People like Norberg-Hodge, Holmgren, Heinberg and the relocalisation associations now starting to appear have placed themselves well ahead of the major state-based environmental lobbies, for many of which relocalisation is not yet on the agenda.
While the staffs of some environmental organisations seem to spend a lot of time in their offices, the relocalisers are out in society organising meetings, showing videos and talking to people to get their ideas out.
The Australian Conservation Foundation’s Green Homes program is an exception when it comes to environmental organisations, as is the NSW Nature Conservation Council and its household team-based Community Climate Challenge, limited in extent though it is. Their work directly addresses global warming, indirectly addresses peak oil and proposes the sorts of actions that relocalisers would identify with.
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There is now a good argument that state government grants - such as the Environmental Trust grants distributed annually by the NSW Department of Conservation and Environment - should go less to the big, state-based environment groups and, over time and as the groups build their capacity to act, to the relocalisers. Their ideas have broader social value in terms of community and local economic development and livelihoods.
Four qualities needed for success
Peak oilers act in a competitive marketplace for ideas, and to be successful they will have to carefully craft their key messages to have three qualities.
First of all, they need to distance themselves from apocalyptic thinking, from the doom-and-gloom messages associated with past pseudo-disasters. Going back to the late-1960s, these include Paul Erlich’s “population bomb” scenario, nuclear winter, environmental collapse and the Y2K computer glitch. Being seen as yet another disaster scenario does little to empower citizens to act in their own lives and to take the kind of collective action necessary to make positive changes.
Another quality is that of not putting full responsibility for adaptation to peak oil and global warming on the shoulders of households and individuals. It is unlikely that peak oil and global warming will be successfully dealt with without concerted government and industry action. To put responsibility onto individuals and the community alone is to ignore the reality of policy and international accords and the responsibilities of government and industry.
The third quality is that the ideas relocalisers propagate need that difficult-to-define property that makes them “sticky” enough to capture the public imagination and adhere to it. In this, the relocalisers have done reasonably well so far, given that they are really only a proto-social movement at this stage. Their message now needs to be taken further into mainstream society.
Local government - the relocalisation multiplier
Of all the initiatives that relocalisation associations can take, perhaps the one with the greatest potential to create long-lasting, deeper change is encouraging local government to participate in the development of energy descent policies.
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Just as the South Sydney Council food security policy of the 1990s, What’s Eating South Sydney?, enabled local food initiatives to get underway, adoption of a policy opens the way for councils to support, in various ways, citizen and local business initiatives that comply with relocalisation aims. Even if the impact of peak oil is not as drastic as some say it will be, the activities enabled by local government policy would still benefit municipalities.
This is still too big an ask for many relocalisation associations. They are new and still finding their feet in the world of community development and advocacy. Many lack the know-how to co-operate in policy formulation, but not all. What they need to understand is that policy is an enabling thing under which a great many socially-beneficial initiatives can be launched.
But how receptive would local government be to developing policy to deal with peak oil? Some councils would not have the slightest interest and relocalisation groups in those areas would have to develop their own policies. Other councils may be receptive once they come to understand relocalisation, especially those - like Randwick, Manly, Hornsby and Warringah councils in Sydney - that employ sustainability educators. Much of what these people already do is compliant with the relocalisation agenda, an agenda that would give their activities a timely, bigger-picture context.
Crises and large scale challenges create fear in many but inspire others to act. Relocalisation is an idea thrown up in response to the possible peaking of the supply of oil and, to a lesser extent, to global warming. What gives it greater value than many of the solutions coming from the environment movement is its broader benefit to society, especially to local farmers, producers, community enterprise and businesses.