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.
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:
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.
On Wednesday I handed the CD containing the first completed draft of ‘The Transition Companion’ over the Green Books for the editing process to begin. Phew! Been quite a mission (due out in September). Anyway, one of the things that runs through the books is ‘Transition in Action’ sections, drawing together inspiring stories from Transition groups of some of their projects. I’ll post a few of them, starting with this one, from Transition Taunton Deane, written by Chrissy Godfrey… have a good weekend.
“Taunton Transition Town ran an exemplary visioning exercise with their local borough council between July and September 2009, at the request of the council’s strategic director. It brought together almost all the council’s 375 employees, from senior management to plumbers, plus over half of the council’s elected members, to create a vision for a post-oil Taunton Deane.
Here’s a pilot for a TV programme called ‘Growing Communities’, produced and directed by Sara Proudfoot Clinch which “gives you a glimpse at how to grow your own community from meeting the Transition Town Lewes group who are learning to live without fossil fuels, to community allotments, to bee keeping in the church yard, to keeping chickens in a tiny back garden of a town house”.
One of the things with climate change as an issue is that when you’re trying to work out what your position is on climate change, there is a scientific consensus and there’s a body of research there – there’s certain criteria you can use when you come to it to work out if this is valid or not. In terms of economics it’s a grey area, in that there’s so much opinion – so for those of us who are coming through the work that you’ve been doing to trying to get our heads around what’s happening on a global scale, what should be the criteria be, do you think, that we should use when looking at different people’s takes on the economy, as to whether they’re valid or not? What was the criteria that you used when researching on the book?
That’s an interesting question; that’s a very good question.
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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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:
