Martha came back from a meeting of the Oakley Regeneration Partnership today with leaflets from Transition Cleeve. This is part of a wider movement to form Transition Towns as “a local community response to Peak Oil and Climate Change”. The leaflet says:

We believe the Cleeve Area can become a low-carbon economy. We can respond in a practical way to the challenges of peak oil and climate change. Why don’t you join us?

I’m glad their literature doesn’t give just one view on Peak Oil, as it’s a tricky area with many divergent views. But whether you take a high or a low estimate of the oil reserves, we should be working now to find ways of reducing our energy consumption, including the ‘black gold’. I recommend George Monbiot’s recent piece on Peak Oil as background reading.

Some of the current suggestions for this young group appear to be encouraging reducing food miles and food waste, growing our own vegetables, keeping our own chickens, improving quality and use of public transport, and fostering community spirit. I’m not sure we’ve got the space to rear chickens (or whether they’d survive sharing a garden with the dog in summer), but I’d certainly support reducing food miles and packaging.

They are working on a website, but for now the best place for info seems to be the Transition Cleeve Google Group.

What I’ve not yet discovered is what really makes a ‘Transition Town’. Does anyone know? (Though I have bookmarked Transition Culture blog for later reading, which seems to be related.)

Related posts:

1. Climate Change Skeptics vs. The Scientific Consensus
2. Harder, Wetter, Faster, Stronger: Bad News in Climate Science
3. Thinking Allowed about Religion and Secularism