Shaun Chamberlin is an author and activist, based in London, England. He is the author of The Transition Timeline, co-author of several other books including What We Are Fighting For, chair of the Ecological Land Co-operative, and was one of the earliest Extinction Rebellion arrestees. He is also known for his collaboration with the late David Fleming, having brought his award-winning lifework Lean Logic to posthumous publication, developed from it the paperback Surviving the Future, and served as executive producer on Peter William Armstrong's 2019 feature film about Fleming's legacy -
Biography
Chamberlin studied at Schumacher College in 2006, where his teachers included Rob Hopkins and David Fleming. Hopkins met his future co-founders of the now-global Transition Towns network during the course, and Chamberlin remained a key figure, co-founding Transition Town Kingston before authoring the movement's second book, The Transition Timeline. He also retained close links with Fleming, and they together advised the UK government's feasibility study into his influential TEQs system for fuel/electricity rationing in the face of climate change. Shortly after Fleming's death in 2010, an All Party Parliamentary report advocating TEQs, authored by Fleming and Chamberlin and endorsed by twenty MPs, met with a controversial reception both in the UK and internationally. During this period Chamberlin also spent eighteen months as a director of the campaigning organisation Global Justice Now. In 2012 he collaborated with David Graeber, John Holloway, Ann Pettifor and others on What We Are Fighting For: A Radical Collective Manifesto, and was also the editor of Mark Boyle's The Moneyless Manifesto. He and Boyle then collaborated towards the realisation of a moneyless community, in partnership with the , of which he became chair in 2015. In 2016, he took a manuscript left by his late mentor David Fleming and edited it for posthumous publication as. This uniquely structured hardback was published alongside the paperback , conceived and created by Chamberlin after Fleming's death, and consisting of content from Lean Logic which he selected and edited into a conventional read-it-front-to-back narrative. The twinned books were critically acclaimed, won several awards including first place in the 2017 New York Book Show, and were named in multiple Book of the Year lists. They also gave rise to both Peter William Armstrong's 2019 film and Sterling College 's $1.5m EcoGather program, including the online course , led by Chamberlin since 2020.
Views and Ideas
Chamberlin argues that the key challenge of modernity is responding to what he describes as the dilemma of economic growth - "either we cease growing, and so collapse the economy on which we all depend, or continue to grow until we overwhelm and destroy the ecosystems on which we all depend". He contends that unless we address this, the economy will inevitably continue its ecological destructiveness, but also highlights that such behaviour is demonstrably not merely human nature, since many cultures - especially indigenous cultures - have a long track record of acting otherwise. Accordingly, his writing, political advocacy and participation with activist projects like the , Occupy and Extinction Rebellion emphasise the possibilities for living in fulfilling ways that do not support our collective drive towards life on a devastated planet. Drawing on David Fleming's work, he argues that a post-growth rediscovery of culture and community is inevitable, but sees this as only likely after civilisational collapse. He was an early exponent of the 'post-doom' perspective, alongside groups like the Dark Mountain Project. He also frequently addresses psychological and spiritual topics such as grief and despair in the face of our collective predicament. He is noted for coining the widely-adopted term 'Dark Optimism', which The Guardian's Anne Karpf has characterised as "facing dark truths while believing unwaveringly in human potential", and which inspired EXPO 1: Dark Optimism at the New York Museum of Modern Art in 2013, featuring artists including Ansel Adams, Joseph Beuys, Agnes Denes, Olafur Eliasson and Adrián Villar Rojas.
Books
Author:
The Transition Timeline: for a local, resilient future
Co-author:
Tradable Energy Quotas: A Policy Framework for Peak Oil and Climate Change
