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
Showing results 16 - 20 of 23 for the month of March, 2007.
**Molly Scott Cato** is the Green Party’s economics spokesperson and is the author of *’Market Schmarket’*. We were delighted when she agreed to come to Totnes to talk at our event last week to launch the TTT Economics and Livelihoods Group. Her talk touched on both the reasons for a more bioregional economy and how we might achieve it.
Last night at a talk by Molly Scott Cato in Totnes (of which more later) the **Totnes Pound** went into circulation. The Totnes Pound is a pilot project that will run until June 1st to see how a complementary currency might work in the town. 18 local business have agreed to accept them, and last night was when they went into circulation, everyone who attended each getting a note. There was a real buzz of excitement around the launch. Rather than write reams of text about how exciting it was to see them go out into the world, I thought I’d go with the principle that a picture is worth a thousand words, and show you some pictures of excited Totnesians and their Pounds…
The second day was, like the first, an unbroken but wonderful IFG-athon, with lots of talks and no breaks. There were some fascinating talks and insights, to which, once again, my dreadful notetaking and occasionally heavy eyelids will do little justice beyond giving you a taste of the kinds of things covered. The first session was called “Campaigners Roundtable, Strategic Policy Concepts and Proposals, targets, tactics and opportunities”. The first speaker was the wonderful Caroline Lucas MEP. Her talk was called “Assessment of Negotitations and Proposals”. She began by asking “will we go down in history as the species that spent all its time monitoring its own demise?”
**David Milliband**, the UK Environment Minister, is developing a track record for announcing big ideas without quite (apparently) thinking them through. A year or so ago he gave a speech in which he used the term “One Planet Agriculture” without seemingly really thinking through the implications of this far-reaching term. A few weeks later he gave an interview where he stated that organic food was not proven to be more nutritious or healthy, but that it was just a “lifestyle choice”, leaving many of us wondering what then exactly a One Planet Agriculture might look like if it isn’t at least organic. This was what prompted the Soil Association to name their conference One Planet Agriculture, in an attempt to reclaim the term and give it some substance. Now Milliband is back, and this time appears to be calling for a national Energy Descent Plan as a response to peak oil.
I was deeply honoured to be invited to a meeting of the IFG in London last weekend. For those who don’t know, the IFG is a North-South research and educational institution composed of leading activists, economists, scholars and researchers providing analyses and critiques on the cultural, social, political and environmental impacts of economic globalisation. It produces numerous publications; organises high-profile, large public events; hosts many issue-specific seminars and much more. Their last such gathering had been in San Francisco a few months ago, and the subject of this one, hosted in London, was “The Triple Crisis – climate chaos; peak oil (the end of cheap energy) and global resource depletion
