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• 1 2025-02-13T01:00:24+00:00 Common Themes - Taking Action For The Climate 8 plain 2025-04-19T00:39:48+00:00

  Facing the future

  Looking back on the past, recalling one’s own childhood and memories, can invite nostalgia and longing, especially when the news today feels more and more frightening and gloomy. How do people view the future – their own, or their children’s, or of this place in general? What actions are they taking in the present to change the course of the future that is yet to come?  

  
  
  
  Taking action for the climate

  The issue of climate change is so huge, so world-encompassing, it is easy to feel that any action taken by an individual is so tiny as to be entirely futile. Yet many, many people have joined together to change the narrative around climate change, emissions targets, and climate justice. How this plays out in people’s everyday lives, and the choices they make, is a fascinating question. 
  
  
• 1 2025-04-19T01:04:33+00:00 Facing The Future 7 plain 2025-05-20T05:58:31+00:00 Looking back on the past, recalling one’s own childhood and memories, can invite nostalgia and longing, especially when the news today feels more and more frightening and gloomy. How do people view the future – their own, or their children’s, or of this place in general? What actions are they taking in the present to change the course of the future that is yet to come?
  
  

   

  Emmanuelle Favre: Moi, personnellement, je pense qu'il faut, il faut changer le discours. Je pense pas qu'il faut changer la cible. Je pense qu'il faut changer de discours, que ce soit plus, que ça donne plus envie, et que ça soit moins punitif, parce que, finalement, on a vécu depuis les années Covid des, des injonctions de chauffer pas trop, éteignez la lumière, et on a infantilisé les gens. Et, et sur ce thème de la transition, on a infantilisé aussi les mairies parce qu'on leur a imposé de rénover leurs bâtiments. Alors, du coups elles font pas, mais bon, car elles attendent que la loi change. On leur a imposé la ZAN [loi 2023 : “zéro artificialisation nette”], elles attendent que la loi change. On leur a imposé. Il y a tout un tas de règles qui sont très, très bien, qui viennent de la loi, qui sont super sur le, le, le verdissement de la flotte automobile des communes. On a des obligations, enfin, aucune, les communes ne respectent pas. Mais par conscience. Si on appliquait correctement les textes qu'on a, ils sont toutes dans le bon sens, vrai. Le problème, c'est qu'aujourd'hui les mairies sont contres, parce que c'est imposé, c'est pas expliqué et elles voient pas leur intérêt. Parce que je leur dis, mais j'ai rigolé quand, quand l'énergie a augmenté. Nous, on avait mis en place, en avril 2021, l'extinction nocturne des feux. Dès qu'on a été élus, on a mis en route pour que ça se mette en route ça, en gros, en avril, tout tout était éteint entre vingt-trois heures trente et cinq heures trente. Un an après, hausse de l'énergie, tous mes collègues maires : “Allô comment t'as fait ? Quel est le résultat ? Est-ce qu'il y a plus d'accidents ? Est-ce qu’il y a plus d'insécurité ?”. Il y a aucun résultat négatif, tout est positif : on économise de l'argent, on améliore la biodiversité. Il y a pas plus d'accident. Il n'y a pas plus d'insécurité. C'est faux.
   

  Translation: 
   

  Emmanuelle Favre: Personally, I think we need to change the way we talk. I don't think we need to change the target. I think we need to change the way we talk, so that it's more, it's more appealing, and it's less punitive, because, ultimately, for years we've been living with Covid, being ordered to turn down the heating, to turn off the lights, and we've treated people like kids. And, on the subject of transition, we've also infantilized town councils by forcing them to renovate their buildings. So, they don't do it, but they're waiting for the law to change. ZAN [Law 2023: ‘zero net artificial development’] was imposed on them, and they're waiting for the law to change. It was imposed on them. There's a whole bunch of regulations that are very, very good, that come from the law, that are great on the, the, the greening of local authorities' car fleets. We have obligations, well, none of them, the local authorities don't respect it. But out of conscience. If we applied the texts we have correctly, they'd all be on the right track, that's true. The problem is that today the town councils are all against it because it's imposed, it's not explained, and they don't see the point. Because I tell them, I laughed when energy prices went up. In April 2021, we introduced night-time lights out. As soon as we were elected, we started the process, so that by April everything was switched off between 8.30 p.m. and 5.30 a.m. A year later, the energy costs went up. A year later, energy levels were up and all my fellow mayors were saying, “Hello, how did you do it? What's the result? Are there more accidents? Is there more insecurity?” There are no negative results, just positive ones: we're saving money, we're improving biodiversity. There are no more accidents. There's no more insecurity. It’s just not true what people believe.

  
  

  Jeremy M.: Going forward, the Transition movement, Transition Wellington and the Transition movement in general has an incredibly important role to play in the future, in the environment, and sociologically I think it's an extremely important vehicle for that. When you say sociologically? Well, it brings the community together and if they can do the job that Transition Town Wellington has done here elsewhere - and I've seen examples of that elsewhere, actually in Totnes, for example, in Exmouth - incredibly vibrant, interactive, solid communities formed around the nucleus, if you like, of the Transition movements in those places, it they can propagate that, as they're trying to do. and if it's as successful elsewhere as it is in the places I've mentioned, that's a real sociological change, a very valuable one. 

  Richard Olson: But the core of Appalachian, New Eastern Kentucky and all, the poverty is real. It's extreme— you’ve got place where the resources have been ripped out. Coal, timber, and the money's gone elsewhere, and you've left a lot of broken people, and drug addiction is really high because why wouldn't it be if you were facing a destroyed landscape and the removal of your economic opportunities and all?  And now climate change and everything, the rains are getting bigger and bigger and flooding events, just massive here. It’s all an act of God. Right. Well, God didn't strip all the trees and everything off the mountains so that all the water immediately runs off. So, unless God owns a coal company, I don't think it's an act of God.