Transition Towns is a movement that began in the UK with the aim of changing urban development and urban lifestyles "from oil dependence to local resilience".  The movement is built on the assumption that the age of fossil fuels and everything that depends on oil is coming to an end, and that the way to the future is to become more reliant on local and regional networks and low-carbon technology.  The website for Transition Aotearoa (http://transitionaotearoa.org.nz/ ) brings people together "out of a desire to explore how we - and our communities - can respond to the twin challenges of climate change and peak oil."

Around the world prparations are already underway for the next great global environmental conference.  Rio+20 is the name of a conference to be held in 2012 to take stock of the changes and progress that has been made since the Earth Summit in Rio de Janiero in 1992.

http://www.earthsummit2012.org/index.php/news/331-uncsd-

One of the challenges of the academic world is the many and varied styles of writing - from business-like and down-to-earth, to highly abstract, intense, long-winded or incomprehensible to the average reader of the English language.  It must be said - even your lecturers find some of the readings obscure, confusing or downright mysterious.  They sometimes have difficulty understanding the meaning of what their colleagues are trying to say, as the linked article demonstrates: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_n24_v12/ai_18400885/