Editorial
Welcome
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The process of making a magazine is organic and cooperative. Ideas flow, people share their stories, others are approached to write articles, and an issue comes together with many hands working behind the scenes. We deliberately do not run themed issues with an entire magazine focussed on one subject like ‘eco building’ or ‘renewable energy’. We prefer to bake a loaf from a wide range of ingredients with a yeast that is about possibility, solutions, and vision in a world that is hell bent on falling apart.
We believe that in these last moments of a culture wedded to destruction, there is still (just) time to choose peaceful and transformational pathways to a yet unknown future. This is a visioning project that started in 1992 and has grown, developed, and unfurled into many different conversations and subjects. The premise, however, remains the same: Another world is possible. Let’s try and find out how to get there.
In the early hours of the morning, I recently found myself listening to Howard Johns talking to Manda Scott some years ago on the Accidental Gods podcast.1 He described his climate awakening in the early 1990s, thanks to a professor he met whilst studying energy and environmental engineering at age 18. From that point he was totally captivated. He became an activist and his first act of defiance was ethical shoplifting, removing mahogany from Harrods, and delivering it to the local police station, reporting it stolen from the Indigenous peoples of Brazil. An amazing woman, Angie Zalta, had researched the Harrods supply chain and found out that they were selling illegal mahogany. “The police were rather bemused when we turned up with all these stolen goods from Harrods.” I can’t help thinking they would be imprisoned for a long time in the current harsh judicial climate that locks up oil protesters for longer stretches than violent criminals.
A few years later, Howard found himself being evicted from one of the last old growth oaks just before it was felled on an open cast mine site in South Wales. A brave stand that led him to realise that when you’re in opposition – however strong and powerful the sense of community – it’s very hard to make progress. Most people just thought he was crazy. He decided to use his agency to work towards a better future. To say yes and not just no. He retrained as a plumber and electrician and started building solar systems. He built up a successful business that doubled its installations every year for 10 years, bringing renewable energy to hundreds of homes across the country every month. His positive and powerful journey sadly ended with him taking the government to the High Court three times but he couldn’t prevent the sudden withdrawal of feed-in tariffs that destroyed his solar business and 5000 others in the UK within six months.
Howard picked himself up and started a community energy business, Ovesco, and wrote a book all about how to set them up called the Energ y Revolution. He says he was about 10 years too early and so he decided to work as a CEO in the European large scale solar industry, often generating 2-3% of the UK’s total electricity in a day. He soon realised, however, that underinvestment in the UK’s national grid has resulted in a long queue well into the 2030s to connect any new large scale renewables. It is working to capacity. He has therefore returned full circle to the world of micro-renewable installations and community energy. I asked him to scope out the global possibilities for renewables and to tell us about his journey, featured in this issue.
Imagine now if our political masters had decided to invest in capacity building of the UK national grid instead of locking into contracts with the French and Chinese governments and pouring billions of pounds into nuclear infrastructure without any coherent plans to decommission nuclear plants and deal with the waste. It is not just the plants, it is the civil engineering, the dual carriageways and road systems required by the nuclear industry that are so big. Take a trip to Hinkley C in Somerset where two new plants are being built on the second highest tidal estuary in the world, said to be providing ‘zero carbon electricity for six million homes’.2 There is nothing zero carbon about the new infrastructure or decommissioning these beasts. The project that started in 2016 is now delayed up to 2031 at a cost of more than £35bn. Imagine if we had spent this on retrofitting homes and rolling out the original feed-in tariff. Look at what Pakistan has done in just a few short years to become independent of the savage global politics of oil (see page 17). There are alternatives.
I have so much admiration for anyone who spends decades seeking solutions to big, apparently immoveable problems. It takes determination, courage and vision. I was inspired by G ˆwyl Paramaethu Cymru, the Welsh Permaculture Gathering, this autumn where I met up with so many people doing positive things. It is impossible not to be energised by events like these so if you get the chance, seek out talks and gatherings in your local community. If you are organising any gatherings for 2025, let us know. The rich seam of nature conservation, rewilding and regenerative agriculture has been one of the things that has kept me going this last year in Devon, along with the wonderful sense of community found in permaculture the world over.
1 https://accidentalgods.life 2 www.edfenergy.com/energy/nuclear-new-build-projects/hinkley-point-c
Permaculture is... an innovative framework for creating regenerative ways of living;
a practical method for developing ecologically harmonious,
ethical, human-scale and productive systems that can be used by anyone, anywhere.
Read more at www.permaculture.co.uk/what-is-permaculture issue 12 2 winter 2024
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