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.
Regular readers will know that I am fascinated by the potential role of story as a way of enabling people to imagine themselves in a successfully transitioned world. There has been less discussion about this in the context of songs. It was my birthday the other day, so I treated myself to the new Super Furry Animals album, and on it is a song called ‘Inaugural Trams’, which, by my interpretation anyway, does just that. Here it is….
Aha! A picture of Mary-Jayne giving her talk! Thanks to Mike G....
Mary Jayne Rust is an ecopsychologist and psychotherapist. At the 2009 Transition Network conference ‘Transition Everywhere’ event, she gave a talk called ‘Resilience of the Heart. It set out to address the following;
“Crisis has the potential to transform our hearts. This is a great gift. What might help us to be open hearted and resilient as we live through testing times? How do we build inner resilience, as well as resilient communities, so that we can endure and resolve conflict? What are the steps we need to take to find a different way of relating to ourselves, to each other and to the earth?”
You can download the pdf. of the entire talk here. Many thanks to Mary Jayne for the talk and for permission to post it here.
You won’t believe this one. How do you make a new generation of coal, traditionally seen as dirty and decidedly unglamorous, not to mention the fact that it is climate suicide, attractive again? Riding to the salvation of the coal industry is Carbon Capture and Storage, a marvellous technology the puts all the carbon dioxide produced safely underground somewhere. Only problem is that as a proven technology it still barely exists, and you need to burn a third more coal in order to power the thing. Still, doesn’t stop the coal industry (in this case GE Energy) using the oldest tricks in the advertising book to convince us the our future lies in coal.
Burn out is a real and present danger for anyone involved in Transition, as indeed for any kind of community work or environmental activism. I have known several green activist/campaigners who suffered from terrible burnout, that led to depression, withdrawal and cynicism. At this year’s Transition Network conference there will be a workshop on dealing with burnout, a subject that has been a regular feature of Transition gatherings since its inception. When I visit Transition groups around the country, burnout is raised regularly as a concern, given that most initiatives are self-funding and driven by volunteers. I am not immune to it myself, but I was wondering the other day how come, given the incredible amount of commitment and energy people around the world are putting into Transition, there isn’t far more burnout than we actually see. In yesterday’s paper I read a fascinating piece that offered an interesting insight into this.
While I love the film The Age of Stupid, and am completely in agreement with the aims of the campaign that is emerging from it to get a strong and deep agreement at the Copenhagen climate talks, there is something about the ‘Not Stupid’ campaign that sits uncomfortably for me. At Eden, where I was, there was a sign saying ‘Eden Project – Not Stupid’. I’m sure the Eden Project isn’t stupid, but this labelling of things as stupid and not stupid feels deeply alarming to me. Since the film premiere on Sunday, I have heard about two people I know who saw it, who were moved by it, felt touched and affected, yet who are planning trips by plane, one to Hong Kong for Christmas, and one to the US for a spiritual retreat.
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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Burn out is a real and present danger for anyone involved in Transition, as indeed for any kind of community work or environmental activism. I have known several green activist/campaigners who suffered from terrible burnout, that led to depression, withdrawal and cynicism. At this year’s Transition Network conference there will be a workshop on dealing with burnout, a subject that has been a regular feature of Transition gatherings since its inception. When I visit Transition groups around the country, burnout is raised regularly as a concern, given that most initiatives are self-funding and driven by volunteers. I am not immune to it myself, but I was wondering the other day how come, given the incredible amount of commitment and energy people around the world are putting into Transition, there isn’t far more burnout than we actually see. In yesterday’s paper 
