Transition Culture

12 Nov 2008

Book Review: Preparing for Peak Oil: local authorities and the energy crisis

‘Preparing for Peak Oil: Local Authorities and the Energy Crisis’, prepared by the Oil Depletion Analysis Centre and the Post carbon Institute.  2008. 41 pages.  Free download here.

The whole question of how to communicate peak oil to local government, and how to support and encourage their creative and rapid responses to it, is huge and very timely.  ‘Preparing for Peak Oil’ is an excellent guidebook for anyone who wants to bring their local authority up to speed on energy depletion and climate change issues.  It is clear, well presented, and achieves an excellent balance between presenting the hard facts about peak oil alongside some positive and inspiring examples of change, as well as some clear and well thought through thinking tools.

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8 Oct 2008

Learning to Live with Solar Panels

The title of this post makes solar panels sound a bit like some unfortunate ailment, but moving from the instant hot water world to the solar world is definitely a process of learning a new way of doing things.  It is now nearly a month now since our solar hot water system was installed by Sungift Solar of Exeter, as part of the Transition Town Totnes Solar Heater Challenge scheme. 

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3 Oct 2008

The Totnes Energy Descent Pathways Launch: report, podcasts and poem

We had a wonderful evening in Totnes last week, where we launched the Totnes EDAP process.  About 180 people turned up, and were provided with wine and nibbles, as well as with live guitar music on their arrival.  I felt it was one of those great Transition events that appeals to both sides of the brain, some talking, some chatting, some moving around, some laughter, some poignancy, some food and drink, some fun.  To set the scene, here is how the evening was reported in the Totnes Times, the first time a TTT-related story graced the front page.  Under the headline “Why Time is Running Out”, the article ran as follows;

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23 Sep 2008

Transition Glastonbury’s Submission to Mendip District Council’s Future Planning Document

I wrote last week about the submission that Transition Leicester made about eco-towns, today I want to celebrate the excellent piece of work done by Transition Glastonbury in pulling together their response to a report prepared by their local Council setting out plans for the development of the area over the next 20 years.  As with most Council plans, it starts with assuming a graph with a line that rises as it moves towards the right, increased growth, increased investment, increased energy availability.  Transition Glastonbury’s submission asks, what if it doesn’t?  How might this area thrive in uncertain times?  This is a timely post, as tomorrow night in Totnes sees the formal launch of our Energy Descent Pathways process, the creation, in effect, of the town’s Plan B.  Congratulations to Transition Glastonbury for blazing a trail with this so brilliantly.

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21 Jul 2008

The Green New Deal is Launched Today

I had the privilege last week to attend a kind of think tank thing organised by Colin Hines, which preceded the release today of the Green New Deal Group’s report, which I think is something that all of you involved in Transition work will find extremely useful. The Group has been meeting since early 2007, consisting of Larry Elliot, Colin Hines, Tony Juniper, Jeremy Leggett, Caroline Lucas MEP, Richard Murphy, Ann Pettifor, Charles Secrett and Andrew Simms. The opening paragraph of the report runs as follows;

“The global economy is facing a ‘triple crunch’. It is a combination of a credit-fuelled financial crisis, accelerating climate change and soaring energy prices underpinned by an encroaching peak in oil production. These three overlapping events threaten to develop into a perfect storm, the like of which has not been seen since the Great Depression. To help prevent this from happening we are proposing a Green New Deal”.

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