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Transition Towns: Green Capitalism? (15 posts)

  1. chrisc
    Member

    The Transitions initiative, "Transition Towns, Cities, Villages and Islands", is growing quite fast, their main site is here:

    http://transitiontowns.org/

    The blog of the founder, Rob Hopkins:

    http://transitionculture.org/

    The book, The Transition Handbook: from oil dependency to local resilience:

    http://transitionculture.org/shop/the-transition-h...

    And a recording of a talk he recently gave to a meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil and Gas, London:

    http://www.appgopo.org.uk/index.php?option=com_con...

    It appears to me to be a positive grassroots response to peak oil and climate change, but it has it's critics, for example the "The Rocky Road to a Real Transition" pamphlet, which is available after this review of it by Rob Hopkins:

    http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/sheffield/2...

    Posted 16 years ago #
  2. chrisc
    Member

    One Transition Town's critic, who has negative credibility as far as I'm concerned, is Ian R. Crane, who runs Transition Town Watch:

    Is the Transition Town project an eschatological Eco-Cult? Transition Town claim that both 'Peak Oil' & 'Man-made Climate Change' are scientifically 'proven'. Such claims are intellectually dishonest and rely upon simplistic, one-dimensional presentation.
    http://www.transitiontownwatch.blogspot.com/

    And he has a page on peak oil on his web site:

    'Crossing the Rubicon' is a critical part of the official mythology.
    http://www.ianrcrane.co.uk/index.php?act=viewDoc&#...

    And sells various DVD's of his presentations, including:

    Peak Oil: Myth or Reality?

    Ian R. Crane, a veteran of a twenty-year career in international oilfield services, which provided him with the opportunity to live & work in the UK, Mainland Europe, Middle East and the USA, believes that counter theories to Peak Oil should be given equal consideration and people should be given the opportunity to see the truth behind ‘Peak Oil’.
    http://www.ianrcrane.co.uk/index.php?act=viewProd&...

    He was the Chairman of the 911 Truth Campaign (Britain & Ireland)...

    Posted 16 years ago #
  3. truthmod
    Administrator

    I saw Ian Crane at the Chicago conference. He was expounding at breakfast about how the Jews have the diaspora which allows them to coordinate vast conspiracies.

    3

    Posted 16 years ago #
  4. chrisc
    Member

    There is a MP3 of a debate between Mike Grenville, "a leading Sussex environmental campaigner" and Ian R. Crane here on peak oil:

    http://www.changingtimes.org.uk/Lectures/IanCrane/...

    Mike is very good and talks about Transition Towns and he is essentially on the same page as we are here in terms of climate change and peak oil.

    Ian makes some valid points about other agendas that are at work regarding the geopolitics of oil but the valid points he makes don't contradict the geological reality of the oil situation, he says that: "in the not too distant future peak oil will be exposed as a myth".

    He attacks Mike Ruppert, "when the myth of peak oil it exposed it'll be used to undermine 9/11 truth".

    He talks about the abiotic oil theory -- he doesn't believe that oil is a fossil fuel... and talks about the "myth of finite resources"...

    He promotes John Perkin's book, Confessions of an Economic Hitman...

    And that is as far as I have got with this audio for today...

    Posted 16 years ago #
  5. chrisc
    Member

    In the Q&A Ian R. Crane says about Ruppert and peak oil, "Mike Ruppert felt that he had been set up..." This is of course totally contradicted by the last update from him:

    http://www.fromthewilderness.com/retrospective2008...

    Ian R. Crane is clearly not to be trusted on any matter.

    Posted 16 years ago #
  6. chrisc
    Member

    I have got through the first third of the Transition Towns Handbook, and it's very good, some more info on it here:

    http://uniteddiversity.com/transition-handbook/

    Also that the 9/11 disinformation people are flustered about it is interesting, see for example this thread (if you can't be bothered, better follow the link above...!):

    http://www.911forum.org.uk/board/viewtopic.php?t=1...

    Posted 16 years ago #
  7. chrisc
    Member

    The Transition Towns Handbook is now available on a wiki site:

    http://www.appropedia.org/Category:The_Transition_...

    The plan is to have a open revision process before it's republished:

    http://transitionculture.org/2008/10/03/wethink-an...

    Posted 16 years ago #
  8. chrisc
    Member

    Transition Towns vs The Activist Left

    A another article from Indymedia about the ongoing "dispute" between elements of the radical activist left and the rapidly growing Transition Towns movement:

    Transitions towns http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/10/410292.html

    See also this thread cited in the first post in this thread:

    “The Rocky Road to a Real Transition”: A Review http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/sheffield/2...

    I have some agreement with both sides of this debate...

    Posted 16 years ago #
  9. chrisc
    Member

    There is a two day Transition Cities conference starting tomorrow: http://transitiontowns.org/TransitionNetwork/Citie...

    Which should be interesting -- can a city be sustainable?

    https://forum.transitionsheffield.org.uk/viewtopic...

    The disinfo freaks haven't dropped this as an issue either:

    With oil at $55 per barrel and falling (unless there are further instances of 'piracy' on the high seas and/or a Bush/Israel attack on Iran sometime between now and 20th January 2009), it is surely time to move on from the dogma of 'Peak Oil' and 'Anthropogenic Climate Change' and start addressing the REAL Community issues.

    http://www.911forum.org.uk/board/viewtopic.php?p=1...

    Posted 15 years ago #
  10. chrisc
    Member

    The conference was alright, I was surprised though how much more aware many people where I live are than some of the people at the conference...

    Some more thoughts from John Michael Greer on Transition Towns:

    The core argument of last week’s post centered on the possibility of building a better future by deliberate planning, and many of the comments and critiques took issue with my suggestion that this is not only impossible but counterproductive. While most of these latter noted that they were participants in the Transition Town movement, the ideas they expressed in that context are anything but unique to that movement; rather, it expresses a consensus that extends through most of the peak oil scene, and indeed, most of contemporary society. Despite its popularity, though, this confidence in our ability to plan the future seems woefully misplaced to me, and the reasons that have forced me to dissent from the consensus may be worth discussing here.

    ...

    what we are trying to invent here – a society that can support some approximation of modern technology on a sustainable basis – has never existed on Earth. We have no working models to go by; all we have, again, is a mix of agrarian practices that seem to have been sustainable, on the one hand, and some experiments that seem to be working so far on a very small scale, on the other. Our job is to piece something together using these, and other things that don’t exist yet, to cope with future challenges we can only foresee in the most general terms.

    ...

    the last round of energy crises in the 1970s saw a great deal of energy go into making plans. A great deal of energy also went into improvisation, in a wide range of fields – notably alternative agriculture, renewable energy, and home design and construction. The plans have been forgotten; I don’t know of a single one that was still in force a decade down the road. The improvisations, on the other hand, have not; they include today’s organic intensive gardening, permaculture, most of today’s arsenal of solar energy methods, a range of alternative homebuilding methods, and much more.

    Nobody drew up plans to develop these things, after all; the developers simply developed them, working things out as circumstances demanded, and shared what they learned with others as they went. Thus nearly all the ingredients being inserted into the current crop of plans for the deindustrial future were themselves the product of improvisation. It might be worth suggesting on this basis that our best option would be to skip the plans altogether and get to work on more improvisations.

    All the points made here can be phrased in another way: a society is more like an organism than an artifact, and while artifacts can be planned and manufactured, organisms must evolve.

    http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2008/11/loo...

    Posted 15 years ago #
  11. ianrcrane
    Member

    The ubiquitous chrisc wrote:

    'Ian R. Crane is clearly not to be trusted on any matter.'

    Ah, tis good to see that character assassination is alive and well on a 'Truth' Forum! Apparently anyone who expresses an alternative opinion to that held bt the status quo is considered to be 'disinfo'!

    As for the selective recollections of Truthmod, it is nonetheless perhaps worthy of interest that a number of the Mumbai 'Terrorists' were guests at Nariman House for upto 15 days prior to the attacks being launched. I don't profess to know what occurred in Mumbai but it sure as hell smells of 'False Flag'.

    By the way, has anybody noticed that the price of oil is currently at $43.80? Less than $30 by Easter anyone?

    I also note that the 'Peakists' have pushed the 'Peak' date back to 2013 ... when it will no doubt be pushed back to 2018 ... then 2025 ad infinitum

    Posted 15 years ago #
  12. truthmod
    Administrator

    Ian Crane, welcome to the forum. We like to keep these threads fairly focused, so if you'd like to discuss Mumbai or Nariman House, you could do it on this thread:

    http://www.truthmove.org/forum/topic/1346?replies=...

    So, you think Peak Oil is a swindle? What exactly is the point then--what is it supposed to distract us from or misdirect us towards? What about mass extinction? What about global warming? What about overpopulation? Is disengaging from the mainstream culture (to grow your own food and live sustainably) a good thing? Is encouraging the mainstream to institute sustainable systems a good thing?

    The current price of oil is pretty meaningless when your talking about Peak Oil. Demand took a big hit with the financial crisis and there is still many billions of barrels of supply left. But it is a finite resource--do you debate that?

    Posted 15 years ago #
  13. chrisc
    Member

    I also note that the 'Peakists' have pushed the 'Peak' date back to 2013 ...

    Uh-hu... which "Peakists" would you be referring to? Most seem to think it's already passed, but in any case whether global peak oil was 2008 or will be 2013 it doesn't really matter -- to get hung up on the exact date is to totally miss the point, but I guess that this is your point...

    Posted 15 years ago #
  14. chrisc
    Member

    There is a growing consensus among those who follow such things, that the new high of world oil production (87.9 million barrels a day) reached last July is likely to go down in history as the all-time peak.

    http://www.fcnp.com/index.php?option=com_content&#...

    Posted 15 years ago #
  15. chrisc
    Member

    Ian Crane's web site sells a DVD on "chemtrails":

    Chemtrails - The Disturbing Truth

    Chemtrail grids are becoming increasingly common in the skies of Great Britain. What is the truth behind these trails which create a high altitude veil, often obscuring natural sunlight for the entire day. MP's have been alerted and are sufficiently alarmed to state that they will be seeking answers from the Ministry of Defence ... yet no answers are forthcoming. Clifford Carnicom's documentary exposes the disturbing truth behind the government silence ... the general population need to be more vocal in the demand for answers.

    http://www.ianrcrane.co.uk/index.php?act=viewProd&...

    See this thread for more on "chemtrail" disinformation:

    http://www.truthmove.org/forum/topic/1217?replies=... ...

    Posted 15 years ago #

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