Keeping it local - and low-carbon - with TTE

Hi Rockwell. Following on from Pebras, who has explained how the Transition Town movement began, here's the Exmouth angle:

Transition Town Exmouth is a group dedicated to finding ways of tackling the dual crisis of Peak Oil and Climate Change. It is also a group of people dedicated to Exmouth, and to finding ways of rebuilding the local resilience of the town.

Founded in July 2008, TTE acts as an umbrella organization, linking various affiliated environmental groups in the town. These groups include: Plastic Bag Free Exmouth, Creative Exmouth, Cyclepath Exmouth, Energy, Exmouth LETS (Local Exchange Trading System), Farmers Market, Food, Good Health Exmouth, Inner Transition and Xcycle.

TTE and these affiliated groups have been active in producing locally made recycled replacements for plastic bags, running seed-swap events, supporting the local farmers’ market, staging awareness raising events, working with other community groups and the local authority and publishing a Local Food Guide. TTE aims to encourage any individuals or groups to develop ideas that build the sustainability of Exmouth.

Hope you can make it along to the Transition Groups Together event on Saturday. It should be a good one...

The idea of the transition town movement started in Totnes a few years ago - see tinyurl.com/7caux5 - it is basically a community response motivated by a perception that traditional government has not been very good at recognising the opportunities and challenges we face with "climate change" and "peak oil". The idea of Saturdays' event is that Transition groups from Exmouth and local towns will get together for a quick update of what they are doing and then a "world cafe" format discussion where anyone who turns up is welcome to take part in small group discussions.

What is the link between "low carbon and local" and the "recession" could be one topic for discussion - but there may be others. One could indeed argue as some have that the current recession is not purely an economic breakdown, but one that is a symptom of a system was relying on oil prices being low. On the other hand, at a time of economic austerity, it is a challenge to try and be austere on the things that are damaging to long-term prosperity rather than "quick fixes" that turn out to be not such a fix in the long term.

I keep hearing good things about Transition Town but I'm not really sure what it is and where or how it started. Can you tell me any more about the link between low carbon and local opportunities in the recession - as I'm interested in going but would like to know more.
Thanks.