Possible Future: Transition Towns

Kama

I was curious if anyone on these boards is into the Transition Model put forward by Rob Hopkins
I only came across it quite recently, so apologies if I do it injustice.

Like any plan or policy, the Transition model is a bet on the future, and has certain assumptions.
If you don't share them, it more than likely will not make sense to you.

Primary assumptions for Transition Scenario are:

Increasing energy/oil price, and decreasing EROEI, aka 'Peak Oil'
Anthropogenic Global Warming due to carbon emissions.


Hopkins thinks it serendipitous, that two of the main problems facing us today help solve each other. Increased oil price from constricted availability and supply provides a welcome incentive to transition to a lower carbon footprint society.

Simply, a post oil peak civilization could be a significantly better place to live, in quality of life terms, than our current one. The arguments for decreased oil dependence-addiction aren't just ecological necessity, but an improved standard of living at a lower resource drawdown.

Lower energy use will be enforced by physics, enforced by our old friend the market; the question is the manner in which we adjust to this almost-certain future in the interim. Do we sink the remaining cheap energy into infrastructure that presumes a future supply, or one that prepares for or hedges against its absence?

Critically, rather than a descent into misery and a low standard of living, as it is usually derided, "our starting point is that it’s a tremendous opportunity rather than a crisis,” he says. “Implicit within it is the potential for the greatest social and economic renaissance we’ve ever seen.”
An energy descent plan, (such as the Kinsale Energy Descent Plan developed by Hopkins) would allow the enforced localisation to be managed in a manner which, through creative involvement and effective planning (and jumping before we were pushed) would allow a higher real standard of living.

One of the reasons Transtition Towns is such an interesting model is the broad involvement it has been characterised by. Often, green movements preach effectively to their own choir, but fail beyond this narrow group. Ecological thought is often characterised by protest and guilt-based tactics and rhetoric, and unsurprisingly gains little support. Unable to articulate a positive future while protesting the developments of others appears a static and unfertile position. In contrast, the Transition model seeks to leverage community involvement through social technologies like Open Space or Imagineering; gain positive visions of possible desired future conditions, and not retain control of the movement by environmental activists, instead engaging a broad cross-section of stake-holders.

Transition Town appears to be successfully leveraging increased perception of 'Peak Oil' to promote a basket of Green-agenda issues, such as permaculture in planning, reskilling, suburban retrofits, local currencies and short-food mile food production through an emphasis on building local economic resilience and security in the face of economic disruptions from energy shortages and monetary volatility. One successful approach was performing oil vulnerability audits on businesses, illustrating the effects of rising energy prices on the medium term performance of their company.

The quality which impressed me most was its optimism; its routine to hear people talking about crisis as opportunity, but rarer to hear any kind of reasoned or practical 'how' argument. Its also been spreading at an impressive rate and garnering significant media attention.

There's a very good hour-long interview with Hopkins here,
and a wealth of other interviews on youtube.