'Transition City LANCASTER' is our name yet the City and the Lune valley and coast are all so connected - don't be put off! Everyone is very welcome at our events and we'll also be very glad to support any new emerging transition villages out there that want to get going . . . . we can offer films, speakers and all sorts . . . .

 

Transition Tales

Steph Bradley from The Transition Network is currently on a tour of Transition towns and called in at Lancaster over the weekend of July 1-4. She is walking all the way in flip-flops, collecting and sharing stories of transition as she goes.

We shared wondeful conversations and wish her well on her adventure. To follow her journey online click to see her blogsite it's well worth a visit.

 

Planning Consultations

The City Council currently has open public consultations on the 'Local Development Framework.' Click here to get to the Council page. It is a very complex and long document. It would be good if many of us contributed our responses. If you find it difficult to follow the subsections and wish to send a response we suggest you simply drop an e mail direct to

forwardplanning@lancaster.gov.uk

Does this document take account of resource depletion? Does it propose a process for creating a low carbon sustainable district? Is it a useful form of consultation with the public?

 

CO2 emissions - Online Trackers

If you'd like to know the latest on CO2 levels and the update on where national and international commeitments are likely to to lead us see the latest online real-time gizmos linked here.

Transition Timelines

If Lancaster is going to be a resilient place to live in 20 years time – able to feed, house and keep ourselves warm, it is essential we start working towards it NOW and have an Energy Descent Plan (EDAP) for the area. We think the plan has to be something we ALL want to see happen, something we are determined to make real.

We want you to be involved.
Here at TCL we are in the early stages of bringing together as many people as possible to share their views, their dreams and their genius. You can
• Read the online record so far here in PDF (Laste Updated 30/06/2010) and make your comment on our Facebook site or email your comments to info@transitioncitylancaster.org

• Look out for an EDAP consultation meeting in your locality during 2010/11

TCL Publicity Toolkit

Every TCL event takes a lot of hard work and human generosity to create - it deserves to reach as wide an audience as possible! The toolkit gives you the strategies, the contacts and the process to reach the audience for your event. Click on the link to access. Updates, comments and new ideas are vital to keep it live. Contact Caroline Jackson email or via Facebook Group.

Lancaster Unleashed

Saturday 17th April saw a fantastically successful Launch day for TCL at the Storey Centre. This was followed up by a large gathering at St Thomas' Church on Penny Street for the evening of the 20th for the inspirational talk by Rob Hopkins and ceremonial unleashing of Transition City Lancaster.
At the Storey over 500 people came in throughout the day. Local people filled every talk and discussion, showing their concern and interest in peak oil and climate change issues and how we can respond here in Lancaster. It was an amazing gathering of local people sharing often detailed scientific and technical information in a great setting with lots of local music and a buzzing market place.
Had our local newspaper, Transition Times, been delivered to local homes, as promised, then we would undoubtedly have been swamped. For the full report from the day and pictures click here

Totnes Presents a Positive
Vision for the Future

Many congratulations to Transition Town Totnes who have now published their inspiring and authoratative "Transition in Action Totnes and District 2030 an Energy Desent Action Plan". (Click on the title to read it online). Use the controls on the virtual pages to scroll through, and the the table of contents will help you navigate this impressive document. If you want to get an idea of the kinds of tasks that lay ahead for Lancaster to plan and build resilience then dive right in it's very inspiring stuff!

Lancaster Transition Timeline
Workshop Report

On 1st May Shaun Chamberlin, author of ‘The Transition Timeline’ led an inspiring full day workshop on visioning and planning a resilient future for Lancaster. The day was a mixture of slide presentations, open space discussions and conversation café’s.

The group worked through ideas about the kind of things we would have in place in 2030 if Lancaster had developed resilient responces to the challenges of climate change and peak oil. Examining issues from transport, food, energy, health, education, population and the local economy, they then used backcasting to explore the processes needed to lead to resilience. We have reams of flip chart and a wall of lining paper full of ideas to develop!

The process will be followed up at the June 2nd networking meeting, where we will discuss the next stages of developing the timeline, linking with other groups and bringing more people into this important process This is the early stage of developing an Energy Decent Plan(EDAP) for Lancaster – essential if Lancaster is going to be a resilient place to live in 20 years time.
More details and photo’s online when it’s written.

Peak Oil Report - Bristol Takes a Lead

"Building a positive future for Bristol after Peak Oil" is a study commissioned by the Bristol Partnership and Bristol city council exploring the implications for Bristol once global oil production has peaked and production is in decline.This report should ring loud alarm bells for cities across the UK. Simply read the executive summary and put the word Lancaster in place of Bristol to get a flavour of the tasks and challenges ahead. The comprehensive report spells out the potential impact of ‘peak oil’ on every aspect of Bristol life – transport, food, healthcare, public services, the economy, power and utilities. You can read the full report here It explains why urgent action is need and why it is need now in order to build resilience into our city while we still have affordable energy to fuel the neccesary transition.

If you'd like to comment on or discuss this resport please do so on the TCL Facebook site.

Unleashing Celebration

The pictures below are courtesy and copyright of Richard Gibbens - many thanks Richard

Rob Hopkins the co-founder of the rapidly growing International Transition Town gave an inspirational talk to a large audience gathered in St Thomas' church for the unleashing of Transition City Lancaster. He ranged through the data on peak oil and the need for us to take our own steps to build local resilience to the challenges coming our way. His talk detailed the real and practical steps that we can all take individually and collectively to discover, plan and implement local support structures and systems able to withstand the inevitable oil and gas price shocks.

 

Unleashing is all about realising the power that we all have. We can release enormous creativity and power by working together to build resilience into our homes, families, communities and city - more locally grown food, locally sourced products, increasing the warmth of our houses and developing renewable energy generation.

 

 

Rob showed the array of local currencies that many places had set up.. Local currencies mean the money stays in the local economy, not quickly sucked out to distant bank accounts never to be used again to create local jobs.
Samagita Moisha continued the theme of what local people can do by detailing the background of TCL and the groups and projects that have so far been created. The first part of the evening closed with questions from the audience.
The official unleashing ceremony was led by Steve Jenkins, who in the best tradition of transition, involved many people in the audience in the creation of a "ribbon" made from different materials, that wrapped around the audience and symbolised the community working together, and being drawn together. Following a count down, the ribbon was cut by Margaret Lyth, the driving force in getting TCL started from her living room in 2008. Spontaneous cheering and applause broke out.

For those who couldn't make it, local film maker and writer Mark Rotherham filmed the evening and the footage will appear in due course on the website. Our thanks to everyone who worked to make both the launch and the unleashing event such a spectacular success.

Want to get involved?

The next networking meeting - to meet the groups, find out what's going on and discuss Transition Lancaster - will be held at the Friends Meeting House at 7:30 pm on the 5th May. It's free, with refreshments (though donations towards costs are very welcome). Alternatively if you can't make that meeting, sign up online to keep informed about events

Powered by the Community

 

Projects in Action

The Fruity Corners project got underway this spring. Ground has been broken and trees planted by local people at two public sites in the City.


 

 

 

 

 

Simon and Steve of TCL, image by local resident Art Quester.

These are the first small steps in an ambitious plan to plant thousands of edible fruit and nut trees and shrubs in our neigbourhoods.

 

 

 

The truly amazing Lancaster Transition Times newspaper will be delivered to over 20,000 local homes by the end of March. Grant funding to TCL has paid for the printing and distribution but all the writing, editing and layout has been created by the generous energies of many, many local folk. Collective genius in action.

Film Nights

Following the success of the Autumn film programme the spring films are now underway. Showing in the Storey, most Thursdays from 7:30pm See the What's on Page for full details.

Lancaster University Students Transition Thinking

As part of the People and Planet national "Go Green" Campaign, concerned students at Lancaster University contacted TCL for a presentation on Transition City Lancaster as a precursor to what they hope will be the creation of a campus Transition group and lead to Lancaster University becoming a Transition University.

 

 

 

The Heart and Soul group are preparing for the recording of dialogues with diverse faith groups in the City.

 

Garden Share

Do you have a bit of garden that you can no longer look after that you would like someone else to use to grow fruit and veg for a share of the produce? We want to match you with prospective gardeners without land and a desire to grow! Interested? See the garden share pages.

A Car Club for Lancaster?

We can drive down our costs and reduce damaging emmissions by using our cars less and cycling and walking more. Research by Carplus (a national charity promoting responsible car use) suggests that is exactly the result of people joining car clubs.

TCL are assessing the level of interest in Lancaster with a view to creating a local Car Club. See the information online and please complete the survey form.

Open Edible Garden Event
July 2010

We are planning an open garden event with a food focus for weekend of 17/18th July. The idea is for people to open their gardens, allotments, yards etc. for others to visit so we can raise awareness about how to grow your own food at home, to provide information and demonstrations about food growing and to raise some funds.

If you have a garden, allotment, piece of land or even a back yard with fruit, veg, herbs or anything safely edible growing there, please get in touch - you don't need to be an expert!

If you would like to get involved in any way please contact Alison on 01524 382568 or email ajk@phonecoop.coop.


Preserving Food and Saving CO2 (See Poster)

Whether you grow your own, pick your own or buy in bulk from local farmers, why not join us in discovering the simple pleasures to be found in putting up, preserving and sharing the harvest. Please email us if you are interested in coming along to the Food Storage Group for Transition City Lancaster to
info@transitioncitylancaster.org

If you’re already an active bottler, bring a jar or two of anything home-made and edible to the Home Made Preserves Food Swap stall at the TCL Big Launch day at the Storey Institute on April 17th. You can swap one jar for another, home produced by another local resident, sharing the taste of your delicious home made recipe and making a few new friends at the same time! Details of food preserving events for the summer will also be available on the stall, along with recipes, taster samples, displays of preserving equipment and friendly faces to tell you more about the opportunities for you to get involved and get preserving!

 

Switch to Renewables

If you've been wondering whether its worthwhile to install some solar panels or wood boiler then take a look at the latest feed in tarrifs and see what you can be paid to save CO2 and get the energy as well!

If that's too daunting why not help TCL and switch to Ecotricity, we get a donation for each person who switches using this link

TCL home page

If you would like to know where the old TCL home page is with the Powerdown show film - look at "About Transition" on the menu bar.

 

Why Transition from Oil Dependence to a Resilient City

There have been an increasing number of reports over the last year from media, government and industry sources around the world warning us that:

“the era of cheap oil is over”.
(The International Energy Agency: ”World Energy Outlook 2008).

And...

“the era of cheap oil is behind us. We must plan for a world in which oil prices are likely to be both higher and more volatile and where oil price shocks have the potential to destabilise economic, political and social activity.”
(The Oil Crunch: A wake-up call for the UK economy. Second report of the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil & Energy Security, Feb 2010)

Even oil industry insiders say…

"We are running the risk of another oil crisis when demand outstrips supply around 2014 or 2015. There won’t be enough oil and gas by the middle of the next decade."
(Christophe de Margerie, CEO of Total, September 2009)

And even the banks…

“This is our view – capacity has pretty much peaked in the sense that declines equal new resources,” (Iain Reid, Head of European Oil and Gas research at Macquarie Bank, September 2009)

Even George Bush!!!

"We gotta get off oil, American has got to change its habits,".. "It should be obvious to all, demand has outstripped supply, which makes prices go up."(George W. Bush, March 5th 2008)

We could have used hundreds of quotes (see ODAC for examples: http://odac-info.org/peak-oil-quotes) and references from government reports(e.g. Ofgem), industry reports, independent agencies(UKERC, Oil Depletion Analysis Centre) and the media from the Telegraph to the Guardian.

The reality remains that our systems in our modern, technically advanced cities, like Lancaster, are totally dependent on and built around the assumption of cheap, easily accessible oil.

We are the Solution

Transition is about Lancaster people coming together to discover what we can do locally to create a more resilient Lancaster: A place where there is lots more food grown locally; where energy supplies are more local, renewable and sustainable; where there are more jobs local to where people live rather than built on the idea of cheap petrol and a longer drive.

Goods and services need to become resilient to changes in the price of oil and that takes forward planning and creative thinking. We as individuals and communities can and must take steps to protect our lives from the coming “Oil Crunch”.

90% of the UK energy supply comes from fossil fuels.

It takes 10 calories of fossil fuel energy to produce 1 calorie of food.

From transport to trainers, dvd’s to diets, plastics to pain killers – we do it all with oil.

The rational choice is to start planning to wean ourselves off this unsustainable addiction. We can and have made a start locally by looking at what we can do: from planting trees and growing and sharing food to building renewable energy systems and improving our insulation. We have even produced a local newspaper to spread the word. We need your ideas to help create a resilient future for Lancaster.

We can make a difference, we don't have to wait for someone else or be told what to do - Your ideas and actions count.

Lots of online resources onb Peak Oil linked from our resources page


Latest on Climate Change

If fossil fuel issues alone don't convince you that we need to start planning then you may also be feeling skeptical about climate change and the need to cut our carbon emmissions. Take a look at the Met Office web pages...

"The overwhelming majority of climate scientists agree on the fundamentals of climate change — that climate change is happening and has recently been caused by increased greenhouse gases from human activities.

The core climate science from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was written by 152 scientists from more than 30 countries and reviewed by more than 600 experts. It concluded that most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in man-made greenhouse gas concentrations."

Or if you want a non-governmental source with lots of technical detail try RealClimate:Climate Science for Climate Scientists web site for a detailed review of all the climate change scientific issues. You'll find links to the original IPCC reports and to many data sources...

"To those familiar with the science and the IPCC’s work, the current media discussion is in large part simply absurd and surreal."

 

Become part of the solution by bringing your positive ideas for making Lancaster a resilient city. Come along to the Next Networking meeting(5th May see what's on page) or the Lancaster Transition Timeline Workshop - 1st May (details above)