Transition Movement on the March
Oct. 21st, 2008 01:09 pmKind of a weird day today. Got an invite from a Bay area friend asking me to join her on LinkedIn and decided to join up and check it out. Sent out a bunch of invites myself and got lots of affirmations from that process. Nice to get in touch with old friends who I don't otherwise keep up on. One of these friends invited me to join up on a couple of "transitions" web sites and I ended up doing one of them.
The transitions movement is something I've been hearing a bit about but haven't really looked into very much. My initial take on it is that it's kind of the latest back-to-the-land or sustainability movement only with the extra motivating drivers of global warming and peak oil. I'm all for it but the re-branding bit is a bit annoying. I guess if it helps people to do the right thing, what the heck.
There's even a handbook! The Transitions Handbook by Rob Hopkins - Chelsea Green
Communities Plan for a Low-Energy Future - CSMonitor.com - 11 Sep 08
"A year ago, Pat Proulx-Lough felt so overwhelmed by reports about climate change that she couldn’t even listen to the news. 'My husband was finishing a dissertation on water resources, and I became hopeless and fearful,' says Ms. Proulx-Lough, a therapist in Portland, Maine.
Fast-forward to summer ’08 and Proulx-Lough is not just hopeful, but excited about the future. What happened? She tapped into the Transition movement.
Transition Towns (or districts, or islands) designate places where local groups have organized to embrace the challenge of adapting to a low-oil economy. As the movement’s website (www.transitiontowns.org) states, it’s an experiment in grass-roots optimism: Can motivated citizens rouse their neighbors to act in the face of diminished oil resources and climate change?
'We don’t know if this will work,' says Ben Brangwyn of Totnes, England, who in 2007 helped launch the Transition Network to support Transition Towns worldwide, 'but if we leave it to the government it will be too little, too late. If we do it on a personal level, it won’t be enough. But if we do this as a community, it may be just enough, just in time.'"
The transitions movement is something I've been hearing a bit about but haven't really looked into very much. My initial take on it is that it's kind of the latest back-to-the-land or sustainability movement only with the extra motivating drivers of global warming and peak oil. I'm all for it but the re-branding bit is a bit annoying. I guess if it helps people to do the right thing, what the heck.
There's even a handbook! The Transitions Handbook by Rob Hopkins - Chelsea Green
Communities Plan for a Low-Energy Future - CSMonitor.com - 11 Sep 08
"A year ago, Pat Proulx-Lough felt so overwhelmed by reports about climate change that she couldn’t even listen to the news. 'My husband was finishing a dissertation on water resources, and I became hopeless and fearful,' says Ms. Proulx-Lough, a therapist in Portland, Maine.
Fast-forward to summer ’08 and Proulx-Lough is not just hopeful, but excited about the future. What happened? She tapped into the Transition movement.
Transition Towns (or districts, or islands) designate places where local groups have organized to embrace the challenge of adapting to a low-oil economy. As the movement’s website (www.transitiontowns.org) states, it’s an experiment in grass-roots optimism: Can motivated citizens rouse their neighbors to act in the face of diminished oil resources and climate change?
'We don’t know if this will work,' says Ben Brangwyn of Totnes, England, who in 2007 helped launch the Transition Network to support Transition Towns worldwide, 'but if we leave it to the government it will be too little, too late. If we do it on a personal level, it won’t be enough. But if we do this as a community, it may be just enough, just in time.'"