Results tagged “oil” from Transition Newent
'The Heat is On!' by Chris Wooldridge of
Back to the Future in Snow
This January's bitter and snowy weather has not been experienced in Gloucestershire in almost 30 years. I am old enough to remember the '81/82 and the '62/63 winters and this time around there was something quite different in the media's treatment of the weather. Yes, they did show tobogganing families and the stunning beauty of a winter landscape but in the main they concentrated on traffic chaos, food shortage and school closures. (...read more)
A Transition Newent Project
What is the
'Super Insulating Newent & The Villages' Project?
What will it do for you?
What can you do to help?
1, The Project is for the benefit of the whole population of Newent and the 17 surrounding Villages on the northern border of the
2. Its primary objective is to help the 2281 households in Newent and 3910 households in the Villages to reduce their energy costs against a long-term trend of increase; in so doing to enable single householders, whole villages, neighbourhoods or Newent Town as a whole, to do what is possible to meet the challenge of Climate Change, specifically the UK government's target to reduce carbon emissions by 34% by 2020. (.....read more)
No need for Candles, Caves or Hairshirts
In the confusion and disappointment that followed the final hours of the
Copenhagen summit on climate change and with the Christmas season on its tail it might seem that the Transition movement have little to celebrate but this, as I'll go on to explain, would be far from the truth. The world's media will now be full of comment and opinion, blaming certain nations and exonerating its own negotiators. One thing was clear: that a global problem as potentially devastating as climate change taxed the particular and varied interests and structures of the nation state. ........( read more) ........
'The Heat is On!' by Chris Wooldridge of
If we falter the earth itself will be at risk
By the time you read my December column, the
For those of you still unconvinced of the seriousness of the situation, let me recap. ... (more) ...
‘The Heat is On!’ by Chris Wooldridge of
Grab the Chance to Grow Local
In my last column I said I would explore some local issues.
At a recent Transition wood-burning workshop, we saw an impressive demonstration of wood splitting. Here’s the method: Get an old rubber tyre. Fill the inner space with un-split logs standing on their ends. Take a splitting maul – a tool rather like a felling axe but built to split rather than chop wood – and aim it into the stack. Result: fuel that doesn’t fly. Low tech, energy efficient and using recycled material, the essence of Transition.
Last Friday, the Transition Food Group held a ‘Question Time’ style discussion on the future of food and farming. Local farmers and an academic were on the panel. My impression is that most farmers have yet to grasp the implications of peak oil and climate change. Food and farming are utterly reliant on oil for machines, fertilizers, pesticides and distribution, using 10 calories of energy to produce 1 calorie of food. We must find solutions to these unsustainable methods as well as tackle the 30% of our food that goes to waste, the national obesity problem and our generally poor diet rich in fats, sugars and additives. From the audience I detected a more positive note though. A town in the Forest has an allotment waiting list of 50, Community Supported Agriculture is beginning to make headway locally and Newent’s Country Market reports a large increase in sales. These alone won’t feed the world but are the beginning of an explosion in initiatives at local, regional and national levels. Some farmers may well get left behind if they don’t grasp new opportunities.
Finally, on April 29, a great chance to see and hear Rob Hopkins and Shaun Chamberlin, co-founders of the Transition Movement. Transition Newent is hosting the event at
‘The Heat is On!’ by Chris Wooldridge of
We have to make our own cakes
That once vast wilderness, the North Pole ice cap, is melting into the oceans after yielding key evidence that human activity is causing climate change. Deep in the ice layers, are stored the historic records of atmospheric carbon dioxide and drillings have confirmed we are moving into the first human-created climatic age. In truth, unless we radically rethink the way we live, we will lose more than Bewick’s swans from Slimbridge.
Climate change is well publicized, but we face another global challenge, Peak Oil. This is the point at which world oil production peaks and begins to fall. It will be offset by the current global recession but makes little difference to our future. At current consumption, the oil that has enabled our high standards of living will run out before the end of the century.
The Transition movement is very clear about solutions to this double whammy. We believe there is time left in which to curb emissions but the world may have to accommodate some temperature rise. We support and encourage the 3 Rs: recycling, re-using and reducing, but our key message is for communities to localise their economies and to encourage local resilience. Currently we import our cake; sometimes we make the cherry that goes on top. In future we must make the cake.
If this sounds rather frightening, consider how local networks encourage friendship, industry and support. The other day someone said to me, “I’ve got a great social life now. Since I joined Transition I could be out almost every night.”
We still need nation states to sign on to global emission targets and structures to guarantee social justice but it is the local actions of all of us that will count.
In future column I hope to explore these local issues in more detail.
