Education

If an alien species were to visit our school cafeterias at lunchtime, it might conclude that we don’t value the health and well-being of the most vulnerable members of our society—our developing children. Not only are our youth daily served low-quality processed products, they are inculcated, at a young age, to the factory-farm model at the heart of our worst environmental problems, namely water pollution, soil erosion, global climate change and fossil fuel depletion.

Engaging in the reskilling/skillsharing aspect of transition has revolutionised my whole attitude towards life. As I say, I didn't really notice it at first. It's been cumulative and all-pervasive. Paying attention to my own skills and those of fellows-in-transition, which are dismissed or ignored in the mainstream discourse: the ability to hold a meeting where everyone's included; communicating the experience of downshifting; learning to cook and eat differently; making space so solutions can emerge in the face of energy and financial constraints, using a chainsaw, making a rocket stove at the Transition Camp!

Urban farmer. Heirloom. Food security. Methane digester. These are just a few of the terms you'll find in the Lexicon of Sustainability, a series of portraits that speak the language of a growing movement.

Scientists seem to be discovering that they can't stick to the old ways any longer. After all, the quality of a paper doesn't reside on the seal of a commercial editor, it is guaranteed by the peer reviewing process. And scientists are doing peer reviewing, not editors. So, scientists tend to publish more and more in "open access journals", which just didn't exist up to not long ago. There is now an "open science movement", and a movement to boycott Elsevier, singled out among the many scientific editors as an especially bad one.

And, as we're always saying here at Transition Voice, however compelling evidence may be in a white paper, chart, graph, or long lecture, if it doesn't succeed in communicating the problem and possible solutions to the problem in a way that engages people, it can end up being of little use except in obscure research or as a footnote somewhere. That's why we were excited to review a new documentary out of the UK, The Crisis of Civilization, by filmmaker Dean Puckett. In the trailer it looked like the newest, most accessible peak oil film since The End of Suburbia. And once we watched the film, we weren't disappointed.

How appropriate then that we kick off this new way of working by taking a closer look at the concept of skillshare. It is the idea that you can learn anything from anybody, anywhere. No need for teachers or schools, just the willingness to share what you know and can do, with others, who will likewise share their skills with you. The most useful things I know were learned this way; my mum showed me how to cook, a friend explained the correct way to use a hammer and saw, another showed me how to split firewood using minimum effort. It's how I learned to fish, grow vegetables, knit a jumper, ride a horse, bake bread, sharpen a knife, fly a kite and wash with a single cup of water.

President Obama's instinct that staying in school is better than dropping out altogether is absolutely correct. It's just that if we're going to compel kids to stay in school, we need to make their schooling compelling.

In the 1990s, Richard J. Jackson had an epiphany while driving on the car-choked Buford Highway, on his way to his job at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta "I realized that the major threat was how we had built America," he says. Dr. Jackson, who is now a professor and chair of environmental health sciences at the University of California at Los Angeles's School of Public Health, has since become one of the leading voices calling for better urban design for the sake of good health.

So it’s really quite simple. The assumption to which marketing students (and just about every participant in the economy) submit is this:

More sales (through more marketing) = more money = more consumption of goods and services = better lives.

"The drivers of climate change are embedded in our global culture. No amount of haggling will address these real problems without deep and dramatic cultural change. That change can be positive, however, and eCOOLnomics explores the potential transition paths and modalities."

- The Networked Era: An Interview with Michael Nielsen
- New Bill Would Put Taxpayer-Funded Science Behind Pay Walls
- The writer who made millions by self-publishing online

The Riot 4 Austerity 90% Emissions Reduction Project challenges participants to cut their negative environmental impact in seven different categories: transportation energy, electricity, other fuels (i.e. natural gas for heating), water, garbage, food, and consumer goods. As individuals, we may not have "much" impact, but the point is to model these positive changes for others, share results and tips, and work together to make the changes needed for society to follow. Hopefully, the changes each family makes will not only result in less environmental harm but monetary savings, greater life satisfaction, and improved health through more exercise and better food. Cutting consumption is not only good for the environment, but also helps prepare us for a world of declining energy and resource availability.

Many people fail to properly differentiate between energy forms and related energy systems. One result is that they can be misled regarding solutions to such concerns as “the energy crisis,” “energy security,” or “dependence on foreign oil.” This not only leads to unrealistic thinking but poor public policy. Consider three major energy forms and their differentiation.

This hefty book from a small publisher (and with an even smaller marketing budget) has sold over 10,000 copies, and its chapters have been downloaded over 20,000 times. It's in classrooms at over 25 different colleges across the United States. People often ask what the story is behind the book. So here it is.

Unlike the plethora of other calls to "Occupy!" specific locations with your presence, the phrase "Occupy Educated" is not a call to Be Somewhere, it's a call to Be Something.