Rethinking Lifestyle

Regular readers of this Rethinking Lifestyles blog will know that it is written by members of a local organization called South Eastman Transition Initiative or SETI for short. For new readers I will explain what SETI is all about and what we do.

First of all I should explain what is meant by ‘Transition’ and ‘Transition Initiative’. Since the beginning of the Industrial revolution man has become more and more reliant on fossil fuels, not only for transport and heating, but also for plastics and millions of chemicals derived from oil. Modern agriculture would be impossible without oil for tractors and more particularly natural gas that is used to make fertilizer. There are three major factors in the world today that will probably come together in the lifetime of our children or grandchildren. These are global warming, our expanding world population and an energy shortfall.

World population is currently at about 7.3 billion and expanding at a rate of around 100 million every year. With health care improvements in developing countries child mortality is decreasing and in developed countries people are living longer. The net result is that world population will likely increase by 1 billion every 10 years. To put that in perspective, 1 billion is about the total population of the whole of North America and Europe combined. Can you imagine having to find food for that many extra people, especially as we are concreting over more and more food producing land every year. The biggest irrigated crop in North America are the lawns around private houses, and that in itself raises questions about the sensible use of limited water resources when global worming is creating more droughts around the world.

Very soon these three factors – global warming, world population and energy shortfall – are going to come together in a catastrophic way. We can already see millions more people requiring food aid due to crop failures or drought. Recently it was reported that the worlds fish numbers have gone down by half in the last 40 years and they are not recovering even when fishing is restricted: eg – cod off Canada’s east coast. Unfortunately there is too much oil still in the ground and little serious attempts by politicians of most countries to reduce pumping, with the inevitable result that global warming will get a lot worse. All those hundreds of houses built in Steinbach and the South East in recent years could have been built with all the windows on the south side for maximum solar gain, called passive solar. They could have been equipped with geothermal heating and solar panels on the roof, but no, the builders and leaders of our communities see more profit in old oil-consuming technology.

So what does SETI do? We help and encourage people to change their lifestyles to be more sustainable. We do this through education of ourselves and others on what is possible, encouraging one another according to circumstances and willingness to change. That is ‘transition’. We also lobby at relevant levels of government.

We run a series of events including practical workshops on subjects such as yogurt making or canning, presentations on a wide range of subjects such as growing your own vegetables, composting, solar power and tours to various successful environmental places etc. The public are welcome to these events: more details are available on our website.