Hi to any visitors. We can be contacted on email at transitionnc@optusnet.com.au
We incorporated as an official Transition Town in August 2008. Our committee has been meeting regularly since then with various comings and goings, and nearly always accompanied by delicious food and supportive conversation. While we are occassionally overwhelmed by the project we are embarking on, it is also an exciting and developing journey. We hope to engage and support many local groups in awareness raising and building an Energy Action Descent Plan with ideas from groups already with expertise and working hard in their own areas and ways.
Let's do what needs to be done!
What is Transition Town Newcastle? Transition Town Newcastle is the environmental vehicle many of us have been waiting for. It aims to help Novocastrians and others in the region, squarely face the twin environmental and social challenges of Global Warming and Peak Oil, and to support and promote a groundswell of optimism and of positive action needed to address what at times, feel like overwhelming issues.
For our children, for our planet, it makes sense for us to create and live in a world that uses less oil-based and carbon emitting energy. We can do this and still have full lives with all that we need to be happy and healthy. The resources are already in our community.
The Transition movement offers to all local groups and individuals, an evolving model to help us move together towards a truly sustainable and resilient city. Together the community will create a vision of a better future for Newcastle, and a plan - an Energy Descent Action Plan [EDAP], that represents and satisfies the needs of our community, and aims to achieve our vision for a safer, more connected, relocalised and more resilient place to live.
We can only do this if we draw on the knowledge, experience and energy of local groups and individuals who share these collective goals. Then we will present our plan to NCC for consultation, ratification and implementation, with the full support of the active community.
Currently, we are building a structure, contacting existing groups to present the Transition concept before organising public meetings to gather the momentum for the urgent changes needed.
Our Web address is www.transitionnewcastle.org.au and is now available for comment and blogging. You can log on to your area of interest and leave ideas to enrich and enliven our journey, fill out concepts or design any of Newcastle's Energy Descent Pathways, offer expressions of support and encouragement, or just comment as the whim takes you.
In September 2009 we held a successful Sensible Transport for Newcastle Region forum at City Hall and formed a working party to take some of the ideas forward. We are currently in the process of preparing a policy document to present to the five Lower Hunter Councils.