The Intergalactic Health & Safety Inspectorate

by Shaun Chamberlin | Feb 11, 2011 | All Posts, Cultural stories, Reviews and recommendations, The Transition Timeline, Transition Movement

The brilliant cartoonist Marc Roberts (whose work will be familiar to regular Dark Optimism readers) got in touch with the Transition Network last year offering to produce a strip exploring the Transition concept. The time has come for the results to be unleashed on...

All Party Parliamentary TEQs report launch

by Shaun Chamberlin | Jan 23, 2011 | All Posts, Climate Change, Cultural stories, Economics, Peak Oil, Politics, Reviews and recommendations, TEQs (Tradable Energy Quotas), Transition Movement

What a week – Tuesday’s launch of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil’s report into TEQs was a tremendous success, with excellent media coverage, including Time magazine, The Sunday Times, Bloomberg News, the BBC, the Financial Times and...

Values and Propaganda

by Shaun Chamberlin | Sep 29, 2010 | All Posts, Cultural stories, Favourite posts, Philosophy, Politics, Reviews and recommendations

  I have just given an intrigued couple of hours to musing over the outstanding new Common Cause report, which explores the battle over cultural values that underlies communications and marketing, while keeping one eye always on our environmental challenges. The...

Coalition of the Willing

by Shaun Chamberlin | Jul 22, 2010 | All Posts, Climate Change, Cultural stories, Reviews and recommendations

This is a really fantastic piece of collaboration animation on the subject of responses to climate change, from the striking opening comment on Copenhagen on through. Though as the creators freely acknowledge, the ideas behind it need a little love. It strikes me that...

The art and music of our world’s predicament

by Shaun Chamberlin | Jun 3, 2010 | All Posts, Climate Change, Cultural stories, Favourite posts, Philosophy, Reviews and recommendations

I got back from the Dark Mountain Project’s Uncivilisation festival a few days ago, and while I could write about many of the aspects of that stimulating week, one thread it really tugged on for me was the role – the critical importance – of the arts...

The Story of Bottled Water

by Shaun Chamberlin | Mar 22, 2010 | All Posts, Reviews and recommendations

The latest video from the “Story of Stuff” team is launched today. A good piece of work, although given our global context, it’s perhaps a little depressing that a message as obvious as this still needs to be pushed....