A New Vision For TCL?

Has the time come for Transition City Lancaster to be re-born from the ashes of the COVID-19 pandemic?

I’ve just been re-reading the Constitution that we set up back in 2012. You can do so yourself if you’ve a mind to since it has it’s own page on this website. <download our Constitution>

We had a vision back then of how individuals could count by working towards preventing climate change from destroying our lives. It was a vision based on individuals coming together in small groups, volunteering their time and their energy and focussing it into specific jobs that needed doing that would help our local community transition towards sustainable, ecologically-balanced life-styles. At the time, back in 2012, these special-interest groups were formed around major changes that we clearly saw our community needed to work on – Food, Energy, Transport, Low-Impact Buildings, Waste, Biodiversity and many others that nowadays, everyone is aware of because governments have now set targets for us all to reach. We may disagree about how quickly we need to reach them but now we can look back and be proud that we were informing local people about these changes we all need to make and contributed to the dialogues that have led us to where we are now.

Many of the individuals that took part in TCL and set up projects back then have split off into becoming local politicians or forming non-profit enterprises like Claver Hill, LESS, MORE, Halton Co-Housing and many other projects, indeed Lancaster and Morecambe are full of them.

So what’s left to do?

Do you honestly need me to tell you? There is so much to do and the emphasis now needs to be on doing rather than talking about it. We no longer need to convince local people that climate change is real. They see it on the news everyday. Who would have thought that people would be dying in June, 2021, in their non air-conditioned houses in Toronto, Canada because of record-breaking summer temperatures reaching 49.5 degrees C? No we are all now well aware of climate change.

But do we all know how to live sustainable lifestyles and are we now doing it? Do we know how to reuse and recycle as much of our stuff as we can? Do we know to to mend and repair clothes, bedding, furniture so that we don’t produce so much landfill and destroy our oceans with micro-plastics? Do we know how to feed ourselves on as much plant foods as we can, and how to grow it in changing climates? Do we know how to protect ourselves against rising sea-levels and flooding? 

Not only do we have this knowledge but are we applying it?

What we need now are small focussed groups of volunteers, learning how to do these things and training others to do the same. We need leaders who share this vision of a sustainable community and can gather teams around them who can work, in their spare time, producing all sorts of products that are sustainable and renewable, providing services that keep us all healthy and happy and free.

And how are we all going to pay for these new products and services that are being produced by these groups of motivated volunteers? Perhaps we need our own community economy, designed to appreciate the voluntary nature of this new type of work? Certainly we can’t afford for governments to fund it because that would mean that our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will end up having to pay back this huge burden of taxes.

Transition City Lancaster are now in the process of developing a new kind of community economy that will reward these motivated leaders and their teams for the hours that they work. Then they can pay for the products and services that other teams are providing. This is not a new type of local currency. This is far more than that because it provides four levels of systems within it – the means to organize and motivate groups of volunteers through Tokens of Appreciation (TOA), the means to transfer TOA to other individuals and groups, the means to validate the work that is claimed to have been done, and fourthly, the marketplace that provides the means to display the products and services offered by other members and groups and to auction them to the highest bidder in return for TOA.

With new Mobile Phone Apps and an auction web site this community economy can form the foundation for building a new TCL and this can form the central hub extending out into the wider community to bring us all together and co-operate in working to build towards a new type of society in Lancaster and Morecambe. One which cares for each other and becomes flexible and resilient together. We can’t do it alone.

If you would like to know more about this new vision for Transition City Lancaster and would like to take part in it then download this document and let us have your comments to info@transitioncitylancaster.org

In order to implement this we need Group Leaders who know what they would like to focus on and can organise others to help them do it.

We also need a team of at least three who will become the Regional Committee and make decisions about the Lancaster Region and what are the priorities in our area that volunteers can help with. Eventually the committee will be an elected body but we need volunteers to get it started.

Also, anyone who has technical skills in programming, web design and relational databases or client-server apps, we could definitely use their help in testing and developing the new Apps and Auction Website.

TCL is changing and we need new volunteers with new ideas to join us. If you start by reading the Constitution you will be amazed at this vision for the future for Lancaster and Morecambe.