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.
Well now here’s something wonderful from Transition York Region in Canada. I won’t say much about it, just sit back and enjoy… can’t help wishing they might perhaps move around a bit more though…
In June 2008, David Fleming was in Totnes to teach on the ‘Life After Oil’ course at Schumacher College, along with Richard Heinberg, myself and others. One afternoon, David and I slipped away so I could interview him for this website. In memory of his passing away this week, I am reprinting it here. We discussed peak oil and Tradable Energy Quotas, among other things. It was a joy.
How do you see the unfolding events of the past few weeks? (ie. the runaway price and it starting to make the price of petrol/diesel rise, with the impacts being felt acutely by those on lower incomes and in rural areas)?
Well, this is the beginning of the breakdown of the energy market. High prices are a sign that some people are having to forgo some or all of the oil which they would have expected to buy. In some cases, those purchases are absolutely essential to their livelihoods, and if they are priced out of the market in the oil auction, they will not be able to do really fundamental things like buying the kerosene they need to power their irrigation pumps. So far, most of those who have been affected to this extent are the poor – third world farmers, for instance. But it is coming our way.
Transition Town Totnes has been running now for just over 4 years, and recently a group of us sat down to try and capture what has actually been achieved by the process. It has been a very illuminating process, one that is very useful to do in terms of being able to get a sense of what has actually been achieved on the ground (I highly recommend it). The name of the report, ‘So, what does Transition Town Totnes actually do?‘, comes from the question often asked by visitors to the town who come to see a Transition town, wander round the High Street and wonder why there are still cars and not windmills everywhere. This report is designed to explain all that is going on below the surface (as well as on top of it…).
In April this year I went to Lancaster for the Unleashing of Transition City Lancaster, and a fine event it was too. Mark Rotherham filmed the event and is editing a film of the event, and has just made this taster available, and rather wonderful it is too… I love his animations of my ‘deep fetid lagoon’ slides…. Thanks Mark.
While I was Tadelakting my bathroom last Saturday, something far more interesting was happening in Totnes town, the annual TTT Winterfest. Sara and Emilio of nu-project were there, and have done this great film of the event, giving a flavour of the different initiatives underway and of what the day was like.
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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