Glossary

I realise that I’m using lots of terms in my posts that need a bit of explaining. Sorry about that. Everyone says that this is a bad, bad thing…they’re probably right! But I haven’t found existing terms that describe adequately the concepts I’m trying to put across.

So instead what I will try to do is to link to this post whenever I use an unfamiliar term, and use this post as a glossary of terms. Slightly clunky, I know, but I haven’t yet thought of a better solution.

Social resilience: The ability of a society to withstand external shocks, and still function effectively. A socially resilient society would be able to withstand changes in the climate, the fertility of its soils, the price of energy and so on without turning in on itself and ‘going medieval’.

Going medieval: A slightly tongue-in-cheek term for the time when everything gets a bit much and we resort to dusting off the scythes in our sheds and hacking each other’s arms off…

The grand downturn: Kind of the opposite of ‘going medieval’. The grand downturn is my optimistic projection for what will happen when energy gets more expensive, water gets scarcer, and climate change leaves us spending large sums of money on protecting ourselves from the elements. I have an image in my mind of the impeccable English country gent who, realising that he cannot continue to service his rather extravagant estate, decides to sell up, move to a cottage by the sea and devote his remaining years to growing giant marrows for the yearly competition at the village fete. The grand downturn will be a similar image, writ large for society as a whole. We will realise that we cannot continue to live the way we did at the turn of the millennium, and we’ll instead find meaning in a less profligate lifestyle. The grand downturn won’t be easy, but there will be a certain majesty to it…

Sustainability: A state in which society lives well, but also lives within its means. We don’t use up resources faster than they are replenished or substituted. The resources that we do use contribute to improving the well-being of all of our citizens.

Sustainable development: A way of developing society that makes progress towards sustainability.