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.
I have just been looking at the online version (which is pretty restrictive, but you get the general idea) of Liam Leonard’s new book ‘The Environmental Movement in Ireland’. It offers a very well researched overview of the evolution of the green movement politically in Ireland, the rise of protest culture through campaigns such as The Glen of the Downs roads protest, the Rossport 5 and the various anti-incineration and anti-nuclear campaigns. As such, it is a very detailed and comprehensive look at those aspects of the green presence in Ireland, but it strikes me that one key part of that story is missing. So far as I could tell, there is nothing that documents the movement that was developing in parallel which focused on solutions, on practically modelling solutions, often at great personal and financial cost. This morning then, I want to take a stab at what that chapter might have included.
Here is a short promotional film made about Transition Streets (premiered at the recent Energy Fair), telling the stories of some of those who have got involved…
As someone who was just weeks away from installing a woodstove into my house, I was fascinated, as well as somewhat horrified, to read an excellent paper by Nick Grant and Alan Clarke called ‘Biomass – a burning issue’, published by the Association of Environment Conscious Builders (AECB). Their arguments are convincing. They open with a quote from David Olivier, who writes that “biomass boilers are an expensive way to make climate change worse and reverse over a century of public health improvements”. Strong words. The writers, both of whom heat their homes using wood, set out to investigate whether Olivier was right, rather, I sense, hoping he wasn’t. “It would have been much easier not to write this”, they state, but on balance, I am deeply grateful that they did, as it is a fascinating and very important piece of work.
Totnes Civic Hall, now graced with 75 photovoltaic panels...
On Saturday Transition Town Totnes held one of those events that feels really celebratory and somehow like it marks a significant step forward in the whole Transition process (well, in Totnes anyway…). The Transition Streets Energy Fair was designed to celebrate the new photovoltaic installation on the Civic Hall, to inspire a new round of recruitment for Transition Streets, to provide the public with access to a range of renewable energy installers and information, and to raise the whole profile of renewables and energy conservation. It did all of these, and more, in a very well-attended day with a great buzz.
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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I have just been looking at the online version (which is pretty restrictive, but you get the general idea) of Liam Leonard’s new book ‘The Environmental Movement in Ireland’. It offers a very well researched overview of the evolution of the green movement politically in Ireland, the rise of protest culture through campaigns such as The Glen of the Downs roads protest, the Rossport 5 and the various anti-incineration and anti-nuclear campaigns. As such, it is a very detailed and comprehensive look at those aspects of the green presence in Ireland, but it strikes me that one key part of that story is missing. So far as I could tell, there is nothing that documents the movement that was developing in parallel which focused on solutions, on practically modelling solutions, often at great personal and financial cost. This morning then, I want to take a stab at what that chapter might have included.
