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 spoke at the weekend at the Triodos Bank AGM in Bristol, an excellent day with an interesting mix of speakers, some great stalls and lots of people who wanted to buy Transition Handbooks (thereby saving my having to lug them all home again). I was speaking in the same session with Patrick Holden of the Soil Association, and Patrick spoke very powerfully of his own attempts at Transitioning his life. Near the end of his talk, he raised a very interesting point which I wanted to explore up here at Transition Culture. He referred to a book that he reads with his youngest son called ‘That’s Dangerous!’
I had the great honour both at the Findhorn conference and at the Transition Network conference to meet Colin Endean, a permaculturist, former dentist and all round good bloke from Down Under. One of the things that Colin does is run, with his partnerAnna Szav, Co-Abundance Permaculture Farm, and as part of their output, they press their own olive oil on the farm, which is marketed under the brand ‘Peak Oil’.
Our personal lives can sometimes imitate what is happening in the wider world to an alarming extent.On Friday morning I sat down at my computer to write you a very amusing piece about olive oil (which you’ll have to wait until tomorrow for…), only to find that my computer had seized up, and refused to start.The Microsoft Windows Screen of Death (left) loomed large.I dashed to my local computer repair man, whose first question, on noting the symptoms, was “have you got everything backed up?”Ah. Hum.
It’s very rare that someone comes up with a genuinely new idea, but the concept of Transition Initiatives is one such. Transition aims to confront the twin challenges of climate change and peak oil at the level of the community – whether town, village, district or city – and for the initiative to come from the people themselves. Rob Hopkins is both the person who invented the idea and the author of this book.
A while ago in Totnes we ran a course on sock darning. It felt to us like a very important skill to start retraining people in, and one of the many useful things the older generation could pass on to the younger. Although some people thought it a great idea, I did get a lot of ribbing about it (if you’ll excuse the knitting pun). However, in the subsequent months, sock darning has started to catch on. It’s the new salsa.
Our local wonderful organic clothing company, Greenfibres, recently put a great film about sock darning on YouTube (see below), which demystifies this most basic of arts so rapidly being consigned to the dustbin of history.
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 spoke at the weekend at the Triodos Bank AGM in Bristol, an excellent day with an interesting mix of speakers, some great stalls and lots of people who wanted to buy Transition Handbooks (thereby saving my having to lug them all home again). I was speaking in the same session with Patrick Holden of the Soil Association, and Patrick spoke very powerfully of his own attempts at Transitioning his life. Near the end of his talk, he raised a very interesting point which I wanted to explore up here at Transition Culture. He referred to a book that he reads with his youngest son called ‘That’s Dangerous!’ 
It’s very rare that someone comes up with a genuinely new idea, but the concept of Transition Initiatives is one such. Transition aims to confront the twin challenges of climate change and peak oil at the level of the community – whether town, village, district or city – and for the initiative to come from the people themselves. Rob Hopkins is both the person who invented the idea and the author of this book.
