What
is a Transition Town
–
adapted from http://transitiontowns.org/TransitionNetwork/TransitionInitiative
Here's
how it all appears to be evolving...
It all starts off when a small collection of motivated
individuals within a community come together with
a shared concern: how can our community respond
to the challenges, and opportunities, of Peak Oil
and Climate Change?
They
begin by forming an initiating group and then adopt
the Transition Model (explained here in the Transition
Primer, which you can download) with the intention
of engaging a significant proportion of the people
in their community to kick off a Transition Initiative.
A
Transition Initiative is a community working together
to look Peak Oil and Climate Change squarely in the
eye and address 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)?"
After
going through a comprehensive and creative process
of:
- 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.
If
you want to find out more, check out the other menu
items on the left hand site of the page.
Cheerful
disclaimer!
Just
in case you were under the impression that Transition
is a process defined by people who have all the answers,
you need to be aware of a key fact.
We truly don't know if this will work. Transition
is a social experiment on a massive scale.
What
we are convinced of is this:
-
if we wait for the governments, it'll be too little,
too late
-
if we act as individuals, it'll be too little
-
but if we act as communities, it might just be enough,
just in time.
Everything
that you read on this site is the result of real work
undertaken in the real world with community engagement
at its heart. There's not an ivory tower in sight,
no professors in musty oak-panelled studies churning
out erudite papers, no slavish adherence to a model
carved in stone.
This
site, just like the transition model, is brought to
you by people who are actively engaged in transition
in a community. People who are learning by doing -
and learning all the time. People who understand that
we can't sit back and wait for someone else to do
the work. People like you, perhaps...
Final point
Just
to weave the climate change and peak oil situations
together...
-
Climate change makes this carbon reduction transition
essential
-
Peak oil makes it inevitable
-
Transition initiatives make it feasible, viable
and attractive (as far we can tell so far...)
If
you are interested in joining our initiating group
in Epsom please email us at info@transitionepsom.org.uk
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