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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
Archive for “Politics” category
Showing results 86 - 90 of 154 for the category: Politics.
12 Nov 2008
‘Preparing for Peak Oil: Local Authorities and the Energy Crisis’, prepared by the Oil Depletion Analysis Centre and the Post carbon Institute. 2008. 41 pages. Free download here.
The whole question of how to communicate peak oil to local government, and how to support and encourage their creative and rapid responses to it, is huge and very timely. ‘Preparing for Peak Oil’ is an excellent guidebook for anyone who wants to bring their local authority up to speed on energy depletion and climate change issues. It is clear, well presented, and achieves an excellent balance between presenting the hard facts about peak oil alongside some positive and inspiring examples of change, as well as some clear and well thought through thinking tools.
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23 Sep 2008
I wrote last week about the submission that Transition Leicester made about eco-towns, today I want to celebrate the excellent piece of work done by Transition Glastonbury in pulling together their response to a report prepared by their local Council setting out plans for the development of the area over the next 20 years. As with most Council plans, it starts with assuming a graph with a line that rises as it moves towards the right, increased growth, increased investment, increased energy availability. Transition Glastonbury’s submission asks, what if it doesn’t? How might this area thrive in uncertain times? This is a timely post, as tomorrow night in Totnes sees the formal launch of our Energy Descent Pathways process, the creation, in effect, of the town’s Plan B. Congratulations to Transition Glastonbury for blazing a trail with this so brilliantly.
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5 Sep 2008
Critiques of Transition come in all shapes and sizes, and are often fascinating. In the US, Robin Mills recently described it as “mistaken, appalling and dangerous” (one of my favourites) and Jim O’Neill, Chief Economist at Goldman Sachs, recently said on the Business Daily Show on BBC World Service that he had just read a book by a Californian with no geological or economic background (that’s me apparently…) calling for Transition economies, and stated that he had never read such rubbish! It has been intriguing in recent weeks to follow the various, and largely more coherent debates and discussions that have emerged in the wake of the Climate Camp, and also as the discussions about Transition that the Trapese Collective’s ‘Rocky Road’ document stimulated have rumbled on.
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28 Jul 2008
Last week, Somerset County Council voted unanimously to endorse a motion that they become the UK’s first ‘Transition Local Authority’. What is means is that SCC could start taking an integrated approach to its planning processes, putting peak oil and climate change at the heart of its forward planning. It may well also unlock funds for the many Transition initiatives emerging across Somerset. The proposal put before the Council ran as follows;
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21 Jul 2008
I had the privilege last week to attend a kind of think tank thing organised by Colin Hines, which preceded the release today of the Green New Deal Group’s report, which I think is something that all of you involved in Transition work will find extremely useful. The Group has been meeting since early 2007, consisting of Larry Elliot, Colin Hines, Tony Juniper, Jeremy Leggett, Caroline Lucas MEP, Richard Murphy, Ann Pettifor, Charles Secrett and Andrew Simms. The opening paragraph of the report runs as follows;
“The global economy is facing a ‘triple crunch’. It is a combination of a credit-fuelled financial crisis, accelerating climate change and soaring energy prices underpinned by an encroaching peak in oil production. These three overlapping events threaten to develop into a perfect storm, the like of which has not been seen since the Great Depression. To help prevent this from happening we are proposing a Green New Deal”.
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‘Preparing for Peak Oil: Local Authorities and the Energy Crisis’, prepared by the Oil Depletion Analysis Centre and the Post carbon Institute. 2008. 41 pages. Free download here.
