Hooray! We now have our blog up and running.
Welcome to the first post of the Transition Bath Blog. We've been talking about getting this going for a while now, so please excuse us while
we raise a glass (clink).
So why all the celebration you ask? Well, because we want to
use this blog as a celebration in itself – a celebration of all that is
Transition Bath, the Transition movement as a whole and, of course, all the people engaged with it. We want to post stories, news, anecdotes, joy, tears (of joy),
laughter (more joy) and occasionally a little mayhem (yes, Green Vision
guerrilla gardeners; we’re looking at you).
This blog will be an outlet for all involved in Transition
Bath to have a say. That is a say on anything: what they’ve been up to, what they are up to and what they intend to be up to, and more importantly, why they’re up to it. We want to
bring out the personal side of our organisation. Everybody has a Transition
story inside them and we want to extract thsoe (in the nicest possible way) and
get them posted on here.
If you subscribe to the blog, you can guarantee a good
supply of interesting, relevant and topical material to brighten up your inbox every week or so.
So, for our first post, we are going to print Tom Youngman’s account of
his time at the UN Climate Change negotiations in Durban last December. Tom, who is co- founder the youth climate movement Green Vision, sent this in
to the newsteam last month, but we couldn’t print the full version in the newsletter, even though we really wanted to.
There are no such restrictions with our shiny new blog; so here you go. Over to you Tom…
So how can I bring this energy
and solidarity back to Bath? It's going to be hard. I tried to communicate at
the time - some of you might have been to Green Vision's 'People's Kitchen' event with which I linked up live - but even now, weeks
later, I'm finding it hard, as I've tried to explain in this longer reflection
on my time at the negotiations.
Mostly I think it's taught me to take a step back - that giving people space
and time to take their own action is as important than trying to inspire people
to do so. A very 'Transition' mantra.
In mid-December I returned from
the adventure of the lifetime - three weeks at the United Nations climate
change negotiations in Durban, South Africa. Just before leaving I recorded
this video.
As you can see, I was exhausted, if still adrenalised, and somewhat
downtrodden. The climax to the conference had been a closed, undemocratic
process - a huge contrast to the lively civil society action that had defined
the rest of the conference.
Durban was filled with people of
every nation, passionate about finding a solution to the climate crisis.
Especially among the young people present, the atmosphere was vibrant in the
face of a lack of agency, taking creative action at every available
opportunity. From the individual action of Abigail Borah, a young American who
stood up in plenary and screamed a speech in place of her negotiator to
the mass action of hundreds of people, young and old, occupying the conference centre,
civil society broke the boundaries imposed by international diplomacy to make
the moral voice the loudest one.
Lastly I'd like to thank
those of you that supported me in any way in the run-up to the negotiations, be
it financially or otherwise. To have my community behind me in this was
both exciting and humbling. If you'd like to know more about my trip, read this
blog article and don't hesitate to get in touch.
Tom Youngman
