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."

In December last year the nations of the world met at Copenhagen to form global strategy and policy on ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and limit predicted global warming.  The meeting, known as the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference ( en.wiipedia.org.wiki/2009_United_Nations_Climate_Change_Conference) was a disaster, as developed and developing countries faught about fundamentals.

A reconvening of the Copenhagen talks is happening this year, from 29th November to 10 December, known as the 16th session of the conference of the Parties (COP 16) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate change.unfccc.int/2860.php  

In April this year the government announced new moves to encourage fish farming (MFish, 2010). 

According to Fisheries and Aquaculture Minister Phil Heatley, the government wants to, “free up the regulatory bottlenecks that have kept aquaculture planning in limbo. The industry has been stifled by inflexible rules stopping companies from investing in the sector."  He voiced support for the industry’s aim to achieve a three-fold increase from current levels to $1  billion in sales  by 2025.  "This is about growing the economy, creating more jobs and getting more people into work, particularly in the regions."

 The US government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has published its latest assessment of the state of the earth's climate.  It concludes: "A comprehensive review of key climate indicators confirms the world is warming and the past decade was the warmest on record" (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/bams-state-of-the-climate/ )

 Science for Environmental Policy, a publication of the European Commission reports a recent study which compares the levels of traffic pollution experienced by cyclists with those experienced by car drivers.  The study found that cyclists experience far higher rates of pollution than car drivers.  Reasons for the higher levels of pollution by cyclists included faster and deeper breathing, which increases the total amount of air inhaled, increased amounts of particulate matter reaching the lungs during exercise, and potentially longer times to complete a trip compared with car travellers.  The study found that cyclists breathed more frequently and took more deep breaths than car passengers and inhaled 400 to 900 per cent more emission particles than car passengers on the same route.

An editorial in the journal, Nature, highlights the issue of compensation for loss of ecosystem services when accidents occur such as the April 22^nd explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico.  The article cites ecological economist Robert Costanza at the University of Vermont in Burlington that the outpouring of oil into the gulf from the burst well-head has already cost an estimated a $34-billion to $670-billion for the loss of ecosystem services.  The article reports the suggestion by Costanza that oil and mining companies pay an up-front ‘assurance’ bond’ to cover the cost of damages in the event of accident or disaster.  In the case of BP, Costanza has suggested that the company would have had to pay a bond in the order of $50 billion to get permission to drill in the Gulf.

I enjoy reading predictions.  It’s interesting to read what people have predicted in the past and compare them against the present.  Take  Thomas Malthus for example, the Anglican parson who, in 1798, at the beginning of UK's industrial revolution, predicted that human population growth would be checked by famine, pestilence and disease.  The increase in population is limited by the means of subsistence, he argued (Malthus T.R. 1798. An essay on the principle of population).  

More recently, Donella and Dennis Meadows, Jorgen Randers and William Behrens III published Limits to Growth in 1972.  They predicted that by continuing on the path of business as usual, the world could not support present rates of growth for more than a few decades; that even with the most optimistic development of new technologies, resource limits and limits to the planet's capacity to absorb wastes would sooner or later come into play and reverse the population growth.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_M3B8h_KSk&feature=related

Transition towns is a grassroots movement of individuals and community groups that encourages action at the local and regional level to future-proof our towns and cities by reducing our dependence on fossil fuels.  It is a positive response to the doom and gloom scenarios of post-peak oil and global warming.  It encourages individuals to work  with others co-operatively to develop the life skills and activities that will help us to live well in a post-carbon world.

These two video clips give an introduction.  The first is by Jo Duffs as a member of the Sustainable Hawkes Bay Trust and the second is by Rob Hopkins, founder of the Transition movement.

This is an intelligent book that faces up to the impending challenges of global warming with clear-eyed courage.  Clive Hamilton is an Australian author who is Charles Sturt Professor of Public Ethics at the Centre for Applied Philsophy and Public Ethics at Australian National University. 

It is not a catalogue of the evidence for global warming and climate change; rather, it follows the philosophy that it is better to accept catastrophe than try to deny.  By denial and avoidance, we make the future worse than it needs to be.  This book accepts that we are already on an unavoidable trajectory to catastrophe; the CO2 already in the atmosphere will take thousands of years to dissipate, and bring about changes to climate and sea level rise that we cannot avoid.

Several more books I can recommend for Christmas are:

Peak Everything, by Richard Heinberg, 2007

Climate Wars, by Gwynne Dyer, 2008

The world is blue, by Sylvia Earle