Tag: Transition

  • Wellbeing Farm, a “Slow Tech Living Laboratory” for the Hudson Valley Bioregion

    Summary:

    Harvest the Past to Power the Future

    Wellbeing Farm will explore an array of innovative heritage and leading-edge technologies by which individuals, communities, and the Hudson Valley Bioregion can thrive in decades ahead – designing and realizing pragmatic, environmentally and economically sound tools for peacefully, equitably, and intelligently transitioning away from fossil fuels.

    Imagine a place here in the Hudson Valley where skilled craftspeople, technicians and visionaries travel back in time to harvest the best, most energy efficient and practical technologies of bygone eras, then retool and repurpose those technologies to meet the challenges of our Post Carbon Future.

    Wellbeing Farm is that place, and the time for its genesis — here among our forested hills and in our fertile river valley — is now.

    Located in the heart of the Hudson Valley Bioregion, Wellbeing Farm will be a working farm with access to a river port, that will engender the Valley’s can-do spirit, harness our region’s inventiveness and our love of innovation, allowing our region and its people to not merely survive in the Post Carbon era, but thrive. And why not? After all, our region gave the world the steamboat, the telegraph, the submarine, FM radio, the first interactive software systems vital to today’s computers, and even potato chips. We seem born to invent the future!

    Wellbeing Farm will be located on one large site or multiple locations in the Mid-Hudson Valley — a real place, or a scattering of several organizationally linked places — that will address the entwined themes of education, food production, alternative energy production, health and wellness, and the equitable distribution of knowledge, facilitating the transfer of an abundance of innovative traditional processes, technologies, and products to the local community. 

    Wellbeing will be an “invention factory” of an entirely new and surprising sort. The source of its inspiration and empowerment will be our region’s earth and waters, its hands, and minds. Here the best and brightest urban and rural, “Slow” technologists, craftspeople, educators, artists, schoolchildren, seniors, can come together to remake our post-modern world. Here they’ll find new, efficient, green ways to produce energy; revolutionize agriculture to assure food security in an increasingly unstable world; reinvent transportation on land and water to move goods up and down our valley and beyond. Here they’ll help birth a new inclusive regional economy that rewards all citizens, while celebrating democracy, cooperation, and public service.

    On the farm, every day, diverse participants — Transition and Permaculture practitioners, farmers, wranglers, post and beam builders and boat builders, commercial fishermen, millwrights, engineers, potters, weavers, woodworkers, writers, historians, archivists, computer and IT experts, and people from wildly diverse vocations — will merge and meld their talents.

    Here, they’ll move via hands-on experiences beyond spin and abstract buzzwords ­– past “environmental”, or “sustainable”, or “eco” this or that. Here, our work will focus on a Just Transition away from fossil fuels, giving new meaning to the word farmhand, as all join together to create the naturally viable means for living and being in community in the 21st Century — as we prosper economically, emotionally, and spiritually, beyond the realm of coal and oil. 

    Wellbeing Farm will be a center for Permaculture, the crafts of Transition, and for re-skilling. It will be a showplace, offering living demonstrations of the efficacy of local food and energy production, a place where practitioners will be given the time and space to develop and implement solutions intended to move the world away from an extraction and unlimited growth paradigm; toward a sustainable, steady-state economy that benefits the local community, its small businesses and residents.

    Most of all, Wellbeing Farm will be a place to dream, and realize those dreams, a place to be nurtured by our heritage, to experiment and boldly face the challenges of a post-pandemic, post carbon, human community — a place to grow crops, breed livestock, construct new buildings and boats, and an empowered future for the Hudson Valley Bioregion.

    WELLBEING FARM

    Permaculture Design System Evolution

    A place to explore Transition, Re-skilling, Permaculture, and Slow Tech, while meeting the challenges of our Post-Carbon Future.

    Wellbeing is defined as a “happy, healthy, or prosperous state.” Wellbeing Farm, therefore, will be a physical place where the principles of wellbeing in a post-carbon age are practiced, where Permaculture (an approach to designing human settlements and agricultural systems reflecting and conserving the natural world), and Transition (where those same principles, as well as other innovative approaches), are applied to solving the dual challenges of climate change and peak oil within the Hudson Valley Bioregion.

    The necessity for establishing Wellbeing Farm first occurred to me and others in 2013 at the Mid-Atlantic Transition Hub Waterways Reskilling Gathering, when it became clear that those who attended and presented – Transition and Permaculture practitioners, farmers, millwrights, boat builders, post and beam barn and mill restorers, commercial fishermen, engineers, potters, weavers, and woodworkers — all needed a physical location and community center, a place to be, gather, hold workshops, teach classes, congregate, train apprentices, share stories, and create real world solutions to achieve an urgent Transition into the post-carbon Appropriate/Slow Tech era..  Slow Tech urges a thoughtful, empowering, nature-based process, utilizing a variety of scaled down tools with which to reshape human relationships, conserving time, energy, and our bioregional home. 

    Well Being Farm will address the entwined themes of education, food production and alternative energy production, health and wellness, and the equitable distribution of knowledge, along with the transfer of an abundance of innovative traditional processes and products to the local community. 

    Wellbeing Farm will be a physical place, located in the heart of the Hudson Valley Bioregion, where participants can move, by means of, hands-on experiences beyond abstract buzzwords ­– past “environmental,” or “sustainable, or “eco” this or that. Here, their work will focus on a Just Transition, giving everyone the tools needed to create the naturally viable means for living and being in community every day, on into a positive future — as we prosper economically, emotionally, and spiritually, beyond the realm of coal and oil. 

    Wellbeing Farm won’t only teach pragmatics skills and livelihoods; it will be a living laboratory in which participants take part in designing Transition ­– where teachers and learners join in a collective adventure and commit to a common journey, originating pathways that lead beyond fossil fuels, helping people feel not like cogs in a faceless corporate gear, but like active, vital, creative individuals involved in the important work of revolutionary societal transformation. 

    Wellbeing Farm will be a center for Permaculture, the crafts of Transition, and for re-skilling to meet the challenges of a post-carbon world. The Farm will be a showplace, offering living demonstrations of the efficacy of local food and energy production, a place where practitioners will be given the time and space to develop and implement solutions intended to move the world away from an extraction and unlimited growth paradigm; toward a sustainable, steady-state economy that benefits the local community, its small businesses and residents.

    Wellbeing Farm; the basics:

    Wellbeing Farm Mission

    Wellbeing Farm will explore an array of innovative heritage and leading-edge technologies by which individuals, communities, and the Hudson Valley Bioregion can thrive in decades ahead – designing and realizing pragmatic, environmentally and economically sound tools for peacefully, equitably, and intelligently transitioning away from fossil fuels.

    Wellbeing Farm will serve as an empowering example – demonstrating ethical livelihoods and teaching beneficial technologies that do minimal socio-environmental harm; methodologies that foster self-reliance and promote Slow Tech via hands-on practices, as professionals and students gather regularly from across our bioregion on a farmstead like no other in our region: a living laboratory cultivating not only resilient  food production methods and energy and transportation solutions, but fresh, pathfinding ideas as well. 

    The Farm will take its essential lessons from nature, incorporating the values of earth stewardship, community cooperation, and individual initiative, while emphasizing the sharing of surplus, teaching that our actions have consequences, that we all have vital responsibilities, and ultimately fostering care and love for the environment, society and for each other. 

    The Power of Just Doing Stuff

    Wellbeing Farm will teach traditional skills and re-skilling for a post-carbon world. It will house Permaculture demonstration projects; alternative energy and water conservation pilot projects; and a plethora of innovative educational activities offered up within beautiful, peaceful, productive, energy-efficient spaces where students, scholars and practitioners can meet, perhaps live, and learn from each other.

    The farm will not stand alone, but will be integrated into the greater Hudson Valley community, with which it will engage collectively and creativity to unleash an extraordinary, historic Transition to a future beyond fossil fuels; a future that is vibrant, abundant, resilient, and ultimately preferable, more equitable, and more economically viable than the current model:

    • Wellbeing Farm will be a physical place, showcasing the efficacy of producing local food and power in our bioregion. 
    • It will provide the space, time, structure, and opportunities needed in which practitioners can develop implementable ideas for achieving a locally focused, highly functioning, steady state economy.
    • The Farm’s workshops will preserve the skills and tools of the past, reworked and transformed into crafts that will serve us adroitly in a carbon constrained future. Among those skills: Wood fired ceramics; small scale iron forging and bronze casting; traditional rope making (using locally harvested natural fiber); woodworking; stone and thatch work; “passive – zero net energy” building design and construction; wind, water mill, and solar steam energy solutions; leather working to create tack for working horses; beer, cider, and spirit distilling utilized in food preservation and medicine making; “bio-digestors for methane and fertilizer; low carbon transportation (including “short sea” sailing freight vessels appropriate to the Hudson River, Hudson Estuary and coastal trade), plus a multitude of other post-carbon commerce and communication technologies.
    • Wellbeing Farm will provide educational opportunities for experimenting with, and realizing, real world solutions to the environmental, economic, and social crises we face today, and those we will face on into the future.
    • Wellbeing Farm will enable people working locally to transition our Hudson Valley communities and the bioregion from a consumptive industrial model to a restorative model — shifting to a truly sustainable economy dedicated to core values of human and environmental health, cultural and biological diversity, care for commonly held resources, and cooperative nonviolence. 
    • Wellbeing Farm will, above all, focus on Transition: on the common journey we must all take together if civilization is to thrive, evolve and fulfill our dreams for a better world. This will not be a journey born of desperation or despair, but one that is joyful and empowering. To paraphrase the title of Rob Hopkins’ book: Wellbeing Farm will embody the Power of Just Doing Stuff! 

    Wellbeing Farm; Three Organizing Principles

    Principle 1: Permaculture — Permaculture practitionersdesign ecologically-sound human habitats and food production systems. This discipline strives for the harmonious integration of human dwellings, farming techniques, and communities within the surrounding natural world, including the microclimate, annual and perennial plants, animals, soils, and water. The focus is not on these individual elements, but rather on the shifting relationships between them to create a prosperous balance between human and natural communities. This synergy is enhanced when human systems actively mimic patterns found in nature.

    The core tenets of Permaculture are:

    • Take Care of the Earth: Provide first for all life systems so they flourish and multiply.

    • Take Care of the People: Offer everyone access to the resources needed to thrive.

    • Share the Surplus: Healthy natural/human systems generate plentiful outputs for all.

    Permaculture principles practiced at Wellbeing Farm will entail eco-friendly food production, and far more. Energy-efficient buildings, nature based wastewater treatment, recycling, and land stewardship are other key holistic components.

    Permaculture on the Farm will include research into practical economic and social structures that support the evolution and realization of more sustainable communities, encompassing co-housing and eco-village models, for example. Participants at the Farm will look closely at ways in which we can all interact productively, while respecting and working closely with nature.

    Principle 2: Transition — The Transition Movement represents one of the most promising models available to modern society today for engaging individuals and communities in the far-reaching actions required to mitigate the negative socio-economic-environmental impacts of peak oil, climate change, and the global financial crisis. A key component of Transition is a move away from a large-scale, global production/distribution model and toward re-localization – achieving fulfilling and equitable local livelihoods, lived in harmony with home bioregions.

    Underpinning Transition is an understanding that peak oil, climate change and the global economic crisis require urgent local action now. Without that immediate action, an era of far-more-costly fossil fuels – marked by disastrous global supply chain interruptions and shortages – looms and is inevitable.

    Industrial society has lost the resilience needed to cope with such system shocks. So immediate adaptation is essential. And we must act together, using all our skill, ingenuity and intelligence, our home-grown creativity and cooperation, to unleash the collective genius of local communities and our bioregion to achieve an abundant, connected, and healthier future for all.

    Wellbeing Farm will not need to reinvent the wheel to meet these Transition challenges.

    Transition US is an already existing, and vital resource for building resilient communities in the United States, while Kingston New York Transition is tuned into local issues and solutions. Both organizations are linked into the worldwide Transition movement in which hundreds of interconnected communities foster their own unique local initiatives, benefiting all.

    In addition, The Good Work Institute envisions a Just Transition to environmentally sustainable and resilient systems in the Hudson River Bioregion by advancing ecological restoration; democratizing communities, wealth and the workplace; fostering racial justice and social equity; re-localizing production and consumption, and retaining and restoring cultures and traditions.

    Principle 3: The Folk School – Wellbeing Farm will operate utilizing five well-established Folk School philosophies and values: 1). Re-skilling – offering training in a varied range of past and contemporary practical tools and skills; 2) Inclusivity – assuming everyone has something to add to the journey, and to creating a more sustainable and resilient Hudson Valley; 3) Honoring Elders – recognizing that the young can learn invaluable lessons from elders with unique skills and stories to share; 4) Awareness – Transition requires we give up old paradigms to create a viable, abundant future; 5) Networking – cooperation, not competition, is the key to all citizens benefiting from innovative new learning opportunities.

    Yestermorrow School

    Wellbeing Farm; Creating a Sense of Place

    The physical location, acreage, scope of programs and services at Wellbeing Farm will be dependent on funding and upon the needs of practitioners in the Hudson Valley Bioregion. It may begin small, then grow to meet our post-carbon societal and educational needs.

    As we envision it today, Wellbeing Farm will be centrally located on multiple acres in the Mid-Hudson Valley. It could be centered at a single location, or scattered at several, depending on availability of facilities, land, and community need. It should be located near public transportation, near or on a major body of water, and sited near other sustainable activity centers and established institutions such as the Farm Hub, Esopus Agriculture Center, Arrowhead Farm Agricultural Center, Garrison Institute, and the Omega Institute.

    Element 1: The farm itself – No matter where situated, Wellbeing Farm must offer a welcoming, bucolic, stimulating, beautiful landscape in which to think, work, create and write – a place where practitioners can experience relationships between human beings and the natural world. Instructors and mentors will be drawn from a wide variety of disciplines and experiences; they will require physical amenities to achieve their teaching goals, for example:

    Anagama Kiln
    • Builders will require sufficient land to construct full-sized buildings, for teaching post and beam, cob, cordwood, stone and thatch construction, and other green building methods. 
    • Millwrights will need a place to build/repair water and wind projects
    • Farmers, foresters, and those working with horses will need sufficient land and facilities for crops and livestock, to practice veterinary skills, harness making and repair, and for modifying tractor-drawn machinery for horses.
    • Sail freighters will require a dry dock and waterway on which to build / rebuild small sail freight boats, learn rigging, and seamanship. 
    • Wild foragers will require forest, meadow, and wetland habitat in which to teach forest gardening and gleaning techniques. Boyers (bow makers) and gunsmiths will likewise need a place where natural materials and tools are available.
    • Furniture makers must have a local source of wood, a sawmill, drying shed, and workshops.
    • Weavers will need a wool source, plus a place to clean, spin, and dye.
    • Potters will require clay, wheels, kilns and shelter.
    • All participants will need a place to socialize and learn skills from each other.
    • Ultimately, what may evolve is a centralized Wellbeing Farm facility, surrounded by nearby satellite locations providing all sorts of teaching opportunities for people of all ages.
    • Also, a portion of the farm must be left undisturbed and natural, serving as a place for nature observation and solitary contemplation.
    LIbrary

    Element 2: The Bioregional Traditional Knowledge Database – Wellbeing Farm will serve as a repository for vital traditional knowledge — encompassing arts, crafts, livelihoods, and connections to our natural heritage, all in danger of disappearance. This database will form an “extraordinary source of knowledge and cultural diversity from which the appropriate innovation solutions can be derived today and in the future.”

    The Farm’s bioregional database will emulate and interface with the UNESCO International Traditional Knowledge Institute (ITKI)  an ambitious project intended to preserve, restore, and promote the re-use of traditional skills and inventions from all over the world. ITKI includes among its important resources an online encyclopedia of low-tech know-how.

    The physical and electronic database at Wellbeing Farm will include a collection of books, blueprints, photos, and drawings showing how things were made and how we fed ourselves in a pre-carbon world – including resources such as the Whole Earth Catalog, books published by Shelter Publications, the Foxfire books, mechanical engineering texts, trade encyclopedias, and downloaded and printed reproductions like Small Hydropower Systems, home built windpower, and books and resources for pre-petroleum technology.    

    Element 3: Common Ground Fair Hudson Valley – Working with the New York Organic Farming Association (NOFA-NY), Wellbeing Farm will provide space for an annual “Common Ground” Country Fair. This event will bring together a large gathering of farmers, change agents, artisans, musicians, Slow Money social entrepreneurs, Permaculture and Transition practitioners, Eco-Villagers, organic farmers, fishermen, seed companies, natural food stores, chefs, cooperatively owned small businesses and thousands of families from throughout the region interested in manifesting and welcoming a new approach to the future. This event, along with other celebratory activities will generate strong lasting bonds between the Farm and surrounding communities.

    Element 4: Educational Opportunities for Children – Wellbeing Farm is, above all else, a place where people of all ages can learn. And while many participants will be adults honing new skills, it is vital that an honored seat at the table be maintained for children, and for their education.

    Permaculture as a design system is rooted in an understanding of ecological principles – and it is best if that understanding is cultivated early, through sensory awareness of the natural world, natural cycles, energy flow and interconnectedness. For that reason, the farm will foster a close relationship with Hudson Valley Bioregion schools pre, primary and high schools, and existing programs such as Creek Iverson’s Seed Song Farm Summer Camp, and Wild Earth’s summer camp. Field trips will often arrive at the Farm, bringing young people to see how their world is being re-skilled; likewise, practitioners will travel to schools often to teach a range of new livelihoods.

    In this way, the Farm will help ensure that our children have the best possible start to understanding the “why” behind the “how” of our Permaculture ways — learning skills that far transcend the deskbound limitations of old school education models. Children will be introduced to a vast range of hands-on crafts and folk art skills, ranging from toolmaking to basketry; clothing construction, fiber and fleece production; gardening and farming, gleaning and food preparation; learning to work with and respect working animals; while also cultivating a love for traditional, self-made music, storytelling, nature observation, and much more.

      Wellbeing Farm; Why Now?

    We live at a highly precarious – but also fascinating and hopeful – point in history. The convergence of massive challenges, particularly climate change, peak oil, and the global economic crisis, has brought us to an historical moment where we are profoundly prompted to act.

    We the People are surrounded by “experts” telling us that we have gone too far, that civilization, and maybe humanity, are doomed; and worse that our end is inevitable – that the web of life as we know it will collapse catastrophically and soon.

    While these dangers are real and dare not be dismissed, at the same time something very powerful and positive is stirring, taking root the world over and in our own bioregion. People are choosing life and manifesting that empowering choice in their daily lives and communities.

    The magnitude of the challenge ahead is huge, and the obstacles are plenty. But there is an emerging energy, positive spirit, and the will to succeed and thrive. There is a sense of exhilaration arising out of our talking and listening to each other, to not accepting the faltering status quo, but envisioning what we want and then rolling up our sleeves and starting to co-create it.

    There is no denying the challenges we face, but there is also no denying the practical, instinctual, democratic response that is arising among We the People today. In towns and cities everywhere we are asking each other: “What can I do right now? How do we get started?”

    In a world of rapidly diminishing resources and increasing stresses on natural and social systems, we must rapidly join to implement innovative equitable strategies to restore degraded landscapes, to feed all people well, to convert our energy-wasteful infrastructure into holistic natural/human systems that benefit everyone. Wellbeing Farm is part of that vision – a real place in the Hudson Valley Bioregion where we can create a bountiful future together.

  • Building Lifeboats – Building Community

    NAVIGATING UNCHARTED TERRITORY

    “‎Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.” ― Voltaire

    The sinking of the Titanic is horribly memorable for many reasons, but one stands out above all: that so many lives were needlessly lost due to “if only” or “what if.” The “unsinkable” vessel lacked sufficient lifeboats to easily hold all passengers and crew, and when launched, those boats were only partly filled.

    Looking deeper: many more Titanic passengers could have been saved if only the crew had been better trained, if only the lifeboats had been deployed in a timely way, if there had been a lifeboat drill, If third class “steerage” passengers had been assigned emergency stations, and if only the ship’s captain had taken iceberg warnings seriously instead of being in deadly denial. Today, no passenger vessel can leave port without an adequate number of well provisioned lifeboats, proper training and preparedness. So the impacts of disasters at sea, which do inevitably occur, are minimized. 

    Leaping forward from an historic calamity to a looming catastrophe: the world is sailing toward a Titanic moment — a collision of unprecedented proportions between blasé “business as usual” planning and a rapidly escalating and increasingly violent climate crisis. New York’s Hudson Valley is the world in microcosm.

    Looking forward rationally and unflinchingly at all major indicators, extreme weather events far worse than Hurricanes Irene and Sandy could lie just over the horizon, meaning that our communities could soon face cataclysmic food and energy shortages, transportation disruptions, infrastructure failures, inundation of vital facilities and valuable properties by sea level rise, a massive financial meltdown and all manner of attendant debilitating social disarray. But no one is seriously preparing.

    Flooding
    forest fire

     We lack both the leadership and the necessary wherewithal at the state, regional, and community levels. But we know that intensifying climate shocks are no longer far off, low probability events. We’ve been warned not only by the climate models — maps of our potential future — but also by daily current events: unprecedented heatwaves storms and droughts are here now. For proof, we need look no further than the cataclysmic fires in Australia and the Amazon, or Paradise, California.

    The stages of climate grief:  

    With every passing day it grows more dangerous for us to depend on good luck or forced optimism and false hope as our best protections. Sooner or later the United States, the Northeast and the Hudson Valley will be slammed by climate disaster. Will we be ready?

    The short answer: we won’t, unless we rapidly move through the stages of climate grief, from paralysis to action. The climate change facts at hand tell us we should already be well past the first stage, denial. But that isn’t the case, with the national government — our ship of state — making its rudderless way through a wildly roiling sea of political division, while individuals are consumed by incapacitating grief. Clearly, the only way forward right now is through decisive local action.

    To help determine the healthy way ahead, let’s look at the stages of our global trauma:

    Obviously, we need to move to the fourth stage as quickly as possible — without panic, acting rationally as we prepare ourselves for unpredictable, but increasingly likely climate shocks, the “what ifs” of our current historic moment.

    Survivalists, preppers and lifeboat builders:

    Some may compare lifeboat builders with survivalists (1) and preppers (2) — those constructing fortified bunkers in remote areas to protect themselves from the “others” in event of “Apocalypse.” 

    But there is a significant difference: lifeboat builders aren’t only thinking of themselves; they’re leading the way, constructing small, local, resilient community systems where we will all be able to rely on each other for survival and safety. This sort of local resilience allows us to live not separately, but together in hope and possibility, rather than in fear — to thrive rather than merely survive.

    Like a ship captain and crew, however, today’s lifeboat builders must prepare well in advance of chaos. They must anticipate disaster as it might unfold, making sure they’ve provided enough boats, stocked them with adequate provisions and trained crew who know how to respond in a crisis. As we sail into the uncertain waters of climate chaos, we must ready our households, neighborhoods and communities. 

    And just as we would never accuse a ship captain who conducts regular lifeboat drills of “doom and gloom thinking,” we must face reality: the real danger of impending climate chaos comes from us ignoring the signs and doing nothing. Inaction puts us all at significant risk. Action offers us hope.

    A New Narrative:

    As a species, we are storytellers. And the stories we tell collectively, whether they be found in Gilgamesh, the Bible, or traditional American History all serve as action plans for the time. They tell us what worked well in the past so we might move into a productive future. But sometimes those tales become outdated and the signposts pointing to safety in the past instead lead us down paths into danger.

    The tale we’ve told ourselves over the last 300 years, since the Age of Reason and on into the Modern Age of Expansion, is that we live in a time of limitless progress, of ever-expanding opportunity and possibility, in which there is a high technological fix for every problem.

    In this story, we tell ourselves that unlimited growth and soaring GDP is a real measure of economic health and community wellbeing; that a rising stock market protects us, no matter how rundown our neighborhoods;  that deregulation stimulates investment, even as climate destabilizing emissions rise; and that national security need only focus on existential threats beyond our borders, and not on quality of life and preservation of civil liberties.

    Today, climate change — along with the socio-environmental and economic upheaval it brings — is turning the idea of endless progress on its head

    Unnatural disasters — pandemics, human-amplified heatwaves, intensified storms and droughts, and rising sea levels falling like bombs randomly across the landscape — are as destructive and demoralizing as war. Extreme weather events now batter whole countries, states, cities, suburbs and rural areas; disrupting commerce, undermining the bottom line, putting human lives at stake, destroying homes and hopes.

    That’s why it is long past time for us to tell a new story: one that recognizes the turbulent sea of change we sail in; a story that recognizes the dangers around us, but doesn’t demand a fear or grief response. This new story inspires us to prepare together as communities with open eyes, minds and hearts — ready to face the risks of impending calamity while embracing the promise of resilience and hope of regeneration.

    We need to change the narrative now, embrace a new story truer to circumstance — a storyline in which we heroically face adversity together, creating abundance out of crisis together, moving with agility through chaos toward new community values that will sustain us in the unsettled years ahead.

    The roots of that story are certain: we will thrive only by being earth and community stewards, rather than exploiters; only by demanding that our leaders address not only the economic balance sheet, but also our ecological and equity balance sheets. Only then will we be able to go ahead with hope and find a safe harbor in the climate crisis. Only then can we leave a better world for our children.

    Planning resilient, future-proof “too small to fail” Hudson Valley communities:

    Future proofing communities can be difficult….  Thinking ahead to the challenges of tomorrow is not something that every community proactively considers. By doing so however, and by actively working with an eye to the future, communities can both improve themselves now and put them in a better position for the years to come.

    While it is true that there is little that small communities can do to independently reverse climate change, there are many things these same communities can do to mitigate the climate crisis in their area as it unfolds, and to future-proof themselves against climate chaos.

    Importantly, because communities are smaller than states or nations, they have the capacity for rapid change and quick course corrections. They are better able to bring citizenry together, to reach consensus and to act decisively.

    As such, individual Hudson River communities can serve as laboratories, where citizens work together to build lifeboats, to stock and staff them against the dangers ahead. Moreover, many local communities acting in this way throughout the region could ultimately “float all boats” in a climate emergency — increasing our chances of mutual survival across the region.

    Where to begin? Every community needs to start by objectively assessing threats. Then we need to unflinchingly evaluate the greatest points of weakness — whether these take the form of infrastructure; social, public health, economic and political structures. Finally, communities need to fortify those weaknesses against the storms to come — work that will enrich our towns and neighborhoods in the present, while reducing risk and enhancing resilience for the future.

    food Security

    A few practical lifeboat building ideas: community flood-proofing in preparation for climate chaos, implementation of drought-resistant landscaping, institutionalization of green building practices, zoning against development in climate disaster-prone floodplains, the installation of redundant storm-proof energy systems, the establishment of community-wide food security, and the creation of damage control centers equipped to deal with sudden disasters — all of this and much more can protect our communities now, while future-proofing them against the harms common on a much warmer, more turbulent planet and in a post-carbon future.

    Resilient communities are at the core of a “Too Small to Fail” future. If we don’t plan for more robust proactive communities, and implement solutions for looming problems, a catastrophic crash seems inevitable. However, in our new storyline, crisis can equal opportunity — as our nation learned during the Great Depression and World War II.

    But if sensible democratically arrived at plans to manage disaster aren’t formulated and pressed forward now, the opportunity afforded by crisis could be hijacked by a better organized, well-financed minority with an authoritarian agenda that benefits the few at the cost of the many. One need look no further than autocratic governments in today’s Brazil, Turkey, Venezuela, and China to see what is at risk.

    Here is glimpse of what our Hudson Valley Lifeboat Culture might look like:

    • Governance: We will prosper via an eclectic egalitarian innovative amalgam of businesses, public interest non-profits, county and municipal governments working together towards a common goal;
    • Energy production: We will promote rooftop and regional solar farms, wind farms, small hydro, tidal energy, community choice aggregation, and conservation to achieve energy independence from the global fossil fuel grid;
    • Food production and food security: We will encourage and protect rural and urban farmers (and the land), develop a new “Grange,” promote “victory” gardens and rooftop/backyard apiaries; convert city and suburban lots into linked “front yard” farms; provide opportunities for artisanal commercial fisheries, fish farmers, and fish mongers; grow our local farmers markets, and build and stock community/emergency food and water storage facilities.
    • Transportation: We will work toward a local water-based and human electric/transportation system to bring goods to market and continue to move people from place to place.  That system will also be hardened and fortified against the impacts of rising sea levels and extreme weather events;
    • Communication: We will develop communication networks and devices that are independent of large corporate telecommunication networks.  An emergency ham radio system for communication in a disaster, community and neighborhood internet, community equitable internet initiatives, and mesh services, and expanded neighbor to neighbor communication.
    • Emergency preparedness:  In the event of an emergency citizens and organization have to be trained and in a position to augment the emergency services, or when those are overwhelmed take a leadership role in both preparing for disaster and implementing responses.
    • Environment: We will clean up our waterways to make them more productive; restore and create wetlands that guard against flooding and storm surges, while serving as nurseries for fish and wildlife; nurture wildlands and “forest gardens” where fruits, nuts, mushrooms and herbs can be sustainably harvested; manage sustainable forests that are logged selectively with an eye on future production; convert urban brownfields to greenfields that balance natural systems with commercial needs.
    • Economics: We will avoid sole reliance on a nationally volatile currency by creating a (or expanding the use of existing) local currency used to pay for local commodities; buying and hiring (and training) locally; creating public works projects for sustainable development, move away from an international and national economy toward a regional economy that fosters local businesses and micro-industries — ranging from brewers and butchers to cheese makers and toolmakers; from ship builders and seafarers, coopers, blacksmiths, and bicycle builders; local wind turbine, solar collector, and tidal generator manufacturers and installers; shoemakers, Repair Cafes, and fix it shops; composters and fryer fat oil recyclers.  Land for farming and sustainable forestry will be protected through conservation easements and equitable urban development will be conserved through community land trusts.
    • Society and education: We will develop regional and seasonal “Common Ground” fairs and celebrations and Chautauqua’s with music, dancing, demonstrations and exhibits of local makers’ products, local food, beer, wine and spirits, and fellowship. Encourage an education system that doesn’t result in graduates leaving for other regions, but in their staying within their communities to pursue sustainable livelihoods. We will ensure affordable housing, improve work opportunities for disadvantaged groups, and allow seniors and children to play useful and valuable civic roles.

    These goals can seem utopian, especially if we look at them through the lens of the old story of “progress.” There are, of course, also hard realities to contend with as we develop a Lifeboat Culture.  The Hudson Valley and the New York City Bioregion — is connected to the rest of the world by literally thousands of lifelines, all of which are now at risk. These include an aging and increasingly failure-prone power grid; an aging and leaky water system; and a vast network of roads, rails, shipping and air routes that rely exclusively on fossil fuels whose supply is prone to sudden cost spikes and shortages.

    Like a patient on intravenous life support, any major interruption in the flow of these resources to the  region can hamstring or harm its economy and people. With global oil, gas and coal production predicted to irreversibly decline in the next 10 to 20 years, a related economic collapse becomes not a question of if, but when — unless we act now to soften and deflect the blow, creating redundant energy, food, product and transport systems that kick-in as international resources become unreliable.

    In the face of this reality, how do we transition from the storyline of unlimited growth and intense capitalist competition to a storyline that calls for community union, local shared economic prosperity, and the building of a Lifeboat Culture? The journey begins as:

    • The region and its communities commit to being a leader in sustainability and resilience.
    • Local people hold their elected officials responsible for inaction and reward effective action.
    • We recognize that real economic pain is associated with the changes needed to mitigate and avoid the effects of sea level rise and climate change, and find ways to reduce that pain.
    Main Street

    Main Street versus Wall Street:

    Any plan for a resilient bioregional economy must insure that every citizen has fundamental needs met for nutritious food, shelter, healthcare, education and ecosystem services. This must be a non-negotiable condition if we are to meet the climate change challenges ahead and satisfy the promise of our great egalitarian democracy.

    As radical as the ideas presented in this proposal may seem when seen from inside our current myopic progress-obsessed worldview, many of these concepts are rooted in our common regional immigrant heritage:  my immigrant grandfather, for example, joined with a friend who owned a pushcart to start a lumber company. They scavenged construction sites daily for discarded lumber and wood scraps, selling the material for what it was – a recycled product. They built their company into a large wholesale/retail lumberyard, and eventually became a regional self-serve hardware and lumber company.

    What my grandfather and uncles, who eventually took over the business, never forgot was that they had an obligation to their employees — many of whom worked at the company for their entire careers. The firm sold a good product, treated their customers with respect, supported their community, and made a living for their families. But after my uncles retired, their partner sold the company to a Fortune 500 company and within a few years it no longer existed.

    I tell this story for a reason: that lumber company was a Main Street business — locally rooted and privately held. It was innovative, successful, and sold materials to people who became repeat customers because of the quality and service they received. As soon as the company became the property of Wall Street, those values were lost; replaced solely by a drive for limitless profit. Until that point, their business had been “too small to fail.”

    Evidence increasingly shows that every dollar spent at a “too small to fail” locally owned business generates two to four times more economic benefit – measured in income, wealth, jobs, and tax revenue – than a dollar spent at a globally owned business. This is because locally owned businesses spend much more of their money locally and thereby are a regional economic multiplier.

    Under our present economic system, large transnational companies reap big profits. But no local businesses receive any of our pension savings, investments in mutual funds, venture capital firms, or hedge funds. The result is that many of us over-invest in Fortune 500 companies we distrust, and under-invest in the local businesses we know are essential for a strong local economy.

    That’s why we need new mechanisms to enable investment in local, place-based, “too small to fail” Main Street businesses. At the heart of such mechanisms is our investment in a Lifeboat Culture. By thinking small, not big; local, not global, we strengthen community resilience against climate change.

    Main Street investing is how the local economy once functioned, and it was the basis of much 20th century urban prosperity. It was then in the interest of well-off farmers, merchants, and small town banks to loan money to, and invest in, businesses that hired local people, in order to make something that held value and created real wealth.

    When we support “buy local / hire local” campaigns, promote “locavesting,” urge a resurgence of local currencies; and institute new public and community banks, community development financial institutions, credit unions and other local lending institutions, we reinvigorate our region’s Main Street economy. And by so doing, we strengthen our regional Lifeboat Culture — put simply, in such a world, the Hudson Valley thrives!

    Revival of the Commons: Share management of shared resources

    A key strategy of our Lifeboat Culture, if it is to succeed, will be for communities to take back the commons — finding ways to manage our waterways, fisheries, pastures, forests and other local landscapes in a sustainable manner that can be productive for hundreds of years.

    This means reinstituting many of the rules that people created and used in generations past to protect shared resourced for future generations so that they could be harvested and shared without degrading ecosystems. While local supervision flies in the face of 21st century trends of federal and state management, corporate exploitation, or privatization — it helps to build community resilience.

    Like a bank account, a farmer or fishermen never removes more from a commons ecosystem than nature can replace in a reasonable amount of time. And it is the community that ultimately benefits.

    The co-operatives model:

    Co-operatives in various forms (production, retail, housing, and credit) are another organizational model in which ethics are embodied and embedded, and which are vital to a functioning local Lifeboat Culture.

    Co-operative principles confer greater resilience – which matches the priority for safety and security in difficult times. Although there are no panaceas and co-ops can fail too, it is also true that co-ops have a track record of longevity and survival that is superior in many cases to private companies that is vital in times of economic contraction and environmental turmoil.

    Living fully in a world of “what if”

    At the start of this proposal we profiled the human tragedy resulting from the wreck of the Titanic — an unnecessary loss of life that occurred not only because of a natural disaster, but that resulted from human carelessness, unpreparedness, elitist hubris and stupidity.

    As the Hudson Valley sails into an uncertain, but surely dangerous, climate crisis, we can learn from the horrors experienced by the Titanic on the high seas. We can move steadily away from dependence on increasingly undependable fossil fuels, giant transnational companies and international finances. We can build energy, food and economic redundancies into local communities to buffer them against international and national shortages and systems collapses. We can invest in our neighborhoods and our neighbors, working together to create “too small to fail” Main Street businesses, non-profits and local governments that strive in union to serve their communities and the people.

    None of this will insure us totally against the dangers ahead, but preparedness as engendered in a Lifeboat Culture, will give our communities resilience and staying power. By acting now with foresight and hard work, we can care for each other, reinvesting in people and the land, creating a future for the Hudson Valley that emphasizes Earth Care, People Care and Fair Share.

    We can create organizational and institutional structures that are sustainable, endowed with ethical values that serve all citizens not only a privileged elite. In our Hudson Valley Lifeboat Culture, the emphasis will not be on blind, reckless progress at all cost, but on the creation of an equitable society that avoids resource depletion while fostering slow growth, and most importantly, hope for everyone, including the most vulnerable people and species. 

    Ultimately, the journey begins simply, with the joining of hands; the breaking of bread; and in taking a first step together, in your community or in mine. I hope you’ll join me for the journey.

    (1) a person who makes preparations to survive a widespread catastrophe, as an atomic war or anarchy, especially by storing food and weapons in a safe place.

    (2) a person who believes a catastrophic disaster or emergency is likely to occur in the future and makes active preparations for it, typically by stockpiling food, ammunition, and other supplies.  “there’s no agreement among preppers about what disaster is most imminent”

    (3) a farmers’ association organized in 1867. The Grange sponsors social activities, community service,

  • Transition, Permaculture, and Slow Technology

    The Center for Post Carbon Logistics

    Part one, the Origins of the Center for Post Carbon Logistics

     Traditional knowledge is in danger and its disappearance would not only cause the loss of people’s capability to keep and pass on the artistic and natural heritage, but also of an extraordinary source of knowledge and cultural diversity from which the appropriate innovation solutions can be derived today and in the future.

    Lewis Mumford wrote in 1970, “The great feat of medieval technics was that it was able to promote and absorb many important changes without losing the immense carryover of inventions and skill from earlier cultures. In this lies one of it vital point of superiority over the modern mode of monotechnics, which boast of effacing, as fast and as far as possible, the technical achievements of earlier periods.”

    Slow Money, Slow Food, and Slow Tech

    “ …..just as the last 10 years or so have brought people greater awareness about the provenance of their food, we believe this is the moment to move people towards a greater understanding of their technology.”

    Slow Food

     Slow Money is a movement to organize investors and donors to steer new sources of capital to small food enterprises, organic farms, and local food systems. The Slow Food movement aims to preserve cultural cuisine and in so doing to preserve the food plants and seeds, domestic animals and farming within an eco-region. It is also a social and political movement that resists the dehumanizing  effects  of fast food and corporate farming.  Slow Tech  is about the re-invigoration of heirloom technologies and traditional skills needed to thrive in a carbon-constrained future.

    Transition and Permaculture

    Transition is the movement by which people are re-skilled in heirloom technologies.  Permaculture gave birth to the Transition movement and offers guidance on how to use those skills to design resilient lives.  The ethics; earth care, people care, and fair share  form the foundation for Permaculture and are also found in most traditional societies.  

    Transition fosters and supports the revitalization of Slow Tech skills and Permaculture asks us to consider relearning the proficiency needed to reanimate wind mills, watermills, and sailing vessel while putting hand tools, levers, and blocks and tackle back into service.

    Permaculture incorporates knowledge from cultures that have existed in  balance with their environment for much longer than our consumer centered fossil fueled society. We should not  ignore the positive accomplishments of modern times, but in the transition to a sustainable future, we need to consider values and concepts different from what has become the social norm.

    Slow Technology:

    C. Milton Dixon, interviewed in The (Chicago) Examiner, May 2011, said:   “(high tech is) industrial technology and refers to things that are out of your control, as opposed to low technology, which is simple things done in a smart way.  (S)Low technology is using the intelligence of nature to accomplish tasks. High technology is buying an apple from the store; low technology is getting an apple from a tree you planted yourself. One of the big differences is in high technology you are disconnected from cause and effect relationships. So if you pollute through high technology, you may not feel the direct result. Low technology is connection because you are involved in the process and you are directly affected by the consequences.”

    Small is Beautiful

    The idea of Slow Technology has its roots in the ideological movement called “appropriate technology,” a term coined by E.F. Schumacher in his book “Small is Beautiful,” first published in 1973.  Slow or appropriate technology centers on ideas of proper scale: technology should be “people-centered.”  “Slow technology as an ideology that extends thoughtfulness about how devices shape our relationships to time, emotion and energy. Slow Technology is articulated in an article about the concept written about by two Swedish designers, Lars Hallnas and Johan Redstrom, who in 2001 described Slow Technology as “a design agenda for technology aimed at reflection and moments of mental rest rather than efficiency in performance.”  The two also said, “The appropriate technology movement has at its philosophical heart the desire to capacitate people of all walks of life to create (1) Meaningful Employment, (2) Comprehension of Technology, (3) Self-Reliance, and (4) Reduced Environmental Impacts.” 

    Technology can be Slow in various ways: 

    • It takes time to learn how it works,
    • It takes time to understand why it works the way it works,
    • It takes time to apply it
    • It takes time to see what it is
    • and it takes time to find out the consequences of using it

    Slow Tech Practice:

    Hand Woodworking Tools

    No woodworker’s first project is a chair, a house, or a boat.  My first lesson in woodworking was to take a piece of rough lumber, and using hand tools, shape it into a three dimensional absolutely square finished piece of wood.  It took me a full day and I used every tool on my bench.

    Chairs

    Once my practice was established I developed a method that worked for me.  First I sat with a piece of tracing paper and did a rough sketch of the final product.  Then I drew it full scale in three views.  From that drawing I could determine what amount of wood was needed, where each joint would go, and how the pieces would transition from one to another to create an aesthetically pleasing whole.  Then the sawing, planing, joinery, shaping, and finishing would take place.  Each of those steps were learned by doing, learning from others, by using traditional references, and knowing that the dimensions and materials were appropriate for the final use.

    I was lucky both to have mentors and to have the time to hone my skills first as a student of Alan Lazarus at Virginia Commonwealth University  and then as a resident woodworker at Peters Valley Craft Center in New Jersey.  Peters Valley gave me the opportunity, and the time, to learn the business, practice my craft, and teach.  It also was a community of like-minded professional potters, weavers, metal workers, and woodworkers that supported one another. 

    If we are to learn the skills necessary to survive and thrive in a post carbon world, more places like Peters Valley will be necessary, more experienced craft workers will have to open their shops to apprentices, and more people are going to have to be willing to take the time, resources, and effort to learn.

    In future posts I will talk about preserving other skills and tools to serve a post carbon future such as building and restoring water and wind mills, wooden boat building, repair and restoration, artisanal fishing, farming, and “future proof” communities. 

    There are schools and apprentice shops for learning large-scale woodworking and metal working skills that are and will be needed for Slow Tech water-driven mills, and wind-driven vessels that will be part of the continuum that supersedes the “blip” of petroleum powered short term thinking and consumption.

    The following are some links to the resources, books, skills, and techniques that are needed to adapt to carbon constrained future that is resilient, abundant, and equitable.

    Water Mill

    Let the following lists of links and books be a starting point – an opportunity to contribute your own favorite sites, books, drawings, and especially experiences with humans with these skills.  Perhaps this list can be the beginning of a Traditional Knowledge Database that will gather and protect historical knowledge and promote innovative practices based on traditional skills.

    Please send you ideas, links, and experiences to nfo@postcarbonlogistics.org

     “International Traditional Knowledge Institute” (ITKI) 

    Foxfire

    WoodenBoat magazine 

    The Museum of Old Techniques

    Compendium of operating grist mills

    Low Tech Magazine

    Museum of Early Trades and Crafts

    Institute for Traditional Knowledge

    Appropedia

    Ropes, Knots, and Hitches

    Maritime Museums

     Mills restored by Rondout Woodworking

    Rocking the Boat

    Buffalo Maritime Center

    The International Windship Association

    The Hudson River Maritime Museum, Riverport Wooden Boat School

    The Apprenticeshop

    Yestermorrow

    Books, please try your independent bookseller first:

    • The Nature and Art of Workmanship, David Pye, Herbert Press
    • How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive, A Manual of the Step by Step Procedures for the Compleat Idiot,   John Muir and Tosh Gregg, Avalon Travel/Perseus Books.
    • The Power of Just Doing Stuff, Rob Hopkins, Transition Books
    • A Museum of Early American Tools, Eric Sloane, Wilfred Funk
    • Why We Make Things and Why it Matters, Peter Korn, David R. Godine
    • The Craftsman, Richard Sennett, Yale University Press
    • Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig, Harper Torch
    • Shop Class as Soulcraft, Matthew B. Crawford, Penguin Press
    • The Whole Earth Catalog, Stewart Brand, et al, The Whole Earth Truck Store
    • Transportation in a Post-Carbon World, Anthony Perl, Richard Gilbert, Post Carbon Institute
    • Foxfire Series, Eliot Wigginton and Foxfire Fund, Inc. Penguin Random House
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