Sandpoint Transition Initiative focusing on future

To some conservationists, going green is much more than just building an eco-house, implementing a more sustainable system inside it or reducing carbon footprints. To be truly sustainable, we need to rethink our way of life and our role on the Earth, and focus on becoming resilient to the ailments of industrialized society, according to the Sandpoint Transition Initiative, an eco-conscious group based in Idaho’s Panhandle. This is the Pacific Northwest’s face of the new worldwide ecological push known as the Transition movement, an international grassroots effort taking shape in towns like Sandpoint to promote community-minded perseverance in the face of humanity’s possible worst-case-scenarios. This grassroots project began in the English town of Totnes in 2005 by Rob Hopkins, an instructor of ecological design. The non-profit movement has grown to 53 cities in the U.S. and 265 worldwide with active groups of citizens in each. In this area, Transition communities also exist in the Whatcom County/Bellingham area, Pierce and King counties. Spokane is working on this designation. The Transition philosophy is almost a reverse revolution, where wealth takes a backseat to society’s overall well-being, and a community’s resiliency – the key word and initiative’s central tenet – is the ultimate goal. It’s a transition to a scaled-down city lifestyle, with shorter commutes (preferably by bike), locally-grown food supplies, and everyone playing a role. Health, farming, building, education, even economies; all roles are taken into account. STI’s key component, which officially kicked off in June 2008, is to develop an “energy descent action plan” for the greater Sandpoint community. “I think the concept grew out of the peak oil reality and the bad economies and global warming. It’s sort of looking at that triangle and realizing that things need to change,” says Bruce Millard, part of STI’s community-building committee and head of the Inland Northwest Ecobuilding Guild’s Sandpoint field office. “Green is not right or left leaning, it is not political…We’ve entered into a new reality, so now the question is how do we make it happen?” While the Transition movement continues to gain momentum, it’s not the only group tackling green issues. Across Idaho, eco-minded individuals promote small-scale changes to lessen energy consumption and curtail human influence on the environment, such as using new home technologies, composting organic waste or replacing light bulbs. Millard says despite the shaky economy there are incentives and tax rebates for consumers from corporations, like Avista Utilities’ rebates on energy-efficient appliance and building materials, and from energy audits that inspect homes and businesses and suggest conservation options. The Northwest Ecobuilding Guild, an alliance of builders, designers, suppliers, homeowners, and partners concerned with ecological building in the Pacific Northwest, represents another group of conservation industry leaders. The organization formed in the Northwest coastal areas in the ‘90s and has seven chapters across the region and field offices dotting North Idaho. The guild also publishes the Green Pages, a directory of ecologically sustainable professional services. Deborah Warner, environmental designer at Sunrise Design Center in Athol and membership director of Idaho’s northern Ecobuilding Guild offices, said it’s a time of change for the guild in the state. While guilds coalesce across the border in Washington and North Idaho, education remains an important part of their over-all purpose. Projects that focus on remodels rather than subdivisions and suburban expansion are going to be keys to conservation in the near future, she said. “The guild to me is very critical because it is bringing the professionals together with the homeowners,” Warner said. While the guild focuses solely on the building world, it shares common ground with the Transition movement on several areas of green living. Millard says Sandpoint’s blueprint as a transition town was heavily influenced by the Northwest Ecobuilding Guild’s mission of providing leadership in eco-education and building a sustainable society. Some of the local guild chapter’s current projects include workshops on straw-bale building, reusing existing materials, incorporating natural habitat into a site, and other topics. The Transition movement, however, takes things further. “It picked up that energy from the guild but took it from just green building to everything else imaginable, from recycling to how to grow food to education,” Millard adds. The belief held by many members of STI and other Transition groups is that limited natural resources will cause a worldwide strain that could lead to a global domino-effect collapse. The shared goal of the movement is to become a community immune to the crises of peak oil, climate change and economic turbulence. The peak oil premise, for example, charts out the point in time when there is no longer cheap and accessible oil, resulting in volatile petroleum prices, limited supply and potential conflicts. The coup de grace in these situations: society’s eventual downfall, possibly soon. “We have to look beyond our current problems,” Millard says. “It’s part of an educational change, and hopefully we’re creating enough awareness to make a difference.” Yet despite the somberness and doom-and-gloom of those scenarios, the group’s members remain optimistic. By pooling resources and allowing for creative approaches to the problems, the move to becoming less energy-dependent and more locally reliant will create a more fulfilling and socially connected lifestyle, STI members argue. Transition movement members say local communities must band together to transform not only the built environment but also to build a more self-reliant society before it’s too late. Currently, the Sandpoint group is establishing working groups on topics like energy, community building and mobility, while also looking into initial projects. “We develop this plan with the broadest community involvement as possible,” explains Richard Kuhnel, a member of STI who was trained by Transition founders in England before helping start the Sandpoint program. Where does the group turn for examples of systems that are more in-sync? That’s the easy part, Kuhnel says: everywhere. “Basically you are trying to apply the things you see in nature to human systems,” he explains. For example, Kuhnel says planting trees around a home provides natural shade and cuts down on cooling costs. However fuzzy the future may be, Transition members are clear on one thing; the Transition movement is an experiment where the results are unknown. According to the Sandpoint group’s Web site, “Just in case you are under the impression that Transition is a process defined by people who have all the answers, you need to be aware of a key fact. We truly don’t know if this will work. Transition is a social experiment on a massive scale.” So far, the shift has met with success, say Kuhnel. Now entering its second year, the movement has been accepted by the community, he adds. Most of the planned projects will be self-funded and several have already gone public, such as a home tour of local eco-buildings the group recently organized. “If you want a different result, you have to do things differently,” he says. “There are lots of ways we can work together, regardless of what we think about climate change. And for that we need everybody.”