I first heard the term “Transition Town” spoken by peak oil activist Richard Heinberg at the end of his talk in Montpelier last April. The words “Transition Town” struck me powerfully. “Ah! The End of Cheap Oil need not mean sudden, dystopic collapse. Yes, our future lives will be local lives, and, if we embrace this change as opportunity NOW, we can transition our communities to a life that is ‘energy-lean, time-rich, less stressful, healthier and happier.’” Right here, among the hills of home.     

An appealing idea. A compelling idea. What did “Transition Towns” have to say about how to go about this?

A quick visit with Mr. Google and a conversation with my friend Carl Etnier, and a few days later I was holding Carl’s copy of The Transition Handbook, from Oil Dependency to Local Resilience, written by Rob Hopkins, founder of the Transition Towns Movement, and based on the practical experience of the communities in the UK and elsewhere embracing this approach. I was immediately struck by the titles of the three major sections: “The Head,” “The Heart,” and “The Hands.” Much has been written for the Head, some about what to do with the Hands, (usually exhorting them to beat upon the heads of unresponsive politicians). Rarely has a book urging societal change recognized and addressed the motivating power and the processes of the heart that bind understanding and action together. Engaging all three, awakening “the genius of the community” to bring a positive vision of a post-carbon future into being is what the book is all about.   

The Transition Town Movement grew out of the confluence of Rob Hopkins’ background as a Permaculture teacher and his personal awakening in 2004, to the reality of peak oil and its probable effects on our oil-dependent society. Subsequently he worked with his second year Permaculture students as they designed the first “Energy Descent Action Plan” in Kinsale, Ireland, (since adopted by the town council) and started the first “Transition Town” (Totnes, in Devon, UK) in 2005.

The Head

 This section includes an excellent summary of peak oil and climate change, and why these “twin challenges” need to be addressed together. “Climate change says we should change, whereas peak oil says we will be forced to change.” Hopkins also surveys a spectrum of “possible ways forward,” details the necessity of rebuilding resilience, not just cutting emissions, and the inevitability and the opportunities of relocalizing our lives.    

Hopkins thoroughly explores the implications of the insight that peak oil, the point at which world oil production reaches its maximum and then goes into terminal decline, is the critical point for an oil-dependent society, rather than when the oil is all gone. As Patrick Whitehead observes in his review of the book in Permaculture magazine, “If you want to know what all the fuss is about or to explain it convincingly to others without having to trawl through long books and obscure websites, look no further.” This in itself makes the book extremely valuable in this age of information overload and busy lives.   

Resiliency is the ability of a system, such as a community, to absorb shocks, such as the effects of peak oil and climate change, and continue to function. Our present condition of being dependent on long supply lines and liquid fuels may be understood as the antithesis of resiliency. Hopkins reminds us of the elements of resiliency that once gave our communities fundamental self sufficiency in the necessities of life, and points to the many new understandings, such as Permaculture, that we may employ to build a new and richer resiliency in the present. Convincing arguments are advanced that with the advent of peak oil, the debate about local versus global economic strategies is effectively over. All the lines of our present situation converge in the need to rebuild our lives and our economies in our communities and our local region.  

The Heart

This is the heart of book in both senses. I believe it is the principles and practices here that will potentiate and give staying power to Transition Town communities as awareness and understanding flower into sustained community action. Here you will find a rich and convincing exploration of the logic, the psychology and the basic common sense of the energizing power of a positive vision in driving actions. The psychology of change and the way people respond when faced with a “challenging reality” such as peak oil are also well mapped. Numerous anecdotes relate these principles to their real-world verification in the self-sustaining energy of the Transition process in communities in the UK and elsewhere.   

In one of the useful figures, this one comparing conventional environmentalism and the transition approach, one of the contrasting pairs is “fear, guilt and shock as drivers for action” and “hope, optimism and proactivity as drivers for action.”  To mobilize to bring a positive vision of the future into being, we need to be able to attach images and feelings to that vision. Hopkins contributes to this in the chapter “A Vision for 2030: Looking Back Over the Transition,” consisting of newspaper articles from various times along the future continuum. These articles also make it is clear that this is a movement with a sense of humor and a sense of fun as well as mission. Richard Heinberg is famously quoted as saying that the Transition Movement looks “more like a party than a protest march.”

The Hands   

This section explores the philosophical underpinnings of the Transition Movement and quickly moves to the nuts and bolts of how to start a Transition Initiative in your own community. Everything you need to know to get started is here, including the “7 Buts,” common beginning questions, and the Twelve Steps of Transition beginning with “forming an initiating committee” and ending with #12, writing an Energy Descent Action Plan, at which point the transition of the community truly begins. Inclusive public process such as “Open Space” is explored, as well as the fundamentals of launching “The Great Reskilling” – reviving and extending skill sets, preparing us for a more self-reliant and more hands-on world.

Transition in Vermont   

Here in Vermont, we have the core of the skills and the land base we will need to build a resilient future. People and organizations are already rallying to meet the emergency of getting themselves and their neighbors through a winter with fuel oil over $5 a gallon. We need to recognize that this is not a temporary crisis to be followed by “business as usual”; the climate crisis is manifestly here, and medium-term and long-term prices will almost inevitably reflect energy’s increasing scarcity.    

We have the opportunity to reinvent resilient, bountiful communities with less energy, or sit back and “watch the worst case scenarios unfold,” as Richard Heinberg put it during his April 2008 visit. Reinventing resilience will take more than individual actions or government actions. It will take group action at the level of neighborhoods and communities. The Transition model, now embraced by more than 80 communities worldwide, gives us the flexible road map to start our journey together. The experience of the Transition Towns so far proves that once this group spirit of “we can do this!” ignites, the initiating group is no longer pushing the effort uphill but running in the community’s wake trying to keep up with it!

As of early August there were three Transition Initiatives in the U.S., and many more in the early stages. Several Vermont communities are in the early stages, and here in Montpelier we have formed an initiating committee to take the vision of Transition Town Montpelier to the community. Local readers should look for notice of community events and gatherings as the fall and winter progresses. There will also be a Transition Handbook study group forming.    

Hopkins’ book is a brilliant, lively, engaging, and fun resource. Read it. Talk about the ideas with your neighbors, and let your own positive visions of our “energy lean, time rich” future take form.   

I like to think about Hopkins’ memory of a moment from the early days of Transition Town Totnes, at a meeting entitled “Local Money, Local Skills, Local Power”. Each person attending had been given a Totnes Pound, a local currency that was exchangeable in local stores on par with the British Pound.  At a certain point Hopkins asked everyone to wave them in the air:

“As I stood at the front of that hall, watching the room full of laughing, twinkling people, waving their Totnes Pounds, I felt very moved. There is a power here, I thought, which has remained largely untapped. Surely when we think about peak oil and climate change we should feel horrified, afraid, overwhelmed? Yet here was a room full of people who were positively elated, yet were also looking the twin challenges of peak oil and climate change square in the face.”

It is time for us to come together and awaken that power in our communities, as well.