TRANSITION TOWNS-...the story so farNaresh Giangrandewww.transitiontowns.orgwww.Livingonthecusp.orgwww.transitionculture.org

The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by sceptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need people who can dream of things that never wereJohn F Kennedy Transition Oxford

A community initiative with three essential components:A Vision

Plans or Pathways that create the transition from where we are now to our Vision

A set of principles that guide and inform the pathways and plans.Transition Training 2007

Visioning our Future. What would a post carbon, energy scarce world look like?

We need to address our collective inability to vision the future we actually want.Transition Training 2007

Transition Training 2007

Transition Training 2007

Transition Training 2007Transition Training 2007

Transition Training 2007

Transition Training 2007

Transition Training 2007

Transition Training 2007

Industrial Ascent (Modernism) Energy & Resource Use Population Pollution ClimaxTechno-FantasyGreen-Tech StabilityEarth stewardshipMad MaxGreat Grand ChildrenAgriculture10.000yrs BPIndustrial RevolutionBaby BoomPre-industrial sustainable cultureHistorical TimeFuture TimeCreative Descent (Permaculture)Where are we going?

Begin with the end in mind

A positive vision creates its own call to action and self selects an initiating group

Hippy nonsense Vision cant Create the Future???

It will be a huge wrench to leave all this behind, but I have always wanted to live in the country. Our new house will be an eco-home. We are going from one extreme to another.Anna Ryder RichardsonHello! magazine 1st January 2008

TT project leaders need to develop and constantly feed an unshakable belief (founded on actual examples and by living their transition) that we can create a new environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling, and socially just world.

This is one of the keysTo creating a sustainableTransition Initiative Transition Training 2007

***Got these things in it

Mix of high tech with local traditional stuff

*If you look around our world for positive visions of sustainable future

Nareshs daughter work in film industry, asked film geek friends which films envision positive future

Are there any? Fourth star treck film- first contact, one with racu

Other than that they are mostly apocolyptic, 2 visions:

Technofantasy- endless technological solutions

Dystopic disaster scenario, mad max, post-apocolyptic vision of few straggling survivors fighting over last few drops of oil, Eco Doom

***Start treck is the growth will never end

Dilithium crystals, go into new galaxies***More recentEnvironmental cataclysm, Eco Doom

Those are the main two*Anyone read it?

Heavy going

Good clips of naimi klein in you tube

Journalist documented how capitalism works

See disasters as good opportunity

Opportunities for companies to go in and take out any local democracy or resilience which many be there

e.g. Following hurricane katrina, lost a lot of valuable property held by working class people and education

Creation of disasters cos good bus opportunity

Iraq war, many failing american businesses profit from rebuilding iraq and the war

REALLY IMPORTANT Q of when we have shocks to our system, who will beneift?

Will it be the continued expansion of the global capital system or well-prepared transition initiative to create positive new community initiatives

There will be key points of crisis, we need to be aware of these and the opportunities the present for both us and those who wish to continue with the existing system*One of the few future positive visions of what a post-transition world might look like

Most of them are in feminist science fiction

Really recommend it

Anyone know of any more?

Marge pearsey, woman on the edge of time

Ursula le guin- The Dispossessed*This is the richard heinberg idea, we are probably at peak everything in the next decade or so

We have climbed the curve, now at a climax

This is a historical moment of choice, we need to choose our future

Where are we going, what the possible futures?This slide maps out the four possible futures, taken from research and a number of different writers

Techno-fantasy- technical fix for every solution- every limit will be overcome by technology, if run out of oil use nuclear, tar sands- tremendous emotional and psychological investment in this- article in New Scientist re renewable energies, if we exploit all possible renewable energy then will be much more than ever with oil

Green tech stability- have to reduce a little but then can stabilise at high level of material affluence- green fix, use far less energy and resources- radical- not continued growth

Earth stewardship- permaculture & transition solution- say need to find way to come down it- reduce levels of consumption & energy use, different ways of organising society and our lives which are more sustainable- option is that we are not going to fall down or but to come down in sensible way

Mad max- nothing in place to help us manage the descent- banking system, grow and grow and now falling apart

Then do credibility monitor for each

Interesting to look at these scenarios as psychological positionsOne bit of psychology of change as how do we respond to having significant change being forced on us

Technofantasy is position of denial- technology as godMad max is polarity- anger or despair, doesnt matter if wiped off planet as we are violent anyway, lots of suffering involved in that, lots of denial in there too, angry and despairing position to take. E.g. in US resilience so low and disbeliefLots of people are caught between those two, only two they can seeGreen tech stability- Interesting position- changed light bulbs but now go on holiday to canaries and keep on buying bananas, bargaining, we can scrape thru without changing too much if we are very good- very attractive to businessEarth stewardship Sane acceptance, we come down off this curve and use it as an opportunity to increase quality of life and social justice

At moment of choice, need to focus our vision, make it into a turning point, The Great TurningSteven covey 7 habits of highly effective people

Principle- start with the end in mind

When you build a house you dont just turn up with a bunch of materials and some builders

You have a plan so that you know what you are going to do, so that everyone knows what they will do

Vision is central part of energy descent pathways*When put out a vision

People get called to that vision

Creates energy and motivation for people to start taking action

Leadership role of Initiating Groups- about doing things which provide people with experiences which move them through an emotional transition where they feel motivated themselves to take actionVision is so important that when Rob Hopkins wrote his Transition Handbook, he devoted a third of it to vision

From robs book where he was doing some visioning himself

Funny that some of the things he had Imagined for the future, some of those things now have already come into being

This is from his book, building firm making hemp plaster

Then when he came to plaster his kitchen he found that the product actually exists

Even same name!*Article from hello magazine about the beckhams, downsizing, trendy thing to live in smallest house and grow heirloom vegetables

TV presenter, Hello magazine*Lewes pound,

they have just launched their pound**To hold a sense of possibility of sense that we can create something else is powerful thing to do

Traditionally seen as a central part of the role of a leader, to create, and communicate an inspiring vision that will gain peoples committment

Important part of job of people leading transition

Initiating group initially hold the vision and then let it go