Transition Culture

17 Jan 2006

Hemenway – Urban Versus Rural (slight return).

I wrote back in November about Toby Hemenway’s article on urban versus rural sustainability which had had such a profound effect on me. You might like to read his follow up article to that one, called **’Cities, peak oil, and sustainability’**, which builds on the previous one, and responds to some of the criticisms the first one has received. For me he hits the nail on the head again. The article appears in the Permaculture Activist, surely the

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17 Jan 2006

Kinsale Piece in Local Paper

Louise Rooney of **Transition Design** just let me know about a piece in the West Cork local paper The Southern Star. The piece is about the meeting of the Town Council at which the Plan was approved. It is interesting to hear the comments of the various Councillors, even the one who seems to have slightly missed the point, thinking that it will lead to the use of more smokeless fuels! The article is called Kinsale Council Support Transition Town Venture. You may need to register in order to view the pages, but hopefully this link will work.

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13 Jan 2006

Half Gone – by Jeremy Leggett – a Review.

This is one of the first UK peak oil books, and follows on the heels of Paul Mobbs’ indispensible ‘Energy Beyond Oil’. Jeremy Leggett has been involved in campaigning on climate change for many years, much of which is documented in his previous book “The Carbon War”. Coming from a background in the oil industry, he taught geology for a while and then became Chief Scientist at Greenpeace. His involvement in the climate change negotiations that led to the Kyoto Agreement led to his setting up Solar Century, one of the biggest UK companies promoting renewables, especially photovoltaics. He is the ideal person to write a book on peak oil, climate change and what we do about them.

‘Half Gone’ is his contribution to the peak oil literature, and

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11 Jan 2006

Interview on Global Public Media

You may be interested to hear an interview with me that was just posted on **Global Public Media**. You can either download it or listen to it straight off their site.

Their blurb says, *”Permaculture designer and instructor Rob Hopkins talks to David Room of Global Public Media about energy descent and the Kinsale Energy Descent Action Plan, which was conceived by Hopkins’ students at Kinsale Further Education College, edited by Hopkins, and approved by the Kinsale Town Council in Cork, Ireland”*. You can here the interview here.

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11 Jan 2006

Already Past the Peak?

Here is a report worth looking at. It is called “Alberta oil sands will be world’s largest source of new crude oil by 2010: CIBC”, and is interesting in that it is produced by a respectable Canadian bank, and sets out their concerns about the future of oil supplies. One quote from the article is “Alberta’s oil sands will become the most important source of new oil in the world by 2010 as conventional crude dries up”. If Alberta’s oil sands are the most important source of new oil by 2010 then we are in trouble. The end of the age of cheap oil has indeed arrived. Tar sands are

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