In Transition 2.0 is an inspirational immersion in the Transition movement , gathering stories from around the world of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. You’ll hear about communities printing their own money, growing food everywhere, localising their economies and setting up community power stations. It’s an idea that has gone viral, a social experiment that is about...
Founder of the Transition Network spreading throughout the world, Rob Hopkins talks about Transition Town Totnes and moving towards a post-peak oil society. His book The Transition Handbook gives an account of the founding of Transition Town Totnes, and the global spread of Transition towns. He shows you how to start the Transition process in your community, and why it is important that...
One response to the global crisis that is gaining enthusiastic momentum is the Transition Towns movement. Jennifer Gray, a pioneer in the Transition Initiative in the UK and cofounder of Transition US, describes it as “a community-led response to the twin crises of peak oil and climate change. It’s … positive, pro-active [and] engages the whole community in building resilience into their...
What is it about transition that is so cool? Well partially it's the attitude. As Isabela Menezes of Transition Granja Viana says in the video, "It's spreading with such speed primarily because it's a positive movement. A movement which brings sadness and suffering isn't sustainable." It's a simple idea, but it's so powerful, so true.
A feature length documentary by Peter Joseph that presents the case for a needed transition out of the current socioeconomic monetary paradigm which governs the entire world society. The film intends to transcend the issues of cultural relativism and traditional ideology and move to relate the core, empirical life ground attributes of human and social survival, extrapolating those...
In South Africa there are about 2,5 million households without electricity. First Light - takes a look at a Rural Solar Initiative in KZN South Africa, where 50 impoverished households are fitted with solar lighting kits, many of them receiving electricity for the very first time.
Reaching out to young people is especially critical at this time. With mounting psycho-social stress attributed to an increasingly uncertain future, young people are going to need support grappling with the social effects of so many convergent crises. The world is rife with uncertainty about our fate on the planet. Declining ecosystems and biodiversity, a quickly destabilizing climate and an...
Ted Trainer is one of the wisest, boldest, and most dedicated advocates of The Simpler Way. In 2010 he published a book called, The Transition to a Sustainable and Just World , and I have to say that it is one of the best books I have ever read in my life. If you only have time to read one more book in your life, consider reading this one. It speaks directly to our global situation and...
This is an 18 part 90 minute intro to permaculture webinar with Bill Wilson of Midwest Permaculture in Illinois. Bill has been teaching permaculture for 6 years. He holds 2 PDC Certificates and has Advanced Training in Permaculture Design and in teaching Permaculture. He took his Permaculture Teacher Training with Jude Hobbs of the Permaculture Research Institute U.S. She was trained by...
Will you survive the transition of human industrial civilization happening now due to peak oil and climate change? Can you see the forest for the trees, the earth for the dream, the universe for the seed? Anima Mundi is an innovative documentary about the planetary animal called Gaia and the human animal we deny, we deny at our own peril, yet a peril that is perfect in design.
On March 1st 2010 Transition Heathrow members swooped on an abandoned market garden site in Sipson; one of the villages to be completely tarmacked to make way for a third runway at Heathrow Airport, London.
Peak oil educator and author Richard Heinberg discusses what communities can do to prepare for peak oil. He covers transportation, including a novel ride-sharing scheme, assessing municipal vulnerabilities, local food and energy production, as well as the Hirsch report's conclusion that 20 years will be needed to make an energy transition -- very possibly more time than we have.
Rob Hopkins reminds us that the oil our world depends on is steadily running out. He proposes a unique solution to this problem -- the Transition response, where we prepare ourselves for life without oil and sacrifice our luxuries to build systems and communities that are completely independent of fossil fuels. This talk was recorded in November 2009. TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the...
Fossil fuels have powered human growth and ingenuity for centuries. Now that we're reaching the end of cheap and abundant oil and coal supplies, we're in for an exciting ride. While there's a real risk that we'll fall off a cliff, there's still time to control our transition to a post-carbon future. A deeper analysis of the crises we face, and possible solutions we can work on right now can be...
The Sierra Club Beyond Oil Campaign aims to block the most dangerous oil projects (Keystone XL, Enbridge Gateway, Trailbreaker pipelines) and revoke the oil industry's license to operate above the law and interfere with our transition to a clean energy future. Narrated by Joshua Jackson http://www.BeyondOil.org
Peak Moment 26: Author Guy Dauncey's lively, optimistic solutions for Peak Oil and climate crisis are do-able here and now. Conservation, efficiency, proven technologies, and emerging innovations will take us through this critical planetary energy transition.
Editor's Note: Fossil fuel companies have spent millions of dollars to get you to believe that a tax on *them* would really be a tax on *you.* Their money has bought mouthpieces to propagate their myths in both mainstream and alternative, anti-establishment outlets. But don't be fooled. We're already paying a tax on carbon , while they continue to profit in the billions. ...
Zeitgeist: Moving Forward, by director Peter Joseph, is a feature length documentary work which will present a case for a needed transition out of the current socioeconomic monetary paradigm which governs the entire world society. This subject matter will transcend the issues of cultural relativism and traditional ideology and move to relate the core, empirical "life ground" attributes of...
A biographical documentary on the late great comedian Bill Hicks and his career; in particular the censorship by Letterman that scarred it. Hosted by Janeane Garofalo, this documentary tells the story of Bill’s transition from a non-drinking, non-smoking, straight laced funny man, to a hard drinking, hard smoking, drug taking angry ranter, to the happy and finally, peaceful and...
The initial phase of the #OCCUPY movement was marked by several weeks of viral growth that peaked on October 15 with a global day of action. In the next phase, there will be a turn towards addressing the deep philosophical and strategic questions of how to escalate this democracy moment into a revolutionary people's movement. Across the nation there are clear signs that the #OCCUPY movement is...
In many spiritual circles, it is popular to talk about gratitude. Gratitude encompasses much more than a quickie “thank you.” It implies a much deeper state of mind, one that practitioners realize will position you to receive even greater abundance. Gratitude – together with all the volumes that have been written about it – is very much an ingredient of the gift...
This article proposes issuing Hour-denominated currency nationwide, to stimulate creative and ecological economies, make grants to community groups, and make interest-free loans. Twenty years ago I started printing money. Soon after, residents of Ithaca, New York, began exchanging colorful cash featuring children, waterfalls, trollies and bugs. Since then, millions of dollars worth of...
The worsening social pains of government austerity programs now intensify the vast social suffering caused by the crisis since 2007. Beyond this especially severe business cycle, longer-term trends show capitalist mega-corporations moving blue and white collar work to lower wage regions far from the former centers of capitalist production (US and western Europe especially). Profit and...
Josh Ryan-Collins speaks at the Urban Green Fair 're-thinking money' He starts off by describing the role of money in our society and how Transition Currencies such as the Brixton Pound are working to empower independent business and the local econ
Thank you, Scott Walker! And you, too, Charles and David Koch! Thanks for being so ham-handed in pushing your self-serving, virulently anti-union agenda on the schoolteachers, health care workers, park rangers and other public employees of Wisconsin. The Birchite billionaire Koch brothers and Walker, their gubernatorial hatchet man in the Badger State, have unwittingly done a tremendous...
In his student flat in Colchester, Jack Howe is staring intently into his computer screen. He is picking the team for Ebbsfleet United's FA Trophy Semi-Final match against Aldershot . Around the world 35,000 other fans are doing the same thing, because together, they own and manage the football club. If distributed networks of people can run complex organisations such as football clubs, what...
350 is the most important number in the world--it's what scientists say is the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Two years ago, after leading climatologists observed rapid ice melt in the Arctic and other frightening signs of climate change, they issued a series of studies showing that the planet faced both human and natural disaster if atmospheric concentrations of CO2...
2011 will likely be remembered in America as the year that the nation's youth finally started to wake up - all that bubbling knowledge of the world's problems, all the discontent and disillusion with our broken system finally burst into a flurry of creative action. Our understandings of the deep, structural flaws in our economy, politics and culture reached new heights of collective awareness...
‘Mindless, violent thugs, hell-bent on sowing chaos.’ That’s the kind of press anarchists often get. Uri Gordon provides a more sympathetic take on a growing yet still little understood political movement. I must have been eight or nine years old when I first heard the a-word. I don’t remember the context, but I do remember asking my mother what...
In a country dealing with debt, unending wars, worsening inequality, instability and social injustice, is it possible to bring about any real change? What's the path to contribute to the resolution of big, global problems on an individual level? Uncertainty equals possibility. We have a lot of disruption and a lot of uncertainty right now in the world, which means I suspect we have a...
The universe ultimately runs on an energy economy, not a market economy as the dominant economic ideology claims. Ecological damage is tied to energy use of any kind in our peculiar type of economy where the operating rules of the system require maximization of profits at any cost. Unrestrained profit maximization in turn impels the conversion of energy and raw materials into garbage as fast...
Consumerism has become the cornerstone of the post-industrial age. Using theories of evolutionary psychology to underpin a bold narrative of our times, this film takes a whirlwind tour through the “weird mental illness of consumerism”, showing how our insatiable appetite has driven us into “the jaws of the beast”. By the age of 20, the average westerner has seen one...
Revisiting American History Part 1 documents the conversion of the US into a monolithic financial empire as the Federal Reserve Act created a monopolized cartel of private interests, ie "Wall Street," which controls all money in the system. Revisiting Economics 101- Debt Discusses the power of debt-based money, embodied in the bond market, and its...
The Mark of Cain documents the fading art form and “language” of Russian criminal tattoos, formerly a forbidden topic in Russia. The now vanishing practice is seen as reflecting the transition of the broader Russian society. Filmed in some of Russia’s most notorious prisons, including the fabled White Swan , the interviews with prisoners, guards, and criminologists reveal...
Started in late 2008, The Zeitgeist Movement exists as the communication and "Activist Arm" of an organization called The Venus Project. The Venus Project was started many decades ago by Social/Industrial Designer Jacque Fresco and his life's work has been to address and overcome the lack of sustainability existing currently across the world and to work to incorporate new methods and values...
2012 was another big year for break-out films in the social change genre. With most of the bases covered for all of the major problems we're facing, more and more films this year focused on the solutions side of the equation, giving a voice to the uplifting stories of people working to realize their dreams of a thriving, sustainable world. For the films that focused on the...
The Federal Communications Commission is pushing a plan to gut its 30-year-old newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership ban . This proposal would allow one company to own a local paper, two TV stations and up to eight radio stations in a single market. Advocates of more media consolidation argue that allowing TV stations and newspapers to merge is critical to cutting costs and saving local...
Films For Action is a local and international organization dedicated to providing you with the information and perspectives essential to creating a more just, sustainable, and democratic society. Along these lines we are many things. We're community film screening organizers. We're an alternative news center. We're a problem/solutions learning library. We're an international and city-focused...
Before I begin, let me preface by acknowledging that I am not very good at sharing. While opinion may be as easily had from me as a dime for the bus, and while some may insist that that opinion is certainly worth no more than that, yet I insist. I am not very good at sharing. You will not find me lounging in some commune, ruminating on how best to either solve the current geopolitical...
Panglossian Disorder? What on earth is that? And how does it apply to peak oil? Inspired by the eternal optimist Dr. Pangloss from Voltaire’s Candide , psychologist Kathy McMahon, who calls herself the “peak shrink,” explains on Peak Moment TV (episode 199) that she invented Panglossian Disorder. It’s a condition of people who view the post peak oil future with...
The economic collapse of 2008 came at the end of three decades of stagnant wages that resulted in record household debt and made it apparent that the economy does not work for most Americans. Even during the collapse the rich got richer and the poor got poorer as trillions of dollars were transferred from the Treasury and the Federal Reserve to the economic elite who were most at fault for the...
As a filmmaker, it’s a rare privilege to stumble upon a completely unique story—in the case of my new documentary, Grasp the Nettle , a motley collection of land rights activists , squatting a three-acre piece of land in the heart of suburban London. With my video camera and microphone in hand, I decided to give up my job and flat to move in with a group of outsiders...
Rap News EP3: Al Gore finally accepts Lord Monckton's challenge to a highly uncivilized debate over the issue of anthropogenic climate change, as the Copenhagen Climate Conference - aka COP15 - approached and faded. 'Mother Earth in climate crisis' say indigenous people A statement by indigenous representatives from around the world describes ‘Mother Earth...
Shifting Power from Corporate Interests Requires us to be Expand Our Media Power We have the power to be the media, to spread the word and tell vast networks of people the truth. Media is being democratized and we can speed that process by recognizing we are the media. When you come to Freedom Plaza in October one of your roles will be to be the media. On Tuesday, October 13 th the...
Grundeinkommen - ein Kulturimpuls (The Basic Income - A Cultural Impulse) is a German film with subtitles in 10 languages that makes the case for a basic income for all citizens. Subtitles Note: To make the subtitles easier to read, we highly recommend clicking the "CC" icon, clicking on settings and then increasing the font size as well as setting the background color to black...
Gaza resident Asem Alnabeh posted a photo of his little sister Nesma earlier tonight in their home. Her name means breeze . "But she really isn't," her brother writes me. "she's very impish!" Nesma's house has lost electric power. There are fighter jets roaring over the house, and there are explosions never too far away -- not sufficiently far for the worried parents to attempt to calm...
BALANDI, Afghanistan — An American soldier opened fire on villagers near his base in southern Afghanistan Sunday and killed 16 civilians, according to President Hamid Karzai who called it an "assassination" and furiously demanded an explanation from Washington. Nine children and three women were among the dead. The killing spree deepened a crisis between U.S. forces and their Afghan...
Oo-de-lally !! After twelve months in development, the site has finally gone live! What started out as a simple plan a year ago to make a few minor visual tweaks and navigational changes ended up morphing into an over-the-top, head-to-toe redesign of the entire site. It's been an epic adventure of long nights, coffee, and dreams of the day we'll someday be done, but the day has arrived...
In Brief : There will be at least 100 million more Americans by 2050, and likely 150 million more. Yet the cities that will house them are so spatially and economically unstable that it is impossible to do much beyond superficial sustainability planning. One solution is to anchor and recycle wealth in communities, using locally owned businesses as bulwarks against uncontrolled economic forces...
“ Indeed, I asked myself, how could this happen, how could this happen in a country we helped liberate, in a city we helped save from destruction.” – Hilary Clinton, US Secretary of State [ 1 ] The recent armed attack on a lightly defended United States diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya that took the life of Ambassador Christopher Stevens is an alarming...