Transition Epping - forging ahead
Transition Epping began earlier in the year with the founders Sandra Nichols and Deborah Burt designing a series of 8 workshops to which local residents and business people were invited to enrol at an initial launch 'town meeting'.
These workshops embraced the history and present resilience of the local area, the natural environment and our ecological footprint on it, local food production, waste and water, home energy use and efficency, health and wellbeing, building community and finally creating a 2020 vision for North Epping.
The final visioning session proved the value of the process and produced a great set of local transition projects with participants taking on team leadership roles and membership to take these projects forward,
The projects were:
Why Transition? - because governments don't have the will to act
The flavour of government spin (and budgeting) seems to be changing from bold action to prevent runaway climate change to minimising the impacts of inevitable climate change. This might be a realistic response but it also confirms the Transition Network's explanation of why Transition initiatives are necessary - "if we wait for governments to act, it will be too little, too late"
See the recent SMH article from Ben Cubby on the NSW Government's version of giving up on climate change prevention in its 2010 budget:
Love Food - Hate Waste
This initiative from DECCW is worth a mention and wishing well. OK, there's some "big grocery" sponsorship in the background (Woolworths, Food & Grocery Council), but it's not a bad thing to use some of their dollars to get useful information out there
A good local transition challenge is figuring out how to capture, reuse, recycle or process waste of all kinds locally and turn it into something of practical or economic value. Food waste is a good place to start. We waste an obscene amount of food.
Here's a link to the Love Food Hate Waste site
Remember this name - Waratah Community Land Trust Association
An early inspiration in the Transition Sydney search for people with meaningful solutions was Dr Louise Crabtree, who has been researching Community Land Trusts as a real and workable model for taking property speculation out of the equation of the toxic mix of financial motives making housing unaffordable for many Sydney people. Community Land Trusts have been operating successfully for many years in the USA and are being used in providing affordable housing and businesss premises for the people.
Now a motivated group of Sydney people have created the beginnings of the Community Land Trust solution here in New South Wales, the Waratah Community Land Trust Association Inc. It is going to be an important part of the greater mosaic of sane, sustainable and ethical initiatives that take us toward a resilient community better able to handle the challenges of the future.
Here's a brief video introduction to this inspiring new group
Watch this space for further news and contact details to get involved
"Peak Minerals" in the Australian context
While peak oil is a headline grabber, peak minerals (part of the "peak everything" story) has not received much attention to date. As a major exporter of minerals to the world, Australia's economy is vulnerable to this peak story. Good to see the issue receiving attention. The Institute of Sustainable Futures at UTS in collaboration with Monash University has just released a paper on the subject. You can download and read the article here
Australia's current population debate ignores climate change, based on delusion of endless growth in prosperity - SMH article
Today's Sydney Morning Herald carries an article by the well known Clive Hamilton, in which he suggests that the debate on the prospect of a future Australian population of 36 million or so is ignoring the facts of climate change and the probability of immense "internal migrations" as it bites into the viability of certain parts of the country.
Read the article here