"It's not the technology - it's the human relationships."

The first meeting held by the new Transition Towns group happened last night in the Parish Hall, with at least 50 people there - some familiar faces, some new, and very few of the Usual Suspects who get involved in everything. Which is probably a good thing, because most of them are rather too busy already.

So, what's a Transition Town, and why should we want to be one?
Basically, it's all about oil. Our present civilisation is based around oil - take oil away, and the whole thing collapses - no petrol - so no travelling, no fertiliser for crops, and so on.
Peak Oil is the idea, based on the work of oil geologists, that there is a finite amount of oil on the planet, and we're about half way through using it. From here on in, oil becomes gradually more and more scarce, while demand keeps going up.
So the Transition is to learn how to live with a minimum of oil, before it all runs out and we have no choice.

The model for this is Cuba, and a film was shown about how they have adapted to their changed circumstances. Their oil supply, from the Soviet Union, was cut off in about 1990, when the Soviet Union collapsed and turned into Russia and associated republics. Cuba went through a very difficult time, but they have come through it with great creativity. Anyone who saw Monty Don going round the world's gardens will have seen organic vegetable gardens, almost small farms, in the middle of Havana.
It's not just food, either - there used to be 7 universities in Cuba. Now there are about 50, decentralised, so it's easier for the students to travel to them. And they imported half a million bicycles from China, and got some of the old farmers to train the younger ones in how to use oxen instead of tractors.
And even in this very difficult time, when the average Cuban lost 20lbs in weight because of the food shortages, they still managed to maintain the same life expectancy as the USA, and they also have 11% of all the scientists in Latin America despite having only 3% of the population.

In the question and answer session after the film, someone made the point that Cuba could do all this very quickly partly because they had to, or starve, but also because they are a dictatorship. On the other hand, it's the sort of thing that we in Britain had to do during the Second World War, and we managed it then very successfully.

The first speaker of the evening, though, before the film, was Gareth Ratcliffe, our County Councillor. Recently he's been out with the bin men, learning just what happens to all the stuff we throw away. On the day he went round, the bin men collected 12 tons of rubbish from Hay. 2 tons were recycled, but 10 tons went into landfill - and the County Council had to pay a fine of £200 a ton because of that. Over a year, they pay £250,000 just in fines - our Council Tax just thrown away! Think what we could do with that money!
It was the most shocking fact of the evening for me - I had no idea that this was going on.
Even worse, the landfill site will only last, at the present rate of use, for another 7 years. After that, as Gareth said, what do we do? Start shipping our waste to China? Because that's one of the alternatives, and why should we dump our rubbish on someone else?
There is a bright side to this though - Gareth also went out around Newport and Welshpool, where they are collecting food waste separately in the rubbish collections to fuel a bio-digester. It's a win-win situation - the food waste doesn't go in landfill, and is used to make electricity.
So there are things that can be done.

Presteigne has been doing things for a year now, and one of their organisers, Richard Pitt, had come down to talk to us. At their big launch meeting, last March, they got 90 people, including 7 local farmers. They've been doing carbon audits to help local people reduce their energy use, and worked out what the carbon footprint is for the whole community - and how much land they need to be self-sufficient.
They're starting car sharing and a hitching scheme - the cars taking part will have a token in the window, and the hitchers will hold the same token to show they're genuine locals who want a lift.
They've started an oral history project, getting older people to share their knowledge of how things used to be done in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. Out of that they're starting storytelling sessions.
They're also looking into a community agriculture scheme and a community orchard, and getting people with gardens who haven't got the time or ability to look after them together with the people who have the time and ability and want a garden. They're about to launch a Seed Swap scheme - someone mentioned that vegetable seeds outsold flower seeds for the first time ever last year, so people generally are thinking more about growing their own food.
He was very keen to stress that they haven't been doing this all on their own. Where there were groups already doing this sort of thing, it would have been pointless to re-invent the wheel, or set up a rival group. What they have been doing there is finding out what people are doing already, and putting them in touch with one another - they're not in the business of telling people what they can and can't do.

Back to Gareth, who said that the Local Council, County Council and National Park - and possibly the Welsh Assembly too - are already interested and supportive, and seven out of the thirteen major towns in Powys have either already started a scheme or are interested in doing so.

In the question and answer session, Gareth mentioned that the farmer in Talgarth who applied to build a bio-digester has been given permission this week, and there was a brief discussion about the technology, for those of us who know about bio-digesters only from listening to the Archers.
A farmer in Presteigne has one up and running - someone in the audience said they'd be interested in visiting one - and he also makes bio-diesel which is sold at the garage in Bishop's Castle.

To finish up, Gareth reminded us all of the recycling bins in the car park. All the money made from those comes back to the local community in the form of grants for good local causes, so we're already benefitting there.

Athene English put in a plug for the new Friends of the Earth group, too, who are also interested in things like carbon audits, seed swaps, and litter. Their next meeting will be on October 30th, 7.30pm, at Kilverts.

And the evening concluded with some very nice soup and fresh apple juice.

(The quotation in the title, by the way, was a quotation from the film The Power of Community).