Midwest Permaculture

What is the Transition Town Movement?

"Now is the time for us to take stock and start re-creating our future in ways that are not based on cheap, plentiful and polluting oil but on localized food, sustainable energy sources, resilient local economies and an enlivened sense of community well-being."                                   Rob Hopkins - Founder of Transition

 

a Special 2-day Trainings Available on How to Create Transition Town Initiatives

 

"The Transition Town movement is the most positive, the most practical, the most inclusive and the most hopeful social movement of our time. It is our path through peak oil, climate change and economic uncertainty." Michael Brownlee Founding Team Member of Transition Network USA Co-Founder of Transition Boulder

It all starts off... when a small collection of motivated individuals within a community come together with a shared concern: how can our community respond to the challenges, and opportunities, of Peak Oil and Climate Change?

They begin by forming an initiating group and then adopt the Transition Model with the intention of engaging a significant proportion of the people in their community to kick off a Transition Initiative.

A Transition Initiative is a community of people working together to look Peak Oil and Climate Change squarely in the eye and address this BIG question:

"for all those aspects of life that this community needs in order to sustain itself and thrive, how do we significantly increase resilience (to mitigate the effects of Peak Oil) and drastically reduce carbon emissions (to mitigate the effects of Climate Change)?"

 

The Guardian Article
(Short and sweet)

New York Times Article
(April 16, 2009 - It's longer, but full of details)

Orion Magazine Article
(July/August 2009 - A deeper view - one of the best we've read)

 

For greater detail about what the movement is, how it got started, where it is showing up and how to initiate a group yourself... Click Here This will download a free .PDF file (1.5MB) of the "Transition Town Initiative". This PDF is informative, free and downloads instantly. In essence, it is a condensed version of what one will find in The Transition Handbook (left).

Click Here for more details about The Transition Handbook itself.

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About Midwest Permaculture and Transition Towns

MIdwest Permaculture is not an official site of the Transition movement.
 We are simply here to assist those who are fascinated and encouraged by its possibilities.

However, we have been trained by Sophy Banks and Naresh Giangrande
of the U. K. International Transition Network along with 18 other graduates (below)
to deliver their 2-day Training for Transition (T4T) workshop.
This is a training for those interested in what is at the heart of Transition and who might be interested in starting a Transition Initiative in their own community.

Bill & Becky Wilson

The First Transition Training Group in the U.S. San Francisco, CA, December 2008

Click here for more on the 2-Day Transition Town Training

The Transition Model has been built upon the recognition
of the following:
• Climate Change and Peak Oil are real and will have a profound effect
on the way we live in the future.
• In this future, energy will become increasingly more expensive and it is better to plan for it than be taken by surprise
• Industrial society has lost the resilience to be able to cope with energy shocks
• It is to our better interests to act together and to act now
• Regarding the world economy and the consumptive patterns within it, as long as the laws of physics apply, infinite growth within a finite system
(such as planet earth) simply isn't possible.
• We demonstrated phenomenal levels of ingenuity and intelligence as we raced up the energy curve over the last 150 years, and there's no reason why we can't use those qualities, and more, as we negotiate our way down from the peak of the energy mountain
• if we plan and act early enough, and use our creativity and cooperation to unleash the genius within our local communities, then we can build a future that could be far more fulfilling and enriching, more connected and more gentle on the earth than the lifestyles we have today.

The Transition approach empowers communities to squarely face the challenges of peak oil and climate change, and to unleash the collective genius of their own people to sustain themselves and thrive, by:

• Drastically reducing carbon emissions (in response to climate change);
• Significantly rebuilding resilience (in response to peak oil);
• Strengthening local economy (in response to economic instability)

Now is the time for us to take stock and start re-creating our future in ways that are not based on cheap, plentiful and polluting oil but on localized food, sustainable energy sources, resilient local economies and an enlivened sense of community well-being.

Enjoy this 20-minute audio clip From 10/1/08 NPR Radio Interview WBEZ's 'Worldview' with Jerome McDonnell The Transition Town Movement with Bill Wilson (This is an 11MB file and may take a minute to download.) You may also Click Here for the full 40-min. interview that includes and additional 20-minutes with Rob Hopkins.

Guest - Bill Wilson