What's your Plan B?

If you were caught up in the aftermath of the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland, did you have a Plan B?

John Cleese came back from Oslo in a taxi. That’s a Plan B of sorts, but at £3,300 it’s not an option for many of us. Having a Plan B is about creating resilience - it’s about improving our ability to deal with external shocks like this.

In the last few months I’ve been struck by the lack of resilience all around us. I recently went to the Royal Free Hospital for some physiotherapy, but because of a power cut the place was in chaos and out-patients like me were sent home. Before that it was the unusual snowfalls which left large parts of Camden isolated.

What happens if Algeria or Russia decides to cut gas supplies to Europe? What happens if London’s water supply is poisoned by terrorists in retaliation for our armed interventions abroad? What happens if food supply lines into London are cut as they so nearly were in 2000 during the fuel protests? Britain buys 95% of its fruit and more than 50% of it vegetables from abroad. Most of it comes in by ship, but the more exotic stuff is air-freighted and was already starting to disappear from supermarket shelves by the time the flight ban was lifted.

This is the downside of globalisation. Just-in-time production systems which span the globe looking for cheap resources create vulnerability. We’ve seen it in the financial system – globalised, unregulated markets are inherently unsafe. During the fuel protests in 2000 the supermarkets warned Tony Blair that they were a few days from running out of food. We were, it was said, nine meals from anarchy.

Transition Belsize is a community response to the need for more resilience in our lives. On Saturday mornings on Haverstock Hill hundreds of people have been joining us to learn how to grow food, identify edible wild plants, run a wormery or repair a bicycle. These are the sorts of skills we will need as oil becomes prohibitively expensive, which it undoubtedly will because we’re at or near the peak of global oil production.

The most amazing thing about these Saturday morning workshops is the community spirit they engender. You can see people having loads of fun learning new skills together. If we can solve the problems of climate change and peak oil along the way, then great. If we can give people space to deal with the psychological problems associated with dramatic change, then so much the better. And if we can create resilience and enhance community by inspiring residents to grow peas or ride bikes, then nothing could make me happier.

For those of us trying to live in tune with the natural world rather than in opposition to it, it’s tempting to see the Icelandic eruption as either an act of God or perhaps a manifestation of James Lovelock’s Revenge of Gaia. But I’m a realist not a romantic so I prefer to see it as simply a powerful warning, just like the 2008 spike in oil prices to $147 a barrel and the 2000 fuel protests.

The final act of the Camden Council all-party Sustainability Task Force which I have chaired these last four years was to ask the various leaders of Camden’s political groups to commit to a plan for greater resilience for our community. We also want to see Camden Council policies judged by how much they reduce vulnerability to external shocks like an aviation ban or fuel price rises.

Last week Camden’s green groups organised the first ever Resilience Hustings in the Hampstead & Kilburn parliamentary seat (see photo above). We and the 200 people who attended wanted the candidates to understand our concerns about climate change and peak oil. But we also wanted to communicate our view that the current globalised economic system based on cheap oil is going to become ever more fragile and that we need to work together on a Plan B.

It’s worth remembering that the last time Eyjafjallajökull erupted – in 1821 – it was throwing up ash for 14 months. My preferred Plan B is relocalisation. That means building resilience, solving the carbon problem, enhancing community and having fun. Put simply - we can wait for disaster to strike or we can work together now to create a better future.