Transition Bedford

In this weeks Times & Citizen i wrote an article about communities and their response to climate change and peak oil. In the article the all important question was posed;

“what will the Borough of Bedford look like in 2020 as a low carbon, sustainable and vibrant town?”

During 2010 Transition Bedford will be holding several events (the first will be at the Bunyan Museum on the 15th of May – sign up to the mailing list for details) that aim to engage local people around creating a vision for the future of Bedford. Based around the Energy Descent Action Planning method used by Transition groups across the globe, we aim to create a vision and the backcast to the present and create an action plan of how we can deliver the vision.

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Hi
Amnesty International Bedford group will be having a stall in Bedford town centre next Saturday 16th from mid day. Please do come and see us! Ruth

Tony Juniper

I am most pleased to announce that on Wednesday 20 January, at 6pm UK/1pm EST, I will be hosting campaigner, writer, sustainability adviser and one of the UK’s best known environmentalists, Tony Juniper, on the special 1st anniversary edition of my radio show, my radio show Lynn Serafinn’s Garden of the Soul

A dynamic and inspiring speaker, and often referred to as an “Eco Hero”, Tony has worked for the last 25 years for change toward a more sustainable society at local, national and international levels. Amongst his almost endless list of personal and professional experiences, he has served as Vice-Chair of Friends of the Earth International, and is currently Special Adviser to the Prince of Wales Rainforests Project, Editor-in-Chief of National Geographic’s new Green Magazine supplement, and is the Green Party Parliamentary candidate for Cambridge, England.

On this very special anniversary edition, Tony and I will discuss his thesis of “Harmony” as taken from the upcoming book of the same name he is currently writing with Prince Charles and Ian Skelly, and is scheduled for publication by Harper Collins in autumn 2010. Tony will tell us about the present state of environmentalism, what we’ve achieved and not achieved, and what’s next for humanity at this time in history, and explain how the solutions to the ecological and economic problems we now face at a planetary level are not due so much to our political, technological or corporate systems, but rather to the fundamental fact that we as a culture have become disconnected from the Earth, and are illiterate as to how nature works and how we as humans fit into the natural order on a cosmological and spiritual level.

On the air, Tony will offer us some easy, joyful and practical ways to re-engage and reconnect with our planet and re-establish the true, holistic harmony that is meant to sing within every human soul.

You absolutely will NOT want to miss this most important and truly inspiring show.

Listeners can listen LIVE or “on demand” any time at http://ow.ly/UvBM

Another upcoming guest of interest to Transition Town followers and other “green” folks is Dr Leo Sharashkin, translator/editor of the “Ringing Cedars” (aka Anastasia)  book  series that is creating a wide-spread “return to the Earth” movement in Europe. That show is coming Wednesday 24 February.

To be sure you don’t miss either of these broadcasts, subscribe to the show either via iTunes, or mark it as a favourite on Blog Talk Radio.

Just look for “Lynn Serafinn’s Garden of the Soul”
http://blogtalkradio.com/Lynn-Serafinn

There is a growing wealth of great long and short films which cover a range of peak oil and climate change issues. Two recent cinema released films which maybe worth viewing by Transition Bedford members are “There will be Blood” an oil evolution film by Paul Thomas Anderson which has recently been described as the film of the noughties by the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw and “a tragic parable of man’s dysfunctional dependence upon oil: the once glorious lubricant of commercial triumph and technological innovation, and now the dwindling lifeblood of our material prosperity, the unacknowledged driving force of our military conflicts, and even the cause of a coming ecological catastrophe” The second more hopeful film is “Fuel” . The Wikipedia page comments that “Most Americans know we’ve got a problem: an addiction to oil that taxes the environment, entangles us in costly foreign policies, and threatens the nation’s long-term stability. But few are informed or empowered enough to do much about it. Enter Josh Tickell, an expert young activist who, driven by his own emotionally charged motives, shuttles us on a revelatory, whirlwind journey to unravel this addiction—from its historical origins to political constructs that support it, to alternatives available now and the steps we can take to change things.”

This leads me to suggest that we should think about recording/filming Bedford’s transition journey. Anyone?