ROB HOPKINS

David Orr was in the UK recently, and the two of us were part of a panel at an event organised by the Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment. After the event, we retired to the bar of a rather grand London hotel, and chatted for an hour about energy, climate change, the Precautionary Principle, Transition and whether or not we are beyond talk of ’solutions’.

A while ago now I was in London for the launch of the Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment’s ‘Building a New Green Economy’ conference, where I was a speaker alongside Tim Jackson, David Orr and Stewart Brand. You can read about the event here, and films of our talks will be posted soon. I mention it today because I want to draw your attention to the report launched at the conference, Sustainable Supply Chains that Support Local Economic Development, available to download here.

The piece builds on Lynas’s previous much publicised conversion to nuclear power, arguing that if we are to apply the scientific rigour that underpins climate science to all other areas of life, in the same way that nuclear power is supported by the science, so is GM. While I strongly disagree with him on both, I want here to challenge Lynas’s conversion to GM, and the belief that if we are serious about climate change, we have no option other than to embrace GM.

Here is Part Two of an interview I did with Tim Kasser a couple of weeks ago while he was at Schumacher College. He is a psychologist, author of the seminal High Price of Materialism, as well as other useful writings such as a great chapter in the State of the World Report 2009 about consumerism and climate change. The interview raises some fascinating areas for research and thoughts about Transition and psychology, and I think you’re going to enjoy this one….

Here is the first part (Part Two to follow tomorrow) of an interview I did with Tim Kasser a couple of weeks ago while he was at Schumacher College. He is a psychologist, author of the seminal High Price of Materialism, as well as other useful writings such as a great chapter in the State of the World Report 2009 about consumerism and climate change. The interview raises some fascinating areas for research and thoughts about Transition and psychology, and I think you’re going to enjoy this one….

At the recent Soil Association conference in Birmingham a couple of weeks ago I cornered Mike Small of the Fife Diet and asked him a few questions about what is happening in Fife. Their work has huge implications for Transition, as well as offering some fascinating insights into the practicalities of the relocalisation of the food system.

At this year's Soil Association conference I was chatting with Mike Small of the Fife Diet in Scotland. He told a story about how a film crew from Sky News came up to Fife to do a news story about their work. While they were filming, Mike chatted to the director and asked him what was the angle on the story. "Well", said the director, "it's about a community eating local food". "Amazing to think that that's now seen as news!" said Mike. Of course, now such a thing is news, so bizarrely distorted has our food system (and our media, but that's another story) become. Unfortunately the sprawling monster that actually now feeds most of us isn't news, but only because it is so well hidden, something that the excellent new film "Food Inc" tries to change.

This very timely book is essential reading for those bewildered by the recent backlash against climate science. It takes things back to basics, and rather than being an exploration of the climate science itself, it seeks to equip the reader with the tools to be able to distinguish between the sources of climate-related information.

I read with interest John Michael Greer’s recent post, The Costs of Community, and then Sharon Astyk’s response, On the Problem of Community and I wanted to add some thoughts to the flow.

Been a fascinating few days here in the UK in terms of the weather...It had been so long since we actually had a really actual snowy winter that thick snow has become the stuff of legend, banished to Doctor Who Christmas Specials and the top of Christmas cakes. Then it snowed, and boy did it snow, and almost immediately all the headlines were of ‘misery’ and ‘chaos’.