Bountiful Bristol Bulletin

andykisaragi

Sorry for the glib title. Just having a little break from writing an essay about nuclear power… I’ve never really been sure where I stood on this, and the more I look into it, the less clear it gets… anyway. I actually wanted to mention this article I saw on AlterNet, Urban Farming: Coming to a City Near You. It’s about GROFUN-esque schemes in America, from groovy west coast cities like Oakland to Houston in the heart of Texas. It’s all deeply encouraging, especially the Houston project. The president’s Texan roots kind of make one expect it to be the global centre of denial, but as the director of Houston’s Urban Harvest says, “With Houston being the oil capital, people here are more aware than most that oil prices are going to rise faster than inflation… As the cheap fuels dry up, metro areas are at huge risk.”
It feels a little like we’re approaching a tipping point. We’re seeing more and more of these little schemes popping up all over the place, more transition town projects are starting up around the country… This is that self organising stuff I’m always banging on about in action. Governments continue to hopelessly flap around trying to reconcile continuous economic growth with climate change and peak oil, but the real action is going to be from the bottom up, initially at least. We have a great opportunity in Bristol as the UK’s first Transition City to show urban dwellers that not only does something need to be done, but something can be done. As grassroots initiatives spread and public opinion reaches that tipping point, Governments will be able to start doing something useful - indeed, they will increasingly have little choice.