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.
The other day I appeared on BBC Radio 4’s programme ‘A Good Read’, where three people suggest books for the others to read and then you all sit around and discuss them. It was great fun, although the other panellist didn’t think much of my book. After the programme I got two emails. One from someone picking me up on my grammar: “while you obviously no nothing about gerunds or gerundives – where verbs act as nouns – and your saying “him learning about …” – when, obviously you should have been saying “HIS learning about …”, and the other from someone whose father had known John Stewart Collis, the author of my book choice. Anyway, here it is, I hope you enjoy it.
Let’s start this month’s round-up in the UK, in Cheltenham. Transition Town Cheltenham have been making some gorgeous short films recently. In the last roundup we shared the one about Ken and his allotment. This month, firstly, Ivor, Remi and Leon talk us through the chickens in their garden, and their 8-person cargo bike:
… and secondly, a short film about In Stitches, who held their The Big Knit event at the Global Footsteps Cafe. A beautiful film about the power of knitting to build community:
George Monbiot announced in the Guardian on Monday “We were wrong on peak oil. There’s enough to fry us all“, an article which concluded “peak oil hasn’t happened, and it’s unlikely to happen for a very long time”. Several people have written, and even stopped me while I’ve been out shopping, to ask for my take on his piece, so here it is. It has been a tricky thing to write, as in the time it took me to compose it, so many other interesting analyses of it have been posted, many of which I have tried to reference here. In a nutshell, I think Monbiot’s piece swallows an over-optimistic take on peak oil, and there are things in his piece that I disagree with and things that I agree with, although I don’t for a moment consider myself a peak oil expert. What he does prompt is a rethink in terms of how we present peak oil. Let’s start with the things I disagree with.
The Centre for Alternative Technology has just published a new book called ‘The Home Energy Handbook: a guide to saving and generating energy in your home and community’. It is a great resource for Transition groups, and Transition features strongly through the book. It is available here. I spoke to Allan Shepherd, one of the book’s authors/editors, and asked him to tell us more about the book. Here is the audio, transcript below:
Can you tell us where the idea for the book came from?
It started from the Zero Carbon Britain 2030 project really, because that was aimed at policy makers and government. What we wanted to do was take the concept that was developed in ZCB, which was the ‘Power down’ and the ‘Power up’ concept.
So here’s something we’ll try, and see if you find it useful. I was in Clitheroe recently in Lancashire, and chatted with a couple of people involved in Transition Clitheroe. I asked them what else Transition Network could do to support their work, were there materials we could produce that would help them? They said that in fact Transition Network put out so much stuff that they struggled to keep up with it, and that perhaps some kind of a digest would be useful. It reminded me of Lee Brain from Transition Prince Rupert telling me that in their group they have someone whose role is ‘keeping up with Transition’. So I thought I would try today to do a digest of the key films, articles, projects and links out there, and see what you think of it and what’s missing. I thought we’d start with food:
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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The other day I appeared on BBC Radio 4’s programme ‘A Good Read’, where three people suggest books for the others to read and then you all sit around and discuss them. It was great fun, although the other panellist didn’t think much of my book. After the programme I got two emails. One from someone picking me up on my grammar: “while you obviously no nothing about gerunds or gerundives – where verbs act as nouns – and your saying “him learning about …” – when, obviously you should have been saying “HIS learning about …”, and the other from someone whose father had known John Stewart Collis, the author of my book choice. Anyway, here it is, I hope you enjoy it.
