Everyday Changemakers: Peter Moffatt, Transition Black Isle

1000 Better Stories

Today’s Everyday Changemaker is Peter Moffatt, Transition Black Isle trustee and a man behind its website. Our Story Weaver, Kaska Hempel, caught up with him at SCCAN’s Northern Gathering in Inverness on the 16th of September.

Credits:

Interview and audio production: Kaska Hempel

Resources:

Transition Black Isle https://www.transitionblackisle.org/

Transition Network (worldwide) https://transitionnetwork.org/

Transition Together (Britain) https://transitiontogether.org.uk/ (SCCAN is part of this project/network)

Transition Black Isle Million Miles Project 2012-15 https://www.transitionblackisle.org/million-miles-project.asp

Million Miles Project in The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/sep/23/carbon-cutting-transport-scheme-helping-black-isle-go-green-scottish-highlands

21 Stories of Transition (book produced for COP21), including a story about the Million Miles Project https://transitionnetwork.org/resources/21-stories-of-transition-pdf-to-download/

Highland Good Food Partnership https://highlandgoodfood.scot/

Highland Community Waste Partnership https://www.keepscotlandbeautiful.org/highland-community-waste-partnership/

James Rebanks English Pastoral https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/03/english-pastoral-by-james-rebanks-review-how-to-look-after-the-land

Gorge Monbiot Regenesis https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/jun/05/regenesis-by-george-monbiot-review-hungry-for-real-change

Transcript

[00:00:00] Kaska Hempel: It's Kaska, your Story Weaver. What a weekend it's been. Still buzzing after our members Northern Gathering on the 16th of September. I met some amazing people on the day and workshopped all sorts of ways in which stories and storytelling can help us all think about a better future for our communities.

As always, there was simply not enough time to chat to everyone about everything. But since I already travelled all the way to the north, I also took time to visit several amazing community groups around Inverness for Everyday Changemakers interviews. And honestly, I can't wait to share those soon in the podcast as well as a wee place based audio tour I'm going to put together for you.

I road tested the tour by cycling around the project locations and I think the stories will make for a fantastic way to explore Inverness on a bike, either in person or online. But today I wanted to share my chat with Peter Moffat from Transition Black Isle, which is based on Black Isle, just north of Inverness.

As usual, you can find out more about the stories and resources behind this community group from links I popped into the show notes for you. I met Peter at the gathering itself, where he was holding an information stall for his group. And at lunchtime, we stepped outside the Merkinch Community Centre to record our conversation.

[00:01:26] Peter Moffatt: I'm Peter Moffatt. I'm one of the trustees of Transition Black Isle.

I have been since 2015. I live at the eastern end of the Black Isle, not far from Muir of Ord, two fields away from the Black Isle Dairy, which is a very, it's one of the few dairy farms in the north of Scotland. It has an enterprising young owner who runs a farm shop.

[00:01:51] Kaska Hempel: Tell me about a favourite place where you live.

[00:01:55] Peter Moffatt: There's a walk we do just round the fields from the back of the house, which goes along at one stage, an avenue of beach trees looking over the fields towards the Beauly Firth. And it's a wonderful view. And it's just walking around the fields, and it's great.

The other way we sometimes go is down over the fields to Conon Bridge, and then along the River Conon. There's a lovely old graveyard a mile or two along there, which not many people know about. But it's a wonderful place to go and think about the people who've gone before you basically, and a very pleasant, enjoyable walk.

[00:02:32] Kaska Hempel: How come you got involved in community climate action? What's been your journey?

[00:02:37] Peter Moffatt: I can't think of anything particular that sort of started me off.

I joined Transition Black Isle as a result of talking to somebody at a stall they were running at an event in Muir of Ord, which I think was something to do with a transport proposal and went on from there really. I admitted to the fact that I had worked with computers and I promptly got captured as it were because the person that currently ran the website lived in Aberdeen and wasn't very active.

So first thing I did was become responsible for editing the Transition Black Isle website, which i've been doing ever since. I'm not sure how many people actually look at it regularly, but I do try and keep it updated with information about climate change and climate activities and government policy and the council, what the council's doing.

I quite enjoy it, but I can't go on doing it forever, obviously. But there's nobody looking... To come and take over.

[00:03:31] Kaska Hempel: What about before you joined Transition? Were you interested in climate issues or environmental issues before then?

[00:03:38] Peter Moffatt: I can't remember. I've always been interested in the sort of countryside issues. My father was a farm manager, so I grew up interested in farming and used to go and work on a cousin's farm during the summer holidays when I was a student and on the farm at home as well.

So I suppose that's interest in nature and the outdoors and I've also been interested in mountaineering all my life. Where there's concern with climate change, I suppose it grew up, as it grew up generally, not very long ago. Despite the fact that people have been warning about it for the last 50 years, people only generally started to take notice relatively recently.

I remember being particularly struck by Greta Thunberg's initial school strike for climate as it was when she sat down outside the Swedish parliament. And she was on the website as soon as she did that, and I've been supporting her as strongly as I can ever since. So setting a fine example.

I don't know honestly where my personal concern with climate change as such began. Possibly as a result of joining Transition Black Isle.

[00:04:50] Kaska Hempel: When I say transition movement, what's the first thing that comes to your mind?

[00:04:55] Peter Moffatt: The idea of trying to move from the status quo business as usual consumerist society to a more sustainable way of life basically. And that was the founding idea of the transition movement. When it began in Totnes, how much transition is actually taking place. Some of the ideas that they had aren't really being applied, I don't think.

There were transition groups were supposed to have energy reduction plans which would progressively reduce the amount of energy consumed in the local area and change its nature. So it was more from renewables. That's not really happening, which is not to say that Transition Black Isle and other groups, whether they're transition groups formally or not, aren't doing a lot of good work.

They are and there's an amazing number of them, but I can't help feeling that for all the good they're doing, you know, merely scratching the surface of what actually needs to be done.

[00:05:53] Kaska Hempel: What makes you the proudest in terms of achievements? of Transition Black Isle.

[00:05:59] Peter Moffatt: Major achievement was something they called the Million Miles Project which was a project aimed at reducing car use on the Black Isle by a million miles over a period of two years I think the project ran and it was amazingly successful, a lot of support.

It actually became the number one story in a book of 20 stories published by the transition movement, I think for one of the COP climate conferences. And we were quite proud of that. Apart from that, recently we are involved as partners in two very important co operative ventures. One is the Highland Good Food Partnership, which grew out of a series of online discussions which were held about two years ago I think.

The other more recent initiative is something called the Highland Community Waste Partnership, which involves eight groups throughout the Highlands. Which is led by Keep Scotland Beautiful and is aiming to raise awareness of waste and reduce waste, particularly food waste, in local communities.

A lot of good work being done. How widely it's being recognised, I'm not sure.

I mean, if you ask your average person on the Black Isle about the Highland Community Waste Partnership, I'm not sure they'd have heard of it. But perhaps that's because we're not publicising it well enough. But there is a lot of hard work being done.

[00:07:35] Kaska Hempel: Who or what inspires you personally?

[00:07:39] Peter Moffatt: That's difficult. Greta Thunberg for one. Talking about food and farming. James Rebanks. Excellent, fascinating book. English Pastoral I think it was called.

He is trying to recognise the sort of traditional values in farming as it ought to be practiced. Involved in the landscape and the countryside, he's in the Lake District, so it's obviously a certain type of land, sheep farming, which some people would say we should do away with, but if it's there, then he seems to set a fine example of how to do it in the right sort of attitude to the land and so on.

Somebody else I would mention is George Monbiot, writer and journalist and activist. Everything he says is pretty sensible. Some people are a bit dubious about his idea that we should replace all beef and dairy farming with industrially fermented protein generated from microbes, fed on carbon dioxide and hydrogen, which apparently you can eat.

It doesn't sound, it would be very appetizing, shall we say. But the chances of doing away with the entire meat and dairy industry, which people say we need to do in order if we're going to reduce environmental damage and feed people adequately, is well, it's a big ask and, it's difficult to see how it could ever come about.

I was just reading Tim Spector saying the same thing, basically, about the need to drastically reduce the amount of land devoted to producing crops to feed cattle for beef.

And we should all be eating more plant food instead. Which is undoubtedly true and unlikely to come about, unfortunately, which is one of my reasons for not being a climate optimist.

[00:09:31] Kaska Hempel: Since we're talking about meat and not eating meat, do you have a favourite vegetarian or vegan dish?

[00:09:36] Peter Moffatt: I make something which is called by the uninviting name of Veggie Grot. Which is in fact a vegetable it's a sort of... vegetable crumble, really with a sort of cheese and breadcrumbs topping. And it contains whatever vegetables come to hand, lightly cooked in the oven. It's popular with our friends.

I take it to mountaineering club meets and they all eat it eagerly enough. I'm not completely vegetarian, i'm certainly not vegan, but the idea of a vegan cheese or vegan sausages, I find difficult to accept. I know they exist. All our sandwiches today were vegan, I'm told. But we don't eat a lot of meat.

My wife and I are largely sort of 75 percent vegetarian, I would say, at least. And I like vegetables. I grow vegetables in the garden. And it's very satisfying to eat your own produce.

[00:10:25] Kaska Hempel: Where in the world are you happiest?

[00:10:28] Peter Moffatt: Where am I happiest? In a sunlit wood, preferably with a burn flowing by, or on the top of a Scottish mountain.

[00:10:42] Kaska Hempel: Now the final question, I always ask people to imagine the place they live in, ten years from now.

Imagine that we've done everything possible to limit the impact of climate change and create a better and fairer world.

And share one memory from that future with our listeners.

[00:11:02] Peter Moffatt: Quite honestly, I think it will be very little different from what it is now. If, some of the ideas that have been proposed in the local place plan that is currently being prepared for the Black Isle and will be presented to the council at the end of this month. If some of them were to come to fruition, then the Black Isle would have a better transport system.

It would have lots of affordable housing available for local people. It would have more local food production. Better care for old people. And safer cycle routes and so on. Transition Black Isle has been working for years on an active travel route, cycle path basically, between Avoch and Munlochy, and we have been frustrated.

It's a question of getting a hold of the land, and there has been reluctance in some quarters to make land available.

[00:12:03] Kaska Hempel: And if you can share one sound or smell or taste of that future, what would it be?

[00:12:08] Peter Moffatt: I would like to think it was the sound of Curlews and we used to hear them over the fields outside the house. We were in Shetland a little while ago looking out over the pasture which should have been busy with Curlews and Lapwings and there was nothing there at all. Whether anything is likely to change to the extent that these birds become more numerous than they are at the moment, I don't know.

It's unlikely, but it would be nice. I would love to hear Lapwings calling over the fields outside our house on a regular basis.

[00:12:38] Kaska Hempel: I'm going to ask you if there's anything else that you wanted to add for our listeners.

[00:12:44] Peter Moffatt: If you're interested and concerned about climate change and so on, just think whether you could make that little bit extra effort and volunteer for organisations like Transition Black Isle. There are plenty of other organisations on the Black Isle and elsewhere. Offer to volunteer, offer to become a trustee maybe and take a bit of responsibility.

It's not very much. Put your good intentions into practice. Transition Black Isle has an online newsletter with a subscriber list of about 480 people. It has a membership of about 150. It has six trustees, needs more, and it is sometimes difficult to get people, especially young people, to volunteer to help with activities.

There's a serious lack of young people coming forward, whether it's because they think it's an old fogey's group. I don't know. But we need more involvement by people who are obviously concerned, but just need to take a step forward and put that concern into voluntary action and actually help the climate movement on its way.