Like buses, you wait for ages for Energy Descent Action Plans to come along, and then two come along at once. This month sees the publication of two new EDAPs, from Llambed in mid-Wales, and Dunbar in East Lothian, Scotland. For a crash course in EDAPs and a taste of those published thus far, see this ingredient from The Transition Companion. These two high quality pieces of work represent two communities taking the idea of an EDAP and rooting it to their place, their community, their challenges.
Here’s a guest post from Fiona Ward, setting the Transition community a brain teaser…
As part of the Economic Blueprint work we are doing in Totnes, Manchester and Hereford (part of the wider REconomy project) we are collecting data about the current local economy in each place. In particular, we want to understand much more about the current businesses; what they do, how many people they employ, what skills those employees have etc. In particular we want to know their turnover. We can then use this information to give us a full picture of our local economy, and we can better understand where our local community spend their money.
In the UK, the main Transition-related story to make the national news over the past month was the suggestion by Ian Jones, CEO of Volunteer Cornwall, that Cornwall should set up its own currency, the ‘Cornwall Pound’. The story made the national news and many references were made to the local currencies already in existence via Transition Towns Totnes (Devon), Lewes (Sussex) and Brixton (London). Jones told the Daily Telegraph “It’s no good if we endlessly talk about our problems, we need to start doing something positive now if we are to avoid being at the mercy of the global storm which is currently raging.”
I already posted a clever thing here that mixed the slides and the audio from a talk I gave the RESOLVE conference in May, well here now is the film of the talk, in case you’re interested…
I spent most of the day yesterday around St. Pauls’ Cathedral visiting the Occupy London Stock Exchange camp there. With hindsight I probably didn’t pick the best day. November 9th was also the day of the student protests and the police presence in the city was the biggest I think I have ever seen in my life. From the moment I left St. Pauls’ tube station, there were ranks of police, policevans, dogs, horses, all kinds of different police units all over the place. During the day I was often reminded of ‘Apocalypse Now’ or ‘Boyz in the Hood’, given the constant noise of helicopters overhead, which at times, even made conversation difficult.
How might our response to peak oil and climate change look more like a party than a protest march? This site explores the emerging transition model in its many manifestations
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