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Sandpoint becomes 2nd Transition Town in U.S.
Positively Sandpoint (Idaho)
The Transition Town initiative has been a fast-growing movement with a working model to look peak oil and climate change squarely in the eye and release the collective creativity of a city or town to establish sustainable solutions to these serious issues. In the United Kingdom more than 50 towns currently signed up. North America started catching the fever when earlier this year Boulder, CO became the first official transition town in the country. Now we can announce with pride Sandpoint, Idaho has become the 2nd official Transition Town in North America.
(9 June 2008)
Portland: Step program for gasoholics
Editoiral, Portland Oregonian
One year ago, the Peak Oil Task Force delivered a report to the City Council, but the whole region needs to mobilize Think of it as a commuter version of “Some Enchanted Evening.” At a recent graduation party in Cedar Mill, two neighbors squint at each other across a crowded kitchen island. Kinda scary, isn’t it, they agree, about those gas prices headed toward $5 a gallon. Then a bit shyly, they circle a new question. Maybe it’s time to take it to the next level. Both, they know, work downtown. Both leave home and return each day at roughly the same time. Turns out, they even park right next door to each other. Maybe this is a match made in post-Peak Oil Heaven.
All over the metro area, people are flirting with new transportation hookups. Bus and train ridership are soaring; interest in car-sharing is, too.
That should help Zipcar (formerly Flexcar), which has 202 cars available in Oregon. Except the same spikes in fuel costs that help the company attract new customers also eat into its profits and limit its ability to expand. (It has only three cars in Vancouver, three in Beaverton, none in Hillsboro.)
In fact, many businesses, governments and families are in the same fix: They must ride the ice cube while it melts. We need to fuel a transformation, and it may ultimately improve our lives. But only if we can fuel it fast, while supplies last — of diminishing fuel.
Two years ago, when Portland created the Peak Oil Task Force, it sounded apocalyptic. Not anymore. Summer of 2008 may be remembered as the moment we awoke from our long national gas binge. Whether oil production has peaked or will do so in a few decades is almost academic. Every fill-up knocks home the realization that we can’t afford to go on like this.
… The party’s over.
But a deeper community connection has just begun.
(15 June 2008)
Apocalypse Now? To hell with debate, what can the simple folk do?
Donna Williams, American Chronicle
I am seriously telling people in drought stricken suburbs, cities and towns to collect any large rubbish bins or industrial size builder´s tubs and place them around your back garden. Even put them under your rain pipes.
Even in California, where people rarely use public transport let alone grow their own food, the governor announced CA officially drought effected. And that means water restrictions like we have here in Australia. In time anything outdoors you won´t be able to water. So get the bins and tubs now, catch the water now, as and when you can use it for plants.
… Here in Melbourne, we have the infrastructure – public transport is great here. But houses requiring petrol cars to get to work and shops have plummetted in price by around 30% (2008) and likely to go further. Those on the railway lines, bus routes, tram lines are highly sought after, over priced, hard to get and rents have increased so dramatically we are having ´rent auctions´ with many people ending up at the back of the queue, risking homelessness.
High fuel means food will rocket in price. You CAN grow food in your garden, safely, with good nutrition, even later feed the scraps to a couple of chickens.
… We can change these things, if we understand them, if we know we are not pawns in this, we are active participants and we can choose what we support, what we buy, how we adapt. We are not powerless.
(14 June 2008)
Donna Williams says that she is known as “‘the arty autie’ [austistic] and have been described as the embodiment of creative chaos.”
38 pounds lighter, all from recycling
Sharon Pian Chan, Seattle Times
Two weeks ago, Baiba Rubino had the most trash to lose. Weighing in at 63 pounds, her garbage was dumped in front of reporters and photographers, while a “garbologist” picked through her family’s dirty diapers and rotting crab leg, pointing out items that could be recycled.
Hers is one of six Renton families competing in a monthlong King County contest to reduce trash by recycling more.
Thursday, the Rubinos’ weekly trash weighed 25 pounds, a loss of 38 pounds from May 29.
… She has spent the past two weeks coming up with simple strategies to reduce and reuse. For her, recycling is about doing her small part and teaching her children to do the same.
Recycling food scraps and food-soiled paper has made the biggest difference in how much garbage her husband and two kids produce. While her 3-year-old daughter, Anna, ran around in a purple princess gown, Rubino showed where she keeps a biodegradable, bag-lined bin under the kitchen sink. Every other day, she tosses the bag into her yard-waste cart. Any longer and the kitchen starts to smell, she said.
Stung by rising grocery prices, Rubino has started buying in bulk, which reduces trash. She stopped purchasing single-serve juice packs like Capri Sun, instead making juice from concentrate. Freezing extra food also saves money. She also used to throw out meat if she didn’t have time to use it in a meal. Now she cooks it, slices it and freezes it so she can serve it on ramen noodles for Anna.
(13 June 2008)
A Community Guide to Environmental Health
Jeff Conant and Pam Fadem, Hesperian Foundation
Drawing the connections between people’s health and the environments in which we live, this groundbreaking book empowers health promoters, development workers, educators, activists, community leaders and ordinary people to take charge of their communities’ health.
… Years in the making, this comprehensive guide has twenty-three chapters which break down the broad overview of environmental issues and concerns into specific examples of how they affect peoples’ health, and how communities have organized to improve their environment and thus their own lives.
Table of Contents, Credits
Chapter 1: Promoting Community Environmental Health
Chapter 2: Understanding and Mobilizing for Community Health
Chapter 3: Protecting Natural Resources for All
Chapter 4: Environmental Rights and Justice
Chapter 5: Health Problems from Unsafe Water
Chapter 6: Protecting Community Water
Chapter 7: Building Toilets
Chapter 8: Health Problems from Mosquitoes
Chapter 9: Protecting Watersheds
Chapter 10: Forests
Chapter 11: Restoring Land and Planting Trees
Chapter 12: Community Food Security
Chapter 13: The False Promise of Genetically Engineered Foods
Chapter 14: Pesticides Are Poison
Chapter 15: Sustainable Farming
Chapter 16: Harm from Toxic Chemicals
Chapter 17: A Healthy Home
Chapter 18: Solid Waste: Turning a Health Risk into a Resource
Chapter 19: Health Care Waste
Chapter 20: Preventing and Reducing Harm from Toxics
Chapter 21: Mining and Health
Chapter 22: Oil, Illness, and Human Rights
Chapter 23: Clean Energy
Chapter 1 begins
It is clear what it means to improve the health of a child or of a family. But how do you improve the health of the environment?
When we talk about environmental health, we mean the way our health is affected by the world around us, and also how our activities affect the health of the world around us. If our food, water, and air are contaminated, they can make us sick. If we are not careful about how we use the air, water, and land, we can make ourselves and the world around us sick. By protecting our environment, we protect our health.
Improving environmental health often begins when people notice that a health problem is affecting not just one person or group, but is a problem for the whole community. When a problem is shared, people are more likely to work together to bring about change.
In this chapter we tell the story of a community health organization in the town of Manglaralto, Ecuador, where health workers stopped a cholera epidemic. Afterward, people in the community found ways to work together to overcome other health problems as well.
(2008)
Copies of this comprehensive book can be ordered online. Book and chapters are downloadable for free, as are many other publications at the Hesperian website. Hesperian is the same group that puts out the well known book “Where There Is Not Doctor.” -BA
