Author Archives: Rob Hopkins

What better way to close our month’s theme than to talk to Annie Leonard, creator of the ‘Story of Stuff’ series of videos, who has done more than anyone to popularise the idea of “stuff”?  She now runs the Story of Stuff project, “a community of problem solvers – parents, community leaders, teachers and students, […]

Over this month of looking at “stuff” from different angles, I came to see that one of my first lightbulb moments in terms of understanding consumerism and the roots of our relationship with “stuff” was Oliver James’ books Affluenza and The Selfish Capitalist.  Both books pulled together a remarkable case for the psychology that underpins […]

We’re all far too sensible to be influenced by advertising, right?  For sure, all of the choices we made while doing our Christmas shopping this year were entirely rational, not possibly swayed by distant marketers, right?  Wrong.  Probably.  A recent article by Adam Corner in Aeon magazine, called Ad nauseam: The more we hate it, the […]

Any sense of “we’re all in this together” appears to evaporate when it comes to those industries that use the most amount of energy.  If a recent lead editorial in The Times is anything to go by, there’s a sense that they are somehow above all that.  But given the scale of the cuts demanded […]

The Drift Record Shop describes itself as “an immaculately curated independent music specialist based right in the heart of the Devon countryside”. Picking up on Ruth Potts’ suggestion yesterday that “wherever practical and possible develop lasting relationships with things by having and making nothing that is designed to last less than 10 years”, we thought it might be […]

It’s not that I’m lazy, it’s just that I never really got the whole keeping fit thing.  I share an office with people whose idea of a good time is running across Dartmoor at night with a head torch on, hours in the gym or cycling across mountain ranges in the snow.  Never quite got […]

Ruth Potts is the co-author, with Andrew Simms, of a pamphlet called The New Materialism, founder of Bread, Print and Roses, and organiser of the recent ‘Festival of Making’. She describes her work as “inviting people to fall in love with stuff in a good way”.  We sat down with Ruth under a tree in the Healthy […]

What would our food system look like if the impacts of production on the environment and on public health were taken into account?  At present the polluter doesn’t pay, and those producing food sustainably are not rewarded for positive outcomes.  How might things work if the true costs of agriculture were taken into account?  Tamzin […]

What’s it like to set off, shod only in a pair of flip-flops, with only as much “stuff” as you can fit in a rucksack, to spend months walking the land in search of Tales of Transition?  In 2010, through wind and rain, sun and sleet, Steph Bradley journeyed forth, and she has now gathered […]

The mental image we were brought up with of Santa’s workshop was of hoards of elves working away making new stuff, painting wooden trains with paintpots and so on.  But what if we were able to shift that image, and instead tell our children that the elves aren’t making stuff, they’re repairing it?  That Santa’s […]

I’ve done it.  I’ve closed my Amazon account.  I now stand before you as an ex-Amazon account-holder.  I feel curiously shaky, but at the same time empowered, excited even.  While opening a new Amazon account is easy as pie, closing one is another matter altogether.  I’d like to share with you how, and why, I […]

The fourth edition of Transition Free Press has just come out, and it is a Thing of Great Beauty.  Transition has long created spaces in which people can engage their creativity, and TFP is one of the shining examples of that.  It models a different approach to telling stories, to building networks, and to building […]

For this month’s theme we’ll be exploring, in the run up to Christmas, our relationship with “stuff” from different angles.  We start with today’s post which, among other things, takes you for a drive along the M5 motorway, delivers your Christmas gifts by drone, and argues that “the amount of stuff we have, how we look […]

Welcome to Transition Network’s Austerity Basics series.  Ever wondered what austerity actually means?  Where the idea comes from?  Whether it actually works?  Over 9 days in late November 2013, we posted a series of answers to the most commonly-wondered-about aspects of austerity, with the help of James Meadway, Senior Economist at new economics foundation.  Now […]

For our last piece in our month’s theme of austerity and how Transition responds to it, we head to Totnes, one of the first Transition initiatives.  What does austerity look like there, and how is Transition Town Totnes responding to it?  We asked Frances Northrop, TTT Project Manager. While from the outside Totnes may be […]

This month’s immersion in austerity has taken us in numerous directions.  We’ve heard from all sorts of people, and now we’d like to hear from you. We’ve had James Meadway’s ‘Austerity Basics’, which have given us a grounding in the thinking behind the whole approach. We’ve heard from a Conservative MP on her take as to […]

Sarah Wollaston, Conservative Member of Parliament for Totnes, is not your everyday Tory MP.  She was the first MP to be chosen as a candidate through a US-style open primary.  She was recently one of 15 joint winners of The Spectator’s Parliamentarians of the Year Award for going “through the ‘no’ lobby to prove that our […]

Naresh Giangrande of Transition Training reports on a Transition Thrive training he recently co-facilitated in Scotland: The University of St Andrews in Fife, Scotland is certainly posh, and old (it is famously Scotland’s oldest university).  So what is a Transition Initiative doing in the middle of all that? And what is a Transition University anyway? I […]

Felicity Lawrence is a food writer and Guardian investigative journalist.  When it comes to understanding the dark side of how the food industry works, she is the place to turn (unfortunately, the Skype connection was too bad to allow a usable podcast).  What I wanted to explore was how austerity measures are affecting what ends up on […]

Pam Warhurst is a community leader, activist and environment worker who is one of the founders of Incredible Edible Todmorden, West Yorkshire.  In the 2005 New Year Honours she became a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), for services to the environment.  She is a passionate advocate for the potential of urban agriculture, and once gave a great […]

Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall is a writer and garden designer, a career that has won her two gold medals at Chelsea Flower Show.  She has written many books, mostly on gardening, as well as writing articles for a range of publications.  And yes, she is Hugh’s mother.  In 2010 she wrote a great book called The Ministry of […]

Naderev Saño is head of the Philippines delegation to the UN climate talks, who gave an emotional speech at the COP 19 climate talks currently underway in Warsaw and is currently on hunger strike until the end of the talks.   Dear Naderev,  I’m writing this in deep admiration for your recent words and actions.  The gallery […]

Jeremy Leggett’s new book ‘The Energy of Nations: risk blindness and the road to renaissance‘ is an inspirational, page-turning telling of the evolving tale of peak oil, climate change, and economic crisis, and how the three issues intertwine and interweave. I found it gripping, and what comes through strongly is firstly the huge potential of […]

When looking for insights into food, policy and politics, the first place I turn is to Professor Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy at City University London.  For decades he has been at the forefront of debates around public health and the role that food, and food policy, play in that.  With our theme for […]

The talk on my recent US tour that I enjoyed most was the one I gave at the ‘Building Resilient Communities’ conference at the Solar Living Institute in Hopland in Northern California.  It was the first gathering I know of that drew together the Transition and permaculture communities in a single event and it was […]

When I was in Houston, Texas recently, I was fortunate enough to meet, and to share a platform with, Jason Roberts of the Better Block project and of the organisation he founded called Team Better Block.  Jason hails from Dallas, and his approach has inspired people around the world.  It has been described as “a […]

One of the most inspiring Transition initiatives I visited in the US recently was Jamaica Plain New Economy Transition in Boston. With our theme for this month focusing on austerity, JPNET (as they are known to their friends) have useful contributions to make to our discussions.  They formed in 2009, and hosted a Transition Training. […]

One of my favourite Twitter follows, @TwopTwips, tweeted, on the afternoon of Halloween, with the sage advice “SAVE TIME and money this Halloween by always answering the question “Trick or Treat?” with “F*** Off”.  While entertaining, it was disappointing, as I took my 11 year old and his friend Trick of Treating in the streets […]

“What I fear most, I think, is the death of the imagination…. If I sit still and don’t do anything, the world goes on beating like a slack drum, without meaning. We must be moving, working, making dreams to run toward; the poverty of life without dreams is too horrible to imagine.” Sylvia Plath, from […]

While running the risk of sounding like a Hello! Magazine reporter, I must introduce this post by saying that while in the US recently, I joined Richard Heinberg and his wife Janet in their beautiful permaculture garden in Santa Rosa, California.  Richard will be known to most readers of this blog as the author of […]

May East is the Transition trainer who reaches the parts that other trainers don’t reach, geographically speaking at least.  She has pioneered Transition with rubber-tapping communities a day’s travel up a river into the Amazon rainforest, in Brazilian favelas, on kibbutzim.  I spoke to her by Skype as she sat in the sunshine on a […]

Milwaukee was the last stop on a tour that in 18 days had taken me to 12 different places and deliver 19 different presentations.  I didn’t know much about the place before I went, but I have to say that it is quite possible that I saved the best until last.  The two days I […]

California is vast, a nation in itself.  As a state, it actually is home to the ninth largest economy in the world.  It is home to one in eight Americans, and produces at least half of the nation’s fruit, and a sizeable proportion of its vegetables.  Its climate runs from tropical in the south, to […]

While in San Francisco, I visited La Cocina, a fantastic incubator for new food enterprises in the city and I project I have wanted to visit for years.  It describes its mission as being “to cultivate low income food entrepreneurs as they formalize and grow their businesses by providing affordable commercial kitchen space, industry-specific technical […]

I met up with Paul Hawken at the Where do we go from here conference in Rheinbeck NY. I took the opportunity to grab some time for an interview.  We discussed growth, change and the power of action.  You can either listen to or download the podcast, or read the transcript below.  I began by asking […]

I grew up watching Dallas.  It’s a TV show with a lot to answer for.  When I lived in Ireland, I met an Irish academic doing their Masters research in architecture around the question “why is it that a culture that created something as beautiful as the Book of Kells creates such dull and horrible […]

I just reached the end of my first full week in the US, and to say it’s been hectic would be an understatement.  After two days in New Orleans, Peter (Lipman, Chair of Transition Network and my travelling companion) and I headed to Boston.  That evening I spoke at an event, at Tufts University, which […]

Coming from England, one of my first impressions of the US is how the word “awesome” is, to my ears at least, somewhat overused.  To my English sensibilities, the Karakorum mountains at sunrise are awesome.  The Grand Canyon, I imagine, is awesome.  To be able to see all of Van Gogh’s paintings in one place […]

Transition Network and Post Carbon Institute have just come together to publish a new report, Climate After Growth: Why Environmentalists Must Embrace Post-Growth Economics & Community Resilience.  The report is published to co-incide with Rob Hopkins’ visit to the US, and is co-authored by him and Asher Miller.  You can download it here.  Below is […]

In this guest blog, Transition trainer Tina Clarke, also of Transition Amherst, Massachusetts, USA, gives a report on a recent training given by Nick Osborne which turned out to be way more successful than anyone could have imagined.  Over to Tina… “Within two days after Nick Osborne gave his first Effective Collaboration Training on the North […]

During August, at the peak of the campaign against the fracking for natural gas at Balcombe, West Sussex, the BBC ran a story called Dorking ‘green’ group in favour of fracking.  It stated, “One group in Surrey set up to encourage sustainable living has come out in favour of exploration and fracking, the process which […]

In the final winning entry in our Transition Training competition, Viv Chamberlin-Kidd shares her story of the impact a Permaculture Design Course had on her life:  The impact that attending the Hoffman Process (HP) in November 2009 had is difficult to beat.  It was 8 days cut off from my family which I found emotionally, mentally […]