Brisbane Transition Hub

Along with Energetic Communities, Food Connect, Permablitz Brisbane and Friends of the Earth, Brisbane, we are helping organise a visit of Nicole Foss to Brisbane on the evening of Sunday22nd April. Nicole will give a 1-2 hour presentation followed by a Q&A session with Illargi, her colleague from The Automatic Earth. [http://theautomaticearth.org/].  We are also going to announce Transition Kurilpa’s Energy Descent Action Plan process and inviting members of the Kurilpa Community to be involved.

Nicole has given over 20 presentations in recent months around Australia. The event on the Sunshine Coast attracted ~500 people. Hopefully the tour will give some momentum to alt-financial networking, just like the food relocalisation movement started getting more networked and organised around five or six years ago.

Nicole’s Message:

Of the three storms threatening our modern way of life – Peak Oil, Climate Change and the Economic Crisis – Nicole focuses her attention on the third less widely understood economic storm. Because, she says, the time scale with finance is so much shorter than changes in energy or climate.   In September 2008 we came within hours of the global banking system seizing up. That’s how quickly events can unfold. The situation is global and Nicole will explain why Australia is not immune.

Who is Nicole Foss:

Nicole Foss is one of those all too rare big picture people who both understands and can explain the links between the many converging factors now threatening our world. She has degrees in science and has worked in nuclear safety and grid technology.  She has two law degrees, acquired she said because ‘I was interested in the codification of power hierarchies and finding out how the world really works”. Her home is a farm run on Permaculture principles outside Ottawa Canada.

According to Nicole, “we must prepare right now for the onset of a period of deflation and depression. Many people are reluctant to make preparations until they see the roof on fire, but by then it will be too late to take action”.

Nicole recommends that we should endeavour to clear debt and remain financially liquid, in order to maintain freedom of action and gain some control over the essentials of our own existence: Building social capital in our own communities is urgent. There is no time to waste. The future is at our doorstep and it does not look like the past as we have known it.

http://theautomaticearth.org/

 
We are seeking volunteers to:
- help out (1-2hrs) with preparing or bringing along some food/snacks on Sunday afternoon.
- seek out donations of goods or services for a door raffle.
- promote the event through your friends and networks.

Hope to see you there

Transition Kurilpa

Dr Mills will also discuss what you can do, by showing where the best home energy savings can be found and how you can achieve a zero carbon home for zero cost.
We all want to use less energy without sitting in the dark, so whether you want to save the environment, save on your electricity bill, or both, our march meeting is sure to be illuminating.

Local community groups, not-for-profits and non-government organisations located in West End, South Brisbane, Highgate Hill and Hill End are being given the opportunity to receive free energy audits over the next 12 months from local group Transition Kurilpa.  The project will help participating organisations reduce their electricity bills and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as attain funds to install solar hot water or solar power.

Transition Kurilpa has been awarded $37 000 by Brisbane City Council to run the initial component their exciting new sustainable energy project, Energetic Kurilpa. Businesses and homeowners are sometimes given assistance from Government and other bodies, while the not-for-profit sector misses out.  The Energetic Kurilpa project will facilitate our local community and existing non-government organisations to gain the knowledge, tools and resources to reduce their energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, and to understand sustainable energy issues, thereby adapting to the oncoming impacts of climate change and peak oil.

To achieve this, Transition Kurilpa will work collaboratively with existing community organisations and businesses to offer a program of Level 1 or Level 2 energy audits[1], appropriate retrofits, forums, film screenings and workshops. Participants will also gain training in using audit kits and will be able to loan them during and after the project.  Emission reductions will be monitored and quantified.

More information found HERE

Contact us if you would like to be involved with Transition Kurilpa or participate in this project on info@transitionkurilpa.org.au.

Transition Kurilpa and the Brisbane Transition Hub are hosting an evening with:

David Holmgren, co-founder of permaculture.

JUNE 15th

South Leagues Club
Davies Park, West End (map)
DOORS OPEN 6PM FOR TASTING AND A 6.30PM START

David Holmgren on Future Scenarios

Cost $10/5

“The simultaneous onset of climate change and the peaking of global oil supply represent unprecedented challenges for human civilisation. In this workshop I will present an integrated approach to understanding the potential interaction between Climate Change and Peak Oil using a scenario planning model. In the process I introduce permaculture as a design system specifically evolved over the last 30 years to creatively respond to futures that involve progressively less and less available energy.”
Global oil peak has the potential to shake if not destroy the foundations of global industrial economy and culture. Climate change has the potential to rearrange the biosphere more radically than the last ice age. Each limits the effective options for responses to the other.
The strategies for mitigating the adverse effects and/or adapting to the consequences of Climate Change have mostly been considered and discussed in isolation from those relevant to Peak Oil. While awareness of Peak Oil, or at least energy crisis, is increasing, understanding of how these two problems might interact to generate quite different futures, is still at an early state.
FutureScenarios.org presents an integrated approach to understanding the potential interaction between Climate Change and Peak Oil using a scenario planning model. In the process I introduce permaculture as a design system specifically evolved over the last 30 years to creatively respond to futures that involve progressively less and less available energy.
David Holmgren, co-originator of the permaculture concept. May 2008
http://www.futurescenarios.org/
http://www.transitionbrisbane.org/transition-town-initiatives/transition-kurilpa/
http://www.transitionbrisbane.org/about-2/

See Flyer: David_Holmglen

SOUTH LEAGUES CLUB
DAVIES PARK, WEST END
DOORS OPEN 6PM FOR TASTING AND A 6.30PM START

Bought to you by Transition Kurlpa

TED talks bring some of the world best thinkers and doers together to share “Ideas worth spreading”. Along with its once a year conferences in California and Oxford, TED affiliated events are now held around the world and many talks are put online for all to see.

Here’s Rob Hopkins talking about the transition to a world without oil at TEDglobal in Oxford last year.

There are lots of other great TED talks available on the website, many along the Technology, Entertainment, Design subject areas but increasingly others too, such as A Greener Future?