So what happens when things fall apart? One group wondering this is Transition Towns. Quoting one group from Southend on Sea:

“by shifting our mind-set we can actually recognise the coming post-cheap oil era as an opportunity rather than a threat, and design the future low carbon age to be thriving, resilient and abundant — somewhere much better to live than our current alienated consumer culture based on greed, war and the myth of perpetual growth”

This episode I’m talking with Bruce Anderson of Transition Towns.

2:00 Worked for Auditor General on Sustainability 3:21 Professionally involved in seeing the problem: NZ making a terrible mess of its natural advantages 6:45 How do you descend from a world of fossil fuels 8:15 Peak Oil – a nice problem to have 8:50 Transition Towns: Creating alternative communities 9:20 How do we build resilience 10:40 Towns retooled 11:40 Sustainable business 12:20 Capitalism designed to channel wealth into a small number of hands 12:50 Cough Underlying narratives about the best wa to function being plugging into your phone 15:05 BBC’s Century of the Self 17:30 The experience of working at the Reserve Bank – their idea of diversity. 18:50 Communism and Christianity 19:05 Anarcho-syndicalist The view from inside the system, Rosa Luxomberg 24:00 Ursula Le Guin quote from the book 26:00 Social Calculus based on something different (26:25 – big cough) 29:00 LeGuin’s views on gender 31:00 The reality of the world is that change is a constant (32:40) big cough Change Requires Stability (quote?) 36:00 Resilience = Community 41:10 The unifying effect of technology 43:20 – long section from bruce that i missed Wikipedia Model VS Google 46:40 VW teaching us to distrust corporates Shoestring organisations Novara Media Open Source software, communal spirit 35:25 Fully Automated Luxury Communism 49:00 Downside of people being freed from work 49:30 Misleading Employment statistics 50:35 Virginia: 5% umemployment, 30% deep poverty 52:50 Loss of trust in government statistics around employment and the environment 53:25 The silencing of science, government departments becoming hostage to industry – the very long spoon 57:25 CMA – the government required to promote petroleum 1:00:00 Swift: Second book of Gulliver’s Travels 1:01:04 Pernicious Vermin 1:02:24 Ishmael – the leavers and the takers 1:04:00 Indigenous populations and alternative world views. 1:05:35 The Renaissance and it’s path to Extractivism 1:10:05 Bruce’s book

Sorry for the lateness of this episode, it’s been a busy time. Not sure where to next, but there’s an awful lot to choose from.

Bruce’s writings ‘A fence sitter’s manifesto’ and ‘A place to stand’ can be found on his blog ‘It’s time to jump’.