Somerset County Council cancels ALL climate change work

In July 2008 Somerset County Council passed a resolution to

officially become a Transition County. This shows a commitment to a

community-led response to the pressures of climate change, fossil fuel

depletion and increasingly, economic contraction. . It was the first

county council to do so and several others have followed suit. What is a Transition County?

This decision was not made in conjunction with Transition

initiatives in Somerset. Feeling some concern about that, a group of

Somerset Transitioners (see below) decided to get together to request

meetings with the county council and form what they hoped would be a

constructive relationship helping to facilitate the transitioning of the

county council. Dan Hurring initially worked with the County Council to

audit their existing transition related activities and make suggestions

for how to build on these. However, no sooner had the report on this

work been issued, when there was a change in administration and

accompanying change of attitude amongst members of the cabinet.

With the financial cuts, the county council have now made the

decision to stop completely  all “climate change work, work on renewable

energy, natural environment policy and delivery,”. Thus, we believe

that they no longer qualify to call themselves a Transition Council. You

can download their 2011-2014 Financial Plan here.

Towards the end of 2010, we wrote to the council pointing out

this dilemma and asking them to either make the Transition Resolution

real or revoke it. They are currently refusing to do either.

Where does this leave us?

We have let Rob Hopkins

(founder of the network)  know the situation, so that Somerset County

Council are no longer cited as some kind of pioneering transition

authority. Clearly, they are not.

The current oil price escalation shows how sensitive this market

is to political instability in producing regions.  The latter merely

exacerbates an already precarious situation for net importers of fossil

fuels, such as the UK.  This situation underscores the reckless

short-sightedness of an authority which has in a short time moved from

a potentially leading position in preparing for a low-carbon or

zero-carbon world, to one where our county is sleepwalking toward the

shocks and disruption that will follow, as sure as night follows day.

We believe that, if Somerset is to transition as a county, then

it is now up to all of us as transition enthusiasts to make this happen,

despite the county council, rather than with it, sad as that may seem.

To this end, the folks at Carymoor Environmental Centre

have kindly offered the idea of Carymoor (and maybe other similar

centres) being used as “Transition hubs” for Somerset, provided funding

can be found to run such a project. These would be resource, exhibition

and training centres for all things transition – alternative technology,

reskilling, food growing, the inner transition etc as well as venues

for local transition conferences.

We would like to see representatives from transition initiatives

and other green groups across the county getting involved in this in

order to move it forward. Carymoor Environmental Trust is a charity -

number 1089668

So far there are some other transitioners and a couple of people

from related green groups who have shown an interest. If you would like

to put your name forward or feedback on this idea in any other way,

please contact Cara on cn.swap@carymoor.org.uk

Yours in Transition

Adrian Tait, Paul Birch, Chrissie Godfrey, Linda Hull, Dan Hurring, Alex Malcolm, Cara Naden, Sally Lever.

What do you think about the Councils decision? Do you know of any

sources of funding to enable this work to continue at Carymoor? Leave

your ideas here or contact them directly.