Category Archives: Uncategorized

PEDAL -> Portobello Transition Town has recruited 4 work­ers to run a new pro­ject aim­ing to reduce the col­lect­ive car­bon foot­print of Portobello and to devel­op loc­al resources to meet the needs of our community.

Project Manager:
We have employed an exper­i­enced man­ager to man­age our pro­jects and fin­ances, fund raise, com­mu­nic­ate our vis­ion, and devel­op our Transition response to Climate Change and Peak Oil.

Two Food Workers:
One Energy Worker: 
We have employed 3 devel­op­ment work­ers: two spe­cial­ising in food and one in energy. In devel­op­ing their par­tic­u­lar area of work, they will be organ­ising a range of events, pro­du­cing pub­li­city mater­i­als and — we hope — work­ing with you to gal­van­ise a high level of com­munity involve­ment, meet­ing the chal­lenges of Climate Change and Peak Oil through facil­it­at­ing mean­ing­ful social change.

These posts cur­rently run until the end of March 2011.

PEDAL has a sup­ply of Powerdown Switches and Energy effi­cient 15w Bayonet light bulbs. Any Portobello res­id­ent can apply for them. Both will help save you money and help stop cli­mate chaos.

The Powerdown Switches allow you to switch off all your com­puter peri­pher­als (print­er, scan­ner etc) with one switch.

Energy effi­cient light bulbs can save you over £10 a year for every light you change. They come on instantly and are now flick­er free.

If you’d like either of these email admin (at) pedal-porty.org.uk and we can arrange for you to get them.

Richard Heinberg sums up what happened in Copenhagen and bril­liantly por­trays the lar­ger con­text and why loc­al action is the best way forward.

Test your Earth IQ here

and then find out one of the key ways we can stop run­away cli­mate change if we choose to …

Firstly, a 1962 advert in which ESSO boasts of it’s power to melt icebergs!

Rob Edwards quotes James Curran (Head of Science at the Scottish Environment Protection Agency) response in The Herald

George Monbiot in The Guardian sum­mar­ises what happened at Copenhagen.

A pub­lic rela­tions expert explains to Americans why Obama can­’t really do any­thing about health­care, cli­mate change, etc unless (as Monbiot says above) people who care get organ­ised, get act­ive and make it happen.

A sum­mary of what’s in the accord from Climate Code Red, an Australian per­spect­ive

Joss Garman of Greenpeace and Plane Stupid responds to Copenhagen.

Johann Hari’s response in The Independent.

The Historian Jeremy Brechner responds on znet.

Mike Small responds on Bella Caledonia

Bill McKibben of the 350.org cam­paign at the end, and earli­er when he was still work­ing flat out in hope and in tears.

… and finally

Ben Brangwyn (of Transition Network and Transition Totness) response from earli­er in the week …

… and I’ve just found a great piece by Shaun Chamberlin on car­bon off­set­ting and the value of money with some excel­lent cartoons …

see also my earli­er blog from the Copenhagen Climate Change march

Justin (justinken­rick AT yahoo.co.uk)

Portobello WaveDD!!! At 9am on a wet Saturday morn­ing, 80 of us climbed onto the two buses near the Town Hall that Tom Ballantine had organ­ised and headed over to Glasgow to join the biggest ever demon­stra­tion against Climate Chaos in Scotland.  In all, about 8,000 people walked behind bright ban­ners — the huge Porty flower made by Towerbank’s P7 def­in­itely the best! — it was a great turn out from Porty and a great turn out from Scotland (even if Glasgow Council, or was it the police, had insisted the march take the back streets, pre­sum­baly so as not to dis­turb the shopping!)

A bunch of us went on from the march to the nation­al gath­er­ing of Transition ini­ti­at­ives from across Scotland.  It was a fant­ast­ic chance to met up with oth­ers, exchange stor­ies, attend diverse work­shops, make a won­der­ful ceilidh, and have bril­liant child­care that cul­min­ated with the kids teach­ing US! If you missed it — and in par­tic­u­lar if you’re used to hav­ing to miss such things because the kids won’t be happy — come next year: the kids were more than happy, and we all returned fab­ulously recharged from the week­end. (But remem­ber to book early — there were way more folk who wanted to come than there was room for). See: Transition Scotland Support’s web­site: www.transitionscotland.org

A brief round up of what’s happened/ what’s happening/ and what’s on it’s way (scroll down to find what’s com­ing up!)

1. Car Free Day was very suc­cess­ful in terms of num­bers in bike parade, the little mar­ket and a really well atten­ded Isle of Egg play. For next year we’ll try to be more ambi­tious and make Car Free Day also about a Pedestrianised zone that shows how the world could be. Would any­one like to sug­gest a par­tic­u­lar place where we might close a road (with the agree­ment of res­id­ents of course!), sup­port a cam­paign for improve­ments to that street, work­ing with the res­id­ents group, and have a street party?!

2. PEDAL Challenge [Free Bus Pass!]: We now have 3 people signed up for this – but still room for 2 more folk to have a months free bus pass to se what it is like to live without their car for a month and report the tribu­la­tions and bene­fits of using pub­lic transport/ cyling/ whatever; and con­trib­ut­ing to a blog on your expei­ences and being inter­viewed by the Evening News. This will prob­ably be for the month of January – let us know if you’d like to be one of them!

3. Tenement wanted to pilot an energy effi­cient [cut your heat­ing bills!] sys­tem: We are involving Changeworks in an Insulation hot­spot cam­paign – let us know if you want to be part of this.

4. PEDAL Office going into hiberna­tion: we have decided not to keep the office on the High Street going – since it would be bet­ter con­trib­ut­ing to a vibrant High Street [as the office was when we had folk work­ing in it] than con­trib­ut­ing to a hole in our pock­ets and a silent High Street. However, if we receive Climate Challenge Funding for the next phase of our work, we will need office space for 3 workers.

5. 2^nd CCF bid: We are apply­ing for fund­ing to employ a full time man­ager, an energy work­er, and a food work­er to take for­ward the com­munity orch­ard (already under­way), the farm­ers mar­ket, the insu­la­tion cam­paign, the poten­tial for renew­ables, etc. We hope this bid will be suc­cess­ful – pour­ing our ‘spare’ time into this work on top of fam­ily and jobs is demand­ing and it would be great top have some fun­ded work (let alone provid­ing more employ­ment in Portobello).

6. New Members: we have over a hun­dred mem­bers now – if you have joined us recently: WELCOME! If you have been with us for the long haul: WELL DONE!

7. Orchard: The Halloween spe­cial (clearing/ planting/ games) was very suc­cess­ful – a great spread of people through­out the day, and a good num­ber of kids.

8. Pot luck meal that was to be at 6.30 on November 26^th in the Community Centre has had to be post­poned — in the mean­time all wel­come to the Espy Pub from 8.30 instead.

9. Home film – extraordin­ary aer­i­al shots of the earth — will be shown at St Philips, Brunstane Road North, at 7.30pm on Saturday November 14^th, and is free. This is part of our build up towards …

10. Portobello and The Wave: Glasgow December 5^th

Portobello Wave — Jump on the Porty Bus on Dec 5^th and head over to join the biggest ever demon­stra­tion against Climate Chaos in Scotland. Tied in to a huge wave of inter­na­tion­al demon­stra­tions that day, designed to bring pres­sure on Governments in the run up to Copenhagen Climate Change nego­ti­ations. We aim to organ­ise coach(es) from Portobello with FoE/SCCS (Tom Ballantine) and St Philip’s (Stewart Weaver). Transition Scotland Support are organ­ising their annu­al meet­ing in Glasgow to fol­low on the 5^th/ 6^th and will be pay­ing trans­port and accom­mod­a­tion for any who want to attend – kids and their fam­il­ies very welcome!

It looks as though the next film is likely to be ‘Home’, we expect it to be shown at St Philips on Wednesday 14^th October … but we await confirmation …

But, just to remind you of the last film: The Porty Premiere of Age of Stupid film Sunday 21^st June at St Philips Church Hall, Brunstane Road North was a great suc­cess. Tea, cakes, wine and beer were laid on by the St Philips fim soci­ety … the film was power­ful … the dis­cus­sion led by Ewan Aitken of eco-con­greg­a­tions was really good.

Thanks to Stewart Weaver of  St Philips, and Jane Herbstritt of the World Development Movement for mak­ing this happen!

If you missed it, the Age of Stupid is well worth see­ing: it’s well made, fast mov­ing, cov­ers the issues, has good and enga­ging human stor­ies in it BUT (or should that be AND?!) it does face the facts of cli­mate change very dir­ectly and is ima­gin­ing a per­fectly pos­sible scen­ario in which human­ity is about to be no more. This is a vital real­ity to face in order that we don’t take that route

…  Age of Stupid website