In November 2006, I sat at the back of the Barn Cinema, Dartington, and watched ‘An Inconvenient Truth‘. It had such an impact on me that by the time it ended, I had decided that I couldn’t just leave the cinema without marking the event by making some kind of change in my life. I decided that evening not to fly again, and I haven’t flown since. I have played an active part in supporting the growth of an international movement in 40 countries since then, participating in countless workshops, and discussing Transition internationally through Skype and pre-recorded talks, most of which I begin with how much carbon I have saved by not travelling in person. However, I recently watched the film ‘Chasing Ice’, and it had, if anything, a more visceral impact than ‘An Inconvenient Truth’. My resolution at the end of watching it, re-enforced by the recent passing, for the first time, of 400 ppm of C02 in the atmosphere, was that it was time to get back on a plane, and I want to use this post to tell you why.
With some considerable amount of fanfare and dancing elephants, I would like to introduce you today to the all-new Transition Research Primer. It is the creation of the Transition Research Network (TRN), a self-organising peer group of academics and community activists which aims to:
Help advance understanding and practice in Transition
Support Transition groups to address their research needs
Help transform the crisis in our universities into an opportunity for positive change in research culture, making research relevant, fulfilling, and fun.
Here is the video of yesterday’s webinar which I hosted and which featured Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone. I hope you enjoy it, and thanks to everyone who participated, logged in and who helped make it happen. The feedback on the technology was great, and we’ll certainly be doing more of them in the near future.
In the last of this series of short videos about the Totnes & District Local Economic Blueprint, David Seymour of Bridgetown Stores in Totnes discusses its implications for the local economy.
Next Thursday (April 18th) at 5pm BST sees a rather special Transition Network/Resilience.org team-up, with a webinar featuring Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone. Next week I will post details on how you can follow it, for now I wanted to let you know so you can put it in the diary and also have a think about any questions you’d like to ask them. If you have questions please put them as a comment below or tweet them to me at @robintransition. Here’s where it will happen, in this window below, so come back here, or here, on Thursday for the webinar.
What’ll we be discussing in our hour-long chat? Here’s how Joanna and Chris frame the conversation:
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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