[Scpg] Lexicon of Change: The Rise of Transition Culture By: Judith D. Schwartz | March 12, 2010 Miller-McCune Magazine

Fri Mar 12 07:19:13 PST 2010

CULTURE & SOCIETY, SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT
Lexicon of Change: The Rise of Transition Culture
A movement aimed at tackling the energy crisis with aplomb has been 
stepping on the gas since its formation..
By: Judith D. Schwartz  | March 12, 2010 | 05:00 AM (PDT)  |   No Comments
http://www.miller-mccune.com/science-environment/lexicon-of-change-the-rise-of-transition-culture-10763/

The Transition movement's ideas are creating the blueprint and even 
guiding the conversation of how communities confront the twin crises 
of peak oil and climate change. (Vasko Miokovic/istockphoto.com)

You may or may not have heard of the Transition movement 
www.transitiontowns.org/ - described by its founder, Rob Hopkins, as 
"an exercise in engaged optimism"- yet Transition's ideas are 
informing and even guiding the conversation of how communities 
confront the twin crises of peak oil and climate change.

The movement is driven by one simple idea: Rather than hand-wringing 
and lamenting dwindling energy reserves and climate change, 
Transition wants people to envision and create models for that future 
- and find much to be cheerful about.
A variety of activities take place under the Transition banner. 
Scroll around - the movement has had a strong Web presence from the 
start - and you'll find numerous farm and food events, tree-planting 
get-togethers, launching a local currency, campaigns to install Smart 
Meters (through British Gas' Green Streets Energy Challenge), and a 
program in which teenagers interview elderly people to learn about 
daily life before the era of cheap oil.

"Transition is often seen as an environmental movement, but 
ultimately it's about cultural change: enabling the shift from what's 
appropriate for the upward net energy curve to what's appropriate for 
the downward curve," says Hopkins, who had been a teacher of 
permaculture - a holistic design system rooted in ecology - the 
principles of which underlie Transition.

"[The Transition movement] has become part of the part of the 
cultural scene, especially in places like Vermont, Oregon and 
Northern California," says author and environmentalist Bill McKibben. 
"When he started this, Rob really understood that people needed to 
take their worries about the climate and do something practical."
What began five years ago as a student project on lowering energy use 
in Kinsale, Ireland, has grown to 273 "official" initiatives in 15 
countries, not to mention the thousands of "mullers" (as in thinking 
about it). The United States now has 55 active Transition 
initiatives, the latest in San Francisco.

And while many Transition groups are in predominantly liberal areas, 
others have set up in more conservative areas, such as Houston and 
Louisville in the United States, as well as in working-class areas 
like Brixton and Penwith in the United Kingdom. In Penwith, 
residents' memory of poverty and knowing that they were last on the 
supply chain made them receptive to Transition.

The movement remains low profile and unsung. One reason may be that 
it's so hard to characterize: Transition is at once local and global, 
high-tech and down-home, methodical and freewheeling. Awareness of 
the movement has also been confounded by its original designation of 
"Transition Town movement," since a Transition community might be an 
island (as in Waiheke in New Zealand), city (Los Angeles) or city 
district (London's Brixton and Belsize Park). It is now simply 
referred to as "Transition," and a Transition group is called an 
"initiative."

What follows is a lexicon of Transition terms, which will help 
explain the movement and where these ideas come from.

Transition: In Hopkins' words, "Transition" represents "the process 
of moving from a state of high fossil-fuel dependency and high 
vulnerability to a state of low fossil-fuel dependency and 
resilience." Transition "is not the goal itself - it's the journey," 
he says. Specifically, it's seeing this journey as an opportunity to 
embrace rather than a calamity to approach with dread.

"Transition" is predicated on the assumption that society cannot keep 
consuming energy and other resources at our current pace and that 
we're better off accepting this reality and choosing how to adapt 
rather than letting ourselves get backed into a crisis. The idea is 
that the adaptation process can harness creative and even joyful 
possibilities that until now have laid dormant in our towns and 
cities. As Hopkins has been known to say, "It's more like a party 
than a protest march."

Resilience: A community's ability to adapt and respond to changes, as 
well as to withstand shocks to the system, such as disruptions in 
food or energy supply chains. Resilience differs from 
"sustainability" in that the emphasis is on community survival as 
opposed to maintaining the structures and behavioral patterns that 
currently exist.
"Resilience is the new sustainability," says Michael Brownlee, a 
member of the Transition U.S. board and co-founder of Transition 
Boulder County, the first Transition Initiative in North America. 
"It's been co-opted by almost everybody. Everybody is sustainable 
these days."

Marketing aside, Hopkins says the two are intertwined: 
"Sustainability only works if it has resilience embedded in it."

Energy Descent: The directional change from being on the energy 
upslope - designing our lives according to the wide availability of 
cheap energy - to making the most with less. When an individual 
shifts to lower energy use, this is known as "powering down." Central 
to Transition is uniting a community around developing and 
implementing an "energy descent action plan," or EDAP, sometimes 
described as a 20-year "Plan B" for keeping a place functioning and 
even thriving on a low-fuel diet.
As with all Transition efforts, each EDAP - to date only been a few 
have been fully developed - reflects the circumstances and flavor of 
the community it is to serve. Hopkins notes that Transition Town 
Totnes, the South Devon market town where he lives, will shortly be 
publishing its EDAP, which he hopes will serve as a template for 
others.

Unleashing: A community breaking free from its dependence on fossil 
fuels. A "Great Unleashing," which takes place when an initiative has 
the momentum and organization to implement the EDAP, is a big "coming 
out" party that announces the group's strategy, commitment and 
enthusiasm to the broader world.
The Great Unleashing for Idaho's Transition Sandpoint Initiative in 
November 2008 drew more than 500 people to the Panida Theater for 
talks - including one by Mayor Gretchen Heller - music and dance. 
"The event is designed to be seen historically as the point at which 
the process began," says Hopkins. "It's a celebration of local 
culture. It's an event that the next generation will commemorate by 
putting up a plaque."
Reskilling: Reclaiming skills that previous generations took for 
granted but most of us have let fall by the wayside. "The Great 
Reskilling" refers to the community-wide mastering of skills that 
will facilitate the process of "powering down."
For many, this is the entry point. Someone may attend a workshop in, 
say, sock-darning (now something of a fad in the United Kingdom) or 
mushroom identification, and begin to question aspects of a 
throwaway, shrink-wrapped culture. "People have an intuitive 
understanding that we're much more vulnerable than our forebears," 
says McKibben. "Today we're so specialized, in that people tend to do 
one thing well enough to earn money and depend on the larger system 
to do the rest. People enjoy the feeling of becoming more competent 
in things."

The range of reskilling events is vast: coppice forestry, heat 
masonry, beehive building, intro to beer brewing, 16-brick rocket 
stoves, nut drinks and butters (kid approved, of course), lye 
soap-making, making cheese with raw goat's milk, essential oils for 
cleaning and healing, "pizza" (circular) weaving, using rain barrels, 
making your own wooden knitting needles - and these come solely from 
those posted for my home state of Vermont.

Will Transition culture continue its rise? Will the movement play a 
role in how people and communities greet the confluence of challenges 
looming before us?

McKibben thinks it's likely. "Many people [involved in Transition] 
are willing to become politically involved," he says. "In the 350 
event - the largest day of mass political action the world has seen - 
Transition Town people played a large role."

He notes that while Transition initiatives focus on the local - 
creating food, energy and economic resilience on a community basis - 
the connection between global and local is not lost: "No matter how 
great your organic garden is, it still has to rain sometimes."
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