10 Jun 2008
It is often said that there is nothing new under the sun. As we stand on the collective precipice presented by peak oil and its many companion challenges (recession, runaway food prices, climate change and so on), it is easy to think that we are the first generation to have to face these issues, indeed, for many of us, anything else has not really happened within our lifespans. However, we have been here before, and the idea that rampant oil prices will necessitate a major rethink of society is not a new one. The oil crises of 1973 and 1979, although politically rather than geologically imposed, focused the mind in much the same way that peak oil is starting to now, and there is a great deal that we can learn from the experience of that time.
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7 May 2008
David Holmgren’s permaculture principles are integral to the Transition concept, and are touched on in the Transition Handbook. I see them as really being the design principles underpinning the design of anything in a post-peak context. David has just launched a new site, PermaculturePrinciples.com, which takes a deeper look into the principles. You might find it a useful resource. We are currently exploring how they might be applied to businesses in the Transition concept, more on that later…
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7 Apr 2008
Spent a glorious weekend in the garden, sowing seeds, building a compost heap, digging over a new bed and generally getting everything ready for the emerging Spring. In the interests of trying different approaches alongside each other to see what works best, I made a double-dug terraced bed, a lot of work but something you only need to do once. I have been putting in some soft fruit bushes and our first seedlings, salad rocket, have just started to peep through the compost in their seed trays. When I sat down this morning though, with my lower back still feeling the exertions of my double digging, I found, via. Energy Bulletin, a wonderful film about a permaculture farm in Australia, which makes my wee plot rather pale into insignificance!
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1 Mar 2008
The Transition Handbook From oil dependency to local resilience.
Reviewed by Graham Strouts of Zone5.org
“The concept of energy descent, and of the Transition approach, is a simple one: that the future with less oil could be preferable to the present, but only if sufficient creativity and imagination are applied early enough in the design of this transition.” -Rob Hopkins, The Transition Handbook
The publication of the much anticipated Transition Handbook marks the latest landmark in what has become the fastest growing environmental movement since CND in the 1960s: the phenomenon that is sweeping the UK, the Transition Towns movement.
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7 Feb 2008
Sonya Wallace in Sunshine Coast in Australia (Australia’s first Transition Town) just sent me a link to an interview that she did on Wonderful World Media Network which explores the relocalisation process happening there, and how their Energy Descent Plan process is going. The quality of the recording isn’t that great, indeed it does sound rather like listening into the Apollo landings at a time when the conversation moved away from booster rockets to peak oil and local currencies, but it is well worth a listen. Great to hear what people are up to there.
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