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.
“Since its inception just two years ago, the Transition movement has grown with a surprising rapidity. There are now nearly 40 official Transition Initiatives around the UK and some 600 at more formative stages around the globe. Put simply, the idea is that the twin challenges of peak oil and climate change mean we will be living lives that are less energy intense and much more local in the near future. Rather than impoverishing us, this change will actually lead to better well-being and more fulfilled lives. But we must start to design the change for ourselves now rather than waiting for the current system to collapse.
‘Energy Descent Pathways: evaluating potential responses to peak oil’ was the dissertation I wrote a while ago at the University of Plymouth. It explores the literature around the peak oil issue, around relocalisation, addiction and suggests some approaches for a community initiated response. Until now it had been for sale via. Transition Culture, but now, as The Transition Handbook is now published which, in many ways, elaborates on and deepens the material in the book, I am making Energy Descent Pathways available as a free download. Just click here and you’ll be able to download it. Enjoy it!
Review of The Transition Handbook. By Robert Morgan.
The “converging crises” of peak oil and climate change are spawning an increasing number of popular books.These include grim forecasts of the consequences such as JH Kunstler’sThe Long Emergency and Mark Lynas’s Six Degrees, explorations of alternative scenarios requiring massive government policy change such as Richard Heinberg’s Powerdown and George Monbiot’s Heat, and fiction such as Kunstler’s World Made by Hand.
Last Thursday in Bristol saw the formal launch of The Transition Handbook, at an event that was also Green Books‘ 21st birthday party. Before I spoke, a DVD was shown of a presentation that Caroline Lucas MEP had sent as she was unable to make it in person. In it she describes the Transition movement as “the most exciting, most hopeful, most inspirational movement happening in Britain today”.
The Transition Handbook is available to order here.
This is a visioning exercise, one I use most often on permaculture courses when teaching about urban permaculture, usually about two-thirds of the way through the course. The scenario is that it is 2030, and that the town/city/village you are in successfully made the Transition to a lower energy, more localised model. As such, it is now an exemplar for the rest of the world similarly engaged in this process. People come from far and wide to draw inspiration from what has been achieved. Their job is to act as tour guides.
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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“Since its inception just two years ago, the Transition movement has grown with a surprising rapidity. There are now nearly 40 official Transition Initiatives around the UK and some 600 at more formative stages around the globe. Put simply, the idea is that the twin challenges of peak oil and climate change mean we will be living lives that are less energy intense and much more local in the near future. Rather than impoverishing us, this change will actually lead to better well-being and more fulfilled lives. But we must start to design the change for ourselves now rather than waiting for the current system to collapse.
