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Transition Bloomington helps neighborhoods re-imagine themselves [Herald-Times, Bloomington, Ind.](Herald-Times (Bloomington, IN) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Mar. 20--Imagine that you're driving a car across the vast spaces of an enormous desert, and your gas tank is exactly half empty. This is the perfect time to consider your options for continuing onward or finding shelter; you wouldn't want to wait until the tank is nearly empty. This is the situation the world faces with peak oil: half of all the world's petroleum reserves have been used up. The U.S. Department of Energy's 2005 Hirsch Report noted that peak oil will pose enormous challenges to our economy and lifestyle, and that mitigation efforts will be necessary to ease the transition to a world characterized by scarce oil. The group Transition Bloomington is part of a worldwide approach that's addressing this issue in a positive and can-do spirit. Founded in Totnes, England only four years ago, more than 300 cities and towns around the world today now have a local Transition group suggesting creative ways to live despite "Energy Descent". "There's no reason why a future with less oil couldn't be a preferable place to the present," says British permaculture teacher and Transition founder Rob Hopkins in a video available on the local group's website. Danny Weddle, local Transition activist, agrees. "Transition is a very hopeful peak oil message," he pointed out. "It allows us to be individuals AND to rethink our communities. We get to choose our future! It's not all gloom and doom and Mad Max." Transition Bloomington is carrying on a campaign to create resiliency in our community, making us stronger and more capable of dealing with the future stresses of high oil prices and associated changes in our society and our lifestyle. Don't forget that oil is not only in our gas tanks; everyday things ranging from clothing, makeup, toys, plastics, roofing materials and the food in our groceries are either made from or produced with petroleum products. Bloomington's city government is one step ahead of the game, for last fall it adopted the report by its task force on peak oil. Bloomington residents might not realize how forward-looking this report actually is, but our community is leading the way, nationally. The Task Force final report envisions "a post-peak Bloomington wherein most residents live within walking distance of daily needs; most of the food required to feed residents is grown within Monroe County; residents can easily and conveniently get where they need to go on bike, foot or public transit; most of the community's housing stock is retrofit for energy efficiency; and local government provides high-quality services to its residents while using less fossil fuel energy." Transition's goal is to help implement that task force report, neighborhood by neighborhood. Task force chair and city councilman Dave Rollo explained. "Reaching global peak oil, which the task force concluded occurred in 2008, means living with less and less petroleum as life goes on," he said. "We don't really have a choice in the matter, as it is a geological phenomenon. What we do have a choice in is preparing for a low energy future sooner rather than later. Transition Bloomington is part of a worldwide movement to begin this shift, and the Task Force Report provides a framework for the community. Personally, I can't think of a more important and worthwhile effort than preparation for energy descent. It has engaged me and informed my work for the past seven years." Danny Weddle and fellow Transition activist Ann Kreilkamp have been making presentations to neighborhood associations within Bloomington, suggesting ways in which future oil shortages can be mitigated. Urban agriculture is going to be very significant, utilizing spaces that are now nothing but lawns; and old buildings will be retrofitted and transformed to provide new uses. Strategies that might be workable could include removing fences between lots in order to maximize spaces for children to play, or neighbors participating in cooperative gardening on one person's lot if that lot happened to be the best site on the street for a garden. This doesn't mean the end of suburbia as we know it; it means a beneficial re-imagining of suburbia. Transition outreach organizer Rhonda Baird noted, "When we create new connections in our neighborhoods, making them places you are proud to be part of, it makes homes more valuable and it makes people invest in their spaces." Transition offers a creative long-term approach to our neighborhoods, offering positive suggestions, not negative criticisms. Transition applies the concept of permaculture not just to yards and gardens but to human culture itself. It's an approach to building sustainable human communities in which people know their neighbors, chip in to help, and create bonds that sustain each other. "That's the brilliance of the plan," says Ann Kreilkamp; "we go into energy descent, but at the same time we strengthen our connections to our community and improve our ability to fend for ourselves and handle any stresses as they come." Partnering with the city of Bloomington, Transition Bloomington will stage an all-day event on April 24, 9:30 am to 5:30 pm at City Hall Chambers called "The Great Unleashing" during which a city-wide Energy Descent Plan for the next ten to twenty years will be initiated. The event will follow a process called Open Space in which participants create their own agenda and methods of interacting to get business accomplished. Transition Bloomington sums up their goal: "We will see a flourishing of local businesses, local skills and solutions, and a flowering of ingenuity and creativity. It is a Transition in which we will inevitably grow, and in which our evolution is a precondition for progress. Emerging at the other end, we will not be the same as we were: we will have become more humble, more connected to the natural world, fitter, leaner, more skilled, and ultimately, wiser." To see more of the Herald-Times or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.heraldtimesonline.com/. Copyright (c) 2010, Herald-Times, Bloomington, Ind. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. |