Walden in Transition

Saffron Walden & District Footpaths Association has joined forces with Walden in Transition to organise a unique WALDEN WALK around the edges of the town on Bank Holiday Sunday, 30th May, starting at 10am at the Lord Butler Leisure Centre.

The walk will be launched by the Mayor and Mayoress and will be open to the general public. The route uses public footpaths as well as some private land especially opened for this event.

The walk will be in two parts. In the morning it will be 4½ miles and go from the Lord Butler Leisure Centre around to the Eight Bells where there will be a stop for refreshment. In the afternoon the walk will leave the Eight Bells at 2pm and extend for 3½ miles around to the Lord Butler Leisure Centre.

On route there will a number of stops at information stations highlighting some background to the area. No costs are involved - only refreshments. The public can walk either one part or do both. Children are welcome but the route is unsuitable for pushchairs. If dogs are brought, they must be under control and leashed when leaders request.

For further details, contact either George Turner on 01799 524206 or Jean Coe on 01799 522590.

The WiT Energy Group publicly launched its Low Carbon Affiliation Scheme (LoCAS) with an information and sign-up stall in the Market Square.

A display was mounted outside the Library and group members explained to the public how they could switch to 100% renewable electricity supplied by local power company, Green Energy UK, for 10% reduction on the kilowatt rate if they signed up through Walden in Transition and resided in the Saffron Walden area.

There was considerable interest not only in LoCAS but also in Walden in Transition itself and several people left their contact details and made a note of the next WiT public meeting.

Talk from Miriam Kennet of the Green Economics Institute: "Clone Town, Ghost Town or Our Town?" Entry £3.00 (under 18s free)

As part of its rolling programme of events which examine topical issues affecting the future of Saffron Walden, Walden in Transition has invited prominent economist Miriam Kennet to talk about the challenges that our community faces in these times of economic instability.
Miriam Kennet is the co-founder and CEO of the Green Economics Institute and founder and editor of the International Journal of Green Economics. She teaches for the Institute in a variety of universities and governments all around the world, and is a prolific writer with over 60 articles, books and other publications. The Institute she founded aims to reform economics, and to create a new school of economics which works for today’s problems, including the current downturn.
Dr Steve Willoughby from Walden in Transition said: “We are delighted to welcome Miriam Kennet to Saffron Walden. As an internationally renowned economist, there is no-one better qualified to talk about the issues this town must address, particularly in the face of proposed supermarket developments. We are looking forward to hearing Miriam’s analysis of who benefits, who loses, and what opportunities there are to create alternative and satisfactory outcomes for all.”
Tickets for the event are priced at £3 (under 18s free) and will be available at the door.

Following the successful planting of fruit trees near the Anglo American Memorial in February, a group of Walden in Transition volunteers, organised by John Ready and with the support of Saffron Walden Town Council, planted six trees on the north side of the Common Car Park last Saturday.

They include two Beeches, two London Planes and two Norway Maples which will, in time, complete the existing partial screening of the car-park from the north.

Informal gathering and talk by Jenny Smith on Credit Union. Read report of meeting.

First tree planting session between the cricket field and the American War Memorial - starting at 10am.

With the support of Saffron Walden Town Council around a dozen Walden in Transition volunteers planted 13 fruit trees in the area of the Anglo-American Memorial on Valentine’s Day. The organiser of the planting was the town’s Tree Warden, Mary Flint.
All the trees are native to East Anglia and were supplied by the East of England Apples & Orchards Project. One of the apple varieties is named after Dr Gabriel Harvey who used to live in Gold Street.
The seven apple trees planted were Laxton’s Epicure, George Cave, D’Arcy Spice, Peasgood’s Nonesuch, Dr Harvey, Norfolk Royal Russet and Red Falstaff. The two pear trees were Improved Fertility and Robin. The two plum trees were Cambridge Gage and Blue Tit and the two cherries were Merchant and Summer Sun.

Reports from Working Groups - Thoughts about a Food Group - Shall we become a Transition Town? - Future open meetings

Reports from Working Groups - Talk by Amy Corzine - Screenings of episodes from "The Powerdown Show" - General discussion

This session will build on the success of the lively meeting of 31st May when themed groups began to form (see the report of that meeting). We'll also be showing the documentary film "The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil" which tells of the hardships and struggles as well as the community and creativity of the Cuban people during the difficult time when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990.

Don't worry if you didn't come to the 31st May meeting - you'll be very welcome to join in.

The recent programme of events organised by Walden in Transition has shown that the "triple crunch" of climate change, oil depletion and the crisis in the economy will inevitably have a huge impact on the way we live our lives. But it is also an opportunity for us to build a future for Walden that is more fulfilling, connected and enriching for its people than the way things are today.
In this informal open meeting we will be discussing the concept of Transition - the process of creating the path from where we are to where we want to be.
We will be asking the question: "What should we be doing to make Walden a low consumption, resilient community in terms of health services, education, food, fuel, buildings, technology, waste, business, arts, transport ... and so on?" To start us off, we'll be looking at projects already underway in Walden geared towards reducing our reliance on fossil fuels and re-localising our economy.
Looking ahead to 2030, we'll speculate about when Tesco’s car park is turned over to allotments, Walden gets a new train station, the “Bloods” regularly get gates of 700, Ashdon wins the Waldenvision song contest, most trade is in Walden Pounds, climate change refugees are welcomed with a party on the Common, and why staying at home is the new going away.

Tuesday, 5th May 2009

Dr. Joe Smith, Open University

Why Climate Change Changes Everything

Joe will talk about how the coincidence of globalization, climate change and other global environmental problems and the Internet create opportunities at least equal to the problems that humanity faces.

Joe has written or edited books on the green movement (2006, Granta) climate change (with Stephen Peake, 2003 and 2nd edn 2009, Oxford Univ Press) and the media and global environmental issues (2000, Earthscan). Most recently he edited (with Andrew Simms) 'Do good lives have to cost the Earth?' (2008, Constable and Robinson). Recent research has explored the politics of consumption, and broadcast media's role in shaping public debate about complex issues. He is Co-Director of the Cambridge Media and Environment Programme which, since 1996, has run seminars on environmental change and development issues for senior media decision makers. He led the team of academic consultants on David Attenborough's BBC ONE programmes for the 2006 climate change season, BBC TWO's Coast (2005), and most recently consulted on the world's first televised climate change based drama Burn Up (2008, BBC TWO). Joe is initiator and chair of Interdependence Day a new communications and research project that takes a fresh look at global issues: http://www.open.ac.uk/socialsciences/interdependenceday/index.shtml. Joe holds a BA degree in Social and Political Sciences and a PhD in Geography from the University of Cambridge.

8.00pm, Saffron Walden Town Hall, Market Square, Saffron Walden

Followed by a discussion of how as a community we should respond to the issues raised by this series of talks.
Price: £3 (Under 18's free)

The Age of Stupid is the new film from director Franny Armstrong (McLibel) and producer John Battsek (One Day In September). Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite stars as a man living alone in the devastated world of 2055, looking at "old" footage from 2008 and asking: why didn’t we stop climate change when we had the chance?

In a remote Arctic library, in a climate-ruined 2055, an archivist (Pete Postlethwaite) sits down amid the collected remnants of civilisation to create a memoir using footage from the ‘past’ 50 years. This framework allows director to tell six different, bang-up-to-date climate change stories – including that of an oil worker whose home was decimated in Hurricane Katrina; that of Jeh, founder of India’s low-cost airline, and that of Piers, a wind-farmer developer trying to live sustainably.

Interspersed with animated sequences detailing everything from consumerism to the Iraq war, the film builds a picture of climate change that simply couldn’t be told through any other medium. In some inspired footage, the director allows anti-windfarm campaigners to explain why they object to a new development, shortly before their town is flooded in last year’s unseasonal summer weather.

This film knocks spots off "An Inconvenient Truth" and well deserves the cinema release its crew are hoping for."

Introduced by Steve Willoughby of Walden in Transition.
8.00pm, Saffron Screen. Tickets £5.50 Concessions £4.50. See www.saffronscreen.com for information and to book tickets.

Thursday, 23rd April 2009

David Strahan, Oil Depletion Analysis Centre (ODAC)

The Last Oil Shock

Expert speaker on ‘peak oil’, the oil industry, and their impact on climate change. Author of The Last Oil Shock: A Survival Guide to the Imminent Extinction of Petroleum Man

David Strahan is an award-winning business correspondent, investigative journalist and documentary film-maker, with many years experience of popularising some of the most difficult and important stories in business and science.
For a decade he reported and produced major investigations for BBC television’s flagship business strand The Money Programme, and for its world-renowned science documentary series Horizon. He is now also the author of a provocative but authoritative book about ‘peak oil’, called The Last Oil Shock.

The Last Oil Shock is a wake-up call to a world sleepwalking towards potential catastrophe: global oil production is set to ‘peak’ and go into terminal decline, almost certainly by 2020 if not very much sooner. And when our daily oil supply begins to shrink, the potential effects could include soaring fuel prices, financial collapse, economic depression and worse. ‘Peak oil’, or the last oil shock, represents a threat far more serious than international terrorism, and just as urgent as global warming.

The Last Oil Shock has already won high praise from senior oilmen. Former Shell chairman Lord Oxburgh wrote: "This is a well researched and documented book and David Strahan pulls no punches in his analysis of the world's impending energy problems...I commend it as a really good and informative read on a topic that affects us all." Richard Hardman, CBE, former head of Exploration at Amerada Hess and president of the Geological Society, commented: “This book should be compulsory reading for all those in Government in this and every other significant oil consuming country. Take note and avert the greatest crisis since the Second World War.”

The Last Oil Shock explodes many of the myths held dear by governments, oil companies and environmentalists, and in particular shows:

1. Biofuels and hydrogen are utterly inadequate to make good the looming transport fuel deficit
2. How ‘running out’ of oil may paradoxically worsen climate change
3. How traditional economics critically underestimates the importance of energy, and therefore the severity of the last oil shock.
4. Why governments, oil companies, and many environmentalists oppose the idea, and why they are wrong
5. How the oil reserves of Middle East OPEC countries are almost certainly far smaller than claimed, meaning the global peak will come sooner rather than later
6. How the invasion of Iraq was not ‘all about oil’, but all about peak oil

8.00pm, Council Chamber, Uttlesford District Council, London Road, Saffron Walden
Price: Free

Wednesday, 15th April 2009

Rupert Read, Green Party

Peak Soil: why we need community action and political action now to ensure food security

The problems of food security and peak oil are even more intertwined than people tend to think. We face not only a crisis of 'peak oil', but simultaneously a crisis of 'peak soil': we are losing soil every year through unsustainable farming practices, and the deficit is being made up only through the use of artificial fertilisers. But these fertilisers are deeply dependent upon a heavy input of oil / energy. Thus as the age of cheap plentiful oil comes to an end, we run the risk of a catastrophic decline in our ability to produce food to feed ourselves.
Rupert Read will explain all about this at his talk...

Dr. Rupert Read is a Green Party City Councillor in Norwich, where the Greens are a strong opposition party with 15 Councillors. Rupert is lead Green Party candidate in the European 2009 parliamentary elections for the Eastern Region. He blogs at:
www.rupertsread.blogspot.com
http://twitter.com/RupertRead
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/rupert_read/index.html and writes a regular newspaper column for the ‘Eastern Daily Press’ newspaper: www.oneworldcolumn.org .

As a politician, his policy specialities are transport policy and dangerous-climate-change-prevention policy.
He is Reader in Philosophy at the University of East Anglia, where he specialises in environmental and political philosophy.

7.30pm, Saffron Walden Town Hall, Market Square, Saffron Walden
Suggested donation: £3 (Under 18's free)

Tuesday, 24th March 2009

Jeremy Leggett, Solarcentury

The triple crunch and the green new deal: facing up to a global peak-oil crisis in a global recession while climate-change accelerates.

Social entrepreneur Jeremy Leggett is founder and Executive Chairman of Solarcentury, a leading European solar solutions company, and founder and Chairman of SolarAid, a charity set up with Solarcentury profits. He is author of The Carbon War and Half Gone. He previously worked as a geologist with the oil industry, among other things researching oil source rocks funded by BP and Shell (1978-89). Increasingly worried by global warming, he left to become an environmental campaigner with Greenpeace International (1989-1996), during which time he won the US Climate Institute's Award for Advancing Understanding. Coming to the view that successful green businesses were badly needed in the global fight to cut greenhouse-gas emissions, he set up Solarcentury, which has grown to be the fastest-growing private energy company of any sort in the 2008 Sunday Times Tech Track 100 and has won multiple awards for innovation and sustainability. He is convenor of the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security (ITPOES), members of which include Virgin, Scottish and Southern, Arup, Yahoo and major UK transport companies.

8.00pm, Saffron Walden Town Hall, Market Square, Saffron Walden
Price: £3 (Under 18's free)

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