An Oscar at the RCE

Yesterday, I related unnecessary packaging to incipient climate chaos. Today, the RCE Severn Christmas Lecture by Michael Wadleigh related consumerism as a whole to unsustainable development by means of the simple equation:

H+P = -R

where H = the human population, P = manufactured products and R = resources. It's hardly an original thought, but he put it across well by means of excellent slides. They imagined our world was encapsulated in a space station with ten occupants - one of whom enjoyed half the available resources, the other nine sharing the rest. Result: of course, revolution.

What makes human beings happy? he asked. Products? No: nature, other human society and activities leading to fulfilment. Truth and finit-ism were his watchwords.

I commend Michael's presentation, called the Homo Sapiens report: he offers it free of charge to secondary schools and universities. And he'll bring along his Woodstock Oscar for a talking point!

Talking the talk

Over the past 48 hours, I've attended three meetings where sustainability or resiliance have been the watchwords. On Tuesday afternoon, there was quite a heated discussion in the RCE Severn Steering Committee about the extent to which we needed to sock it to our stakeholders. Should our working groups challenge businesses' CSR policies, and challenge too the whole notion of the sustainability of continuing economic growth, given Peak Oil and that we are already in ecological debt? Are children being equipped by our schools for a society based on the realities of resource depletion and global warming? What is our positive vision of a low-carbon, steady state economy or our plan for energy descent?

Some of these questions were addressed by Ben Brangwyn of the Transition Network at the University of Gloucestershire's IRIS Seminar that evening. Ben's "excited by local currencies," he tells us - not as a replacement for the pound sterling, but as a complementary process. And he's big on visioning: "Where will we need to be in 20 years' time? How do we get from here to there - year by year?" "We don't know," he stressed, "if this Transition thing is going to work: it's an experiment; but we cannot sit around and wait for someone to do a pilot." And he cautions, "complex systems can never return to a prior state." Sustainable Bungay was an example of what could be achieved with faith-based communities heavily involved. Or, talking of adaptation, what about Cheltenham becoming a City of Sanctuary? (There's a challenge!)

My photograph was taken at the well-attended meeting of the Gloucestershire Churches Environmental Justice Network yesterday, where Professor Daniella Tilbury spoke of the UoG's work in the sustainability field. What is it about our lives that has got us to where we are, was the question she posed. Not, "Who dropped that plastic wrapper?" but, "What sort of society makes it necessary to have such wrappers?" Strategies to change behaviours don't work: the consumer culture is here to stay. How do we influence without preaching? "The biggest problem we have in this institution [the UoG] is students."

Sustainable Japan?

We are off to the airport in the morning, having come to the end of our trip, which has passed incredibly quickly - a good sign that we have all been enjoying ourselves. Here in Yokohama (today) we have been dazzled by the modern architecture of Minato Mirai, where I've been talking sustainability with RCE colleagues, Zinaida Fadeeva and Aurea Tanaka at the UN University Institute of Advanced Studies. Their team is funded by the Japanese Dept. of the Environment, for ten years - a sign of at least a degree of commitment to the subject.

Bicycles abound in the cities - more than at home - and public transport, particularly the train service, is excellent. Seeing the huddling of houses together, as the Shinkansen passes at vast speed through the suburbs, makes you think our town sprawl energy wasteful. But even up on the Buddhist monastic stronghold of Kôyasan - we spent the night before last in temple dwellings there (delicious vegetarian food, and a wonderful chanting ceremony at 6 a.m.) - to find a heated loo seat is a matter of course. And the shopping malls in the centre of Osaka and here seem endless.

Plastered on my birthday

I'm sorry to report that my grand tour - see my last post Northwards Ho! - ended yesterday with a bump. On the last leg of my journey, biking home from Brackley, I was intending to head for Chipping Norton, when instead I headed into the tarmac, and to Banbury Hospital. Coming down a steepish hill at speed with a clear road ahead, my front wheel hit a pothole and buckled. I didn't know too much about what happened next.

An amazing procession of extremely helpful people then introduced themselves to me: the couple with a first aid kit in their car, and telephone (for a 999 call); the local police; the ambulance crew; a team of nurses at the hospital; Dr Ahmed; the radiographer; the Plaster Queen - and above all Caroline, who dropped everything and rushed over to be with me, drive me home (and rescue the remains of the bike from the roadside).

And so I returned home to my birthday tea party feeling rather sheepish and very battered and bruised, with possibly a fractured foot - hence the plaster. (Agnes took this picture, and also photographed the remains of my cycle helmet, see below, without which I would certainly not be writing this today.)

Oh dear, and it had all gone so well till then! After a cold, wet start from Ludlow, the weather gradually improved once I had reached Edinburgh. The cycling was glorious when I was on canal paths and country lanes - less so at the times when my route took me along the side of a dual carriageway. All but one of the 16 trains I caught ran to time. I met as planned - amongst others - some Christian Ecology Link and RCE contacts. I visited more than 20 cathedrals and churches (more counting the ones which were locked).

But more importantly (as it was the object of the exercise), I checked out most of the places where my ancestor Peter Davis had been (and which he had written about) on his travels 174 years ago. If I found it tiring, getting round his 800-mile itinerary by comfortable train (mostly) with 100 miles on my bike, then he must have been completely exhausted after his fortnight spent mainly on top of rattly coaches with 100 miles on foot!