Totnes was the UK’s first Transition Initiative, that is, a community in a process of imagining and creating a future that addresses the twin challenges of diminishing oil and gas supplies and climate change, and creates the kind of community that we would all want to be part of. Transition Town Totnes believes that only by involving all - residents, businesses, public bodies, community organisations and schools – will they come up with the most innovative, effective and practical ideas, and have the energy and skills to carry them out. Our future has the potential to be more rewarding, abundant and enjoyable than today, and by working together they believe the collective enthusiasm and genius of communities can be unleashed to make this transition.
Transition Towns have a two-fold mission:
- To explore and then follow pathways of practical actions that will reduce our carbon emissions and dependence on fossil fuels.
- To build the town's resilience, that is, its ability to withstand shocks from the outside, through being more self reliant in areas such as food, energy, health care, jobs and economics.
Why are Transition Towns needed? Well, this was the headline in ‘The Independent’ on Friday, 23 May just before I went on holiday - 'Is the world about to be running on empty?' The article goes on to explain that the world uses about 87 million barrels of oil a day. Demand is growing but the supply of oil has peaked. "The high-priced energy environment is being driven by the fact that demand has outstripped supply," President George Bush's Energy Secretary, Samuel Bodman, has told the US Congress. "We have sopped up all the available spare oil production capacity in the system ... and there is no silver bullet that will immediately solve our energy challenges or drastically reduce costs at the gas pump."
In Britain, the price of petrol has risen to an average of 114p for a litre of unleaded – £5.15 per gallon. energy bills are rising for households across the globe, hitting the poorest the hardest. Airlines which once limited fare increases to temporary "fuel surcharges" are now raising ticket prices. Manufacturers are putting up the price of goods to compensate for higher energy bills at their factories.“The two toughest challenges facing humankind at the start of this 21st century are Climate Change and Peak Oil. The former is well documented and very visible in the media.” Peak Oil, however, the idea that our supply of oil has peaked and we are leaving the era of cheap, plentiful fuel, has remained under the radar for most people. ”Yet Peak Oil, heralding the era of ever-declining fossil fuel availability, may well challenge the economic and social stability that is essential if we are to mitigate the threats posed by Climate Change.”
The consequences are fairly obvious. Transport will become very expensive - commuting will need to be communal (electric rail) or non-existent (car pools to begin with). Food will become very expensive - unless we set up local co-operatives where will our food come from? Heating will become very expensive – a gas peak is also imminent and this will lead to much more house sharing. Electricity will become very expensive – what effect will this have on our labour saving devices? Hence the need for Transition Towns.
I’ve become aware of these issues and ideas through Sam Norton, Rector of Mersea Island, who has included comprehensive information and presentations on his blog. Sam argues firstly that we have made economic growth into an idol in our society. Just as the earth was corrupt and full of violence in Noah’s day, the same can and should by the church be said of our world today. We need to stand up and say something against the idols of the age. We need to change what it is we value and look to what gives quality of life, what actually allows for human flourishing, rather than simply repeating the economic cycle.
"Economic growth in our society now has negative marginal utility," to use the jargon of economists. What that means is that as we grow a little bit bigger in terms of the economy and of money, our actual quality of life has become less. Statistics show that our quality of life peaked in the late 60's, early '70's. The quality of life for the people living in this country has got worse ever since, even those who are materially better off. Despite our knowledge of these statistics, we remain wedded to growth. For example, think how often politicians mouth the platitudes of needing to preserve growth and do so because they are reflecting the desires and preferences of us, the voting population.
Then, in the words of the theologian, Stanley Hauerwas, "We would like a church that again asserts that God not nations rules the world, that the boundaries of God's kingdom transcend those of Caesar and that the main political task of the church is the formation of people who see clearly the cost of discipleship and are willing to pay the price". The church community, Sam argues, is called to be distinct. We are called to be salt in the world, we are called to be the yeast in the bread, we are called to be the light shining on a hill, and when we simply become absorbed into the world and indistinguishable from the world then we are fit only to be trodden underfoot and discarded. We are called to show to the world what a different sort of community can be like and thereby draw people to it.
In Acts 2. 40 – 47 we read of the early church living together in a way that mirrors that of a transition town. Are we, as Christians, being called to live in a way that mirrors a transition town? Are we being called by God to become contemporary Noah’s and build an ark fit for the coming crisis? To do so at St John’s would link our concerns for peace and justice with our commitment to the local community in a way that could be both distinctively Christian and a clear alternative to contemporary culture. Think about it and let me know whether this is something that we could explore further together.
As we reflect on whether that is a challenge we could accept, let us take away one further question, again from Stanley Hauerwas: What sort of community would we have to be in order to be the sort of people who live by our convictions?
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U2 - Window In The Skies.
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