Transition Bedford

In this weeks Times & Citizen i wrote an article about communities and their response to climate change and peak oil. In the article the all important question was posed;

“what will the Borough of Bedford look like in 2020 as a low carbon, sustainable and vibrant town?”

During 2010 Transition Bedford will be holding several events (the first will be at the Bunyan Museum on the 15th of May – sign up to the mailing list for details) that aim to engage local people around creating a vision for the future of Bedford. Based around the Energy Descent Action Planning method used by Transition groups across the globe, we aim to create a vision and the backcast to the present and create an action plan of how we can deliver the vision.

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Ban Ki Moon addressing the conference

This clip is essential viewing for anyone following Copenhagen

As Copenhagen fails do not despair!!! There will be an international treaty but it will be led by the people, it will probably be done in a couple of years and it will be much more ground breaking, deep routed, driven and worldshiftng than that being discussed at Copenhagen. I’ll explain myself below.

I put a lot of faith and hope in Copenhagen but taking a step back and viewing this conference as part of wider set of activities the timing was quite clearly not right.  We often hear the Einstein quote;

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them”

Most world leaders are well and truly still using the same kind of thinking that caused the problem and given a mindset that is almost “mindset as usual” lets imagine that our leaders came up with what is from our current thinking an “ambitous, fair and legally binding treaty”. Do not underestimate two consequences;
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On the 15th of November i wrote a blog article about Patrick Hall’s (MP to Bedford and Kempston) decision to vote against the 10:10 bill. He kindly responded to the post and I promised to publish his response “in full” here below. In fact there’s two response letters. The first is his response to the blog post and the second is his response to my earlier request that he vote in favor of 10:10. He and i will always disagree over his decision but i have the upper most respect over his attention to mine (and i imagine other constituents)  questions and requests. Truth is we now need much much more than attention if we are going to get ourselves out of this hole. Bold leadership is imperative.

It’s also worth noting that this subject was discussed on TB google group were one of the TB Initiating Group members has put forward some really insightful comments that most certainly opened my eyes. I haven’t named the individual because i haven’t asked permission but you can read the discussion in full here.

My Ref PH/LJ

18 November 2009

Dear Mr Hughes

Thank you for your email sent 17 November 2009 regarding your recent blog post on the 10:10 campaign. After reading the content of your blog, I feel it necessary to formally respond as clearly my views have been misunderstood.

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Patrick Hall MP

Perhaps a more important focus of this post would be that Bedford Borough Council have signed up to 10:10 and have committed to reducing emissions by 10% across their built assets during 2010. Superb, Amazing, Wonderful, well done BBC!!! But that will be another post.

A few weeks back 226 MPs voted for Parliament to sign up to 10:10, 297 voted against. For those unaware of what 10:10 is take a look here, here and here. This tight majority was only made possible by a few votes against and Patrick Hall MP for Bedford and Kempston was one of those votes. In past conversations and communication with Patrick i have always considered him to be extremely knowledgeable about the issues, supportive of our community level efforts and quite honestly i feel that he is dedicated and committed to the changes needed on a personal and political level.

So if a vote of this importance failed because traditionally supportive MP’s voted against, i have to question several things.

10:10 Parlimentary vote

A. Is Patrick Hall’s level of commitment really up to “one of the greatest challenges facing humanity?

B. Was 10:10 a good and sound bill? is there a better way? or perhaps more importantly (for me) was it understood by the MP’s voting?

C. Does our political systems have the ability to deal with the level of change needed? (more…)

After realising that the Bishop of Bedford was campaigning on climate change i thought i’d see what i could find out about other influential figures of

Duke of Bedford

the region. I did a web search using terms such as Duke of Bedford and “Green”, “Eco”, “Environment”, “Climate Change” and “Renewable”. After these failed to yield any connections, i tried “conservation” given that the Duke is a substantial land owner. Relevant findings were pretty scarce. If anyone knows of any green and transition related activities of our local Duke, please do post them here. For that matter if you know of any high profile local residents that are supportive of a transition to a more just, sustainable and vibrant community, please do let us know. It would be nice to know about people who aren’t necessarily white middle classed males too. Not that i have anything against them, being one.

What i found was that previous Dukes were;

- connected to the ” worlds first ever ecological experiment” and linked to Darwin

- gave some land to allotments

- involved in captivated breading of a near extinct bread of dear

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Bishop of Bedford

This article appeared in this weeks Bedfordshire on Sunday and i thought i’d reproduce it here with full credits of course. The reason being that it’s an article of significance but also because i often see articles in the local papers that i think we should re-post on the TB site so that we can collate information. These articles generally indicate a project or organisation that i’m amazed to find exist in our region that i know little of and that i feel we’d do well to connect with. In my mind, largely Transition Bedford as a Transition hub is a mechanism from supporting and bringing together existing activities. So here’s the article. You can see the original here

Bishop faces up to ‘greenhouse’ issue

BY CHRIS GILL

This is the Bishop of Bedford as you probably haven’t seen him before – or are possibly likely to see him again. News – Bishop of BedfordThe Rt Richard Inwood agreed to be photographed with the word Copenhagen written across his forehead to show his backing for climate justice. Other Bishops in the St Albans diocese followed suit ahead of climate talks in the Danish city.

The images will be projected onto landmark buildings across the UK, along with hundreds of other messages from people who are calling on the international community – and Prime Minister Gordon Brown, in particular, to seal a fair and effective climate change deal at the key summit.

The Rt Rev Inwood, said: “Climate change poses a very real threat to humanity and to our planet. “We must be in no doubt that the Copenhagen climate summit requires strong leadership that will deal fairly and effectively with the consequences of climate change.

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I’ve always believed that the transition would be a mix of incremental and step change and that the step changes are largely psychological changes in the way we see ourselves. My belief follows that these psychological changes would come about through global events, festivals, celebrations and protests (not the traditional anti protests but protest in the modern more creative sense displayed in the video below), where people join together from across the globe for 1 day or 1 hour to do the same thing, whatever that thing might be. This global union or connection makes us conscious of each other in a new way. Well in my understanding a global shift is one step closer. Watch and enjoy!!

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Bedford will come together and vote on our new Mayor in the coming days. This article isn’t meant to answer the question “Who will be the next mayor?” nor “who should be the next mayor?”, that’s your choice. It’s a quick temperature gauge on the local political promises around climate change.

I put a question to each of the mayoral candidates via the Times & Citizen;  “I see a Local Authority’s approach to renewables as a kind of litmus test to just how seriously you take the issue of climate change, i’m not particularly interested in opinions on climate change, i’d like to know what specific policies you intend to implement to increase renewables in the area?” The Times & Citzen published a written edit of the response in last Thursdays edition. My initial response was one of dismay at how many of the answers seemingly missed the point. However, some of the content is lost in translation which is largely an issue of editing. I’ve since watched the video responses online. I urge you to take a look. The candidates mostly promise significant action. This article is a request that we hold to account who ever gets in.

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A major funding stream has just become available to communities and NGO’s etc working to lower carbon. Transition Bedford, Zero Carbon Castle, Sustainable Oakley, Flitton and Greenfield carbon initiative could all put in separate or joint bids. My take on this is that there is a massive amount of form filling and the application workload is heavy for a voluntary based initiative like ours. However, the fund is for 10 million pounds awarded to 20 groups, together with considerable support to deliver projects. This level of funding could redefine Bedford’s low carbon landscape and therefore i think if we gain support from the Borough and/or a local NGO or two, in form of, paid employees dedicating time to this application, then it is worth a punt.

See the full press release below and an article on the Transition Culture website

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Unlike governments, nature doesn’t do bailouts. Yet as of today, hu manity will have placed more demand on ecological services – from filtering CO2 to producing food, fiber and timber– than nature can provide in this year, according to Global Footprint Network calculations. From now until the end of the year, we will meet our demand for ecological services by depleting resource stocks and accumulating carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

“It’s a simple case of income versus expenditures,” said Global Footprint Network President Mathis Wackernagel. “For years, our demand on nature has exceeded, by an increasingly greater margin, the budget of what nature can produce. The urgent threats we are seeing now – most notably climate change, but also biodiversity loss, shrinking forests, declining fisheries, soil erosion and freshwater stress – are all clear signs: Nature is running out of credit to extend.”

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