Sustainable Orcas Island
Working to define and create a sustainable model of Orcas Island
Sustainability Orcas Island (SOI) is in the process of defining sustainability on our unique North West Island. We recognize that our well-defined natural boarders make us an excellent example for the rest of the county. We understand that great changes need to be made, in our individual lives and as a community. We are currently in the process of defining w ...learn more
GROUP DETAILS
Created: Feb 06, 2008
Updated: Jun 06, 2009
Membership: Open
Public
Transition Towns Marin
The Transition Handbook is online.
Transition Marin group here at WE is an experiment in designing a 'home base' for all regional groups sharing focus on relocalization and reorganization of communities to address the need for a bottom up model of regional sustainable development.
Proposal to utilize the tools available at WE to:
- serve as a home base for regional Marin organizations, individuals and local government, media
- connect to national and international communities
- create hybrid learning environment for ongoing education, synchronistic and asynchronistic learning modules
- engage experts to share and instruct
- develop best practice for use of virtual environment to build and sustain regional community which can be replicated
- utilize WE editors journalism team to promote and publicize
from eco resolve
While I realize that Climate Change and Peak Oil are big items on lots of
people's agendas, to me the most critical concerns we face are about
food security and
sovereignty, and both have a lot to
do with ecoliteracy. People have
lived too long under the delusion that humankind is somehow at the top of
the ecological ladder when if fact people are a minor part -- and perhaps
nonessential part -- of the living world. The Sustainable Fairfax group
seems closest to recognizing this with their emphasis on Ecology,
Economy and Community in their definition of 'What is
Sustainability?'
I also think that 'sustainable development' is an oxymoron that
too many people use, whereas what really is required is re-development --
perhaps deconstruction -- of much of what has been constructed over the
past few hundred years to conform more closely with the realities of all
the needs of the natural world.
This is not to say that everything people are looking at and working at
in the sustainable/transition towns initiatives are not valuable, because
they are. I just feel that the goals people set don't really look
realistically at the inappropriate foundation that has been laid down
through hundreds of years of self-interested behavior and
ignorance.
So there you have my biases!... how can I help you create what you would
like?
from ecoresolve
Until those of us who understand the urgency of the situation recognize this as a marketing problem, we will continue to sing to our own choir. The changes that we need to make will require widespread action and collaboration. Reducing our collective carbon footprint is only one piece of the mitigation pie. We won't be able to achieve sustainability until we've accepted the fact that we need to adapt to sea level rise and climate change impacts.
I've been to meetings about these issue in Marin over the past year and the few hundred people who show up do not represent the level of interest we need to generate. So using WE as a base for collaboration first requires that we have all of the activists participating here. Then, I think, we need to come up with a better, more far-reaching strategy for reaching the other 99.xx% of our neighbors, or enough of them that hyperlocal mobilization can spread. We help educate our youth, we speak to businesses, we work with local government to update climate-related information, and we put together a central web-based community site for discussion and events.
Marin could be a model, or could follow the lead of existing models that combine Transition Towns, Post-carbon communities, ICLEI and some of the pioneering environmental organizations that have been effective in Marin over the past 100 years.
That's my 2-cents and I'd be happy to help.