Fwd: A transition effective, delightful, profound...

Sun Jan 18 00:20:41 PST 2009

Dear Peggy,

I have come across TT in September 2007. At that time I was involved in the formation process of the Bradford TT Initiative; there were public talks, film screenings and other events aimed at spreading the message and getting in touch with already established movements and activists in the area. Until today, Bradford is not an official initiative yet (still in the middle of 'inofficial' self-organisation and 'mulling over'). 
A friend of mine, Steve Smith, has been heavily involved in the Marsden and Slaithwaite Initiative (which has become an official one); he is an expert in community development and an OS facilitator as well. He also wrote a brilliant MA thesis on how to facilitate awareness and behaviour change in the context of climat change/peak oil.

I closely follow the TT movement out of personal interest and for my research on resilience and baehaviour change. I think this is a great project with an interesting blend of principles and methods, drawing on - among others- Permaculture, Open Space, the latest scientific research on climate change/peak oil, community development strategies, ancient knowledge, etc. There definitely seems to be an acknowledgement of the sort of skills you need for wave riding and high performance.

One of the initiators, Rob Hopkins, has written a book 'The Transition Handbook. From oil dependency to local resiliencecŽwhich I can only recommend (in October the  German translation was published; maybe it has been translated into other languages as well). I am really amazed by the rapid spread of TT Initiatives all over the world and I suspect this is very much due to self-organisation and the fact that the TT movement provides a model and some guidelines without detailing every single step for how to become a TT Initiative.

All the best, Sirin

> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: "Peggy Holman" <peggy at opencirclecompany.com>
> Gesendet: 18.01.09 02:07:47
> An: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
> Betreff: [OSLIST] Fwd: A transition effective, delightful, profound...

Has anyone been involved with the Transition Town movement? It is 
> apparently large and growing. It 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? (see Tom Atlee's article below)." 
> 
> And Open Space is a central organizing practice for them.
> 
> I'm curious whether anyone from this community has been a part of 
> this remarkable experiment.
> 
> appreciatively,
> Peggy
> 
> 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....
> 
> ______________________________
> Peggy Holman
> The Open Circle Company
> 15347 SE 49th Place
> Bellevue, WA 98006
> 425-746-6274
> www.opencirclecompany.com
> 
> For the new edition of The Change Handbook, go to: 
> www.bkconnection.com/ChangeHandbook
> 
> "An angel told me that the only way to step into the fire and not get 
> burnt, is to become 
> the fire".
>  -- Drew Dellinger
> 
> Begin forwarded message:
> 
>  *From: *Tom Atlee <cii at igc.org>
>  *Date: *January 11, 2009 2:29:02 PM PST
>  *To: *cii at igc.org (undisclosed list)
>  *Subject: * *A transition effective, delightful, profound...*
> 
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> 
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> 
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> 
>  The concept of energy descent, and of the Transition
>  approach, is a simple one: that the future with less oil
>  could be preferable to the present, but only if sufficient
>  creativity and imagination are applied early enough in
>  the design of this transition. -- Rob Hopkins
> 
> Dear friends,
> 
> I've been hearing more and more about a sustainability program called 
> Transition Towns in recent months. And it is not just me: it has gone 
> viral. It is being initiated in communities around the world at an 
> ever-accelerating rate. At the time of this writing, there are 126 
> communities who qualify as Transition Towns (see <http://transitiontown
> s.org/TransitionNetwork/TransitionCommunities>) -- despite the 
> considerable criteria involved (see <http://transitiontowns.org/
> TransitionNetwork/Criteria>). Beyond that, there are about 600 more 
> communities seriously considering it, all laid out on Google Maps <
> http://transitiontowns.org/TransitionNetwork/Mulling> to help 
> everyone find each other and start new groups...
> 
> (Note: The links above are from the excellent Transition Towns wiki, 
> which is a delightful portal through which to explore this topic.)
> 
> First worked up as a student project in the UK in 2005, Transition 
> Towns has spread around the world in 3 years, entirely from the 
> grassroots, truly viral. I feel like a late-comer. It is almost 
> embarrassing to be writing to you about it now, in 2009, but I figure 
> the world can use all the help it can get right now, and building 
> resilient communities is a "the more the merrier" kind of undertaking.
> 
> The Transition Town movement is sometimes called the Transition 
> Initiatives movement because it has come to include cities, colleges, 
> islands, and all sorts of other communities in addition to towns.
> 
> And it is no surprise why it is spreading so rapidly. Not only are 
> these folks incredibly pleasant, upbeat, and savvy about the use of 
> the internet, but the Transition Towns initiative offers a refreshingly
>  creative channel for people's growing unease about the slow-motion 
> collapse of the old structures and systems we've come to depend on. 
> It offers an inspiring, fully adaptable and evolving positive vision 
> of incremental change toward sustainability that any community can 
> realistically and pragmatically implement -- one that can be launched 
> by any group of ordinary citizens. The Transition Town (TT) approach 
> not only faces global-impact challenges squarely, but suggests that 
> we can "build ways of living that are more connected, more enriching 
> and that recognize the biological limits of our planet."
> 
>  While Peak Oil and Climate Change are understandably
>  profoundly challenging, also inherent within them is the
>  potential for an economic, cultural, and social renaissance
>  the likes of which we have never seen. We will see a
>  flourishing of local businesses, local skills and solutions,
>  and a flowering of ingenuity and creativity. It is a
>  Transition in which we will inevitably grow, and in which
>  our evolution is a precondition for progress. Emerging
>  at the other end, we will not be the same as we were:
>  we will have become more humble, more connected to
>  the natural world, fitter, leaner, more skilled, and
>  ultimately, wiser. -- Transition Towns Handbook
> 
> Perhaps most remarkable is that the Transitions Towns approach 
> engages people NOT by scaring them out of their wits or telling them 
> what to do, but by providing powerful motivations, possibilities, and 
> ways for them to explore creative local responses for and among 
> themselves. There is no blueprint. The guidance provided involves 
> tools, ways of talking and co-creating together, visons, and links to 
> other people and resources engaged in this effort. What we do with 
> all that is up to us.
> 
> Transition Town (TT) initiatives are formally about the "localization"
> of communities to prepare for disruptions arising from the twin 
> crises of
>  (a) PEAK OIL -- not running out of oil, exactly, but when the world'
> s demand for oil exceeds its ability to produce it (and the current 
> low price of of oil will not last long: see <http://my.earthlink.net/
> article/bus?guid=20090106/4962e550_3ca6_15526200901061823557235>) and
>  (b) CLIMATE CHANGE and the extreme weather and other disruptions 
> that accompany it.
> 
> However, there are other crises that effective localization and 
> community resilience programs like TT can also prepare us for, from 
> economic depression (which we're already tasting) to the disappearance 
> of government services in a flood of red ink (see <http://features.
> csmonitor.com/politics/2009/01/08/deficit-projection-stuns-congress> 
> and <http://features.csmonitor.com/politics/2009/01/07/in-red-states-
> seek-tax-hikes/>) to solar flares disrupting our power grid and 
> electronic control systems (an eventuality NASA has deemed possible 
> by 2012 <http://www.foxnews.com/story/0%2C2933%2C478024%2C00.html>). 
> We have gotten ourselves into a kind of addictive dependence on 
> globally vulnerable systems whose potential (likely? current?) 
> collapse dictates a prudent (inevitable?) turn towards relocalization 
> and resilience.
> 
> As peak oil expert Richard Heinberg points out, the sooner we start 
> learning to live without oil and the vast supply networks it feeds, 
> the easier it will be for us when the current set-up is simply no 
> longer an option.
> 
> So all this community preparation would be a great idea, regardless --
> and I'd want to spread the word for that reason alone. But when I 
> researched the TT approach, I found something even more intriguing to 
> me, personally: the Transition Towns process uses two of my favorite 
> processes -- Open Space and World Cafe. In fact, I even discovered 
> that the most visible co-founder of this movement, Rob Hopkins, wrote 
> in his Masters dissertation "Energy Descent Pathways: Evaluating 
> potential responses to Peak Oil"
> <http://totnes.transitionnetwork.org/system/files/msc-dissertation-
> publishable-copy.pdf>
> 
>  "'[F]or many commentators, the need for engagement
>  points inexorably in the direction of new fora, such as focus
>  groups, citizens juries or panels, round tables, "visioning",
>  and new consensus conferences, in which, with no technocratic
>  monopoly of information, the necessary deliberation can take
>  place'. This arises from a growing realisation that environmental
>  values are not preformed, rather that they 'emerge out of
>  debate, discussion and challenge, as [people] encounter new
>  facts, insights and judgements contributed by others'."
>  "[Tom] Atlee's concept of 'co-intelligence' offers a tool for
>  harnessing the power of communities to implement change.
>  He defines its aim as being 'to increase the capacity of a
>  society as a whole to act in a co-intelligent manner' and
>  recommends the use of a wide range of facilitation and
>  empowerment tools to enable this. 'Our goal...' he writes,
>  'can become the creation of ways in which people can
>  collaboratively arrive at solutions to their (and our) collective
>  problems'. Some of the mechanisms cited by [Gene] Rowe
>  and [Lynn J.] Frewer, most notably Open Space Technology
>  and World Café, are also advocated by Atlee, and are
>  increasingly being used around the world by groups working
>  to initiate relocalisation projects." (p. 41)
> 
> Wow. It made my day to find that my work played a role in inspiring 
> and informing this intiative that just might make a decisive 
> difference in how things turn out in our world.
> 
> But back to the Transition Towns movement. It has much to teach us. 
> Here's my take on one set of its core principles:
> 
> The key to sustainability is RESILIENCE -- resilient communities, 
> resilient people, resilient cultures, resilient systems. Resilience, 
> TT folks like to point out, means a community or system can bounce 
> back after challenges and shocks -- everything from food-supply 
> interruptions to economic downturns to energy crises. Resilience is 
> in many ways the healthy counterpoint to obsessive efficiency. 
> Resilience makes healthy systems in which life-serving productivity 
> arises from their well-being and responsiveness. Obsessive efficiency,
> in contrast, makes productive systems at the expense of well-being, 
> degrading people and trashing ecosystems to maximize production and 
> monetary profit. When productivity is defined as units produced and 
> profits made per hour, rather than as life-value added, it becomes 
> the enemy of life. The effort to create resilient Transition Towns is 
> an effort to make an evolutionary leap into a kind of economics that 
> focuses on supporting and adding value to life, not only in the 
> OUTCOMES of productive activity, but in the vitality of the activity, 
> itself.
> 
> Three requirements for resilient systems are Diversity, Modularity, 
> and Tightness of Feedbacks.
> 
> DIVERSITY is about the variety of a system's elements and parts. It 
> shows up in the idea that every vital function should be performed by 
> more than one entity (redundancy, which is essential for resilience) 
> and that if a community includes diverse people pursuing many various 
> approaches to challenges and providing different sources of resources,
> it can keep functioning even if some of its parts fail. And if one 
> approach doesn't work, there's a good chance another will. When you 
> want to nurture diversity, you help people do what they are 
> individually and collectively passionate about and good at rather 
> than formulating and managing master plans into which you engineer 
> human cogs. This kind of "follow your energy" self-organizing dynamic 
> is where the Open Space process shines.
> 
> MODULARITY means that the whole scene works largely through groups or 
> communities who are
>  (a) able to perform all the needed functions and
>  (b) networked so they can share experience and information.
> This is an alternative to having everyone dependent on centralized 
> governance and vast and vulnerable supply networks that pull everyone 
> down when they collapse. Modularity enables the system as a whole to 
> better re-organize in the event of a shock.
> 
> TIGHTNESS OF FEEDBACKS refers to how quickly and strongly one part of 
> the system can respond to changes (good or bad) in another part. This 
> factor involves good communication systems and, more importantly, 
> local-ness. The more local our interactions are, the more the results 
> of our actions are obvious to ourselves and others, and the more 
> readily consequences can inform and shape our individual and 
> collective responses through learning, answerability, corrections, 
> rewards and penalties, and all the other forms of feedback.
> 
> Rob Hopkins stresses that Transition Towns is about cutting carbon 
> and building resilience. Cutting carbon and building resilience. They 
> go hand in hand, each inadequate by itself, each helping the other, 
> each with long- and short-term implications.
> 
> There is MUCH more to the wisdom and practical know-how contained in 
> the Transition Team materials, but I'll leave it for you to discover. 
> I've included a number of further links below -- including links to 
> the basic TT primer and Rob Hopkins' extensive TRANSITION HANDBOOK -- 
> mostly sent to me by people on this list (Thank You!).
> 
> I have a feeling that in the not too distant future a majority of 
> folks reading this will be involved, one way or another, in 
> Transition Towns. The time is very very ripe.
> 
> Coheartedly,
> Tom
> 
> =======================
> 
> For a quick, clear, and compelling introduction to the Transition 
> Town movement see this great article from the Christian Science 
> Monitor*
> <http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2008/09/11/communities-
> plan-for-a-low-energy-future/>
> and this great introductory talk by TT co-founder Rob Hopkins, about 
> 6 minutes long
> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGHrWPtCvg0>
> 
> For some no-talk inspiration about community engagement for the kind 
> of world we dream of, here's a wonderful slideshow -- with great 
> music -- about the many Transition Town communities being formed in 
> New Zealand. It's about 4 minutes long:
> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APMTXrIL48A>
> 
> Here's an excellent talk by Rob Hopkins, about 18 minutes long
> <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.
> 
> Here is the Amazon Link for The Transition Handbook by Rob Hopkins:
> <http://www.amazon.com/Transition-Handbook-Dependency-Local-
> Resilience/dp/19
> 00322188/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1227893553&sr=8-1>
> 
> Rob Hopkins' blog http://transitionculture.org/ includes, among much 
> else, an engaging account of his own family's efforts to give up 
> their addiction to "the car".
> 
> Here are a recent set of videos, about ten minutes each: Rob Hopkins, 
> co-founder of the Transition Towns Movement, speaking at the Positive 
> Energy Conference in Findhorn this past Spring. They are short and 
> very enjoyable, instructive, and inspiring.
> 
> First segment
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kizxt14aPM8
> 
> Second http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbLsmR21gnk
> 
> Third http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwjGDtHGd9c
> 
> Fourth http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciZc5vv5-yY
> 
> Fifth http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0GYI5CJTkw
> 
> Sixth http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Db9KpaELhCg
> 
> -----------
> 
> * NOTE: I wanted to feature that excellent Christian Science Monitor 
> article on Transition Towns (ironically dated September 11, 2008) -- 
> in its entirety -- but the Monitor has done something with its 
> website that makes it impossible to cut and paste that article (and 
> others?), so all I can give you is the link and hope that you will 
> take the trouble to click it. I do highly recommend it.
> 
> PS: In researching this, I ran across this stunning fact: "Americans 
> drove 100 billion fewer miles in the 12 months ending in October than 
> they had the year before, a decline of about 3.4%, the Transportation 
> Department reported Friday. Miles driven fell by 9 billion miles, or 
> 3.5%, to 250 billion miles in October compared with October 2007. So 
> far in 2008, miles driven have fallen 3.5% to 2.45 trillion miles."
> <http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/markets/industries/energy/americans-
> drive--billion-fewer-miles-past-year/>. I'm boggled that people can 
> throw around numbers like billions and trillions when talking about 
> miles driven. I then stumbled on a chart showing miles driven each 
> month from 1983 to 2007
> <http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2008/05/06/nothing_but_flo.html> 
> which shows the yearly average was at 3 trillion miles per year for 
> both 2006 and 2007 and will -- thankfully, painfully, undoubtedly -- 
> be much lower for 2008. At 20 miles per gallon (about average for the 
> US), that's 150 billion gallons of gasoline burned by American 
> drivers during each recent year. If I were the earth, I'd be getting 
> hot under the collar, too... It is high time to get our act together. 
> And it adds immense poignancy to Rob Hopkins' blog entry on his own 
> efforts to give up driving
> <http://transitionculture.org/2009/01/07/five-months-and-counting-the-
> realities-of-giving-up-driving/>
> 
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> 
> Tom Atlee • The Co-Intelligence Institute • PO Box 493 • Eugene, OR 
> 97440
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