Transition Towns
Woodstock: Town prepares for peak oil
HereNB.com / Victoria Handysides / 19 January 2012
With a population of just over 5,000, the conservative Western New Brunswick town doesn't appear a likely place for an organized attempt at large-scale sustainability.
However, many in the community have shown interest in the movement and have embraced the principles behind the movement, Helmuth said. Some have retrofitted their homes with homemade solar heating systems, while others have begun to lay framework for biodiesel farming.
Since its inception, the local Transition Town network has led to a number of initiatives aimed at educating the public and turning the tide on energy use in the community. The group built a solar-powered cooker that's used at public events (like Canada Day and The Dooryard Arts Festival), compiled a local food directory and established a community garden.
Currently, the network is putting the finishing touches on an "energy analysis guidebook" that calculates all the energy usage in the community and suggests alternatives.
"As that builds within a community, you get a community that is more generally able to sustain itself," Helmuth said.
Cornwall: Keeping green ideas on the front burner
Cornwall Standard-Freeholder / Erika Glasberg / 15 January 2012
Transition Cornwall+ is planning an a busy year with their wide array of events available for those who want to be green. Transition Cornwall+ is a local group created to build resilience and sustainability within the Cornwall area and to prepare for environmental challenges such as global warming and climate change.
Shuswap: Trying to beat the oil addiction
Salmon Arm Observer / Martha Wickett / 04 January 2011
Her children. They’re the reason Karen Andreassen became involved in the Transition Town movement.
As the world faces diminishing oil reserves, an unstable climate and unpredictable food production, the Transition movement is a worldwide network of communities working to move away from dependency on oil and create a more sustainable future.
“I used to worry that my kids were going to come along one day and say, ‘Why didn’t you do anything? You knew about this, why didn’t you do anything?” Andreassen explains. “Now I’m doing something – small, but I think a lot of people doing small things can make a difference.”
Andreassen has been involved in similar ‘relocalization’ initiatives since 2006 and Shuswap in Transition since 2009. “Our belief is that there could be a rough road ahead and as a community, that’s the only way it’s going to work, for people to work together.”
Video: In Transition 2.0 - Official Trailer
In Transition 2.0 is an inspirational immersion in the Transition movement, gathering stories from around the world of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. You'll hear about communities printing their own money, growing food everywhere, localising their economies and setting up community power stations. It's an idea that has gone viral, a social experiment that is about responding to uncertain times with solutions and optimism. In a world that is awash with gloom, here is a story of hope, ingenuity and the power of growing salads in unexpected places.
Soul in the Soil
University of Vermont / Lee Ann Cox / 07 December 2011
As Americans find themselves facing another economic crisis, as well as climate and energy issues, they have begun to reexamine, Brown says, what constitutes the good life, whether we’ve gone too far toward self-indulgence, whether kids know how to do anything except buy stuff. In this she sees a fourth wave of back-to-the-land thinking, though she finds with community-supported farms and local cheesemakers next to bread bakers that there is less of a go-it-alone approach than there once was. Everyone doesn’t have to make their own yogurt to be part of the movement.
She is amused at changing styles: “For an observer of an older generation,” Brown writes in the book, “nothing is more startling than to overhear bandana- and earring-clad young people in the local co-op swapping recipes – not for tofu and vegetarian chili anymore but for pork belly and organ meats from heritage-breed pigs and cattle.”
For those deeply worried about the end of oil, as Paul Roberts puts it, the end of food and the end of easily replaced socks, transition towns, Brown says, are springing up from Britain to Bennington with the idea of a “great reskilling.” While you can still power up the Web, you can even find a darning group.
A Conversation With Rob Hopkins, Transition Movement Founder
The Atlantic / Nicholas Jackson / 03 December 2011
What new idea or innovation is having the most significant impact on the sustainability world?
Resilience. This refers to the ability of an individual, a community, or a whole nation to withstand shock from the outside. The former manager of Crystal Palace Football Club, Iain Dowie, once referred to it as "bouncebackability." Sustainability tends to assume that we can aim for -- and attain -- a way of doing things that the planet can support, and that can continue indefinitely. As the world's economic situation worsens, and the whole concept of economic growth appears increasingly untenable, and our nearing the peak in world oil production begins to impact our economies, it is clear that, in the pursuit of just-in-time business models, we have created an economy which has little resilience. Resilience is a word which, when we started using it in relation to Transition five years ago, no-one was really using. Now it is everywhere. It adds a new dimension to sustainability, arguing that we need to also be preparing for shocks, but that if we can get that right, making our communities more resilient could be the thing that leads to their economic revival.
Video: Transition Cornwall+ presentation to Council
John Towndrow of Transition Cornwall + made a presentation to council about the work his group has been doing and requested that they be given more access to city staff so that they could work together with Cornwall.
