LOCALIZATION SEMINAR: ADAPTING TO A WORLD WITH LESS MATERIAL, MORE TIME, BETTER FOOD

Instructors: Prof. Ray DeYoung and Prof. Tom Princen

Day/Time - TBD

The future form of life patterns, settlements, and societies may differ substantially from what most of us have come to expect. Among our many possibilities is a future involving highly localized lives. Presumably the material standard of consumption in such a society would be substantially lower than that of the present. Possibly the sense of well-being will be greater. A premise of this effort is that energy use will unavoidably drop by over 80%. We will explore the implications of this unprecedented drop, envision a successful accommodation to this new reality, and design the transition to such a future.

Localization is well underway, albeit invisible to the global managers and techno-optimists. What it lacks is a unifying theme, a framework for coping with declining net energy and emerging bio-physical constraints. This seminar builds such a framework, preliminary as it necessarily must be. The seminar assumes that a fundamental departure from recent life patterns will occur and that much about the transition will be hard. Fortunately, humans' desire for a stable, secure and familiar existence turns out not to be a status quo bias but rather a cognitive map bias, and our cognitive maps can be altered. To aid alteration, the framework we develop during the seminar assumes that a multitude of small experiments will be conducted, quickly and simultaneously, and some will fail. And yet the process of adjusting to austerity can be satisfying in a way present generations have forgotten or never experienced. Localization is thus a dynamic, ongoing and long-term process that, paradoxically for many, can bring out the best in people.

The seminar's structure - The seminar readings work through the nuances of the topic positing that, while historical insights exist, a downshift of this sort is unprecedented. Successful approaches will be those that engage people and institutions in their own discovery of how to transition well.

• 1. The first section outlines the context of localization and the need and inevitability of making a transition. This material will help readers envision positive future scenarios, some quite familiar, others novel.
• 2. The next section outlines ways to organize, govern, and provision ourselves under a more austere existence. Some look to our agrarian past, others to new patterns of exchange and ownership structure.
• 3. The third section explores human needs and strengths, and the conditions that enable reasonable and satisfying behavior. Throughout, brief but positive case studies will be presented.