LMCC’s Oil Supply Vulnerability Policy

LMCC’s Oil Supply Vulnerability Policy is open for community comment till 22nd September. The policy will assist to prepare the city for likely increases in the cost of living associated with increased fossil fuel prices.

The goal is to provide a policy and framework to assist Council and community to respond responsibly and proactively in the face of a declining oil supply and associated rise in the cost of fossil fuel.

The plan is to build resilience to peak oil and some of the things Council aims to do includes create oil-resilient transport networks and actively plan for oil resilient towns and for a city prepared for demographic and regional change, including fundamental change to transport, work and living arrangements.

Council’s website has the details http://www.lakemac.com.au/page.aspx?pid=101&vid=1&apt=detail&aid=838 

Transition Film Festival

The film festival continues with the June 20th Sunday session presenting a movie marathon of almost epic proportions.
 
The film that put Climate Change front and centre, An Inconvenient Truth, will be shown mid afternoon, if you’ve never seen it, now’s a good time. It provides a lot of really interesting information, some memorable graphs and a personal insight into what drives some people to take on the world.
 
In Transition -the movie starts the session and provides a good summary of what various localities are doing around the world to reconnect their communities so that they could survive with as least impact as possible should Peak Oil deliver the ‘shock to the system’ that was experienced in Cuba during ‘the special period ‘ of the 70’s when their oil supplies were stopped almost overnight.

The Power of Community wraps up the afternoon and goes in to some detail about how Cuba’s economy and social structure shifted to sustain the population by setting up local organic agriculture close to the population and  developing alternative transport systems to move the masses.

The films will run to the outlined programme so if you want to come to a specific film you can be assured of its start and end time.

In between the movies there is time to chat and get a cuppa and get acquainted.

What’s Happening             Start    Finish
Meet and greet, 
Beverages and bites          1100    1130
In Transition                    1130    1220
Lunch (Soup and/or BYO)   1220    1300
An Inconvenient Truth     1300    1430
Beverages & Bites
Discussion                         1430    1450
Power of Community       1450    1545
Beverages & Bites
Discussion                         1545    1615

Transition Times Film Festival

The News Year’s Resolution for the local Transition Steering Group is to hold a film festival during January showing a variety of films, 3-4 times a week, covering a variety of time slots each with a discussion theme. This is to enable as many people as possible to see the films and have a chat about what the ‘theme’ could mean to our community.

Some of the films that are being considered include Baraka, An Inconvenient Truth, The Age of Stupid and The End of Suburbia. These are all very powerful films with strong messages about Climate Change and Peak Oil and the effects upon our current lifestyle.

The discussion after the movie has the potential to be equally powerful as we start to create a vision for a more positive future and consider what the changes will mean. 

The Transition Town movement focuses on positive ways to address potential challenges, a great opportunity to create a resilient and community .

Transition Steering Group Update

The Transition Steering group has been meeting regularly and discussing the
process and making plans for the next few months. The group has met with
LMCC’s Sustainable Neighbourhoods Program and deliberated upon their
program and possibilities.
A movie ‘In Transition’ was purchased and reviewed and the logistics of having a
community viewing are being worked upon.
The group went to the Sensible Transport Forum held in Newcastle recently and
learnt that CSIRO projects petrol to be $8/L within the decade, Australia’s oil
production peaked in 2000-01 and since then it has been getting more expensive
to extract the oil, with only 40% of our oil currently supplied domestically.
Some other interesting bits of information were the uncertainty of the OPEC Oil
reserves as they have been overinflated to allow for increased production, OPEC
providing 40% of the world’s oil supply, and 60 of the 90 oil producing countries
already having peaked in their oil production.
The forum highlighted the impact increased oil costs will have on out-lying
suburbs that don’t have adequate public transport infrastructure or pedestrian
options, with the proposition that car travel will become the realm of the
exclusive and air travel very expensive once again.
One of the exciting options for the future was to revise the way we view roads,
not just as car places but also people spaces, where all modes of mobility are
accepted and accommodated, making it safer to ride bikes.
Another speaker provided a perspective on Council operations and how some
Councils have already started planning for oil depletion as an imminent threat, as
‘leaving oil before it leaves us will maximize resilience and liveability’. The
cost of service provision will affect the whole community, especially waste
services. Garbage trucks are big, heavy and do a lot of start and stopping which
uses a lot of fuel.
An option that could be easily adopted even here at Coal Point is to put your bin
out next to your neighbours. If your bins are next to each other the truck doesn’t
have to stop/start so much. It might seem like a small thing but it all adds up.
If your interested in thinking about how a community adapts to a changing world
and what it would have to do the Transition Steering Group meets monthly, 3rd 
Monday of the month. We are meeting in group member’s homes, the next
meeting is at 23 Whitelock St, 19th October 4pm-6pm. All are welcome. If you
can’t make a meeting but would like to follow the discussion there is an online
discussion group. Send an email to coalpointprogress@gmail.com and the details
can be forwarded.