But I very much doubt whether Bham can be even remotely sustainable for very long anyway. 40-20 years ago it was surrounded by a green belt of farms which supplied its food. It had many factories creating genuine value. But now those farms, factories and related resources are closed and very hard to replace. It has a million people who would not have a clue how to provide their own food and other necessities locally. In the context of severely rising fuel costs, the probability of Bham being able to feed more than 10 percent by local food (or global either) is slim. That’s even if Bham performed some radical de-urbanisation program which is unimaginable without central government support.

So we are looking to a catastrophe of mass starvation, unless, very improbably, the oil/economic crisis magically eases for some years and meanwhile there’s a stupendous movement towards local sustainability.

More realistically, I regret, it looks like mass starvation and violent social breakdown is pretty inevitable, in the next one to ten years. And rather than trying to build something positive in doomed Bham the only positive thing to do is prepare to flee before that collapse hits.

Those with longer memories repeat after me; “Agenda 21, Agenda 21, Agenda 21…”

mu understanding of the transition concept is that you create a vision so appealing that people will want to go there themselves, under their own volition. if my MP were to tell me they wanted my neighbourhood to follow almost any idea, i’d smell a rat immediately and wonder what they were up to, as i’d imagine most people might…

Nice to see Clare demonstrating ‘energy descent’ in action.

x steve

The Transition Birmingham ‘mulling’ group met with Clare on Sat 17 May 2008. She is keen to see every local area within Birmingham with their own Transition Neighbourhood. Felipe and I talked about our ideas for a Transition Birmingham Network, which would help such Transition Initiatives to co-operate where appropriate.

John Hemming MP is also interested, and sent a representative, Neil Endicott.

Our next steps are: (1) to have a Transition Birmingham mulling meeting tomorrow, Mon 19 May 2008, which Neil can hopefully attend; (2) to contact Rob Hopkins to find out when he might fit a talk in Birmingham into his diary – in a central venue which the MPs offices can facilitate.

Watch this space …

my suggestion to clare short would be however, to set up a TT in her area of Birmingham – in her own neighbourhood. the idea of having one over-arching transition project in birmingham risks sounding like a ‘top-down’ rather than grassroots initiatives. if she got a fantastic TT project going where she lived and really got people involved, they would want to go and set one up in their own area.

i’m currently working as part of a transition group in swansea and it looks like this is the way we might go – set up a number of neighbourhood transition projects in the areas of people who are already well into the idea and then hope it spreads!