Summary: From "The Farm" in Summertown, Tennessee, deep green thinker and activist Albert Bates on Tough Transition. Then one of the pioneers of localization and sustainable community, Dr. Mark Roseland. Alex reports on new ocean/climate movie to save... us. Rob Stewart's film "Revolution". Radio Ecoshock 121003. Download 1 hour program in CD Quality (56 MB) or faster download/lower quality Lo-Fi (14MB) This week we're still talking about social change to save the environment and ourselves. From "The Farm" in Summertown, Tennessee, deep green thinker and activist Albert Bates on Tough Transition - how to make a local community work - even if people can't agree on why it must. Then we're going to one of the fathers of movements like Transition and localization, Dr. Mark Roseland in his 1992 book "Toward Sustainable Communities" became a handbook for local and regional politicians, non-profits, and citizen groups. Now it's out in a Fourth Edition, with a goal of providing, quote "Solutions for Citizens and Their Governments." We'll get a call for Revolution from the maker of the movie Sharkwater. Rob Stewart says the species we need to save now is us. I've just seen his new film "Revolution". It's the ultimate challenge, literally our do or die time to save ocean life, and all life, from mass extinction. Our coverage of the dying oceans continues. All coming your way this week, on Radio Ecoshock. I'm Alex Smith. ALBERT BATES - TOUGH TRANSITION Just like organisms, there are simple people. Others, like Albert Bates, are complex. He's a former attorney, a designer, bio char expert, author, speaker, and an international and local organizer. Albert has lived at the famous intentional community called "The Farm" in Summertown, Tennessee since 1972. His book "Climate in Crisis" was published back in 1990, with more following, like "The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook" in 2006, and "The Biochar Solution" in 2010. In last week's program, we heard from successful Transition Towns in New England. That's easy enough with progressive voters. Albert, can it be done in a conservative "Red State" like Tennessee? I've called up Albert to ask him about forming a Transition community in the rural Republican South. When "The Farm" began in 1971 - it was part of the hippie movement. Bates tells us when the collection of school buses arrived from Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, in rural Tennessee - to local residents it seemed like Martians landing. Over the course of a generation, there has been a general acceptance and interaction between The Farm and its surroundings. You can learn more about "The Farm" in Albert's book "Voices from The Farm" (1998) co-authored with Rupert Fike. TRANSITION IN A RED STATE One sign of that was when Hohenwald Tennessee became the 25th Transition Town in America. That was accepted by all the local politicians, County Commissioners and so on - even though, as Bates tells us, practically none of the locals accepted the human-induced climate change or Peak Oil. So how did they do it? The Farm organized a regular film and speaker night. Sure they showed "An Inconvenient Truth", but one of their most successful nights (garnering 130 people from a population of 4,000) was about "Financial Permaculture". In a very hard economy, people wanted to know how to improve their financial situation, and learned about permaculture almost as a side subject. In fact Hohenwald had many Swiss settlers from the late 1800's. The Transition organizers were able to draw on a common community value of "frugality". It's frugal not to waste things, and so recycling and other ways to avoid waste are acceptable. It's a fantastic lesson: find out what your community values, and help deliver that as a road to transition. In a bit of humor, one of their speakers was David Bloom, who explains how to make your own alcohol for energy and other uses. That was quite popular in rural Tennessee, where moon-shining is traditional. But the Transition grou
