Transition Town arrives in York Region

Are you in York Region?

Do you believe in peak oil?

Are you concerned about the impact of peak oil?

If so you'll be pleased to know Transition (upper) York Region is born.

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Things I want to see for Newmarket/Aurora

In light of peak oil, pollution, global warming and those pesky food security issues that are dear to my heart(and belly) there are a great many things I’d like to see happen to make Newmarket Aurora a better and more sustainable place for what I believe will be a harder more austere future.

No more irrational development, yes we should increased density but stop building those damn 4000 sq ft homes, and stop allowing big box developments. Mixed use high density is the best model, each block should have a grocer, a restaurant, a bar, a play ground etc. Grouping all the retail and services around main arteries that no one can walk to is insane.

LEEDs certification for all new homes and major rebuilds, simple additions must be at least R2000 compliant. If people’s houses are so inefficient that they cannot heat them affordability you will get people freezing in the dark or installing in wood stoves that create smog and lead to deforestation, not to mention the number of dumb asses that burn down their houses or gas themselves when they bring the BBQ inside.

New Commercial buildings must utilize their roofs as green roofs, Solar PV or Solar thermal applications, 20 year phase in for all existing commercial buildings.

I’d like to see more open mindedness in the building codes regarding alternative building materials; Straw bail, earth bag, rammed earth etc. The carbon footprint of the building process must also be taken into account, not just the day to day carbon use.

No more drive through businesses with notice that existing ones must be phased out in 10 years. Having both an anti idling law and numerous drive throughs makes absolutely no sense.

I want the city to stop planting foreign ornamental trees everywhere. All trees should be indigenous species with at least half being productive varieties of fruits and nuts, providing both natural foods for wildlife and energetic citizens.

I don’t want the Widening of Davis Drive for public transit lanes.
Peak oil is going to severely reduce the amount of public traffic on the roads within the next 10 years. Widening this road to accommodate transit on the assumption that oil availability or price will never impact car use is blinkered thinking. The age of the car is ending, stop building infrastructure that perpetuates a broken model.

I want people to come forward to found a transition town movement (I’ll certainly join and take part but I won’t kid myself that organization or consensus building skills are my strong point, I’m too much the lazy malcontent)
Transition towns is a great movement devoted to helping towns and communities adapt to peak oil and more self reliance.

I’d like to see the creation of a food not lawns movement. The waste of water, energy, time and fertilizer on grass is a national disgrace. The potential benefit to food security, biodiversity and the survival of pollinators greatly outweighs the benefit of the uniformly boring dead zone we call lawns. While it’s your right to have a lawn I it’s also my right to utilize my soil to grow food.

I also want a lobby for the legalization of small urban livestock, hens, rabbits, dwarf goats as part of a greater Right to Farm legislation.

I want to see tax relief and zoning concession that encourage land owners to lease, donate or even use their honking big lawns to grow food locally. Just drive around the Pony and Stellar Drive industrial area, the lawns on some of these properties could supply 100s of people with produce. The utilization of urban lands to feed people is becoming more prevalent

Stop jerking us around on community gardens. After years of improving the soil in Newmarket’s community garden the region is giving urban farmers the boot, our new location will be a dead field of clay adjacent to the Magna center. In reality Magna should be additional garden plots not replacement plots

I’d like Ontario hydro to allow us the use of the hydro corridor for garden plots. There are many acres of untended and usable land going to waste.

I want a local food cooperative selling locally grown fresh and canned produce as well as bulk purchases of food staples.

I want to see the careers ended for those local politicians who think that the only thing they must offer to get my vote is more public ice rinks. There is more to life and their jobs than facilitating hockey…arrgggg!

I want to see strict enforcement of the no free range cat bylaw. If your dog, child or spouse is running amok in my yard I can call the police, if it’s a cat however you must trap it yourself because police or animal control won’t do anything. Cats and their freakishly zealot owners are apparently above a law that protects indigenous species like song birds from being hunted by a foreign and destructive species. If you’re too lazy to clean your own cat box put the cat down, don’t send it to crap in my garden

Ban golf courses- a place that Ontario exempts from the pesticide spraying laws

I want to see a group of environmentally aware people create a slate of like minded candidates in the next round of municipal elections.

I’d like the Newmarket Farmers market to have its board fired and a neutral party placed in charge. The market has lost good vendors because board members did not like losing market share to a better product, (the best meat pies are sold by a guy at the Aurora market now.) It also looks pretty obvious that many current vendors are breaking the rules and bringing out of region produce from the food terminal.

I’d like to see at least one weekend Go train that goes down 9:00ish a.m. and came back at 5-6 pm so that people can do the Ex, trade shows, theatre, the islands etc.

There are so many things that I want done yet I see no awareness to the need for change. I guess there are several answers but they all boil down to 2 categories

I’m a delusional crank
or
People are inherently short sighted and stupid

Or maybe there are people out there who will say, "Those are great ideas, I want to get involved" and will contact me to do something.

No, you are right. I must a be delusional Crank!!! bwahahahahaahah

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Doomers Amongst Us!

An article in the Star today takes a look at doomers and their preparations for what they believe will be a crisis as oil depletes and the modern high carbon society collapses. The story covers a self sufficient farmer/homesteader type , the Bug-Out and start over type and the optimistic urban survivalist who opts the Adapt in Place scenario. (Personally I prefer the first option but will likely be forced by necessity to follow the last.)

As I read the article I can imagine the eyes of my friends and family rolling they way I do when I bring up such subjects, and then I start to panic thinking "Shit, these people seem better prepared than I am." I can't help but laugh when I see the "ideal" provisions list for a family of 5 with pet. I'm truly sceptical that any family needs 34 cans of anchovies or would want to live after 114 of Spam but we know the Star published this abridged version of the attached provisions list making sure there were just enough items on it to heap scorn on these "poor deluded" survivalist types. Can't take them too seriously can we?

I want to know where was the doomer like me? Someone concerned about growing local food and the conservation of open pollinated seed, strategies that will create personal food security and alleviate the need to store outrageous amounts of food.

Where was the reference to Cuba and the movement to low carbon urban farming and food self sufficiency? A reduction in fuel does not need to bring starvation and panic but it will if we do not prepared for it.

I think the doomers they covered were far too weighted towards the "screw you I'm saving my own ass" camp and ignored the good work and advocacy by people looking to Power Down society and adapt. It seems that making the doomers survivalists types rather than seers and mentors for the masses was a better way at marginalizing people who would question the status quo.

It was unfair to imply that most doomers are simply survivalists looking for the next perceived crisis, especially considering the connotation that the survivalist label has generated in the U.S.
At least they did not ask these people how many guns they owned!

What concerned me most about the article was the ignorance of commenter's who cling to claims that oil is not depleting, that Alaska, Alberta, Unknownia all still have massive reserves that will keep us wallowing in our exuberant lifestyles for another century. Beside these cornucopians we have the usual techno fix types who think that wind mills and solar will somehow replace a dense, easily transported liquid hydrocarbon for cars, fertilizer, pesticide, or as used in a gazillion chemical compounds including many medicines.

Did they all miss the report I posted about last week questioning the sustainability of most new "Saviour" techs which are commonly touted as our future.

When it comes down to it unless people are hoarding guns so they can steal their neighbours food, fuel, wife, land etc, why ridicule them? As long as they are not working on an online longpork cookbook why sneer at them. Each prepared person is one less the government will be able to fail, one less that will initially compete for resources as they decline, and one more likely to have the skills rest of us will need to learn. We've all heard the the boy scouts motto, about 7 fat years followed by 7 lean years, the stories of hardship from your depression era family, yet suddenly it's insane to be prepared "just in case". Are we too affluent to worry about mere food?


Also don't forget that the financial Doomers like Marc Faber and Peter Schiff are now becoming celebrities in financial circles for being all to correct. While chicken little was just a stupid bird it was those around Cassandra who could not see the truth.

Associated article

Embracing the doom: What kind of doomer are you?

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