Jeremy Rifkin Video

Lights Out for the Territory

In 2001 I took a journey with two friends from Southern Arizona to the red rock country of Utah. On the way home we passed through Hopiland and gave a lift to an old woman who was walking back to her village on the first mesa. We were silent for a long time in the car together. Our heads full of Sedona vortexes, fossilised forests and medicine wheels, the presence of a real Native American was unnerving. ‘What you do call that bird?’ I finally asked, pointing to a red-tail hawk floating above us in the giant bare landscape.

‘Bird,’ she replied and looked toward her village where the coal mine blew out toxic dust into the atmosphere and she said her sister was losing her mind.

The desert is a place where you get real. Where the reality of growing crops in one of the toughest territories in the world comes home to you. This is years before the seeds of the Transition movement are sown on the coast of Ireland, where Rob Hopkins, a teacher of permaculture, designs an energy descent action plan with his students for the town of Kinsale. This is years before I come to the end of a walk along the East Anglian coast, and realise that to be any use to the place we call earth, I will have to look at the coal mine and the world that was driving everyone crazy.

The Hopi nation are famous for making a pledge to keep the world in balance by example. Harassed by the industrialised world to conform, they still grow maize and beans by hand and honour the cycles of the growing year in their kivas and ceremonial dances. Everything has meaning and significance in the life of the pueblo. But the one thing they do not order is the wilderness, represented by the form and spirit of the wild turkey.

You give a place for wild turkey to remind you what comes before the kivas, the village, the fields of corn. Our ancestral link to the earth and the living systems of ourselves, without which all life goes haywire.

Transition and the Big Frame

The Transition movement began in Totnes in 2005, with a series of documentaries about peak oil. These films made it clear that everything in our industrialised world, from the clothes we wear to the food we eat, is wholly dependent on cheap fossil fuels. For people whose lives are defined by the private ownership of cars and houses and technology, these facts were a shock. Hopkins called it The End of Surburbia moment. The moment you realise the mantra of economic growth won’t hold in the face of dwindling resources and ecosystems in a state of collapse.

In 2008 I watched a film called The 11th Hour in a market town in Suffolk and found myself in a group known as Sustainable Bungay, discussing the steps we could take to make ourselves resilient in the face of peak oil and climate change. For the last four years, we have been engaged, like the 876 Transition communities worldwide, in the business of relocalising everything we do: creating CSAs, co-operative bakeries, breweries, community kitchens, wind turbines, solar-power stations, alternative currencies, alternative media, planting trees, reducing waste, setting up exchange systems, seed swaps, tool libraries. In short, reshaping a culture that has become entirely divorced in its mind from the territory in which it sits. Rob Hopkins’ new guide book The Transition Companion lists 82 ‘ingredients and tools’ that define initiatives. Based on the seminal work of ecological design, The Pattern Language, these represent ways in which communities can shift from individualism towards working together. How we might downshift to a lean-energy, low-carbon future, following the permaculture principles of fairshare, earthcare and peoplecare.

Our hardest task is to consider the price our fossil-fuelled everyday lives exacts from the earth and its atmosphere. We stand before the petrol pump aware of the tar sands of Alberta, in front of the stove and consider ‘fracking’for shale gas in Lancashire, turn on the light and see the plundering of the Appalachian mountains and the Amazon.

Walking the coast in 2008, I found I could no longer keep these geo-political realities at bay. I encountered activists on the Sizewell Nuclear power station, stood amongst protesters at Walberswick as the government withdrew funds for flood defences, along the Blyth, the Alde and the Ore. I looked out of my window, across the marshes, and where once only moonlight reflected on the sea, oil tankers floated in the darkness, waiting for the oil prices to rise, like giant neon sharks.

meant a nearly 50% hike in residential electricity prices.

The province of Ontario tells us that our growing electricity bills are caused by the

move to pricier but cleaner energy such as solar and wind. Is this move to

renewables the real reason for the high cost of electricity or is there another

answer to our electricity woes?

While the rest of the world turns its back on high cost, high risk nuclear, Ontario

energy planners are calling for billions to be spent on new and refurbished

nuclear units. But we don’t have to spend billions on a dangerous nuclear buildup.

Instead, we could invest in job creators like green energy efficiency, clean

energy sources like hydro imports from Quebec, and flexible and super efficient

options like combined heat and power (CHP). All of these options are vastly less

expensive – and less dangerous – than nuclear power.

Our panelists will present their perspectives and we want to hear from you. What

are your concerns and ideas?

Marty Lancaster, Renewable Energy & Feed-In-Tariff Program Specialist

]]> http://transitionbarrie.org/aware-simcoe-public-meeting-may-26th-930/feed/ 0 http://transitionbarrie.org/new-group-may-1st-food-security-7pm/ http://transitionbarrie.org/new-group-may-1st-food-security-7pm/#comments Sun, 22 Apr 2012 14:34:23 +0000 admin http://transitionbarrie.org/?p=2127  

Transition Barrie extends a warm welcome to anyone interested in participating in the Transition Barrie Food Secure Network.  Our first meeting took place on Tuesday, May 1^st at the Barrie Community Health Centre. Our primary areas of focus was to help to organize food related monthly meet ups, education and skill building efforts, multi media work, and a variety of special projects. Some of the areas discussed were Native Beekeeping, Spirituality and Food, Gardening, canning, possible Rogers food shows, the Good Food Box and discussions about the possibility of a new Food Hub and supporting the Mayors vision of a Market to be located at the Bus Terminal.  In future meetings we will revisit the Barrie Hunger Report and talk about various cooking classes, and an inexpensive source of protein in our “Just a Pulse Campaign” which focuses on legumes.  All are welcome to join this group.  There is no charge.   For further information, please contact Karen Fox 705-721-6867 or email rightmove@sympatico.ca

Local cardiologist and author Dr. Brad Dibble will be the guest speaker at our April Meet Up.
Melting glaciers, thawing permafrost, 85 degree temperatures in March, violent storm events, tropical diseases move northward…..the climate is definitely changing!!

In spite of foreboding events, Climate Change seems to be flying under the radar these days so Transition Barrie is thrilled to have Barrie’s own Dr. Brad Dibble as our Guest Speaker next Wednesday, to explore this timely subject. Dr. Dibble, a local cardiologist has recently written a book on Climate Change and is presenting “Five Facts Everyone Should Know About Global Warming”. We all experienced the dramatic weather this winter that was both unusual and unsettling and highlights the fact that things are changing and we need to be both informed and ready to take action.

We will also be discussing the efforts of Bill McKibben and the 350.org initiative.

Please join us at Barrie City Hall ( Huronia Room,2nd floor Upstairs, 7PM) for an engaging presentation and discussion.

Admission is free. Refreshments will be served. Bring a friend.

What we want to accomplish is to have a store of plates and silverware to use for any of our events so that we do not have to use plastic or disposable dishes.  We will also loan out these supplies to any NGO, not for profits or groups wanting to have a Zero Waste event.

Any pattern will do.  A couple of dishes or a set will add to collection.  If you have any dishes that you are getting rid of and wish to donate, please contact Karen at 705-721-6867 or Rightmove@sympatico.ca

In a recent article for the Globe and Mail, ‘Our Peak Oil Premium,’ author Thomas Homer-Dixon provides a brief updated view on peak oil.

All About Seeds.

Wed March 21st 7PM to 9PM

Huronia Room, 2nd floor Barrie City Hall

Just in time to plan for your  garden.  Everything you need to know about seeds.