Dunedin Area Transition Groups

Hi All, (copied from email)
Please note, the Transition Town forum is now located (bizarrely!) in Southland (see link): http://www.transitiontowns.org.nz/node/847

This is because the TT web administrator (Rimu) is way up North and doesn't understand anything under Christchurch. ; )
It is also because I am just learning about creating forums/blogs on the TT site, and if I can do it (roughly) it ain't hard (but neither is it perfect)! Rimu is attempting to give me advice, but will only show me the grail if I get to his 'how to use the TT web sites' at the Eco Show inTaupo. Since the North Island isn't on my agenda, please bear with the idiosyncratic labelling regime.

Feedback is best there (on the forum) - if we use it. But to summarise so far:

Niki: keen, but if soon must be week before 7 Oct, as N is absent for 4 -5 weeks after that.
Maureen: can communicate with SL groups, and we can expect a number of interested people from various parts of the city
Jinty: Keener for the 16th Oct date, though may be clashes with some SDC stuff.
Kim: Can make it to either proposed meeting date (9th or 16th)

My thoughts:
- I don't want to 'drive' this, but my intuition says we're ready for it. Only feedback will tell.
- No date will suit everyone
- I think as a core useful open dialogue forum we need some people from Waitati, Port, MacBay, if we have that, we run with it.
- We'll benefit from those other groups/people too
- This, as Maureen clearly put it, is about 'mid-level' action, i.e., beyond the individual, below official governance structures.

Best,
Scott

On 16/09/2008, at 6:22 PM, Maureen Howard wrote:

Yes - I think this would appeal to most of the followon Sustainable Living
groups. BroadBay/Portobello, Waikouaiti. I've got some workshops planned
with most of the groups in the next month - will bring up. Both dates suit
me though there is an SDC meeting at 5.30pm on the 9th - I can get reps for
each group I hope. About 5 gps.

I like the geographic and the polical lobbying focus - differentiates it
from other group networking -such as the more relaxed GreenDrinks.

Cheers
Maureen

OK, so the title changed, to "Rising Electricity Costs: Town in Transition" (initially we thought 'Transition' too obscure when it was first considered, but the first consideration met with approval in some areas and so the title went out on publicity.

Jeanette Fitzsimons arrived from Central Otago on a visit to the Waitati Energy Project, via the Pig Route, and visited Waitati’s highest HERS rated house. There she also met the Powerhouse Wind team, viewed components of their ground breaking single blade turbine and watched a short presentation.

The forum, ‘Rising Electricity Costs: Town in Transition’, began at 7.30. Jeanette was our keynote speaker, and provided a simple breakdown of the big forces we only vaguely perceive. She made essential connections between the emerging global recession and its deeply rooted causes, i.e. the hard limits we are hitting in the natural world – oil, water, fisheries, grain, minerals, along with the dangerous instability of a rapidly changing climate. Yet she reminded the audience that we are not powerless, and gave examples of where we could all take effective action.

After that informative, hard-hitting and motivational opening we turned to our expert panel: Janet Stephenson, convenor of the Otago Energy Research Centre, Inga Smith, Co-Chair of Solar Action, and Ian Buchan, owner/manager of Power Options, specialising in installing distributed and off-grid generation systems. Jeanette Fitzsimons and the panel responded to three questions: ‘what would you/can you offer a prediction of future electricity costs, in a context of peak oil, etc?’; ‘How can households prepare for the future energy situation?’; ‘How would you imagine our community preparing for the future – or what might an ‘integrated local energy system’ look like?’ After each response speakers responded to follow-on questions from the floor.

It was an extremely lively evening with the amusing (a story of a man who wanted to remain off the grid, but had to fight the company to do so – and got some copper in the process), the outraged (why would National proclaim it wants to repeal the Green Homes legislation and the 1 billion dollar insulation fund for NZ’s housing stock when we know we urgently need to give NZers warm dry and healthy homes?), the pragmatic (‘what is the best solar hot water set up and how can it be made affordable?’), and the serious (‘what can I do, and what can we do now?’).

The research relationship between Waitati community and the Otago Energy Research Centre, coordinated by the Waitati Energy Project featured strongly, as the implications of the partnership were made explicit: knowing ourselves better, and becoming empowered to act on that knowledge; becoming an example. Ian Buchan argued that by getting our own households and lives sorted we’d solve the big problems, Inga Smith mentioned the multiple arenas of action, and emphasised that we are all political creatures and surprisingly powerful at that, once we become aware of our own power, Janet Stephenson emphasised the power of community, in knowledge combined with action, and Jeanette Fitzsimons stressed that knowing and understanding the possibilities and limits we’re presented with as individuals, as a community group and members of community, and as political citizens of New Zealand, were all important for gauging effective action.

Many ideas and initiatives were aired, and one that particularly captured the imagination of all present was the suggestion to form a power buying cooperative, and negotiate a bulk purchasing price with a supply company, offering moderated demand in return for a special relationship. As the forum concluded, no-one was left in any doubt of the benefits of adding insulation to our houses (some if none, more if some) or of installing solar water heating. DCC Energy Manager Neville Auton sketched out some exciting energy possibilities, perfectly in tune with WEP objectives, and ideas were sparking over cups of tea and biscuits.

Somewhere between 90 and 100 people attended, and the forum concluded at around 9.40 with conversation continuing one long into the evening and people reluctant to leave. We’re left with a surplus of topics and pragmatic actions to go on with!

Scott Willis.