Transition Towns- A way through the coming dual crises of peak oil and climate change

There are twin crises looming in our immediate future .. ones which threaten our society with its very survival. Our society has reached a great and beautiful place, in many ways, but the core foundation our society rests on is cheap oil. We are coming to the end of the age of cheap oil and it seems almost nobody knows about the problem. Further complicating the problem is one more people know about, climate change, where the environmental conditions we humans have enjoyed for eons are spiraling into an extremely hot period. Neither of these issues are ones which will kill all life everywhere, so we are not talking about apocalypse here. However these mean an end to the lifestyle to which we have become accustomed. The transition from our current overly luxurious lifestyle to the new one can be easy, or it can be abrupt and bloody.

The Transition Town concept is about preparing society for a more orderly transition to a different style of living. The suggested lifestyle is lower in impact, sustainably focused, localized, human scale, etc. It shares a lot of concepts with other simplification lifestyles and one could see this as a remedy for the high stress high speed lifestyle modern life has become. Wasn't technology supposed to give us a life of leisure? If so then why are we rushing about so madly? Maybe we just need to slow down irregardless of the threats of peak oil or climate change?

http://transitiontowns.org/ - is the home site for the Transition Town movement. It began in 2006, apparently, in Totnes, UK and is spreading like wildfire. It is most prevalent in the UK but groups are springing up worldwide.

What is a Transition Town (or village / city / forest / island)? It all starts off when a small collection of motivated individuals within a community come together with a shared concern: how can our community respond to the challenges, and opportunities, of Peak Oil and Climate Change? They begin by forming an initiating group and then adopt the Transition Model with the intention of engaging a significant proportion of the people in their community to kick off a Transition Initiative.

There are twelve key steps to setting up a transition town group:-

#1. Set up a steering group and design its demise from the outset

#2. Awareness raising

#3. Lay the foundations

#4. Organise a Great Unleashing

#5. Form sub groups

#6. Use Open Space Technology - a meeting format that allows for very open ended conferences that organically grow

#7 Develop visible practical manifestations of the project

#8. Facilitate the Great Reskilling

#9 Build a bridge to Local Government

#10 Honour the elders

#11 Let it go where it wants to go…

#12 Create an Energy Descent Plan

Links: 

http://transitiontowns.org/

External Media

Climate Code Red

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Climate Code Red

http://media.globalpublicmedia.com/RM/2008/02/SuttonBradford.20080218.mp3

Description: 

Climate policy is characterised by the habituation of low expectations and a culture of failure. There is an urgent need to understand global warming and the tipping points for dangerous impacts that we have already crossed as a sustainability emergency, that takes us beyond the politics of failure-inducing compromise. We are now in a race between climate tipping points and political tipping points.

This is a book and web site about the urgency of the situation regarding climate change. They use the phrase "Code Red" in the way that hospitals mean it, that the patient is in critical danger, that everybody should drop what they're doing and go to emergency stations, and that it's this critical.

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Avalon Springs

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Avalon Springs

Description: 

Avalon Springs is an experiential learning environment, anchored by a healing hot springs retreat center and staff ecovillage - a living mystery school for an emerging sustainable human culture. As a land-based holistic retreat center and ecovillage in Northern California, Avalon Springs aligns the most advanced green technologies, systems and philosophies to become a living template for an abundant, sustainable economic, social and environmental future.

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Purdue: Bioenergy

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Purdue: Bioenergy

Description: 

Purdue Extension BioEnergy information on Bioenergy, renewable fuels, ethanol, biodiesel, DDGS. The U.S. must reduce its dependence on foreign oil and petroleum-based fuel.

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Why is the world's biggest landfill in the Pacific Ocean?

The North Pacific Subtropical Gyre has become clogged with trash. Due to its lack of large fish and gentle breezes, fishermen and sailors rarely travel through the gyre. But the area is filled with something besides plankton: trash, millions of pounds of it, most of it plastic. There are two patches, the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches. The western patch is between Hawaii and Japan, while the eastern one is between Hawaii and California. The patches are connected by a thin 6,000-mile long current called the Subtropical Convergence Zone. Research flights showed that significant amounts of trash also accumulate in the Convergence Zone.

Plastic constitutes 90 percent of all trash floating in the world's oceans. The United Nations Environment Program estimated in 2006 that every square mile of ocean hosts 46,000 pieces of floating plastic.

The main problem with plastic is it doesn't biodegrade. The durability of plastic which makes it attractive to use in products is what makes it not biodegrade. Instead it photodegrades and becomes shards of plastic. The tiny plastic particles can be sucked up by filter feeders and damage their bodies, and in general the plastic enters the food chain of the ocean. The fish are harmed and since we humans consume lots of seafood it will eventually harm us as well.

Article Reference: 

Why is the world's biggest landfill in the Pacific Ocean?

Better Planet The World's Largest Dump: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

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ARB Fact Sheet: Air Pollution Sources, Effects and Control

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ARB Fact Sheet: Air Pollution Sources, Effects and Control

Description: 

A listing of specific sources of "air pollution" compiled by the California Air Resources Board.

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Grim look at state's plant life (California, that is)

"If temperatures rise rapidly in California this century, up to two-thirds of the state's native plants might lose large swaths of suitable habitat, according to a new study. " ... this estimation comes from researchers at many universities who released maps showing effects on plant species from climate change. As the environment warms up it changes the conditions, and both plants and animals tend to have narrow ranges of environment conditions in which they will live. If a given plant's preferred temperature range is between 70-90 degrees F and the ambient temperatures are regularly above 100 degrees the plant is likely to die. Further the area which has the preferred temperature range will move, either uphill (higher elevations have cooler temperatures) or further north. An effect that's been observed is for plant and animal species to be found higher and higher up mountains, and that some species eventually can go no higher in elevation because there's no more mountain, meaning the species will completely die out.

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Grim look at state's plant life (California, that is)

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