Climate Change and Transition
The Transition Initiative continues to expand across the US and the world, gaining popularity, great thing to see.
I read some of the Transition dispatches from Copenhagen 15 and was glad to see that they gave some presentations there.
Naresh (who I met at the Cambridge, MA T4T training in 2008) did a good write up worth reading at A Copenhagen Christmas Present from Naresh Giangrande.
I am profoundly UN-hopeful about any sort of effective climate catastrophe mitigation.
For me Transition is not about mitigation of climate change. Mitigation is absolutely not possible, full stop.
Why? Let me show this “Venn Diagram” I just whipped up, to illustrate my viewpoint:
Do you get my meaning? Our countries are incapable of functioning as if there were core overlaps between us. (there are all sorts of interdependencies that exist, the critical importance of those dependencies is what is not acknowledged nor appreciated)
We live in a capitalistic world, our cultures and our states derive their life blood from commerce and the power that is created through commerce.
Capitalism requires Infinite Growth.
Infinite growth is an oxymoron and a pernicious construct. It has very effectively broken the real venn diagram of interdependencies into a global fantasy of primacy of the individual state in domination over all others and absolutely over Gaia.
This is a sick, broken, malignant system and it will continue to consume mother earth until resources fall below a critical threshold, after which capitalism and the myth of money and value collapses on our heads.
You can bet the farm that even with the collapse, corporations (real state) will continue to grind until the very last scrap of coal has been burned.
You can take that to the bank Delilah.
So, back to Transition.
For me, a person of no means and a product of an American Debt Society, rational Transition is about adapting in place.
Climate change IS happening and the weather chaos we are already living means added complexity to adapting in place.
For us here in the northeast, this means extending our season. I wrote a bit about my greenhouse dreams at our homestead blog, Humble Garden, in this post: Greenhouse with poultry.
Its my goal this year to get a greenhouse in place so that my garden doesnt need to look like this for a good part of the year!!!
Instead, imagine something like this little sketch, though likely the greenhouse will be taller. It will also roll up on the sides in the summer. The top will stay in place to cope with the extensive COLD wet rainy springs we get now.
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