IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENTS ON COLORADO TRANSITION NETWORK

Explore activities of the COLORADO TRANSITION NETWORK -- Anytime, Past hour, Past 24 hours, Past week, Past month, Past Year.
Daily mentions of the Colorado Transition Network on Facebook, YouTube, Linkedin, etc. now appear real-time in LATEST ACTIVITY.
Be sure to experiment with TOP NEWS vs EVERYTHING in the center column -- two different types of Latest Activity.

August 2009 Blog Posts (13)

Smart Technology

Yesterday I attended a workshop hosted by the IEEE focusing on the status of various alternative energy technologies from a business and employment perspective, especially in Colorado. There was a strong emphasis on the development of “smart grids” that could efficiently distribute and manage electricity generated from renewable sources such as solar, wind, and geothermal. Indeed, smart grids are seen as an absolute necessity for renewable energy to become more than a small part of what the… Continue

Added by Brad Jarvis on August 30, 2009 at 3:00pm — No Comments

Niches and Comfort Zones

Discussions with fellow members of the Transition movement and ruminations about my future employment have led to some interesting insights about both my ongoing research into the future of humanity and my own potential role in that future.

The Transition discussions have centered on what kind of society the core members of my local group prefer to live in, setting the basis for a mission statement and the definition of an “energy descent plan” that most painlessly removes dependency… Continue

Added by Brad Jarvis on August 23, 2009 at 8:34pm — No Comments

Farms needed for high school students

Hi all,

I teach 11th and 12th grade Humanities at the Rocky Mountain School for Expeditionary Learning (RMSEL) in Denver, and the science teacher and I are starting a year-long curriculum on sustainability. WE NEED FARMS TO VISIT in the first week in September--we'd like to go to one small, family-owned, organic farm and one larger industrial farm. The few possibilities we had have fallen through.

Anyone have ideas and, especially, personal contacts? Ideally, the farms… Continue

Added by Rachel Balkcom on August 20, 2009 at 11:14am — No Comments

Living in Place - Part 4

The first three posts on Living in Place brought you up to date on my experiments with these ideas. I can now give a blow by blow as new results come in. Last night we had a meeting of the Core Group for Transition Westminster/Arvada/Broomfield for the purpose of discovering our common values. We started by trying to answer the question 'Why Transition?' There is an on going discussion by the group in our group pages here on Transition Colorado but I woke up this morning thinking about these… Continue

Added by David Braden on August 20, 2009 at 8:24am — 7 Comments

"Transition Town Lyons Journal" column by Sapan RInpoche for December 4, 2008 Lyons Recorder newspaper

TRANSITION TOWN LYONS MOVES FORWARD

by Sapan Rinpoche

LYONS - Transition Town Lyons (TTLyonsCO) is a transition initiative for the community to begin working together to look peak oil and climate change squarely in the eye and address this large question: For all those aspects of life that this community needs in order to sustain itself and thrive, how do we significantly increase resilience (to mitigate the effects of peak oil) and drastically reduce carbon emissions (to… Continue

Added by Sapan Rinpoche - Lama Kunga Gyal on August 18, 2009 at 12:51am — No Comments

Thinning

Yesterday my wife and I took a guided tour of White Ranch Open Space Park, west of Golden, Colorado, led by a forest ranger who described the area’s ecosystem with a focus on two of its more famous members: ponderosa pine trees and Abert’s squirrels. Toward the end of the tour, he pointed out how, until humans settled the area, fire naturally kept the population of trees at a sustainable level. Now, with fire control, disease agents such as bark beetles tend to move in and do the job of… Continue

Added by Brad Jarvis on August 16, 2009 at 3:00pm — 5 Comments

“Transition Town Lyons Journal” column by Sapan Rinpoche for the Lyons Recorder - October-November 2008

TRANSITION TOWN LYONS – First official town, following Transition Boulder County in Colorado

by Sapan Rinpoche

LYONS - On August 20, Lyons officially became the first Transition Town in Boulder County and also in all of Colorado and the third such auspicious town in the United States! Our initiating group was catalyzed and organized by Jennifer White, co-founder of Green Heart Institute. The website for Lyons can be found by visiting… Continue

Added by Sapan Rinpoche - Lama Kunga Gyal on August 16, 2009 at 7:34am — No Comments

Sapan Rinpoche's "Transition Town Lyons Journal" monthly articles for the Lyons Recorder newspaper in Lyons, Colorado

Well folks ... it's about time. Since last Fall I have been writng a monthly column for the local Lyons Recorder weekly newspaper, entitled "Transition Town Lyons Journal". These articles are supposed to appear, as was planned from the start, on Transition media, from Transition US to Transition Colorado down to Transition Town Lyons websites. Although they are on the Internet at www.lyonsrecorder.com, I have been dragging my pen and keyboard in getting them up here, in my… Continue

Added by Sapan Rinpoche - Lama Kunga Gyal on August 16, 2009 at 7:06am — No Comments

Rocky Mountain Sustainable Enterprises Signs Biodiesel Fuel Supply Agreement With Gray Oil Co, Inc.

$45 million contract to be supplied from new state-of-the-art Colorado bioXchange™ refinery in Fort Morgan

Rocky Mountain Sustainable Enterprises, LLC (RMSE), a leading provider of smart, sustainable biofuels, announced today that it has entered into a biodiesel fuel supply agreement with fuel distributor Gray Oil Company, Inc., to supply up to 4.5 million gallons per year of biodiesel fuel for a three year term.

The… Continue

Added by Jen Scherpenseel on August 13, 2009 at 12:06pm — No Comments

CONFRONTING THE CHALLENGES OF COMMUNITY, Part One, By Martha Ireland

There exists today, a trinity of situations that confronts those of us who live in Western culture: global climate change, the peak and eventual end of non-renewable sources of fossil fuels (oil and gas), and economic meltdown. These issues are old news for much of the world. We in the wealthier nations are going to join the global community in attempting to find ways to survive and live amidst enormously trying circumstances.

There are individuals who have been aware of these issues… Continue

Added by Carolyn Baker on August 12, 2009 at 3:44pm — No Comments

Innovative Solar Group Purchase Program Comes to Denver Metro Region

REC Solar and 1BOG introduce first “solar buying club” to Mile High City.

Two solar power leaders have joined forces to make solar power more affordable for metro area businesses and residents.

REC Solar (www.recsolar.com), an industry-leading provider of residential and commercial solar electric systems, and One Block Off the Grid (1BOG, www.1bog.org), the largest residential solar community purchasing group in the US,… Continue

Added by Jen Scherpenseel on August 6, 2009 at 2:40pm — No Comments

2009 Moskowitz Prize Draws Record Number of Studies

Submissions for 14th Annual Research Prize Reflect Growing Academic Interest

The Center for Responsible Business at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business has concluded the submission process for the 2009 Moskowitz Prize. Over 30 research entries were accepted by the submission deadline. The annual Moskowitz Prize is the only global award recognizing outstanding quantitative research in the field of socially responsible investing… Continue

Added by Jen Scherpenseel on August 6, 2009 at 10:17am — No Comments

Unhealthy Community and the Health Care Debate

Few things define a community more than its members’ support of a minimum level of well-being for everyone within it. When they have taken care of basic needs such as food, water, shelter, and protection from large-scale threats such as hostile invaders, fire, and poisoning of necessary resources, the members of a community must deal with the maintenance of their health, which is affected by all of the rest (especially defense against microscopic “hostile invaders”). The debate about… Continue

Added by Brad Jarvis on August 2, 2009 at 3:03pm — 2 Comments