Community becomes more self-reliant

Concerned with global warming, peak oil and a carbon footprint on the earth, one local group said it hopes to change Bloomington into a more self-reliant, sustainable community.

Transition Bloomington is the first transition movement in Indiana with goals of self-reliance, local sustainability and community work on growing local, organic food, said group facilitator Keith Johnson.

Although the group doesn’t plan to start sponsoring organized events until March, Johnson said there are plans for radical changes in Bloomington to add on to the sustainability changes the community has already made.

“I would hope Transition Bloomington would provide even more help for people doing good work,” he said. “The whole planet is in crisis at the moment, and what’s needed is local economic resilience. We have to take that back into our own hands.”

Transition Bloomington is a part of Transition U.S., in which several communities are involved in localization and sustainability, said Pamela Gray, director of the national group. Gray said a whole Transition network that grew purely at a grassroots level exists across the world, from the United Kingdom to Australia.

“It has grown like a computer virus,” she said. “It’s been pretty amazing how it spread, and it’s continuing to spread like wildfire.”

Transition Bloomington facilitator Zach Mermel said the group plans to have movie nights to educate the community on the issue of peak oil. The group plans to show a movie titled “A Crude Awakening” on March 24 and “The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil” on April 9, both at the Monroe County Public Library auditorium.

Mermel said educating the public about peak oil is important because though Bloomington has made important steps in being more sustainable, unstable oil prices and climate change are issues that need to be in the community’s consciousness.

“Oil is declining, and global warming is happening right now as well,” Mermel said. “And they’re going to start increasing in their severity within the next few years.”

Transition Bloomington will sponsor training sessions April 18 and 19 at the City Hall Council Chambers, Johnson said. He said the training involves people who want to be involved in Transition Bloomington and those already involved in Transition U.S.

The training has two sessions. The first involves a course educating people on Transition U.S. goals and the steps necessary to build a local group, Gray said. She said the second session involves teaching people to become trainers who will spread the word about the group and its goals.

Gray said she hopes the transition movement will continue to spread, forming sustainable communities that are needed in the world now.

“There are all sorts of things going on in the group that encourage people to work together,” Gray said. “Sure, there are bad things lurking in the background, but all of our messages tend to be positive.”

Johnson said creating Transition Bloomington is important because the community needs to learn new crafts and skills to become more self-reliant and create sustainable changes in its everyday life – instead of waiting for governmental changes.

“It’s a huge social experiment,” he said. “If we wait for the government to do it, it will be too little, too late.”