Transition: An Introduction

One of the (too many) books I’ve been reading lately is The Transition Handbook by Rob Hopkins.  I read it as part of the Hyperlocavore book club, which turned out to be really fantastic.  (The chat logs from our weekly sessions are still available, although the conversations have mostly wrapped up.)  The book was a compelling read, and the fundamental concepts seem to have implanted themselves firmly in my brain.  I’ll post a full review once I finish the last several chapters.

An interesting phenomenon of the human mind is that the better we understand something, the worse we get at explaining it.  We also become less capable of understanding that others do not share our knowledge.  Lately I’ve found myself mentioning Transition Initiative concepts, only to be met by the blank stares of my family and friends.  Oops!  I guess Transition sunk in more than I realized – the Curse of Knowledge in action.  In a deliberate attempt to counteract the Curse of Knowledge, I’ve decided to do a short series of posts on the basics of the Transition Initiative, as well as some of the continuing dialogue about Transition and how it fits with other visions of a sustainable future.

What Is Transition?

The Transition Initiative is an organized response to the dual threats of climate change and peak oil.  It is important to distinguish between the two issues and their associated solutions, because many of the solutions proposed for climate change would not address the issue of peak oil, and vice versa.  Transition is designed to confront both problems simultaneously, and argues that they must be addressed in tandem if we are to move confidently into the future.

What Is Peak Oil?

By now most of us are familiar with the concept of climate change, and even the term “anthropogenic global warming,” or the understanding that human action is responsible for the changing climate.  But only occasionally do you hear mention of peak oil in discussions of climate change policy or activism.  This is a little surprising, as the two issues are fundamentally connected.

Peak oil refers to the moment when global oil production is at its maximum.  From that point forward, we will be able to extract decreasing amounts of oil at an increasing cost.  This cost can be financial, technological, or environmental.  The costs begin to climb, quickly and (theoretically) irreversibly.  Some experts believe that we have already reached peak oil, and are now accelerating on the downhill slope, slowed only by inaccurate inflation of stated oil reserves and natural short term market fluctuations.  In other words, the people with the oil know we don’t have enough, but are lying both to keep things stable and present a strong front internationally, and markets have little up and down blips while they generally trend in whatever direction they’re headed.

Why Transition?

As I mentioned, the Transition Initiative approach was created to address climate change and peak oil together.  Hopkins argues that not only does addressing the two issues separately generate ineffective solutions, but that they actually may be more compelling motivators when addressed together.  Climate change asks us to change.  Peak oil forces us to change.

A Transition Initiative is designed to address the future through a localized message of community empowerment.  The goal is for communities to work together to develop in such a way that they will be resilient to future economic contraction and/or crisis.  This resilience is created through relocalisation, reskilling, regenerative efforts and a few other “re’s,” which I’ll babble about in more depth over the next several weeks.

In the mean time, what do you think?  Should we be worried about peak oil now?  Are climate change and peak oil more effectively addressed separately or together?

More on Transition:

• The Transition Handbook by Rob Hopkins
• In Transition 1.0 (video)
• Transition Towns Wiki
• Transition United States

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