Welcome to the low impact community adventure...

... an occasional blog based on the research for a book of stories, 'The Ecology of Community' about an exploration of communities in the UK that are living lightly and lowering their carbon emissions...

It's a blog which hopes to connect inspiring and alternative stories about living lightly .. showing how our journey to a post-carbon future is one about inspiration, resourcefulness and creativity, and coming together, rather than fear and guilt and doom.

It documents my journey as I join with others to see how groups of people are taking power into their own hands, learning useful skills for a post-oil world

And, by looking at what communities are doing - not just intentional communities, but the concept of community: cooperative groups, structures, traditional and new communities, islands, housing estates, communities of interest and virtual communities - the journey will test the premise that cooperation - rather than competition - provides the most effective model for change.

It's all inspired by a lovely handbook called the 'Three Tonne Handbook', published by Women's Environmental Network, which shows groups of people how to reduce their emissions with handy sections for food, water, energy, waste and transport.

Monday, 5 April 2010

Feasta - a collective thinking process

To continue thinking about the links between ecology and community... I was looking at the website of excellent Irish organisation Feasta, to feature in due course as one of the stories in my forthcoming book The Ecology of Community...

Feasta describes itself 'as a collective thinking process about the future' (feasta being an Irish word for future, taken from an early poem):

Cad a dheanfaimid feasta gan adhmad, ta deire na gcoilte air lar
What shall we do without wood, when all the forests are gone?

Their radical and sensible ideas include proposals on Cap and Share, a proposal to incentivise emitting less, and rewarding people, not companies in the process which has found currency (sorry) with the Irish Government and the UK's sustainable development commission.

Eminent economist Richard Douthwaite, who wrote the seminal titles The Growth Illusion and The Ecology of Money, is on the organisation's executive committe.

And it is of no coincidence, in my opinion, that it is such a non-hierarchical, participatory organisation, that is coming up with some of the most ground-breaking ideas to look at new systems of economics for a sustainable future.
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