Round up of the Transition Week

Welcome to another round up of the Transition Farnham Week — the last one of the summer.

This was the week in which the Transition Meeting was spent partly out on the lawn and partly in the pub — talking about how to achieve a sustainable lifestyle.

The Mayor of San Francisco announced striking new laws requiring all city departments to immediately start using sustainable food, and has given them six months to create plans for growing substantially more sustainable food in and around the city.

Desertec, a consortium of approximately 20 companies, announced the go-ahead to build a pioneering 400 billion euro ($550 billion) project to build massive (sustainable) solar farms in the Sahara desert to supply Europe with electricity.

And our very own Ed Miliband announced the ‘UK Low Carbon Transition Plan‘ — a plan he calls “the most systematic response to climate change of any major developed economy”. That it may be. And he did mention Transition Towns in his speech, (how many other environmental groups get mentioned by government ministers?) saying “we know from the Transition Towns movement the power of community action to motivate people.”
But the sad reality is that although this is a step in the right direction, more will be needed. Click here for Rob Hopkins’ analysis, and an overall score of 6 out of 10. All praise to Ed for getting the government to take the first step though.

And finally, on a lighter note, this Sunday sees the ‘Big Lunch‘ when people all across the UK will be getting together with friends, neighbours and complete strangers for “basically, it’s a party in your street, in everyone’s street. On 19th July we’re asking the people of Britain to stop what they’re doing and sit down to lunch together. Why? Well for lots of reasons really but mainly to put a smile back on Britain’s face.” Several have been arranged in Farnham. Click here to find out more.

That’s all from Transition Farnham for the summer. We’ll be back in September. Enjoy the break.