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.
So the Queen’s Speech has set out the policy priorities for the new government, but were the policies announced a cop-out or do they set out a wartime mobilisation scale of response to climate change and peak oil? These reflections are based on the article about the speech that appeared in yesterday’s Guardian. Plans include setting up a green investment bank, which will make loans available to households for energy efficiency measures and renewable energy installations, the ‘pay-as-you-save’ scheme initially proposed by Ed Miliband. The exact amount of the loans that will be available has not yet been stated, although the Guardian speculates that it could be as much as £15,000. This is a great development, but I wonder if it could yet be taken further? How would DECC respond, for example, if a Transition group were able to get 100 people to take out loans of £15,000 each and club it together as £1.5million in order to finance a community-owned ESCO, an energy company designed to be owned by and financially benefit the community?
The Ministry of Food: thrifty wartime ways to feed your family today. Jane Fearnley Whittingstall. (2010) Hodder & Stoughton and the Imperial War Museum.
I hadn’t heard of this until a couple of weeks ago, when a group of folks visiting from the US dropped by, en route from London, where they had visited an exhibition at the Imperial War Museum called ‘The Ministry of Food’ (which runs until January 3rd 2011), gave me their copy of this book. Having read this book, I will definitely make a point of going to see the exhibition next time I am in London. The book is the exhibition catalogue, but it is also a superb stand-alone publication, offering many useful insights on how the British people managed during the war, how the Ministry of Food successfully promoted the Dig for Victory/Kitchen Front campaigns which kept the country from starvation, and, ironically, led to the healthiest population in the country’s recent history.
Pete North’s new book ‘Local Money: how to make it happen in your community’ will be formally launched at the 2010 Transition Network conference and will be available to order here at the end of this week. The latest book in the Transition Books series, ‘Local Money’ is a comprehensive overview of local currencies, and how to plan and implement such a scheme. It is written with Transition initiatives in mind, drawing from the experience of Transition currencies such as the Brixton Pound and the Lewes Pound, but it also tells the fascinating stories of other alternative currencies, including the story of how local money was a key element of how communities survived the Argentinian crash. To celebrate the launch of the book, I interviewed Pete about the book, and about local currencies….
For Transition groups looking to set up viable local food systems, there is a range of models to choose from. There are the better known ones such as CSAs and box schemes, and the more innovative ones, such as Food Hubs. One less well known, but equally exciting model is that being developed at Growing Communities in Hackney, who I have often written about glowingly here. For the uninitiated, here is a short film about their work:
I spent yesterday afternoon in the village of Tuckenhay, a few miles from Totnes and on the Bow Creek, a spur that comes off the River Dart. Beautiful place, now largely a mix of very expensive houses, second homes and holiday cottages. There was a time when it was a vibrant working village, home to a papermill that made bank note quality paper, and a range of trades. Walking past ‘The Old Bakehouse’, ‘The Maltings’ and several other housenames indicating the former role of the houses, I was reminded of an amazing programme on Radio 4 yesterday morning that suggested that the reskilling required to support a more localised world on a meaningful scale may already have started.
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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So the Queen’s Speech has set out the policy priorities for the new government, but were the policies announced a cop-out or do they set out a wartime mobilisation scale of response to climate change and peak oil? These reflections are based on the article about the speech that appeared in yesterday’s Guardian. Plans include setting up a green investment bank, which will make loans available to households for energy efficiency measures and renewable energy installations, the ‘pay-as-you-save’ scheme initially proposed by Ed Miliband. The exact amount of the loans that will be available has not yet been stated, although the Guardian speculates that it could be as much as £15,000. This is a great development, but I wonder if it could yet be taken further? How would DECC respond, for example, if a Transition group were able to get 100 people to take out loans of £15,000 each and club it together as £1.5million in order to finance a community-owned ESCO, an energy company designed to be owned by and financially benefit the community? 
