Friday, April 13, 2012
Friday, April 6, 2012
Elizabeth Fekonia
Elizabeth Fekonia will be at the Transition stall at the Big Pineapple Saturday morning 7th March from10am. She will be demonstrating how to create saurkraut and answering all your questions on home food production.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Hello fellow Transition Towners and
folk who have recently registered interest through Nicole Foss or the Big
Pineapple!
Transition Nambour had monthly meetings
over the last couple of years. Since taking on the Big Pineapple Markets TT
stall during our summer recess a few things have changed in people’s lives, and
we are instead hosting a number of community events.
The next one for this year will be in
April: a pot luck dinner followed by an open space ‘conversation’ to discuss
where we might focus our energies and attention during the rest of the year.
We welcome folk from beyond (greater
Nambour) who are just interested or are getting ready to launch other local
Transition groups. It could be a rich and vibrant evening!
Venue to be confirmed and it will be
Tuesday April 17th, in Nambour. 5.30 for dinner (pot luck) – 8.30 .
We recently had a stall at the
Montville Sustainability Fair, and this resulted in an invitation to offer a
positive Transition perspective at the Coal Seam Gas rally at Mapleton last
Sunday.
At a meeting this week themed ‘Small is
Beautiful’ and hosted by Nambour Community Centre the Open Space process came
up with 3 topics: transport, ‘having no friends’, and transition equipment
(stuff that does not require fossil fuels or power)
We’d like to remind people about
preferential voting if you are voting in the State Election. You don’t have to
‘just vote one’. On the contrary, it is our democratic right to put
preferences, and in the case of closely contested seats, or where there are
Independent candidates it can make a huge difference.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Review of Nicole Foss's talk at The Big Pineapple on 9 February
On Thursday 9th February Nicole
Foss spoke to several hundred people at The Big Pineapple, Woombye. This was
the largest turnout for a Transition Nambour event, the largest Nicole had
spoken to anywhere in the world, and the first public event at the venue since
its re-opening under new ownership.
The strength of the turnout may be
attributed to the strong viral networking amongst the Sunshine Coast and
Brisbane sustainability and environmental groups, and to the broader spectrum
radio interviews that Transition Nambour was able to set up with Radio National
“Life Matters” and Annie Gaffney (ABC Coast FM). Congratulations to the organising
team. Annie’s support before, during and after the event was much appreciated.
Once the news of Nicole’s talk was out on
the radio it was the strength of her message
that attracted at least half of the new attendees and strengthened the resolve
of the “already converted”. Her message is one that, like or not, one has to
listen to in order to help make major decisions about the future.
In addition to this talk Nicole had time to
spend a few hours talking with senior Sunshine Coast Council officers and to business
people and academics at the Innovation Centre at the University of the Sunshine
Coast. The main event was well supported by Council staff and councilors Jenny
MacKay and Keryn Jones (Environment) attended.
Nicole spoke for and hour and a half after
which there was a break for refreshments. She then continued to field a wide
range of questions for a further hour, in spite of having had no sleep for over
24 hours.
Nicole’s academic experience draws together
avenues of thought from a wide variety of disciplines, allowing her to see
clearly the macro-economic position the world finds itself in today, and at the
same time understanding the underlying human emotions that drive economies.
Nicole laid out her argument in a carefully
orchestrated and illustrated PowerPoint display explaining a complex subject
with enviable clarity and precision of language. Her relentless logic seemed to
hit home.
She described the world economy as a giant
“ponzi” scheme built on 30 years of expanding credit since the liberalisation
of the major world economies in the 1980’s. This credit expansion was fueled on
the way up by cheap oil energy and it has created very high levels of debt for
citizens, businesses and governments.
Her argument runs that such wealth creation
is largely a chimera as it is based entirely on the availability of cheap
credit and property value is unrelated to its ability to generate income, or to
its real underlying value. Property is at the heart of our economic peril
because this property is the collateral used to expand the world wide credit
system, and when the credit market dries up (as in 2008) there exist far too many claims
on the underlying (and now devaluing) collateral resulting in a credit
implosion, asset price deflation and the grinding to a halt of the world
economy.
Nicole sees the coming depression as being deeper
and longer than that of the 1930’s because we no longer have a cheap source of
fuel to help us climb our way out of the hole. The cost of extracting even the
vast reserves left in the world are so high that the nett energy out represents
little more than 40% of the reserves. That is, it costs 60% of the energy
recovered just to extract itself.
All bubbles burst eventually she explained and
they usually fall harder and faster than they climbed up, as they are driven by
fear. She also claimed that they normally undershoot the point from which they
started. This, she predicts, might see a return to asset values similar to
those last seen in the 1970’s.
Nicole regards the major economies’
attempts to “band aid” their way out of trouble through Quantitative Easing,
public purchase of private banks in crisis and by offering more debt to troubled
countries like Greece as dealing only with the symptoms of the disease, and not
with the deep underlying problems.
Australia’s unique problems include a
strong reliance on international credit for property loans (at risk of a collapsing
European credit market), rising oil imports, climate change, a dependency on
fossil fuel derived nitrates for farming (and real soil depletion), and a
vulnerability to the decline in commodity prices (now coming off their high) as
the Chinese economic bubble starts to deflate.
Nicole was able to explain what happens in
a deflationary economy both internationally and at home. She explained
carefully why we would have deflation not inflation as in Weimar Germany (a credit contraction not a money supply
contraction) and she explained how people react in such circumstances,
exacerbating the problem in an understandably human way.
Her advice was to rent property or own it
without debt if you can. Renting is just a clever way of letting someone
else experience a devaluing asset!
Pay off all debt because debt just creates
a type of indenture to others, and debts will be chased for recovery. In
the short term cash is king but in the medium term, banks are likely to fail
and short-term government bonds are probably best, but nothing is
guaranteed. Beyond that, if you have cash available and recoverable, you may be
able to buy some hard assets very cheaply. Gold is both over allocated and of
little use in practice, and will crash in value as no one will have any cash to
buy it with.
Finally she delivered a more up beat
assessment of how we can mitigate the worst of these effects. Nicole spoke at
some length about how to deal with living through such a crisis in the world
economy and emphasised the unique role of local community sharing and networking.
She sees a key element to be that of de-centralising utilities and services (local
power supply, local food supply, local government decisions/accountability,
barter currencies, etc), and not to be expecting big government top- down
solutions.
Building a new economy through grassroots
movements like the Transition Network and
building local resilience through permaculture groups will be important.
Life after such a power-down would be
slower and there would be less consumer choice but it could be better, and planning for such an event – given the
constraints that will also arise through expensive fuel and ongoing climate
change – is vitally important.
By experiencing such a change we will learn
to value the true wealth within our lives –wealth that cannot simply be
measured by a unit of currency - the
Earth, our soil (where true wealth resides), relationships, family, community,
the arts and our true culture.
There will be a Transition Nambour follow up meeting to
discuss Nicole's talk soon. She writes as “Stoneleigh” on
www.theautomaticearth.org
Think Global, Act Local.
James
Macdonald-Buchanan
Friday, February 10, 2012
The Nicole Foss visit to the Sunshine Coast
On Thursday evening 9th February Transition
Nambour special guest, Nicole Foss, gave an excellent presentation at the Big Pineapple
on the Sunshine Coast Queensland.
The night was very well attended by a receptive and
appreciative audience. Following her talk there was an interesting Question and Answers session.
Nicole’s message has struck a chord with many people and her
visit has been a catalyst for a number of positive initiatives in the area.
Please note that Nicole's website - The Automatic Earth now has a new web
address: - http://theautomaticearth.org/
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Talk by Nicole Foos at the Big Pineapple on Thursday 9th February at 6.00 pm
Why is your
local community the answer
to global
economic implosion?
Transition
Town Nambour
invites you to consider…THE
BIG PICTURE
at an evening with
Thursday 9th Feb 2012
5.30 pm for 6.00 pm start
The Big Pineapple,
Nambour Connection Rd, Woombye
Talk followed by Questions & Answers, tea and coffee
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 to re-design
life as we have known it.
both understands and can explain the links between the many converging factors now threatening to re-design
life as we have known it.
Tickets: $10.00/$8.00 concession - Available at the door
or from the Transition Town Nambour stall at the Big Pineapple Growers’ Markets every Saturday morning
For more information please call : 07 5442 2118 or 0438 562
118
http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Transition Town stall at the Big Pineapple Growers’ Market on Saturday morning 4 February
Down to earth gardener,
Dee Humphries from Kin Kin, will be our special guest at the Transition Town
stall at the Big Pineapple Growers Market on Saturday 4th February.
Dee will share her
knowledge of edible weeds and growing animals as food plus will give helpful
hints on how to make 18-day compost.
Visit the Transition
Town stall for useful information on sustainable living and upcoming community
events. Browse the markets from 6.30 am to 12.00 noon each Saturday.
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