David Orr in London. Note the offending highly energy wasteful chandeliers behind him (referred to in the interview)
David Orr was in the UK recently, and the two of us were part of a panel at an event organised by the Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment. After the event, we retired to the bar of a rather grand London hotel, and chatted for an hour about energy, climate change, the Precautionary Principle, Transition and whether or not we are beyond talk of ‘solutions’. Part two will follow shortly.
So, how would you introduce yourself?
I’m David Orr. I teach at Oberlin College in Ohio and I also work as Senior Advisor to the President of the college on environmental issues generally, but specifically on the redevelopment of the town and the college to carbon neutrality, a 20,000 acre green belt and the revitalised downtown corridor.
There have been various threads here previously about music inspired by, or to inspire, Transition. A quick scoot about on YouTube reveals a couple of Transition-themed tunes people have posted there. This first one, by Lala Jane Wilson (I’m guessing that’s her name), was inspired by her going to watch ‘In Transition’… she came home, and out came this….
The second one, as far as I can tell, is from somewhere in the US, where a competition sought local bands to sings songs about Transition (would love to know more about that…). This band, the Time Spinners, who all look about 15, came up with the song below, although it is quite hard to hear the lyrics…
Transition Adelaide West recently ran an open-air film screening (somewhat easier to do in Australia than in Devon in March). Looks like a great event, and all credit to them for documenting the event and making it available online.
Transition Scotland Support is recruiting for a new post to develop a range of printed, video, web based and other resources around training, mentoring and re-skilling for Scottish Transition communities.
We’re looking for someone to connect with local groups around Scotland and create accessible materials that tell their stories, someone who can create contexts for people to share their experience and skills, to inspire and resource people involved in Transition. Experience of working with community groups will be essential, as is a real ability to communicate, enthuse others and draw together people and information. If you think you’ll be able to hit the ground running, and help us develop valuable resources for communities over the next year, we’d love to hear from you.
A while ago now I was in London for the launch of the Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment’s ‘Building a New Green Economy’ conference, where I was a speaker alongside Tim Jackson, David Orr and Stewart Brand. You can read about the event here, and films of our talks will be posted soon. I mention it today because I want to draw your attention to the report launched at the conference, Sustainable Supply Chains that Support Local Economic Development, available to download here. As someone who has, for many years, been fascinated by local, natural building materials, this is a fascinating piece of research, one of the first things I have seen which starts trying to calculate the financial benefits to an area of moving towards more locally-sourced building materials.
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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