Think Tank
The Post Carbon Institute has an ambitious set of program and
policy areas. Our program areas and the corresponding projects are selected
to make a near-term postitive impact on local communities, prepare them for
times of energy scarcity, and/or raise the awareness of Peak Oil and Gas. Our
policy areas are reflect the key issues and opportunities facing humanity as
we transition into the Post Carbon Age.
Featured Program Area: Community Supported Manufacturing
Excerpt from the "Getting Started" chapter of "Relocalize Now! Getting
ready for Climate Change and the End of Cheap Oil":
We have discovered in visits to countless towns in North America that most
places are totally reliant on outside deliveries for practically everything
except oxygen. Time and time again we hear about workshops and light
manufacturing plants that have shut down, leaving the young, middle-aged and
old with no work, no money, and in the particularly barbarous case of America,
no health care either.
At the infrastructure level, the factories that once made the machine tools
to supply the end-user manufacturers, have also largely disappeared. This story
will surely find resonances across the world. Even in places like Germany, which
still does make things, including machine tools, unemployment is reaching post-war
records. Thus, almost everywhere it will be difficult to start making local
daily necessities again because the complex infrastructure and vital tools,
small and large, which were built painstakingly over time, have disappeared
and reappeared in the places of the cheapest, most exploitable labour and lowest
environmental standards. That used to mean places like Mexico and Taiwan, but
nowadays means China (with India waiting in the wings). Furthermore, the whole
economic system, as we have already described, is designed to eat the eggs and
babies of any community creature foolhardy enough to try go it alone and produce
even some of what it consumes.
When we first approached the idea of returning to making our daily needs, the
problem seemed insurmountable. Everywhere we turned it appeared that the means
of production were missing and that the free market, economists, and the MBA
malaise would mean that no product would ever make it even to the business plan
stage because everything can always be made more cheaply (in rotten conditions)
offshore. The only entry point would be by replicating the same techniques of
quasi-slavery and corporate ruthlessness we find so despicable. If only there
were some way of shielding the local production system from the rapacious lunacy
of globalization.
We think that there is, but it is not simple or easy. That should be no surprise,
otherwise many people would already be doing it. What is required is a near
total remaking of the infrastructure, what we have called the parallel public
infrastructure. We have spoken of it earlier and said that it will be a system
to help integrate the many disparate efforts that are now starting to bridge
the carbon chasm. In the case of the ‘non-grown’ items, the parallel
public infrastructure moves from being vital to continuation and scaling up
of operations, to being the very womb and mother system, without which no egg
will get implanted, far less grow.
The key parts of the parallel public infrastructure that will allow local manufacturing
to begin again and be sustained, are the training, analytic, knowledge, energy,
and local currency elements. Yet even this will not be enough to start a new
local production venture; this will require the active and possibly prolonged
financial support of the community. The model we look to is that of community
supported agriculture (CSA), which we already know works in the matter of growing
in soil. Now we want to transfer community cultivation from the land to the
workshop. Developing different and varied techniques of community support will
require different kinds of production organisation and different ownership structures.
We envisage a mixture of everything from municipal ownership and operation through
cooperatives and mutual aid organizations to family businesses and other smaller,
locally owned firms. In all cases, stress will be laid on local ownership and
control, whether it is attempting to be obviously democratic in some way, or
privately owned but locally responsible. It should be clear that all these many
formulations, and some that may yet be invented, utterly and completely exclude
the global corporations, for all the reasons that we have already made clear,
especially in the chapter on corporate disobedience.
Featured Policy Area:
Relocalization Platform
Post Carbon Institute is developing a relocalization platform for candidates
for city council, mayor, commisions, school boards and other elected officials
in municipal government. Cosnistent with our Relocalization Statement, the Relocalization
Platform advocates local food, energy, money, manufacturing of essentials, media,
ownership, etc.. as well as rebuilding cities for much less transport and energy
consumption. Due to the inertia and beauracracy in the political system and
the fact that the platform is all about localization, municipal government will
be the most effective entry point for candidates with this platfom. Julian Darley
says “It is imperative that people who understand our energy predicamant
and the need for relocalization take over municpal government; the alternative
is painful to imagine.” We encourage all of you who have the stomach for
politics to consider running for municipal office and begin preparing immediately.
Regardless of outcome, your voice will be heard and reported on local media
further propogating the seeds of transformation. Take a look at our Relocalization
Platform.
