Jersey in Transition
www.facebook.com/groups/jerseyintransitionAbout
Jersey has now officially been recognised as an island in transition! In just 10 months we have catapulted ourselves into a profound response to our environments call to action!
What exactly is a Transition Initiative?
A Transition Initiative (which could be a town, village, university or island etc) is a community-led response to the pressures of climate change, fossil fuel depletion and increasingly, economic contraction.
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, Climate Change, and increasingly, economic stagnation? They recognise several crucial points:
To a certain degree, we all experience a life disconnected from our living environment, disconnected from our communities and disconnected from our landbase:
* that our energy-profligate ways of living have depleted our resource base to critical levels that we used immense amounts of creativity, ingenuity and adaptability on the way up the energy upslope
* that there's no reason for us not to do the same on the downslope
* that we have to act now, rather than wait for the government or "someone else"
if we collectively plan and act early enough there's every likelihood that we can create a way of living that's significantly more connected, more vibrant and more in touch with our environment than the oil-addicted treadmill that we find ourselves on today.
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 that is asking the BIG question :
"for all those aspects of life that this community needs in order to sustain itself and thrive, how do we significantly increase resilience (to mitigate the effects of Peak Oil) and drastically reduce carbon emissions (to mitigate the effects of Climate Change)?"
Cheerful disclaimer!
Just in case you were under the impression that Transition is a process defined by people who have all the answers, you need to be aware of a key fact.
We truly don't know if this will work. Transition is a social experiment on a massive scale.
What we are convinced of is this:
• if we wait for the governments, it'll be too little, too late
• if we act as individuals, it'll be too little
• but if we act as communities, it might just be enough, just in time.
Excerpts taken from www.transitionnetwork.orgCategories: Ecology, Energy Conservation Consultants, Environmental Consultants & Management, Politics, Pollution Control.
