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.
Let’s start this month in Japan, and this wonderful article that appeared on Our World 2.0 called Transition Town Fujino goes for local energy independence. It included the gem that “as of July 2012, one transition town starts up every week”, and also this beautiful paragraph:
“Transition Towns in Japan identify themselves with the initials “TT”, which also stand for the Japanese words tanoshiku and tsunagaru, meaning “having fun” and “networking”. True to these words, people involved in Transition Fujino work towards transition while making it a point to enjoy life and avoid overworking. A resilient, secure and happy way of life is reinforced by the warm connections between local people that are nurtured by the Transition Town movement”.
Let’s start this month’s round up in Australia. Transition Sydney also recently held an event about social enterprise and reviving local economies through resilience-building, entitled the ‘Living Economies Forum’, with a great range of speakers. Here is the poster. One of them was Michael Shuman, and here is his excellent talk, called “Building Resilient Local Economies through Local Investment”:
This month’s round up covers two months, because this time last month half of the team that lovingly create these round ups was away when they should have been producing this. As a result it’s a bit of a whopper. The latest Transition Bristol newsletter begins “In this issue…. The Bristol Pound is coming, the Bristol Pound is coming, oh, and lots of other stuff too! Read on”. That seemed like a good way for us to start too. The Bristol Pound, the vastly exciting imminent launch of a city-wide currency that is creating a frenzy of media interest, is nearly here. Here is a short film about it:
[Here is a press release just put out by Atmos Totnes] When it comes to building houses, which offers the best return to a local economy, concrete blocks or straw bales? Gypsum or clay plasters? Imported timber or local timber? Atmos Totnes today announces the release of a ground-breaking new paper, ‘Can Totnes build itself?’ (a kind of successor to 2009’s ‘Can Totnes and district feed itself?’ study), which looks at the local building materials potentially available for the construction of the Atmos Totnes development.
The Centre for Alternative Technology has just published a new book called ‘The Home Energy Handbook: a guide to saving and generating energy in your home and community’. It is a great resource for Transition groups, and Transition features strongly through the book. It is available here. I spoke to Allan Shepherd, one of the book’s authors/editors, and asked him to tell us more about the book. Here is the audio, transcript below:
Can you tell us where the idea for the book came from?
It started from the Zero Carbon Britain 2030 project really, because that was aimed at policy makers and government. What we wanted to do was take the concept that was developed in ZCB, which was the ‘Power down’ and the ‘Power up’ concept.
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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Let’s start this month’s round up in Australia. Transition Sydney also recently held an event about social enterprise and reviving local economies through resilience-building, entitled the 
