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You are not alone: learning more and growing community

Part 4 of wake-up calls, insurance and having a plan

This is the final post in a four-part series started in March on resiliency and emergency planning. Part 1 covered waking up to our vulnerabilities; Part 2 explored responding versus reacting; Part 3, sobering up, covered a few, very basic food and water storage strategies.

In this post, Part 4, the focus is on resources for learning more and opportunities for connecting with others doing the same work.

If you have time, doing your own emergency planning and research will uncover a host of resources to help tailor a plan that’s most suited to your unique situation. A variety of books, blogs and websites offer plenty of information but sifting through them can take time, energy and patience. At the outset if you would rather cut-to-the-chase, here are few resources to serve as a portal.

• Get a Kit – FEMA’s emergency planning guide & check lists
• www.72hours.org – The City of San Francisco’s very comprehensive emergency planning guide
• A Simple Plan -- A post by my dear friend and blogger, Christine Patton, a.k.a. Peak Oil Hausfrau, on short and long-term planning. Plenty of additional info on her blog, about everything from backyard gardening to cooking with a solar oven. She’s one of the most prepared people I know.
• “Surviving the Apocalypse in the Suburbs: The Thrivalist’s Guide to Life Without Oil” by Wendy Brown. Personable, down-to-earth, easy to read, full of useful info and resources and mostly geared to longer-term planning.
• “Just in Case: How to be Self-Sufficient When the Unexpected Happens,” by Kathy Harrison, another book with a practical, down-to-earth approach.
• “The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It: The Complete Back-to-Basics Guide,” by John Seymour. Although geared toward longer term self-reliant living for those on small farms, it may seem like this book doesn’t have much to offer urban dwellers. Guess again -- this book offers a compendium of how-tos on a range of subjects, from soap-making to composting and is full of beautiful illustrations and graphics. A great resource for the home library and even if you never do any of these things – fun to read and browse.

Organizations providing a portal for actually meeting other people doing the same things, working on the same issues, providing ways and means of sharing knowledge and building community:

• Transition OKC (TOKC) –  a local Oklahoma City group working on these types of issues, sharing info, and networking (I volunteer with this group). TOKC offers an ongoing slate of free or low-cost workshops, films, presentations and events focused on helping people and communities in OKC become more prepared and resilient in the face of climate change, peak oil and economic instability. We like to have fun while we’re doing this work. We collaborate and partner with other groups, businesses, and organizations, serve as a catalyst and connector, and we organize practical projects, often with an emphasis on localization, a strategy that a growing number of leaders around the world believe will help offset many of the challenges we face. We eat a lot of potluck meals together (a lot). We are part of the vibrant Transition movement, which has more than 300 initiatives around the world. My friend and fellow Transitioner, Christine Patton and I started TOKC in Jan. 2009; it’s a program of Sustainable OKC, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
• Oklahoma Sustainability Network -- a statewide nonprofit networking resource with a wonderful listserv and multiple chapters involved in an array of sustainable endeavors.
• Transition US – a nonprofit organization that provides inspiration, encouragement, support, networking and training for Transition initiatives in the U.S. There are now 90 Transition initiatives across the U.S. -- take a look at the map on their website and seen if there’s one near you, or if you’re interested in starting one in your community, school, or town, they can help.
• Transition Network -- the international hub for the Transition movement. You can sort through Transition initiatives from all over the world here and browse loads of ideas and resources.

More books. If you’re into reading, dive into this big fat list of recommended books. Every book on this list is part of our personal library, guiding our family as we work on our own resiliency planning.

Again this is just a starting place. You may have a whole different set of resources you’ve found that work for you (good on you if you do) and if you’re up for sharing, please feel free to do so. What websites, books, blogs do you recommend for resiliency and emergency preparedness planning?

Technorati Tags: awareness,books,change,climate change,community,emergency planning,home,hope,peak oil,partnerships,resilience,sustainability,transition okc,transition movement

Taking the future into your hands

“We basically have three choices: mitigation, adaptation, and suffering. We’re going to do some of each. The question is what the mix is going to be. The more mitigation we do, the less adaptation will be required and the less suffering there will be.” – John Holdren, President’s Science advisor, Harvard University

Last Sunday in “We’re Gonna Be Sorry,” New York Times op-ed columnist, Tom Friedman, quoted from the July newsletter of hedge fund manager Jeremy Grantham, who tells investors “global warming is a classic tragedy of the commons” and asks why we are even arguing the issue anymore. Grantham writes:

“ … the fossil energy companies, driven by the need to protect hundreds of billions of dollars of profits, encourage obfuscation of the inconvenient scientific results. I, for one, admire them for their P.R. skills, while wondering, as always: “Have they no grandchildren?”

And there’s the nut of the issue. This is the future of our children and grandchildren we’re talking about. A child born today will be 40 years old in 2050, in the prime of their life, and unless we change drastically, they’ll be living on a planet that’s crowded and hot and most likely short on a wide range of resources we now take for granted – including the basics such as food and potable water. It could be literally hell on earth. 

A few weeks ago I wrote about climate change in “Welcome to the new usual,” and promised to address mitigation and adaption strategies. The first strategy is simple – take responsibility for your future and that of those you love. Take the future into your hands as though it is a soft mass of moldable clay (and it is) and educate yourself pronto on how to shape it for yourself and for the common good because if you don’t understand the problem, you won’t be able to address what needs to be done in your own home, much less anywhere else. Once you understand what’s happening, then you can begin to act. 

I submit three simple places to start.

1. “The Transition Handbook: from oil dependency to local resilience,” by Rob Hopkins. Rooted in his Permaculture background (Permaculture is a design system for creating sustainable human settlements), Rob takes a measured look at the daunting issues of climate change, declining supplies of cheap, easily produced energy, and economic instability and applies sensible creativity and practical mojo. A lot of books on these topics bog down in buzz words, jargon, dense analysis or academic punditry, and in the process they often shortchange readers on solutions. The Transition Handbook bypasses those pitfalls with accessible language, and then spends as much time on a framework for solutions as it does on explaining the issues, envisioning a nourishing and abundant future without fossil fuel dependency. And you just can’t beat the enthusiastic, “yes we can” attitude that pervades the book.

2. Rob’s blog, transitionculture.org, continues the work of “Transition Handbook” in real time. Stay connected with what’s being done around the world and to pertinent news and information useful in a personal or community journey.

3. Katharine Hayhoe’s slide show. Hayhoe is a highly respected expert on climate change, and a reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. She knows her stuff! The full slide show is the best I’ve seen at quickly explaining what climate change is, the challenges it poses, and she also manages to debunk every silly denier myth out there. In short, she rocks.

Next strategy: Be a sensible hero. Coming soon.

A deep, inner crisis of the soul

A very erudite quote from Prince Charles below posits the many crises we face are rooted in an inner crisis of the soul. I totally agree. The Transition movement makes this point eloquently by addressing the need for outer and inner Transition, with the inner transition being a different way of moving and being in the world deeply rooted in Permaculture design principles. 

"When we hear talk of an 'environmental crisis' or even of a 'financial crisis,' I would suggest that this is actually describing the outward consequences of a deep, inner crisis of the soul. It is a crisis in our relationship with – and our perception of – Nature, and it is born of Western culture being dominated for at least two hundred years by a mechanistic and reductionist approach to our scientific understanding of the world around us. So I would like you to consider very seriously today whether a big part of the solution to all of our worldwide “crises” does not lie simply in more and better technology, but in the recovery of the soul to the mainstream of our thinking. Our science and technology cannot do this. Only sacred traditions have the capacity to help this happen."

The Prince of Wales made these comments in a recent speech on Islam and the Environment at the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford University. Matt McDermott at Planet Green, wrote an excellent assessment of the Prince's speech on Planet Green today, and notes the prince "brings up some themes which continue to be overlooked by the mainstream of the green movement, tragically." Right on Matt!

McDermott writes:

"What hits exactly the right note for me is the Prince's accurate identification at what really lies behind our twinned and ongoing environmental and economic crisis-as-norm. It is constantly searching for external solutions to problems to the exclusion of considering that, at the least partly, the issue is internal to humanity. Put plainly it is always attempt[ing] and expecting the world to adapt to our desires, rather than adapting ourselves to it."

Just imagine what could happen if we all took this kind of transitioning seriously. What an extraordinary sight to behold.

McDermott's full comments on Prince Charles' speech are here.; full transcript of the Prince of Wale's speech is here.

First comes hail, then comes resiliency

About 4 p.m. yesterday, May 16, we were hanging out here at the hacienda, having a bit of rest after a busy Saturday and Sunday morning. I'd been out in the garden earlier tucking more compost around the potatoes in the potato bin, pulling a few weeds, checking on the newly emerging green beans, baby spinach and the first asparagus shoot in my newly planted asparagus bed. The garden was healthy, thriving, burgeoning. Callie and I sat in our backyard rocker and just drank it in for awhile.

When the sky started darkening we flipped on the TV. We do that here in Oklahoma where the weather can change dramatically in moments and sometimes deliver one helluva slap, and yes, the weather guys confirmed yet another storm was headed our way. We've had plenty of threatening storms this season and last week's series spawned a maelstrom of tornadoes -- 39 or so depending on who you Google -- that ripped through central Oklahoma with a vengeance. Yesterday the weather guys weren't talking tornadoes though. Instead they were warning of hail, big hail, lots of hail. And hail it did.

At our house it started with a few baseball-sized balls that thwacked the roof so hard I thought someone had fired a gun next door. I looked out the window to see white missiles whizzing by and slamming into the backyard. When one of them snapped a tomato plant off at ground level, I couldn't help it, I started crying. But that was just the beginning. Tennis-ball size hail came next and finally golf-ball size, only these came in sheets. Everything outside turned white, the sound was so deafening we had to shout to be heard, the cats freaked so we tucked them into their carriers. We took pictures, I Facebooked, and then we stared in shock when it was over. Everything was pummeled, shredded garden, trees, flowers, smashed cars and windows, dented roof.

Just like the ever present wind, dust storms, drought, intense heat, and the threat of tornadoes, hail storms are part of living on the plains. We accept we have no control over Nature, we understand it, but when it zaps us it's still a shock.

I've lived in Oklahoma and West Texas most of my life, been in plenty of hail storms and I've never seen anything like what hit us yesterday. My mother and mother-in-law, both long-time Okies more than 70 years old (I'll be discrete and not reveal their ages) echoed the same sentiment.

Thinking about the now and the future, as climate change brings more extremes, more once-in-50-or-100-year events, my thoughts turned to ways we can be more prepared, building earth-sheltered houses for instance, which is something my family is planning to do. For this kind of resiliency planning we're going to need the creativity of everyone which is why the Transition framework seems like such a timely tool for us plains dwellers. For instance, maybe together we can figure out a way to to create low-cost, sturdy pop-up shelters for blossoming plants that would act as a deterrent to hail.

For now after this latest storm we're in the hopeful stage. I toured the garden and signs of life are everywhere. New leaves are already sprouting on the plants that weren't flattened. In places the hail drilled holes as deep as four inches into the soil and right next to the hole seedlings are unfurling, growing in spite of the bruising toll on the earth surrounding it. Birds are flying in to grab hay and I'm imagining they're already deep into nest repair and rebuilding. My neighbors are raking and gathering downed leaves, smashed car windows are covered with plastic and duck tape, blown out house windows boarded, and I've seen people up on their roofs, sawing boards for quick roof repair. It may take awhile, but all these materials things will be repaired, car windows installed. And plants will put on new leaves, trees new branches, gardens will recover.

There are so many who lost so much more in last week's tornadoes, and our farmers and ranchers who depend on their crops and livestock for a living are much more effected by the vagaries of weather than we urban dwellers will ever be. So sending blessings today to those dealing with last week's tornado damage, to farmers, ranchers and urbanites sorting through yesterday's hail damage, to those who were injured or suffered more devastating losses.

Today I'm grateful there were no tornadoes yesterday, that no lives were lost. Grateful to be alive, to know my friends and family are well, grateful we're resilient and planning to be even more so. And now on to recovery.

Lessons from Transition Boulder County for Oklahoma

Nice story on Transition Boulder County on CNET today by reporter Daniel Terdiman. Overall the article expresses the concept of the transition process and goals very well. Some good insights into how the transition process can work in Oklahoma City and throughout the state.

Highlights:

Because a massive spike in the cost of fossil fuel-based energy would drastically change most of our systems -- food, energy, economy, employment and so on--re-localization imagines a new era in which local communities work to meet their own needs rather than depending on a global infrastructure.

Brownlee explained that although the Transition movement is built around a recognition of the hard realities of fossil fuel depletion, the impact of climate change and likely economic instability, it doesn't spend a lot of time saying that using fossil fuels are a bad idea. Instead, the message is that, in the not too distant future, such energy will not be as easily available or as inexpensive as it is today.

"Communities cannot depend on globalized systems to continue to support them," Brownlee said.

.... until local governments get on board, we won't be able to depend on them to take care of the problems that will come in a post-peak oil world, either, Brownlee argued. That was one of the chief lessons from Hurricane Katrina, he said. "It's going to come from the local level, from the citizen level."

... he's never seen a grass-roots movement spread at the pace he's seen with Transition. While most of the organizations have sprouted in small towns, there are currently efforts under way in cities like Denver and Los Angeles. However, in cities, he said, it is likely that work will have to be done at the community level and coordinated city-wide, rather than be driven by a top-down structure.

Money quote:

"Transition is a social experiment on a grand scale, and we don't know if it will work. But we do know that if we wait for government it will be too little, too late, and if we rely on individuals, it will be too little. But if we come together as communities, it might be just enough, just in time."

Full story here.