Art of Climbing Trees

Environmental Audit for Transition (EAT)

This will be an ongoing participatory, transparent (i.e. with a chain of accountability), open-source, audit of civilisation/human activity, human skills and energy, the biosphere and non-living materials/resources²⁰⁷. Much of this has already been done, but it needs to be collated through the lens of transition. This will be something like world citizens putting on the Parallel Thinking White (Information) Hat¹⁹⁵ to illuminate what we know, giving us a solid foundation of reality. 

This will quantify environmental health – the health or degradation of the biosphere, the needs of each species pertaining to habitat and healthy sustenance/food chains. Also, current human production, infrastructure including private property, the available renewable power, plus the available kilojoules of human/animal/machine energy. The EAT summarises what we have to work with.

The world is the commons. The Tragedy of the Commons⁵⁷ is only avoided by communication, which is the primary function of the United Earth polycentric forums and assemblies. The EAT aims to present reality so the UE (all of us) can make good decisions, understand the economy’s true nature (prioritising the objective over the subjective), and pragmatically manage the transformation of resources cleverly and with empathy⁵⁷. (The new economy has nothing to do with creating or chasing money, and GDP is abandoned as a measure of success¹⁹⁹).

The first lesson from the EAT will be to accept that we have absolutely no choice but to reduce energy-intensive and extractive activities (if we wish to survive) and to accept we’ve been ‘energy blind’. We must transition to using only the clean energy we have available, and no more – to usher in a FREEconomy¹⁰⁷. This is largely a matter of transitioning our expectations, which will involve weaning ourselves off our addictions¹⁸¹. Despite a significant reduction in production/consumption – degrowing the economy, or causing a ‘great simplification’ to something ‘leaner’¹⁷² – it won’t have us going ‘back to the dark age’, as the cliché would have us fear*. (The life of muddy boil-faced toil and drudgery of yesteryear were also primarily caused by inequality and corrupted power, just as it is today. Poverty and squalor are the other side of the gold coin.) It remains a choice between degrowth by disaster or by our design. 

Please try using the (efficient) ‘Six Thinking Hats’ method of parallel thinking for sharing your ideas.
It helps us to organise our thoughts and feelings. Wear the Black Hat for critisism/doubts; the Green hat for creative suggestions; the Yellow for positive responses, Red for gut feelings; White for information. I am wearing the Blue Hat now, when I say we are here to design Eutopia.

Simply write ‘Black’, ‘Yellow’, ‘Green’, etc, before your given response. Then, start a new paragraph for ideas of a different coloured hat.