Transition Culture

An Evolving Exploration into the Head, Heart and Hands of Energy Descent

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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.

Archive for “Localisation” category

Showing results 626 - 630 of 684 for the category: Localisation.


1 Jun 2006

David Holmgren on Energy Descent…

holmgrenGlobal Public Media have just posted a talk by the great David Holmgren, the co-founder of permaculture, just after Hurricane Katrina, which explores peak oil, energy descent and permaculture. He sets out the history of the permaculture movement, its place in the larger sustainability movement, the concept of energy descent and our options forward from here. David is really at the cutting edge of thinking about solutions to peak oil and energy descent, his approach is practical, and his solutions are realistic, positive, but also address the profundity of the challenge. David has been a huge inspiration to my work, do have a listen.

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Categories: Energy, Localisation, Peak Oil, Permaculture, The 'Heart' of Energy Descent


30 May 2006

12 Suggestions of Insightful Reading for Designers of Energy Descent Pathways…

bwI am currently in full-on bookworm mode, up to my neck in books and papers, attempting to write my dissertation about tools for community planning for energy descent (due in September). Therefore, this might be a good time to reflect on some of the gems I’ve come across recently. The last list of books I did was around Christmas, and many people enjoyed it and wrote to me to that effect, apart from the person who commented on the site that it was a “weak little list”, and that its “uninformed reviews are rife with typos”. Oh well, you can’t please everyone..

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29 May 2006

Brian Goodwin on Peak Oil – an Interview

Interview with Brian Goodwin. Schumacher College. May 8th 2006.

BGBrian Goodwin is a Visiting Scholar at Schumacher College and teaches on their MSc in Holistic Science. His research and teaching interests are on the use of the sciences of complexity to study emergent phenomena in evolution and to understand health in various contexts: in individuals, communities, organisations, economies and ecosystems. This involves a fundamental rethinking of basic scientific assumptions and leads to a new science of qualities.

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Discussion: 1 Comment

Categories: Gaia Theory, Localisation, Peak Oil


25 May 2006

Building with Hemp – A Review and a Competition!

**Building With Hemp by Steve Allin – a Review (see bottom of review for a chance to win a copy of this book in our latest Transition Culture competition).**

hempHemp is a plant with an extraordinary history and a list of uses that would gave most other plants a serious inferiority complex. Historically it provided the UK Navy’s ropes for centuries, the paper for the first US dollar bills, it can be made into a material called Hemp Plastic which was what the bodywork of the first Ford car was made from, and makes a wide range of papers and fabrics

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22 May 2006

Reflections on Decentralised Energy Systems Following the CAT Course.

pvOne of the most useful things about the **Community Renewables** course at CAT was that I got to bounce some of my ideas off the people there. Clearly I don’t have a strong background in community renewables, being more of a permaculture and plants kinda guy, and community renewables are clearly a key part of a relocalisation process. I will look at this below, firstly setting out what was my thinking prior to the course, then the reservations that the course leaders raised about that, and finally the revised version of how I am now thinking that all of this might work.

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Discussion: 9 Comments

Categories: Energy, Localisation, Peak Oil, Technology