Email from Founder of Transition Town Network, Rob Hopkins

From: Rob Hopkins
To: Carter Latendresse
Tuesday, December 17, 2013   8:42 AM

Hi Carter

Thanks for the email and for letting me know about what the book has inspired in your students. It's lovely to hear. Best of luck with it and I'll keep an eye on the website!

Thanks
Rob

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Catalyst and Outreach Manager, Transition Network<http://www.transitionnetwork.org/>.
43 Fore Street, Totnes, Devon. TQ9 5HN.

You can follow my blog here <http://www.transitionnetwork.org/blogs/rob-hopkins> or follow me on Twitter as @robintransition.

My new book The Power of Just Doing Stuff: how local action can change the world is now published<https://www.transitionnetwork.org/power-just-doing-stuff/buy-book>.

Portland Hunger for Justice, by Noah & Bryan

July 18, 2020

Throughout Portland, Beaverton, and Lake Oswego areas, there are a lot of farmers markets, but throughout Oregon there are a lot more hungry people. One of these many farmers markets, on the Park Blocks by PSU, is dedicated to solving the problem of local hunger. Andrew O'Neill, an original founder of the Portland Farmers Market over three decades ago, told us that “We should use a unique aspect of Portland, like its Farmers Market to solve one of our local problems.”



O'Neill rounds up unsold fruits and veggies at the close of every Saturday Farmers Market between March and December, and he takes it to Neighborhood House in Southwest Portland, where the staff there stocks its pantry shelves with fresh fruits and veggies for the poor and hungry.




One third of the food that is produced is wasted and roughly 3 billion people are suffering from hunger today in the world. Poverty is most common in towns and villages that are poor and weak. Recent studies show that one-quarter of India’s population is hungry, which is a lot because the Indian population is about 1.237 billion people. World hunger is not easy to solve, but people like O'Neill can are doing something to help.

Who Will Win? Coops vs Malls, by Owen & Advay

April 4, 2020

Co-ops and building owners are banding together in bargaining partnerships as they go before City Hall in order to combat the invasion of big box mall stores like Best Buy, Starbucks, Walmart, and Home Depot. This week city planners in Portland have been hearing arguments from coop lawyers who are defending themselves against lawsuits from big box stores who have complained about backroom collusion and trickery.

Since 2018, longtime-Portland-area coops like REI and People's Coop have been allowed to stay in buildings without paying rent to building owners. This unusual partnership has allowed coops to flourish, while saving money on rent. Meanwhile, rents for big box mall stores continue to soar, and the global corporations are none too happy about it, which is why they have brought the law suit against building owners, asking the courts force the building owners to charge the coops rent.

Legal analysts say that the big box mall stores have little chance of winning this suit, and some predict a slow death for global corporate businesses in Portland.

Topsoil Is Top Goal, by Finn and A-Lo

September 30, 2020

Increased rainfall over the last decade that meteorologists have attribute to climate change has caused steep levels of erosion. Soil scientists warned in 2015 that Earth's topsoil was practically gone, and now, five years later, the world inches close to that cliff.

Enter a start-up business in Portland, Oregon, called Topsoil Top Goal, whose mission is to preserve the precious skin of Mother Earth. Founder Latandra Howard told us that they "have planted a lot of ground cover like grass. [They] have gone all around Portland assessing homes and businesses fro proper draining systems." For the ones that didn't have good drainage, Topsoil Top Goal added it so that the water could flow to sewers and main water systems.

"We have also created awareness among children and young adults," Howard added, "starting with Mayor Ellis Whitman." They went to the mayor's house in SE Portland, installing rain gardens that handled water runoff from his roof. "Erosion is a big part of topsoil loss," Whitman said, "and Topsoil Top Goal helped me install erosion controls to control topsoil loss."

The issue of topsoil retention is key to human survival, as we cannot grow food without it. Latandra Howard's new company is not only working to reduce erosion, they also partner with the city, who have run a highly successful composting program since 2012. When Latandra's company installs rain drainage systems, bioswales, and rain gardens, the city also provides topsoil and compost for new planting. This is a partnership that will help our city blossom.

Native Plants Save Lives, by Sara & Evan

November 21, 2020

Early this year, Professor Franky McLaurence from the University of Chicago came up with a solution to world hunger, an Organization called No Kid Hungry (NKH), which supplies money to grow food such as fruits and vegetables in different places around the world so the hungry people can easily access the food they need. Rather than gathering monetary donations and sending the money directly to the poor and hungry, Professor McLaurence accepts money, then works with farmers and botanists to select the right fruit-bearing trees and plants, which he then sends to people in need. His team works to make sure that the recipients have the correct soil and a reliable water source for the trees and plants they send. One important consideration in all of their purchases is endemic and local: they send drought and rain-tolerant plants that are suited to the regions they serve.

"I believe that the NKD Organization will make the world's biggest impact and save so many lives of youngsters," Professor Frankie McLaurence reported.

Professor McLaurence of NKH

Global Warming Is Fading from the World, by Ezra

December 3, 2020

Climate change has been an ongoing problem for decades, but now we have hope that Global Warming will start to slowly fade. This morning, after five years of construction, PGE finished completion of its twenty thousandth wind turbine along the Oregon Coast, which bring our state to the pinnacle of green energy in this country. The wind turbines, combined with the hydroelectric dams along the Columbia, provide Oregon with 100% of its energy. After just one minute in operation, the wind turbines had produced enough energy to light up thirty thousand light bulbs. Oregon no longer has to use dirty energy sources, like oil and coal, which pollute and raise global temperatures. The twenty thousand wind turbines create ten times more power than the old energy sources.

Wind Turbines Just North of Cape Arago, Oregon

Why is global warming such a problem, and why did PGE respond so urgently to it? One of the problems is that when the earth's climate gets warmer, extreme weather events start to happen. Hurricanes, tsunamis, rising sea levels, floods, droughts, wildfires, and other horrible weather events result, destroying houses, cars, forests, animals, and sometimes even people. When there are floods, heat waves, and droughts, farmers' plants either get drowned or dehydrated, which causes the plants to die, which causes famine. All of this is happening because people have been burning oil and coal, releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which causes global warming. PGE made a commitment to try its best to stop global warming because it leads to these world problems.

Dr. Ann Shernell, a leading climate scientist at My House Institute that worked closely with PGE over the past five years, has a good point when she says, "If each one of us does our bit, we will be helping to keep global warming from harming our planet." Today Oregonians can breathe a little easier, knowing that we are now climate heroes in the U.S.

Global Warming Explained, by Ava

February 7, 2020

We all have heard of global warming. The Intergovernmental Report on Climate Change has been issuing reports about every four years since 1990. By now we know that global warming happens when we drive our cars, when we turn on our air conditioner, whenever we burn fossil fuels. Earth gets hotter and hotter. That's not the whole story, however.

Looking into the past, one can find many reports over the past several decades, though the news was not generally aired through major news outlets like CBS, NBC, FOX, CNN, and ABC.

National Public Radio (NRP), however, has been sharing the findings of the scientific community, including the IPCC, from the beginning. We found a five-part special program that they aired nearly a decade ago about global warming called "It's All About Carbon." Please find Part I below.

The Evolution of Public Transportation, by Noah & Chloe

June 6, 2020

What changes are ahead for our world of public transportation? In the last three years, street-side bike rentals have taken the world by storm. Public bike rentals are a popular alternative to gas-burning vehicles, although they weren't always that way. Here in Portland, where there are a lot of eco-friendly projects and initiatives, you would think we would get public bikes earlier than 2020.

The first free public bike-sharing program was launched in 1974 in France. It was called Velos Jaunes (Yellow Bikes) and featured bicycles that were free to take and use, unlike other earlier bike-sharing programs. Public bike rentals sprouted all over the world and grew popular quickly, but bike rentals were not used by everyone until inventor John Stevenson came up with a risk-free alternative to the whole system.

Stevenson has owned a public bike-sharing company for five years, but just last year he invented a digital lock system, a small device that you simply clipped onto the front of your bike and you were ready to go. How it works is simple: you clip the lock on your bike, wrap the cord (made out of recycled plastic) around a post or tree, create a 4-digit code that unlocks the lock, and that way you can park it wherever you go. When you return the bike to the rack where it belongs, the lock automatically resets. Now there are nearly twice as many people using bike sharing programs, as well as Stevenson's new inventions.

Transportation causes for 30% of our carbon emissions. If everyone can adjust to this new bike-sharing system and make it part of their daily lives, we can do our part in getting rid of the global warming that comes with driving/riding in oil-burning vehicles. Don't know how to ride a bike? You can learn in a short, 20-minute long online tutorial that Stevenson is creating to post on his website. "The bicycle is a simple alternative," says Stevenson, "It's not just a toy for young children, but a tool that we can use to save the world from carbon emissions."