On 3 June 2010 09:46, David xxx wrote:
> Dave
>
> I’m leading a transport workshop for Transition Edinburgh South next week on
> personal / local group action in the light of climate change and peak oil.
> I’d be interested to know what your perspective would be on the key
> priorities for individual / collective action.
>
>
> Regards
> David



Dave du Feu
 to David
	
Hi David - sorry, I've been really busy in the lead-up to our mailout
this w'end - I may well now be too late to reply anyway!

Not too sure what I can say that isn't fairly obvious. Here's one
thought that has just come to me...

 Apart from the questions of what policies should be lobbied for from
a 'pure' perspective, there are questions such as personal motivation
and of likely effectiveness of action.

e.g. say you can think of 3 alternative courses of personal or
collective action, A-C, where all 3 are useful environmentally but...

A is likely to be the most beneficial, but is hard to achieve
B is the one which you or your group are most motivated to tackle
(e.g. might be more fun or might have most local utility)
C is the course which is most likely to achieve success, even though
perhaps a bit boring to do, or perhaps the outcome might be useful but
not spectacular.

Which do you do??

Part of the reason Spokes has had a fair level of successes, and has
stayed in existence for so long, is that we go for all 3 approaches,
and probably rely most heavily on B and C.

As regards (C) one of the benefits of being a spokes member is that we
tell members WHEN is a good time to lobby WHO about WHAT.   e.g. you
are much more likely to achieve something if you can get it included
in something the council or a developer is doing anyway, rather than
trying to persuade them to take on something from scratch.

Example - it took us about 7 years to get the original Middle Meadow
Walk cycleway opened (we were lobbying from scratch - fitted
categories A & B above), whereas with less difficulty we have twice
achieved improvements, and are soon to get more, to cycling conditions
on the road to the New Infirmary by getting a lot of member input to
the council on plans the council were themselves developing to make
the road more bus and cycle friendly (category C).

I see a talk coming on here!!!

Dave