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.
Come find me at robhopkins.net
Showing results 71 - 75 of 154 for the category: Politics.
While Vandana Shiva was in Berlin recently promoting her book ‘Soil Not Oil’, Andreas Teuchert and Thomas Finger of Transition Berlin, who were filming the event, spontaneously asked her for her thoughts on what the Transition Towns movement could do that is of real use for people in the southern hemisphere. Here is her answer.
Our thanks to Andreas for allowing me to post this here.
Just realised I hadn’t blogged about this yet. It is an extraordinary story, one which we might regard as an example of best practice in terms of how Transition initiatives engage their local authorities. In effect, Transition Taunton Town got over 350 staff from the local Council to create a vision for the future of the area. You can download their plan here, but here’s how it was described over at Transition Network News.
“Something historic happened in the summer of 2009 in Taunton. A UK Local Authority decided to take a whole staff approach to their responsibility for tackling the community’s carbon footprint and dealing with the potential effects of climate change and Peak Oil.
As a response to the recent discussions about Ted Trainer’s critique of Transition, Ted recently sent me the following.
“Unfortunately Rob’s reply to my article A Friendly Criticism of the Transition Towns Movement, didn’t reach me. Here is a response to his comments of 8th Sept. My discussion began by stressing the enormous importance of the Transition Towns Movement, and how inspiring it is. I’m among those who have been arguing for decades that the salvation of the planet can only come via the development of local economies. But for a long time nothing like this emerged, apart from the heroic pioneering of the eco-villagers. But suddenly the Transition Towns Movement has exploded onto the scene, obviously tapping into a widespread recognition that mainstream society is unsustainable.
Somerset County Council was the first UK local authority to pass a resolution in support of Transition Initiatives across Somerset in July last year. The motion was pushed through by what was largely a LibDem council, since when, a few months ago, following a local election, the Council has gone largely Conservative. Transition Training also ran a training day with Councillors. So what has happened since? Has the resolution been sidelined by the new administration? How deeply does awareness of Transition run? What role has Transition Somerset, a coalition of local initiatives, played? Niamh McDonald, in her MSc dissertation at University College London has set out to answer those questions.
After many months of Ed Milliband putting himself out there are a Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change that actually gets climate change, finally his big Plan, the UK Low Carbon Transition Plan was unveiled on Wednesday, in a speech in the House of Commons that namechecked Transition Towns and which is the boldest national vision for a low carbon society yet seen. Many others have since pitched in with their thoughts, I thought it might be useful here to offer an analysis from a Transition perspective. In his speech, Milliband said “we know from the Transition Towns movement the power of community action to motivate people..”, clearly an outcome of his attendance as a ‘Keynote Listener’ at the Transition Network conference in May. So how does the Plan measure up, and does it actually advance what Transition initiatives and the wider relocalisation movement are doing?
