Update: This article was republished in On Line Opinion on 23 September 2009. Many thanks to Susan Prior for her consideration.
A couple of Wednesdays ago, I went to see a film entitled The Age Of Stupid (IMDB link), about the current state of the climate change debate. The movie only played in three cinema complexes in Adelaide, and two of them were in Westfield shopping centres - probably the wrong crowd for a movie about climate change. There's no word yet on whether our local Palace Nova cinemas will pick it up.
After paying 17 bucks to watch what appeared to be a copied Blu-ray disc, and to have an entire theatre all to myself, I came away from the movie with a mixed message. Most of the main characters in the film seemed to have conflicting ethics for their reliance on energy, but few actually showed any remorse. The oil rig worker who stayed in New Orleans throughout Hurricane Katrina sees the obvious connection between his work and his environment, but he has no remorse about it whatsoever. The lady in the Niger delta, having seen the massive pollution and the ravages of war that are brought to their nation by our greed for natural resources, sells petrol in bottles to make a bit of extra cash.
I don't know what the point of the movie was any more, but I still think I know what it was supposed to be. Climate change isn't just an environmental problem: it's a broad social, economic and political problem that will affect all of us to an extent that we cannot fully comprehend, even after seeing a film about it. This one got so close: people do understand that the drive for resource wealth does as much harm as good, but it never actually asked the question of whether it's worth devoting your lifestyle to it. (This point is raised directly by Michael Moore in The Corporation.)
After a decade-long hiatus, climate change is back on the agenda, and regardless of their position on the subject, everyone is back on message. The greenies want to save the planet. Big business doesn't want saving the planet to interfere with employment or economic growth. The politicians want to implement a trading scheme for greenhouse gas emissions, but want to set aside $11,700,000,000 in welfare for the mining industry.
Most importantly of all, everybody has an opinion that they can't wait to tell you about but that they can't live up to. I saw a bumper sticker the other day about doing something about climate change - on the back of a 20-year-old Ford Laser. To be fair, you could see through the brown exhaust fumes that it was at least carrying a full complement of passengers. Everyone gets climate change, and gets it well enough to talk about it, but nobody's doing anything to fix it. An Inconvenient Truth (IMDB link) was a bold step, and we had the impression of having come a long way since Kyoto; one wonders how far we have travelled since.
The previous weekend, I was back at The Food Forest for a weekend workshop on something called the Transition Towns initiative. The goal of transition is to make communities more self-sufficient, and therefore more robust to problems such as economic downturn, political dysfunction, or the disruption of utilities. Think of it as permaculture scaled up to a society level: the idea is to take similar tenets of environmental management and use them to plan entire communities. It stands to reason that climate change is a given in this philosophy, as is peak oil.
There are already hundreds of Transition groups all over the world, and each community is tackling the problems a little differently. It might start as modestly as a car pool or a sewing circle, or it could be as ambitious as a local currency or an activist group to fight against imposing businesses that, one way or another, do not act in the community's interest. Neighbourhoods become more productive and more closely knit, favouring local businesses and activities seeing their own well-being as prosperity in itself.
As much as I find a lot of the environmental debate quite tiring, I found the Transition Towns weekend very uplifting. The difference was that the people who attended this workshop seemed more like the sorts of people who might actually do something to make their lives better. Naturally, such a weekend involves a lot of talk, but it's positive and enthusiastic talk, and those of us who were already doing something were more interested in networking and marketing what was there than the minutiae of establishing something new. Suddenly, the confidence was there among us, the right courses of action were obvious, and everything else seemed irrelevant, distant, archaic.
I wondered, then, whether the environmental debate could truly be taking this direction, and, if it were not, whether this might be an opportune time to turn it this way. It was nearly five years ago that I discovered the peak oil debate, and at the time, it was all doom and gloom. In fact, Matt Savinar's primer, The Oil Age Is Over (sadly now out of print), ends with a discussion about the depression one typically suffers after the penny drops about peak oil. Arguably, though, the debate is still one of doom and gloom today, and the purists among us are only too ready to howl down anything touted as a solution.
We can do better.
I can vouch for the concept of post-peak depression. I remember when I ran out of both questions and answers, and I remember how helpless I felt at the time, as if the only way not to lose was not to play. The best way out of this funk is to do something positive. For me, getting around my oil dependency meant less car travel, working out public transport again, and getting a bicycle. I'm still going with that.
When you consider most problems so fundamentally, the solutions are simple too. If you're worried about food miles, buy local produce from suburban markets. The dominance of large supermarkets and department stores can be mitigated by shopping elsewhere, even if you can't buy everything in the one place. Learn to turn things off when you're not using them, and not to buy things you don't need. Even questions about money - from the siphoning off of local investment by major banks, to the very nature of fiat currency itself - seem tractable when considered the same way.
The point of these individual tasks is twofold. Firstly, you participate less and less in a system that will break off in massive chunks in the coming decades and crumble into the sea. (With that mental image, you and Antarctica are in this together. Secondly, the more you think about this, the more you learn and understand the way things really are in the world. New challenges will come along in our current convention, and current conventional thinking won't solve them; you will need a new paradigm. Either way, you're doing something positive about the world's plethora of problems, and coming shocks won't be quite so shocking.
It's a lot more easily said than done, of course. For example, buying food is easier and quicker than growing it, and there will be no shortage of people telling you so. That said, it's all about believing in what you're doing. If you believe that growing food is important - and with good enough reasons - you should do it anyway. Every person who attended the Transition weekend, I conjectured, probably knows someone who isn't interested in climate change, peak oil, permaculture and the like, but that hasn't stopped us getting together anyway, and it won't stop us trying to do the right thing.
This is perhaps the real key. Just give it a go. Buy a rainwater tank. Walk somewhere that you normally would have driven. Repair something you would otherwise have thrown away. Whatever form a collapse of civilisation may take, you are far worse off afraid or ignorant than you would be armed with options.
Above all, the Transition concept has given me a sense of hope that I haven't had for years. It hasn't assured me at all that we won't see major societal upheaval in the next decade or so, but it has motivated me, with neither fear nor rage, to do something more constructive to prepare for it. Furthermore, it's also given me a better way to talk about to those ordinary people I know who imagine me in sandwich boards telling them how nigh the end of the world is.
I mentioned The Age Of Stupid as merely the most recent Chicken Little, and despite its good intentions, I wonder how much films like this are really helping. Then again, even if people are tiring of hearing about the problems, they need more in the way of solutions than superficial gesture of buying a CFL and a green shopping bag (that is, in all probability, made of plastic anyway). I sense a valid opportunity here, to engage interested people not to panic but to empower themselves, and to make peace (or at least neutrality) with the non-believers who may never notice your conviction. You don't even need to talk about a crash; at least, what you want is to make the world a better place.
Think about a low-energy future. Food without chemicals. Transport without pollution. Austerity without exploitation.
Think about a human-energy future. Motivation without badgering. Urgency without panic. Darkness without fear.
We can do better.
07 September 2009
24 August 2009
Weaving An Orb - an experiment in small-scale demountable permaculture
In January and February 2009, I attended the Permaculture Design Certificate course at The Food Forest in Gawler, South Australia. As part of our course project, we prepared a Powerpoint slide show entitled Weaving An Orb - an experiment in small-scale demountable permaculture, where we apply permaculture principles - perhaps only temporarily - to a suburban flat with very little territory of its own.
At the start of the course, I shot some video footage from the site and incorporated some of it into our final presentation. More recently, however, our host held a "permablitz" to implement some of the ideas we had during the course, and I got some footage during that afternoon as well.
All of this is now available as a YouTube playlist for your viewing pleasure. Naturally, there may be more chapters to add to this story as the site evolves, so stay tuned.
At the start of the course, I shot some video footage from the site and incorporated some of it into our final presentation. More recently, however, our host held a "permablitz" to implement some of the ideas we had during the course, and I got some footage during that afternoon as well.
All of this is now available as a YouTube playlist for your viewing pleasure. Naturally, there may be more chapters to add to this story as the site evolves, so stay tuned.
13 May 2009
farewell to QinetiQ
On Monday, 11 May 2009, I handed in my letter of resignation from QinetiQ Consulting, where I'd been working for nearly one and a half years. Today - Wednesday, 13 May - was my last day at work, notwithstanding the notice period and my annual leave.
I didn't get a chance to see all of my colleagues in person between announcing my departure and the departure itself, so I wrote an email to them to bid them all farewell. I got two compliments about it before I got out the door, so I thought I'd republish it here. No hard feelings, of course.
Hi all,
As some of you are already aware, today is my last day as an employee of QinetiQ. Having given this decision a lot of thought, I finally tendered my resignation on Monday. I thought I’d send out an email to you all to mark the occasion.
I am reminded at this moment that a wise man once said to me, “hey, you, get the hell out of my wardrobe”. Even then, I knew that truer words had never been spoken – which shows you how wrong you can be, because I’m still friends with his wife. But that’s another story.
This story is not one I have taken lightly. To many of you, this development won’t come as a surprise. The past year and a half has had its moments, but in truth, this job hasn’t always been good to me, nor I to it. I can at least say we’ve always treated each other with patience and understanding. As such, the decision to leave was not an easy one, but it is a mutual and positive one.
We find ourselves in interesting times, in a period of social, political, economic and environmental instability that is far from over. You might imagine that such a scenario made me more than a little nervous about resigning. At the same time, I also saw it as a compulsion to act before things get any worse. I can weather the crisis of paying bills for a while, but I’m more enthusiastic about the opportunity to figure out what I want to do with myself, in my own time and with minimal distractions.
First things first, of course: I’m taking a bit of a break. I’m travelling to Japan for two weeks, spending a week back home in Townsville and attending a cousin’s wedding in Brisbane. When I return to Adelaide afterwards, I can get back into my career again. Who knows, maybe I’ll even get it right this time. Or not.
So, it is on this note that I leave my position of receptionist, economist, permaculturalist, IT support officer, wildlife wrangler, grocery shopper, Wii tennis champion, and occasional software engineer. To everyone here in Edinburgh and across the country, I want to thank you for your support and company throughout my time at QinetiQ, and I give you my best wishes for the future.
Warmest regards,
Aaron Nielsen
I didn't get a chance to see all of my colleagues in person between announcing my departure and the departure itself, so I wrote an email to them to bid them all farewell. I got two compliments about it before I got out the door, so I thought I'd republish it here. No hard feelings, of course.
* * * * * *
Hi all,
As some of you are already aware, today is my last day as an employee of QinetiQ. Having given this decision a lot of thought, I finally tendered my resignation on Monday. I thought I’d send out an email to you all to mark the occasion.
I am reminded at this moment that a wise man once said to me, “hey, you, get the hell out of my wardrobe”. Even then, I knew that truer words had never been spoken – which shows you how wrong you can be, because I’m still friends with his wife. But that’s another story.
This story is not one I have taken lightly. To many of you, this development won’t come as a surprise. The past year and a half has had its moments, but in truth, this job hasn’t always been good to me, nor I to it. I can at least say we’ve always treated each other with patience and understanding. As such, the decision to leave was not an easy one, but it is a mutual and positive one.
We find ourselves in interesting times, in a period of social, political, economic and environmental instability that is far from over. You might imagine that such a scenario made me more than a little nervous about resigning. At the same time, I also saw it as a compulsion to act before things get any worse. I can weather the crisis of paying bills for a while, but I’m more enthusiastic about the opportunity to figure out what I want to do with myself, in my own time and with minimal distractions.
First things first, of course: I’m taking a bit of a break. I’m travelling to Japan for two weeks, spending a week back home in Townsville and attending a cousin’s wedding in Brisbane. When I return to Adelaide afterwards, I can get back into my career again. Who knows, maybe I’ll even get it right this time. Or not.
So, it is on this note that I leave my position of receptionist, economist, permaculturalist, IT support officer, wildlife wrangler, grocery shopper, Wii tennis champion, and occasional software engineer. To everyone here in Edinburgh and across the country, I want to thank you for your support and company throughout my time at QinetiQ, and I give you my best wishes for the future.
Warmest regards,
Aaron Nielsen
21 April 2009
tempting fate
My time capsule posts aside, it's been a while since I've written here, and a lot has happened since I failed to decide on any specific New Year's resolutions. Here goes...
Sadly, I'm still working in the same spot; gladly, not for much longer. I've been applying for other jobs and I'm starting to get a few responses back, although nothing too positive yet. It's strange, perhaps, that as tense as I was about deciding to look for alternative employment, I'm even more tense about finding it. You might think I'd be a bit more relaxed after making the decision and relieved to think I can still do it, and I might feel that way once I've found a new job, but in the meantime, I'm still very nervous.
Part of the nervousness comes from a few plans that I may or may not have for the next two months or so. My brother is planning a two-week trip to Japan in May and June, and a cousin of ours is getting married shortly afterwards. I'm hoping to join them both. The problem is applying to take leave in one of our busiest times of the year, particularly for a block of several weeks.
Wait, what? I'm actually needed at work suddenly? Well, sort of.
The task that I'm on now, and that I've been complaining about to no avail for more than six months, still refuses to die. I've had a colleague from across the corridor looking at this in some idle time, and another colleague from interstate who visited here for two days this week, and I'm still not entirely sure what's going on. I've only got about a week and a half to finish the entire task, and I don't even know what we're supposed to be delivering any more.
On the proviso that I see this task out, there are two more tasks lined up for me. The former of those tasks is with my supervisor, for whom I worked directly this time last year. By the time I start working there again, he will have held up my work there for a full year, without having even had the common courtesy to tell me the truth about it. The latter is with another group I spent about a month with on and off about eight months ago. I tried to stop them reinventing a wheel and I didn't get invited back. I haven't received any feedback about this work either, and although my supervisor has claimed to have some, he said it would be "unprofessional" to pass it on to me. Somewhere in the middle of this, this same supervisor is magically going to do his job and thereby allow my work from this time last year to be completed. Of course, I've heard all of this many times before, and the message is just as mixed as ever.
I've tried talking to my boss, my boss's boss and our HR officer about these problems. Everyone seems to understand but nobody seems even remotely interested in solving them. As a result, I'm pretty much through wondering whether any of this will get better. I'm well and truly embedded in a search for another job, and I can't wait for the day when I can leave this one behind. I don't even care that much where I end up afterwards, although it will certainly not be in a defence job. Make no mistake, I'm happy with the money I'm getting here, but this job has nothing else to offer; there's no worth in the work itself, nor in my being there to do it.
My job has drained me of my energy, both physical and mental; in fact, I took today and yesterday off to recover. However, I haven't given up. My mind and body are weak, but my spirit still has hope, at least for the prospect of getting another job. On the other hand, I've still got this one, and I can't talk about how much worse things will get without it sounding like a temptation of fate.
Sadly, I'm still working in the same spot; gladly, not for much longer. I've been applying for other jobs and I'm starting to get a few responses back, although nothing too positive yet. It's strange, perhaps, that as tense as I was about deciding to look for alternative employment, I'm even more tense about finding it. You might think I'd be a bit more relaxed after making the decision and relieved to think I can still do it, and I might feel that way once I've found a new job, but in the meantime, I'm still very nervous.
Part of the nervousness comes from a few plans that I may or may not have for the next two months or so. My brother is planning a two-week trip to Japan in May and June, and a cousin of ours is getting married shortly afterwards. I'm hoping to join them both. The problem is applying to take leave in one of our busiest times of the year, particularly for a block of several weeks.
Wait, what? I'm actually needed at work suddenly? Well, sort of.
The task that I'm on now, and that I've been complaining about to no avail for more than six months, still refuses to die. I've had a colleague from across the corridor looking at this in some idle time, and another colleague from interstate who visited here for two days this week, and I'm still not entirely sure what's going on. I've only got about a week and a half to finish the entire task, and I don't even know what we're supposed to be delivering any more.
On the proviso that I see this task out, there are two more tasks lined up for me. The former of those tasks is with my supervisor, for whom I worked directly this time last year. By the time I start working there again, he will have held up my work there for a full year, without having even had the common courtesy to tell me the truth about it. The latter is with another group I spent about a month with on and off about eight months ago. I tried to stop them reinventing a wheel and I didn't get invited back. I haven't received any feedback about this work either, and although my supervisor has claimed to have some, he said it would be "unprofessional" to pass it on to me. Somewhere in the middle of this, this same supervisor is magically going to do his job and thereby allow my work from this time last year to be completed. Of course, I've heard all of this many times before, and the message is just as mixed as ever.
I've tried talking to my boss, my boss's boss and our HR officer about these problems. Everyone seems to understand but nobody seems even remotely interested in solving them. As a result, I'm pretty much through wondering whether any of this will get better. I'm well and truly embedded in a search for another job, and I can't wait for the day when I can leave this one behind. I don't even care that much where I end up afterwards, although it will certainly not be in a defence job. Make no mistake, I'm happy with the money I'm getting here, but this job has nothing else to offer; there's no worth in the work itself, nor in my being there to do it.
My job has drained me of my energy, both physical and mental; in fact, I took today and yesterday off to recover. However, I haven't given up. My mind and body are weak, but my spirit still has hope, at least for the prospect of getting another job. On the other hand, I've still got this one, and I can't talk about how much worse things will get without it sounding like a temptation of fate.
12 April 2009
time capsule 1 revisited
A few weeks ago, I caught up with two of my friends, from whom I had gotten two conflicting reactions about how I was doing. One of my oldest and best friends took a bit of convincing that I was doing OK, while another friend who sees me fairly regularly, hadn't noticed if anything was different about me. I wrote in my blog about it at the time, and left it for a few weeks before I looked at it again.
I couldn't decide which of them was right. In a way, they probably both were.
For a little while, I've suffered a bit from poor self-esteem, mainly stemming from the 40 hours I waste each week by being at work. I'm trying not to let that get to me, but I couldn't blame anyone for thinking that I'm not all there at the moment. In my previous post, I wrote that I had hoped to have "turned a corner" and had started doing something positive about my problems - specifically, by actively looking for a new job.
That's not all. I've started doing things for myself again. I'm cooking for myself more and buying junk food less. I haven't fixed the bike yet (another job for the Easter weekend), but I've bought Wii Fit for the times that it's out of action or don't need to ride it anywhere. I'm giving myself another long weekend in a month, and I'm considering a three-week break shortly afterwards. As for the job hunt, I am starting to get a few nibbles. Things are looking up. By rights, I should be feeling better.
That being said, maybe I'm not quite there yet. Sure, I've made some improvements, but it will take some discipline to keep it all going. Ironically, the closer I get to feeling better about myself, the more edgy I am at work, as if I can tell I'm getting closer to leaving and I almost can't bear the suspense.
In the long term, this should all work out, but I am still in limbo, at least to a certain extent. I had hoped, in my previous entry, for nothing more than to "think I was on the right track" when I looked back on what I had written. Maybe I'm selling myself short: I should have hoped that I'd be seeing some results by now, which I'm actually starting to do.
Happiness is supposed to be a journey, rather than a destination. However, it can be hard work to push yourself to keep going, and if it's not a destination, how do you know where to stop to catch your breath? You see, even if you have that sense of self-belief, it will still only really work if your sense of direction was also good enough in the first place. I'm a long way off mastering this kind of travel, but it's a journey that's important to me, at least.
I couldn't decide which of them was right. In a way, they probably both were.
For a little while, I've suffered a bit from poor self-esteem, mainly stemming from the 40 hours I waste each week by being at work. I'm trying not to let that get to me, but I couldn't blame anyone for thinking that I'm not all there at the moment. In my previous post, I wrote that I had hoped to have "turned a corner" and had started doing something positive about my problems - specifically, by actively looking for a new job.
That's not all. I've started doing things for myself again. I'm cooking for myself more and buying junk food less. I haven't fixed the bike yet (another job for the Easter weekend), but I've bought Wii Fit for the times that it's out of action or don't need to ride it anywhere. I'm giving myself another long weekend in a month, and I'm considering a three-week break shortly afterwards. As for the job hunt, I am starting to get a few nibbles. Things are looking up. By rights, I should be feeling better.
That being said, maybe I'm not quite there yet. Sure, I've made some improvements, but it will take some discipline to keep it all going. Ironically, the closer I get to feeling better about myself, the more edgy I am at work, as if I can tell I'm getting closer to leaving and I almost can't bear the suspense.
In the long term, this should all work out, but I am still in limbo, at least to a certain extent. I had hoped, in my previous entry, for nothing more than to "think I was on the right track" when I looked back on what I had written. Maybe I'm selling myself short: I should have hoped that I'd be seeing some results by now, which I'm actually starting to do.
Happiness is supposed to be a journey, rather than a destination. However, it can be hard work to push yourself to keep going, and if it's not a destination, how do you know where to stop to catch your breath? You see, even if you have that sense of self-belief, it will still only really work if your sense of direction was also good enough in the first place. I'm a long way off mastering this kind of travel, but it's a journey that's important to me, at least.
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