Transition Towns take charge of changes ahead

Transition Town Training By Michael McGee
August 19, 2009

On August 5, 2009, I attended the first public Transition Town meeting in my hometown of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Victoria is one of a few hundred towns, villages and cities where local people are, among other things, working to lead a deliberate transition away from planet-heating fossil fuels and address the twin (economic) problem of peak oil.

An informative presenation was led by Tamara Schwartzentruber and Harald Wolf, and a memorable visualization was led by Denise Dunn. These individuals are part of a larger core organizing group that was recently established in Victoria, with more local gatherings and activities in the works for the months ahead. Whether you live in the same city as me, or some other place in the world, there is universal relevance to the issues that are central to a transition plan.

Mixing global issues with local flavours, the following editorial was written by Leslie Campbell, editor of Focus, and reposted here as a thoughtful introduction to the Transition Movement that is spreading to towns and cities in more and more countries. The editorial was originally published in Focus, Victoria's monthly magazine of people, ideas and cutlure. It is a pleasure to be able to share Leslie's editorial at the CO2Now website.

Please note, she references a feature article in the August 2009 edition of Focus: The elephant in the room by Katherine Palmer Gordon. Click here to read the article on page 28.

Embracing the transition

by Leslie Campbell
August 2009

Katherine Palmer Gordon’s feature this month [see page 28] explores the converging realities of peak oil and global warming, along with our reluctance to face facts. We mostly avoid having a conversation about that large elephant in the room—the fact that regardless of all the alternative energy sources that are being suggested, we will still likely have to adjust our lifestyles in a pretty dramatic fashion. Peak oil makes it inevitable and climate change makes it advisable—sooner, rather than later.

In trying to figure out a way to encourage dialogue, I took to the internet (now that’s one thing I’d hate to give up!) and was rewarded by discovering a whole new movement about this next, crucial step. Called the Transition Movement, it has spawned websites, books and videos. Whole towns, cities and islands—mostly but not exclusively in the UK—are embracing it. Eight hundred in total.

Things I like about it include that it’s founded on people (not power structures) developing their own vision and pathways to a zero carbon future. Transitionculture.org’s founder, Rob Hopkins, asks, “How can we design [energy] descent pathways which make people feel alive, positive and included in this process of societal transformation?”

It’s inherently, determinedly positive: after all, what is so bad about growing our food close to our homes and walking and biking a lot more? Have all our energy-sucking ways really made us happier? (Studies show this is not the case.)

The Transition Movement is practical too: figuring out the skills we will need to manage without fossil fuels, and teaching them. Transition cities are developing their own energy companies (think of the biomass plant at Dockside Green) and planting groves of nut trees to ensure a vegetable source of protein near at hand.

We mostly avoid having a conversation about that large elephant in the room—the fact that regardless of all the alternative energy sources that are being suggested, we will still likely have to adjust our lifestyles in a pretty dramatic fashion.

I also like the 20-year horizon the movement recommends: it’s not so far off that it feels like we can put off making changes starting now, yet it’s enough time that we needn’t panic. Transformation—with dedication to the task—seems doable. Transition Towns (or cities or islands) come up with a 20-year “energy descent plan” which includes the vision for 20 years hence, and a year-by-year roadmap that addresses food supply, transportation, and livelihoods, all moving towards little or no fossil fuel dependence in a way suitable to their community’s specific nature and culture. The overriding theme is building local resilience. Local strength and self-reliance.

The world’s diminishing oil supply means that globalization, once the glamourous new trend, is replaced by localization. In her feature story, Katherine mentions Jeff Rubin, former chief economist of CIBC World Banks, as someone who sees the writing on the wall: “All of a sudden, the globalizing forces of the last three decades will come to a screeching halt,” predicts Rubin, adding, that our “world is going to look more like the past than what we are accustomed to expect from the future.” In his book, Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller, Rubin argues that whereas globalization encouraged narrow specialization for the huge global marketplace, in the future economy, we will need to become generalists, refocusing on smaller local markets.

We will need to learn how to build and repair things again—with our own hands even. And grow our own food on the outskirts of all our cities.

This is not a bad fate, say Rubin and those in the Transition Movement. But it is a huge shift and we need to start talking about it now, working on making it an “elegant” rather than a chaotic, bumpy passage.

In the future, without cheap fossil fuels and cheap foreign labour, food will be a larger part of everyone’s budget, so it makes sense that the food route (through the stomach, so to speak) may well be the way to involve more people in the transition. A recent study of the Transition Movement by folks at the University of East Anglia noted that: “Food and gardening projects are far and away the most popular practical ways for Transition initiatives to start engaging people in hands-on action. Local councils could promote these activities by offering more land for allotments and community gardens, as a first step to wider community engagement in sustainable development.”

Transitionculture.org’s subtitle asks: How might our response to peak oil and climate change look more like a party than a protest march? Building local food-producing capacity seems like one way that’s already started here in Greater Victoria with our many neighbourhood markets, the Woodwynn Farm Community, and determination to save farm land from development. But we’ll need much more to achieve true food security.

Rob Hopkins suggests that we honour what the age of cheap oil has brought us and move on. “The only future it can offer us now is profoundly unmanageable and not a place we want to go. By loving, and then leaving, all that it has done for us, we are able to begin the creation of a new, more resilient, more nourishing world in which we find ourselves fitter, more skilled and more connected to each other.”

Though he doesn’t believe we should wait for government to act, he also realizes it can’t be just a project for individuals; it must involve communities figuring out what makes most sense for their particular place and people—in a joyful, creative, inclusive way.

It’s worth a try, and I sense many Victorians are ready to embrace the transition to a smaller footprint. Perhaps we can become Canada’s first city to become a “Transition City.”

Leslie Campbell is the editor of Focus. She feels rich in garlic, potatoes, peas, beans and berries this year.