About us
We are a group of people living in Nayland who believe that moving away from high-energy living makes a lot of sense. And we can see that in a village like Nayland with all its collective enthusiasm, wealth of societies and strong sense of community, such an initiative could be a real success. We have a special village which is rich with a sense of community so why not use that strength to support that which is local, and that which is sustainable to protect this environment and this village for future generations?
Why transition and what does it mean?
In the face of climate change, the uncertainty of energy supplies, and a food production and supply network that is unsustainable due to depleting oil supplies it is hard to argue against the need to reduce our carbon footprint.
Reducing our dependency on global food supplies, building more local support and resilience and looking after and improving our natural environment can make a real difference. In this way we can protect and support our local community for the future, save ourselves money, and be ahead of the game in adjusting our lifestyles to be far less reliant on unsustainable and increasingly expensive fossil fuels.
So what are the facts?:
- The warming we are experiencing now is the result of greenhouse gases emitted in the 1970s. We are already committed to a 1.4 degrees rise whatever choose to do now.
- Oil is used throughout our lives, not just to fuel our cars, lorries and aircraft, but in the manufacture of a vast range of products such as plastics, trainers, tyres, carpets, computers, aspirins and paints to name but a few.
- In the 150 years that we have been using oil the world population has gone up from 1 billion to 6.7 billion and we currently use over 1000 barrels of oil a second.
- Arctic sea ice is already reduced in size by 22% over the past 2 years as well as becoming steadily thinner, halving in thickness since 2001.
- If you turned off our oil supplies today, it would be just ten days before our supermarkets would be empty of food because the whole supply network is dependent on oil – transportation, packaging, refrigeration etc.
- The UK’s emissions of greenhouse gases need to reduce by a minimum of 60% by 2050, in order to play our part in slowing global and local climate change.
- The lower our oil reserves get the more invasive it becomes to extract the remaining supplies causing further irreparable damage to our natural world.
The fact is that the world’s supply of oil took millions of years to form and we are using it up in the historical equivalent of a blink of an eye.
Transition initiatives focus on encouraging local food production, renewable energy, supporting local producers and traders, less consumerism, greater reuse of things and less disposable living, learning the skills to live more sustainable lives that are more resilient to all the changes our world is witnessing. In general, transition involves living lives that are “..more connected, more enriching and that recognise the biological limits of our planet.”
Transition from high energy living has become the focus of a number of communities around the country. Totnes in Devon being the first. And on a more local level, Lavenham and Ipswich are now developing a transition initiative.
These transition initiatives emerging across the country are proof that communities of people making small changes can make a difference.