[Peace] Invitation to Transition Champaign County

Fri Dec 12 10:25:04 CST 2008

 *TransitionChampaignCounty.org: Moving Toward a Sustainable 21st Century*
(This document on the web at http://tccinvitation.notlong.com)

Are you are concerned about the future of Champaign County (Illinois) and
want to help ensure its sustainability for current and future generations?
If so, you are cordially invited to join a new initiative called *Transition
Champaign County* and participate in transitioning Champaign County's
communities and residents to meet the dual challenges and opportunities of
Peak Oil and Climate Change.

*Background and Rationale*

Champaign County's current economy is dependent on inexpensive and abundant
supplies of fossil fuels whose future availability cannot be ensured
[1]<http://www.sustainabletucson.org/2008/12/06/memo-to-the-president-elect-on-energy-realism-and-the-green-new-deal/>.
And Champaign County, like other counties in the U.S., is responsible for
contributing a large amount of greenhouse gases missions to our atmosphere
and oceans. Although China has recently overtaken the U.S. in total
greenhouse gas pollution per year, the U.S. continues to lead the world's
large countries in the amount of climate-changing and ocean-damaging
emissions per resident. The U.S. is responsible for nearly as much
greenhouse gas pollution as Africa, Central and South America, the Middle
East, Japan, and India, combined.

On the positive side, Champaign County has ample resources, many yet
untouched, to allow us to transition to a sustainable and more resilient
local economy to provide residents with energy, food, shelter,
transportation, education, health care, recreation and art. Wind resources
in this part of the country can provide impressive amounts of renewable
electrical energy as demonstrated by the 396-megawatt Twin Groves Wind Farm
[2] <http://www.horizonwind.com/projects/whatwevedone/twingroves/> in
neighboring McLean County. Germany is a world leader in converting sunlight
into electricity, and yet Champaign County receives significantly more solar
energy per unit of surface area than Germany does. We also have
opportunities for creating energy from biomass, including agricultural and
municipal waste and sewage. We have the best agricultural land in the world,
although its primary use for industrial monoculture (corn and soybeans) is
input intensive, unsustainable and inefficient (10 calories of fossil-fuel
energy burned for each calorie of supermarket food sold
[3]<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html>)
and contributes agricultural chemicals to the "dead zone" in the Gulf of
Mexico. Although little of the native tallgrass prairie remains in Champaign
County, native plants are thriving in many preserves and gardens because of
the efforts of concerned individuals who want to see native plants and
wildlife become a larger part of our county, parks, gardens and homes.

Champaign County also possesses many active environmental and conservation
groups and institutions (much too many to list) whose members are dedicated
to making the Champaign County and our lifestyles more sustainable. But
there has been until now no common forum and no overall social organization
to coordinate the knowledge, skills, energy and visions of these many
future-oriented and progressive groups and individuals.

Finally, Champaign County is the home to cutting-edge knowledge, technology
and expertise. The University of Illinois is a world class research
university with four new "green" units: The Office of Sustainability
[4]<http://sustainability.illinois.edu/>,
the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center [5]<http://www.istc.illinois.edu/>,
the Institute of Natural Resource Sustainability
[6]<http://research.illinois.edu/inrs>and the Environmental Change
Institute
[7] <http://eci.illinois.edu/>. Parkland College provides affordable
technical education to residents of Champaign County that we need to face
the challenges of the 21st Century. Other institutions and enterprises such
as the U.S. Passive House Institute
[8]<http://www.passivehouse.us/passiveHouse/PHIUSHome.html>and Newell
Instruments
[9] <http://newellinstruments.com/> in Urbana and SmartSpark Energy Systems
[10] <http://www.smartsparkenergy.com/> in Champaign are leading the way
toward carbon-neutral and even carbon-negative residential homes and
buildings.

*Transition Champaign County* will form part of a national and global
network of other communities sharing the challenges and opportunities of the
21st Century. Starting with the Transition Town
[11]<http://transitiontowns.org/>initiatives in Ireland and England in
2005, this movement has now grown to
include over 100 communities worldwide. The U.S. network has been created
using Ning social networking software (developed by Marc Andreesen,
University of Illinois graduate and co-developer of Netscape) and there are
now Ning sites for each of the 50 states. For more information about the
Transition Initiative, you can check out the *Transition Primer*
[12]<http://transitiontowns.org/TransitionNetwork/TransitionPrimer>and
the
*Transition Handbook*
[13]<http://transitiontowns.org/TransitionNetwork/TransitionHandbook>(available
via
amazon.com [14]<http://www.amazon.com/Transition-Handbook-Dependency-Local-Resilience/dp/1900322188/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1228418725&sr=8-1>for
$16.47) and this video of Transition founder Rob Hopkins
[15] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGHrWPtCvg0>.

*Join Us!*

To become part of Transition Champaign County and become involved in this
important effort involving conservation, relocalization of our economy and
community building, go to
http://TransitionChampaignCounty.org<http://transitionchampaigncounty.ning.com/>to
sign up (you will need to answer a few questions to create your
profile),
join one or more Groups of interest (click on the Groups tab to see them
all) and join in the conversation by sharing your comments, questions and
concerns. Also feel free to list sustainability-related happenings under
Events to share with others.

I believe we will all find *Transition Champaign County's* website a
valuable tool for us to get to know each other, share our knowledge, skills,
and resources, and begin to coordinate our transition efforts. In addition
to Groups and Forums for discussion, the website allows us to get to know
each other, share videos and photos, announce events, create blogs and chat.
I believe that we will soon discover that there are many people with similar
interests and goals concerning sustainability in Champaign County that would
have otherwise never learned of each other's existence and activities.

Please forward this invitation to anyone who lives in Champaign County
(Illinois) who you believe may be interested in becoming involved in
*Transition
Champaign County*.

I look forward to working with you in this crucial and exciting project to
create a sustainable and better Champaign County.

Sustainably yours,

Gary Cziko

Professor Emeritus
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Founding Member,
Transition Champaign County <http://transitionchampaigncounty.org/>

Secretary,
ChampaignCountyBikes.org

Member,
Urbana Bicycle & Pedestrian Advisory Commission

"Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world
is either a madman or an economist" - Kenneth Boulding (economist)

*References

* [1] http://tinyurl.com/6p87na<http://www.sustainabletucson.org/2008/12/06/memo-to-the-president-elect-on-energy-realism-and-the-green-new-deal>
 [2] http://www.horizonwind.com/projects/whatwevedone/twingroves
 [3] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html
 [4] http://sustainability.illinois.edu
 [5] http://www.istc.illinois.edu
 [6] http://research.illinois.edu/inrs <http://eci.illinois.edu/>
 [7] http://eci.illinois.edu
 [8] http://www.passivehouse.us/passiveHouse/PHIUSHome.html
 [9] http://newellinstruments.com/
[10] http://www.smartsparkenergy.com/
[11] http://transitiontowns.org/
[12] http://transitiontowns.org/TransitionNetwork/TransitionPrimer
[13] http://transitiontowns.org/TransitionNetwork/TransitionHandbook
[14] http://tinyurl.com/5uft3t
[15] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGHrWPtCvg0
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