FEASTA MULTIMEDIA FILES

Feasta aims to disseminate our ideas as widely as possible, in formats that are appropriate to various types of content and to different people. As part of this effort we have developed methods of making lectures, presentations and conferences available for download as multimedia files. These files typically combine the video recording of the speaker synched with any visual presentations (such as powerpoint slides) in a way that closely resembles attending the original presentation in person. There are also some audio files.

All of these media files are listed on this page and can be streamed or downloaded directly from our new dedicated server by following the links below or from links within the relevant pages of the main Feasta website. This is a new development for us and we will be adding new material as they become available.

The video files are in QuickTime 7 format. If you have difficulty viewing the linked files below, you may need to download the latest software which is available for free for both MacOSX and Windows. Click on the link to view the file in your browser. To save the file directly to your hard disk, Windows users can Right-click on the link. Mac users can Option/Alt-click on the link. The audio files are in mp3 format, and also compatible with Quicktime software.

FEASTA SEMINAR SERIES: Converging Crises, Policy Responses
A series of five seminars presented by prominent Feasta members in Dublin, in June and July 2008. You can read about the seminars in more detail here.
Richard Douthwaite and Minister Eamon Ryan - Introduction/launch (09:02, 9.5 MB QuickTime file)
David Korowitz - The Future's Not What It Used To Be (50:35, 43.9 MB QuickTime file)
Bruce Darrell - Planning For Food Security (55:16, 42.7 MB QuickTime file)
Richard Douthwaite - The Need For Benign Inflation (36:00, 40.1 MB QuickTime file)
Emer O'Siochru - Reclaiming the Commons (52:50, 48.9 MB QuickTime file)
John Jopling - Global Governance for Climate Change (1:06:07, 67.2 MB QuickTime file)

Climate Change: First, the Bad News, Then the Good by David Wasdell and Peter Read 18th April 2008

David Wasdell, Director of the Meridian Programme, a world-renowned expert in the dynamics of climate change, delivered the bad news. He argued that greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere have already exceeded a safe limit. Consequently, not only will every tonne of CO2 emitted from now on have to be recovered and sequestered before its full heating effect has developed but some past emissions will have to be recovered too.
view Lecture (0:44:24, 36.8 MB QuickTime file)

Peter Read, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Applied and International Economics at Massey University in New Zealand, delivered the good news. Plants and soil lock up huge amounts of carbon. Read contends that it would take only a relatively small increase in the levels of that stored carbon to return atmospheric concentrations of CO2 to safe limits. This would also improve soil fertility and raise incomes for millions of farmers.
view Lecture (0:39:29, 27.3 MB QuickTime file)

Beating the Bust: Land Value Taxation by Dave Wetzel 10th April 2008

Dave Wetzel, a leading expert in the political economics of land, is currently Vice-Chair, Transport for London 2000 and President of the Labour Land Campaign. Wetzel is best known as the man behind the successful London Congestion Charges. What is less well known is that congestion charges are only one of a suite of innovative fiscal mechanisms he advocates, that could significantly improve our lives. Dave gave an engaging and easy-to-understand outline of how the land market in its current form works to make housing unaffordable, increase inequality and damage the environment, and how, with reform, it could do quite the opposite.
view Lecture (1:16:30, 62.4 MB QuickTime file)

THE 2007 FEASTA LECTURE by Peter Barnes November 13th 2007
Who Owns The Sky?
Peter Barnes is a successful US social entrepreneur and author of Capitalism 3.0, whose previous career has ranged from setting up one of the first solar energy companies in California to pioneering the use of charity credit cards and ethical phone services at www.workingassets.com. He described how a "cap and rebate" system is the best option for an ethical economic framework to stabilise the climate which would "pay" citizens and communities substantial sums of money every year to benefit from rapidly rising carbon prices. He also talked about the need for a strong new independent "Third Sector of Commons' Trusts" in the economy with the remit of protecting and sharing out the benefits of commons such as the atmosphere - so overcoming the "tragedy of the commons".
view Lecture (44:36, 38.3 MB QuickTime movie file)
listen to Questions + Answers (35:16, 16.2 MB mp3 audio file)
More Information

Following the lecture, Richard Douthwaite of Feasta gave a brief introduction and update on Cap and Share which is closely related to the "cap and rebate" system that Peter Barnes talked about.
view C+S description (11:53, 21.2 MB QuickTime movie file)
listen to C+S description (11:28, 5.25 MB mp3 audio file)

Peak Oil: The End of Economic Growth? by Charles Hall September 19th 2007
Dr. Hall is a systems ecologist who began his career studying life in freshwater systems. He is best known for developing the concept of EROI, or energy return on investment, which examines how organisms, including humans, invest energy in obtaining additional energy to improve their biotic or social fitness. His lecture deals with the probable implications of peak oil on the economic activity. It focuses on the past, present and future energy cost of energy itself, and how that is likely to effect investments, economic growth and discretionary spending.
view Lecture (1:26:04, 52.3 MB QuickTime file)

THE 2006 FEASTA LECTURE by Nic Marks December 6 2006
Re-Thinking Progress: Well-Being as the Focus of Policy
Nic Marks is the head of the Centre for Well-Being at NEF (The New Economics Foundation) and has recently set up a new global measure of progress, the Happy Planet Index, which shows the ecological efficiency with which human well-being is delivered around the world. He talked about how the economy is only really a means to an end and that we should be measuring the 'ultimate end' of people's well-being instead of measuring GDP.He showed how simply relating the length and satisfaction of people's lives to their ecological footprint creates a much more useful way of comparing the progress of different countries.
view Lecture (57:00, 38.8 MB QuickTime file)
view Questions + Answers (35:52, 24.8 MB QuickTime file)

Why Nuclear Power Cannot Be A Major Energy Source by David Fleming April 19th 2006
An audio recording of a talk given by Dr David Fleming on nuclear power, together with responses by John McGuirk of the Freedom Institute and Nuala Ahern of the Green Party. This talk took place at the 11th Convergence Festival.
David Fleming's talk (49:36, 5.7 MB MP3 file)
John McGuirk's response (10:59, 1.2 MB MP3 file)
Nuala Ahern's response (8:56, 1 MB MP3 file)

THE 2005 FEASTA LECTURE by Roger Levett November 21st 2005
How to Live Well without Carbon: Decouple Life Satisfaction from Economic Growth, as well as Economy from the Environment
Levett, a member of the British Government's Sustainable Development Commission, spoke on the practical steps that national and local government can take to reduce energy use and climate impact.
view Lecture (53:00, 25.9 MB QuickTime file)
view Questions + Answers (43:01, 26.9 MB QuickTime file)

FOOD CONFERENCE: What Will We Eat as the Oil Runs Out? Food Security in an Energy-Scarce World.
Feasta held a conference on June 23rd to 25th, 2005 in Dublin, Ireland, which sought to answer a crucial question: How can the world's population be fed without the extensive use of fossil fuels in the production, processing and distribution of food? More details about the conference are available here
Richard Douthwaite - Conference Introduction (22:30 presentation, 13 MB QuickTime file)
Richard Heinberg - Peak Oil and the Global Food Supply (40:00 presentation + 13:09 Q+A, 44 MB QuickTime file)
Mae-Wan Ho - Making the World Sustainable (41:21 presentation, 30 MB QuickTime file)
Helena Norberg-Hodge - Globalisation and Loss of Democratic Control (44:58 presentation, 64 MB QuickTime file)
Dan Keech - Energy Use in Food Systems (25:28 presentation + 05:20 Q+A, 22 MB QuickTime file)
Colin Sage - Effecting a Paradigm Shift in Food Policy (39:29 presentation + 10:15 Q+A, 27 MB QuickTime file)
David Holmgren - Holistic approaches to food production during energy descent (48:45 presentation, 52 MB QuickTime file)
Lori Stahlbrand - Growing local food systems: The North American experience with eco-labels (31:41 presentation, 19 MB QuickTime file)
Micheline Sheehy Skeffington - The Cuba Example - Coping with the sudden absence of fuel, fertilizers and pesticides (41:40 presentation, 36 MB QuickTime file)
Wayne Roberts - Acting locally: Setting the global municipal agenda for oil-free food (50:35 presentation, 27 MB QuickTime file)
John Feehan - The Irish farming context (43:00 presentation, 39 MB QuickTime file)