Transition Culture

27 Jul 2009

Ed Miliband Muses on his Experience as a ‘Keynote Listener’ at the Transition Network conference

Following UK Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Ed Miliband’s appearance at the Transition Network conference as a ‘Keynote Listener’, we invited him to write a few words to sum up this thoughts on the experience.  Unfortunately it came in just a day too late to make the latest, and rather wonderful, Transition Network newsletter, (if you don’t get it you can subscribe here), but it is very interesting.  See below;

“Dear Friends

I’ve never been a “keynote listener” before – it’s probably not something that politicians tend to do. So my first experience of it was when I attended the Transition Towns conference and, going table to table to hear what people were discussing, learnt about the movement and what people want me to do in government to help.

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17 Jul 2009

A Transition Take on the UK Low Carbon Transition Plan

After many months of Ed Milliband putting himself out there are a Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change that actually gets climate change, finally his big Plan, the UK Low Carbon Transition Plan was unveiled on Wednesday, in a speech in the House of Commons that namechecked Transition Towns and which is the boldest national vision for a low carbon society yet seen.  Many others have since pitched in with their thoughts, I thought it might be useful here to offer an analysis from a Transition perspective.  In his speech, Milliband said “we know from the Transition Towns movement the power of community action to motivate people..”, clearly an outcome of his attendance as a ‘Keynote Listener’ at the Transition Network conference in May. So how does the Plan measure up, and does it actually advance what Transition initiatives and the wider relocalisation movement are doing?

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16 Jul 2009

An Alarming Side Effect of Wind Energy That We Have All Overlooked

Have spent the day writing a ‘Transition Take on the UK Low Carbon Transition Plan’, which I will post soon.  One of the things it commits the Government to is a five-fold expansion of wind power over the next 10 years.  We have reported on many of the more colourful reasons people give for an expansion of wind generation being a bad idea, from the danger to them from flying cows and UFOs to the danger from terrorist attack.  A piece over at New York Times online, reporting on the UK government’s plan, produced a comment so astonishingly stupid that it ranks now even above those previously mentioned. 

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10 Jul 2009

Announcing the Release of ‘Can Totnes and District Feed Itself?’

We are delighted, after many months of work, to finally announce the release of a major piece of groundbreaking research developed by Transition Town Totnes, Transition Network and Geofutures, with support from Land Share CIC, entitled ‘Can Totnes and District Feed Itself: exploring the practicalities of food relocalisation’.  You can download the paper here.  The report is a key part of the Totnes EDAP, taking Simon Fairlie’s Can Britain Feed Itself paper and applying it to Totnes and District.

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2 Jul 2009

Transition Town Tooting Win Prestigious Grant

Roving Transition reporter and publisher of Transition Network News Mike Grenville sent the following report from an awards event in London at which Transition Town Tooting found out that they had been one of four projects selected from 178 applications to recieve funding for projects that bring art and responses to climate change together.  The result is a great boost to Transition, and to Transition Town Tooting, who are doing hugely innovative and important work embedding Transition principles in the urban context…. congratulations all… and thanks Mike for the following report.

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