by Shaun Chamberlin | Mar 6, 2010 | All Posts, Transition Movement
Following on from our success in the local Green Awards, TTK has won 'Green Group of the Year' at the South London Awards. I was also highly commended in the Green Champion category, with my indefatigable friend Lucy Neal of Transition Town Tooting the deserving new holder of the title of Southwest London Green Champion.
With the groundbreaking Our Kingston, Our Future documentary-creation and workshops also set to take place on the weekend of March 20th and 21st, our list of things to celebrate is now in desperate need of some attention, so thank heavens the Great Unleashing of TTK (AKA The Big Launch Party) on Sat 17th April is edging ever closer. Old stalwarts and total strangers equally welcome at the party!
Despite the seemingly unnecessary opulence of the 5-star setting, the awards event itself was fairly enjoyable, as TTK's Temporary Steering Group (that's the six of us to the right of the photo, with Lucy Siegle) rarely get together without seventeen thousand items on the agenda, so it was nice to kick back and relax for once. Having said that, I skilfully avoided the moral dilemma of the HSBC-sponsored drinks bash by the expedient of a delayed train, so I didn't do quite as much relaxing as the others!
by Shaun Chamberlin | Jan 31, 2010 | All Posts, Cultural stories, Transition Movement
So here it is, the final proof that all Transitioners (me included) have been brainwashed to think alike! Two other vids, and an explanation of where they all came from, below the cut.
Transition: What's that all about then?
What's your 'Transition Vision'?
These three videos were made by Andreas Teuchert via a simple process. He roamed the 2009 Transition Conference, pouncing on unsuspecting passers by and dragging us into a dark room to point a camera at us and probe us with questions. Then he took the footage away and edited it up into the finished videos you see before you. Good work!
For those who may be interested in attending, details of this year's Transition Conference(s) can be found here.
by Shaun Chamberlin | Jan 26, 2010 | All Posts, Transition Movement
Last night saw this year's local Green Awards ceremony, organised by the Royal Borough of Kingston and the Kingston Guardian newspaper.
We were delighted that Transition Town Kingston beat off around twenty nominees to win the Green Group award, and that I am now Kingston's 'Green Champion'!
(If they try to send me out to battle the mighty Red Champion of a neighbouring borough I'll point out that they have the wrong man, as evidenced by the typo below)
Last year we were also nominated for both awards, but demurred, as we felt that we hadn't yet done enough to deserve them, and that there were more worthy recipients. This year we were happy to accept our nominations, and even happier to win! Two other members of TTK also received commendations for their individual efforts over the past year (congratulations Marilyn and Elise!), and it was great to see how intertwined TTK has already become with other Green initiatives across the Borough.
The prize of an apple tree was very well-chosen too, and I will soon be planting mine in pride of place in our front garden. Any suggestions from locals as to where the TTK tree should go are very welcome.
I must confess I have sometimes wondered what the usefulness of such awards ceremonies is, but nonetheless I found I was gladdened by both wins, and have decided to abandon cynicism and treat the awards as tools for raising the profile of the work we are doing, and hopefully amplifying our impact.
As local winners we now go forward to the regional awards in February. I will admit to more misgivings about that, featuring as it does a lavish dinner at a five star hotel, an HSBC sponsorship and a range of prizes including the most surreal 'green' prize I've yet come across...
"A picnic activity bench made from recycled Waitrose 'Bags for Life' bags, worth £500" (to who, one wonders?)
Still, we'll see how it goes!
by Shaun Chamberlin | Dec 22, 2009 | All Posts, Climate Change, Cultural stories, Politics, Transition Movement
[audio mp3="https://www.darkoptimism.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/09-09-10-Scottish-Parliament-Holyrood350.mp3"][/audio]
Above is a recording of a quick interview I gave immediately after speaking at the Scottish Parliament earlier this year, as part of the Holyrood 350 campaign.
by Shaun Chamberlin | Jun 4, 2009 | All Posts, Climate Change, Cultural stories, Favourite posts, Peak Oil, Politics, Reviews and recommendations, TEQs (Tradable Energy Quotas), The Transition Timeline, Transition Movement
It has been another crazy whirlwind of a month, with this weekend set to be the first in five which I get to spend in Transition Town Home, having spoken recently in Bungay, Glastonbury, Belsize Park and the Forest of Dean, as well at the Transition Conference (I hate that name, can't we call it a 'Gathering' or something?) in Battersea, and at the Sunrise Celebration Festival.
One highlight for me was watching the world première of the movie "In Transition" and being surprised and delighted to find that I was in it (having completely forgotten the quick interview they grabbed with me at my book launch!). Another was meeting an A-Level teacher who is already using my book as a teaching aid for his Environmental Design students.
But perhaps of wider interest was the fact that Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, turned up at the Transition Conference as a 'keynote listener', but still managed to drop a few bombshells.
When we buttonholed him for a bit of a chat (audio here, courtesy of Traydio.com), I was pleased to hear that he understood the need for Government to remain a step removed from the Transition movement in order to avoid "strangling" it. However, I must confess I had to refrain from gasping as he declared that:
"If you think about the history of the debate on peak oil as I understand it, climate change makes debate about peak oil a bit of a second-order debate, because we have to start making the transition to low carbon forms of energy in any case. Whether you think that peak oil's in 2020, 2030 or 2040... I don't need to have the debate about peak oil... to know that we have to start making the transition as quickly as possible."
Where to begin? Clearly Ed's understanding of the history of the peak oil debate differs a little from mine. Let's start with the obvious - with many experts agreeing that we likely saw peak oil last year, for our Minister for Energy to be pondering how many decades in the future it might lie is, frankly, terrifying.
But what I personally find even more worrying is that he (and thus presumably his department) has not yet grasped that climate change and peak oil often pull in opposite directions. Perhaps Ed should cast his eyes across the Atlantic to the US Congress, where the advocates of Climate Change Bills (to implement strict carbon budgets) are doing battle with the champions of Energy Independence Bills (to subsidise carbon-intensive tar sands and coal-to-liquids projects).
As I wrote here last year, and more recently in The Transition Timeline, there is a very real tension between addressing climate change and addressing peak oil, and policy based purely on one side of this equation could be very destructive indeed. Unfortunately, our government is still caught on the horns of this 'supply side dilemma', and is desperately casting around for more rapidly-deployable low-carbon energy supplies.
It is only slowly dawning on them that renewable supply cannot increase as fast as oil and gas are declining, that nuclear only makes the problem worse, and that coal is not an option if we want a habitable planet. The inescapable conclusion is that if we are to treat climate change with the seriousness which it undoubtedly deserves, then we may well have already entered our years of energy descent. The only reasonable response is to find ways to thrive in this context - to reduce energy demand in line with the reducing supply - but as yet Ed still believes that only Denial sells to the voting public:
"In a way I'm less optimistic than you are... you're optimistic that you can persuade people to adopt a sort of "no growth" model of society - I'm pretty convinced that you couldn't persuade people of that... Even if you were right about your model of society, I just don't believe that you're going to convince people of that"
Actually, I do agree with Ed that we need to think long and hard about what "economic growth" actually means before we debate whether we want it, though I'm not sure we'll see eye-to-eye when that debate reaches its head.
Of course it doesn't come as an overwhelming surprise to see my perspective deemed darker yet more optimistic than the Government view, but since the Transition Vision of the future seems about the only desirable outcome out there to shoot for, I think I'll just keep right on shooting, whether Ed rates our chances or not.
Having said that, with Rob's recent post on 'burn out' in mind, it's definitely time for a day off for me. Tomorrow is my birthday, and I will be taking a hard-earned breather at Kew Gardens with my beautiful and inspirational girlfriend. Back soon!
by Shaun Chamberlin | May 6, 2009 | All Posts, Cultural stories, Reviews and recommendations, Transition Movement
The latest version of the Transition Movie – In Transition 1.0 (post updated December 2009 to embed full movie – including an appearance from me around the 35 minute mark!)...
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