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 76 - 80 of 692 for the category: Community Involvement.
Isabel Carlisle is presenting the Youth Symposium that takes place on the Friday before the main conference (an event you can also follow on Facebook), as well as a workshop on the Saturday looking at the ‘One Year in Transition’, the Transition Learning Journey. We asked her to tell us a bit more about both:
About 4 weeks ago, I had the honour of interviewing Charles Eisenstein, author of ‘Sacred Economics’ while he was in the UK visiting Schumacher College to teach a course there for a week. I had to admit before we began the interview that I have yet to read his book, in spite of the number of people I know who have insisted that I really ought to. I decided to see this as an opportunity though, given that most people who will be reading this won’t have read it either, thereby sharing my starting point of near-complete ignorance. I think it kind of works. He was charming and thoughtful, and you can either hear the podcast of the interview below, or read the transcript below that.
Jorgen Randers is professor of climate strategy at the BI Norwegian Business School, and among many other things, was coauthor of The Limits to Growth in 1972, Beyond the Limits in 1992, and Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update in 2004 (you can read his full biog here). He has recently published ‘2052: a global forecast for the next forty years‘. You can see a film of him discussing the book at its launch here. I had the great honour of interviewing Jorgen recently, via Skype from his study at his home in Norway. You can hear the audio of our interview below, or read the transcript. ‘2052’ is available here if you’re in the US, or here in the UK.
The first question I wanted to ask you is what your aim was when you sat down to write ‘2052’?
I’m 67 years old, I’ve spent 40 years of my life working in vain for sustainability and I finally decided that it would be interesting to find out whether I really needed to be continually worrying about the future as I have over the last 40 years because I have now only 20 to 25 years left to live. I thought it would be interesting to try to find out what will actually happen over those 40 years.
I was recently in Santander, a major port city on the northern Spanish coast. While my kids were waking up in the hotel, my wife and youngest son went out in search of breakfast. Bereft of a map, we wandered in search of some fruit, and some pastries perhaps? Eventually, glancing round a street corner, I spotted what looked like it might be the corner of a market stall. On closer inspection, it turned out we had stumbled across one of the most remarkable food markets I have ever had the pleasure to wander around, El Mercado de la Esperanza, or ‘The Market of Hope’.
In 2007 we published Simon Fairlie’s seminal study “Can Britain Feed Itself?” (which originally appeared in The Land journal), the first study since 1975 to ask that question. In spite of being a back of the envelope stab at the question, the study proved hugely provocative (although sadly not in government circles) resulting in a number of “Can [insert name of place] feed itself” studies and seemingly endless debates about whether it could be done in a way that pleased vegans, meat eaters, vegetarians and so on. Five years later, The Land, the journal that published Fairlie’s original study, has published “Can Britain Farm Itself?” (which you can download as a pdf here or read online here), written by Ed Hamer, smallholder and writer (a noble combination). The question it explores is the extent to which agriculture, if approached in a different way, could create land-based employment in a time in desperate need of employment opportunities. It is a fascinating piece of work.
