The praise of our dry toilets

The event Tuesday, January 30, we left Mazatlan, the bucket of our dry toilet on the roof stuck in one of the spare wheels. Having needed to use it in the morning, I cleaned it in the ocean. Quick U-turn on a boulevard in the middle of Mazatlan, telling Laurent, I think I heard the bucket fell from the roof, we turn back watching for the low sides. I can see a man crossing the …

A turtle storie in Minneapolis, thinking the transition

As kilometers are added to the Van Snail’s counter, it’s also the people’ story we met that we sum. Walking in the transition model is to go on a road not yet built, but where everyone sows it. While we thought telling the collective construction, we realize that it is made of multiple individual constructions. While we want to build a practical example tool, we realize that we must also make a tool of reflection. …

UC Gill Tract Farm, Berkeley, California, USA

We were in the city of Berkeley for 2 weeks to visit the local transition group. They are very involved in community gardens and have spoken to us several times about a farm that was on the field of the university. Is just after a whil, that we did not the connection with a documentary that was screened while we were on Vancouver Island. This is how we went on a Saturday afternoon on a …

Manuel de transition, chapter 3: Make it resilient again, why?

If the oil shock and climate change are the triggers for the transition movement, resilience is the proposed principle as a starting point to make a change. «In the field of ecology, resilience refers to the ability of an ecosystem to adapt to external events (shocks) and imposed changes. […] the ability of a system to absorb disturbing change and reorganize itself by incorporating that change, while retaining essentially the same function, structure, identity, and …

Accorderie : a social time bank

In a couple there are topics that sometimes you need to not speak about, topics where existing disagreements can create a stormy atmosphere, trigger passions. There is the classic subject of the parents-in-law, the ex, the subjects about the time spent at work, the time spent a passion, but not for us. On the other hand do not come to speak about the Accorderie, you will be in the embarrassment. Although … the travel, the …

Transition Handbook: Chapter 2 : Energy Descent

View from the top As we saw during the reading of chapter 1, peak oil and climate change cannot be seen separately. Since the beginning of our trip we talk about our approach and these imminent issues, it is interesting to see how many people feel concerned, but actions do not necessarily follow. There are many reasons for this, but one of them is that people do not think it can happen imminently. «It’s for …

Think to our time in a day

During my participation at the convergence of Permaculture in 2014 in Freylisburgh village in Estrie, I had listened an interesting strong conference on the genesis of earthships presented by the founder of Solution Era. In his introduction, he presented us a distribution of time in a day to invite us to think about the use of our time. This short presentation inspired me and gave me an other approach of our time when I shall …

Transition handbook: chapter 1; peak oil and global warming (part 2/2)

Read the first part Climate change At the time of writing the book, the subject was not yet so present in the media and still many leaders could deny it. Talking about global warming or climate change is the same thing, although we talk more about the global warming in different studies, talk about change will be a more generic term that can explain cold waves, current changes, absences or abundance of rain, etc. When …

Transition handbook: chapter 1; peak oil and global warming (part 1/2)

In order to understand the transition movement, we will begin by summarizing the various chapters of the transition manual written by Rob Hopkins in 2008. In order to understand the reasons for the transition, the first chapter will speak about the coming peak oil (at the time) and global warming. As we will see, primarily the transition movement is an ecological movement trying to find local solutions. There are, however, two peculiarities which denote it …

Understanding the transition movement

Once upon a time, in a town of Ireland, a professor of permaculture and his students watched The End of Suburbia, a documentary about the imminent peak oil. We were then in 2005, it was announced to be in a few years, 2008 for the most pessimistic, around 2012 for the others, but one thing is certain it would happen. The teacher and his students then had the idea to find alternatives that they knew …