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.
How do you see the relationship between sustainability and resilience as concepts? Is resilience part of sustainability? Is sustainability part of resilience?
I guess for me sustainability is kind of a boring word but we’re stuck with it. But I tend to like resilience because it implies an active disposition to be able to withstand, it’s more of an engineering and mathematical term, but to be able to withstand disturbances. Some parameters change, some factors shift, and the system is able to adjust. There’s enough slack in the system that it works. So for me, at a minimum, sustainability implies resilience. In any definition of sustainability the system has got to be resilient to disturbances.
David Orr in London. Note the offending highly energy wasteful chandeliers behind him (referred to in the interview)
David Orr was in the UK recently, and the two of us were part of a panel at an event organised by the Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment. After the event, we retired to the bar of a rather grand London hotel, and chatted for an hour about energy, climate change, the Precautionary Principle, Transition and whether or not we are beyond talk of ‘solutions’. Part two will follow shortly.
So, how would you introduce yourself?
I’m David Orr. I teach at Oberlin College in Ohio and I also work as Senior Advisor to the President of the college on environmental issues generally, but specifically on the redevelopment of the town and the college to carbon neutrality, a 20,000 acre green belt and the revitalised downtown corridor.
There have been various threads here previously about music inspired by, or to inspire, Transition. A quick scoot about on YouTube reveals a couple of Transition-themed tunes people have posted there. This first one, by Lala Jane Wilson (I’m guessing that’s her name), was inspired by her going to watch ‘In Transition’… she came home, and out came this….
The second one, as far as I can tell, is from somewhere in the US, where a competition sought local bands to sings songs about Transition (would love to know more about that…). This band, the Time Spinners, who all look about 15, came up with the song below, although it is quite hard to hear the lyrics…
We’ve got so many wonderfully diverse and inspiring activities to show you this month…ideas for getting people involved and having fun! And they’re here for the sharing…
In the UK, TT Luton is organising a series of Grow Your Own events to relocalise food production and consumption, with discussions and a quiz to encourage people to grow their own fruit and vegetables, while Southend-on-Sea in Transition organised a day’s introduction to Permaculture with more events lined up that you’re invited to get involved with. TT Leek is getting hold of allotments and orchards so they can plant more trees and increase production of native British apple varieties, while TT Nailsea is sharing its gardening skills with other local people to increase self-sufficiency in food production, strengthen local resilience and encourage people to think more about their carbon footprints.
One of Totnes’s best kept secrets is cartoonist Simon French (who, trivia fans, is the son of the head of Sixth Form from when I was at school). Every week his column ‘Two Knights in the Castle’, based around two knights sitting on the walls of Totnes Castle, grows more surreal and ploughs its own furrow. I love it. Here is the latest one, which you might enjoy (click on it to see it in its full glory). You can check out his work at his blog, although I think it might be temporarily down.
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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How do you see the relationship between sustainability and resilience as concepts? Is resilience part of sustainability? Is sustainability part of resilience?
