Building on CleanWheels Success

Our apologies - we have had to delay the Transition Cafe event - this will now be 17th June 2020.

Two years ago Transition Cambridge began a project to put electric cars in the hands of car club members. Our first milestone is in the bag. In July this year the City and County Councils awarded a contract to Enterprise Car Club who put 30 hybrid-electric cars on the streets with ambition to change these for fully electric vehicles as the charging infrastructure becomes available.

Our next challenge is to make sure that the newly instigated Club is successful at displacing old polluting vehicles from our overcrowded roads. So far the CleanWheels team of four Transitioners have been able to push the local authority agenda in phase one, but now we need more help to build confidence in the Car Club model. Fewer shared vehicles are needed to serve numerous households and the costs are divided in proportion. That’s how we push the low-carbon agenda. Come to the Transition Cafe on 18th December and bring ideas on how to target your area with greener transport. 

Experience in Norwich is that a campaign of local advertising can rapidly build the membership around each vehicle and pretty soon its time to add an extra car nearby so that sharing is even more flexible. We can work with the Councils and Enterprise by leafleting and spreading the knowledge about low emission, low maintenance, mobility-as-a-service.

While the public sector and the commercial enterprise hold the reins of the project the voluntary sector (that’s us) can enhance development by using our local knowledge and network to spread the benefits around. Please come to the cafe on Wednesday and find out how, for example you could become a champion for low carbon transport in Cambridge and surrounding villages. Here is a live opportunity to reach out to our communities and make a real difference to transport habits and emissions.

Our apologies - we have had to delay the Transition Cafe event - this will now be 17th June 2020.

Climate Justice: climate change, gender and poverty in Cambridge and beyond

This is a guest post by the Blanca, James and Takashi: the team who ran the Climate Justice Cafe evening:

In late October, Transition Cambridge had the pleasure to hear Susan Buckingham and Sandy McClure discuss climate justice and its relationship with gender inequalities in Cambridge and beyond. Susan Buckingham is an independent researcher and consultant on gender and environmental issues based in Cambridge, and Sandy McClure is the director of philanthropic partnerships at Global Greengrants Fund (GGF) UK.

Susan Buckingham (left) and Sandy McClure (right)

We recorded the event in three parts so you can read on or listen, as you prefer.

Part 1: Blanca's introduction and then Sandy (Blanca's intro is noisy but it gets much better when Sue starts speaking)

Part 2: Sue's talk

Part 3: Questions