Film

Mother: Caring for 7 Billion

Mother_poster

After our customary summer break we are kicking off again on 14th September with a new film called ‘Mother: Caring for 7 Billion’, which is about population growth.

Since the 1960s the world population has nearly doubled, adding more than 3 billion people to the planet. Compounded with our ravenous appetite for natural resources, population growth is putting an unprecedented burden on the life system we all depend on, as we refuse to face the fact that more people equals more problems.

The film follows Beth, a mother and a children’s rights activist as she explores the complexities of the population issue. The film strives not to blame but to educate, to highlight a different path for humanity. Overpopulation is merely a symptom of an even larger problem – a system of domination that for most of human history has glorified the power of man over nature, man over woman and man over child. To break this pattern, the film demonstrates that we must change our conquering mindset into a nurturing one, and that the first step is to raise the status of women worldwide.

As usual the showing takes place at St Mary’s Church, St Mary’s Road, Ealing W5 5RH. Start time is 7.30pm and run time 69 minutes. Entry is free, but we will ask for a donation after the film to help us to cover screening costs.

 

Editorial

Another Year in Transition

The end of July always marks the end of Ealing Transition’s ‘year’: it’s when we hold our “AGM”, and, as well as looking forward to the things we want to achieve in the next twelve months (and beyond), it’s also good to look back and see what we’ve achieved in the last twelve, and make sure that we “celebrate our successes”.

July  2013-2014 was another busy year for us; amongst the highlights, we held our Third Re-Skilling Day, started our Forest Garden (which will appear in our reviews for many years to come!), held energy saving events, maintained our allotment, orchard, wildlife-friendly flowerbed, and held regular film showings. There was more besides: the Chris Johnstone talk, Edible Ealing’s 1st Birthday, Cosmetic making with produce from our Community Bees, and a whole bunch of pizza making (and eating) down at Village Park to name but a few.

To put it all in context, we’ve knocked up a wizzy time-line thingy for your enjoyment!

Ealing-Transition-2013-2014Actually, putting it in context is what it does well: on the time-line we’ve also included some of the climate and energy news events of the last twelve months – it’s amazing how quickly you forget that, for instance, winter 2013/2014 was the wettest on record, with the UK battered by storms for much of it, not to mention the continued CO2 and temperature records, the Balcombe anti-fracking protests and energy price hikes…

Whether you’re off on your holidays, or staying at home, we hope you enjoy the rest of the summer; if you are around town, please drop by the Orchard or Allotment to see them in their glory,  but otherwise, we’ll see you in September, when, amongst other things, we’ll be gearing up to our “Community Fayre” event on 11th October, put that in your diary, and watch out for more details!

Environment, Media

The Turning Point

algore rolling stoneAl Gore’s new article in the Rolling Stone makes both sobering and inspiring reading. Most notable is the hope offered by the rapid uptake of solar power and other renewables, which are fast making the old model of centralized power based on fossil fuels obsolete. You can read the full article at http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-turning-point-new-hope-for-the-climate-20140618