Transition Sydney co-founder Ruth, is in touch with the Australian chapter of the Association for the study of Peak Oil (ASPO) and received this interesting link this week from ASPO's Ian Dunlop who is just back from Copenhagen where he was a member of Mikhael Gorbachef's Climate Change task force. (Sorry,  the earlier link was a broken one!)

Here is the Link

The link is to an article by Paul Gilding which is an interesting and thought-provoking read.

Why can't we scale -up the solution to a Sydney size?

Watch this and ask yourself the question.

A new article by Rob Hopkins for the publication "Resurgence", points out that the usual responses to climate change from all levels of government and business are missing a vital point - that of resilience. The article expores what resilience means in our communities and how vulnerable they are when depending on very long chain supply lines of a great deal of the basic living living necessities. You can read this excellent article here transitionculture.org/2009/10/21/resilience-thinking-an-article-for-the-latest-resurgence/

Community for many urban dwellers does not necessarily exist in the place where they live. How do we build local resilience in the absence of local "communities"?

An initial meeting has been held between some locals in the Leichhardt area to start the ball rolling for a Transition Initiative there.

Prime mover and shaker, Sky de Jersey has family connections to Transitioners in NZ and a strong passion to work with the local community to build its skill-base and prepare for a resilient future . The area has wonderful diversity and a strong base of imported wisdom and skills from its older residents - as well as great food and coffee! It will be exciting to see this initiative grow and create its own unique version of transition to a resilient community.

If you live in the area and want to get involved, click on this word

The man who inspired the Transition Movement is honouring us with a visit to our next Cafe Conversation.

See the Events panel at the right of screen for details and bookings

It seems that "community" is more of a mental and emotional construct than something tangible and easily identified or defined.  It is something that was probably never even thought about in the small rural villages of the past. I suspect that the villagers just got on with life and took it for granted that they all knew each other, traded food, goods or skills with each other, occasionally fought with each other,socialised together or helped each other out.

A few of us Transition Sydney folk were invited to a preview of this amazing film about 6 months ago. It has had a huge impact in UK and Europe and now is finally launching here. It's a painful mixture of fiction and real-life (and the real life bits will make you as mad as hell, and show you just how easy it is for us to delude ourselves that climate change is "sorted" or a non-issue).  Click on "Read more" to see the trailer 

Transition initiatives are described as community-based actions focused on building local community resilience. But what do we mean by community? And do we actually have any community in Sydney?