Small Revolutions: Voluntary Simplicity in Devon

Food, Biofuel and Peak Oil: No-one gets left behind.

This is about the coming food shortages.

Well, I say coming. What I actually mean is that it is already happening for some.

There were the Mexico Corn riots where hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets because the price of corn had gone up 400%.

Because the price of oil is so high, it is more profitable for farmers to produce and sell corn for the biofuel market where it fetches higher prices.

That's land not being used to feed people.

The rush to produce corn has caused the world price of fertiliser to double in 2007 meaning that the poor farmers in sub saharan Africa who really need the fertiliser to grow stuff, may well not be able to afford it - producing less food in that region.

The price of wheat has rocketed too. Kazakhstan, Argentina and Russia have all put export restrictions on wheat. Source: BBC

The World Food Programme has outlined stark choice of getting more money, or rationing and feeding fewer people (this isn't luxury stuff, we're talking about the basics to simply stay alive and maintain a basic level of health to escape disease and malnutrition). Source: BBC

According to Independent Bangladesh, wheat is up more than 180%, soybeans are up 82% and rice has doubled in the past year. In America, 16% of land formerly planted with wheat and soybeans is now growing corn, most of it going into biofuel.

The price of rice doubling means that a 2kg bag of rice now costs half a day's wages. This is about the margin of survival, not luxuries. (Independent Bangladesh)

We're beginning to see a convergence in food and energy prices. Right now, it's not just because of biofuel, but at heart I believe, we are seeing the beginning effects of peak oil with oil at $100 plus per barrel being the main trigger for all of this.

There are other reasons of course which I will briefly spell out here:

• Inundations in some parts of the world, drought in others (shifting weather patterns are a feature of global warming
• Meat production - growing affluent markets such as China are increasing the demand for beef and more grain is needed to feed the beef animals

If, as I suspect (and I am not an educated commentator, I surf and find things out in my spare time) that peak oil has in fact hit and this is the frontier of what is to come, then it shows a haunting overture to what is to come.

And here’s the central point:

I really absolutely believe that we can all get through it. I really do.

But it's going to be much bigger than a battle for food. It's going to be a showdown between the twin forces selfishness and fear (in all its manifestations, including denial) on the one hand, and love and compassion on the other.

There is a classic line in the kids cartoon movie Lilo & Stitch: "no-one gets left behind" and that's the policy we have to take.

No-one gets left behind. Whatever happens we’ve got to make sure everybody is fed.

How do we do that, and how does it relate to our individual actions, how does it relate to what I can do every day to be part of that change right here?

That’s what I am going to explore in my blog over the next few weeks.

Blatant plagiarist that I am, I am going to call it Digging for Victory.
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LETS (Local Exchange Trading System)

Yes, Exeter does indeed have a LETS organisation.

http://www.exeterlets.org/

I love the way LETS is so subtle. It creates an economy where money is not used, essentially allowing people an agreed way of sharing skills and services as well as receiving them.

It's subtly radical and decentralist, just like the philosophy and practise of permaculture...

The Cosmic Boomerang.

I've now taken the step of shutting down my business, and god do I feel happy about it. Thanks to everybody online and offline for their support

I got some great comment from Mike, and I'd like to paste his comments here:

"I spent most of last year doing the same thing, only to discover that I'm at my best/happiest/wholest in the garden, occasionally writing (words and software).  So, now wrapping up the loose ends of what remains of my business "interests", and just going with the flow for a while.  It's bliss."

I also had dinner with a friend last night who also told me about someone a lot more successful than myself. This person writes bestselling novels and has just given up, to the consternation of their publishers, a project that doesn't feel right, that just doesn't inspire them.

I feel I have learnt something of a lesson about letting go. About having the courage to give something up that doesn't feel right, to follow your heart regardless of its own peculiar, often frustrating logic.

The files are being archived as we speak, and I have left in its place, a picture of a buddha. There is something wonderful and refreshing and freeing about letting it all go.

I worry sometimes that it may be yet another instance of me flitting from one thing to another. But something tells me that although there is a risk of that with my personality, there is also a greater force carving out a certain, almost inevitable path.

The path is massage.

I started training with Clare Maxwell Hudson a couple of years ago. I had just come out of a turbulent period of my life with a need to escape my life in London and get some time out. The escape I found was going round Europe in a campervan. That turned out to be a bizarre and not altogether wonderful experience, and after a minibus crash in Sorrento in Italy. But I still needed somewhere to chill out so I went to Thailand for two months, and wrote constantly in my journal. When the Tsunami hit on Boxing Day, and my family was frantically trying to get in contact with me not knowing if I was alive or dead, I was on the other side of the country sheltered from the devastation and unaware of it.

I came back home and started the massage course again. This was all down to Clare's kindness as she did not  make me pay to do the course again. Later that year redundancy threatened, and a new job loomed and I gave up once again, stupidly.

I can tell how this is looking. Bad.

But I find myself here and now, knowing that I have to complete my training as a massage therapist. There seems to be something inevitable about it, rather like a vast karmic/cosmic boomerang. Whatever I try to do, however I try to escape (university, corporate careers, far flung escapes and bizarre travel adventures) I am brought back to the same thing again.

I don't believe in destiny. It's an absolute construct. There's no such thing. It's generally something we map onto history with hindsight in order to confer it with some sort of narrative inevitability that serves our own purposes. And that's a whole load of rubbish.

But I do believe in following your own heart. In fact, the older I get, I believe that is the only way. Knowing yourself and following your heart. Because life is short and at the end we die. I believe my various bits and pieces will simply become part of the universe again. That's it.

Massage and aromatherapy is something that I have harboured in my heart since I was 17.

And I believe it's time to stop playing around and start following my heart well and truly. Because that's the only way there is.

Doesn't matter that it doesn't create fortunes. It does matter that what I do in life has to feel right to me, and only me.

Clare Maxwell Hudson has closed her school I was shocked to find a couple of weeks ago. And it sparked something in me.

So, Clare, if you ever happen to come across this, I'm back. And this time the cosmic boomerang is coming home to stay, because I can no longer run away from what I need to do.

The End of Suburbia

Last night I went to Haringey to see The End of Suburbia. Along with the Cuba documentary, these are the two main films that are out there about peak oil. It's must see, chilling stuff.

Free & Subsidised UK Composting, Wormery & Water Butt Schemes.

I am so unbelievably impressed with Hackney Council right now. In the past few weeks they have implemented a blue box scheme for compostable waste. It's composted in Edmonton - which is just 7 miles away and the result is used by the council in local parks and suchlike.

Now, I was in bed with a cup of tea thinking (as I am wont to do) about stuff this morning. I worked out that if just 1 in 10 people in Hackney composted just 2.5kg of vegetable waste each week, it would save the transportation of 2.6 million kilos of waste around the borough each year, reducing our carbon footprint even further.

So I phone up Hackney council asking about subsidised or free (here's hoping) home composting bins. It turns out they have a deal with a company called Original Organics Ltd in Devon. Not only do they offer composting bins substantially subsidised by Hackney Council, they also offer heavily subsidised wormeries. Woohoo!

I have always, and forever, wanted a wormery but never bought one as they have been quite expensive (I have seen models selling for £80 and more).

Here is the current price list (correct in March 2007) for anyone who wants a wormery, a composter or a water butt and lives in the borough of Hackney:

• The Original Wormery - £17.99 (save £31.96)
• The Junior Wormery - £12.99 (save £18.46)
• Rotal 220litre Composter - £9.99 (save £9.96)
• Rotal 300litre Composter - £9.99 (save £12.96)
• Garden King 220litre Composter - £10.99 (save £13.96)
• Garden King 330litre Composter - £12.99 (save £14.96)
• Rain Sava Water Butt - £22.50
• Water butt Stand - £9.98
• Down Pipe Connector Kit - £6.98

Delivery is free, but it will take approximately 3-4 weeks. Alternatively you can pay £4.95 and have it delivered within 5 working days. Please contact Original Organics directly to order them.

What if I don't live in Hackney? For other people looking for schemes in other parts of the UK you might want to check out these:

• Lancashire County Council offers free compost bins
• West Sussex council are offering subsidised rainwater butts for water conservation
• Barnet are offering subsidised composters and wormeries
• Customer of Severn Trent Water can order composting bins & water butts
• Customers of Thames Water can get free hippos (save up to 3 litres every flush) and subsidised composters and rainwater butts

This list is far from exhaustive (please leave a comment if you know of any more), but it shows how the tide is turning and how questions of resource use are coming to the forefront of both local councils and companies. 

It's through the little actions we'll win this.

I'll try to build a more exhaustive resource over the next couple of months - not only do these schemes save money, resources and carbon, but the more we use them and ask for them, the more we positively reinforce the message back to these organisations that they're doing something good and that they are supported and going in the right direction.

Sorry to my chums outside of the UK - this has been a very local post - but if you know of any organisations that are doing this kind of thing elsewhere, please leave a comment.

All the best,

Rob

Ecological / Carbon Footprint Calculator

I've tried number of ecological footprint calculator sites - this is by far the best.

It's accessible, simple and shows you immediately and visually the things you can do to make a difference to your ecological footprint.

I've done mine and realised I still have some way to go before I can really consider myself green. It currently sits at 6.3 tonnes a year and if everybody lived like me, we'd need 2.1 planets to sustain it.

So I have still some way to go.

Have a play and you'll find it interesting changing the options to see what you can do to change your carbon footprint.

Mindfulness and Voluntary Simplicity

For me, mindfulness and consciousness is intimately connected with voluntary simplicity. Everyone puts a different emphasis on their own practise of voluntary simplicity, and this is just how it is manifesting with me right now.

I think I have had a bit of an epiphany about mindfulness, reading a book called Being Nobody, Going Nowhere by Ayya Khema.

She talks about the mind spontanouesly producing all sorts of thoughts with neither rhyme nor reason. And that (as I've experienced) with closer examination, much of these thoughts are better of dropped using mindfulness.

I was a bit sceptical of this when I first considered it. I have always believed that my ability to think is my greatest asset. It is a big part of what I call 'me'.

But when I meditated yesterday, I found hundreds of different thoughts just happening and I witnessed something extradorinary. Dozens upon hundreds of thoughts that just happened and actually thoughts that were not me, and that I did not identify with me.

It's like sitting in a big cinema on your own with a massive screen. All sorts of stuff comes up on the screen. Very often for fractions of a second each time, you have images and memories running on from each other in quick succession. It's like a mish mash of everything you've ever experienced or thought, edited together into long strings made up of random chunks.

In short, it's like channel surfing/flicking at ultra high speed.

Mindfulness meditation is useful and helpful, because otherwise the mind is like a big TV that's switched on all the time. Things happen on it and then just drop away. It changes channel randomly and quickly, makes things up, remembers other things, worries about others. The confusion arises with identifying all that mass of thought with 'Self' or 'me' just because it happens across the radar of our consciousness.

Like TV, watching the mind we can either be active or passive consumers. As active consumers, we are aware of what we're watching and we're able to have some objectivity. As passive consumers we passively and uncritically absorb what is happening - there is a suspension of disbelief. We react as if it everything it presented us were absolutely true.

Mindfulness for me is not about switching that TV off.

Mindfulness is about being conscious of and remembering the fact that I am watching this TV, so I can detach myself from the way it tends to pull me all over the place with sometimes irritating and anxiety producing randomness.

The thoughts, although the content may be familiar and they're happening inside my head, are no more 'me' than a dog I see walking past my window, or an old lady I see walking down the street.

Voluntary simplicity starts with ourselves, at home in our minds. There's no point opting for the simple life physically (for example, it's just one type of simple living), if your mind is full of the clutter of the non-simple life and you're still absorbing and identifying with everything that arises because of it.

It's about stepping back and choosing which thoughts you 'own' and which ones you'll let come across your radar and just drop away again. Like the advertising messages you've internalised, as just one example.

I don't think you can ever rigidly, strictly and consistently choose what you think all the time. The mind just happens by itself - it's far too creative and independent and random. Such thinking smacks of brainwashing and computer programming.

But I think you can choose varying degrees of attachment or detachment to the thoughts which arise. And in proportion that you don't 'own' or 'hold onto' random thoughts which arise, life can become progressively simpler.

Today's small revolution: own less thought.

[Note: I'm not a buddhist, and these are just reflections rather than rigorous workings - please treat them as such!]

We're the change.

"A sustainable future emerges when citizens recognize the absolute necessity of change and use their tools of mass communication to undertake an unprecedented level of dialogue about the most healthy pathway ahead." Duane Elgin, Voluntary Simplicity.

Logging on to my email today, I found an email from the health editor of Red Magazine.

Anna is writing an article for the June issue on voluntary simplicity, so we had a bit of a talk about what it means for me and why I do it.

Despite being horribly hungover (at 2pm in the afternoon) after my leaving do, I was surprised at exactly how much sense I made and how cohesive my thoughts were.

We may or may not get a link to the Voluntary Simplicity Book project. I'm hoping we will.

What's important is this: voluntary simplicity is a step towards ecology, happiness and a better quality of life. The more people that are interested in it, the more people will have a better quality of life and be happy and ecological. It's as simple as that. And we're all contributing in our own way to the health of our world together.

We, as individuals blogging, communicating online, talking together, are starting to create a trend. We are the innovators and change agents in Alan AtKisson's amoeba of culture.

Just by being here. Just by blogging. Or using forums. Or having a website.

It may seem for the most part self-absorbed and "all about me". Which it probably is, really, but who cares? No-one bugged Hemingway because he felt the need to write.

Today I realised that what we're doing here - as individuals, whether it's Jessica, or Dibnah or Mel - each from our own different perspectives really is the start of the kind of 'small revolution' I talked about in What's Your Small Revolution?

I started this blog off with nobody reading me - on average I get about 30 people (unique visitors, not subscribers) a day now. That's 900 a month. Over 10,000 if it continues for a year.

Together, in small and imperceptible ways we are all being the change we want to see in the world.

We may all have small voices individually, but together we shout and we are important and we do make a difference.

Today's small revolution is: keep talking, blogging, emailing, posting, communicating - you do make a difference.

Community

"We don't know how to do communities any more."

A report on radio 4 this morning showed how housing in the UK has suffered a failure of the imagination.

Poorly planned rabbit hutches, without sufficient opportunity for interaction - no benches or communal areas or anything which might encourage interaction, a sense of community.

To approach the challenges of the next 50 years and more, we're going to have to learn community. Because it's only through working together and sharing resources that we'll be able to live in a low impact way in a globally warmed world.

I'm no expert or model here. I live in the midst of 9 million people in London. The sheer density of us seems to enclose us and shut us off. We value private time and space and we choose our interactions carefully.

But things like Freecycle help, encouraging sharing and gift giving. Shopping locally makes a difference, rather than just shopping in a big warehouse where you'll never see the same cashier twice.

Community is hard. It's uneasy for those of us brought up on television and Internet - it's not instant and it's not under our control and doesn't fit our interests exactly. But we need to learn it all the same. And though the lessons may be hard, I suspect we'd be the fuller and happier for it.

Made to Last

Satisfying moment last night.

I found an old Sheffield knife in the drawer, blunt as anything. A rubbish knife.

So I spent about 15 minutes sharpening it. Very quickly it became sharp and cut through a lemon like butter.

I know this post sounds a bit stupid so far. Sharp knie. Big deal.

But my point here is that sometimes it just takes a little bit of effort to make something useful again.

And that was the philosophy of times past. You'd buy something and it would last a lifetime. And you'd take care of it because it was far cheaper to repair service than it was to buy new.

Nowadays with cheap consumer goods , everything is so disposable.

Sharpening the knife took very little time and saved in all sorts of ways:

• Saved the money which might have been spent on the new knife
• Saved the energy it took to forge the steel
• Saved the wood it took to make the handle
• Saved the energy of transport to bring it in from China or Taiwan
• Save the oil which might have made a plastic wrapper for a knife bought new
• Saved the energy it might take to transport the old knife away as rubbish
• Saved the energy of driving to the shops

Some of these are infintesimal fractions of energy which we save. But it's a small example of the many products we use in our homes, across millions and millions of homes across the world.

If we bought only the things we needed, and we bought things to last a lifetime instead of buying disposable, cheap, easily replaced products, we would save huge amounts of energy.

Moreover, I think our lives would be that much less cluttered, we'd be more skilled up and independent (which increases self-esteem) by developing practical skills to repair things (from knives to transport, to laptops - you name it), we would waste less resources, and ultimately  we would value the things we had.

And that's key. I think disposable consumerism leads to people having disposable attitudes. Because what we have is so easily replaced we just don't value it or appreciate it very much any more.

Today's small revolution was sharpening a knife.