Transition Culture

An Evolving Exploration into the Head, Heart and Hands of Energy Descent

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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.

Monthly archive for May 2006

Showing results 6 - 10 of 26 for the month of May, 2006.


25 May 2006

Building with Hemp – A Review and a Competition!

**Building With Hemp by Steve Allin – a Review (see bottom of review for a chance to win a copy of this book in our latest Transition Culture competition).**

hempHemp is a plant with an extraordinary history and a list of uses that would gave most other plants a serious inferiority complex. Historically it provided the UK Navy’s ropes for centuries, the paper for the first US dollar bills, it can be made into a material called Hemp Plastic which was what the bodywork of the first Ford car was made from, and makes a wide range of papers and fabrics

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24 May 2006

An Evening in Peter Harper’s Garden.

g1**Peter Harper** has been at the Centre for Alternative Technology for over 15 years as a landscape designer, director of biological research and now as Head of Research and Innovation. He is author of many articles and of the classic “Natural Garden Book”, which I think is now tragically out of print. He lives in Machynlleth has done a great job of renovating his traditional cottage as ‘greenly’ as possible, as well as creating a beautiful and productive garden.

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23 May 2006

Urban Wind Farms – coming to a town near you…

urban windAs I was washing up this evening and listening to the news on Radio 4, a story caught my ear that sounded too good to be true. After endless stories of wind projects being turned down across the country and all the ‘blot on the landscape’ nonsense about wind turbines, did I actually hear that **urban** wind farms could be the thing of the near future? In a very timely follow up to yesterday’s post about community renewables projects, the BBC gave a taste of things to come in the field of community wind projects.

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22 May 2006

Reflections on Decentralised Energy Systems Following the CAT Course.

pvOne of the most useful things about the **Community Renewables** course at CAT was that I got to bounce some of my ideas off the people there. Clearly I don’t have a strong background in community renewables, being more of a permaculture and plants kinda guy, and community renewables are clearly a key part of a relocalisation process. I will look at this below, firstly setting out what was my thinking prior to the course, then the reservations that the course leaders raised about that, and finally the revised version of how I am now thinking that all of this might work.

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Discussion: 9 Comments

Categories: Energy, Localisation, Peak Oil, Technology


19 May 2006

‘Animate Earth’ competition winner!

b2The winner of the ‘Animate Earth’ competition is **Andy Wimbush** from Oxford, who correctly guessed that James Lovelock was in fact the inventor (almost by accident if I remember the story correctly) of the microwave oven. Only one person guessed it wrong, although much to my disappointment they didn’t think that he had invented the nodding dog or had a hand in unleashing Barney the Dinosaur on humanity. Well done Andy, and thanks to everyone else who entered.

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Discussion: Comments Off on ‘Animate Earth’ competition winner!

Categories: General