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A friend just emailed information about transition towns to us. I think it’s a really exciting concept. Here is some of that email…

Here are some excerpts from http://www.transitiontowns.org/:

What is a Transition Town (or village / city / forest / island)?

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 embark upon] a process of:

* awareness raising around Peak Oil, Climate Change and the need to undertake a community-led process to rebuild resilience and reduce carbon emissions
* connecting with existing groups in the community
* building bridges to local government
* connecting with other transition initiatives
* forming groups to look at all the key areas of life (food, energy, transport, health, heart & soul, economics & livelihoods, etc.)
* kicking off projects aimed at building people’s understanding of resilience and carbon issues and community engagement
* eventually launching a community-defined, community-implemented “Energy Descent Action Plan” over a 15- to 20-year timescale

… The community also recognises two crucial points:

* that we used immense amounts of creativity, ingenuity and adaptability on the way up the energy upslope, and that there’s no reason for us not to do the same on the downslope

* if we collectively plan and act early enough there’s every likelihood that we can create a way of living that’s significantly more connected, more vibrant and more in touch with our environment than the oil-addicted treadmill that we find ourselves on today….

The Transition Town movement started in the UK, and it has spread there very quickly.

Now it’s reaching out to other parts of the world, including the US.

Here’s a wonderful slideshow — with great music –

about the many Transition-Town communities in New Zealand. It’s about 4 minutes long:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APMTXrIL48A

Here’s an excellent talk by Rob Hopkins, one of the founders of the Transition Town movement:

http://www.ifg.org/programs/Energy/triple_crisis_av/panel5/3rob-v.htm

Here’s a PDF file about the Transition Network (14 pages), “Who We Are and What We Do”:

http://www.transitionnetwork.org/Strategy/TransitionNetwork-WhoWeAreWhatWeDo.pdf

And here’s a PDF file (51 pages) of the Transition Initiatives Primer:

http://transitionnetwork.org/Primer/TransitionInitiativesPrimer.pdf

These PDFs contain information and guidelines that show a lot of wisdom about the psychology of an enterprise like this, and about connecting and partnering with different segments of the community, including local governments.

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