Transition Towns

Transition Towns Meeting
Last Friday evening (Jan. 9, 2009) there was a meeting at the Windham, Maine Public Library. There was a presentation on Transition Towns. This is a movement that began in Kinsale, Ireland and then spread to Totnes, England. It has now become a world wide movement. The purpose of this movement is raise awareness and help communities prepare for climate change and peak oil. Information on peak oil can be found at this site http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil

The concept of Transition Towns is to introduce sustainability and to reduce energy usage. There is an excellent article on Transition Towns at this site http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_Towns. Also Transition Towns has its own website.

http://www.transitiontowns.org

All of the above sites are worth visiting. One of the questions asked at the meeting was “When was your peak oil moment?” Mine was in 1973 when there was a shortage of oil and gasoline. I remember the lines at the gas stations and having to get gas on alternate days. I have been frustrated ever since because we never learned our lesson and began to make alternative energies affordable and accessible.

In the 1980’s my husband and I built an envelope house and heated with wood. We did have a backup system that consisted of a monitor heater that used K1 (Kerosene). This saved us a great deal of money both on heating costs and electricity. We also grew some of our food using the theory of square foot gardening. This allowed us to grow quite a few things in a relatively small space. We had deciduous trees on the south facing side of the house which allowed for cooling in the summer and more sunlight in the winter which helped with heating. On the North side of the house we were bordered by White pines which blocked the wind and cold in the winter. While this may seem to be irrelevant to the basis of this article, it is an example of how we tried to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and to try to become somwhat self sufficient and that is what Transition Towns tries to do also.

We as a people must now come together to find ways to reduce our energy consumption and find ways to support local agriculture. It costs an enormous amount of money and uses a great deal of fuel to ship lettuce , fruit and other produce 3000 miles or more.

Barbara Kingsolver wrote a book titled Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. In this book she chronicles her family’s return to a farm where they grew most of their own food and bought the rest locally. In order to do this the family had to change the way the ate. They ate seasonal foods and preserved the produce they grew by the old fashioned methods of canning and of freezing. This is an excellent read and for those of us who care about the environment and understand the consequences of excessive use of fossil fuels this is a must read. It is available on audio as well as in print format. Kingsolver’s website is very informative.
http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/

The result of the meeting last Friday was to get a small group of people who could learn more about Transition Towns and see if we can generate enough interest in the community to get people to make some changes.
This is just an introduction to the concept of peak oil and Transition Towns. As I become more familiar with it I will be writing more on the topics. I hope any readers of this blog will explore the articles cited and read Barbara Kingsolver’s book.