Care about the planet? Well stop saying local is better then.

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One of the most common myths of the modern trendy progressive world is that which say 'local' is always better - for the economy, for the planet and for society. If only we 'transitioned' our places into being locally-focused, resilient communities filled with independent shops, urban gardens and local food networks say the advocates - with comments like this ever so common:

The same goes for agriculture, textiles, and many other sectors where returning to local, human-scaled enterprise will lead to less worker exploitation and environmental damage while producing better, healthier products. Nonindustrial practices may be more labor-intensive, but they’re also better for us all. For those of us used to white-collar jobs, the idea of growing vegetables or making clothes may seem like a big step backward toward more menial labor. But consider for a moment the sorts of activities the wealthiest Americans or most satisfied retirees engage in enthusiastically: brewing craft beers, knitting, and gardening. If there’s really not enough work to go around and there are so many extra people to employ, we can always farm in shifts.

This quote is from a book called Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus and was quoted - as an example of progressive ignorance - by Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek. What bothers me most isn't the stuff about the local multiplier that are used to justify resilience - we know that's pretty much nonsense - or even the truth that this sort of local protectionism only makes us poorer. No, what bothers me is that the idiot progressives promoting transition towns and putting up these 'back to the land' arguments are completely wrong about its environmental impact.

It simply isn't true that this return to pre-industrial production has less environmental impact than modern intensive agriculture or mass-production of the clothes and tools we need. We know that extensive agriculture uses more inputs than intensive agriculture, which is a pretty wasteful start, but we also know that this sort of farming is more polluting and has a bigger impact on wildlife and the local environment. Yet the 'Greens' and their progressive fellow travellers persist with their myth-making and in denying that the same benefits come from agricultural intensification as come from any other improvement in our efficiency in using resources - it makes us richer, it puts less strain on the planet and it allows time for those pleasant pastimes like home brew beer and allotment gardening.

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Transition Network - smug folk who want higher prices

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There's a particular sort - I call them 'local protectionists' - who think the salvation for poor communities, indeed for our economy, is for prices to be higher. That's right folks - there really are people out there who believe poverty will be resolved, sustainability achieved and resiliance maintained by stuff being more expensive.

I've written about Transition Towns before pointing out that they don't do what they claim at all (assuming 'helping the poor' is part of the point) but actively make life worse for the least well off in the communities they colonise.

Their nonsense - dangerous, divisive, damaging nonsense - is encapsulated in this smug post from Rob Hopkins, the daddy of Transition Towns and ruiner of Totnes. The post catalogues Rob's little adventure closing down his Amazon account:

I've done it.  I've closed my Amazon account.  I now stand before you as an ex-Amazon account-holder.  I feel curiously shaky, but at the same time empowered, excited even.

It's OK, the blog calms down a little as Rob explains all about how evil Amazon is as a business and how he not only wanted to close the account but wanted his reasons ('I don't like how you do business') to be registered. Perhaps even tattooed on Jeff Bezos' backside.

And Rob then concludes with a call for higher prices:

Me, I resolve to buy less, but better. Less, but longer-lasting. Less, but local. The thought of where we will end up in 5 years time, 10 years time, 20 years time, if companies like Amazon continue as they are, really frightens me. It's not good, it's not right. It's not about our needs, it's about the needs of huge investors. I want a different world for my boys. I can't, on my own, do that much about it. I can't insist that the UK government legislate so that, as in Holland, the Recommended Retail Price (RRP) is the legal minimum at which any book can be sold, although I think that is grounds for a really timely campaign. 

We used to have price fixing for books. Publishers loved it. And books were more expensive (lots more expensive). This smug bloke wants those prices to be higher - for rules to passed to make this so. And for all of us to be less well off.


Dreadful.

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More on the crass stupidity of Transition Towns - the case of Totnes

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Some folk from Totnes aren't too happy at the way in which a few well organised green extremists have captured the Town Council and imposed their ridiculous Transition Town Totnes (TTT) idea on the place:

While no one in the Totnes has voted for TTT to dictate town policy, it has enormous influence over town planning policy and the future economic direction of the town. No one in the town voted for TTT to run policy, and it is quite wrong that Totnes Town Council took the unilateral decision to become give us the label of a Transition Town. In fact, if TTT continues to implement its damaging policies it will succeed in turning Totnes centre in a ghost town and make all our lives far more difficult. We want choice, not just TTT's choices.

Indeed the town featured in all the trendy nationals over a campaign against Costa coffee opening and revealed how the green extremists distorted the truth to make their case:

...only 12 per cent of local residents supported its battle against the coffee chain. Its argument that Totnes was a chain free town was a lie. It's claim there are 41 coffee outlets in Totnes included pubs, cafes and restaurants that would have been barely affected even if the arrival of Costa Coffee resulted in fewer coffee sales. Totnes has one dedicated coffee and that, the Curator, open after TTT began its campaign.

These good people have launched a petition - I would urge them to put up for the Town Council and to involve their District and County Councillors (if they've not been taken in by the green extremists). More power to their elbow and success to their petition!

Worse still this green fanatics want to impose a load of huge industrial wind turbines on the place!

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Transition Towns - or how to be less resilient and exclude the poor

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Maybe I've been asleep - I don't usually miss left-wing, green wibble - but 'transition towns' were a new one on me. Apparently there's a whole movement of them:

Transition Initiatives, community by community, are actively and cooperatively creating happier, fairer and stronger communities, places that work for the people living in them and are far better suited to dealing with the shocks that'll accompany our economic and energy challenges and a climate in chaos.

The point about these 'transition initiatives' is that they involve the capture of a local agenda - and policy-setting within a specific community - by a small group of committed, green extremists. The point and purpose of these groups is to ensure that all the focus within the particular community is on "resilience". We are told the problem is - without evidence or the proffering of choice - with things such as 'runaway' climate change, peak oil and that:

Industrial society has lost the resilience to be able to cope with energy shocks.

The chosen methods for these activists are to stress those parts of the local agenda that are open to criticism on 'environmental' grounds - it might be anything from local concerns about proposals for a coffee shop or a supermarket to campaigns against housing development or new transport infrastructure.

These campaigns give the green extremists the crack into which to ram their anti-development, anti-industrial wedge. At the heart of this extremism is the seemingly benign idea of 'resiliance' - making communities more resistant to shocks such as "fluctuations in energy prices" and "anticipated changes in climate". And this resilience is all about excluding the regional, national and international - thus the lower prices and distribution resilience of the large supermarket is denied in favour of local growing initiatives, jolly little town currencies and campaigns to defend independent shops. All of which, of course, make it more difficult and more expensive for the less well off.

And cutting yourself off from wider distribution systems does not make you more resilient. You only need to look at the aftermath of the recent Hurricane Sandy to see that national retailers were far more able to respond to the crisis than were local independents. Why? Because their national distribution networks, dispersed warehouses and truck fleets allowed them to quickly redirect stocks to places affected by the hurricane.

The truth is that the last and best protection - that resilience - comes from well-managed private business rather than from government. The Transition Towns idea deliberately sets out to exlcude these systems claiming they damage the environment or actually threaten local resilience. Worse still Transition Towns seek to create local systems that are more expensive to manage, less robust and excluding of the poor - they are not just twee little groups 'doing good' but organisations actively damaging communities.

Most depressingly these Transition Towns do not seem that way. Clever and articulate people promote them, the same naive churchy types as were suckered by 'fair trade' get involved and none of these people realise that the losers in all this are the poor. The one's who'd rather like a nice supermarket or a Costa coffee. The one's who would benefit most from connection to the international network of trade. The one's who'd like their sons and daughters to have a fighting chance of affording to carry on living in the smart little market town. The people who benefit from that "industrial society" our Transition Town advocates disdain.

Transition Towns really are less resilient and exclude the poor.

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