Pat Murphy

Curtailers are different from consumers or conservers, consumers being those who are blithely devouring and polluting the planet and conservers being those who want to pull back a bit but avoid making big changes in the way they live. Being a curtailer in America is not a popular occupation or avocation. The very use of the word in ordinary conversation typically elicits a response that is one of shock or a low level of hostility.

To understand the Transition Movement requires understanding the significance and broadness of the word resilience as the movement uses it. It may be that many Transition supporters are assuming the common definition and are content with it, unaware of the more complex meanings. If so, this could be problematic later.

“Your EDAP should feel more like a holiday brochure, presenting a localized, low-energy world in such an enticing way that anyone reading it will feel their life utterly bereft if they don’t dedicate the rest of their lives towards its realization.” Does the Totnes EDAP meet this criterion? Does it feel like a holiday brochure? Is it an adequate model for the changes needed in a community? Will the “holiday brochure” somehow be developed into a practical action plan? This is still unclear.

Reviewing the numbers on the Transition U.S. and U.K. sites is a useful indicator about its future growth and just how “viral” it is. Brownlee’s comment led me to peruse these sites. They show an initial increasing rate of growth and then a decelerating rate of growth

Sometimes it seems as if little is happening and then suddenly a major shift occurs. This seems true of the Department of Energy (DOE) when it comes to energy use in buildings. The DOE is beginning to take big strides in supporting the reduction of energy use in existing buildings. Retrofit costs are still high and funding difficult to obtain but this should change over the next year. The nation’s consciousness is moving away from new green buildings to impressive energy retrofits of the existing stock.

It was a little surprising to have our popular work “The Power of Community” tied together with Nick Griffin, the head of Britain’s neo-fascist British Nationalist Party and David Korten, whose book The Great Turning, John characterizes as “among the most antidemocratic books of recent years’.