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
Monthly archive for November 2008
Showing results 16 - 20 of 24 for the month of November, 2008.
12 Nov 2008
‘Preparing for Peak Oil: Local Authorities and the Energy Crisis’, prepared by the Oil Depletion Analysis Centre and the Post carbon Institute. 2008. 41 pages. Free download here.
The whole question of how to communicate peak oil to local government, and how to support and encourage their creative and rapid responses to it, is huge and very timely. ‘Preparing for Peak Oil’ is an excellent guidebook for anyone who wants to bring their local authority up to speed on energy depletion and climate change issues. It is clear, well presented, and achieves an excellent balance between presenting the hard facts about peak oil alongside some positive and inspiring examples of change, as well as some clear and well thought through thinking tools.
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11 Nov 2008
(A message from Peter North at Liverpool University)… Green Books in the UK will be publishing a guide to alternative currencies as part of their “Transition Guides” series called: “Money: how to unleash a money revolution where you live”. I am writing it, and it will be published in September next year. It won’t be an inaccessible academic tome, but an affordable accessible ‘how to’ guide. I have to deliver the manuscript in February.
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10 Nov 2008
If you are not coming to Nottingham for the Transition Cities conference, you would do very well to attend this wonderful event in London, a crash course in the latest science of climate change. The event is the precursor to the launch of a report called ‘Climate Safety’, modelled on the ‘Climate Code Red’ report. Essential stuff. Full details below…
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7 Nov 2008
One of my favourite Transition Tales in the Transition Handbook was the one about Celebrity Love Allotment, in which aspiring starlet Letitia Lloyd emerged victorious from an allotment in Crouch End, having become a more proficient gardener than the other competitors. The article spoke of a planned followup series called ‘Pimp my Patio’. At the time it seemed absurd, but rapidly it is looking entirely plausable. Things are moving so quickly with regards to the demand for space to grow food and the whole idea of urban food growing that it sometimes defies belief.
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6 Nov 2008
I feel I just lived through a seminal moment in history. Yes, I know all the reasons why we ought not be excited about Obama’s election as President of the US (it will inevitably go sour at some point, his Afghanistan policies, he is still an economic growth man etc. etc. etc.), but just for now, for a few days, I want to bask in the glow of something really quite extraordinary having happened. In Naomi Klein’s seminal ‘Shock Doctrine’ (a must-read) she explores how neo-conservatism has pounced on (and actively engineered) moments of shock and social disorientation in order to intervene with drastic and self-serving measures that would have been otherwise unimaginable. The reverse of this is that times of disturbance also offer the potential to do positive things. Sharon Astyk put it beautifully when she wrote;
I think it is true that had Americans been told after 9/11, “We want you to go out and grow a victory garden and cut back on energy usage” the response would have been tremendous – it would absolutely have been possible to harness the anger and pain and frustration of those moments, and a people who desperately wanted something to do.
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‘Preparing for Peak Oil: Local Authorities and the Energy Crisis’, prepared by the Oil Depletion Analysis Centre and the Post carbon Institute. 2008. 41 pages. Free download here.
