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Can we together Create the Future we want

This is copy of an article by Robin Coates, first written for Malvern Hillistic.

To add to the Transition to a low Carbon more Community resilient world that Transition Malvern Hills (TMH) has been working towards we now have the massive Brexit transition to work our way through.

From a TMH perspective the big concern about Brexit is that the EU has been very successfully working towards (and achieving in many areas) much improved environment protection and standards. As well as being vital leaders of the Climate Change agenda. Will the UK now backslide to the position it was before we joined “The Dirty Man of Europe”? We had the poorest recycling rates, the highest level of pumping sewage to sea and spreading sewage sludge to agricultural land, the most inefficient houses (by Northern EU standards), the least interest in restricting dangerous chemicals and pesticides and much more. Having to raise our game to meet EU regulation has led to major benefits in nearly all environmental areas. In others like air pollution the regulations have enabled the Government to be taken to court by UK pressure groups and instructed by the courts to create a plan.

If there is a loud enough voice from the public we can perhaps stop there being a bonfire of necessary regulation (the bonfire proponents would call all this red tape).

It is just possible that Brexit could lead to the UK creating a vision of a different future. We will be less attractive to Multinationals so maybe their lobbying tactics will stay focussed on Brussels and the publics’ voice could carry more weight in the UK.

As Rob Hopkins the Co- Founder of Transition Towns recently wrote in his blog:
It could, after all, end up with England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, in whatever permutations of independence or united-ness we end up with, as a model sustainable, equitable and resilient nation, showcasing a completely renewable energy grid, home to thriving and diverse food economies, meeting its housing needs through truly affordable gorgeous homes in community ownership, supporting each other through the long-overdue disintegration of neoliberalism, creating diverse thriving working communities. And if those of us fighting for a better world in the UK have lost the link to the EU, then we will need to find other ways of co-operating with our friends across Europe and around the world, working locally but sharing our learnings, overcoming barriers and tapping with greater vigour into the networks that exist. Well why not?

From a Hillistic perspective we can add to this healthier citizens supported to eat and live healthily with unhealthy food advertising banned or carrying serious warnings and lots of emphasis on complementary treatments that support our bodies to heal themselves, with drugs being a last resort.

To make this much more attractive future come about we, as citizens, are going to have to raise our voices and support or create the many experiments and prototypes of this more healthy society. We need to realise just how many people want this more desirable future and feel rather hopeless about it happening. It is worth pondering on how many small groups are quietly working on this, usually believing they are in a tiny minority as they are not connected to other groups and individuals working on another aspect of a very similar vision.

There is a book called Blessed Unrest subtitled: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming. It is a 2007 New York Times bestseller by Paul Hawken. He identifies all the fragments from social justice, indigenous peoples’ oppression, inequality and environmental issues and more and showed how interconnected these are and how many millions of people are working for change but most not realising how much we need to join the issues and our pressure and solutions. To broaden our sense of community and realise together we can achieve much more.

TMH’s project have been based around the notion of them being community schemes (the Malvern Hills Car Club and the Malvern Community Energy Coop being examples). All our efforts have also built links to other Malvern groups. The Malvern Cube Youth and Community Centre is perhaps the most overtly community based project, helping to save the building from demolition and then run it and develop it with a wonderful group of Trustees and Volunteers from other groups and interests.

A great venue for your next event, group or class, have you tried it yet?

Now Malvern has a community resource second to none where all ages, abilities and interest can do their own thing and meet others with different interests.
What else can we create together?

We would like to start a project that brings together the distribution of local food but we need interested volunteers, could you be one of them?

More information: for electric bike https://transitionmalvernhills.org.uk/electric-bike-loan-scheme-2/ for the car club malvernhills-carclubs.org.uk, for the malverncube.com or contact Robin Coates 01684 540284, robin@robincoates.com.