At a public meeting last night, Kendal was formally announced as the latest Transition Town (there are apparently around 270). South Lakes Action on Climate Change, a local pressure group, announced they had successfully passed the audit to achieve TT status. The town mayor and local MP were there to add their congratulations.

TT’s grew as a response to the challenge of Peak Oil – the date when forecasters state that oil production will start to decline irreversibly. As the global economy is built on the relatively low cost and high availability of oil, environmentalists predict that without corrective action, this shortage would have catastrophic effects on the human race.

TTs are one attempt at corrective action at grass roots level – encouraging communities to start to transition now to a low carbon future. Last night’s meeting showed excerpts from In Transition 1 – the movement’s video manifesto, and there was no doubt about the enthusiasm and committment of the fifty or so people in the room.

However, earlier in the day I had watched the Tory prospective parliamentary candidate campaigning in the centre of town. He was attempting to raise the closure of a free informal car park in Kendal as a major issue in the area. If he is right in identifying this as the biggest issue in the town just now, then I think the good folks in TT have some way to go to winning hearts and minds of the people in the street in Westmorland.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 4th, 2010 at 9:40 am and is filed under Greenery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.