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.
Come find me at robhopkins.net
Showing results 306 - 310 of 389 for the category: Education for Sustainability.
I did an interview yesterday with Trenna Cormack, who is writing a book called ‘Be The Change’, and one of the questions she asked me was “what gives you hope?” Tricky one to put your finger on…. I blathered something about seeing people engaged in designing their future, or somesuch, but then last night as I checked out what Transition Town Lewes are up to, I found something I could put my finger on.
This post might be a bit lost on our overseas readers, but it appears that a case of Post-Petroleum Stress Disorder (or something rather like it…) has broken out in Ambridge. Ambridge is the fictitious village which is the home of BBC Radio 4’s long-running soap opera The Archers, an unfortunate addiction passed on to me by my parents many years ago. While the storylines are usually focused on fairly mundane tales of everyday rural lives, (escaping sheep, droopy wheat and bell ringing practice) sometimes it rises above that to embrace topical issues of the day. It did after all originate during World War 2 as a vehicle for getting ideas and information to the farming community. On last night’s programme, however, one of it’s main characters, Nigel Pargeter (played by Graham Seed, below), ‘got’ climate change, and underwent his dark night of the soul, in what was quite a powerful piece of radio.
Here is a very lightly edited transcript of the talk I gave to the Soil Association conference on Friday 26th February 2007. You can also download the accompanying Powerpoint presentation of the talk here.
“Good morning and thank you very much. I couldn’t wish for four better preceding speakers (Porritt, Campbell, Leggett & Heinberg) to go before me in this morning session and they were in the main the people who very much inspired and influenced me during the work that I do and this first day of the conference was very much designed to take you on a journey through encountering this issue and what we might do about it. So as a response, as my part of that, I want to take you on the pathway, the journey that I’ve gone through since I was where you are all now, where you’ve just heard about peak oil.
**Peter Russell** studied mathematics and theoretical physics at Cambridge, and then experimental psychology. He traveled to India to study meditation and eastern philosophy, and on his return took up the first research post ever offered in Britain on the psychology of meditation. His principal interest is the deeper, spiritual significance of the times we are passing through. He has written several books in this area, including *The Consciousness Revolution*, *Waking Up in Time*, and *From Science to God*. He recently spoke to a capacity audience in Totnes, and the next morning I went to Schumacher College to interview him for **Transition Culture**.
West Cork in Ireland is a hotbed of permaculture projects, natural buildings and people who have spent years developing pieces of land in experimental ways. This summer a 10 day intensive permaculture course will offer an immersion in both permaculture design principles and approaches and also in the numerous projects in the area that have employed them. The course even has its own website where you can find out more about it. Permaculture principes are the most powerful tools you can have for the design of a post-peak future for yourself and your community. The course comes highly recommended…
