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.
I was fascinated to see that Totnes MP Anthony Steen raised both Transition Town Totnes and the Totnes Pound in a question in the House of Commons a couple of weeks ago. This is in the wake of the piece he wrote in the local papers, waxing lyrical about TTT. In Questions on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on the subject of local food production, he managed, in one question, to cover peak oil, the fragility of import dependency, the role of local currencies and the Transition concept, not bad! The exchange ran as follows;
Regular readers will know that I often state, at every opportunity, that David Holmgren’s book, Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability is the greatest book of the past 15 years. The EON Network have just posted an interview with David, recorded a month or so ago, in which he explores the whole concept of permaculture as a response to peak oil. David is, for me, the person from whom I have learnt the most about all of this, so this film is a bit of a treasure, and I think you’ll find it fascinating.
Greenfibres are a Totnes-based company who have pioneered the whole field of organic and natural fabrics. They have just produced a peak oil T-shirt which we think is rather nice, on organic cotton, and £2 from the sale of each shirt goes to Transition Town Totnes. You can order them here (not from us), we think they will be all the rage this summer… . Greenfibres have kindly offered us 2 to give away in a competition, so here are the competition details.
Have a look at this piece of homemade video nonsense, it is a very entertaining insight into the minds of some more extreme peak oil deniers. You see, peak oil and climate change are actually a Zionist conspiracy to curtail our freedoms and introduce new taxes. Aha. Now I see. I particularly like the bit that challenges the peak oil argument by saying that there is basically loads of the stuff left, and that “just one reserve in Alaska is large enough to fuel the entire US economy for over 100 years at the present rates of growth”. Excuse me? Come again? And there was me thinking that all of the oil in Alaska would last the US only 3 months… Climate change is all caused by sunspots too apparently. If you are looking for indicators that we are nearing or at the peak, take the rumours, as reported by David Strahan last week, that Shell and BP are considering merging, the fact that even William Rees Mogg is now writing insightfully about it and that a film like this which tries to rubbish it can’t come up with anything better than this!
One of the taboos among the peak oil/energy descent subject is the question of population. In a recent post Sharon Astyk wondered aloud whether as a father myself I might join in the population debate taking place through her excellent posts on the subject. I must confess, it is a subject I try to avoid, as as soon as one starts to discuss it, one can feel the British National Party and xenophobes and bigots of every persuasion rubbing their hands.
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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I was fascinated to see that Totnes MP Anthony Steen raised both Transition Town Totnes and the Totnes Pound in a question in the House of Commons a couple of weeks ago. This is in the wake of the piece he wrote in the local papers, waxing lyrical about TTT. In Questions on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on the subject of local food production, he managed, in one question, to cover peak oil, the fragility of import dependency, the role of local currencies and the Transition concept, not bad! The exchange ran as follows;
