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 was delighted to hear today that the Italian edition of The Transition Handbook, “Il Manuale Practico della Transizione”, has arrived and is now in print. Regular readers will know that I spent a few years living in Italy earlier in my life, and have a continued affection for the place. Cristiano Bottone, one of the initiators of Transition in Italy, wrote to tell me and asked me “to send us a few lines to present the book to Italian readers”. Allora, ciao tutti…..
Last Saturday, in spite of the atrocious weather, 55 people from 19 Transition initiatives across the east of England gathered in Diss in Norfolk for the second meeting of Transition East. Transition East is made up of Transition groups in Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex. In honour of the event, Charlotte Du Cann and Josiah Meldrum pulled together a really quite extraordinary document, “Transition in the East: co-operation, collaboration, support and influence”, which you can download here. It offers an extraordinary insight into what is happening there, the range of groups and what they are up to. It also includes a brilliant section on ‘Troubleshooting’, or as they put it, “everything you wanted to know about Transition but were too correct to ask…”, which looks at some of the common problems they are running into. It is an exemplary look at the spread of Transition on a regional scale.
Here is a rather good film from the good people at Transition Whidbey in the US, letting the world know what they’ve been up to. Fantastic to see places making films like this, do film what you’re doing in this way, document your Transition work for ‘In Transition 2.0’. Thanks to the Whidbey folks for this….
I have been following with interest the discussions surrounding Alex Steffen’s piece at WorldChanging in which he critiques Transition. I am honoured that someone so widely respected as a writer on sustainability issues saw fit to engage in discussions around Transition , but, as a critique of Transition, it leaves a lot to be desired. It is a confusing piece in which, in spite of Alex’s protestations in the comments thread to have read everything about Transition that is out there, seems to have somewhat missed the point. I’ll go through some of Alex’s main points, but an overall reflection is that it appears to me that what Alex does is to describe Transition as something it isn’t, criticise it for being that, and then propose something to replace Transition which is actually what Transition was all along. An odd approach. Carolyn Baker has already posted an articulate response to Alex’s piece, but here’s mine.
Popped the radio on on Sunday afternoon, and heard an amazing 15 minute programme called ‘The Runaway Train’. It tells the storyof an event in northern Canada in 1987, when railwayman Wesley MacDonald loaded up a train of 50 cars of iron ore, but the brakes failed and before he knew it, he was the only person aboard a runaway train. The discussions between himself and the rail traffic controller about whether to stay on the train or to jump were recorded on tape. The programme is made up of interviews with many of those involved and you can listen to it here for the next 6 days. In some ways it has no relation to usual Transition Culture-related issues, but there is something about how people come together in times of adversity, and the depth of emotion this programme captures, that suggests that as we inhabit our own collective runaway train, the notion that it will inevitably bring out the worst in each of us is at least debatable.
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
Read more»
I was delighted to hear today that the Italian edition of The Transition Handbook, “Il Manuale Practico della Transizione”, has arrived and is now in print. Regular readers will know that I spent a few years living in Italy earlier in my life, and have a continued affection for the place. Cristiano Bottone, one of the initiators of Transition in Italy, wrote to tell me and asked me “to send us a few lines to present the book to Italian readers”. Allora, ciao tutti…..
