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Green Party Conference, May 2005
It is May 2015:
How have your eating habits changed in the last 10 years? What did you have for dinner yesterday and where did it come from?
Business As Usual
- Farmed salmon increase in price due to transport costs.
- Scenario is implausible
- Same menu, different sources
- More restricted choice
Enlightened Transition
- Fish from ponds on farms
- Organic turnkey from an integrated farm
- Food eaten is more seasonal
- Eating Irish beef and lamb, less is exported.
- Shift from mass production products to locally produced products
- Food is more expensive.
- Tea and Coffee is available but twice the price
- Less imported products - discount stores such as Lidl
- We have less choice of what we eat
- Increased population
- Diet more like 1950s
- Sugar beet factories re-opened
Localisation
- Eating local meat and veg.
- Less variety, imported, processed
Fair Shares
- Semi-organic growing - little artificial fertilisers/pesticides.
- Irish produce as imports very expensive
- Seasonal food as out of season very expensive
- More processed and frozen or dried food.
- GMO's are widely grown.
Menu:
Starter
- Mixed local salad
- Potatoe and leek soup
Main course:
- Freshwater farmed fish
- Rabbit stroganoff
- Irish stew
- Quorn stew
- Nettle
- Onions
- Spring Cabbage
Dessert:
- Rubard Crumble
- Apple pie
with Sloe wine and herb tea.
What energy saving changes have you made to your home in the last 10 years?
Business As Usual
- Insulation
- Solar Panels
- Energy efficient light bulbs
- Wood fired stoves
- Increased awareness of cost of energy and waste in the home
- Use of showers of instead of baths
Enlightened Transition
- Insulation in all areas - windows, walls, roof
- Economic machism helped us to adopt passive solar construction methods - make homes more affordable.
- Solar panels, wind generators and heat pumps all in common use.
- Underground tanks used to store warm water from solar panels
- Houses are generally colder, we have more blankets on the bed and wear warm clothes inside.
- Wood pellet stoves have become popular
Localisation
- More insulation
- Fireplaces replaced by wood stoves.
- Wooly jumpers
Fair Shares
- Two new subterranean rooms lit from the sky
- Solar panels on the roof
- Biomass boiler using woodchips
- Geothermal heat pump to heat underfloor
- Small wind turbine/community turbines
- Insulate walls - retrofit
- Mechanical ventilation and heat recovery
- Triple glazing, pilkington K
- Smaller windows
- Shutters

