Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Working to build resilience in the face of climate change and peak oil, the Transition approach can be particularly instructive in demonstrating how to accomplish this shift using bottom-up rather than top-down methods (the top-down approach has been characteristic of most Japanese eco-towns).
We all know that walking is good for us. It sheds calories, tones muscles, and clears our minds. But taking a regular walk is also important to our understanding that we share a common life with others–the psychic foundation of the commons.
I’ll be talking with Nader about the critical ideas in his wonderful new book, The 17 Solutions: Bold Ideas for Our American Future.
I have written several times here about ‘Transition Streets’, the street-by-street behaviour change model created by Transition Town Totnes which was the winner of the 2011 Ashden Award for behaviour change. I am delighted to announce today is that now Transition Streets (also known as ‘Streets-Wise’) is available for any group to run, anywhere.
The wealth gap in this country is huge and growing larger. What surprises me is that we’re not looking more deeply into the issue. We don’t really understand how big the wealth gap is and what wealth inequality does to us.
The three sovereign entities in the United States are the federal government, the states and indigenous tribes, but according to Bill Tripp, a member of the Karuk Tribe in Northern California, many people are unaware of both the sovereign nature of tribes and the wisdom they possess when it comes to issues of climate change and natural resource management.
*Big Tobacco lawyers target food industry
*How To Compost In Your Apartment
*Why Caring About Food Isn’t An Option, It’s a Responsibility
*Food price crisis: What crisis?
*New EU biofuel proposals inadequate, warns ActionAid
Like Heineken you might hope that the Transition Network refreshes the parts others cannot reach.
Since its founding in 1996, the Community Food Security Coalition has been the leading voice for people of color and the poor in a food movement that often marginalizes them in favor of well-heeled “foodies.” This summer, the coalition announced that 2012 would be its last year of operation. The announcement left those of us in the food movement reeling. Although the timing was not deliberate, it seemed fitting that a gathering about the future of the food justice movement, Food + Justice = Democracy, had been planned to take place just months after the coalition’s announcement.
One of the greatest gifts of Transition is rediscovering the simple joys of doing seasonal things together – cooking, cycling, swimming in the sea, having a picnic. They bring sense and meaning into everything we do. Nothing though is quite as delightful and satisfying as foraging – going out into the wild territories and finding stuff to bring home and eat.
In early October, the eco-village, Änggärdet, Sweden, hosted two days of Live Action Role-Play (LARP) along the theme of life 2016-2027, post peak oil and post economic collapse. Players got the opportunity to explore what various scenarios would be like, including being commaned into a work detail bu the military to harvest the last remaining potatoes by hand, and by joining a self-organised, worked-by-hand co-housing combi-farm.
Years on from the early days, one could argue that the world looks more or less as Transition visioning sessions then might have imagined – climate change more evident, energy descent and peak oil important topics albeit discussed differently, and economic relocalisation a front burner issue. Loosely accurate forecasts of the realities we’re living now, but lacking the immediacy and urgency of the current moment.
