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Transition film to be available for 48 hours Friday and Saturday
Transition Culture
Your Chance to See ‘In Transition’, the emerging plans for its release, as well as an appeal for help in finishing it…
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As you know, we have been making a film about Transition, called ‘In Transition’, which was previewed at the Transition Network conference to a standing ovation, and which we had, unsuccessfully, tried to show online simultaneous to the conference screening. Now, after much technical fiddling about, we can tell you when and where you can see it, and unveil the plans for its release. So, you will be able to watch the film online at any time on Friday 12th and Saturday 13th June 2009 (BST). We are running it over two days so as many people get a chance to fit in watching it around their busy lives as possible, one week day and one weekend day. We think you’re going to rather like it… There will be several stages to the release of ‘In Transition’, which are set out below…

Stage 1. The Online Preview.

The exact url. of where to find the film will be posted here, at Transition Culture, on the evening of Thursday 11th 2009 (BST). The film will then remain online until early Sunday morning, when it will be taken down, … this means that it’s available for a full 48 hours in all timezones. That is, from New Zealand’s midnight Thursday 11th to Alaska’s midnight Sat 13th. The version of the film that will be available is not the final version, as there are still a few tweaks to make, and one final section to add to it, but it is nearly there, and we can’t keep you waiting any longer. During those two days you will be able to watch it as many times as you like, and leave your thoughts and comments. Tell your friends!
(8 June 2009)

Daryl Hannah: the joy of living 'on the edge of civilisation'
Gaby Wood, The Observer
Mermaid, android, one-eyed psychopathic killer ... Daryl Hannah's startling performances mean she is no stranger to publicity. But it is as an environmentalist that she has attracted the biggest headlines. Gaby Wood joins her in Colorado to talk about the joy of living 'on the edge of civilisation'
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Some people think Daryl Hannah is a little nuts. In fact, she's been considered to be varying degrees of nuts since she was a small child. I am not a doctor, but after spending an unintentionally crazy day with her, I have come to the conclusion that she is one of the most quick-witted and beguilingly eccentric people I have ever met.

... Hannah, who is now 48, looks remarkably as she did when the world first saw her in films of the 1980s - Blade Runner, Splash, Roxanne, Wall Street, Steel Magnolias. She's still wispy haired and wafty voiced, very long and very lean (she tells me she did so much ballet as a kid that she can wrap her legs around her neck without stretching). Her eyes are pale blue, with a fleck of yellow that looks as though it's been imported from another species. And while she is still acting, her main occupation these days might best be described as being the good fairy of the biosphere.

She divides her time between California and Colorado, and in both places she lives "off the grid", with her own sources of water and power. Her homes are powered by solar panels, her toilets are compost, her cars run on leftover grease from fast-food restaurants. One of them a Chevrolet El Camino pick-up painted a Batman-esque matt black has become something of a signature. She grows her own food and brings what she can't eat to a farmers' market; she keeps bees and makes honey, she knits, she sells teepees on her website. She gets excited about battery storage and new designs for low-profile wind turbines ("I'm a little bit of a nerd," she admits). She wears recycled necklaces made of boiled-down shotgun casings. She has more than 20 animals - horses, alpacas, chickens, dogs, cows - all of which are rescues.

... Well, I suggest, if you really want to help, don't you have to focus? "No, I don't think so," Hannah argues. "You know, a lot of people say: 'What are you? An environmentalist? A humanitarian? We're confused.' They want to put you in a little box. They don't understand unless you pick one thing and that's your thing - unless you say: 'I'm fighting for all shoes to be vegan shoes.' I just can't work that way - it's all interconnected to me, and what I'd like to do is help people understand that interconnection - that if you buy a T-shirt from a chainstore, it may have been made with sweat-shop labour, it may have been made by little kids, it definitely took more than nine years of drinking water to make that T-shirt, and it probably was processed with a whole bunch of chemicals as well. That's sort of what my challenge is - to help people understand that everything you do, or everything you don't do, has an effect."
(7 June 2009)

Rebooting Urban Watersheds
Jeremy Miller, High Country News
Activists restore blighted Bay Area creeks -- and impoverished communities
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... Most city residents give little thought to the creeks that run through culverts or along the scraggy margins at the edge of town. But restorationists like Bradt see these neglected waterways as key indicators for urban sustainability. In the Bay Area, as in other urban areas across the country, pollution, aging stormwater infrastructure and sprawl have increased the strain on nearly all of the city's waterways. To call the creeks in and around North Richmond "polluted," however, is to put it mildly. These creeks are dumping grounds.

A strong countercurrent of activism and research around water in the region has kept the plight of these streams in the public eye. In the mid-'70s and '80s, scientists and activists, many from neighboring Berkeley, turned their attention toward the neglected creeks and rivers in their own cities. Their work sparked the nation's first grassroots attempts to restore urban streams and protect community watersheds. In 1985, Berkeley restorationists achieved perhaps their most symbolic victory. They "daylighted" a buried stretch of Strawberry Creek, exhuming it from pipes and restoring it to a channel on the surface.

A 1987 amendment to the Clean Water Act forced local governments to curb urban runoff. To help cities meet the new requirements, watershed protection groups cropped up throughout the state and country, inspired by what was happening in the Bay Area. More than 50 such groups now operate in the East Bay counties of Alameda and Contra Costa alone. These groups have done more than just educate the public; they've marshaled the manpower for small restoration projects. Yet financial and logistical constraints have generally confined most urban creek restorations to wealthier communities, such as Los Gatos, San Luis Obispo and Pasadena.

Meanwhile, in the East Bay's poor industrial communities, progress has come in fits and starts.
(1 June 2009)

The eco evangelist
Xan Rice, The Observer
While recovering from a brain haemorrhage, Craig Sorley had an epiphany – to spread the environmental word using the Bible. He took his green gospel to Kenya – now crop yields are up, the monkeys are back and even the Church is won over
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... Sorley is a self-proclaimed environmental missionary. He represents the Baptist General Conference on the "conservative side of the evangelical movement" in the US. For many (perhaps most) of his church colleagues back home, the environment barely registers on the scale of challenges facing the world today. Climate change is still widely regarded as a myth, while creationism trumps evolution.

But for Sorley, 41, who discovered his calling after being diagnosed with a potentially fatal brain tumour two decades ago, global warming, environmental degradation and food and water shortages are some of the greatest threats to mankind today, particularly in the developing world. An easy-going, mild-mannered man who signs off his emails with "Blessings", Sorley becomes exasperated when trying to explain his church's reluctance to recognise the urgent need to protect God's creation.
"The deeply embedded view is that Christ is returning soon, so why should we care for the environment? Well, what if I had a child with leukaemia and I said to my wife, 'We don't need to give him food because he's going to die anyway'? Man, it's the same thing!"

In Kenya, where Sorley has chosen to test his pioneering mission work, it is clear that the natural resources are dying. A fast-growing population is putting huge pressure on both wildlife and the land. In April, a study revealed losses of hoofed animals such as giraffe, warthog and hartebeest of up to 95% in the famous Masai Mara reserve between 1979 and 2002, mainly due to human settlement around the park.
(7 June 2009)

Post-Consumerism: Emerging Needs and Market Opportunities
Tamara Giltsoff, PSFK
In the first part of my article on Post Consumerism, I touched on the drivers of the “Citizen Renaissance,” as Jules Peck coins it. My hypothesis is that there are emerging citizen values, and a shift away from consumerism towards citizens who are actively engaged in behaviors of business, the decisions of government and of involved in communities of interest. In this second part, I attempt to outline the market need and opportunity, and some examples that attempt to address post consumerism. The insight, indicators and market needs of the post consumer era are outlined: [CHART]

... The challenge for markets, and marketing, is to look beyond the current product-obsessed industrial paradigm of value-creation and selling ‘consumption as a way of life’ to understand new types of ‘citizen needs’ and ways of generating value and loyal relationships with customers/stakeholders. It provides an opportunity for start-ups, brands or even NGOs to influence civilization or provide tools for civilization to do the influencing and local-problem solving itself—outsourcing innovation to local communities and people.

Post-consumer marketing and innovation is inherently more democratic and grassroots because it engages people in the decision-making or value-creation (sometimes people are the product or service).

... Examples of platforms or initiatives already in action that are engaging citizen around issues such as climate change, government decision-making and rescue plans, or grass-roots innovation:

• Transition Towns, a platform for UK communities to come together and respond to challenges of Peak Oil and Climate Change. The movement is spreading globally.
• US Skunkworks for Innovation, a local innovation fund managed by US Corporation for National and Community Service to address global issues with grass-roots solutions. This sort of fund would likely support things like Transition Towns.
(10 June 2009)