Earth Equity News

Looking into the Future, Cheerfully. By Harriet Green, Guardian, May 2, 2008. “For three years, my husband has talked about taking to the hills. About buying a small holding… where, with our four-year-old daughter, we can safely survive the coming storm - famine, pestilence and a total breakdown of society. I would wait for his lectures to finish, then return to my own interests. I had no time for the end of civilization… But recently, I’ve wavered… This week, the details got scarier. The UN warned of a global food crisis, like a ‘silent tsunami’, while OPEC predicts that oil, which broke through $100 a barrel for the first time a few weeks ago, may soon top $200. In the course of an idle conversation at work last week, a colleague casually revealed that he keeps a supply of tinned food in his bedroom ‘just in case’…. [But ‘Transition town’ movement founder Rob] Hopkins recently published a manual, The Transition Handbook, a startlingly cheerful book that gives some idea as to how transition initiatives work - from the very early stages, in which groups raise awareness through film screenings and talks, to the later development of local food networks and even the launch of local currencies. The movement uses 12 steps, rather like Alcoholics Anonymous, to wean us off our dangerous addiction to oil.”