Transition Culture has moved
I no longer blog on this site. You can now find me, my general blog, and details of my books, on my new website.
Come find me at robhopkins.net
Monthly archive for January 2009
Showing results 1 - 5 of 24 for the month of January, 2009.
28 Jan 2009
We are often asked whether the Transition model should be adapted to explicitly reflect what is happening in the global economy at the moment. This is an ongoing discussion, and one I will return to in subsequent posts, but of course, the intertwining of what is happening in the economy and the peaking in world oil production have been explored by others, as well as the recent observation that peak demand seems to have arrived in advance of peak supply, although peak supply is, of course, not far behind. One of the tools that I personally have found extremely useful over the last few weeks in terms of really getting my head around how economics works, has been Chris Martenson’s ‘Crash Course’.
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27 Jan 2009
The most controversial part of the course remains the inner worlds talk – linking the personal psyche with the shape of the society we have created and naming some of the patterns that arise from what is generally unconscious for people in Industrial Growth cultures. We use a model adapted from psychosynthesis, which describes both painful wounding experiences and the healthy potential states whose loss the wounds relate to as being kept out of consciousness to some extent for most individuals in our culture. The place we operate from is a place of learnt adaptation to the world around us – particularly the world of our early childhood where our first experiences of the world, of other, and of life create lasting impressions and shape our worldview.
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26 Jan 2009
California Dreaming
We are about to leave the States, having done our last training in Los Angeles. It felt like a different thing to SF and the other American trainings. There feels like there is an added degree of difficulty to Transition in LA. But maybe this is not real maybe the scale of things in the US is hitting me, I don’t know. Having been built with the car as an integral part of the system, car and freeways and wide boulevards scream out at me, and seem to have a life of their own.
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23 Jan 2009
After a late night session in a smoke filled room, fuelled by chocolate and gallons of coffee, finally a wording has emerged from Transition Towers for the question to go forward to the great and the good at DAVOS. It is a kind of compilation of some of those you (collectively) submitted. We hope you like it, and that it gets put in front of the panel.
“On a finite planet, it is not impossible for most of us to acheive fulfillment and happiness through material consumption, and will many of our children and grandchildren even have the opportunity to make that choice if we go on with our current ways of being? Is it not time to leave the very concept of ‘economic growth’ behind?”
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23 Jan 2009
The Local Government Association recently published a paper called ‘Volatile Times: transport, climate change and the price of oil”, which you can download here. It looks at the challenges faced by local authorities through the lens of peak oil and climate change, and is a very useful document for any Transition groups working with their local authorities. It starts with a clear setting out of the peak oil concept, and then looks at what Councils can do to respond. Transition initiatives, and Nottingham in particular are cited as case studies, the ‘Oil Independence in Oakland’ report is cited, including the great quote “quite simply, if Oakland is to reduce its dependence on oil, its residents must drive less”. A very useful document.
Read more»
We are often asked whether the Transition model should be adapted to explicitly reflect what is happening in the global economy at the moment. This is an ongoing discussion, and one I will return to in subsequent posts, but of course, the intertwining of what is happening in the economy and the peaking in world oil production have been explored by others, as well as the recent observation that peak demand seems to have arrived in advance of peak supply, although peak supply is, of course, not far behind. One of the tools that I personally have found extremely useful over the last few weeks in terms of really getting my head around how economics works, has been Chris Martenson’s ‘Crash Course’. 
