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.
Just back from a fascinating couple of days away. I went to an Ashoka Fellows retreat in the beautiful village of Great Missenden (home to the Roald Dahl Museum and many beautiful half-timbered houses), which brought all the UK Ashoka Fellows together to meet each other and for an intensive session of workshops. The distance I had to travel meant that I arrived half way through the first day, but there were some great workshops on, among other things, social franchising, communications and recruitment. Also got to meet some of the new Ashoka fellows, some amazing people doing remarkable work.
The concept of localisation is one increasingly being discussed as the debt-based, high carbon, energy vulnerable model of economic globalisation increasingly comes apart at the seams. A recent conference run by Transition Colorado had the subtitle “food relocalisation as economic development”. I think we might argue for localisation in general, not just in terms of food, being seen now as a key strategy of economic development. ‘The Economics of Happiness’, as a film that argues that “’going local’ is the way to repair our fractured world – our ecosystems, our societies and our selves” has therefore arrived at the right time, but is it the convincing, accessible and rousing film about localisation that we need in order to raise the issue to the next level of the debate? Here is the trailer:
Well, it has been Naomi Klein week here at Transition Culture! Here is the film, beautifully produced by those good folks at nuproject, of Naomi’s talk in Totnes last weekend. Amazing they have turned it around so quickly. Here’s the film … enjoy …
You talked last night about the need for a new coalition in response to climate change, on that could come out fighting… this is the focus of your new book, but I wonder if you are in a position to start sketching out what that might look like?
I’m not sure I’m ready to do that. The only thing I can say is that people, as you know here, people don’t get involved just because it’s climate. People go to a protest because of climate change but they don’t do what they’re doing in Wisconsin – occupying the state capital for almost a month – and this is why politicians feel they can ignore climate issues. Even the people who care, as opposed to the people that deny anything is happening, even the people who care don’t care that much! They always rank it at the bottom of a list of all these other issues. They care more about education, they care more about unemployment, they care more about health.
At the end of Naomi Klein’s two-day visit to Totnes, which included a talk (film of which is still to come) and meetings with many of the key players in Transition Town Totnes, I managed to grab an hour with her for an interview. Here, in two parts (part two tomorrow), is the discussion we had.
You’ve spent two days here in Totnes and met lots of people, and I wondered what your reflections are? What will you take away with you from your time here?
I’m still processing it I guess, but it’s been an amazing two days. What’s most striking to me is just how decentralised this process is and the sense of ownership that so many people have over it. There isn’t that “no I can’t really talk about it”, there’s a tremendous amount of people that have enough confidence to talk about it.
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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