Whilst discussing our newsletter contents, with a fellow Carbon Cutter, the observation was made that the Step 10 “Move” may scare people. This is the sort of valuable insight we need but it made me think. How can anyone be scared by someone so benign? Carbon Cutters are not meant to be a tiny minority of hardcore anti-carbon fanatics. Would someone refuse to cut their carbon on the basis that, one day, they may have to be closer to a sustainable community and living in resilient housing? Nobody is saying they have to. Many may be just fine right where they are. However many of us may benefit from being closer to their family, food, water, a community, shops – all in walking distance. This transition should inject new life into our local communities. This should be an exciting and invigorating idea. To be local you need to get local. To be resilient you need to be in touch with others. Maybe “Move” is just the wrong word. Maybe we should just say “Community” and leave it at that? This is probably the best way to think of this. Too many of us are divorced from our community and barely know the names of the people next door let alone the person across the road.

The idea of being scared of a future where we all are a little closer to each other, seems, on the face of it, absurd. People move somewhere all the time for all kinds of relatively trivial reasons such as being close to a good school. Since the Ten Steps are not prescriptive the notion of “Move” is as metaphorical as it is literal. You need to move your mind and your feet just as well. It is more about accepting that the physical structure of our Communities may change. The word here is “acceptance”, ie, understand that things cannot stay as they are. Why would anyone cut their carbon footprint without fully understanding this? Or are we to shelter people from the real world. Is moving such a harsh reality? Surely not.

They are many people in this life who have to move for extremely unfortunate reasons. War, famine, plague, hunger. Ask anyone and they would not voluntarily join those unfortunates. These people are running away from something. We have the luxury of running towards something. If we do nothing about Climate Change & Peak Oil then these misfortunes will engulf as all. We either restructure our societies around a post-carbon paradigm willingly, voluntarily and in advance – OR the decision will be made for us. We’ll be 6 billion refugees looking for a place with food, shelter and security. Therefore the notion of questioning our modern standards of human settlement & housing should not be soft-peddled. It isn’t even one of the hardest topics to discuss. We could have made Step 10 “Zero Population Growth”. I am sure that wouldn’t have been very palatable. If you can’t accept that everything is about to change then you will be carbon cutting as a lifestyle choice. This year you’ll cut carbon to be seen to be ‘green’. Next year you’ll buy an SUV so you can enjoy a ‘country lifestyle’. No one wants that.

So, should we care? In some respects it is not worth much heated debate. I can only recommend that anyone interested should pick up James Howard Kunstler’s “The Long Emergency” and read it for themselves. We need everyone to reduce their carbon footprint but it must be for good – forever. There is no going back. How do we persuade people of this? It reminds me of the problem that anyone on a weight-watchers program faces. Unless they make permanent changes to their diet, lifestyle, habits and exercise regime then they will just slide back into old routines and gain weight. The analogy is highly apt. CO2 footprints can easily be halved if you really work hard on it. But as soon as you take the eye off the ball you are back into what Heinberg calls the “consensus trance”. You go back to society’s ‘norm’. Unless we have critical mass we cannot change the ‘norm’. We can’t get critical mass unless we have mass acceptance of the program.

So is Step 10 counter-productive? Or do we accept the carrot with the stick? It certainly isn’t a threat! As a set of principles the Ten Steps stand as a charter. Our constitution. They are not negotiable. We must be firm and stick to these principles. There are no theologians rewriting the Bible because there are bits that people don’t like. They just discuss interpretation. The steps were carefully thought through to be slightly challenging – but not too challenging. They are broad enough to accept a variety of interpretation. No one is asked to take up all ten steps. It is only a structure to work within. There is no a membership criterion or entry test for Carbon Cutters. It is more a state of mind and a friendly club than Army recruitment. You can’t fail or get kicked out. You can join a gym but never get fitter. You’ll be encouraged to. If you didn’t want help and encouragement then why did you join the gym? We know that, like gym membership, there will be many drop outs and many will lose interest. However, unlike muscles and fat, which are fickle and fade, the things you learn will stay with you forever. People can dip into and out of their Community Action Group as they need to. We won’t be taking a register or giving homework. It is just an extension of the Community.

If people feel threatened by the Steps then maybe we have only failed to name or explain them properly. We can re-package the purpose of the steps in Carbon Cutters. If we explain better what this “to do” list is for maybe we’ll head off any misunderstandings. There can be no Carbon Cutters without the Ten Steps. When you go to school no one is expected to know everything that will be taught in school in advance. Otherwise there would be no purpose in school. Likewise, I hope people will discuss the meaning of Step 10 in one of our cosy fire-side chats. The ensuing debate will supply the insight that we all need to prepare ourselves. Life-boat drills are not there to scare the passengers on the Cruise Ship. Their purpose is to assure the passengers of their safety. And that is the most apt analogy I could hope for……