{"id":1464,"date":"2014-11-12T06:54:30","date_gmt":"2014-11-12T11:54:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=1464"},"modified":"2014-11-12T06:54:30","modified_gmt":"2014-11-12T11:54:30","slug":"climate-crisis-and-the-pursuit-of-happiness-reflections-on-community-solutions-conference-transition-milwaukee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=1464","title":{"rendered":"Climate Crisis and the Pursuit of Happiness: Reflections on Community Solutions Conference – Transition Milwaukee"},"content":{"rendered":"

Climate Crisis and the Pursuit of Happiness: Reflections on Community Solutions Conference – Transition Milwaukee<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Last weekend I had the privilege of attending the Sixth Community Solutions Conference: \u00a0\u201cClimate Crisis\u2014Curtailment and Community\u2014and The Power of Individual Action,\u201d held in Yellow Springs Ohio by The Arthur Morgan Institute for Community Solutions.\u00a0 To those not familiar with permaculture, the work of \u00a0Community Solutions or for that matter The Post Carbon Institute, the most remarkable thing about the conference was what was not included\u2014namely, the usual salvo of smart-grids and breakthroughs in efficiency, panel after panel celebrating the decreasing price of solar and wind, the false promise of carbon capture or a new knowledge economy, or, if necessary (so that we might continue to live as if there is no tomorrow) the prospect of blasting the tops of mountain tops, this time to fill the air with sun-blocking dust.\u00a0 There was no suggestion, here, that we might magically maintain our unsustainable way of life with nary an inconvenience; the message was far more optimistic and uplifting than\u00a0that<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Any foolish hope that we might collectively address climate change in a way that does not involve massive lifestyle-changes was disposed of in Richard Heinberg\u2019s opening talk, which highlighted the peaking of world conventional oil production, the limits of tight oil, and the fact that renewable energy just won\u2019t behave like coal, oil, and natural gas, no matter how much we may wish it would.\u00a0 Pat Murphy added to this a significant discussion about the diminishing returns that we might expect from efficiency and thus the necessity of re-engineering our own practices and demands rather than the planet itself.\u00a0 The rest of the conference was geared mainly towards personal and community choices we can make.\u00a0 While some of these changes did had a technological aspect, inner-change, will, and commitment received far more attention.\u00a0 The power of moral reckoning and a commitment to doing what is right on a planet that is hot, crowded, and certainly not flat, were highlighted by Jim Merkel\u2019s rousing and highly-personal account of his model of radical simplicity.\u00a0 No one was suggesting that politics don\u2019t matter, nor that our current societal values might be compatible with humanity\u2019s long term survival.\u00a0 But the stronger emphasis, this weekend, spoke to the belief that this group of activists and aspirants might \u201cbe the change they want to see.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Climate Crisis and the Pursuit of Happiness: Reflections on Community Solutions Conference – Transition Milwaukee. Last weekend I had the privilege of attending the Sixth Community Solutions Conference: \u00a0\u201cClimate Crisis\u2014Curtailment and Community\u2014and The Power of Individual Action,\u201d held in Yellow Springs Ohio by The Arthur Morgan Institute for Community Solutions.\u00a0 To those not familiar with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1053,622,639],"class_list":["post-1464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-climate-crisis","tag-permaculture","tag-post-carbon-institute"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1464"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1464\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1465,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1464\/revisions\/1465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}