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Sunday 6th December , The Greenhouse, 17 St Andrews Street, Dublin 2
Cultivate are organising a “Transition Day” on Sunday 6th December in The Greenhouse (former Enfo building) to bring together members of existing Transition Towns and those wishing to get started in an afteroon of sharing and learning. The first session from 3-4pm will look at what learning resources and education materials are available to raise awareness and develop capacity within your community for change. The second session, from 4-6:30pm, is an introduction to Transition – what its all about, how to get started, how to keep things moving and lessons from transition groups around the country.
“Now is the time for us to take stock and start re-creating our future in ways that are not based on cheap, plentiful and polluting oil but on localised food, sustainable energy sources, resilient local economies and an enlivened sense of community well-being.” Rob Hopkins – Author of the Transition Handbook
More details below the fold.
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For the time being at least, it is not that the oceans are coming that will bother us in Ireland but the fact that the rivers are coming – through the front door. As if on queue this week’s dramatic floods coincided with a report by the Irish Academy of Engineers. The report says that if we don’t take urgent action to strengthen adversely affected critical infrastructure the following will happen:
- Changing rainfall patterns will affect water supplies
- Rising sea levels will inundate coastal cities and towns
- Severe weather incidents will damage energy installations, hospitals, telecommunications, railways and other critical infrastructure, and contaminate water supplies.
In Cork this weekend those forecasts are becoming reality.
With new evidence mounting that global warming is happening faster than previously thought it is becoming clear that the we are moving from debating about future climate impacts to dealing with present day climate impacts. As the flood waters rise around the country this weekend I am reminded of a recent debate in the transition blogosphere about the need for emergency planning for communities within the Transition Town movement.
Of course the skeptics will argue that you cant link 1 weather event to global warming despite our academics warning us that this is just a foretaste of new weather patterns.
For those who are still unconvinced and those who want their increase their understanding of climate science the EPA is holding the next in it’s series of climate change lectures this coming Tuesday in the Mansion House in Dublin. The lecture is entitled “Back to the Future – The Role of Climate Science” by Professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, Head of Climatology and Environmental Sciences at the University Catholique de Louvain and Vice-Chair of the IPCC.
You can find the full details here and watch previous lectures on the EPA website here.
Thursday 26th November, 7pm, Butler House, Patrick St., Kilkenny
The County Kilkenny LEADER group are hosting a meeting on Thursday next in Butler House at 7pm on Communty gardens & Allotments. The purpose of the meeting is to:
- Share information on the various community garden/allotment projects presently existing in Kilkenny
- Form a working group to support an InterReg (Ireland/Walse program) funding application from Kilkenny LEADER partnership
- Discuss a possibe trip to Wales for the South Wales community garden/farms conference on Dec 2nd.
Further information from Tom Mc Donald, Kilkenny LEADER, 0567752811
We were going to hold a competition to design the look of the Kilkenny Katz but it looks like Paul Young, cartoonist at the Kilkenny People has beaten us to it!
His design of a 1 Cat note, based on a US dollar, features Brian Cody in place of George Washington and the phrase “In Cody We Trust”. The notes are issued by the “Kilkenny Federal Reserve” and are declared legal tender for all debts, public and private, in the “United Towns of Kilkenny”.
The cartoon ties in with this week’s front page article “New Cat currency to boost local economy”. The article, which was unexpected, describes the ongoing work by Kilkenny Chamber of Commerce, Mayor Malcolm Noonan and ourselves on how best to introduce a local currency into Kilkenny. You can read more about local currencies here.
In late October 09 a group of people interested in setting up allotments in Kilkenny visited the Clonmel Allotments Association and the Aimsir Bia Allotments in Cashel. Both sites have been up and running for around a year now and the progress made in that time to turn grass fields into vegetable growing plots is amazing and inspirational.