Transition Town Aberystwyth?

I've just come back from a public meeting in Aber which hopes to be the beginning of putting Aber onto a Transition Town path - the 'transition' meaning how we learn to live differently in the world of scarce oil that lies ahead of us.

The main part of the meeting was a screening of The End of Suburbia, a documentary about suburbia - our way of living of urban sprawl where most people live in the suburbs and commute into the cities for work, often by car, and what peak oil means for this way of life. Peak oil refers to the point where global oil production reaches its peak and thereafter production rates begin to decline. It isn't running out of oil - but it's the beginning of the end, where decreasing supply means that prices are going to increase unless demand begins to fall too.

The screening was followed by an introduction to the principles, background and examples of transition by Sarah Pugh, who has been involved with TransitionCity Bristol - trying to apply transition principles to a city of 400,000! Transitioning is about an 'energy descent' - getting used to using much lower levels of oil and gas, descending from our current level of consumption in preparation for a world where those lower levels will be the only choice available.

I blogged in April about a massive public meeting in Lampeter to introduce the Transition Town concept (see the Guardian article here) , and it is brilliant to see Aber residents taking up the initiative to spread the word, ideas and practices locally! Transitioning begins with ten key steps - raising awareness, forming local groups, connecting with local government, 'the great re-skilling' and so forth, but what is empowering is a sense of any means possible - there is no fixed, dogmatic way to transition, but different places will discover different ways of doing things.

The first meeting to start thinking aloud about what making the transition entails, with other concerned residents takes place this coming Monday (18 June) at 7pm in the Treehouse on Baker Street - if you can't make this but want to be kept in touch, email Albrecht Fink (fogelfink[at]gmail.com) who is leading this initial bit of coordination on the project.