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.
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Showing results 221 - 225 of 230 for the category: The ‘Heart’ of Energy Descent.
It was only a couple of weeks ago but it had passed me by. George Monbiot‘s speech to the Climate Change March in London is definitely worth a read. Over the last few months, judging by his articles in the Guardian, his peak oil awareness has been developing exponentially. In his speech he directly links peak oil and climate change and sets out the severity of the challenge we face.
On Friday 16th December in Totnes, members of the Global Eco-Village Network, GAIA University, Sustainable Ireland Co-Operative, Transition Culture and others came together to explore the ‘heart’ aspect of energy descent planning work. The meeting was part of the initial work to design an Energy Descent process for Totnes, and invited people with relevant experience to share their ideas in a day-long dialogue.
**Lesson 4 – Designing in Flexibility**
I once did a course with Australian permaculture teacher Dave Clark, who talked about his experiences working doing permaculture in refugee camps in Macedonia. You can read more about his work here, here, and especially here. He was dealing with large numbers of people moving to places with no infrastructure, all of which had to be created. He did amazing work, building strawbale buildings, food gardens, putting in miles of swales and hundreds of thousands of trees. One thing he said really stayed with me.
**Lesson Three – Creating a Vision of an Abundant Future.**
One of essential things in developing community strategies to peak oil is that of facilitating the community to create a vision of how the future could be. We move from working with peak oil, which is about probabilities (how probable is it that it will be horrendous, how probable is peak in 2007 and so on…) to possibilities. The shift is subtle but illuminating. Through the Open Space event we ran in Kinsale, we gave the community (well those who came at least) permission to dream. It was very powerful to see it happening, people going home excited about
**Lesson 2 – Creating a sense that Something is Happening.**
The KEDAP process arose from the Practical Sustainability course at Kinsale FEC, which began in 2001. Over the last 4 years, it has developed a reputation in the town for being a place where unusual yet fascinating things are occuring. People often commented to me that they loved the ‘buzz’ around the town created by it. The various building projects that have taken place there have particularly been of great interest, indeed sometimes students would spend the morning cob building or clay plastering, and then head down to the town for some lunch, leading to their being fondly referred to in the town as the ‘Mud People’. We also had an annual Open Day where visitors would
