Transition Culture has moved
I no longer blog on this site. You can now find me, my general blogs, and the work I am doing researching my forthcoming book on imagination, on my new blog.
Come find me at robhopkins.net
Monthly archive for January 2006
Showing results 1 - 5 of 36 for the month of January, 2006.
31 Jan 2006
This one slightly stretches the definition of being a tree I’m afraid, as it is really a shrub and not a tree at all, but so delicious, so easy to grow and so wonderful is it that this list would be incomplete without it. Also known as the Chilean Guava, ***Myrtus ugni*** has a uniquely delicious taste that is beyond compare. It tastes like a kind of
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30 Jan 2006
On Radio 4’s Any Questions last week (for those of you from outside the UK it is a political questions and answers type show with leading politicians on the panel), the issue came up of whether nuclear power was the way forward for the UK. The panel included
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30 Jan 2006
I love walnuts. They are the finest tree you could ever plant. They should be planted everywhere, and it strikes me as one of the great wonders of our age that we have developed the life-size dancing and singing robotic Santa that wriggled its hips at me in a suggestive manner very time I went into my local corner shop over Christmas, but are only just starting to produce reliable fruiting varieties of walnut.
The first walnut I ever planted was
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27 Jan 2006
On Monday begins a new 5 part series at **TransitionCulture**, looking at trees that will be of most use to us as we redesign our communities for the realities of energy descent. I make no claim to it being a scientifically unbiased list, these are trees I have come to love and which I think will be an essential part of our transition toolkits. It’s a ridiculous concept really, as if there are only five trees that will be needed beyond oil peak, but what I am trying to do is to interest and inspire you about some of the less mentioned and more essential ones. I’ll post a new tree every day. Trees are uniquely useful, they build soil, they clean the air, they make rain, they provide habitat, they lock up carbon, they shelter, feed and inspire us, and they can be among the most beautiful things on this earth. In choosing the trees I will be offering to you in this series, I have
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27 Jan 2006
BBC Radio 4’s **In Business** programme this week, “There’s Oil in Them Thar Sands” looked at the white elephant that is the Alberta tar sands. It really confirmed my suspicions that if the Alberta tar sands are the best we can do we are really in trouble. In Business is a weekly programme that looks at directions and trends in business, and this week it explored the oil sands from the economic and business angle. Alberta is estimated to contain 175 billion barrels of oil, which puts Canada into the top 4 or 5 oil producing countries in the world. Tar sands are far more expensive to produce than most other sources of oil, but with the price of oil rising and rising, these harder-to-extract oil sources become increasingly financially viable. Oil companies are moving into the area, and
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