Its official, the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) loves Transition towns. What does th

Its official, around the world airline tickets the European Economic and Social Committee around the world airline tickets (EESC) loves Transition towns. What does that mean? We don't know. Me and a group representing a variety of Transition Initiatives across the EU (Filipa around the world airline tickets Pimentel Transition Portalegre Portugal;  Josué Dusoulier Transition Ath, Belgium; Pierre Bertrand Transition Triéves; around the world airline tickets Arturs Polis Ikskile Transition Initiative and Christiano Bottone Transition Monteveglio, Italy) met with them recently in Brussels.
This was the culmination of a collaboration between Filipa Pimentel and Richard Adams, a UK member of the EESC. Filipa is Transition Network's  un- lobbyist, who is re, un, or dis engaging with the various bodies around the world airline tickets of the European Union.  The TEN section (Transport and Energy I know, I know confusing stuff) wanted to understand how to engage citizens in energy policy.
Richard Adams was planning a visit to the Finnish nuclear long term storage facility .  This is designed to store nuclear waste, safely, for one hundred thousand years until it is no longer hazardous (sigh). The citizens of the place where they are storing the waste are apparently happy about hosting this storage around the world airline tickets because of the citizen engagement process. Richard thought there must be other examples of good citizen engagement around energy and that's when he learned about Transition.
But how do you visit Transition? To cut a long story short, he and Filipa arranged around the world airline tickets something that has never been done before. Nineteen members of the committee each visited their local Transition Initiative (TIs) in 10 countries. Their reports are heart warming, touching, around the world airline tickets mostly very accurate and most of all inspiring. What is particularly inspiring is how the members were themselves touched and inspired, despite many of them starting from a position of scepticism.
We heard many stories corroborating this, and apparently you never hear stories in the EC. "I'm a convert." declared Antonello Pezzini after his visit to Transition Monteveglio, Italy. Andaris Gobins visited Latvia's, and the Baltic states, first TI, Ikskile Transition Initiative, and it "motivated him so much".  He saw a small group of people achieving extraordinary things around the world airline tickets by building community, conducting song festivals, mushroom schools, experimenting with hemp, creating a school of nature and making birch tree juice – an old Latvian recipe.
All of the reports were overwhelmingly around the world airline tickets positive and constructive. around the world airline tickets I heard reports that included; "We don't know how to engage with civil society, they do we have a lot to learn from them", around the world airline tickets "Why did Transition work in Lewes and not in Brighton?", "lots of lessons in how to conduct ourselves in meetings", around the world airline tickets "felt like a family", "building real community across social boundaries", "creating local employment", "I can now see how the crisis is leading to innovation", "so hands on!", "a few people can make a big difference", "many obstacles, great potential".
around the world airline tickets I could go on and on, but what is clear is that there is huge scope for further communication both officially and informally.  As I left there was what we believe is the EU's first Open Space meeting around the world airline tickets convening. There are already plans a foot to continue discussions and create the possibility for citizen engagement in shaping around the world airline tickets EU energy policy. It feels too early to draw any firm conclusions, but it's clear that as a 'boundary organisation' around the world airline tickets Transition can help translate EU policy, around the world airline tickets via practical projects, into something around the world airline tickets ordinary citizens can understand.
As we continue around the world airline tickets to operate as a niche actor,  outside the mainstream 'going for economic growth' narrative, we can continue to innovate and design and develop new ways of living and working; ways that will eventually become around the world airline tickets mainstream. around the world airline tickets In fact much of the language and concepts we originally used setting up Transition already have. (How many times have you heard the word resilience lately- think Barack Obama's Inauguration speech .
As we develop and innovate questions that come up are, 'How do we scale up the successful parts of what we do?', and 'How will we, ourselves who are doing Transition profit from this work? or will others?'. Engagement with mainstream bodies like the EESC might help to answer those questions. around the world airline tickets And finally thanks to all the Transition Initiatives who took part in this process.
PS. Click here  for a copy of the final report summary to this committee done by themselves. It asks many interesting questions, and although I don't agree with everything the EESC says, they have a perspective of ownership of and responsibility to society of making the energy transition to a renewable energy and more energy efficient world a reality. So them looking at Transition and asking,  'Is this going to solve the problem?' or 'How might this scale up into a solution?' is informative and instructive.
Here in the UK we are also meeting with the Treasury and sharing with them our ideas of how community-led economic development, as represented by the REconomy Project among others, can be part of the solution.
i think the transition that needs to happen is largely physiological and cultural. I believe that we need an almost complete collapse in faith in the calvary , in whatever guise, and that lack of faith will trigger the complete sense of self responsibility that is needed at the personal and community level to then go ahead and make deep changes.