I look forward to the wider distribution here in the UK – it is getting many stellar reviews so I hope it will get nationwide cinema screening here. That will help with peak oil awareness and preparation a lot, which along with adapting to climate change at a local and community level, is the essence of Transition Towns.

Here are some clips:

Apple Trailer Website

Clip 1

Clip 2

Clip 3

Clip 4

Clip 5

Michael C Ruppert is one of the key people involved in raising awareness of peak oil since 2001. For example, see his excellent ‘From The Wilderness’ interview with Colin Campbell in 2002. Colin is the geologist who coined the term ‘peak oil’ and who inspired Rob Hopkins to start Transition Towns in 2004.

Similarly, this article by another geologist Dale Allen Pfeiffer, “Eating Fossil Fuels,” that Mr Ruppert published in 2004, echos Rob Hopkin’s comment in a Guardian article about Transition Towns that “British farming has evolved ‘into a system for turning oil into food,’ reliant on the energy-intensive manufacture of synthetic fertiliser, heavy use of oil-based plastics, and centralised just-in-time distribution systems that also guzzle oil.”

This video, 400 Fruit Trees Project, Kilkenny from Future Proof Kilkenny, is a great little 5 minute introduction to Transition Towns in action.

Mike’s new book, “A Presidential Energy Policy”, will be published on May 1st.

This summer a documentary about his work “Collapse” will also be released.

Here’s a video from him dating back to 2005, at a Solar Energy conference, and although the details are somewhat American-specific and a little dated, its a good hour-long piece:

(Download high resolution DIVX file
– play with VLC Video Player)

This is a 10 minute file about a Transition group in Melbourne, Australia: Permablitz

Their focus is easy to summarise: Edible backgardening.

In the video, Richard Heinberg provides a great quick introduction to Peak Oil and how that relates to food gardening in our backgardens. The Melbourne group simply gets people together to have fun learning how suburban permaculture systems work.

http://www.permablitz.com/

(Via Transition Network News)

John Beddington, the UK Chief Scientist, is now publically warning us about the issues Heinberg writes about. The BBC reports:

Growing world population will cause a “perfect storm” of food, energy and water shortages by 2030, the UK government chief scientist has warned.

The key word in that sentence for me is “by.” That is, we are going to have food, energy and water shortages within the next 20 years. Beddington sadly suggests a switch to permaculture without naming it as such:

We need more disease-resistant and pest-resistant plants and better practices, better harvesting procedures.

And this little fact at the end of the article is very interesting:

Prof Beddington is chairing a subgroup of a new Cabinet Office task force set up to tackle food security.

At the moment (and only for a few days) there is a little iPlayer video half way down the page, for 5 minutes. Essential viewing, and the audio is available here: MP3 Download

There was also a 7 minute radio interview on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme at 07:50am on Thursday 19th March 2009. MP3 Download

The Telegraph and The Guardian have published similar articles.

(Via Transition Culture)

(Original “Peak Moment” page)

David Holmgren is one of the co-originators of Permaculture, and this recent 25-minute video of him talking about the possible effects of permaculture is positive and thoughtful.