Transition Towns was initiated in the UK by Rob Hopkins, a permaculture designer, teacher and author. The aim of the project is to equip communities for the dual challenges of climate change and peak oil.
Transition Initiatives are part of a vibrant, international grassroots movement that builds community resilience while addressing this BIG question:
“For all those aspects of life that this community needs in order to sustain itself and thrive, how do we significantly increase resilience (to mitigate the effects of Peak Oil) and drastically reduce carbon emissions (to mitigate the effects of Climate Change)?”
The process for building a Transition Initiative involves:
* awareness raising around peak oil, climate change and the need to undertake a community lead process to rebuild resilience and reduce carbon
* connecting with existing groups in the community
* building bridges to local government
* connecting with other transition initiatives
* forming groups to look at all the key areas of life (food, energy, transport, health, heart & soul, economics & livelihoods, etc)
* kicking off projects aimed at building people’s understanding of resilience and carbon issues and community engagement
* eventually launching a community defined, community implemented “Energy Descent Action Plan” over a 15 to 20 year timescale
This results in a coordinated range of projects across all these areas of life that strives to rebuild the resilience we’ve lost as a result of cheap oil and reduce the community’s carbon emissions drastically.
The community also recognises two crucial points:
* that we used immense amounts of creativity, ingenuity and adaptability on the way up the energy upslope, and that there’s no reason for us not to do the same on the downslope
* if we collectively plan and act early enough there’s every likelihood that we can create a way of living that’s significantly more connected, more vibrant and more in touch with our environment than the oil-addicted treadmill that we find ourselves on today.
ROB HOPKINS
Transition Towns founder Rob Hopkins spoke at the TED Conference this year. Watch his talk here.
TRANSITION LINKS
Here’s a nice article about the movement.
Founder Rob Hopkins‘s blog site.
Transition Handbook: Free PDF download
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