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.
The second half of the oil age will be very, very different from the first half. It is truly, to coin the term usually used to describe football, “a game of two halves”. The first half was awash with cheap, easy-to-find and easy-to-produce oil and gas. The second half will be the story of expensive-to-produce hydrocarbons, from increasingly inaccessible places, with a rapidly falling energy return on investment and an increasing impact, both environmentally and in terms of carbon emissions. It will be (unless we are able to break our addiction to hydrocarbons sooner rather than later) a wretched and increasingly desperate time of squeezing fuel out of anything we can. It will be the societal scraping of the barrel. If you want to know what that looks like, ‘Gasland’ offers a powerful, chilling, and enraging insight. Here is the trailer:
‘In Transition1.0’ was a huge success. Shown thousands of times around the world, the film has done a huge amount to support initiatives and give them a good “so this is what Transition is” resource. Things have moved on a lot since then, so we are going to make a second one… provisionally titled (imaginatively) “In Transition 2.0”. Emma Goude (see below right), who directed the first one, is back at the helm, so here is her first guest blog setting out her plans for the new film…
“In Transition 2.0 is underway. Transition Network have green lighted the budget and formed a dream team to make it happen: Emma Goude, Beccy Strong and Emilio Mula.
In 2010 Transition Linlithgow (TL) began ambitious bulk buying project for solar thermal heating systems (STH). The project involved selecting a manufacturer and installer, and negotiating a discount to encourage participation. When selecting the hardware we have looked at all aspects of manufacturing and environment (green manufacturing process with minimum waste), manufactured locally (no large carbon footprint due to shipping from somewhere in the world to Scotland). Other key criteria are performance, lifespan (guarantees) as well as ethical business approach.
I want to tell you about a rather exciting new plant I am growing in the garden this year. RELATE, the marriage guidance and relationship counseling organisation last year launched a range of specially bred plants designed to overcome many of the challenges which their research showed most often led to conflict among gardening couples. The one I am trialling (see above) is the ‘Flowering Lettuce’, designed to support couples where one partner wants to grow food at the expense of growing vegetables, and the other only wants to grow flowers. Apparently this is responsible for 28% of all the disputes RELATE work with. I was dubious, but last week, after 3 weeks of just looking like a normal lettuce, it burst into beautiful flowers! I’m impressed. You can also eat the flowers, which are said to have a slight taste of malt, but they are so beautiful I can’t bring myself to.
It’s the end of the month again, which means it’s time to bring you a taste of the wonderful Transitioney things that have been going on around the world. We’ll start in South America with some very exciting news from Colombia where they recently held their first three Transition Trainings, and here’s a report with a few pictures. And then there’s news of Chile’s first Transition Town at El Manzano in the BíoBío Region, started by three brothers who also established the Ecoescuela where they teach sustainable lifestyles.
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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The second half of the oil age will be very, very different from the first half. It is truly, to coin the term usually used to describe football, “a game of two halves”. The first half was awash with cheap, easy-to-find and easy-to-produce oil and gas. The second half will be the story of expensive-to-produce hydrocarbons, from increasingly inaccessible places, with a rapidly falling energy return on investment and an increasing impact, both environmentally and in terms of carbon emissions. It will be (unless we are able to break our addiction to hydrocarbons sooner rather than later) a wretched and increasingly desperate time of squeezing fuel out of anything we can. It will be the societal scraping of the barrel. If you want to know what that looks like, ‘Gasland’ offers a powerful, chilling, and enraging insight. Here is the trailer:
