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.
TTT's Frances Northrop proudly displaying its new plaque...
Here’s a kind of half-formed thought that might possibly go somewhere if I start writing about it. This September sees the fifth anniversary of the Unleashing of Transition Town Totnes. We were deeply flattered the other day to receive a somewhat premature but very welcome plaque from the Town Council bearing the inscription “Transition Town Totnes: to celebrate their first 5 years of activity within the town”. I’ll probably write a more detailed ‘Totnes: some reflections after 5 years in Transition’ in September, but this post was prompted by an email from a friend in Totnes, who grew up here in the 1960s and is very much a pillar of the community. He had valiantly read my dissertation, ‘Localisation and Resilience‘, cover to cover and wrote with some reflections. In his email he makes a very interesting point:
FC United is a supporter-owned football club in Manchester, formed by Manchester United fans opposed to the Glazers buyout of the club. They play in the Northern Premier League and aim to raise £1.5 million for a new ground, and have already raised £700,000, in part through a very well supported share launch. Might a similar model also enable the rapid acceleration of Transition at the community level?
Here is a last minute addition to the ingredients for the forthcoming ‘Transition Companion’. It is especially timely as OVESCO in Lewes’s share option has managed to raise £286, 600 is only £20,000 short of its target … if you live in an around Lewes, get your shares before 27th May!!
Money isn’t a neutral thing. The decisions we make with our investment choices either prop up and reinforce an economic model rooted in a past of cheap energy prices and climate irresponsibility, or they can help to bring forth a new, revitalised and more appropriate way of doing things.
Here is a short film of the launch of OVESCO’s (Ouse Valley Energy Services Company) community power station share launch. If you live in and around Lewes, you have until 27th May to get your shares. They have raised £287,000 so far, and still need to raise another £20,000. A very exciting model, which will be put in a wider context tomorrow.
The other week I did a chat with Karen Rybold Chin for ‘The Nation’ as the final part of a thirteen-part series called “Peak Oil and a Changing Climate”. Here it is….
Following it, Walter Haugen at Local Harvest wrote a post questioning my “1 litre of oil equals 35 days of human work” figure. My source for that was from the end of a report done by FEASTA a few years ago which concluded that “a 40 litre fill-up at a petrol station is the equivalent of about four years of human manual work”. Walter’s calculations, which argue that my figure “overstates the energy value of a liter of petrol by almost a factor of four” are here. Be great to hear your thoughts on this. Not being a mathematician or an engineer myself I’d value your thoughts/analysis….
Here’s a short piece about exciting developments in Lewes….
Despite George Osborne’s best efforts, the UK will soon be facing huge hikes in the cost of energy supply as falling global production, political unrest in the Arab world, increased demand from India and China and new nervousness about nuclear cause oil prices to soar. Part of the solution to this problem has been obvious for a long time: localise energy supply. In Lewes, East Sussex, the energy services company Ovesco 1 is teaming up with Harveys, the local brewery, to install the country’s first community-owned solar power station on the roof of Harveys’ warehouse. Ovesco, a non-profit IPS, 2 hopes to raise 100% of the £307,000 installation cost from local investment.
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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