Roller Coaster Days
In the last few days, clocks turned back an hour. Darker days on their way. Will have to wait ’til St Lucy’s day in December for the turning of the solar year, the winter equinox and a little more light. Have spent the weekend gathering jumbo crop of apples from my father’s garden. They are now cooked up and coming to a ‘rolling boil’ in a huge pan in the kitchen. A tang of apples pervades the house. Winter may be on its way but there will be apple jelly.
It has been a roller coaster couple of weeks: stock markets tumbling, house prices falling, banks in crisis, a ‘full blown recession’.
Over the past months as Transition Town Tooting has been finding its feet, I’ve been struck by the perspicacity of this movement to forsee the urgent need to plan ahead, build resilience and collectively invent how our low energy future will sound, look and feel like. The realities of the Triple Crunch (credit crunch, peak oil, climate change) are playing themselves out at top speed in full technicolour all around….All the reasons for creating positive community responses to these global challenges are surely here!
And here is some VERY GOOD NEWS: On October 28th -tomorrow- the government is to announce that the new Climate Change Bill – which will be made law next month, with a commitment to curb the UK’s carbon footprint by 80% by 2050 – will now include aviation and shipping emissions. This is the world’s first climate change law and is what Friends of The Earth director Andy Atkins has called “a world-class climate change law”. This appears to be a direct result of everyone lobbying their MPs who in turn have lobbied the government. Change IS possible.
Now we have to work out how we will actually reduce our carbon footprint by 80% by 2050. Transition Town Tooting (TTT) will continue its events, awareness raising over weeks and months ahead. 2 meetings planned immediately on Nov 2nd (11am-1pm) and Nov 4th (7-9pm). Both at Mushkil Aasaan, 220-212 Upper Tooting Road, SW17 (side entrance, first floor).
The first, a practical workshop with visioning excercise and how we imagine TTT’s Energy Descent Action Plan coming into being. A future preferable to the present and built on some of the amazing ideas that have been coming forward and will continue to be dreamt up by all Tooting residents. The meeting on Nov 4th is a planning meeting to build on the momentum gathered over the Autumn for organising events and next steps.
Sunday Nov 2nd will also see first ever Transition Town Tooting Sunday Swap. Bring anything you would like to swap: food, ideas, clothes. Apple Jelly anyone?? See you there. Lucy Neal.