Free 30-Minute Presentation on Transition Towns
By Michael Brownlee
"The Transition Town movement is the most positive, the most practical, the most inclusive
and the most hopeful social movement of our time.
It is our path through peak oil,
climate change
and economic uncertainty."
Michael Brownlee
Founding Team Member of Transition Network USA
Co-Founder of Transition Boulder
Last November (2008), Michael Brownlee gave a keynote address at an energy conference in Michigan that Becky and I attended. He gave this 30-minute address over the internet while he was sitting in Sandpoint, Idaho, attending the first US Transition Town unleashing. The talk he gave was the highlight of the Michigan conference (according to many) as the message was so hopeful. While Michael was speaking, his PowerPoint slides were being simultaneously shown.
Below we have posted an audio recording of this presentation as well as the slides. You may download and scroll through them yourself while listening to the recording.
Click below for the slides that go with the audio if you like. .PDF File(4MB)
Suggestion for easy opening, listening and viewing.
Right-click on the slides (.PDF can be opened on almost all computers). You will get a menu. Left click on something like "Open in new window" or "Open in new tab" (my preference) . While it begins to download, come back to this page and right-click on the audio file, opening it in another window or tab as well. This way you can download both at the same time and once available, move back and forth from one window to the next... from the recording (to pause or start)... and back to the slides, with ease. Please Note: These are large files and will take a few minutes to open depending on your internet speed.
Cheerful disclaimer about Transition! As it appears on the website of Rob Hopkins and the Transition Network UK
Just in case you were under the impression that Transition is a process defined by people who have all the answers, you need to be aware of a key fact.
We truly don't know if this will work. Transition is a social experiment on a massive scale.
What we are convinced of is this:
if we wait for the governments, it'll be too little, too late
if we act as individuals, it'll be too little
but if we act as communities, it might just be enough, just in time.
Everything that you read on this site is the result of real work undertaken in the real world with community engagement at its heart. There's not an ivory tower in sight, no professors in musty oak-paneled studies churning out erudite papers, no slavish adherence to a model carved in stone.
This site, just like the transition model, is brought to you by people who are actively engaged in transition in a community. People who are learning by doing - and learning all the time. People who understand that we can't sit back and wait for someone else to do the work. People like you, perhaps...!
Final point Just to weave the climate change and peak oil situations together...
Climate change makes this carbon reduction transition essential
Peak oil makes it inevitable
Transition initiatives make it feasible, viable and attractive (as far we can tell so far...)
