BY DONNA WESTFALL
Wednesday night, September 24th, a group of nearly 40 people joined local, Dan Schultz, and Humboldt resident, Larry Goldberg, at the Fire Department on Washington Blvd to learn about Transition US.
They showed an hour long video of Transition groups around the world and how these groups are impacting their neighborhoods. Some are cleaning up abandoned homes. Some are growing food at the airport. Some are installing solar panels to power some 40 homes in their area.
The mission of Transition US is to inspire, encourage, support, network and train individuals and communities as they consider, adopt, adapt and implement the Transition Model.
The concerns that spearheaded this movement were recognizing that natural resources are being depleted. Also that we have to generate solution to peak oil. It has taken millions of years to create oil from ancient decomposed matter. At the rate we are consuming oil, it appears that we have “peaked” the supply and now are on a downward slope with this finite source. The other concerns are economic crises and climate change.
Volunteers from the community are encouraged to invest their time, skills and resources in solving local problems. In their brochures under Cheerful Disclaimer, they write, “What we are convinced of is this: If we wait for the governments, it’ll be too little, too late. If we act as individuals, it’ll be too little. But if we act as communities, it might just be enough, just in time.”
In our community we have an abundance of wind and usually rain. One solution may be wind machines. One woman protested because of the number of birds they would kill. Another man piped up that less than .01% of the wind machines ever kill birds. Many of those in the group were interested in gardening and growing food. Larry Goldberg related that one community received 200 donated fruit trees and their group spent the day planting the trees in a low income apartment complex.
I mentioned wanting to get on the agenda at the City Council and Board of Supervisors the banning GMO’s (genetically modified organisms), but so far one elected official didn’t see the need since we don’t have much of an agriculture base in our area. As an organic gardener for decades, I was hopeful to nip this potential problem in the bud. It took four years and two times at the ballot box to stop the insidious program of 44 years of harmful water fluoridation.
Other concerns were the need for solar energy in our area in order to reduce the high electricity costs that seem to be ever rising, along with high sewer rates also consistently increasing.
Before the program ended, suggestions for the next meeting and free meetings rooms were discussed. The Wellness Center a few blocks up from the Fire Department was mentioned.
Look for future notifications. This sounds like it’s going to be a very worthwhile group.
Glad to hear about this. I mentioned some ideas long ago to put Crescent City on the map as a leader in innovation, but the backward and stuck-in-a-bubble leadership of this community only know old and tired ways and it’s always back to the business-as-usual model. We have so many opportunities here, like the wind and ocean to generate power. The power-sucking Cultural Center could be an example of renewable energy that would save the city so much money. Street lights could be solar. Wave generators could probably be built here. There are ways to generate power from trash and turn us into a zero-waste community. People and communities are doing it all over the world, why not here? We need to step out of our comfort zone and create a new way of life, a new comfort zone that benefits the planet rather than destroy it. But, this IS Crescent City, as I always say. New and younger leadership might be just the thing to get us away from the tired old ideas that have no place in the future.