14 Jul 2008
We’re back, following some down time due to a collapsed server! People find a variety of ways to spend their birthdays. Now that you all know that I ended up spending the evening of my recent birthday enduring ‘Sex and the City’ at the cinema, I can now attempt to redeem myself slightly by pointing you to the time I also spent that day with Nancy Durham from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, helping in the making of a short piece for Canadian TV. You can see Nancy’s article and 5 minute film here (follow the link top right corner for the film clip). I think it turned out rather well, and hope that I have, partially at least, attoned for my sins…
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29 May 2008
At a time when it is entirely self-evident to anyone who takes an interest in these things that the Age of Cheap Oil is over, that the world is about to enter an unprecedented energy transition and that we are led by people with no idea what to do about it, I was intrigued to be given a clipping from the Daily Star which somehow embodies the depths of denial at work out there in the world. Accompanied by a wonderful, Viz-like image of a spaceman taking a stroll outside a Premier Inn on the lunar surface with the Earth in the background (see left), the article runs as follows. You’re going to enjoy this…
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22 May 2008
On Wednesday night, on the same night as the rather wonderful Champions League Final (which some idiot timetabled for the same night.. oops it was me… doh) and on the evening oil began touching $135 a barrel, Transition Town Totnes held an evening called “How Are We Doing?”, an opportunity for TTT to update the community on how it is doing, and on all the range of activities and projects underway, as well as getting feedback. In the event over 100 people came, and the evening was very positive and constructive.
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14 May 2008
Things seem to be moving so fast these days. About 6 months ago, BBC Radio 4’s consumer affairs programme ‘You and Yours’ ran a piece about Transition Initiatives and peak oil where Jeremy Leggett debated peak oil with a ridiculous guy from Audacity.org, who basically argued that the free market will solve all ills and there is still loads of oil left. The presenters rather laughed off the peak oil discussion as though it was all rather alarmist and silly. How rapidly things have changed. Yesterday’s ‘Call You and Yours’ was devoted to high oil prices and how they are affecting the consumer, and it was powerful stuff (you can hear the programme for the next 6 days here).
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28 Apr 2008
Our personal lives can sometimes imitate what is happening in the wider world to an alarming extent. On Friday morning I sat down at my computer to write you a very amusing piece about olive oil (which you’ll have to wait until tomorrow for…), only to find that my computer had seized up, and refused to start. The Microsoft Windows Screen of Death (left) loomed large. I dashed to my local computer repair man, whose first question, on noting the symptoms, was “have you got everything backed up?” Ah. Hum.
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We’re back, following some down time due to a collapsed server! People find a variety of ways to spend their birthdays. Now that you all know that I ended up spending the evening of my recent birthday enduring ‘Sex and the City’ at the cinema, I can now attempt to redeem myself slightly by pointing you to the time I also spent that day with Nancy Durham from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, helping in the making of a short piece for Canadian TV. You can see Nancy’s article and 5 minute film here (follow the link top right corner for the film clip). I think it turned out rather well, and hope that I have, partially at least, attoned for my sins…