TD update

Sorry for being so quiet on the blog for so long. Its high time I wrote an update.

World oil prices, and fuel prices at the pumps, have fallen some way from their peak during last year due to the global financial crisis and the recession that we now find our selves in. This seems to fit with the predictions made previously in some of the films about the threat of Peak Oil and its consequences. I believe that the high price of oil last year (a result of global supply struggling to keep up with rising demand) was one of the key triggers of the financial crisis!

I don’t wish to undermine the reckless stupidity of the banks lending so much money to those who could barely afford it. But it was the soaring cost of energy that tipped the balance and lead to people defaulting on those loans which exposed the banks and created the crisis.

Had it not been for the high energy costs, the banks would be continuing as before and there would have been no crisis! Maybe then the likes of Woolworths would still have been open on our high streets. But our addiction to oil, and to unsustainable “economic growth”, caused this financial crisis that is killing so many businesses and jobs.

However across the Eastern Region much is beginning to happen with Transition. Transition Norwich has been “Unleashed” and now has themed groups developing projects in a number of areas.

Since October 2008 I’ve been administrating the “Transition East Anglia” [TEA] google group. One of the things to emerge from this regional e-mail networking was our first Eastern Region Transition network day which was held in Downham Market on Saturday 7th March 2009. About 50 people from across Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire attended the day. Towns represented included; Cambridge, Ely, King’s Lynn, Mundesley, Norwich, Dereham, Diss, Bungay, Beccles, Ipswich & Woodbridge.

Transition East gathering in Downham Market

The Eastern Region is now involved in piloting a regional Transition web portal which will contain information on all the Transition Initiatives in the region. I have also registered a new web address for Transition Dereham, linked to a WordPress blog, which I’ll be advertising once I’ve had time to further develop the site’s content, etc.

I am hoping to organise some Transition film showings in Dereham in the coming months. So keep an eye here, or on noticeboards around the town, or drop me an e-mail at transitiondereham@googlemail.com