An Evolving Exploration into the Head, Heart and Hands of Energy Descent
Transition Culture has moved
I no longer blog on this site. You can now find me, my general blogs, and the work I am doing researching my forthcoming book on imagination, on my new blog.
I posted the video of this a couple of weeks ago, but I am deeply grateful to Vanessa Kroll who has transcribed it, in case such a thing would be of interest/use to anyone. Here it is:
“Hello. I want to tell you a story which pulls together a lot of what we’ve heard already and looks at what that might look like in the context of one place. And it’s a story which I think can change the world. It’s a story which already is changing the world. It’s the story of my town, Totnes, in Devon. A town of about 8,500 people, midway between Exeter and Plymouth. But before I can tell you the story I really want to tell you about Totnes, I have to get another one out of the way first.
A couple of weeks ago I spoke at TedxExeter, a fantastic occasion with many great speakers (have a look at their website as more and more of the films from the day go online). I spoke for the first time in detail about Totnes as a case study, and what, after 6 years, we can draw from the experience of Transition Town Totnes. I hope you enjoy it.
Am home for a couple of days, and spotted that some of the TED talks have started going up. Here, as a sort of Transition Culture Summer Homework, is Paul Romer’s talk on ‘Charter Cities’ which I was so critical about in my write up. It offers a fascinating taste of unbridled human hubris, of an economist with no sense of economic or resource constraints, no sense of living within our means or of peak anything, no sense that perhaps unbridled neo-liberal free trade economics have been anything other than to the dazzling wellbeing of everyone. Have a look. Be fascinated to hear your thoughts on it. My two highlights are his raising the question as to why no-one else has thought of building cities in deserts, and the bit near the end where he says …“there is no roadblock, there is no impediment, other than a failure of imagination that will keep us from delivering on a truly global win win solution”. See what you think.
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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