Partners in the exercise are Ashridge Business School and the Tellus Mater Foundation.

The session opened with Professor Sir Brian Hoskins of Reading University and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) bringing us up to speed on the latest science.  Quite simply the fact of global warming and the contribution of man-made carbon emissions is incontrovertible, whatever the climate change deniers try to say.

And then a very stimulating session with Simon Hughes MP (the Lib Dem spokesman on these matters), Stephen Hale (Director of the Green Alliance), and Bryony Worthington (Director of Sandbag, a campaigning organisation focused on emissions trading).

Two nuggets really hit me.

First, that “decarbonisation” of power generation not only deals with the largest single source of carbon emissions but also helps tackle emissions from domestic transport (by substituting electric cars and electric trains) and from domestic heating too – respectively the second and fourth largest sources of carbon emissions in the UK.

Second, that China is beginning to get it and if it starts to invest in green technologies and threaten to get a lead in the new industrial revolution which is needed, this should galvanise both our own government and more importantly the USA.  A “space race” in pioneering and marketing renewable technologies could be just what we need.

We are going to need to see local, bottom-up initiatives such as St Albans Transition.  And top-down legislative action.

The new Parliament to be elected this year is being described as “The Last Parliament” in terms of taking the necessary measures to tackle carbon emissions.  That is if we are to see a peak in global carbon emissions in 2020 and then a decline, the path recommended by the IPCC.  I hope I will be able to play a role in promoting the necessary measures to deliver this.

Gordon Brown did well in my estimation, at least he tried – he seems to rise to the occasion at these big international summits in marked contrast to his lumbering cackhandedness at home.

But if we cannot rely on national governments to get a grip on the issue, that tells us even more that we must not sit back and drift at a personal level.  We need to grab and reshape our own versions of the future.  Transition St Albans is one way forward.  So is signing up to the 10:10 initiative – committing to do our best to reduce our own carbon footprint by ten percent in 2010.

This latter is somewhat challenging on a personal basis.  I am already obsessed with turning off lights and appliances.  We’ve turned the thermostat down to 19 degrees in the public areas of our house and close the doors and switch off the rads in bedrooms not being used while our children are away at uni.  We don’t use a tumble dryer and have few other gadgets though our collective computing power is admittedly rather energy hungry.

My car is reasonably economical – a little diesel Peugeot 206.  When four of us drove home from Italy a couple of years ago, we only need 100 euros of fuel to complete the journey.  But getting round a constituency which stretches from the Grand Union Canal in the west to the A1(M) in the east does rack up the mileage.

As a family we have almost stopped flying.  We did nip over the Berlin to see son Edward a couple of weeks ago and that was our first flight for four years.  I felt rather guilty about it, we did the carbon offset calculation (just over half a tonne for three travellers), and chose to support the Woodland Trust and their appeal for the new Heartwood Forest at Sandridge since that seemed reasonably close to home!

We went to the farmers’ market this morning and our own allotment provides much of our vegetables throughout the year.  Every little does and will count.

On a recent Any Questions the panel were asked what was the chief moral issue of our age.  They went down the road of social justice – and certainly the lack of equality of opportunity in this country is very disturbing.  But surely the big moral issue is that we are borrowing thi planet from our children and grandchildren – do we believe we are returning it to them in as good a condition as we received it?

It is about how we can individually and in local groups make the transition from oil dependence to local resilience, very much based on personal and bottom-up initiatives.  An impressive group of people in St Albans are now leading the charge.

The film was surprisingly good – not at all preachy or dull.

I like the sense of optimism and “can do” – and a realisation that every little helps.  St Albans Transition will be looking closely at food miles in its early activities.  Allotments are a key part of the story – this fits in well with some of the ideas of active management of our green belt.  Also a nice idea of garden sharing – where people who can no longer look after their gardens allow other people without gardens to cultivate vegetables and flowers.  This seems to me an eminently achievable idea.

St Albans has a significant challenge in terms of its collective carbon footprint – a function of long commuter journeys and energy inefficient housing stock.  Again I think we have to be more flexible about conservation areas and listed buildings (I live in one), but the challenge is also on the building industry to come up with products that fit better in historic cities.  But I whole-heartedly support my friend Jack Pia’s idea of covering the Abbey roof (after all no more than a Victorian fake) with photovoltaic cells – it would send the most powerful message and generate a lot of energy too.

We also have to be more robust about cycling.  The ban on cycling through Verulamium was raised – I do think this is absurd, I hope some progress can be made on this.

Councillor Melvyn Teare spoke after the film about the City Vision project.  He has an allotment and he clearly understands the issues which is encouraging.  One message he should have received loud and clear is that the City Vision should be more about sustainability and less about department stores!

You can read more about St Albans Transition and its future events here ( http://transitionstalbans.org/ ) and I will continue to report on its progress.

PS When I was at school, Transition was the (to us) incomprehensible name of the class just above Juniors with a particularly vicious form teacher…  I prefer its new incarnation