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 debate has raged recently among the online peak oil/localization community about whether peak oil will result in the relocalisation of food, or whether it will in fact lead to a shoring up and revalidation of industrial agriculture. Stuart Staniford questioned the assumption that peak oil will inevitably lead to the relocalisation of food supply, an argument which was, I think, pretty thoroughly savaged by the astonishingly productive Sharon Astyk (does this woman sleep?). I want to offer a new angle on this which I hope might add to the ongoing discussion, triggered by a document produced by the British Cabinet Office recently. It raises the possibility that the discussion so far has rather missed the point, and that the key driver for relocalisation, of food at least, will not be peak oil or climate change, but could in fact be the obesity crisis.
It was fascinating to read Rupert Read’s recent article posted both on his website and reproduced in the Green Party magazine Green World entitled *‘Peak Oil’ only makes the Green Party message more urgent”*, in which he sets about the Transition movement for being naive and even potentially harmful. *”Next time you hear a Transition Town aficionado peaking about how Peak Oil renders ordinary politics irrelevant, please beg to differ”*, he writes. However, Read’s piece betrays such a profound misunderstanding of where the Transition movement is coming from that I feel duty bound to respond.
A while ago I wrote here about the presentation I gave at the International Forum on Globalisation despite staying at home, sending a DVD and thereby saving 2,788kgs of carbon dioxide in the process. The response to that was very good, and as a dedicated no-flyer, I am always interested in other people who do the same. Prince Charles saw off all competition in this department recently by having himself beamed, 3D, in a Star Trek style, into a recent energy conference in Abu Dhabi (see below).
This whole question of how to attend conferences without travelling is a huge challenge, as the film above discusses, and
**Sonya Wallace** in Sunshine Coast in Australia (Australia’s first Transition Town) just sent me a link to an interview that she did on Wonderful World Media Network which explores the relocalisation process happening there, and how their Energy Descent Plan process is going. The quality of the recording isn’t that great, indeed it does sound rather like listening into the Apollo landings at a time when the conversation moved away from booster rockets to peak oil and local currencies, but it is well worth a listen. Great to hear what people are up to there.
I wrote recently about the event in Wadebridge I spoke at with Anthony Gibson of the National Farmers Union which explored, among other things, biofuels, organics and localisation. In the interests of balance and on throwing more light onto the different perspectives that were aired that night, and offering a different perspective, here is Mr. Gibson’s regular column in the Western Morning News.
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 debate has raged recently among the online peak oil/localization community about whether peak oil will result in the relocalisation of food, or whether it will in fact lead to a shoring up and revalidation of industrial agriculture. Stuart Staniford questioned the assumption that peak oil will inevitably lead to the relocalisation of food supply, an argument which was, I think, pretty thoroughly savaged by the astonishingly productive Sharon Astyk (does this woman sleep?). I want to offer a new angle on this which I hope might add to the ongoing discussion, triggered by a document produced by the British Cabinet Office recently. It raises the possibility that the discussion so far has rather missed the point, and that the key driver for relocalisation, of food at least, will not be peak oil or climate change, but could in fact be the obesity crisis.
