People like you who are interested in strengthening the resilience of our region

About Transition

Transition is a relatively new model people are using to proactively address the challenges of peak oil and climate change. It seeks to bring people together in their communities to create a vision of an improved quality of life that is independent of oil and does not contribute to climate change. While many of the ideas of the movement are not new, what is unique about Transition is that it unites people, working with the new understanding that social, environmental and economic issues do not exist in a vacuum; they are all interrelated and will most effectively be addressed together.

On this journey, Transition Towns adopt the following four assumptions:

That life with dramatically lower energy consumption is inevitable, and that it’s better to plan for it than to be taken by surprise.
That our settlements and communities presently lack the resilience to enable them to weather the severe energy shocks that will accompany peak oil.
That we have to act collectively, and we have to act now.
That by unleashing the collective genius of those around us to creatively and proactively design our energy descent, we can build ways of living that are more connected, more enriching and that recognise the biological limits of our planet.

A future with less oil can, if enough thinking and design is applied sufficiently in advance, be preferable to the present. There is no reason why a lower-energy, more resilient future needs to have a lower quality of life. Indeed, a future with a revitalised local economy would have many advantages, including a happier and less stressed population, an improved environment and increased stability.

We are creating history here, in communities around the globe, from New Zealand to Japan, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States, looking at the whole picture and charting a more sustainable world. We are living in a defining moment of Earth's history. The actions we take now will be multiplied exponentially. Let us make them deliberately with our health and happiness and that of future generations, and all species, in mind.

A September 2008 Christian Science Monitor article offers the best and most complete introduction to the Transition movement I have seen. No Transition website seems to offer such a vivid and concise explanation of the movement and 12-step model for overcoming dependence on oil. To avoid infringing on copyright laws by reposting here, I invite you to read their article about the history and process of Transition on the Christian Science Monitor page: http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2008/09/11/communities-pl...

The Transition United States networking page is also well worth taking a look at:
http://transitionus.ning.com

And the international peer-edited Transition wiki site:
http://transitiontowns.org/

Also interesting, and updated quite frequently, is the blog by Rob Hopkins of the England, founder of the Transition movement. http://transitionculture.org/

Of course, we must not forget to turn off our computers and work together in the "real" world.

About Transition

That life with dramatically lower energy consumption is inevitable, and that it’s better to plan for it than to be taken by surprise.

That our settlements and communities presently lack the resilience to enable them to weather the severe energy shocks that will accompany peak oil.

That we have to act collectively, and we have to act now.

That by unleashing the collective genius of those around us to creatively and proactively design our energy descent, we can build ways of living that are more connected, more enriching and that recognise the biological limits of our planet.

You need to be a member of Northern Berkshire Transition to add comments!