Essays

• July 2008 Ecology

  A turbine for the community

  This is the second discussion session I attended at Friday’s Transition Town meeting.
  A community wind farm turbine purchase
  This session was on the community purchase of a wind turbine in a new development in Fintry (Scotland). A developer approached the community with a plan to build a 14 turbine wind farm; the community proposed an additionality that they would purchase a 15th turbine and receive income from the electricity generated. They found funding and purchased the turbine for £2.5 million (turbine was originally expected to pay itself off in roughly 15 years; however, as electricity prices are increasing, the return on investment time is growing shorter. It will, again depending on electricity prices, generate an income of £50 to £100,000 a year till it is paid off then £400,000 to £500,000 a year for the community).

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• July 2008 Ecology

  Think before consuming

  Over the past few days I’ve been at The Big Tent: Scotland’s Festival of Stewardship. On Friday, before the festival started, I attended a Transition Towns meeting. I’ll present notes from two discussions; first is a conversation about consumer culture:
  Think before consuming
  The session was mainly concerned with how to raise awareness about waste and energy involved with the production and packaging of “plastic rubbish” (this term was used several times through the conversation to indicate anything from flat-pac furniture to toys that are used briefly and then thrown out). We considered the social implications of becoming “that mother who doesn’t want her children to give or receive gifts from the store” and what misunderstandings and opportunities might arise from taking a “non-consumer” or contrarian stance on this issue.

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• May 2008 Ecology

  The Call of the Suburb

  Here is an excerpt from an essay I’ve just finished for the Ecopsychology module of my MSc in Human Ecology.
  “The soil and the pavement grow different crops, even though the soil is cut up into minute suburban plots.” – Harlan Paul Douglass

  One Step Removed
  Perhaps humans were never meant to live in cities; arguments against are based on the theory of our evolution in small groups—that these cannot be scaled to a metropolis. (Rees, 37-40) However, counter-arguments propose we can construct cities as groupings of small self-contained communities that mimic our evolutionary background (see Ackoff on his model for new urban design). Some contend our only “natural” living space is the countryside; yet the countryside as we know it is almost always a man-made (or heavily altered) construct. If one considers the countryside a wild place, one might imagine the suburb as a happy middle-ground—not urban, not wild, but a median of the two. However, in this paper I will propose the suburb is perhaps the most unnatural amalgam of environments we have yet devised. In the city, we can at least see some shadow of our prior organisation into small communities with shared space for common use. In the country, we often organise into groups that provide mutual benefit (farm collectives, fire brigades, etc.). However, the suburbs tend to separate out each family or individual into an isolated unit (an isolated unit that relies heavily on outside resources for maintenance). If one is habituated into such an environment where everything and everyone is siloed off into discreet controlled elements, what is the psychological impact? This essay will briefly explore this and some reasons behind the growth of contemporary suburbs.

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• May 2008 Ecology

  Community

  I’m a few days back now from the Isle of Eigg (one of the small Hebridean Islands; 7,400 acres with about 80 people—and a stunningly beautiful landscape). We were there for a core course on the MSc.
  There is a lot I could (and probably should) write concerning our visit there; one of the primary reasons we visit Eigg is to observe the workings of a small community—how they interact with each other and their environment. I’m supposed to be able to parse this all out and write about it; however, as I’m becoming more aware of issues of legitimacy (the “who am I to come in here and think I can tell these people anything” question) and just generally sensitive to the spirit of a place, I feel less inclined to write (probably not the best reaction on an academic course!). I think I’m better able to experience a place and appreciate it than I’ve ever been before (and keep in mind that I’ve now had a lot of training to do this). But am I competent to tell someone else’s story; this is the question I am working through. (This is one of my learning edges for the course.)

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• April 2008 Ecology

  Gaia Embodied in a Voice too Soft to Hear

  I wrote the first stanzas of this several weeks ago and finished the last few in the wilderness of Knoydart (I think there is a “missing” stanza yet to come). Here is a .pdf of the poem with proper formatting: Gaia Embodied.pdf
  In the MSc course I’m on, we’ve spoken much about finding voice—about trying to find words to relate the human condition. I believe poetry is the language one uses to express what can’t be said with words.

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• March 2008 Spiritual Life

  Excerpts from Spiritual Activism Essay

  I finished an essay last evening for my Spiritual Activism Course; it’s entitled Blessings: The Beginning of Conflict Resolution. Here are some excerpts:
  What is the root cause of conflict? Perhaps that is too large a topic to explore in a brief essay; What instead is the essential component of peace? When we hone peace to its “beginnings”, what do we find at the core? In many languages, a curse is considered the most powerful utterance available. Unfortunately, curses (or the words of conflict in general) also seem to be readily translatable into all dialects (and, for that matter, our curses are translated into the “language of nature” as our ideas and action have direct bearing on the environment). From local disagreement between individuals to vast conflicts between nations, the world is inundated with curses; yet, despite the richness of language, we lack ready words for harmony. This is partially a linguistic barrier; however, there is also little overarching structure that reaches across languages and ideologies to fill a common human need for blessing. I submit that most conflict is essentially language based and the point beyond a curse is often conflict.

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