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.
Come find me at robhopkins.net
Showing results 461 - 465 of 474 for the category: Climate Change.
The UK Interdependence Report: How the world sustains the nation’s lifestyles and the price it pays by Andrew Simms, Dan Moran and Peter Chowla has just been published, and is essential reading for those of us promoting localised responses to peak oil. Produced by the excellent New Economics Foundation, it builds on the concept of ‘Ecological Debt’, as outlined in Andrew Simms’ book of the same name.
Listening to Friday’s Any Answers programme from Norfolk while I did the evening washing up, I was incensed, nay, incandescent, to hear the reaction of some of the audience to a question about wind turbines. The school that was hosting the programme had apparently applied to put a wind turbine on its roof. When one of the panellists said that they thought that having a wind turbine on a school was good for the environment, and also good for the children to see their school walking its talk, he was booed! Booed!
The Totnes Sustainability Group is holding a half-day conference in May to launch a study it commissioned which looks at all the renewable energy options for South Devon and for the town of Totnes. It compiles a wealth of information that will be extremely useful to the Totnes Energy Descent Plan. Its findings are similar to those of Paul Mobbs in ‘Energy Beyond Oil’, who says that renewables, at max, could provide 40% of the nation’s energy, the rest needing to come from conservation. The figure the report produces for South Devon is closer to 30%. I will put the report itself on here when it is completed. The conference is by invite only, details below. I am one of the speakers, attempting to give an overview of peak oil and energy descent in 15 minutes!
“Vote for Me – I’ll guarantee you less every year”. Not something you are likely to hear from your local politician. Even though some MPs, like Michael Meacher, talk about the reality of peak oil, they still cling to the concept of business as usual, not really taking on board the depth of its implications and the inevitable need for relocalisation and for economic contraction. At what stage will MPs start to acknowledge the inevitable fact that we have to start rethinking some very basic assumptions and start working out how to make relocalisation and contraction electable?
FEASTA, the Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability, based in Dublin, have just issued a briefing paper called The Great Emissions Rights Give Away, which explores the question of what is the fairest form of emissions trading. The paper is deeply critical of the EU’s proposed carbon trading system and suggests a new more equitable and effective system. It is also critical of David Fleming’s TEQ’s approach as set out in his book ‘Energy and the Common Purpose’, for reasons which all rather go over my head. The two will be debating the subject in Dublin in mid-April, I’ll let you know more about that soon. The paper can be downloaded for free and is very readable and illuminating.
