Transition Edinburgh University hits the blogosphere…
Friday,18 December 2009 by CarolineOvery
Firstly, I wish to apologise for this blog being such a late starter, and perhaps secondly for it not being about Copenhagen. I’m not there. As a blog, I intended it to document the progress of the Transition Edinburgh University (TEU) initiative, hopefully giving ideas to other People & Planet groups and whoever else stumbles upon it about ways to begin their own Transition initiatives and projects. Unfortunately, due to a combination of time-sapping factors, I’m a few months too late in that TEU is already six months down the line. But there isn’t really such a thing as ‘too late,’ I’ve just got a bit of catching up to do.
It makes sense to begin with a post about the background to the Transition initiative, if only to clarify why I keep dropping in a capital letter at the beginning of the word.
Oh no, this is no ordinary transition. Well, actually I suppose transition is all about changing, moving from one state to another, and it is this idea that underpins the Transition Towns movement, started by Rob Hopkins and burgeoning in Transition communities all over the world.
The big question Transition tries to answer is, “What can we do when faced with the problems of peak oil and climate change?” These problems, if they don’t already, are going to have a huge impact on our lives, and it’s easy to be overwhelmed by them. As far as the UK is concerned, the apocalypse is nigh, and with a bunch of indecisive jumped up suits in Westminster making legislation, all hope is lost.
Actually, it’s not. The dual challenges of peak oil and climate change are not insurmountable; it just requires communities to act together, examining how they live and what they can change to decrease their reliance on depleting oil supplies and other climate-damaging fossil fuels. If we can take responsibility for the oil-dependence and climate impact of the places where we live, we can protect ourselves against a potentially disastrous future and build strong, people-centred rather than money-driven communities.
That is not to say that policy at national and international levels doesn’t have its place. Transition is not about turning our backs on government completely, retreating to a tumbledown shed at the bottom of the garden with a rudimentary vegetable patch, forgetting Africa or roads or coffee machines ever existed and waiting for the end of the world to turn up. It is more about recognising the place of local action within a necessarily broad and multi-level approach to global problems.
There is a level of individual action involved, but we already knew that really. Recycle, use energy-saving lightbulbs, eat less meat and dairy, turn electrical appliances off when you’re not using them, don’t fly, the list continues, and it’s an important list so we shouldn’t ignore it. But the consumer can only do so much, especially when, in an unsustainable economy, most of it is focused around cutting consumption. The person can do a lot more. Bring and share meals to promote local and sustainable eating, going for a bike ride with friends, customising second hand clothes, that list also goes on and it’s a fun list with much to be explored and added to it. It is upon this community level that Transition takes place, and where the TEU story begins.
Tags: Edinburgh University, TEU, Transition, Transition Towns
January 29th, 2010 at 11:52 am
[...] The Transition Edinburgh University initiative was set up to put the Edinburgh University community on the road to transition, lowering carbon emissions and finding a community response to peak oil and climate change. TEU was set up partly as a consequence of the People & Planet campaign Go Green and partly as a consequence of the work of the Energy Manager of the University, David Somervell. It works through student-staff coalition and using the process of horizontal participatory management, so with no hierarchical structure, instead through a series of working groups. [...]