Grey Lynn 2030 Transition Community

James Samuel is coming to speak at our next Grey Lynn 2030 monthly meeting.

James brought the Transition Town concept to New Zealand. We are very pleased that James will be coming over from Waiheke to speak to us. The Transition Town movement is too smart and modern to have a “leader” but to me James is “the man”.

James writes a great blog, started and maintains www.TransitionTown.org.nz

He is also very involved with www.oooby.com – Out of Our Own Backyards.

James is very involved in the energetic and inspiring Waiheke Transition Town group who have amongst their many projects the Fabulous Fruit Tree Initiative and a Community Supported Agriculture project.

James is speaking to Grey Lynn 2030 about the Transition Town movement and will be inspiring us with successful New Zealand Transition initiatives. If you are new to ideas or been around the Transition movement for a while you are sure to learn from him.

Monday 10th August

7.30

Grey Lynn Community Centre

The Bad News

• MIT’s centre for Global Climate Change Science have revised their best guess of temperature rise by the end of the century if humanity continues with business-as-usual – to 5.2˚C. This is well in excess of the median estimate in the worst-case scenario looked at in the most recent IPCC report in 2007. With a 5˚ rise, we all fry of course, but this would still be better than the 9% chance they now think there is of a 7˚ rise. 7˚C! The conclusions of the MIT study confirm other recent revisions of temperature rise by the International Energy Agency (IEA), which has warned of a 6˚ rise if we remain on our current emissions trajectory, and the MET office’s Hadley Centre, which also guesstimated a 5-7˚ rise if we don’t change course.
• Meanwhile Kofi Annan’s charity, the Global Humanitarian Forum, reports that global warming is already causing 300,000 deaths each year, and the Inernational Organization for Migration predicts 200 million climate refugees by 2050. (Franny and Pete P will be speaking alongside Kofi Annan at the Forum’s event in Geneva on June 24th.)
• The Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade Bill passing through the US Congress has been hailed as good news by many, and in some ways it is. Unfortunately its bloated and dizzying array of measures look set to repeat all the mistakes of the first round of the EU emissions trading scheme, with ludicrously inadequate targets, massive loopholes and 85% of the pollution permits handed out to big polluters for free. The coal industry have warmly welcomed the latest draft.
  

And… breathe. It’s time for:

The Good News

• The UN climate negotiations are just starting to pick up pace in Bonn this week, with the first draft treaty text tentatively accepted by all parties as a reasonable starting point for the talks, which will conclude in Copenhagen in December. The 53 page text was still criticised by both rich and poor alike for not being ‘balanced’ enough, although at this stage it is still full of blanks, to be filled in at later sessions. Watch this space…
• Russia has quietly performed an astonishing volte-face on climate policy, accepting in their newly published ‘doctrine’ that anthropogenic global warming poses severe risks and requires immediate action to limit carbon emissions. Nostrovia!
• Here’s a lovely short film about the Kingsnorth Six, the Greenpeace activists who painted ‘Gordon’ down the side of one the chimneys of Kingsnorth coal power station last year, and were subsequently acquitted by a jury in an historic ruling. The jury, on hearing a lot of expert evidence from climate scientists, decided the damage the activists caused was justified in the face of the terrible threat of climate change. Go trial-by-jury!
• Friends of the Earth have launched a new campaign against international offsetting, where rich countries pay poor countries to be more sustainable, then write off their own emissions as if they’d magically disappeared. It’s the elephant in the ointment of the UNFCCC process – sign up to stop it here: www.demandclimatechange.com.
• Climate change is just one symptom of a broader sickness – over-consumption. 8th June sees the premiere of The End of the Line, a new doc spelling out how the old adage about there being plenty more fish in the sea is now very far from the truth.
  
• For those of us trapped in the Big Smoke, Love London Green Festival kicks off this week, and runs to the 28th June. 99% of events are free.
• Good riddance to US car giant General Motors, who declared bankruptcy this week! Whilst this is sad news for the thousands of workers set to lose their jobs, it is very good news for the climate. As late as 2008, GM’s Vice Chairman Bob Lutz was calling global warming a “total crock of shit”. GM are the lunatics responsible for Hummers. Nuff said.

Grey Lynn 2030

Possible Legal Structures

1. Currently Grey Lynn 2030 is operating as an unincorporated society with no rules/constitution.

2. As an unincorporated society, the members of the steering group are personally liable (jointly and severally) in the event that something happens at an event organised by Grey Lynn 2030. This is because in law the Grey Lynn 2030 group has no separate legal existence. For example, if last Friday night with the screening of the short movies, the projector caught fire and burnt the community centre down, the community centre’s insurers would go after members of the steering group to recover the costs of the fire.

3. Creating Grey Lynn 2030 as a separate legal entity is therefore desirable, not only for members of the steering group to avoid personal liability, but also because it is easier to secure funding from organisations, that is, organisations such as trust boards etc are more likely to give legal entities rather than groups of people.

4. There are two possible legal structures which Grey Lynn 2030 can use:

(a) Charitable trust; or

(b) Incorporated society

In addition, to allowing members of the steering group to avoid personal liability, both can allow Grey Lynn 2030 to claim tax exempt status. But note, tax exempt status must be applied for and is not granted automatically.

5. The differences between the two structures are set out on the following page.

6. I believe that the better structure of the two for Grey Lynn 2030 is that of an incorporated society, for the following reasons:

(a) Grey Lynn 2030 is not sitting on a large amount of money or other assets and deciding how they should be used, maintained etc. Rather as the vision statement currently says, the aim of Grey Lynn 2030 is:

“[t]o be a participatory organization that aims to serve all sectors of the Grey Lynn community by facilitating, supporting and generating sustainability in all dimensions of urban development.”

Thus having a committee to which people go to and communicate with, plus the committee organising and co-ordinating events, makes it sensible for Grey Lynn 2030 to be an incorporated society rather than a trust.

(b) Difficulty in finding two people willing to be trustees. Reasonably onerous duties are imposed on trustees and changing trustees is time consuming. Incorporated societies are much more fluid in that sense, can have people come and go as they please.

We hope that you can make our movie night this evening
Media that Matters

This is a collection of films from the Media that Matters Festival

7.30

Grey Lynn Community Centre

510 Richmond Rd

Friday May 1

By JANIE SMITH – Auckland City Harbour News

Photo: JASON OXENHAM

NEW DIGS: Grey Lynn community constable Natalie Lyons is now based at the Grey Lynn Community Centre.

Grey Lynn residents wanting to have a chat with their community constable can find her in a more central spot.

Constable Natalie Lyons recently moved to an office at the Grey Lynn Community Centre on Richmond Rd to be more accessible to the public.

She was previously based in a shopping complex on Surrey Cres and says people found the office difficult to find.

“It makes sense for a community constable to be based in a community centre. This is really good, a lot of people come through the centre.”

Being on a main road the centre attracts a lot of foot traffic and people know where it is, says Ms Lyons.

Recent problems facing the area include a spate of burglaries and thefts from cars.

Ms Lyons says she is trying to get Neighbourhood Support groups set up to encourage people to look out for one other.

She has been the Grey Lynn community constable for three years and loves the job.

It allows her to do proactive work rather than reactive and she can get to know the community instead of just passing through.

Ms Lyons will be at the office until July when she will go on maternity leave and a replacement will be arranged.

The office is open from 9am to noon on weekdays except Wednesdays when it is open from 2pm.

Ms Lyons can be contacted on 360-0796.

Rob is to me is the “father” of the Transition Town movement.

Rob’s own site www.transitionculture.org is worth a look.

“the site is designed in such a way as to allow me to share thoughts, insights and resources that I come across as I do this research, in the hope that it will be of use to you. I am designing an Energy Descent Action Planning process for Totnes which will begin in the summer, once the first year of research is out of the way and I have a thorough methology worked out”