23 Sep 2008
I wrote last week about the submission that Transition Leicester made about eco-towns, today I want to celebrate the excellent piece of work done by Transition Glastonbury in pulling together their response to a report prepared by their local Council setting out plans for the development of the area over the next 20 years. As with most Council plans, it starts with assuming a graph with a line that rises as it moves towards the right, increased growth, increased investment, increased energy availability. Transition Glastonbury’s submission asks, what if it doesn’t? How might this area thrive in uncertain times? This is a timely post, as tomorrow night in Totnes sees the formal launch of our Energy Descent Pathways process, the creation, in effect, of the town’s Plan B. Congratulations to Transition Glastonbury for blazing a trail with this so brilliantly.
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22 Sep 2008
Thanks to that great Transition film-maker Alex Munslow, the talks from the night of the Lewes Pound launch are now available. The Lewes Pound is developing into a fascinating story, and although I did my best to try and capture the spirit of the night, these films capture it far better, in particular the last one, with the Mayor officially launching it. So here they are, in the order they came on the evening….
Part Two here.
Stewart Wallis of the New Economics Foundation
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19 Sep 2008
Attended a wonderful event in London on Tuesday night, organised by Wise Women, called “Transition Towns Come to London”. It took place in Conway Hall, and was, I realised when I got there, the first actual public talk I have ever given in London. A few people have asked for the presentation I gave, you can download it here, but as usual with my presentations, it probably doesn’t make much sense without notes as to what I actually said. Mike Grenville started the evening with a powerful overview of peak oil and peak water, and of the need to act. Then I gave my talk about Transition, during which I read out a rather wonderful quote by Brian Eno about the power of visioning given to me by Lucy Neal of Transition Town Tooting just before the talk. I think I’ll go on to use it regularly… A few people asked me for it, so here it is…
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18 Sep 2008
In Totnes, one sometimes hears the term ‘old hippy’ used as a term of abuse. Last week in Totnes, Albert Bates, an old hippy of the highest order, thrilled a full house at the Methodist Hall with the story of the Farm Ecovillage in Tennessee. It was a delight for me, as I first heard Albert speaking in 1995, when I was a fresh-faced, just qualified permaculturist who was lucky enough to get a bursary to attend the ‘Eco-Villages and Sustainable Communities’ conference at Findhorn. The speech Albert gave there, one long evening, was a life changing moment.
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12 Sep 2008
Communities plan for a low-energy future
‘Transition initiatives,’ begun in Britain, aim to empower people to tackle effects of climate change and decline of oil.
By Judith D. Schwartz |The Christian Science Monitor/ September 11, 2008 edition
A year ago, Pat Proulx-Lough felt so overwhelmed by reports about climate change that she couldn’t even listen to the news. “My husband was finishing a dissertation on water resources, and I became hopeless and fearful,” says Ms. Proulx-Lough, a therapist in Portland, Maine.
Fast-forward to summer ’08 and Proulx-Lough is not just hopeful, but excited about the future. What happened? She tapped into the Transition movement.
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