Editor's Note: Big kudos to Theo Talcott for sending us this inspired account.

“I feel an intense urgency to do this work, and I hear that all over
the world” said Naresh Giagrande, one of the founders of the
Transition Town movement in the UK. Indeed, on that Nov. 24th
evening at Montpellier’s Unitarian Church, one could feel that positive,
encouraging, ready-to-go energy. It was an inspiring evening, and an
auspicious beginning for Vermont’s Transition Town movement. 

The church was packed.  Vermont’s crunchy intelligentsia turned
out in force. The energy in the room was palpable and refreshing.
Climate change can be pretty doom and gloom, and the Transition
Town movement nicely short-circuits this by shifting to a positive
vision for a low-carbon future. Citizens are encouraged to create
committees or councils that  “Start creating visions of a positive
future.”  By “unleashing the collective intelligence of humanity”,  the
climate change crisis can be addressed by “letting a thousand flowers
bloom.” On his powerpoint, Giagrande had written a T.T. slogan, 
“Action without vision is just busyness.  Vision without action is
fruitless.”       

Giagrande is currently on a worldwide speaking tour to spread the
word about this movement to create an “abundant, pleasurable,
resilient future.”  Resilient is a key word in Transition culture, meaning
the ability of a living system to withstand shocks. In this case, a
resilient, transitioned community will withstand the shocks of peak oil
with grace.  One quick way to measure the resilience of  a community is
looking at the cords of firewood and seeing if they are well-stacked,
notes Richard Heinburg, author of Peak Everything.     

Transition Town started in Totnes, England.  A group of citizens
have worked together to create an ‘energy descent plan’ that looks
forward into a desirable future.  And they are cultivating a pleasant
vision: old school, homespun, communitarian, and fun.  They are trying
to embody that Buckminster Fuller proverb, “You never change things
by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new
model that makes the old model obsolete.”          

The Transition Town has a component called The Great Re-
skilling. Giagrande said “We are probably the most useless generation
in history.  Most people can’t cook their own food, let alone grow it.” 
The Great Re-Skilling encourages people to meet their own needs
rather than employ energy intensive delegation of the task. Or to
reframe it, do it like our grandparents did before we paid Chinese
slaves to do it.  Mend soxs.  Fix that bicycle instead of throwing it away
and getting a new one.  Grow and store food.   

The Transition Town model is hugely hopeful.   There are
abundant web resources at  www.transitiontowns.org.  Vermont has it’s
own Transition website at transitionvermont.ning.com.   And also, on
Dec 6th, at Vermont Technical College, there will be a conference on
this subject, called “Community-based Approaches to Energy and
Climate Change.”    

Onward and upward, Transition Vermont!