Archive for “Politics” category
1 - 5 of 91 posts
18 Mar 2010
How do you see the relationship between sustainability and resilience as concepts? Is resilience part of sustainability? Is sustainability part of resilience?
I guess for me sustainability is kind of a boring word but we’re stuck with it. But I tend to like resilience because it implies an active disposition to be able to withstand, it’s more of an engineering and mathematical term, but to be able to withstand disturbances. Some parameters change, some factors shift, and the system is able to adjust. There’s enough slack in the system that it works. So for me, at a minimum, sustainability implies resilience. In any definition of sustainability the system has got to be resilient to disturbances.
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17 Mar 2010
David Orr in London. Note the offending highly energy wasteful chandeliers behind him (referred to in the interview)
David Orr was in the UK recently, and the two of us were part of a panel at an event organised by the Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment. After the event, we retired to the bar of a rather grand London hotel, and chatted for an hour about energy, climate change, the Precautionary Principle, Transition and whether or not we are beyond talk of ’solutions’. Part two will follow shortly.
So, how would you introduce yourself?
I’m David Orr. I teach at Oberlin College in Ohio and I also work as Senior Advisor to the President of the college on environmental issues generally, but specifically on the redevelopment of the town and the college to carbon neutrality, a 20,000 acre green belt and the revitalised downtown corridor.
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4 Mar 2010
A while ago we published here a draft guide for Transition initiatives wanting to hold Transition hustings with their local election candidates, in particular to explore themes around resilience. Thanks to everyone who sent in comments and changes, and I am delighted to announce that the final document is available now to download here. It runs over 8 pages, so in theory it should be able to print out as a rather nice A5 booklet. The first such husting to have reached our ears was held on 25th February by Transition Luton. You can read a detailed report of the event here, including their reflections on how to do it better if they did it again and a rather ropey film that gives a flavour of the event. Do let me know (rob (at) transitionculture.org) any stories of hustings you hold, and we’ll report them here.
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25 Feb 2010
Amazing times. Last week’s headline of one of the papers I saw at the station was that the UK’s national debt is now worse than that of Greece. On Tuesday I spent the morning with Chris ‘Crash Course’ Martenson, whose view is that last year’s ‘banking crisis’ was just the first of many, which will get steadily worse. The interview I did with him will be posted next week. Then yesterday morning, in the middle of a piece on Radio 4’s Today Programme about immigrant workers and why so few unemployed people here want any of those jobs in spite of rising unemployment, enter Frank Field, Labour MP, who delivered a verdict on the state of Britain’s economic health so withering that it made Martenson’s predictions look positively rosy. Rarely do I hear politicians on the radio and feel the need to transcribe every word, but here it is. After my meeting with him, Martenson went to give a talk for the All Party Parliamentary Working Group on Peak Oil and Gas at the Commons… I wonder if Frank Field happened to wander in on Chris’s session?
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2 Feb 2010
Here is an excellent piece from the Mid-Wales Permaculture Network site, an interview which looks at how Transition initiatives build relationships with other organisations. It is very insightful, and so, with gratitude to Roz Brown and the MWPN, here it is.
Roz Brown in conversation with Dave Prescott of Transition Hay-on-Wye
The need for broad community involvement is frequently recognised by TT groups, and is certainly advocated by the fonder of the movement. But many TTs struggle to identify and work with existing community organisations to forward the process of meeting the global challenges of climate change and peak oil. One TT group in Mid Wales proceeded from the outset to foster this collaboration and work with and through other organistions. In this interview, Dave Prescott tells the story of Transition Hay on Wye.
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How do you see the relationship between sustainability and resilience as concepts? Is resilience part of sustainability? Is sustainability part of resilience?
