Permaculture teacher and author Patrick Whitefield has just limked on Twitter to a blog by Chris Smaje in response to the widely discussed talk by Mark Lynas on genetic engineering.
His first is that Lynas makes a false comparison between the “science” for climate change (AGW) and genetic engineering. Greens accept the science on the former but not the latter says Lynas, which Smaje challenges as a false comparison.
I agree that there is a false parallel here, but not for the reasons that Smaje gives. Greens don’t accept the “science of climate change” any more than they accept the science regarding the safety on GE: what they do generally is point to the agreed science that CO2 is having a warming effect, and translate this into the same pseudo-religious rhetoric that they use to discuss GE: humans are Bad, technology is not to be trusted, we are hurting Gaia and the Sky Gods will unleash retribution in the form of storms and famines.
Smaje is at least half-way correct on this issue- Science can show that AGW is real (although how much warming is actually anthropogenic is not so clear..) but “What it hasn’t shown – and what it can’t show – is what, if anything, we should do about it…” – exactly the point that climate skeptics have been making for years.
Smaje goes on to say “By contrast, nobody has ever questioned that GM is a viable, implementable technology – the question is whether we should in fact implement it, on which “the science” is equally as impotent in its ability to answer as in the case of climate change.”
Nonetheless, Smaje’s point is a valid one: science is good at testing specific hypotheses, such as the relative safety of a new technology, or temperature trends, but policy is not an issue for science alone. The inconsistency amongst the Greens is more that while scientists are used as authorities with regard to policy on climate change all the time, and we are told we should follow specific (or all-to-often unspecific) policy actions to deal with climate change because the science is settled, on the issue of genetic engineering- as also with nuclear power- scientist’s policy recommendations are ignored, because they are assumed to be industry shills directly or indirectly, and not to be trusted.
This is evident in Smaje’s later comment that “I accept that some people genuinely think GM does solve problems – though I suspect biotechnologists are heavily overrepresented in this particular category “- of course, biotech scientists have vested interests, in perpetuating their careers and finding and justifying their existence! Just like climate scientists, no? I mean, funny how most scientists warning about the dangers of climate change are, you know- *climate scientists* isn’t it? Even more odd, many of the most vocal proponents of small-scale organic farming are… small scale organic farmers!
Smaje accepts that GE is probably safe but links to a fine Green Herring on an activist site to sow the seed of doubt that “maybe we shouldn’t be too hasty”.
The “OMFG Viral Genes!!” story is just the latest anti-GMO meme to be doing the rounds. It is complete bunk, and the failure of Smaje to recognise this does rather bring into question his scientific understanding of the issue.
He also links to other Green Herrings, such as the super-weeds issue: but weed resistance is not an issue only of GE, and have been with us since the 1970s at least. As with so many objections to GE, the arguments apply to farming in general, including often organic farming, not just GE. (more…)
The Truth About Terminator Seeds. There aren’t any, not in any crop anywhere. Yet this myth/untruth/lie is perhaps the most frequently repeated by anti-GE activists.
the minute seeds stop being the seeds of renewal and starts being the seeds of death- like the terminator technology, creating sterile seeds, patented technology that makes it illegal for farmers to save and exchange seed, we get scarcity, that is why a quarter million Indian farmers have committed suicide. We’ve got to save the seeds of life…the seeds of freedom.
Why? My guess is, it sounds scary. “The Terminator…” it sounds just so unnatural, and, well terminal. Combined with the political implications- heartless money men using science fiction-type technology to force thousands of poor farmers into debt slavery (Ill come back to the suicides claim), taking over the seed supply, controlling the world’s food production, threatening to wipe out humanity…. you can just hear the throaty Evil Laugh in the background. What’s not to like?
Shiva’s picture of the nasty capitalist mega-villains Monsanto screwing the bejeezus out of both the defenseless farmer AND Mother Gaia herself has proved very effective at garnishing opposition to genetic engineering which, don’t forget, has been hitherto effectively banned from Europe and much of Africa.
But Shiva is not anti-capitalist. What she is really doing is protecting vested interests which are themselves just as much capitalist as the biotech companies she fights. Here she is hand in hand with Billionaire New Age King of Woo Deepak Chopra. They are pals you see; they share the same commercial interests. As discussed before, the mega-billion multi-national global capitalist alternative “health” industry is one of the big backers of the anti-GE movement.
Queen of Poo meets King of Woo: Shiva and Chopra…together..
As opposed to the life proliferating activities of cow dung, GMO seeds are “terminator seeds designed to be sterile, in a deliberate creation of food scarcity for profits,” says Shiva, who has worked with and defended the rights of farmers to store seeds for three decades…
The technological science so highly prized in our civilization has another side.
“Yes, it has given us important tools,” Chopra acknowledges, before he goes on to enumerate the ugly side of “fragmented science,” such as global warming, ecological destruction, mechanized death, nuclear weapons, GMOs, and pesticides. “Together they are risking our extinction as a species,” he says.
What are Terminator seeds exactly? The correct term is GURT or Gene Use Restricted Technology, and there is no doubt that one of the idea of developing them was to facilitate seed patents, to make money in other words, or recoup investment if you are slightly less anti-capitalistic. The technology developed by the USDA in conjunction with Delta and Pine Land company in the 1990s, who were awarded the patent in 2005; Delta & Pine were acquired by Monsanto in 2007. Due to concerns that this might lead to dependence by small farmers, Monsanto agreed not to use GURT, instead requiring farmers to sign declarations that they will not save and replant Monsanto’s seed. (more…)
Apart from completely evading the relevant scientific issues Singh raises, Don makes the following extraordinary comment:
Having known you for nigh on 20 years – albeit with great gaps – I suspect that you are as temperamentally and intellectually suited to immersing yourself in organic, holistic agriculture as I am in particle physics. Your mind just doesnt work that way. That does not make you wrong or me right. Well,OK, I am just being polite but it doesn’t make you bad for being wrong…
WTF?! I mean, really, what is he actually getting at here? And what is the Bigger Picture about “organic, holistic agriculture” ?
Perhaps picking up on Singh’s admission that organics is not really his subject, Don recommends some reading:
Suggest you inform yourself a lot more before taking this any further. If you are genuinely interested in understanding what it is all about start by reading Michael Pollan, Colin Tudge and Rob Hopkins. No specific scientific work so you may not feel comfortable with it but very good cross section of the field.
Let’s have a look at what these three authors have to say on the subject under discussion:
Pollan’s 2006 book The Omnivore’s Dilemma is celebrated by foodies, and it is certainly an original perspective and well-written survey of many of the issues in food production.
But in Chapter 9 he takes a look at Big Organic and concludes
So is an industrial organic food chain finally a contradiction in terms? It’s hard to escape the conclusion that it is…. The inspiration for organic was to find a way to feed ourselves more in keeping with the logic of nature, to build a food system that looked more like an eco-system that would draw its fertility and energy from the sun. To feed ourselves otherwise was “unsustainable”, a word that’s been so abused we’re apt to forget what it specifically means: Sooner or later it must collapse. To a remarkable extent, farmers succeeded in creating a new food chain on their farms:trouble began when they encountered the expectations of the supermarket. As in so many other realms, nature’s logic has proved no match for the logic of capitalism, one in which cheap energy has always been a given. And so, today, the organic food industry finds itself in a most uncomfortable, and, yes, unsustainable position: floating on a sinking sea of petroleum.
Pollan is aware of the limitations of trying to live “sustainably”- he is accutely aware of course of how impractical it would be for him to always eat the hunter-gatherer meal he prepares for himself in the last section, because of the extreme amounts of time and work it would involve; and so ends his book with something of a lament:
..imagine for a moment if we once again knew, strictly as a matter of course, these few unremarkable things: What it is we’re eating. Where it came from. How it found its way to our table. And what, in a true accounting, it really cost. We could then talk about some other things at dinner. For we would no longer need any reminding that however we choose to feed ourselves, we eat by the grace of nature, not industry, and what we’re eating is never anything more or less than the body of the earth.
Ding Ding! Naturalistic Fallacy- sorry, Michael, “nature” does not have “grace” and does not give a wit as to whether we eat or not- we eat by dint of our own ingenuity and hard work, and famines were a constant threat until the advent of industrial food and the globalised food industry. The Malthussian fears of a burgeoning population outstripping food supply have not been realised because of technology. Any move back to nature will not only turn us into peasant laborers but will also put us right back as defenseless against the vagaries of nature and living always in the shadow of hunger.
Colin Tudge, in his 2003 book So Shall We Reap is another prominent critic of modern farming, and while convinced that its “unsustainability” could be our downfall, nevertheless addresses many of the very shortcomings of organics raised by Lynas and Singh, specifically the need for extra land:
Organic farming has much to recommend it, of course, but could it in conscience be recommended to all the world? I find it hard to see how…Manure can be polluting…could organic farmers really double their input of nitrogen, as they would need to do to maintain present agricultural output if artificials were banned? Could they double it again in the next fifty years as world population doubles? Nobody knows but the odds are surely against.
…if yield is lower farming must then occupy more space, spreading into wilderness and into marginal land that should not be cultivated at all.
Tudge correctly concludes that artificial fertiliser need not destroy soil structure or lead to polluting run-off if properly applied- thus “good farming” is always the key- and even points out that we will not run out of natural gas for manufacturing artificial fertliser- he cites a figure of only 1% of fossil fuels currently being required for this- “a small price to pay for half of agriculture’s fertility”- and that it could be easily made from solar power or biofuels(?) if needed. Although Tudge is opposed to GMOs, even he accepts that
GMOs are currently deployed for dubious economic and political purposes but the science that has given rise to them should not be banished out of hand.
Pollan and Tudge are well-known published authors on food and farming, but Hopkins, really?! There must be some mistake. Transition Towns founder Rob Hopkins would not I think qualify as, nor claim to be an expert on organics, although like the other two he is of course a strong proponent of it. Unfortunately, he has found the wet summer too much for his own garden which has been overtaken by slugs; at least he confesses to the limitations of self-sufficiency in such circumstances, but shirks the logical conclusion that it is a globalised food industry which leads to true resilience, allowing us to grow the most suitable crops in the most suitable climates and ship in surplus to where there is a shortfall.
In the same post, he challenges the genetic engineers to do something (Hopkins and most of his followers are vehemently opposed to GE):
If those people working on genetically modified crops while also claiming to be working for the benefit of mankind actually want to do something useful, perhaps they might engineer a kind of grass that you could grown in your lawn that would be more attractive to slugs than the things you actually want to eat? Or engineer a slug that prefers the boring stuff that you don’t actually want to eat (like brambles, Woundwort or bindweed) to the stuff you want? Just a thought.
More likely, it might be possible to insert slug-repellant genes directly into the plants, as the Bt pesticide has been successfully engineered into corn and cotton, thus saving vast amounts of sprays. (My comment to this effect was deleted as I am banned from Hopkin’s blog.)
(I should say that as a gardener I found most of Rob’s post quite amusing and I do sympathize, though I have not had nearly as much trouble with slugs as he describes; it’s a great gardening column, easy to forget that this is a writer who heads up an influential international movement that is opposed to modernity and influenced by quacks and other doyens of New Age occultism.)
Transition Towns, like much of the organics/back-to-the-land movements, resembles a Medieval re-enactment society, aiming to turn back the clock to an imagined romantic past of local communities growing their own veg and darning their own socks under lights powered by windmills and solar panels, while fleeing in fear, like Monty Python’s Brave Sir Robin, from the very technologies-such as genetic engineering and precision farming- that might actually improve farming and ameliorate both world hunger and some of the excesses of industrial farming.
The idea, you see is to turn everyone back into peasant farmers: organics takes a lot more labour, and for it to increase its tiny market share from just a couple of percent at present to challenge conventional farming would require the wholesale reversal of the main demographic movement from parochial country to cosmopolitan city that defined the 20th century.
So what was that “Bigger Picture” again that Don speaks of? Maybe he found it on this Biodynamic farm he visited in 2002 in the Black Mountains, where a family are using the magical methods of Steiner’s astrology and alchemy to grow vegetables on poor land where “The Soil Association wanted money to even talk to them.”
Don admits BD is whacky:
But there is an aspect of biodynamics that needs to be taken with a dumper truck of salt. This is the essential tenet that cosmic and terrestrial forces can be harnessed for the benefit of soil and plants by the mixing of certain preparations. These range from oak bark buried over winter in the skull of a domestic animal to Valerian flowers buried inside a stag’s bladder. The preparations are used in minute quantities – such as a level teaspoon to 10 tons of compost. Crazy stuff.
but cannot quite dismiss it because the farmers are “models of health and vitality” and the veg is just sooooo tasty. The whole place seems a picture of the rural idyll amongst rolling green pastures with a communal lifestyle and plenty of laughter in the fields, that many organics supporters yearn for.
But he gives it all away in the last paragraph:
Conventional farmers and growers are in a mess. I suspect that the government is incapable of understanding the problem, let alone providing any solution. The answer lies in us as individuals – gardeners or people brave enough to buy a patch of ground ‘no good for growing vegetables’. And if that is accompanied by the burial of dandelions collected at dawn or a chart of the phases of the moon, then is it any weirder than the damaging potions and incantations of scientists, ministers and so-called experts down the years?
You see Monty, the thing about science is, it provides a method for examining these things rationally, using evidence. Thus, there are plenty of other successful small farms using either conventional or organic methods that are just as successful, where the produce is just as good, the laughter just as vibrant, but without the magic, which adds nothing other than the fog of delusion and the propensity to foster the creation of cults. Biodynamics is not as Don seems to think “one step further down the organic road” -unless that road is one leading back into the Dark Ages of witchcraft and goat-sacrifice.
Betweeen Don’s tolerance of superstition, and his apparent sharing of the aims of Hopkin’s Transition Re-enactment Society, we would seem to have something closer to Monty Python rather than any useful contribution to addressing the very real issues of food and farming in the 21st century.
She kindly agreed to a short interview in which I asked her about her work, and the future role genetic engineering can play in sustainable agriculture, which you can listen to below:
Professor Pamela Ronald in her lab in UC Davis last year
Update: Post by Mark Lynas here. I had missed the start of the Twitter debate, which originated with a tweet from @GMO Pundit (David Tribe) showing that the campaign to have GMOs labeled was funded by Big Quacka.
Interesting Twitter exchange yesterday on the subject of food labeling- specifically, the campaign from the Organic movement to make the labeling of GMO crops a legal requirement.
Mark Lynas started it, arguing that the only reason to label foods containing Genetically Engineered crops would be as a “skull and crossbones” for the benefit of those who have an ideological position against GE technology- ie as an aid to a boycott movement, and suggested instead
How about a label on organic foods: ‘Warning, land-inefficient product, may cause damage to the environment’.
I prefer ‘May Have Been Sprayed With Bacterial Toxins’ on organic veggies.Truthful and accurate!
The problem with labeling is, where do you stop, and what is the motive for the label? I am all in favour of more information for the consumer, but given the well-funded campaign against anything GE, a label for that alone would simply act as a falser warning NOT to buy- without reams of peer-reviewed references and lengthy discussions around all aspects of food and farming, such a label on its own would do little to benefit the consumer.
I had been thinking about the labeling issue for a while, and wondered what sort of label might be suitable for Biodynamic crops- that is, essentially “organic” food grown by people using astrology (planting by the moon) and other esoteric practices advocated by the extremist anti-science cult founded by Rudolph Steiner:
for Biodynamic produce “warning! Grown by moon-planting fairy-worshipping whackos. AVOID
This was re-tweeted by Lynas and then picked up by John Walker, author and award-winning organic gardener:
Real grown-up stuff eh? Oh the joys of constructive debate…
who then made his own grown-up suggestion:
Maybe the real priority is to label big ag’s produce with list of pesticide residues it contains? #choice
For someone of with such a high media profile, Walker seems lamentably unaware of the issues. Astonishingly, it would appear that he has not even listened to the Skepteco Podcast on Organics.
There is actually no evidence that “conventional” produce contain harmful levels of pesticides; these things are tested very thoroughly, and it maybe even that the tiny trace residues- far below what is considered safe- that are found may even be beneficial, perhaps providing some protection against “natural” toxins and predators including cancer: this was the conclusion from Trewavas, as discussed on our podcast, who cited a longitudinal study with a very large sample of farmers and foresters, ie those groups who come into contact with pesticides the most: they were found to have lower levels of some diseases than the general population.
Organic produce can also be harmful, as the tragic case of the Organic German Beansprouts incident showed last year; should we put warnings on organic food alerting shoppers to the risks of ecoli poisoning as a result of the use of animal manures? Another organic movement bugbear- food irradiation- could save lives and eradicate the risks of ecoli – but unfortunately this technology is also being campaigned against by those who think that deadly natural toxins are preferable to minute traces of any synthetic chemical.
Walker responded:
And of course no evidence of wider effects of pesticides on environment? Is organic-bashing really useful?
Organic bashing is useful because they peddle lies about conventional farmers.
Again, this issue of wider environmental impacts is different to toxic residues, and of course all forms of farming have a tremendous effect on the environment- there is no perfect, garden-of-Eden-type way of farming that ticks all the boxes; and the original point from Lynas- that organics require more land- still stands. While an individual organic farm may take greater care to leave habitat for wildlife, more land will be needed in total- including a lot of land for all those manure-producing animals that organics rely on- and that means less wilderness habitat.
The lower yields for organics are a serious issue that need to be engaged with by its supporters- maybe it would be a good idea to put this on a label to make more people aware of it; and all this reminded me of a tweet from @geneticmaize a few weeks ago, who said that she avoids buying organic food for this very reason (though she says she is not religious about it.) With world population heading towards 10billion, there is simply no option of switching wholesale to less productive methods. They need to become more productive, and the only way for this to happen is by technology.
Which brings us back to GE. Mark Lynas offered an olive branch on the twitter discussion:
We can end this now if you agree that GM chemical-free should be considered organic.
The irony is of course that there IS already a GMO-free label- “Organic”- but that, for organics to overcome its other limitations, it could embrace GE technology to make it more viable- as proposed by Pamela Ronald in Tomorrow’s Table.
Organic food currently provides a very small part of world food supply. There is still a place for it, and hopefully for many other kinds of farming, and organics plays an important research role. But at the end of the day it is just a label, a rather arbitrary list of criteria. What is really needed is a more integrated system that is not afraid to use technology.
Too much of the organic movement is however dominated by Biodynamics (which is where organics came from in the first place), homeopathy, astrology and general woo based on the naturalistic fallacy: in reality, Mother Nature wants to Eat You.
So shopper be aware. While there is nothing to fear from GMOs, your food may have been grown by moon-planting fairy-worshipping, anti-vaccine, quacks and whackos: is that what you want for your children?
Seems like there is a crack of light opening up in the organic movement with regard to Genetic Engineering, judging by remarks made by Phil Bloomer, director of policy and campaigns at Oxfam, at the Soil Association’s annual conference in London on Friday (March 2):
“From the outside the organic movement seems insular, like it is the only one who has the answers.”
He pointed to the debate around genetically modified (GM) crops as one area where there could be a more open debate by the organic movement.
He added: “I understand the Soil Association’s concerns around GMOs. The fact is, however, there are a lot of GMOs which are necessary.
“Many small farmers do not have 15 years to wait in order to breed into their wheat the soil nutrition efficiency they need. GM can speed up that process.”
This of course is the line taken in the book Tomorrow’s Table by Pamela Ronald and Raoul Adamchuk- GE is a biological approach and so there is every reason for the organic movement should embrace it, since the whole point of the organics movement was as an alternative to synthetic chemicals in farming in the form of pesticides and fertilizers. The problem is, organic yields are lower than conventional- if yields could be increased through for example disease resistant varieties like the blight resistant spuds I blogged about last week, this could help to make organic crops more viable. GE spuds could dramatically reduce the use of fungicides.
To feed the world’s expanding population, farmers will need every tool available to them to increase yields without destroying soil-Genetic Engineering is one approach that cannot be ignored in its potential to help reduce the impacts of farming. More food from less land- a sort of “sustainable intensification” should be the goal- otherwise we will encroach ever more into wild lands to feed ourselves.
At the end of the day, the criteria for what constitutes “organic” is decided by whoever sits around a table and draws up the list. As technology improves, the organic movement should be willing to adapt its criteria – lest it otherwise sinks back into the Dark Ages and becomes irrelevant.
The Almighty, indeed, sent the potato blight, but the English created the Famine.
So wrote John Mitchell, one of the leading Irish political writers of the day, in his tract on the Irish famine The Last Conquest of Ireland (Perhaps) c.1861.
While there were clear political causes for the famine of 1845- Ireland was still a British colony- the proximate cause was Phytophthora infestans the fungus responsible for late potato blight., which continues to reduce potato yields to this day.
The potato has always had a prominent role in Irish culture and food, and traditionally Paddy’s Day- the Feast Day of St. Patrick, March 17th, is the day for getting the spuds in, and if it stops raining at all I hope to get out there with the spade myself. (more…)
Book Review Ecofascism Revisited Lessons from the German experience
Janet Biehl and Peter Staudenmaier
Pbck; 188pp
New Compass 2011
First published 1995
The historical connections between fascism and environmental movements remain relatively unknown in the contemporary world where “Green” issues are more generally associated with the Left and liberal values.
In Britain, early environmentalism was strongly influenced by eugenics and concerns about the burgeoning human population. A good overview of this can be read in Fred Pearce’s PeopleQuake. This in turn had been influenced by Malthus and his dire warnings of population outstripping the food supply- perhaps the original single issue defining the course of the environmental movement.
First published in 1995, this updated work by Peter Staudenmaier provides a powerful historical analysis of the how environmental thinking was adopted by some quarters in the Nazi party in 1930s and 40s Germany, and how this alliance between romantic environmental thinking and far-right politics may still be significant today.
The book consists of three essays, the first two reproduced unchanged from the original, and a new essay by Peter Staudenmaier reflecting developments since the mid-1990s.
As a social ecologist he takes a pragmatic and rationalist approach approach to environmental problems, but keeps them rooted firmly in left-wing politics and issues of social justice: for the social ecologist, environmentalism is as much a struggle against structures of oppression of people as of the environment, and this is in stark contrast to the romantic and Malthussian, anti-human wing of environmentalism, which sees the enemy to be not capitalism and the profit motive, which exploits people and nature equally, but the human race itself- or more accurately perhaps, certain racial groups.
In the Introduction, Staudenmaier explains:
In Europe as in the United States, most ecological activists think of themselves as socially progressive…For many such people, it may come as a surprise to learn that the history of ecological politics has not always been inherently and necessarily progressive and benign. In fact, ecological ideas have a history of being distorted and laced in the service of highly regressive ends- even of fascism itself….
important tendencies in German “ecologism”, which has long roots in nineteenth-century nature mysticism, fed into the rise of Nazism in the 20th Century. During the “Third Reich”…Nazi “ecologists” even made organic farming, vegetarianism, nature worship, and related themes into key elements not only of their ideology but in their governmental policies.
Moreover, Nazi “ecological” ideology was used to justify the destruction of European Jewry. Yet some of the themes that Nazi ideologists articulated bear an uncomfortably close resemblance to themes familiar to ecologically concerned people today.
Earlier this year the journalist James Gray interviewed me to get my views on the Transition Town movement which I had been peripherally involved with during its inception in Kinsale six years ago.
James never got around to publishing so I’m posting it here as I wrote it back in March, with a couple of updates as indicated:
James Gray interviews me on Transition Towns
Mar 31st 2011
JG: Could you briefly explain who you are, what you do and how you became involved in the Transition movement?
My name is Graham Strouts, I teach Permaculture and Green Building at Kinsale College of Further Education, which was the birth place of Transition Towns.
The course I teach was founded 10 years ago by Rob Hopkins and I took over from him when he moved to Totnes and started the Transition Towns Network.
I like to think I played a small but crucial role in TT- it was myself who gave Rob his first copy of The End of Suburbia, the film that first turned me onto the concept of Peak Oil which was about 6 years ago. Rob immediately turned this into a class project, the Kinsale Energy Descent Action Plan, still available by download from his website. We were very excited about peak Oil at the time- I was then a very typical environmentalist, fairly anti-modernist, anti-technology and convinced the world was going to hell in a handcart. For myself and my colleagues, Peak Oil was a huge opportunity to say, hey, now we know the end of civilization is coming and we even have a date- Peak Oil was set to occur in the next few years, by round about now, according to oil geologist Colin Campbell and many other Peak Oil Doomers, so this was seen as a great opportunity to galvanise the complacent public to mend their evil ways of pursuing mindless consumerism and growth and start growing vegetables and cycling.
I guess I got caught up in the wave of Transition in its early stages also because I was jumping into Rob’s fairly large boots in the college and it was easy to generate interest in the new project. I began touring the country giving Peak Oil talks, explaining how growth was finished, new technologies were a fantasy, we would all be better off living close to nature and with simpler lifestyles.
Although I was involved with the very first meetings of Transition Towns in Kinsale, I actually live an hour-and-a-half away in West Cork so soon dropped out; so in fact I have had no direct involvement with Transition Towns at all since then. In fact, my only involvement seems to have become one of its most strident critics on my Zone5.org blog!
