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Transition Culture

An Evolving Exploration into the Head, Heart and Hands of Energy Descent


12 Sep 2008

Transition Makes the Pages of the Christian Science Monitor

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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Discussion: 5 Comments

Categories: Climate Change, Community Involvement, Localisation, Peak Oil, Resilience, Transition Initiatives, Transition Network


11 Sep 2008

‘A Peak into the future’, from yesterday’s Guardian

A peak into the future.
Described as ‘a social experiment on a massive scale’, the Transition Town movement offers positive ideas for low-carbon living

Sarah Lewis, The Guardian, Wednesday September 10 2008

When Waterstone’s recently asked 150 MPs about their favourite summer reads, number five on the list was a book from an environment group that only two years ago almost no one had heard of. But in that time, the Transition Town movement has grown from a classroom idea to a sprawling international network, which many think holds some of the answers to our environmental problems.

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Categories: Climate Change, Community Involvement, Localisation, Peak Oil, Resilience, Transition Initiatives


5 Sep 2008

Responding to Various Critiques of Transition

Critiques of Transition come in all shapes and sizes, and are often fascinating.  In the US, Robin Mills recently described it as “mistaken, appalling and dangerous” (one of my favourites) and Jim O’Neill, Chief Economist at Goldman Sachs, recently said on the Business Daily Show on BBC World Service that he had just read a book by a Californian with no geological or economic background (that’s me apparently…) calling for Transition economies, and stated that he had never read such rubbish!  It has been intriguing in recent weeks to follow the various, and largely more coherent debates and discussions that have emerged in the wake of the Climate Camp, and also as the discussions about Transition that the Trapese Collective’s ‘Rocky Road’ document stimulated have rumbled on.

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Discussion: 33 Comments

Categories: Climate Change, Community Involvement, Localisation, Peak Oil, Politics, Resilience, The 'Heart' of Energy Descent, Transition Initiatives


27 Aug 2008

What Transition Nottingham have been up to…

I was up in Nottingham a while ago giving a couple of talks to a very young but vigorously emergent Transition Nottingham group. The first talk was to an invited audience of business people and local councillors, and the second was a public talk with almost 200 people. There is some very good work going on there, a good deal of energy and momentum. On the Every Action Counts website, you can find this excellent update on what they are up to, which I have also copied below. We are planning a Transition Cities event for some time around the end of the year, which we hope will be in Nottingham. Watch this space.

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Discussion: 2 Comments

Categories: Climate Change, Community Involvement, Education for Sustainability, Peak Oil, Transition Initiatives


31 Jul 2008

An Interview with Mike Jones, Transition Stroud

Run of the Mill magazine is produced by the Ruskin Mill Educational Trust at Nailsworth, the beautiful venue that hosted the first Transition convergence in 2007. Their latest edition includes an interview with Mike Jones of Transition Stroud, which gives a rich overview of how Transition Stroud began and what it has been up to. Many thanks to the editor for permission to reproduce the article here.

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Discussion: No Comments

Categories: Community Involvement, Peak Oil, Transition Initiatives