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.
Here is an article I wrote that just appeared in the National Trust’s latest ‘Views’ magazine. You can read it below, or download it as a pdf here, or see the whole magazine here.
As I write this in May 2011, some amazing things are happening. A report1 from Australia shows that car ownership there has peaked, having been in steady decline since 2004. John Lewis report that, over the last year, trade at their UK out-of-town stores has fallen by 12 per cent while it has remained steady in their stores in town centres, the drop being partly blamed on the rising costs of fuel. A survey2 by B&Q showed that 37 per cent of adults plan to grow some of their own food this summer. In the Sussex town of Lewes, the community energy company OVESCO (Ouse Valley Energy Services Company) has raised over £300,000 to put 540 photovoltaic panels on the roof of the local brewery, Harveys.
Evening sun lights up the cathedral in the old quarter of Deventer, Holland.
How’s this for an interesting sign of the times? I travel to Brussels on Eurostar, I arrive and write a tweet saying “just travelled to Brussels on Eurostar, very nice it was too”, and almost immediately get a tweet back from them saying “glad you enjoyed the journey”! Didn’t expect that one. That’s either really great or a bit scary, I haven’t decided yet. Anyway, I am just back from a mad-dash tour of Belgium and Holland. It was fascinating to see the level of interest in Transition in those places and to meet some of the people involved.
Here, thanks to those good people over at PermanentCultureNow, is a film of the talk I gave at this summer’s Sunrise Off Grid Festival in Somerset. Part 3 also includes the ‘milling’ exercise with the ingredients cards which will be available to download and use on October 27th, the official launch date of The Transition Companion.
Here is the second in the ‘Story of Transition in 10 Objects’ films, which tell some of the stories from the forthcoming ‘The Transition Companion‘. It tells the story of Bertie and Gertie from Tooting.
On Monday I did the second webinar for Transition US, looking at the ‘ingredients’ of Transition, and answering lots of questions about Transition sent in by people from across the US. You can now listen to it in full here. I started out by telling people that it was, in a way, an illustrated talk, in that I had uploaded a picture online they could look at, taken from the forthcoming ‘The Transition Companion’ (which you can pre-order now). Beautifully created by Marina Vons-Gupta, it communicates the idea of embarking on Transition being like opening the larder door and picking the ingredients for creating what you have decided to create. Anyway, thanks to everyone who made it possible, and enjoy the recording.
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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As I write this in May 2011, some amazing things are happening. A report1 from Australia shows that car ownership there has peaked, having been in steady decline since 2004. John Lewis report that, over the last year, trade at their UK out-of-town stores has fallen by 12 per cent while it has remained steady in their stores in town centres, the drop being partly blamed on the rising costs of fuel. A survey2 by B&Q showed that 37 per cent of adults plan to grow some of their own food this summer. In the Sussex town of Lewes, the community energy company OVESCO (Ouse Valley Energy Services Company) has raised over £300,000 to put 540 photovoltaic panels on the roof of the local brewery, Harveys. 
