Transition initiatives are spreading throughout our cities and regions.

IN Northcote, by the railway line, there’s a grand old apple tree. It had long since been neglected, until local artist Cat Wilson began photographing it through the seasons, and volunteers from Transition Darebin held working bees to clean up the site.

“Now we’ve put seats there and had lots of picnics,” says Sally MacAdams from Transition Darebin. “It’s become a lovely community area.”

It might not sound like much, but this small act of civic engagement is part of a big movement buzzing through the western world and beyond.

Transition Darebin is a member of the thriving international Transition Network. The first transition town – Totnes, in Devon, England – was launched in late 2006. Now there are over 600 active groups around the world, 60 of which are in Australia.

“We want to prepare our community for a turbulent time ahead,” Ms MacAdams says. “The government is talking about climate change, but not doing much, and it doesn’t seem like they’re considering it together with the prospect of rising oil prices.”

She says that as oil becomes more difficult to extract, the cost of food and transport could climb steeply. “We have to change the way we live. The approach transition towns takes is that we can change in a way that makes our lives better. We can improve the connectedness and resilience of our communities, mostly through doing and making things more locally,” she says.

The details change from place to place, but broadly, transition groups seek to remake their streets into food producing, low-energy, low-emission, tight-knit neighbourhoods.

In Darebin, which traverses suburbs from Alphington to Reservoir, the residents have turned their minds to their pantries. Among other things, they’ve formed a vegie and dry goods co-op, visited local growers and sellers, held a forum on food security in Preston and begun planning urban orchards with the council.

Australia’s first transition town was the Sunshine Coast. This year, residents there presented an Energy Descent Action Plan to their council. The plan sketches the region in an energy-constrained future, spanning issues from household efficiency through to transportation and the economy.

That kind of preparation is also being championed by the Municipal Association of Victoria. The association has created a program for local governments, called ‘Councils And Communities in Transition’, which includes energy descent planning. So far, 20 Victorian councils are taking part; the association is aiming for every council to be inducted by 2012.

Janet Millington, from Transition Sunshine Coast, says that while councils have a role to play in educating and supporting their residents, it’s important that local people fast track change themselves.

“We can’t wait for government – it’s going to be too slow,” she says. “We can’t do it individually – it’s not going to be enough. But if we work together in communities, it might be enough and it might be in time.”

Ms Millington says the scale of the challenge before us depends on the speed and severity of both climate change and the decline of non-renewable resources.

“Transition initiatives are about getting people to think, ‘Hey, what do we do when all these things hit?’” she says. “We’re all living on the same finite, self-regulating system. If we push it too far, it’s going to regulate us right out of the picture.”

Read this on The Age website. 

Fans and ventilation will take the heat out of your bills.

Our electricity consumption spikes on hot summer days. But with utility bills soaring and climate change pressing, it’s time to turn off the air conditioner. There are cheaper ways to keep your home cool.

Andreas Sederof, from sustainable housing design firm Sunpower Design, says carefully planned cross-ventilation is a vital part of a well functioning home. It’ll help you harness each cool change on a stifling day and every fresh breeze in the evening.

If you’re planning to build or renovate, Mr Sederof’s first tip is that all windows are not equal. “To be effective, your windows must be sufficiently openable,” he says.

For example, awning windows, which hinge at the top, don’t allow as much breeze as casement windows, which hinge at the side like a door.

“Casements expose the whole opening of the window to ventilation,” he says. “In Melbourne, most cool changes come from the south and southwest. You can get the windows to act like chutes for the cooling breezes to enter the house.”

Mr Sederof’s second principle is to give the wind a free run of your home. “The building’s spaces should be organised in such a way that it allows cross-flow ventilation. It’s best to have the ventilating doors and windows opposite one another – like a good aerodynamicist, you need the air flow to be as unrestricted as possible,” he says.

According to Sustainability Victoria’s Air Movement guide, providing an outlet for the wind, as well as an inlet, creates wind speeds up to eleven times greater than only opening an inlet window. Larger outlet spaces to the north allow a greater volume of air to enter from the south.

Even if the southerly change hasn’t yet arrived, you can still passively cool your home each evening by venting the day’s heat.

“In summertime we often get still, clammy nights,” Mr Sederof says. “That’s when openable roof glazing, highlight windows or thermal chimneys can be very effective. Hot air rises, so it’s easy to evacuate. Cooling towers like those have been around for centuries in the Middle-East.”

When you open both a low window and a roof window (once the temperature has fallen outside) hot air will flow out and cooler air will enter. “If you’ve got low windows opposite small fern gardens or vegetation, you’ll replace that hot air with slightly colder air from the plants’ transpiration,” he says.

Ceiling or roof-mounted exhaust fans work on the same principle as high windows. They’ll extract hotter air from high in the room and draw fresh air through open windows. They can be either powered or passively operated. Make sure you choose models that have covers or dampers, or seal automatically if they’re not being used, so you don’t lose warmth in winter.

If your home doesn’t have good cross-ventilation, and you can’t retrofit it, ceiling fans are the next best bet. In hot weather, fans can make you feel a few degrees cooler. Mr Sederof recommends one fan for every 10 to 12 square metres.

“Fans rely on evaporative cooling. The air moving over your skin is what makes you feel cool,” he says. “But you have to buy decent quality ones – if you’re spending less than $200, they’re probably not good enough.”

During No Impact November, you can look at your lifestyle anew.

MARA Chambers has decided to change the way she shops – and she’s starting with a weeklong challenge. From November 11 to 18, Ms Chambers, from Altona, will skip the supermarket altogether.

“I’ll buy what I need from organic shops or farmers markets,” she says. “I’ll also have to nut out what to do if I need things like toilet paper or washing liquid. I’m hoping to change my habits for the long-term, so I need to look for something else that’s achievable.”

She’s avoiding the well-trodden aisles as a part of No Impact November, run by the Ethical Consumer Group.

In the lead up to the challenge, participants have been meeting to devise their individual goals. The ideas for action range from switching off electronic gadgets to using a composting toilet.

Ms Chambers chose a supermarket-free week because she’s become increasingly dissatisfied with the lack of transparency in the provenance of house brands in the large chain store where she’s been shopping. “I feel like there’s a lot of greenwashing with their organic produce, and they don’t seem to stock many smaller suppliers anymore,” she says.

“I’m really conscious that my power is where I spend my dollar. There are lots of things I can’t control, but I do have freedom over where I spend my money.”

No Impact November is the third annual household action challenge run by the Ethical Consumer Group. In previous years, the participants sought to eat from within one hundred miles, and to produce no waste for a week.

Nick Ray, from the group, says the hard work of changing habits is made easier by doing it together. The people taking part are planning to gather for a meal at the start and end of the week to share their experiences.

“We all have impacts in our everyday life,” he says. “Often people are unable to minimise them because they feel overwhelmed, or because they’ve tried and burnt out. The idea of our household action challenge is to choose something that’s manageable. It pushes us hard for a week, but then we can digest it.”

This year, Mr Ray and his family have come up with a three-pronged challenge: to bake their own sourdough bread, to forgo driving their car, and to cut their electricity consumption by one-third.

“The average Australian citizen consumes an amount of energy equivalent to nearly 50 people pedalling bicycles non-stop, day and night,” he says. “That statistic makes me think twice about our energy use. Do we want to be dependent on oil, or on slaves when oil runs out? Or is there another way?

“We need to really pioneer new ways of living that aren’t fossil-fuel dependent, and that’s why we’re not going to get into the car for the week,” he says.

If you’d prefer to start with a shorter challenge, November 27 is Buy Nothing Day, an international day of protest against over-consumption.

Alternatively, to find out the facts behind your regular buys, check out the Ethical Consumer Group’s Guide to Ethical Supermarket Shopping. The fourth edition will be available shortly, as both a booklet ($6) and an iPhone application ($4).

“It’s great for people who are looking for something with an ethical edge for Christmas stockings or to buy for their friends,” Mr Ray says.