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.
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.
George Monbiot announced in the Guardian on Monday “We were wrong on peak oil. There’s enough to fry us all“, an article which concluded “peak oil hasn’t happened, and it’s unlikely to happen for a very long time”. Several people have written, and even stopped me while I’ve been out shopping, to ask for my take on his piece, so here it is. It has been a tricky thing to write, as in the time it took me to compose it, so many other interesting analyses of it have been posted, many of which I have tried to reference here. In a nutshell, I think Monbiot’s piece swallows an over-optimistic take on peak oil, and there are things in his piece that I disagree with and things that I agree with, although I don’t for a moment consider myself a peak oil expert. What he does prompt is a rethink in terms of how we present peak oil. Let’s start with the things I disagree with.
Early morning sun welcoming the '24 Hours of Possibilities' into the world
The centre of Manchester, where I spent last weekend, doesn’t feature a diversity of small, medium and large hotels and hostels in the same way that, say, Paris does. So far as I could tell, there are just several huge Premier Inns, and huge Travelodges, massive, soul-less tower blocks with massive soul-less logos down the side. As well as that, in the centre, virtually every shop is a huge chain, you know the ones, they now dominate every city centre in the country. It’s like an episode of Dr Who, where the place has been taken over by huge leeches, sucking the financial lifeblood out of the city, what Andrew Simms recently called “extractive industries”, funnelling money to distant shareholders. There are endless hideous new ‘iconic’ buildings, massive corporate egos in built form, usually home to just one organisation (such as the hideous gravity-defying monster below, surely a contender for James Howard Kunstler’s ‘Eyesore of the Month’?). But on this day when many are celebrating ’24 Hours of Possibility’ (have a look, there’s loads going on!), how might it be possible to see beyond all that to something that actually nourishes us as individuals, communities and local economies?
I’ve written before here at Transition Culture about Transition in Brasilandia in Sao Paolo in Brazil. There is some fascinating stuff happening there (as elsewhere in Brazil), which is starting to attract attention with the media in the country. We recently had a news crew from Brazil’s Globo TV visit us at Transition Network to do an interview for a forthcoming piece, also about Transition Brasilandia. That hasn’t emerged yet, but here is a piece called ‘Pra Você Ver from TVT in Brazil that gives a good sense of it (in 3 parts, speaking Portugese helps…).
I was at the Hay Literary Festival over the weekend, and while I was there I caught up with Andrew Simms of New Economics Foundation, and in the light of the campaign afoot in Totnes to try and stop the opening of a Costa Coffee outlet in the town, I asked him “why should Totnes (or anywhere else for that matter) say no to Costa?” Here’s the audio file, followed by the transcript:
“Chain stores, of whatever variety, whether they are selling mobile phones, or whether they are selling coffee, or whether they are selling doughy torpedo-shaped sandwiches, are a way of doing business that carries with them a particular DNA for the society and the local economy which grows up around them.
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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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.
