Living Communities. Resilient towns.

It's the economy that must change. Where Living Communities differs.

Isn’t it funny that at various times in history it just seems like the perfect moment for certain things to happen, no matter what? If you look throughout history and wonder, what would life had been like if Lenin hadn’t led the Russian revolution or if Stephenson hadn’t invented the locomotive or Henry Ford just remained happy tinkering in his shed or indeed, Adolf Hitler had been killed in a first world war battle…  

No matter who is born into this world, I believe circumstances make certain solutions inevitable. If Stephenson died from some 18^th century childhood disease, two contemporaries, William Hedley and Timothy Hackworth would have perhaps designed the first railway locomotives instead.   It’s very hard to be totally original. So I’m also fully certain that the locomotive they would have designed would have had many similarities as well as many differences to the one that Stephenson developed.  

So too I believe it is with many other things. Lets look at the idea of resilience that is really starting to sweep the world and almost poke its head up into the mainstream consciousness.

The Transition Town movement is perhaps the most successful idea on community resilience that has spread throughout the world. The last figure I read said there were some 250 certified towns in transition throughout the UK, Ireland, North America and Australasia and perhaps a total of 1500 unofficially.   Yet there are also many other different approaches to relocalisation that haven’t spread as rapidly but can offer equally important and in many cases, better solutions. I believe Living Communities is one of those along with others, like the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies in the US.  

Living Communities™ gets compared to Transition Towns often. However, as I described earlier, although similar ideas can evolve from a common moment in history, Living Communities has a different focus than Transition Towns.  

LC and TT have similarities. Both methods require bottom up community driven initiative and both aim to improve the outcomes for communities.   I guess the main differences between Living Communities and Transition Towns is what we believe the focus and method should be to achieve better outcomes in all our communities.   I’ve put together a brief summary below, which hopefully gives you a snapshot of the main differences as well as some similarities.

 

Living Communities	Transition Towns
Economic change driver	Peak Oil and Climate Change resilience drivers
Aims to set up local businesses that ‘plug leaks’ in the local economy.	Aims to reduce community dependence on fossil fuel and reduce carbon footprint
Builds awareness around the need for an alternative economic model and how that model can contribute to dealing with environmental and social issues.	Builds awareness around peak oil and climate change and the need to undertake a community lead process to rebuild resilience and reduce carbon
Connects groups in the local community	Connects groups in the local community
Builds bridges to local government	Builds bridges to local government
Connects other Living Communities	Connects other Transition Towns
Presents entrepreneurial opportunities and assistance for local entrepreneurs in all areas of the local economy such as; food, energy, transport, finance, health, education, arts, tourism, manufacturing, communications, retail etc.	Forms groups to look at all the key areas of life (food, energy, transport, health, heart & soul, economics & livelihoods, etc) in a community and sets up projects based on these.
Delivers business opportunities to strengthen the local economy based on community visioning and research. Provides ongoing support to enterprises and advocacy for change at policy level	Launches a community defined, community implemented "Energy Descent Action Plan" over a 15 to 20 year timescale
Produces a range of locally owned community specific enterprises that strives to rebuild the economic resilience lost at community level as a result of neo-classical economic approach.	Produces a coordinated range of projects across all these areas of life that strives to rebuild the resilience lost as a result of cheap oil and reduce the community's carbon emissions drastically
Uses local knowledge and creativity to create solutions supported by professional facilitation, coaching and resources	Uses local knowledge and creativity to generate solutions supported by Transition Town resources
7 step process driven by a local community group	12 step process driven by a local community group
Requires start-up funding	Requires no start-up funding to begin

While peak oil and climate change may be a concern to a Living Community, it is not the primary driver for change and motivation in the Living Communities™ process. The focus for Living Communities™ is to help reform the economic system at a community level.  

By focusing on developing an alternative value system for trade and business (two activities people already do with enthusiasm) profound solutions to energy scarcity and carbon pollution can be achieved as a result, along with other issues affecting communities. For example, changing the way we place value on an economic transaction, we believe, encourages economic development thinking rather than economic growth thinking to improve our lives and our communities.  

Economic ‘development’ should take into account the quality of economic transactions and include interactions other than financial - such as human relationships - rather than simply requiring a greater quantity of financial transactions as per the traditional economic growth model.  

In the transaction value example, a purchase from a locally owned enterprise (held privately or by the community) is a higher quality transaction than one from a non-locally owned enterprise because the dollar spent in the locally owned business will circulate in the local economy longer. There may also be added benefits of community relationships forged with the locally owned business you purchase from.

To obtain the same local economic benefit when doing business with a non-locally owned enterprise, a greater quantity of transactions would have to be made. At least 3 and sometimes more, for every one locally owned transaction in actual fact. It is also quite likely that you would never form a relationship with an owner who may live in another state or even another country.  

And because we require increasing quantities of transactions to keep our economy in ‘positive growth’, we are placing enormous pressure on our finite resources.  

However, this doesn’t mean we should put a halt to enterprise because it has been used up until now to increase the quantity of transactions.   Enterprise is embedded in our society and has enormous positive effects on our well-being, our communities and our general development. We need to realise that it is only by improving the way enterprise functions and the values it displays that we can ever hope to become more resilient and sustainable.  

Local entrepreneurs, networked and working together for their common benefit are also a benefit to the whole community.

The recently awarded Nobel Prize in Economics to Elinor Ostrom dispels the myth of the tragedy of the commons and demonstrated that local decision making about resource allocation is more effective than big business or big government.

The co-founder of the cradle-to-cradle design movement Bill McDonough suggests, “commerce is relatively quick, essentially creative, highly effective and efficient and fundamentally honest because we can’t exchange value with one another for very long if we don’t trust each other.”  

We agree. This is why local community level entrepreneurs are so important.

Our focus on the local economy ensures that the needed change can come quicker, be just as "creative, highly effective, efficient and fundamentally honest". 

Perhaps this is the most important difference between Living Communities™ and Transition Towns. The Living Communities™ process focuses on the immediate development of the local economy via discovering tangible local business opportunities for local entrepreneurs. We believe we can tap into community initiative far quicker by starting the focus on the economy rather than peak oil or climate change.  

Put simply, why spend time telling people about peak oil and climate change and how it will harm their community and why they need to do something about it THEN try and get them to take action to build resilience?

Living Communities™ seeks to take action to build resilience by improving on something communities actually are already doing anyway – local business, local trade and local enterprise.  

The Transition Town model is a positive step to help empower local people who feel frustrated at a lack of action about the issues of Peak Oil and Climate Change. It is fantastic for raising awareness and increasing community participation. However, despite some transition initiatives having been operating for nearly 5 years, they are still only just beginning to plan business enterprises for their communities.

Living Communities aims to have communities able to start-up enterprises in less than half this time.  

My feeling is that a focus on surviving peak oil, climate change and economic collapse doesn’t necessarily attract the best entrepreneurs in the community. Given that, perhaps the TT model role is of an important awareness raiser and educational tool that has a naturally low barrier to initiation - hence the take-up rate.  

Living Communities™ role therefore, along with more established organisations like Business Alliance for Local Living Economies and the New Economics Foundation, might be to engage with energetic TTs and help them along to the next level.

Exploring the local food landscape

 
We’ve been in our new home in Toodyay now for a week and haven’t been in a position to really get organised as yet. We’ve still got packing boxes everywhere, had to run back to Perth for birthdays, build bunk beds for our kids and now I’m sitting on a bus typing this on my way to Esperance to take the next few steps to getting our Living Communities Esperance pilot project off the ground. So this post is an admission that our eating local challenge hasn’t quite started.

I’m excited about helping Mary get stuck into the new veggie patch that will run along side our fruit trees and a watermelon field that should grow us (and the town) a fair few melons for the coming summer. And I do plan do start that this weekend when I get the luxury of being home.

Because we’ve not settled in after the move we’ve cheated already and had to buy some take-away in Perth while driving back to town late but we’ve managed one full grocery shop that I’m pleased to say was all bought from local stores, if not local produce.

I‘ve had the opportunity to get a taste (excuse the pun) for some of the local food opportunities that are presenting themselves here in Toodyay and I’m in the process of building a food map of the area that I hope to share with you soon.

So what does Toodyay have in terms of local food stores?

We have a bakery, locally owned – not a franchise and a butcher who assured me that all their meat is sourced from the surrounding Avon Valley. Even if local meat isn't always available from the butcher, we know of several people we have met in town who have the animals and people who can do the messy work.

Our fantastic green grocer is run by two 50 plus anti-establishment types who proudly display their finalist certificates gained from being part of the fresh food retailer of the year awards. It’s fun being in their shop. They have a full understanding of the need for local food and you’d be unlucky to pick something up that hasn’t been grown within a 100km radius. Two obvious items that are outside this jurisdiction though are the bananas and a sad piece of watermelon, but as mentioned earlier, my wife and I aim to make this a watermelon summer for the people of Toodyay, especially when they shop at this particular green grocers.

We have the mandatory IGA supermarket that seems to have all the other bits and pieces that make modern homes function according to plan too so as far as I can see there is little excuse to jump in the car and drive 24km to shop at the large chain stores at the regional centre of Northam down the road.

There’s also a lolly shop attached to the Visitor Centre, which sells, you guessed it…lollies! Not sure where they get made.

As for that food map I mentioned earlier, it’s just taking shape. We have honey about 10km from town, a farm that specialises in hams and bacons about  25km south and the dairy looks good. Fresh milk straight to our door, milked that morning, not trucked in from Victoria or anything ludicrous like that. Orchards about 70km away in Gin Gin – citrus, avocado mainly. Olive groves are within a 5-minute drive and there are table grapes, cheeses and wines really close and about 50km away in the Swan Valley too. Naturally, we’ll be growing our own veggies.

We’ve picked a good spot it seems. I’m sure I can find areas that can be improved and I hope the good folk of Toodyay won’t get too upset if I talk about them as I discover what they are - it’s all part of a new perspective that outsiders can bring to a town that inevitably improves and rejuvenates and economy to make a town even more successful, resilient and thriving.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Where did all your money go?

 

Many people I have been talking to lately are interested in finding out more about what sort of leaks can occur in a local economy.

Of course, every local economy is different but there are some common leaks too.

The most visible ones are of course, when an out of town retail business sets up in your community. Apart from the wages it pays to local employees, it sends local dollars out of town when it buys out of town goods and services.

Examples of this may be a chain store supermarket or discount department store. Even a franchised chain store such as a bakery, fast food outlet or electronics store, although owned and operated by a local, may leak dollars out of a local economy more than a true local business, depending on the franchise buying policies and how much autonomy the owner has to make decisions that may benefit the local economy.

Some not so obvious leaks come in the form of insurances, mortgage repayments and rents paid to landlords that don’t live in town. Then there are leaks that can prove difficult to plug that may be obvious or not such as; telecommunications, transport, heath care and the list goes on.

And some obvious leaks like food are quite easy to plug, if there is community will to do so.

It’s not hard to come up with some rough numbers on how big these leaks may be.

I looked at the 2003-04 ABS Household Expenditure Survey (the most recent available) to see what the average Australian household spent on different types of goods and services.

If we took a small community of 500 households (about 1200 people based on the Australian average of people per household), we can see the sort of money a local economy might be leaking if it had no local substitute to keep that money in town.

Let’s look at the possible annual leaks in some of those areas where rural and regional towns import the most;

·               Housing Finance $680,940 (Bank interest payments only – what would the figure be if you included rents paid to non-local landlords?)

·               Telco: $703,820  (probably paid just to one big monopoly)

·               Food $2,307,500 (fresh food that could be produced locally makes up more than half this figure.)

·               Energy $607,100 (this household consumption only!)

TOTAL: $4,299,360 per annum or $8598 per household.

Now, let’s look at some of the leaks where local alternatives may already exist to some extent but certainly don’t plug the leak to its fullest extent possible.

·               Household Furnishings and Equipment: $1,352,000

      ·               Household Services: $706,420 (Possibly up to 50% may be already local for some towns.

      ·               Transport (less public transport) $3,518,840

·               Health Care: $1,190,280

      ·               Entertainment/Recreation: $753,480

·               Clothing and Footwear $916,760

·               Education: $471,380

·               Alcohol $606,320

·               Tobacco $300,300

·               Holidays: $902,720

·               Animals (pets): $238,680

·               Personal Care: $447,200

That’s nearly $16 million worth of household expenditure in a town of just 500 households. Imagine what could be done if you could keep just a quarter of this money in a small town?

If this town’s economy had an extra $4million circulating in it suddenly new people may want to live in it, bringing new skills and new ideas to further enhance your community.

But sometimes, new ideas from new people aren’t what some small towns want and this attitude, if not corrected, can be terminal. I’ll explore that phenomenon in the next post.

Walking the Talk

I'm a city boy. More accurately, I'm a product of the suburbs. My wife, is a product of a town of about 4000. We currently live in Perth, Western Australia, city of about 1.5 million.

I find myself obsessed with helping to facilitate real change in local economies and primarily, at the moment, that means rural and regional local economies. This world is somewhat different to the suburbs I grew up in and have lived in for most of my 40 years.

I spend many days now in that other world now but I have never really experienced it. So, we've decided to move. And for me, it means I'll be walking the talk!

Next month my wife and I and my three kids are moving to a smaller community of a few thousand people on the edge of WA's wheatbelt. It's not too far mind you. I still need to be able to get into the city 2 or 3 times a week to continue to build this social enterprise.

We're moving to a town about 90km north east of the city. It also happens to be only 50km from Goomalling, one of our pilot towns.

Slotting into the community is going to be important. I certainly don't want to be someone who comes along for a quick visit. If we like it, we're planning to stay. So, we've already committed ourselves to helping some of our new neighbors set up a Montessori School in town and I think I'll have to pick up a bat again for a season standing in 45 degree heat and bruised ribs!

The most exciting thing is the challenge that Mary and I have set ourselves. Eat local. It's not going to be a very strict regime. We'll probably still get the odd jar of vegemite from the local grocery store or the occasional bar of chocolate but we won't be buying any 'imported' fresh food - it has to be produced from within a 50km radius. If it isn't, we don't eat it.

That means chooks and a veggie patch of course. Our home will provide us with grapes, figs and oranges. But it does mean no bananas or mangoes for some time I suspect. Mary has already sourced some local goat and lamb, while other fruits, milk and honey are in amply supply in the area. I think rice is a hard one...does that count as fresh or not? Probably not!

We figure our food bill is going to be reduced by half.

The plan is to keep you posted with how we go with this challenge to see what the true savings are for a family who only eats local fresh produce and buys locally. I'm interested in finding out how difficult this is going to be and what am I going to crave.

It should be fun. We'll probably have to buy a freezer and I think we'll certainly be healthier, if only because I'll have to get off my fat behind and work the earth!

I'll even try and post some pics. Stay tuned.

The myths of big box advantage

One thing I was reminded about recently was that the people with all the answers are the people who live in the communities we are dealing with.

During a recent radio interview, the host asked me if I knew how a town could stop people leaving to shop 'elsewhere' when 'elsewhere' is cheaper.

After giving a very disjointed answer covering everything from buy local campaigns to better local business marketing efforts (clearly rambling) I was saved by the person with whom I was being interviewed, Kathleen Vincent, the Post Office owner in Goomalling, one of our embryonic pilot towns.

Kathleen is born and bred in Goomalling (about 140km north east of Perth). She has lived in Perth and returned to run the post office in her hometown. Craving a different experience for her family she is soon to be heading back to the city.

Despite leaving the town for the second time, she still loves it enough to be part of the fledgling team that is putting the Living Communities™ project together there.

After my bumbling and incoherent effort, she simply said; “People think they’re saving money by driving into Perth or into Northam to shop but they’d be using up any saving in the price of fuel anyway.”

Spot on. I didn’t put it any better myself!

Apart from being annoyed at sounding like a bumbling fool during the interview, I started to think in detail about what Kathleen had said.

We’ll have to make some assumptions here. Imagine a town of 500 people that doesn’t have a local supermarket. It has a convenience store but most grocery lines must be purchased from a larger town nearby that has Coles and Woolworths supermarkets as well as numerous other stores not available in our small town.

So it’s not possible to say for sure what the exact dollar saving would be shopping in the larger centre compared to the small town, like Goomalling. We have to assume that if the small town did have its own supermarket, given the size of the town, it would be small and obviously wouldn't stock the range of the chains in the larger nearby town. 

But we can safely assume that it would sell most of the basics, if brand restricted.

Based on the only easily accessible information of pricing I could find on the net, a basket of goods that cost around $185 in a small locally owned supermarket would be about $166 in a chain store. A whopping $19 saving (10%) if you shopped at a chain store in a nearby town – or is it?

So, how much would you be saving by driving to a larger centre to go to the supermarket?

In Goomalling's case, you have to jump in your car and drive for 46km (92km return)– about a 25 minute hike if you stick to the speed limit.

Say you own a Subaru Forester and your car does 10.5lt per 100km. You also buy fuel in Northam at $1.35 a litre. The maths says that a 92km trip will roughly use about 9.6 litres of fuel or $13.04

That’s also 4784 km per year. If you service your car every 10,000km, then that’s roughly the cost of half a service. Let’s be reasonable and say you get your car serviced at a franchise mechanic so it’s cheaper than taking it to the dealer. The last time I had this done it was about $370. So lets add $185, or $3.55 per week.

Immediately your saving by shopping at the big box is reduced to $2.41 – is that really worth sitting in a car for nearly an hour?

Lets add a few very real possibilities to this equation. Fruit and Vegetable prices for conventionally grown local farmer direct produce are likely to be much cheaper than those at major chain stores or even the locally owned supermarket, although some wouldn’t be able to be grown locally. With reduced transport costs and no mark-up from the supermarket chain, it can be almost half the cost. I bought some farmer direct local mandarins in Toodyay last week for $2.50kg. In my city supermarket they were $4.99kg!

The ABC have this very interesting, if somewhat unscientific, survey which backs up the assertion that communities that grow their own, save, even when sold through a supermarket.

So, if you spent about $70 a week on fresh fruit and vegetables you may only pay $40 at a local farmers market. But we’ll add $15 for things like Bananas and out of season imports for a fruit and veg saving of $15.

Our trip to Northam starts to become more expensive - $12.59 more expensive.

So, as you can see, the problem with local isn’t the price. That’s something that either doesn’t exist if the shopping destination is far enough away, or can be compensated for by producing more fresh produce locally.

The reason why most people in a small town leave to go to the next biggest town to shop is really a combination of convenience and experience but primarily experience.

Convenience, because it is possible to do ALL your grocery shopping in a supermarket nowadays, perhaps with the exception of pharmaceuticals.

Experience, because as my marketing background tells me, people want to feel like they are able to have the same or better experience as everyone else. In other words, why stay and do your shopping in a small quiet store in your small town when you can drive for 25 minutes and experience the huge range, brightly lit and ‘exciting’ chain store your larger neighbours have access too? You don’t need to feel you a missing out living in a smaller town.

So maybe I can answer that radio host’s question more succinctly now? 

“How can a small town stop people leaving to shop elsewhere when elsewhere is cheaper.”

Until we go through the program with the community, the detailed answers can’t ever be known for sure but here are some basic principals that can shed some light on where those answers may lie.

Price: As we have shown, buying locally is probably more price competitive even when other factors such as travel are considered. If you have fresh local produce available from a farmers market; vegetables, fruit, dairy, eggs, meat etc., the cost of fresh food in the local area can actually be much cheaper.

Convenience: The convenience of all your groceries in one place (and other items such as clothing, hair dressing etc.) is one thing. However how convenient is it to have to drive 92km if you need something quickly? If your town is big enough to have a big box supermarket in town this isn't obviously isn't a factor but a well designed main street filled with locally owned stores can offer just as much convenience as the big chain. 

Experience: Even if a well designed buy local campaign dispelled the myths of price and convenience in the resident’s minds, it would never be enough to stop people from spending the extra fuel and paying the extra for imported fruit and vegetables. Despite what economic ‘theory’ might tell you, people aren’t rational creatures. Unless your town provides the locals with a unique and fulfilling experience then the lights will always be brighter somewhere else and you may have to understand that you will never be able to convince everyone to shop locally no matter what – but we have ways of compensating for that too!

Local stores need to provide; service, unique products not available in the bigger town up the highway, local products, atmosphere, community, visual stimulus, tantalising aromas and interesting and amazing ways of exciting their customers, even if they do know them intimately already. In other words, never take your customers for granted. Continually surprise them.  

As mentioned earlier, even if the local businesses do provide an amazing experience there will still be those who want to experience a supermarket with thousands of options on the shelves, a bigger chemist or the opportunity to duck into a furniture store that isn’t available in the home town. That’s ok.

These shopping tourists will be replaced by the people leaving the big town down the road and visitors from the city who are bored with the same chain stores and want something interesting by coming to your really exciting community filled with unique stores, offering different local products with friendly and welcoming staff.

Local politics

I have always thought what we were doing was apolitical. We were pushing a free enterprise agenda that supported small business entrepreneurs (a capitalist approach largely claimed by the right) at the same time as focussing on community and sustainability (largely claimed by the left). However, I have become aware in recent weeks of the British Conservative Party’s push to be known as ‘Progressive Conservatives’ – whatever that really means.

It may mean that Living Communities™ and groups like us are about to become political footballs, whether we like it or not.

It seems part of the CP agenda is to move away from their neo-liberal roots and to embrace a return to ‘communitarianism’ and localisation.

A recent interview with ABC’s Geraldine Doogue had one conservative strategist acknowledging that the neo-liberal/neo-classical market dogma had failed to deliver the trickle down effect they claimed it would. He even had some stats to prove that the ‘lower’ classes in the UK had been stripped of their assets over 30-40 years and now was the time to recapitalise them.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

My first reaction was to listen to the little positive guy sitting on my right shoulder (no political pun intended) whispering optimistic futures in my ear. If what these previously intractable conservatives were saying was true  - a major political party, likely to take power in coming elections, in one of the most influential nations on earth, was about to embrace localism, and rebirthing community power as part of their push to turn Britain back into a ‘nation of shopkeepers’ - then the concept of localism will really start to boom…maybe.

Then the grumpy little pessimistic guy on my left shoulder started shouting in my other ear. “This will politicise the whole movement.” Would this allow the conservatives to ‘own’ the idea and as is the nature of politics, lead to ‘opposition’ from the left?

How would this play out in Australian politics? Would Australian conservative parties embrace it? If they were to, my thoughts are that the National Party would be more likely to do so than the Liberal Party. Or would our ‘centrist’ left government take it on board?

Will the Nationals and the Greens merge?!

That last sentence was a joke by the way…

My real thoughts on this whole bizarre embryonic re-shaping of political positions is perhaps more hope than anything but still based on a bit of historical observation.

When neo-liberalism and neo-classicism began to appear in the policy documents on political parties in the 1970s, it re-shaped our world. But it only did so because both sides of the political spectrum embraced it.

The idea that markets were perfect, led to the Australian Labor Party running a neo-liberal economic agenda in the 1980s, following a lead from Thatcher and Regan in the UK and US. The conservative Howard government that followed continued the strategy right up until 2007 and we have seen little, despite some vigorous essay writing from the current Prime Minister deriding neo-liberal economic policies, to think this government really wants much to change.

So maybe, just maybe, if the British Conservatives actually walk more than they talk, localism and ‘communitarianism’ could be woven into the thinking of both sides of politics over the coming decades and push neo-liberal thinking aside.

If it does I’ll be happy, not just because it will be the right course to take but it means I don’t have to become a member of any one particular political party!

Goomalling - Perhaps the first Living Community

Well it’s not quite official but we are certainly able to tell you that we have identified, Goomalling, Western Australia as the likely site for our first small town pilot project.

The Shire of Goomalling is a very forward-looking active local government and they have committed to supporting the project.

We are currently looking to match their commitment through sponsorships, with possibly the bulk of the program funded through the Royalties for Regions grants scheme run by the West Australian government.

Our next immediate steps are to talk to prospective sponsors and identifying the community champions who can help to drive the project.

I’ll keep you all posted on the progress of the Goomalling project.

It's more than the CO2 game

The Prime Minister has just started blogging. His blog is a little different to most. You can make comments but, because it’s the PM’s, all comments are vetted first.

The funny thing is though; it’s obviously moderated by a public servant. The site stops posting comments around midday for an hour and then around 5pm until the next day. I found that quite amusing.

Anyway, I didn’t want to discuss the PMs blog really, but the subject matter of his first post and the narrow focus of debate around it.

His first topic is climate change and the issue has proven to be exceptionally popular.

However, I find something quite interesting. The complete lack of ability the posters seem to have to understand the relevance of renewable energy in the debate.

Those that argue for Anthropogenic Climate Change focus on co2, the rising temperatures and the need for ‘strong action’ - a more powerful ETS usually. Those in the skeptic camp point to the inconclusive science and the risks to our economy if any ETS is introduced.

Again, in Australia, we seem to believe that the only solutions we can accept must come from big government (via a stronger ETS) or big business (via an unfetted free market). Are we a nation of entrepreneurs or a nation of sheep? Solutions actually come from the people.

The skeptics claim the science is wrong, or inconclusive. Fair enough you might say. But wait, then they claim any action based on this wrong science will lead to economic catastrophe. Fair enough again? I’m not so sure.

They are actually arguing for no change whatsoever. ‘Keep everything as it is, it’s all good.’ I’ve even read the old cliché, ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.’.

Continued oil, gas, coal and uranium extraction, in the safe hands of large corporations, sold to large corporate utilities that will lovingly distribute the vital energy to our society as required.

Of course, there is no mention of the sustainability of this practice, given the growing demand for energy from the likes of China and India and no doubt, in time, Africa.

Don’t get me wrong here. I’m not suggesting that China, India and Africa should not be able to aspire to a standard of living equal to that of developed nations like Australia. I am suggesting that they simply can’t. We don’t have enough cheap energy.

Cradle to Cradle founder, Bill McDonough gave a speech at a TED conference a few years back, talking about the new cities he was helping the Chinese government design. They had come to him because they understood if they built them based on current principals, they would run out of materials…from the clay for the bricks to their stockpile of coal to fuel them.

This is for about 400million people.

We would literally need more planets to allow 2 billion people to live a highly materialistic western lifestyle. We don’t yet have those planets available to us of course.

So, the argument that a weak ETS would wreck our economy doesn’t really wash with me. In fact it makes me chuckle.

There are clearly more reasons to lose our addiction to fossil fuels than just any contribution they may make to climate change. 

What those mounting an argument against the climate change science have missed, is that in trying to mount an economic case for 'business as usual', the economics of 'business as usual' is near impossible.

And those that mount the argument for a stronger ETS or even bigger co2 reductions have to be honest and admit that for us to achieve those type of goals, the economy can’t keep ‘growing’. Our focus will have to change from one of growth to one of development.

And that idea is obviously a political death sentence if you can't explain the difference with a 30 second sound bite.

The only way to show people incolcated with the growth paradigm how positive the development paradigm can be, is through real life examples - not more rhetoric.

Perhaps the only real benefit of the currently proposed ETS is to help us to create what is possible. A new system will beget new ideas, further new systems and new business models.

It is a beginning, a chance to start to look away from the fossil fuel folly to focus on renewables. And renewables are great for communities.

Renewables work best away from a centralised system on a distributed grid. That means communities are perfectly suited to owning and running their own mini power stations when they are renewable, not when they are fossil fueled or nuclear.

Renewable energy is more economically feasible for a town of 15,000 souls to build, own and run than a coal fired power station or a nuclear power station that would cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build and run. These huge plants are best run by large corporations.

At the moment these corporations are extracting, generating and selling energy to small communities. The community’s wealth is being extracted too, straight down the money pipe of the corporation, into the shareholder's wallet.

With some market restructuring, renewables could allow communities the opportunity to generate their own power, retail it back to themsleves, sell the surplus wholesale into the grid and generate revenue from renewable energy certificates thus stopping the economic leakage that comes from paying a power bill to a centralised corporation.

‘Business as usual’ though, will build up risk in our general economic system by embedding us further in a finite fuel economy. The supply of which will, by its very nature, decrease just as the demand increases from a rapidly developing world.

We can’t leave it too late to try an extract ourselves from this reliance on fossil fuels and communities are perfectly positioned to lead this change.

If those disputing the science of anthropogenic climate change are to claim it is our economy that is at risk if the science is wrong, then they need to show how the economy will not be at even greater risk - from basic supply and demand factors relating to energy - if we go for their 'business as usual' approach.

And the other side needs to start doing rather than preaching.

An ETS, along with some more community friendly ‘market reform’ is the first step.

Town makes commitment

It's been some time between posts and this one is certainly nothing more than a quick update. I promise to post something more profound soon!

I just got off the phone with the CEO of a shire that has shown tremendous interest in kick starting the Living Communities program in its community.

The upshot is that we have a financial commitment from the shire towards an application for a government grant (these grants require 'skin in the game' from the applicants). This is great news as it is the first financial commitment we have obtained in relation to our pilot program.

Unfortunately, until I get the go-ahead from the shire, I am loathe to reveal its location. We need to pay the community the courtesy of informing them first rather than members of the blogosphere.

But don't worry, the town will be revealed as soon as possible.

In the meantime, Martin and I will set about chasing up the rest of the funds from sponsors. Stay tuned!

Milestones and money

The last 6 months has seen a flurry of activity as we have assembled our team and advisory board, preached our gospel to towns throughout Western Australia and created an organisation that we aim to make real change to communities that have been left very few alternatives by a cruel ‘efficient’ globalised economy.

But now, the easy and fun bit is nearly over and the hard bit is just beginning. How do we get some financial backing to not only conduct three pilot projects but to maintain the organisation so we can continue to talk to communities, train Living Communities™ practitioners and provide ongoing services for our member communities like advocacy, education, training, networks and expertise?

Pilot Projects
We have been taking a very standard route to find the funding for the pilot projects by going though the available grant schemes offered by government.

While we have no shortage of towns that want to take part – 3 starters at last count – there is no certainty that we will obtain the required funding. Only 40% of applicants at best have received funding via the Western Australian government’s Regional Grants Scheme, part of Royalties for Regions.

When I think about the towns that have said they are willing to be involved the frustration of not being able to start at the moment is strangling me and Martin. Each town has so many opportunities and so much potential to be a remarkable community – yet bureaucracy, like cold water, shocks me back to reality.

Government grants may yet prove to be the fire-starter, however, we must continue to examine other options so no momentum is lost should the towns be knocked back by the bureaucracy.

Operational
Our organisation is not for profit. This usually means that we would be expecting to survive off our wits and the generosity of others. Living Towns Corp., the NFP company that runs Living Communities™, aims to be self sufficient once fully operational after the pilot phase, but of course, like any start-up enterprise we need start-up capital.

Finding this capital is probably going to be even harder than funding the pilot projects. Not because we aren’t worth funding, but because the global economy means people with money seem to be far less willing to part with any cash.

One advantage we do have is having an experienced venture capitalist on our advisory board and an entrepreneur who has been down this path many times.

Gary MacBeth (the VC) and Paul Papa-Adams (the E) will be crucial in turning Living Communities™ into more than just a brilliant idea.

The next 6 months will be crucial to maintaining our momentum. Much of what we will be doing right now will be focused on the money side of things…like it or not.

So stay tuned as we let you know how we try and raise nearly $1.3 million to fund the pilots and the organisation.

Finally, if anyone reading this has some spare change, please feel free to let us know!