I realise I got too excited too quickly about the transition movement perhaps being the solution for Dawlish. I now do not think it is, and this is why (in brief, and I will expand on this):

• the transition towns idea is quite sophisticated, more so if one questions it at all deeply;
• it assumes a mindset focussed on two environmental issues:
• ‘peak oil’: the point at which the best (easiest to extract and process) of global oil resources has been discovered and exploited, has, it is argued, been passed or is imminent, such that the cost of oil and its derivatives will increase dramatically; and
• ‘climate change’ caused mainly by a build up of carbon dioxide released by burning fossil fuels has been acting like a blanket retaining too much of the heat from the sun and causing warming and extreme weather events;
• if you have those two issues as your top priorities, you will be pleased that both can be addressed with a single set of responses, an ‘action plan’, directed at ‘energy descent’, whereby your town, or other locality, becomes more locally self-reliant, less dependent on national and global transportation delivering manufactured goods from distant industries, workshops, mines and mechanised plantations;
• you need to welcome a less energy intensive local economy, with local growing of foods in season and craft industries, not seeing that as ‘doing without’ modern conveniences, or regressing to more primitive laborious ways of life;
• you need to trust that your town’s transition will be allowed or encouraged (by the public, the authorities, the media etc.) to take place and have a major impact;
• and so on.

What has all that to do with Dawlish in particular? Well—

• it has been said that the people here tend to be apathetic and ignorant;
• it has certainly been difficult to keep a Friends of the Earth local group going, and national FoE’s ‘Tescopoly’ campaign material doesn’t go down well;
• perhaps that tendency is confirmed by people apparently welcoming the advent of a new supermarket;
• and that suggests conventionality;
• there is no evident ‘alternative’ element here;
• any ‘community’ activity seems to be directed at putting on events like the Carnival for visitors, rather than the place having a soul or sense of cohesiveness;
• groups formed to address issues have been fragmented, not working together;
• the economy depends on people coming here, on transport, on fossil fuels, on the car;
• and so on.

On the Transition Town Totnes website, it says:

[O]ur mission is two-fold:

• To explore and then follow pathways of practical actions that will reduce our carbon emissions and dependence on fossil fuels.
• To build the town's resilience, that is, its ability to withstand shocks from the outside, through being more self reliant in areas such as food, energy, health care, jobs and economics.

http://totnes.transitionnetwork.org/

I cannot see such a mission being adopted in Dawlish, however well the issues of ‘peak oil’ and ‘climate change’ are ‘sold’ via talks, meetings, video showings etc. A personal point I should perhaps make is that I’m not convinced about those issues myself – and that’s where the arguments get really complicated. To be continued…

This page was previously about ‘Breaking the Supermarket Habit: Starting in Dawlish’, and is now the temporary home page for the Transition Town Dawlish group, started 8 May 2008.

Below is what I started in a brief enthusiastic interlude:

The advice is to start with a ‘steering group and design its demise from the outset’ (Rob Hopkins, The Transition Handbook, p.148), and that is all I’m aiming for at this stage, just two, three or four of us. My enthusiastic friend (see below) – who is too busy, she says, to get involved – says I should set up a website, explaining the concepts in ‘plain old English’. This page isn’t that; this is just to get some initial thoughts together.

The proper Transition Town Dawlish website should have good interactive facilities: let me know (chris_e_marsh@hotmail.com) what you want or prefer, but I haven’t caught up with how to do that – some clever techy person please tell me how, but I’m not keen on those templates supposed to make it easy: they often don’t work for everyone out there, and they can restrict what you can put on the site, and in what format.

Why start a Transition Town Dawlish group? For me it is because the problems and issues around Dawlish need a radical focus. There are various groups trying to do something, each with a different perspective:

• DADS saving Sandy Lane: strong, well-supported campaign on a narrow issue;
• DARE: concentrates on planning, anxious not to be political, to reflect its members’ interests;
• Teignbridge Friends of the Earth: very dedicated organiser, DB, but puts some people off with national FoE propaganda;
• Dawlish Community Trust: I was impressed with the presentation by yellow book on 6 May, but where will it go from there?
• Dawlish Chamber of Trade: unrepresentative of local traders, I’m told.

Will anyone who reads this tell me their views of any or all of these groups.

Another reason for joining the Transition Towns movement is that the world needs to change, and it’s becoming clearer and clearer that change needs to happen locally, through people’s own initiatives, not by lobbying decision makers at the centre. Here are two articles to illustrate this, one on the dangers, on how destructive the cement industry is – worse that aviation! – and one on the opportunities, like transition towns, which some people are seeing in the crisis, and taking action at individual and community levels.

I am working on ‘a backgrounder ... that clearly explains something that is actually quite a difficult topic’ (see reply from a friend below). Meanwhile, below I’ll put correspondence as it builds up:

• my announcement that I would ‘go for it’ (7/5/08) ,
• the really encouraging reply from a friend. (7/5/08) (Using initials is practice picked up in lefty circles, to which I unapologetically belong. If anyone in our group prefers first names or full names or whatever, I'll respect that, of course.)
• my ‘poem’ (download as leaflet) which served as a signal that this is what I should do. I was at a meeting on 5th May and JW related saying to someone that a new supermarket in Dawlish would kill the town, and the person replied that Dawlish is not a town, having already had its lifeblood sucked out by supermarkets in Newton Abbott and elsewhere. (6/5/08)

7/5/08

Hi ...,

I’m really going to have a go at starting a Transition Dawlish group – it was waking up with my ‘poem’ in my mind (I’m not a poet, of course) that, oddly enough, has made me decide to ‘just do it’, as you would say. I went to the presentation by John Lord of yellow book yesterday evening – very professional actually – and he had a slide showing why Dawlish needs a ‘master plan’. It was a graph showing the gradual decline of the Dawlish economy, plus the big dip that will be caused when the new supermarket comes, above that was an optimistic sweep of a line to counteract the decline and carry us off into the sunset. There were quite a few people in the audience ... wriggling uncomfortably at that slide. When it came down to the practicalities, the ‘solution’ he put forward was to tart up the Lawn and Strand, cosmetic stuff (done badly elsewhere), which is cheap and relatively easy to get funding for. I put a question to that effect and he said again that the supermarket will damage the local economy, especially the food shops, and that he recognised that tarting up is badly done elsewhere and he’s seen that, but in Dawlish it should be done sensitively, and then the Dawlish people would – somehow! – pull together and pull Dawlish through. It’s not going to happen, imv, and that’s why we need to be a Transition Town. I’m going to contact John Lord and ask for a copy of that slide. And I’ll write some kind of leaflet to pass around. Meanwhile, do suggest people interested contact me. A slightly changed version of the ‘poem’ is attached.

All best, Chris

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7/5/08

Chris, this is FANTASTIC news. You’re right to “just do it”, and I know loads of people will be behind you, alongside you, carrying you and being carried by you. It’s a tremendous movement.

May I make one swift suggestion, and it’s something right up your street. The current Transition Town movement ... website [http://transitiontowns.org/] ... [is] not at all engaging. It would be brilliant to have a Dawlish Transition Town website, that is in plain old English, and that explains the whole thing clearly so that people WILL be interested.

If you go to www.communitykit.co.uk you have all the tools you could ever want at your disposal to build a site. It’s FREE, the hosting is free, and so’s all the web design software. You just do it online .... I’m sure people will want to contribute, I certainly will.

I am so so so pleased. Let me know what you want to do. I do think that before I go off telling everyone to get involved in the movement we just need a backgrounder, the website or a document that clearly explains something that is actually quite a difficult topic if you aren’t already interested in the ecology behind it. Also we need a “call to action”, and this can be simply the website – even just one page – “come and see it and register your interest”. ... is up for this too, and I’m sure a load of the others will be. ...

BRILLIANT!

Cheers

...

xxx

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Dawlish Is Not A Town

‘Dawlish is not a town,’ some say—

Vampires have sucked its lifeblood dry

By seventy percent—so who will care

About the rest?

‘Dawlish gives a poor impression,’ they say—

To visitors to this once-upon-a-seaside

-town—so who will care

When nothing remains

But estate agents and phone shops?

‘Dawlish is a regeneration opportunity,’ they say—

Needing a robust baseline analysis

And a strategic proposition—for addressing shortcomings.

There will be no rest

From demolishers and hole-diggers and paving contractors.

‘Dawlish has had a public consultation,’ they say—

Although the public is asleep, and works and shops

Elsewhere—so who will care

When the few precious real shops close,

And nothing remains,

Only estate agents and phone shops?

‘Dawlish has the makings of a TransitionTown,’ we say—

Support our food shops, shun the vampires, old and new,

We will have markets and an energy descent plan,

Be independent and alive and renewed.

Interested? Please contact me:

Chris Marsh, 01626888772, chris_e_marsh@hotmail.com - subject ‘Make Dawlish a Transition Town’

(see http://transitiontowns.org/)

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