuse global justice with sustainability. If we can make our society sustainable then maybe injustice will be a casualty. It may be a consequence but is a lost cause if an objective in it own right.
Sharon's work
has enormous breadth. She deals at length with everything from producing local
food to the schooling children. Thankfully she falls short of just recommending
home education because of her own experience with a special-needs son. She also
has a sense of national humility and insight so rare in modern Americans. How
often do you read words like these outside of a Noam Chomsky book: "we are
teaching children that they are supposed to participate in a global economy but
also to believe that Americans are better than other people"? Sharon is OK with
us. Her insights into the changing shape of the modern economy is well worth the
price of the book all by itself. Her views on American healthcare are valuable -
but only to Americans as most of the rest of the civilised world has some form
of universal free healthcare. Sharon has enough sense of irony to be able to
ask, and address, the question of whether she is romanticising poverty. She
devotes a section of her book just to waxing lyrical about population. All in
all she is quite sold on the idea of peak oil and climate change. These central
beliefs she doesn't question at all. This book is so homespun that at times you
feel like Sharon may well have lovingly home-made the paper and bound it
herself. But it is a homespun that carries itself with dignity and
respectability. Here we have a book coming from a slightly different place from
regular Transition books - but it is saying all the right
things.
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