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
Archive for “General” category
Showing results 496 - 500 of 506 for the category: General.
11 Apr 2006
It is a point often made by ‘peakniks’ that the energy choices that we will have beyond the peak are all already here, that we don’t have the time to wait for what Richard Heinberg calls ‘The Magic Elixir’. There is no point in waiting around for free energy machines, a hydrogen economy, nuclear powered cars, whatever, life will be simpler and power will come from things we already know work. Yet every day there is a new story about some ‘miracle’ development, or some amazing new ‘breakthrough’, which naturally you never hear anything about again. Rather than actually researching anything useful, scientists are looking with increasing desparation into increasingly unfeasible and ludicrous things to try and convince us that the solution to the energy crisis will come from science and that they are on the case.
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7 Apr 2006
A month or so ago I launched a competition where you could win a copy of the wonderful ‘Building with Cob’, the new bible for cob builders everywhere. The idea was that you send me a photo of your favourite old building… the response has been somewhat underwhelming, total entries received thus far, er, 0. So, not one to be put off, and wanting some lucky soul to get their hands on this fabulous book, I am henceforth cancelling that competition and launching a far simpler version, which will only take you about 20 seconds to enter and will run only until next Friday, so come on, as they say, **It Could Be You!**
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6 Apr 2006
The Totnes Sustainability Group is holding a half-day conference in May to launch a study it commissioned which looks at all the renewable energy options for South Devon and for the town of Totnes. It compiles a wealth of information that will be extremely useful to the Totnes Energy Descent Plan. Its findings are similar to those of Paul Mobbs in ‘Energy Beyond Oil’, who says that renewables, at max, could provide 40% of the nation’s energy, the rest needing to come from conservation. The figure the report produces for South Devon is closer to 30%. I will put the report itself on here when it is completed. The conference is by invite only, details below. I am one of the speakers, attempting to give an overview of peak oil and energy descent in 15 minutes!
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1 Mar 2006
Allan Jones is a bit of a hero of mine. I was very excited about hearing him speak and he provided a very interesting talk. He is the Chief Development Officer of the London Climate Change Agency. He is also the guy who set up the UK’s first ESCO and did such amazing work in Woking with decentralized energy systems. Allan Jones has been headhunted by Ken Livingston to achieve a Zero Carbon London, and listening to the no-nonsense way he speaks, you’d think he might actually pull it off.
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14 Jan 2006
I was fortunate enough to attend a talk by economist **Bernard Leitaer** at Schumacher College the other evening. He was teaching part of their The Future of Money course, and, in the Schumacher tradition, offered a public talk one evening. Leitaer is author of, among other things, The Future of Money, and is widely regarded as one of the experts on alternative currency systems. These notes are compiled from my notes, so any mistakes are due to my poor notetaking ( I was sat on the windowsill at the back!). Much of what he had to say is very relevant to those of us working in the field of localisation and energy descent. He is a powerful and extremely knowledgable speaker.
He began by asking how many
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It is a point often made by ‘peakniks’ that the energy choices that we will have beyond the peak are all already here, that we don’t have the time to wait for what Richard Heinberg calls ‘The Magic Elixir’. There is no point in waiting around for free energy machines, a hydrogen economy, nuclear powered cars, whatever, life will be simpler and power will come from things we already know work. Yet every day there is a new story about some ‘miracle’ development, or some amazing new ‘breakthrough’, which naturally you never hear anything about again. Rather than actually researching anything useful, scientists are looking with increasing desparation into increasingly unfeasible and ludicrous things to try and convince us that the solution to the energy crisis will come from science and that they are on the case.
