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.
Come find me at robhopkins.net
21 Nov 2006
**An Interview with Michael Meacher MP, Schumacher College, Dartington, Devon, 18th November 2006.**
**Michael Meacher** has been Labour Member of Parliament for Oldham West and Royton since 1970. He was Minister of State for the Environment between May 1997 and June 2003, and has been very outspoken on issues of peak oil and climate change. I managed to grab a short interview with him while he was eating his lunch at Schumacher College during his one day visit to the Life After Oil course and ask him for his thoughts on peak oil and localisation.
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20 Nov 2006
Getting young people, boys in particular, to be quiet and focused in a woodland is quite a task. Getting them to become aware of their surroundings, to experience the sounds, smells and feelings of being in a wood can be hard work. It would be great, therefore, to have an exercise which brought boys into a sense of complete awareness yet of which they were unaware. This exercise is called ‘Kick the Can’ and is a years old game but one which I have also found to be very powerful with adults. It places you in a woodland with all your senses heightened, rooted to one place, intensely aware of your surroundings.
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20 Nov 2006
The winners of our recent competition to win signed copies of Richard Heinberg’s new book The Oil Depletion Protocol are **Steve Wheeler**, **Graham Strouts** and **John McCormack**. The correct answer was that Richard Heinberg plays the violin, see right for photographic evidence. Many thanks to all who entered, and to Clairview Books.
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17 Nov 2006
**’An Inconvenient Truth’**, as you’ll all be aware, is Al Gore’s film about climate change. In essence it is a record of the lecture he has given to audiences all over the world, intercut with asides and reflections on Gore’s life and experiences. Climate change is often an area where one can feel out of one’s depth in graphs, charts and statistics, but what is so powerful about this film is that it makes the whole subject comprehensible to the lay person. Such a thing could be dry and dull, yet it is completely engrossing. It is well edited and paced, I have to say I was on the edge of my seat. As a film designed to shock the world into action, it is very powerful and, hopefully, effective.
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16 Nov 2006
Before the Earthwalk I give everybody a leaf, which I have chosen for their beautiful patterning. Tell them they are their tickets for the Earthwalk. When you arrive at the entrance to the woods you can pretend to check them, like tickets, as if they were going to the cinema. Tell them to hold onto their leaves as they will need them. To do this exercise you will need to have made your ‘slides’, made from cardboard, about 5″ square and hinged so you can open them to put your leaves in the middle. I then number them, and make sure I have one for each person, numbered from 1 to that number. I also write Kodak on them, to make them look a bit more like real slides!
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**An Interview with Michael Meacher MP, Schumacher College, Dartington, Devon, 18th November 2006.** 
