New Year, Big Picture, World Rescue

by Richard Register

I attended a most unusual conference two months ago but shrinking cities was in the news and needed some commentary. So I postponed writing and posting this report until now...  

Now, as befits a new year, looking ahead - in fact maybe too far ahead - I'll write about the conference that looked at what happens After the Fall. Say Peak Oil, climate change and accelerating species extinctions may be rushing toward a collision, a perfect storm that could bring on a world economic collapse and general chaos, not a Great Depression, but a full on collapse of now by far the largest civilization the world has known, the technological civilization all us 7 billion and growing are part of, whether benefiting from or not. How can we save something of civilization and begin again - or can we even save anything at all? We (speaking for European history anyway) recovered from the Fall of Rome though it took about 1,000 years and the reorganization was radically different in many ways. Jews have recovered from several thousand years of pogroms back to Egypt and nastiness earlier. American Indian culture is rising in a few places after total extermination of many of its tribes and near extermination of all the rest. What can we learn from religious and cultural traditions and other schools of thought that managed to squeeze through those desperate historic trap doors and start all over again, if not personally, their to the xth generation later descendants? Or can we at all this time around, now that the civilization in question embraces the whole world?

John Cobb, leading Protestant theologian

John Cobb, a Christian theologian and professor at the Claremont Graduate School in Claremont, California is no doom and gloom Chicken Little. He's been extremely upbeat and positive, even inspirational in his commitment to the creative and the healthy ever since I first met him slightly more than 40 years ago and no doubt for years before. He is coauthor with Herman Daly of the book on economics, "Our Common Future - redirecting the economy toward community, the environment and a sustainable future." The conference with many workshops was called "Brave New Planet - Imaging Ecological Communities." For a little dark humor I called it, among a few of my friends, the "After the End of the World Conference." But it was hardly a laughing matter.

So if he has been such a thoughtful and positive man all these years why did the YouTube announcement for his conference start like this? He's 86 years old, sitting in a chair that looks to be in his back yard, on the lawn. He won't quit, and he's looking straight into the camera. You can't miss it. He's a genuinely kindly and very thoughtful guy.

"This conference is based on some very bad news. Now, we are going to try to make the conference itself come out with a little better news. But we [the hosts, an NGO called Progressive Christians Uniting] think that we as a people, especially we people in the church, need to recognize that the human activity over the past few centuries and increasing recently has created the situation in which disaster, [long pause] catastrophe, [long pause] is inevitable. The civilization that we have created, the global civilization based on economic growth, has overshot, and that old pattern that biologists are familiar with of a species overshooting, is inevitably followed by a collapse. ...Western society... has been using resources and polluting at a rate the natural world simply cannot cope with."

Added inducement for me to participate was the fact that I knew John passably well in the early 1970s. He was actively interested in Paolo Soleri's ecological city ideas and John and I had even driven out from the Los Angeles area to a special seminar at Paolo's experimental town in Northern Arizona, Arcosanti, which was in the early stages of construction at the time. At that 1973 seminar Soleri was introducing his ideas for his arcology (architecture + ecology) city designs powered by solar energy and our evolving creative human spirit. He called it the "Two Suns Seminar," one being the sun itself, the other being us and our spirit of creativity, responsibility, compassion - all that gives us something of the radiance of our celestial center.

Paolo Soleri at Cosanti in the 1960s. Photo: Cosanti Foundation

The other two reasons I went: first I wanted to say I think we still have time to learn fast and fly right so here's my proposal, and, number two, as my Grandmother once admonished me looking over her shoulder as if someone might be listening and holding a forefinger to her lips, "Say you believe, Richard. Be on the safe side." So maybe I'd learn something about salvation here or on the other side of the divide that's collapse in the here and now, or, perhaps learn something about personal death and the heaven most of those in attendance believed they are going to - Earthly civilization collapse or not - on the other side of the life/death divide.

I decided to present a paper in the spirit of "what would it take to not collapse but regroup, learn, plan, build and thrive?" Admittedly a tall order in such a forum or any forum if we take our converging crises and collapse seriously, but to capitulate, even very late in the game as it may or may not be, while I still have some time on this planet, is not my idea of a worthy game to be spending my days playing. Maybe some others feel that way too and want to "get organized." Imagining what would actually work was a big order, but I'd done some thinking about it already. Some of you reading this may have seen one or another of my talks in the last year and will remember a point of two. But the new and revised version-for-the-occasion I called "World Rescue" to address the coming collapse of resources, biology and climate around the world. I organize it according to these italicized headings:

 Read On 

Ecocity Insights

by Jennie Moore,

Director, Sustainable Development and Environmental Stewardship, British Columbia Institute of Technology

Car Free Journey

By Steve Atlas

Welcome to 2012. I hope you enjoyed your holidays. This year, Car Free Journey will continue to spotlight a variety of vacation spots, cities, and other areas that you can enjoy without driving.

This month, we will spotlight South Florida. This popular, expensive, and traffic-clogged area includes Palm Beach and Palm Beach County, Fort Lauderdale and Broward County, and Miami/Miami Beach and Dade County.

South Florida beaches

There are airports in Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, and Miami. Each county has its own transit system, and visitor center. Tri-Rail, operated by the South Florida Regional Transportation Authority, is a commuter rail system (operating every day) that links all of these areas.

Read On

 

Ursula Sladek, photo courtesy EWS

When Ursula Sladek first grasped the severity of the fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown in the spring of 1986, the mother of five from the small town of Schönau (population 2,382) in Germany's Black Forest region had no clue she would one day be co-founder and president of one of Europe's first and largest cooperatively owned green energy companies.

Like that of most citizens in the developed world, the 2011 Goldman Environmental Prizewinner's life was once far removed from the energy sources that light our homes and power our appliances. But when the German government began to caution against eating leafy greens and recommended powdered instead of fresh milk for children, she says it felt as if a bomb had detonated: "All of a sudden we were wondering what to feed our children and it became very clear how small the world really is."

And just like her, many friends and neighbours in her community who had never thought about energy before started to wonder too. She recalls saying to her husband, a member of their local church council at the time: "Michael, this should also be the church's concern because we're dealing with God's creation here. We can't just destroy it like that." The couple wrote letters to the bishop but got placating responses and nothing actually happened. The government's only reaction was to raise radiation limits (a tactic being used again today in the aftermath of the more recent tragedy in Fukushima). "Nothing changed and so we realised we would have to step up and create the change we wanted ourselves."

The Sladeks got together with a small group of like-minded people, calling themselves Parents against Nuclear Power until one group member said he didn't like being against something; he wanted to be for something. "To be for something gave everyone a different feeling, so we called ourselves Parents for a Nuclear-free Future. Of course," she now muses, "this is impossible, but everyone knows what we mean."

The new group's activism raised quite a few eyebrows in their conservative hometown, so they decided to form a club, something people were more familiar with. "Clubs are non-profit, which meant we were doing something for the public good, and this gave us a lot more credibility," Ursula explains. They also decided to stage cultural events, holding energy-saving contests and assembling their own cabaret group, Wattkiller. Being able to make light of themselves wasn't just an icebreaker with their fellow citizens: it also helped Ursula and her group cope with the enormity of the cause they had chosen to take on: "When we were exhausted from all the serious business, the fun cabaret nights re-energised us."

As it turned out, the Schönau energy rebels would need all that energy in overcoming their next, more formidable obstacle. "We went to KWR, the power company that was operating the local grid, and asked them whether they'd like to join our conservation efforts," Ursula recalls. "We just wanted to add a few energy-saving measures, like rates based on consumption, and incentives for more cogeneration units, but they said, 'Conserve energy? Have you lost your mind? We want to sell energy, not save it!'"

Parents For a Nuclear-free Future decided they were not going to let the power company get away with an attitude based on deep-rooted ignorance, setting the stage for a six-year campaign to challenge KWR's monopoly and raise funds to take over the Schönau grid. KWR's licence was up for renewal in 1991, and after two hard-fought referendums - both in the energy rebels' favour - and the now infamous nationwide Ich bin ein Störfall campaign - which raised DM5.7 million (2.9 million euro) to buy out KWR - the newly formed and community-owned power company EWS, with Ursula Sladek at the helm, began operating Germany's first nuclear-free grid in July 1997.

Ich bin ein Störfall (literally: 'I'm a disturbance') is a provocative play on the double meaning of the German word for a nuclear incident, depicting ordinary people as nothing but annoyances to the nuclear industry. Conceived, pro bono, by one of Germany's largest advertising agencies, it was an instant media hit. The timing too was great. With the liberalisation of the European electricity markets in 1998, customers could now choose which power company to use - and a growing number of people liked the idea of getting clean energy from a non-profit cooperative.

With total sales reaching 67 million euro in 2009, EWS has long outgrown its local market. While Schönau boasts three times the national average in photovoltaics (20 cogeneration units, two hydroelectric plants and a wind turbine), EWS provides power from over 1,800 solar, hydroelectric, wind, biomass and cogeneration facilities to 115,000 homes and businesses throughout the country.

But for Ursula Sladek it's not all about big numbers. As she reaches out to towns across Germany with advice on how to set up their own community-owned energy companies, she points out the importance of focusing on small projects that are feasible: "There's nothing more gratifying than to be able to say, 'See, it can be done!' We've been working on our grand vision for 25 years but haven't actually shut down a single nuclear plant. However, we did a number of other things that felt like successes, and made sure we celebrated them."

With the Merkel government's recent decision to phase out nuclear energy by 2025 and switch to 100% renewables by 2050, the former rebels suddenly find themselves at the vanguard of a new energy era. While fossil fuels, especially natural gas used in cogeneration, will be needed in the interim, Ursula sees the dawning of a new industrial revolution: "We already have about 350,000 jobs in the renewable energy sector and we're developing all kinds of new technologies for energy storage, new power lines, and intelligent networks to transport electricity from solar facilities or offshore wind parks to users across the country. There's going to be a complete transformation, and the world will look very different when we're done."

Undoubtedly, Ursula Sladek and EWS will be at the centre of this movement, though this time not as feisty underdogs but as major players, a role she doesn't mind at all. "I was never really a rebel or a contrarian but rather someone who wants to build something positive and constructive, so this new role really suits me. I love to inspire and create change together with others. There's a lot to do still, but we won't be running out of work any time soon."

Sven Eberlein is a writer and ecomuse living in San Francisco, with roots in Germany. He is a member of Ecocity Builders and a Core Advisor to the International Ecocity Framework and Standards initiative.  

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Also, Ode Magazine ran an article last month based on Eberlein's visit with Peter Hasenbrink, pastor of the Schönau Lutheran church that became a legend when it covered its church roof in solar panels, calling them "Creation Windows" that provide "heavenly energy."

Pastor Peter Hasenbrink in front of Bergkirche in Schönau

He'll be writing more about Schönau and its cast of energy rebels in the coming months, but for now some visual impressions of this giant little town from his trip last summer...

Schönau - Solar Capital of Germany

Walking to church...

View from above

Ursula Sladek in front of one of EWS' transformer stations

solar-powered mountain

Community-owned windmill

Hydro-powered brush factory

Greetings from Schönau!