Media works toward a green transition

Sari and Pat Steuber live in a house they designed and built themselves, on a steep hillside on the outskirts of Media. Light floods the interior through south-facing double-glass windows. The house is heated by a system that captures the warmth of the earth. A three-story staircase is supported by long strands of rebar; the treads are recycled sections of finished maple from a bowling alley lane.

In 2008, Sari, 61, a retired software-development manager, and Pat, 64, a retired Web designer, decided to rectify an omission: They'd been married 22 years and never taken a honeymoon. So they spent the next 61/2 months touring the United States. They didn't rent a Winnebago. Instead, they mounted a tandem bicycle and pedaled 9,000 miles.

It was typical of the Steubers, who believe in respecting the environment and the finite and perishable treasures of Planet Earth. Sari, in particular, has long been interested in sustainable living.

So when she learned that like-minded souls in Media and vicinity were working to make the Delaware County seat a Transition Town, she gladly joined the effort. In August, Media became the first Transition Town in Pennsylvania.

What does the Transition Town designation (TT, for short) mean? In Media, it means that scores of conscientious citizens who live in and around the borough have committed themselves to trying to meet more of their needs locally so that they use fewer resources, especially oil and other carboniferous sources of energy.

"The idea is to enjoy a more vibrant, livable future by weaning ourselves from fossil fuels," Sari Steuber says.

The TT movement began four years ago in England, and there are now about 280 official initiatives around the world, about 60 in the United States. Pittsburgh recently became a Transition Town, and State College, Pa., is a serious "muller." Citizens in Coatesville, Cheltenham, and several municipalities in Bucks County are pondering TT status.

The surest path, TT disciples say, is "relocalizing" - using more locally produced goods, especially food, and creating more local jobs, health care, and commerce.

The driving cosmic worries behind the TT movement are peak oil (the era of cheap oil is over), climate change (putatively aggravated by burning fossil fuel and loading the atmosphere with carbon), and economic instability (no telling what chaos and mayhem will ensue when more and more people are vying for fewer and fewer resources).

But the movement is less about energy independence and self-sufficiency and more about resilience.

"Self-sufficient is not really the right word," Steuber says. "We don't want to insulate ourselves and put up ramparts. We will always have to rely on outside suppliers for coffee and grapefruit, but we can also get more stuff we need to survive locally."

Another distinguishing feature of the TT movement is its can-do optimism.

"It's more positive and less gloom and doom," says George Owen, 67, a retired architect and founding member of TT Media.

"It doesn't try to make people feel bad and tell them what they should and shouldn't do," Steuber elaborates. "Instead, it paints a picture of someplace wonderful to get to where people will share more, walk and bike more, help each other more, and do more enjoyable things in a more pleasant community with less pollution, more greenery, and a better quality of life."

Such a vision may seem idealistic, but TT adherents believe they have a practical, powerful tool: their focus on towns and communities. The efforts of individuals are too puny; national and international governments are too large and slow, they argue.

"What lies in the middle is community, historically the crucible of civilization, and the right scale for effective action," Owen says.

Since becoming official last summer, TT Media has grown to about 160 members and has concentrated on raising awareness through monthly events such as movies and lectures on pertinent topics.

Two working groups have been formed to study food and energy, and another may soon follow to examine ways to localize health care. In collaboration with Media's Environmental Advisory Council, Justin Wright, a Yale University senior and Westtown School graduate, is preparing an ecological footprint of the borough.

"This provides a way of keeping accounts," Wright says. "People can't manage what they can't measure." (Among his preliminary findings: The amount of bioproductive land necessary to sustain Media is about the size of Delaware County.)

TT Media's immediate goal is to develop a critical mass of community interest, what Owen calls "the great unleashing," when hundreds of residents join a dozen or so working groups and begin imagining ways to relocalize the economy and make Media more resilient and less vulnerable to future energy shocks and dislocations.

The ultimate goal of TT Media is an "energy descent action plan" that Borough Council could adopt. That could take five years, Owen estimates; translating the words into deeds, 15 to 20 more.

Media, a borough of 6,000 residents that bills itself as "Everybody's Hometown," has a head start. Though neighboring Swarthmore enjoys a progressive reputation because of a preponderance of enlightened eggheads, Media is hardly lagging.

Besides its active and influential Environmental Advisory Council, the borough recycles waste. Nine municipal buildings derive power from solar panels, and last year the town was cited by the Sustainable Development Fund for committing to buy at least 20 percent of its energy from clean and alternative sources by this year and encouraging at least 7 percent of residents to do likewise.

For more than a quarter-century, Media has been named a Tree City USA for its stewardship of its arboreal riches, and in 2006, the borough became the first U.S. town to achieve fair-trade certification by pledging to use its buying power to help farmers and workers receive a fair and stable price for their products and labor.

Media recently commissioned a transportation-options study to deal with limited parking. One recommendation: Entice more people to walk, bike, carpool, and use public transit. Happily conducive to that aim, Media is the rare suburban town in America with a trolley that originates from a major city and runs down the middle of its main street.

"It can't hurt for a vigorous group of people who are committed to progressive social change to be working in the Media area," says Borough Council President Peter Williamson, speaking of the TT initiative. "I look forward to their coming up with concrete proposals for council to consider. That will be the real test of whether they can translate all that good energy into things that can make Media even better."

Walt Cressler, chairman of Media's Environmental Advisory Council, lauds TT Media for its "grassroots energy" and having "the right attitude."

"Not everything will be solved with a technological fix and not everything will be solved by alternative energy or cutting back on use," Cressler says, "but all of those will contribute, and any one of those things may be important bridges to get us through."