An Evolving Exploration into the Head, Heart and Hands of Energy Descent
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.
On a rooftop in Brixton, a back garden in Totnes, a village hall in Ambridge, they’re preparing for a post-oil future. So is Transition Towns busting out of the eco-niche and into the mainstream? By Vicki Lesley and Hannah Bullock, from Green Futures magazine.
Around the country, towns are printing their own currency, turning over scraps of land to grow food and re-skilling their workforce for a future where fossil fuels are no longer on tap. When the Transition Town movement first got under way it may have sounded a little militant: “from oil dependency to local resilience”. But with 85 communities on board, 700 more looking to join, and ‘peak oil’ in the news, is this an idea whose time has come?
We had a wonderful evening in Totnes last week, where we launched the Totnes EDAP process. About 180 people turned up, and were provided with wine and nibbles, as well as with live guitar music on their arrival. I felt it was one of those great Transition events that appeals to both sides of the brain, some talking, some chatting, some moving around, some laughter, some poignancy, some food and drink, some fun. To set the scene, here is how the evening was reported in the Totnes Times, the first time a TTT-related story graced the front page. Under the headline “Why Time is Running Out”, the article ran as follows;
Below is a rather wonderful short animated YouTube slideshow thingy which gives a flavour of the energy that is gathering in New Zealand around Transition Initiatives. A very inspiring and heartening way to pass 4 minutes and 10 seconds.
I wrote last week about the submission that Transition Leicester made about eco-towns, today I want to celebrate the excellent piece of work done by Transition Glastonbury in pulling together their response to a report prepared by their local Council setting out plans for the development of the area over the next 20 years. As with most Council plans, it starts with assuming a graph with a line that rises as it moves towards the right, increased growth, increased investment, increased energy availability. Transition Glastonbury’s submission asks, what if it doesn’t? How might this area thrive in uncertain times? This is a timely post, as tomorrow night in Totnes sees the formal launch of our Energy Descent Pathways process, the creation, in effect, of the town’s Plan B. Congratulations to Transition Glastonbury for blazing a trail with this so brilliantly.
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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