How will Salisbury cope with a changing climate?

SALISBURY being a deeply conservative place (and I’m not just talking about party politics here), I’m not sure whether it’s ready to become a Transition City.
I do hope I’m wrong, though.
The concept has a lot to recommend it, not least that it could become a real, cross-generational unifying force within our community in an era when we spend more and more of our time glued to the telly, the computer or (in the case of certain young people I could mention) fighting World War Three extremely noisily on the Xbox.
In Totnes, Devon, which became Britain’s first Transition Town back in 2006 – when the Big Society wasn’t even a twinkle in David Cameron’s eye - more than 3,000 folk, almost half the population, have been involved in some way.
A movement that grew out of concern about how our society would cope in the future with declining oil reserves and climate change has taken off worldwide.
The Totnes pioneers developed theme groups to focus on topics such as health and wellbeing, building and housing, business and livelihoods, food, transport and energy, breaking what looks like one big insurmountable problem down into bits that we can do something about.
From these groups sprang schemes involving anything from garden sharing and collective planting of nut trees to clothing swaps.
There are projects helping people to make their homes more energy efficient, to teach them about eco-friendly building techniques, and to support local food production.
There are free skill sharing sessions where people can learn about cooking, carpentry, upcycling, sewing … just about anything that someone can find time to teach them.
And of course there’s the famous Totnes Pound – a local currency to be spent supporting local businesses.
Apart from bringing extra revenue to the town from visitors eager to learn more about how Transition works, residents say it’s had a huge effect in making everyone more neighbourly, to use an old-fashioned word.
Since drastic public spending cuts are here to stay (and Wiltshire Council has made it quite clear that we’ll all have to become more self-reliant) it’s an idea whose time has well and truly come.
How fortunate, then, that Rob Hopkins, one of the founders of the Transition movement, is coming to the Guildhall for a public meeting next month, aiming to get us to join in. I gather he’s an inspirational speaker. See you there?