When Cuba lost access to Soviet oil in the early 1990s, the country faced an immediate crisis — feeding the population, and an ongoing challenge: how to create a new, low-energy society. Cuba transitioned from large, fossil-fuel intensive farming to small, less energy intensive organic farms and urban gardens, and from a highly industrial society to a more sustainable one.
The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil tells the story of the Cuban people’s hardship, ingenuity and triumph over sudden adversity — through cooperation, conservation and community, told in their own words. As the world approaches Peak Oil, Cuba provides a valuable example of how to successfully address the challenge of reducing our energy use.
“Everyone who is concerned about Peak Oil needs to see this film. Cuba survived an energy famine during the 1990s, and how it did so constitutes one of the most important and hopeful stories of the past few decades. It is a story not just of individual achievement, but of the collective mobilization of an entire society to meet an enormous challenge.” – Richard Heinberg, author of The Party's Over and Powerdown
Transition Bookham is intending to screen this film as part of it's launch event. Date, time and venue to be announced soon.
Once again, the Woodland Trust are offering recycling facilities for your Christmas cards throughout January. There is a poster on the Epsom Tower noticeboard giving more details - cards can either be taken to WH Smith, Marks & Spencer or TKMaxx - or you can just leave them in the box in the Tower. The scheme ends on 31 January.
This is a great way of recycling your cards. Over the 12 years that the scheme has been running, 600m cards have been recycled. This has had two readily measurable benefits: firstly, 141,000 new trees have been planted, and secondly, 12,000 tonnes of paper and card have not been landfilled, thus saving 16,000 tonnes of harmful carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere.
The Woodland Trust's website (www.woodlandtrust.org.uk) also has an important reminder about reducing and reusing things before we worry about recycling - these early steps in the waste process are even more effective ways of cutting down on landfill and reducing our carbon footprints. For reducing they suggest simply refusing plastic carrier bags wherever possible - something I'm sure that many of us do automatically now. For reusing we can support organisations such as Green Metropolis (an online second hand bookshop - www.greenmetropolis.com), but charity shops and high street second hand bookshops are non-online ways of doing the same thing. An "inhouse" way to reuse birthday cards is to either make "eco-cards" yourself, or pass them on to the Tots Alive! children who like cutting them up and sticking them - just leave any cards in the box in the Tower.
Another way to reduce, reuse and recycle is to learn how to knit or crochet, remodel your own clothes, or even just mend them by stitching on buttons and making repairs. If this appeals, Dorking Stitch Up could be the new group for you. They meet on the second Saturday morning each month in the Christian Centre in Dorking, see www.transitiondorking.org for more details.
On the morning of 
Saturday 16th the Green Mole Forum was present at Bookham Vision's Volunteers fair.
It was an event to enable the many people who ticked the box in the village plan survey indicating they were interested in volunteering to meet groups they might be able to help.
More than 100 people who filled in the survey also indicated they would be interested in joining a Transition Towns initiative for Bookham - Transition Bookham - an initiative which the Green Mole Forum is helping to support. Not sure what the Transition Town initiative is about? Then click here. The Green Mole Forum has already helped Transition Dorking and Transition Ashtead get going. With your help we can start Transition Bookham and make it a success.
What you can do if you are interested in taking part:
And we will let you know. For more articles on Transition initiatives click here.
We also had a great response to our Energy Monitor scheme. What's this? Simply: we can lend you whole-house energy monitors to help you easily identify where you can save money by not accidentally leaving energy-sapping appliances turned on.
Transition Ashtead has now (30 July) got an initiating group of ten people and a mailing list of 50 people. We need a lot more supporters but we feel we've made a decent start. We have organised three open meetings in the Brewery Inn, Ashtead. We are using these to educate ourselves on some of the main issues and also as a way of meeting new people and finding out their interests.
The first meeting was on 20 July with the title - Introducing the Transition Movement. For this first meeting we explained what the transition movement is all about – the issues it addresses, the way it works and what local transition initiatives do. We also described what we’ve done in Ashtead to date, and answered questions. The other two planned meetings are as follows:
Monday 24 August. 'Peak Oil'. Brewery Inn, Ashtead 8 pm.
Monday 28 September. 'Climate Change' Brewery Inn, Ashtead 8 pm.
Derek Smith
Transition Ashtead Secretary
“Ashtead Village Day was one of the best ever with more than 7000 people flocking to the recreation ground for a day of fun and festivities” ….. reported the Epsom Guardian.
I helped man the Transition Ashtead Initiating Group stall which was the group’s first go at a public event. We had various activities to attract people, ranging from the serious (helping people to calculate their person carbon footprint) to the fun (learn how to play the didgeridoo) with lots in between. Our main aim naturally was to talk to as many people as possible about Transition Ashtead, give out information and hopefully sign up potential supporters. Having to have the stand ready forced us to speed up various important jobs that might have stretched out otherwise, and so we had leaflets, a logo (see below) and a banner all ready for the day.
We were all really pleased by how it all went and we’ve now got a very healthy list of potential supporters. We are now starting to plan for our next public event which will be a public meeting in September.
Derek Smith
Ashteads Village Day is at the Barnett Wood Lane Recreation Ground on 20 June. The gates open at 1200. Transition Ashtead is having a stall and is hoping to explain what Transition is all about to as many people as possible and sign up supporters. Come and meet us there.
George McNamara is the Chair of Mole Valley LETS and is also active in starting a Transition group in Epsom. The group has organised two meetings so far on 9 and 25 June. George has provided the following information.
Transition Epsom is just starting with a small group of 4 people. If you would like to get involved, please let me know on 01372 749803 or george@whatever-will.be
We are having Epsom Transition Drinks on Tuesday 9th June at the Symonds Well pub, South Street, from 9pm to 10.30 (we will have more in future, but no dates fixed yet)
We are having a meeting at the Epsom Common Club on Thursday 25th June - 7.30pm for 8, please. At the end of this, we hope to have established a strong "initiating group" of people who will move us through the first stages of the Transition blueprint.
We have a social network site at http://transitionepsom.ning.com/ and a tiny website at http://www. transitionepsom.org.uk
(Transition Ewell may split off from this at some future date, but for the time being it is all one)
Transition Ashtead is now getting into its stride. We've had two meetings and have decided that between us we've got enough people and commitment to have a real go at making Ashtead a Transition Initiative. Our group has therefore applied to formally become the Transition Ashtead Initiating Group and we have appointed a Chair (Barry Smale), Secretary (Derek Smith) and Treasurer (Tony Cooper). We have agreed a set of aims and principles, and should soon have a constitution, bank account and logo sorted out. Once these boring but important tasks have been done, we will set about the real job of spreading awareness and organising events in Ashtead. If you are interested in learning more, please ring me on 01372-378914 or email us using the 'Contact' button on the Green Mole Forum home page.
Derek Smith
September 28, 2008 16:09 by
dereksAt our Green Mole Forum meeting on 3 September, three of us decided to start a Transition Steering Group for Mole Valley and others said they wanted to help when they could. We had our first meeting on 10 September and our next is on 6 October. The following article explains more and appeals for more people to get involved. The Transition approach is quite different from traditional climate change campaigning. Transition argues that such campaigning might lead some people to take action but will not have much effect on most people because:
- many don’t relate to climate change as it’s seen to be a problem for the future, not now
- the message is too negative and depressing
- we’ve become addicted to cheap and plentiful oil. It takes more than awareness to change the behaviour of an addict.
The transition movement addresses these problems as follows. Firstly it addresses Peak Oil as well as Climate Change. You might not have heard of ‘Peak Oil’ but we are all starting to feel the effects. It is not about running out of oil in the ground, but reaching the end of easy to get, cheap oil. If the demand for energy keeps increasing whilst the supply declines it is inevitable that the price will soar. Industry experts estimate the peak will occur over the next few years if it hasn’t occurred already. We don’t currently have systems in place to replace oil. The key elements of our society including food production, transport, medicines and manufacturing all rely on it. When oil becomes scarce and expensive, the impact on our lives will be huge. Experts predict a recession which will be far worse than anything we’ve experienced before.
OK – that bit was depressing. The positive part of the Transition approach is to think about what life could be like if we can make the transition to a low carbon society. Many people find this creates a picture of a future so enticing that they instinctively feel drawn towards it.
Finally the transition movement is intended to be enjoyable. It has has pioneered various ways of holding meeting and events that involve and galvanise people. A typical transition event does not consist of a speaker followed by questions.
A community that takes up this challenge is called a Transition Town. The nearest one to us is Horsham which is preparing for a big launch or ‘unleashing’ in 2009. You can see what they’re doing and learn more about the transition movement generally on this website: http://www.transitionhorsham.org.uk/. Here in Mole Valley we have just taken the first step of forming a Transition Steering Group and we’ll have had our first meeting when you read this. If you want to get involved, please contact us via the Contact button on the Green Mole Forum website.
Derek Smith, Green Mole Forum
Forest row (community website, council website, map), a village not so far from Mole Valley has officially unleashed themselves as a transition town. Read about it here.
(A transition town is a community which engages and prepares to cope with the inexorable decrease in oil supplies. It is a positive approach to learning to rely on this increasingly expensive commodity less and less. A large part of this is building up resources of good, local, food.)