BCSEA West Kootenay: Focus on Transition Towns

By Adam James on January 28, 2009

Our January chapter report

We had a great discussion at our West Kootenay Chapter meeting last Wednesday after watching a video about the Transition Town movement that's developing in Britain and spreading to other parts of the world. For those who weren't able to make it, but are interested in the video, you can watch it here.

More information about Transition Towns is available at:

The discussion started out on the some of the specific items in the video and spread into how the Transition Town approach might be applied in the Kootenays and some specific activities the local Chapter of the BCSEA could focus on in 2009. Here are some of the key ideas we discussed:

  • The Transition Town focus on hope rather than fear. Being for something rather than against something.
  • The level of effort that went into the process before the official start or "unleashing".
  • The geographic scale that seems to make sense for this type of endeavor.
  • The interesting links made between the environmental movement and the field of addictions psychology.
  • How the success of these projects can be used to help guide activities in the Kootenays.

Some of the areas we identified for local BCSEA activities in 2009 are:

  • A strong desire to repeat the Kootenay Energy Conference.
  • Develop a list of existing projects and groups working on related topics like food security, climate change adaptation, permaculture, etc and work to facility communication between all these groups.
  • Look at existing initiatives and see where the BCSEA may be able to provide support.
  • Perhaps develop our own regional WIKI that could facilitate the items above (similar to the Transition Towns WIKI at www.transitiontowns.org) - Chris is going to look into this for more discussion at the next meeting.

An action item that came out of the meeting was for members to do some research on energy, climate change, peak oil, food security, and any other related projects or initiatives that are going on in their communities to start building this list. So, if you know of any of these that should be included, please pass them on to me and I'll include them in the information for our next meeting.

Also, if you have any other ideas or suggestions for local BCSEA activities this year, please let me know.

Cheers,

Adam James
Chair, BCSEA West Kootenay Chapter
getadam@shaw.ca

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