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Original Content at https://www.opednews.com/Podcast/Rob-Hopkins-Transition-To-by-Rob-Kall-Hydrocarbon_Localization_Oil_Transition-Towns-151209-628.html (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). |
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December 9, 2015
Rob Hopkins: Transition Towns #relocalization and Local Resilience
By Rob Kall
Rob Hopkins, a Brit, is the author of The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience, and he’s really considered just about the leader of the Transition Town movement.
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Rob: So my goal is to introduce my listeners and readers to Transition Town and what they're about. Could you kind of give an overview and describe what you're doing and what they're about?
RH: Well, I suppose the underpinning recognition is that we are nearing or at the end of the age of cheap oil and although that is made possible we are also at a point in history where our dependency on cheap fossil fuels has pushed the global biosphere to the edge of irreversible collapse, and perhaps maybe that's a good moment to take stock and wonder if we could maybe do things any better. And so Transition really starts with the understanding that we need to plan proactively for where we move forward, and we need to base that on asking some realistic questions.
So if we base our planning for the future on the idea that in 20 years' time we'll have more cheap fossil fuels than today, that we'll have more economic growth than today, that we'll have access to more stuff than we have today, then I think those are deeply flawed and dangerous assumptions. And perhaps we might look at a more realistic base...a set of assumptions based on using less and trying to break our addiction to cheap hydrocarbons with considerable urgency so Transition's starting point is actually...what that looks like in practice is something which is driven from the grassroots, and which is based on the idea that it's just a nonsense. For example, the UK sends one and a half million kilos of potatoes to Germany while at the same time it's important one and a half million kilos of potatoes from Germany, and that actually maybe if we...if our settlements were able to produce as much of their own needs as they could, not become self-sufficient but become more resilient in terms of the supply of basics, mostly energy, food and building materials for starters...that actually rather than that being some sort of retreat backwards, that it actually holds the potential for the kind of economic regeneration that our communities need -- they could leave us more skilled, better connected, fitter, healthier and so on....and happier, ultimately, I think. So this is really about whether we can see the climate crisis, the energy challenges that we face as an opportunity rather than a crisis, and shift our focus from focusing on probabilities, focusing upon possibilities and what we can create out of this time.
Authors Bio:
Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.
Check out his platform at RobKall.com
He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity
He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com
more detailed bio:
Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.
Rob Kall's Bottom Up Radio Show: Over 400 podcasts are archived for downloading here, or can be accessed from iTunes. Or check out my Youtube Channel
Rob Kall/OpEdNews Bottom Up YouTube video channel
Rob was published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com for several years.
Rob is, with Opednews.com the first media winner of the Pillar Award for supporting Whistleblowers and the first amendment.
To learn more about Rob and OpEdNews.com, check out A Voice For Truth - ROB KALL | OM Times Magazine and this article.
For Rob's work in non-political realms mostly before 2000, see his C.V.. and here's an article on the Storycon Summit Meeting he founded and organized for eight years.
Press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party's Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table
Talk Nation Radio interview by David Swanson: Rob Kall on Bottom-Up Governance June, 2017Here is a one hour radio interview where Rob was a guest- on Envision This, and here is the transcript..
To watch Rob having a lively conversation with John Conyers, then Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here. Watch Rob speaking on Bottom up economics at the Occupy G8 Economic Summit, here.
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His quotes are here
Rob's articles express his personal opinion, not the opinion of this website.
Join the conversation:
On facebook at Rob Kall's Bottom-up The Connection Revolution
and at Google Groups listserve Bottom-up Top-down conversation