| Group aims to build a greener Northfield |
By: DAVID HENKE, Staff Writer
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Posted: Friday, July 10, 2009 9:18 pm
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NORTHFIELD — Paul Sebby has his eye to the future.
The Northfield resident is a member of Transition Northfield, a new, environmentally friendly group that is working to reduce the city’s dependence on oil and non-renewable energy.
The group takes its inspiration from a concept developed by British ecologist Rob Hopkins, the founder of the “Transition Town” movement. Hopkins’ theory of transitions, espoused in his book, “The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience,” calls for local, grassroots responses to the idea of a peak oil crisis and global climate change.
The book lays out a 12-step initiative for creating a “Transition Town” — a community that relies on local food production, green energy and interdependence.
The group, Sebby said, eventually hopes the Transition Town model will bolster Northfield’s local resilience and sustainability. But for the moment, Sebby and his fellow group members have set their sights a little lower. Currently, they are working on awareness-raising and networking with the city and other local environmental organizations.
“I think Northfield is a great place for the transition town approach, because there are a lot of people and groups who are already interested on these issues,” Sebby said. Already, Sebby said, the group has a steering committee with eight to 10 members, and has hosted a “Training for Transition” class. Sebby says the group plans to continue to host green events in the city, and would like to serve in an advisory capacity with the city.
“I think that’s where city government is heading, I think the transition [model] has some interest to those of us working on the energy side of things,” said George Kinney, a member of the city’s Environmental Quality Commission who worked on the city’s Energy Task Force. The task force, Kinney said, examined local green solutions to energy dependence to avoid high oil prices last year.
“If we get to a position where we’re experiencing price shocks again, we need to not be as dependent on foreign oil and the outside,” Kinney said.
Transition Northfield member Karen Olson says she envisions the group working with other local, environmental organizations, and serving as an umbrella under which those groups can coordinate their efforts.
“That’s where all of the solutions are, in scaling things back down to the local level,” said Olson. “What transition is about is moving away from the degree to which we currently depend on our source of energy.”
— David Henke covers city, business and youth issues. He can be reached at dhenke@northfieldnews.com or 645-1100. |
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