The Perfect Storm

We live in a turbulent time. Peak oil, climate change and an economic crises seem to be looming on the horizon. Some would say we already live in their shadows. Individually they are grim, together they create a “perfect storm”.

These issues continue to recur, while most of our political and economic leaders provide only lip-service for a solution. When gas was rationed in the 1970's, we emerged from it only to find ourselves facing exorbitantly high prices at the pump once again thirty years later. With a continuing recession, a growing gap between oil supply and demand, and an oil slick the size of Puerto Rico floating in the Gulf of Mexico, the urgency of such issues could hardly be more apparent.

While some work has been done and perhaps this work spared us standing in line for fuel every other day, fundamental changes in the way we live are necessary if we are to wean ourselves from an addiction to an unhealthy and unsustainable way of life. Replacing light bulbs and driving a Prius aren't enough to prevent catastrophe.

To fill this need for fundamental changes in our social structure, the budding Transition Movement has been planting seeds around the world. It is one of several grass-roots movements cropping up in response to the global situation. Within this turmoil, there is opportunity, an opportunity the Transition Movement hopes to seize, creating a better future during a turbulent time.

Transitionnetwork.org describes the Transition Movement as “a community-led response to the pressures of climate change, fossil fuel depletion and increasingly, economic contraction.” It is a social experiment rooted in self-reliance and community sustainability, and has been described as a “community resilience plan”.

A Brief History of the Transition Movement

The ideas behind the Transition Movement germinated in the minds of originator Rob Hopkins and his students at the Kinsale Further Education College in Kinsale, Ireland. After educating his students on the world's energy and environmental situation in early 2005, they soon realized not enough was being done to curb the problem, and developed “Kinsale 2010: An Energy Descent Action Plan”.

The students' action plan was soon adopted and implemented by Kinsale's City Council.“It was the first strategic community planning document of its kind,” says Transitionnetwork.org, “and went beyond the issues of energy supply, to look at across-the-board creative adaptations in the realms of food, farming, education, economy, health, and much more.”

In 2006 the movement put down roots in Hopkins' hometown of Totnes, England. Adopting, expanding and implementing the action plan, they created the world's first “Transition Town”. In addition to publishing a local food directory, a nut tree planting project and green markets, Transition Town Totnes has adopted the Totnes Pound, a local currency, as a Transition initiative. The Totnes Pound is designed to keep wealth circulating within the local economy, hedge against devaluation of the national currency and increase sustainability by encouraging local (and greener) trade.

Education is also important in Transition Town Totnes. Businesses have been receiving oil vulnerability audits, to determine at what oil price those businesses would be rendered unsustainable, clearly highlighting the need for sustainable energy in world where oil is harder and harder to come by. Educational programs for school children include “Transition Tales” – where the kids put together “news stories from the future” to get them thinking creatively about the consequences of today's choices.

The Archers, Britain's longest running radio soap, has featured the Transition Movement in several programs, contributing to the movement's viral spread.

In the past four years, Transition Town Totnes has pollinated other towns and cities throughout the world with this movement. There are currently 275 officially recognized Transition Towns in Australia, Canada, England, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Scotland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, the United States, and Wales. 22 of these Transition Towns are in the U.S.

Growing a Transition Town

So how does a city – here in Tampa Bay, for instance – blossom into a Transition Town? According to Transitionnetwork.org, growing a Transition Town requires self-organization of the community in four phases; easy to envision and understand, perhaps a little harder to carry out, but proven doable by cities around the world:

“First, the small initiating group starts a programme of awareness raising and hooking up with existing groups. They articulate the rationale for adopting/adapting a transition approach and show the creative responses that the community might embark upon.

“Second, as the group becomes larger, it self-organizes in groups in all the key areas such as food, transport, energy, housing, education, textiles etc, and creates practical projects in response to that big question (such as community supported agriculture, car clubs, local currencies, neighbourhood carbon reduction clubs, urban orchards, reskilling classes).

“Third, when the initiative is sufficiently competent with these concepts and practices, it embarks on an EDAP (Energy Descent Action Plan) process. This is a community-visioned and community-designed 15-20 year plan that creates a coordinated range of projects in all these key areas, with the aim of bringing the community to a sufficiently resilient and low CO2-emitting state.

“Fourth, they begin implementing the EDAP, sharing successes and failures with other Transition Initiatives that are traveling the same path.”

Transition Tampa Bay

Tampa Bay, an area which has been receptive to the green movement, is embarking on the first phase of becoming a Transition Town. On April 29^th, Don Hall, the founder of Transition Sarasota, spoke to a small but eager crowd in Tampa. The event was hosted by The Bridge, a group “dedicated to the advancement of individual, community and ecological well-being in Tampa”.

Hall, wearing a t-shirt prominently featuring a gas pump pointing a gun at itself, educated the group on peak oil, the Transition Movement, and the benefits of greener living. At the end of his lecture, the group did an envisioning exercise to mentally see what living in Transition Town Tampa would be like. More trees, more interaction among neighbors, more cooperation, and individual creativity were a recurring theme, as were windows that open to let the breeze through, working in gardens, and falling in love with the place where you live.

The Transition Movement is budding in Florida. Transition Movements have been initiated in Orlando and Sarasota. More information can be found at www.transitionorlando.org, Transition Orlando's Facebook Page, and transitionflorida.ning.com. The Transition Sarasota website, www.transitionsarasota.org, is still "transitioning into existance.

A wealth of information on the Transition Movement is available at www.transitionus.org, www.transitionnetwork.org, and www.transitionculture.org. A 50-page PDF of The Transition Initiatives Primer can be downloaded on www.transitionnetwork.org.

This article appears in Apr 28 – May 4, 2010.