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Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) A majority of the content of this primer is sourced from the Transition Network and is used here in gratitude and with permission in case anyone asks.
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Transition Primer
Contents
Something remarkable is happening ... The Transition Movement How is Transition Different From Other Sustainability Groups? Why Transition? The Guiding Principles of Transition The 12 Ingredients Barriers to Transition - The 7 Buts Becoming a Transition Initiative Training For Transition About Transition US Cheerful Disclaimer! Appendix A: Community Resilience Indicators Appendix B: A Closer Look At Peak Oil Appendix C: Introduction to Exponential Growth 1 2 4 6 8 10 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28
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The Transition Movement is comprised of vibrant, grassroots community initiatives that seek to build community resilience in the face of such challenges as increasing energy costs, sever environmental degradation and economic instability. Transition Initiatives differentiate themselves from sustainability and environmental groups by seeking to mitigate these converging global crises by engaging their communities in home-grown, citizen-led education, action, and multi-stakeholder planning to increase local self reliance and resilience.
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During the process the community recognizes these two crucial points: That we used immense amounts of creativity, ingenuity and adaptability on the way up the energy upslope, and theres no reason for us not to do the same on the downslope. If we collectively plan and act early enough, we can create a way of living thats significantly more connected, more vibrant and more fulfilling than the one we find ourselves in today. Transition Initiatives make no claim to have all the answers, but by building on the wisdom of the past and unlocking the creative genius, skills and determination in our communities, the solutions can emerge.
Now is the time for us to take stock and to start re-creating our future in ways that are not based on cheap, plentiful and polluting oil but on localized food, renewable energy sources, resilient local economies and an enlivened sense of community well-being. Local Transition Initiatives provide a process for relocalizing the essential elements that a community needs to sustain itself and thrive. Hundreds of communities in the US are joining thousands around the world that are setting off on their relocalization journeys using the Transition model.
Source: www.transitionnetwork.org
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Transition initiatives share many of the same goals as other groups, and works collaboratively with a variety of organizations in their local areas. Transition differs in that it focuses specifically on preparing communities for the changes associated with unprecedented resource depletion and transitioning away from fossil-fuel dependency.
When our supermarkets have only enough food for two days time, sustainability seems to focus on the efficiency of the freezers. - Rob Hopkins, 2009 TED Talk
* Thanks to Transition Oklahoma and Transition Sebstopol for the above text.
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Traditional Environmentalism
Single issue .......................................................................... Holistic
Transition Approach
Tools: lobbying, campaigning, protesting ................ Tools: Public participation, psychology, culture Sustainable development .............................................. Resilience/relocalization Fear, guilt, and shock as motivation ........................... Hope, optimism and proactivity as motivation The man in the street is the problem ......................... The man in the street is the solution Blanket campaigning ....................................................... Targeted interventions Prescriptive - advocates answers and responses ...... Acts as a catalyst - no fixed answers Carbon foot printing ......................................................... Carbon foot printing PLUS resilience Belief that economic growth is possible ................... Designing for local economic resilience
Sustainability is inherently static. It presumes theres a point at which we can maintain ourselves and the world, and once we find the right combination of behavior and technology that allows us some measure of stability, we have to stay there. A sustainable world can avoid imminent disaster, but it will remain on the precipice until the next shock. Resilience, conversely, accepts that change is inevitable and in many cases out of our hands, focusing instead on the need to be able to withstand the unexpected. Greed, accident, or malice may have harmful results, but, barring something truly apocalyptic, a resilient system can absorb such results without its overall health being threatened.
-- Jamais Cascio
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We are living in an age of unprecedented change, with a number of crises converging. Sever weather disruptions, global economic instability, declining biodiversity, resource wars, have all stemmed from the availability of cheap, non-renewable fossil fuels. Global oil, gas and coal production is predicted to irreversibly decline in the next 10 to 20 years, and severe climate changes are already taking effect around the world. The coming shocks are likely to be catastrophic if we do not prepare.
Why Transition?
As Richard Heinberg states: Our central survival task for the decades ahead, as individuals and as a species, must be to make a transition away from the use of fossil fuels and to do this as peacefully, equitably, and intelligently as possible. The Transition movement represents one of the most promising ways of engaging people and communities to take the far-reaching actions that are required to mitigate these foreseen shocks. Furthermore, these relocalization efforts are designed to result in a life that is more fulfilling, more socially connected and more equitable than the one we have today. The Transition model is based on a loose set of real world principles and practices that have been built up over time through experimentation and observation of communities as they drive forward to reduce carbon emissions and build community resilience. Underpinning the model is a recognition of the following: The challenges of our time require urgent action Adaptation to a world with less access to cheap fossil fuels is inevitable It is better to plan and be prepared, than be taken by surprise Industrial society has lost the resilience to be able to cope with shocks to its systems We have to act together and we have to act now We must negotiate our way through these challenges using all our skill, ingenuity and intelligence Using our creativity and cooperation to unleash the collective genius within our local communities will lead to a more abundant, connected and healthier future for all. The Transition Movement believes that is up to us in our local communities to step into a leadership position on this situation. Together we can make a difference.
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Id put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we dont have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.
Thomas Edison, 1931
The danger posed by war to all of humanity - and to our planet - is at least matched by the climate crisis and global warming. I believe that the world has reached a critical stage in its efforts to exercise responsible environmental stewardship.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon
It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.
Henry Ford
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Principles matter because the people we deal with on a day to day basis can hold us accountable to them. They matter because theyre how we look at problems, devise responses and interact with people. They matter because the field that were operating in can knock us sideways, and its really useful to have something solid to grab hold of. These are the principles that Transition US aspires to as an organization, and we hope to model them in such as way that other transitioners adopt them as well.
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It makes explicit the principle that there is, in the challenge of energy descent, no room for them and us thinking. We need good listeners, gardeners, people who like to make and fix everything, good parties, discussions, energy engineers, inspiring art and music, builders, planners, project managers. Bring your passion and make that your contribution if there isnt a project working in the area you are passionate about, create one!! 4. Enable Sharing and Networking Transition Initiatives dedicate themselves to sharing their successes, failures, insights and connections at the various scales across the Transition network, so as to more widely build up a collective body of experience. 5. Build Resilience This stresses the fundamental importance of building resilience, that is, the capacity of our businesses, communities and settlements to deal as well as possible with shock. Transition initiatives commit to building resilience across a wide range of areas (food, economics, energy etc) and to setting them within an overall context of the need to do all we can to ensure general environmental resilience. Most communities in the past had a generation or two ago the basic skills needed for life such as growing and preserving food, making clothes, and building with local materials. 6. Inner and Outer Transition The challenges we face are not just caused by a mistake in our technologies but as a direct result of our world view and belief system. The impact of the information about the state of our planet can generate fear and grief which may underlie the state of denial that many people are caught in.
Psychological models can help us understand what is really happening and avoid unconscious processes sabotaging change, e.g. addictions models, models for behavioral change. This principle also honors the fact that Transition thrives because it enables and supports people to do what they are passionate about, what they feel called to do. 7. Transition makes sense - the solution is the same size as the problem Many films or books who suggest that changing light bulbs, recycling and driving smaller cars may be enough. This causes a state called Cognitive Dissonance a trance where you have been given an answer, but know that it is not going to solve the problem youve just been given. We look at the whole system not just one issue because we are facing a systems failure not a single problem failure. We work with complexity, mimicking nature in solutions based problem solving. 8. Subsidiarity: self-organization and decision making at the appropriate level This final principle enshrines the idea that the intention of the Transition model is not to centralise or control decision making, but rather to work with everyone so that it is practiced at the most appropriate, practical and empowering level, and in such a way that it models the ability of natural systems to self organise. We create ways of working that are easy to copy and spread quickly.
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These 12 Ingredients (aka Steps) have grown out of the observation of what seemed to work in the early Transition Initiatives. They dont take you from A to Z but rather from A to C, which is as far as weve got with the model today. These Steps dont necessarily follow each other logically in the order they are set out here; every Transition Initiative weaves through them differently.
The 12 Ingredients
1. Set up a steering group and design its demise from the outset. This stage puts a core team in place to drive the project forward during the initial phases. We recommend that you form your Steering Group with the aim of getting through Steps 2 5, and agree that once a minimum of 4 sub-groups (see Step 5) are formed, the Steering Group disbands and reforms with a person from each of those groups. This requires a degree of humility, but is very important to put the success of the project above the individuals involved. Ultimately your Steering Group should be made up of 1 representative from each working sub-group. 2. Raise Awareness. This stage will identify your key allies, build crucial networks and prepare the community in general for the launch of your Transition initiative. For an effective Energy Descent Action plan to evolve, its participants have to understand the potential effects of both peak oil and climate change the former demanding a drive to increase community resilience, the latter a reduction in carbon footprint. Screenings of key movies (Inconvenient Truth, End of Suburbia, Crude Awakening, Power of Community) along with panels of experts to answer questions at the end of each, are very effective. Talks by experts in their field of climate change, peak oil and community solutions can also be very inspiring. Articles in local papers, interviews on local radio, presentations to existing groups, including schools, are also part of the toolkit to get people aware of the issues, and ready to start thinking of solutions. 3. Lay the foundations. This stage is about networking with existing groups and individuals, making clear to them that the Transition Initiative is designed to incorporate their previous efforts and future inputs by looking at the future in a new way. Acknowledge and honor the work they do, and stress that they have a vital role to play. Give them a concise and accessible overview of Peak Oil, what it means, how it relates to Climate Change, how it might affect the community in question, and the key challenges it presents. Set out your thinking about how a Transition Initiative might be able to act as a catalyst for getting the community to explore solutions and to begin thinking about grassroots mitigation strategies.
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4. Organize a Great Unleashing. This stage creates a memorable milestone to mark the projects coming of age, moves it right into the community at large, builds a momentum to propel your initiative forward for the next period of its work and celebrates your communitys desire to take action. In terms of timing, we suggest this take place about 6 months to a year after your first awareness-raising event. The Official Unleashing of Transition Town Totnes was held in September 2006, preceded by about 10 months of talks, film screenings and events. Your unleashing will need to bring people up to speed on the challenges ahead but in a spirit of we can do something about this rather than a doom and gloom scenario. One item of content that weve seen work very well is a presentation on the practical and psychological barriers to personal change after all, this is all about what we do as individuals. It neednt be just talks, it could include music, food, dance - whatever you feel reflects your communitys intention to embark on this collective adventure. 5. Form working groups. Part of the process of developing an Energy Descent Action Plan is tapping into the collective genius of the community. Crucial for this is to set up a number of smaller groups to focus on specific aspects of the process. Each of these groups will develop their own ways of working and their own activities, but will all fall under the umbrella of the project as a whole. Ideally, working groups are needed for all aspects of life that your community needs to sustain itself and thrive. Examples of these are: food, waste, energy, education, youth, local economics, transport, water, local government. Each of your working groups looks at their area and tries to determine the best ways of building community resilience and reducing their carbon footprint. Their solutions will form the backbone of the Energy Descent Action Plan. 6. Use Open Space. Weve found Open Space Technology to be a highly effective approach to running meetings for Transition Initiatives. In theory it ought not to work. A large group of people comes together to explore a particular www.transitionus.org
topic or issue, with no agenda, no timetable, no obvious coordinator and no minute takers. However, by the end of each meeting, everyone has said what they needed to, extensive notes have been taken, lots of networking has had taken place, and a huge number of ideas have been identified, and visions set out. The essential reading on Open Space is Harrison Owens Open Space Technology: A Users Guide, and you will also find Peggy Holman and Tom Devanes The Change Handbook: Group Methods for Shaping the Future an invaluable reference on the wider range of such tools. 7. Develop visible practical manifestations of the project. It is essential that you avoid any sense that your project is just a talking shop where people sit around and draw up wish lists. Your project needs, from an early stage, to begin to create practical, high visibility manifestations in your community. These will significantly enhance peoples perceptions of the project and also their willingness to participate. Theres a difficult balance to achieve here during these early stages. You need to demonstrate visible progress, without embarking on projects that will ultimately have no place on the Energy Descent Action Plan. 8. Facilitate the Great Reskilling. If we are to respond to Peak Oil and Climate Change by moving to a lower energy future and relocalizing our communities, then well need many of the skills that our grandparents took for granted. One of the most useful things a Transition Initiative can do is to reverse the great deskilling of the last 40 years by offering training in a range of skills. Research among the older members of our communities is instructive after all, they lived before the throwaway society took hold and they understand what a lower energy society might look like. Some examples of courses: recycling grey water, cooking, bicycle maintenance, natural building, herbal medicines, basic home energy efficiency, practical food growing, harvesting rainwater, composting waste (the list is endless).
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If you keep your focus on the key design criteria building community resilience and reducing the carbon footprint youll watch as the collective genius of the community enables a feasible, practicable and highly inventive solution to emerge. 12. Create an Energy Descent Plan. At the moment there is only one completed Energy Descent Action Plan, the one done for Kinsale in Ireland. Although this was a student-led project, it did a very good job of producing a template that other communities could follow in designing pathways away from oil dependency. Some people find the term Energy Descent too negative, and have chosen to call their EDAP an Energy Transition Pathway, Community Resilence or Community Vision Plan. Whatever it is called, the EDAP sets out a vision of a powered-down, resilient, relocalized future, and then backcasts, in a series of practical steps, creating a map to get there from here. Every communitys EDAP will be different, both in content and style. However, they will explore a wide range of areas as well as energy: energy descent is an issue which affects every aspect of our lives.
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Creating An EDAP
Step 1. Establish a baseline. This involves collecting some basic data on the current practices of your community, whether in terms of energy consumption, food miles or amount of food consumed. You could spend years collecting this information, but you arent trying to build a detailed picture, just getting a few key indicators around how your place functions in terms of arable land, transport, health provision etc. Your working groups may have identified some of this information. Step 2: Get hold of any community strategy plans that are produced by your local government. Their plans are likely to have time scales and elements that you need to take into account, and they will also be a useful source of information and data. You will need to decide how to integrate your EDAP with their existing plans. Step 3: The overall vision. What would your community look like in 15 or 20 years if we were emitting drastically less CO2, using drastically less non-renewable energy, and it was well on the way to rebuilding resilience in all critical aspects of life? This process will use information gathered in your Open Space Days, from Transition Tales and a range of other visioning days, to create an overall sense of what the town could be like. Allow yourselves to dream. Step 4: Detailed visioning. For each of the working groups on food, health, energy etc. (although this is trickier for Heart and Soul groups for example), what would their area look like in detail within the context of the vision set out above. Step 5: Backcast in detail. The working groups then list out a timeline of the milestones, prerequisites, activities and processes that need to be in place if the vision is to be achieved. This is also the point to define the resilience indicators that will tell you if your community is moving in the right direction.
Step 6: Transition Tales. Alongside the process above, the Transition Tales group produces articles, stories, pictures and representations of the visioned community, giving a tangible sense through a variety of creative media, of what this powered down world might look like. These will be woven into the EDAP. Step 7: Pull together the backcasts into an overall plan. Next the different groups time lines are combined together to ensure their coherence. This might be done on a big wall with post-it notes to ensure that, for example, the Food Group havent planned to turn into a market garden the same car park that the Health & Medicine Group want to turn into a health center. Step 8: Create a first draft. Merge the overall plan and the Transition Tales into one cohesive whole, with each area of the plan beginning with a short summary of the state of play in 2009, followed by a year-by-year program for action as identified in the backcasting process. Once complete, pass the document out for review and consultation. Step 9: Finalize the EDAP. Integrate the feedback into the EDAP. Realistically, this document wont ever be final - it will be continually updated and augmented as conditions change and ideas emerge. Step 10: Celebrate! Always a good thing to do. The 12 Steps set out a plan of action and you may be forgiven for assuming that Step 12 is the end of the process. On the contrary, it is with the completion of Step 12 that your initiative really begins! The EDAP sets out the work you will be doing in the future and in theory once you reach that stage, your initiatives job becomes the implementation of the EDAP.
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When faced with the prospect of difficult change and challenging actions, humans often construct their own emotional and psychological barriers that stop them from taking those actions. In the Transition Movement we call these The 7 Buts. Below we give some guidance on how to tackle what weve seen to be the most typical barriers to change.
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But its too late to do anything useful It may be too late, but the likelihood is that it isnt. That means your (and others) endeavors are absolutely crucial. Dont let hopelessness sabotage your efforts - as Vandana Shiva says, the uncertainty of our times is no reason to be certain about hopelessness. But I dont have the right qualifications If you dont do it, who else will? It matters not that you dont have certain qualifications, or years of experience in gardening or planning. Whats important is that you care about where you live, that you see the need to act, and that you are open to new ways of engaging people. If there was to be a job description for someone to start this process rolling it might list the qualities of that person as being: positive, good with people, having a basic knowledge of the place and of the key people in the town. Remember that you are going to design your own demise into the process (see Step 1 below). Your role at this stage is like a gardener preparing the soil for the ensuing garden, which you may or may not be around to see.
But I dont have the energy for doing this... As the quote often ascribed to Goethe says, Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it! The experience of beginning a Transition Initiative certainly shows this to be the case. While the idea of preparing your town (or city, region, county, or state) for life beyond oil may seem staggering in its implications, something about the energy unleashed by the Transition Initiative process is unstoppable. You may feel overwhelmed by the prospect of all the work and complexity, but you will find that people will come forward to help. Many Transition Initiatives have commented on the serendipity of the process, how the right people appear at the right time. Something about seizing that boldness, about making the leap from why is no-one doing anything to lets do something that generates the energy to keep it all moving. Developing environmental initiatives can seem like pushing a broken down car up a hill - a hard and unrewarding slog. Transition is like coming down the other side the car starts moving faster than you can keep up with it, accelerating all the time. Once you give it the push from the top of the hill it will develop its own momentum. Thats not to say it isnt hard work sometimes, but it is almost always a pleasure.
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So you have learned a little (or a lot) about the challenges and opportunities of our times, and you want to start a Transition Initiative in your community. Congratulations, you are embarking on a truly critical and exciting path. Below you will learn about how simple it is to apply for your official status. Many initiatives have told us that they cherish their formal status, and are very proud of having reached that point. By registering with Transition US you are also playing a critical role in allowing us to paint an accurate picture of the movement.
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A commitment to ask for help when needed A commitment to regularly update your Transition Initiative web presence A commitment to write up something on the Transition US blog once every couple of months A commitment, once youre into the Transition, for your group to give at least two presentations to other communities (in the vicinity) that are considering embarking on this journey a sort of heres what we did or heres how it for us talk A commitment to network with other communities in Transition Minimal conflicts of interests in the core team A commitment to work with Transition US re grant applications for funding from national grant giving bodies. Your own local trusts are yours to deal with as appropriate. A commitment to strive for inclusivity across your entire initiative. A recognition that although your entire county or district may need to go through transition, the first place for you to start is in your local
community. It may be that eventually the numbers of Transitioning communities in your area warrant some central group to help provide local support, but this will emerge over time, rather than be imposed. This point is in response to the several instances of people rushing off to transition their entire county/ region rather than their local community. Finally, we recommend that at least one person on the core team should have attended a Permaculture design course. It really does seem to make a difference Once you let us know at Transition US that youre on board with these and ready to set off on your Transition journey, you open the door to all sorts of wonderful support, guidance, materials, web space, training, networking opportunities and coordinated funding initiatives.
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This two-day course is an in-depth experiential introduction to Transition for those considering bringing Transition to their community. It is recommended for local communities wishing to become an internationally-recognized Transition Initiative.
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Stelle, IL 2009
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Transition US is a nonprofit organization that provides inspiration, encouragement, support, networking, and training for Transition Initiatives across the United States. We are working in close partnership with the Transition Network, a UK based organization that supports the international Transition Movement as a whole.
About Transition US
We believe that we can make the transition to a more sustainable world. We hope that you will join us. Our vision: Our vision is that every community in the United States has engaged its collective creativity to unleash an extraordinary and historic transition to a future beyond fossil fuels; a future that is more vibrant, abundant and resilient; one that is ultimately preferable to the present. Our Mission: Transition US inspires, encourages, supports, networks and trains individuals and their communities as they consider, adopt, adapt, and implement the Transition approach to community empowerment and action. Strategic Action Goals: 1. To raise awareness of the need to work together to build resilience in the face of fossil fuel depletion, climate change and economic crises. 2. To support the emergence and growth of Transition Initiatives and leaders in all regions of the United States. 3. To support the continued development and delivery of high quality education, training and consulting in support of the advancement of the Transition Movement in the United States. 4. To mirror the diversity of the United States in Transition Initiatives by supporting Initiatives efforts to include all major cultural and demographic segments of their local communities. 5. To achieve financial sustainability for Transition US and Transition Initiatives in the United States and build capacity for TUS board and staff.
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History: The Transition Network was established in the UK in late 2006, to support the rapid international growth of the movement. In 2007, increasing high levels of interest in the States led to the launch of Transition US. We were established as a national support network, in partnership with the Transition Network so that we could take on the role of providing co-ordination, support and training to Transition Initiatives as they emerged across the States. The process of officiating Transition Initiatives in the States was also handed over to Transition US.
In December 2008, Transition US invited the UK founders of Transition Training, Naresh Giangrande and Sophy Banks, over to the United States to give a series of training courses and talks. All courses were sold out events. One of these was the inaugural 4-day Train the Trainers course, in which we selected and trained a team of 21 people who are now facilitating 2-day Training for Transition courses around the country.
To learn more about Transition US and the movement in general please visit our website. There is a wealth of resources on the topics covered in this primer and more. www.transitionus.org
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Just in case you were under the impression that Transition is a process defined by people who have all the answers, you need to be aware of a key fact. We truly dont know if this will work. Transition is a social experiment on a massive scale.
Cheerful Disclaimer!
What we are convinced of is this: If we wait for the governments, itll be too little, too late If we act as individuals, itll be too little But, if we act as communities, it might just be enough, just in time. Everything contained in this primer is the result of real work undertaken in the real world with community engagement at its heart. This document, just like the Transition model, is brought to you by people who are actively engaged in Transition in a community. People who are learning by doing - and learning all the time. People who understand that we cant sit back and wait for someone else to do the work. People like you.
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Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. Margaret Mead
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Resilience is the ability of a system or community to withstand impacts from outside. An indicator is a good way of measuring that. Conventionally, the principal way of measuring a reducing carbon footprint is CO2 emissions. However, we firmly believe that cutting carbon while failing to build resilience is an insufficient response when youre trying to address multiple shocks such as peak oil, climate change and the economic crisis together.
Appendix A:
Resilience is the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change, so as to still retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and feedbacks. - Rob Hopkins
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This article was written by YES! Magazine staff for the Fall 2010 issue, A Resilient Community. It is being republished here with permission. http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/a-resilientcommunity/how-resilient-are-you
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Peak Oil is about the end of cheap and plentiful oil. It recognizes that the ever increasing volumes of oil being pumped into our economies will peak and then inexorably decline. Its about understanding how our industrial way of life is absolutely dependent on an ever-increasing supply of cheap oil and making the adjustments that will be necessary as oil becomes ever more difficult and expensive to obtain.
Appendix B:
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A growing body of independent oil experts and oil geologists have calculated that the peak will occur between 2006 and 2012 (a few years of hindsight is required in order to confirm the peaking point). Many say that it is happening now. Technological advances in oil extraction and prospecting will have only a minor effect on depletion rates. As an example, when the US hit its oil production peak in 1972, the rate of depletion over the next decades was high, despite a significant wave of technological innovations. To understand the degree to which Peak Oil will affect the industrial world, here is the opening paragraph of an executive summary of a report prepared for the US government in 2005 by an agency of experts in risk management and oil analysis: The peaking of world oil production presents the U.S. and the world with an unprecedented risk management problem. As peaking is approached, liquid fuel prices and price volatility will increase dramatically, and, without timely mitigation, the economic, social, and political costs will be unprecedented. Viable mitigation options exist on both the supply and demand sides, but to have substantial impact, they must be initiated more than a decade in advance of peaking. Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation & Risk Management. Robert L. Hirsch, SAIC
According to Jeremy Gilbert, former Chief Petroleum Engineer at BP, in May 2007: I expect to see a peak sometime before 2015 and decline rates at 4-8% per year. The opening paragraph of the Peak Oil Report produced by Portland, Oregon (population 550,000) explains their concerns: In the past few years, powerful evidence has emerged that casts doubt on that assumption [that oil and natural gas will remain plentiful and affordable] and suggests that global production of both oil and natural gas is likely to reach its historic peak soon. This phenomenon is referred to as Peak Oil. Given both the continuous rise in global demand for these products and the fundamental role they play in all levels of social, economic and geopolitical activities, the consequences of such an event are enormous. Portland has incorporated the Oil Depletion Protocol in its targets, aiming to reduce its oil and gas consumption by 2.6% per year, reaching a 25% reduction by 2020. Apart from a few notable exceptions, national and local leaders are not stepping up to address Peak Oil problems in any meaningful way. If the political leaders arent going to fix the problem, who is? Its going to be up to us in our local communities to step up into leadership positions.
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An understanding of exponential curves.is critical to fully grasping the perdictiment we are facing. The following is exerpted from Chris Martensens Crash Course.
Appendix C:
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Transition Primer
But if you know the limits, or boundaries, of what you are measuring, then you can fix the left axis, and the turn the corner stage is absolutely real and vitally important. This is a crucial distinction, and our future depends on more of us appreciating this. For example, the total carrying capacity of the earth for humans is thought to be somewhere in this zone, give or take a few billion. Because of this, the turn the corner stage is very real, of immense importance to us, and not an artifact of graphical trickery. The critical take-away for exponential functions, the one thing I want you to recall, relates to the concept of speeding up. You can think of the key feature of exponential growth either as the AMOUNT that is added growing larger over each additional unit of time, oryou can think of it as the TIME shrinking between each additional unit of amount added. Either way, the theme is speeding up. To illustrate this using population: If we started with 1 million people and set the growth rate to a measly 1% per year, wed find that it would take 694 years before we achieved a billion people. But wed be at 2 billion people after only 100 more years, while the third billion would require just 41 more years. Then 29 years, then 22, and then finally only 18 years to add another, to bring us to 6 billion people. That is, each additional billion people took a shorter and shorter amount of time to achieve. Here we can see the theme of speeding up. This next chart is of oil consumption, perhaps the most important resource of them all, which has been growing at the much faster rate of nearly 3% per year. So we can detect the hockey-stick shape over the course of just one hundred and fifty years. And here, too, we can fix the left axis, because we know with reasonable accuracy how much oil the world can maximally produce. So, again, having turned the corner is extremely relevant and important to us. And heres the US money supply, which has been compounding at incredible rates, ranging between 5% and 18% per year. So this chart www.transitionus.org
only needs to be a few decades long to see the hockey stick effect. And heres world-wide water use, species extinction, fisheries exploited, and forest cover lost. Each one of these is a finite resource, as are many other critical resources, and quite a few are approaching their limits. And here is the world you live in. If it seems like the pace of change is speeding up, well, thats because it is. You happen to live at a time when humans will finally have to confront the fact that our exponential money system and resource use will encounter hard, physical limits. And behind all of this, driving every bit of every graph is the number of people on the surface of the planet. Taken one at a time, any one of these charts could command the full attention of every earnest person on the face of the planet, but we need to understand that they are, in fact, all related and connected. They are all compound graphs, and they are being driven by compounding forces. To try and solve one, youd need to understand how it relates to the other ones that you see, as well as others not displayed here, because they all intersect and overlap. The fact that you live here, in the presence of multiple exponential graphs relating to everything from money to population to species extinction, has powerful implications for your life and the lives of those who will follow you. It deserves your very highest attention.
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