Transition movement sees opportunity to plan for change

Monday, August 30, 2010
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GORDON DANIELS
Lundy Bancroft, of Transition Northampton, says the group will hold an event this fall at which people interested in the Transition Initiative will meet and break into smaller groups to discuss concrete plans for dealing with issues such as local food supply. He is shown here on fields the group has advocated be preserved as farmland.

Climate change. Dwindling oil supplies. A precarious economy. Disruptions to the national food supply.

The future, some believe, is likely to throw a large wrench into life as we know it. The assumptions that we make – that there will be food at the grocery store, gas at the filling station, a regular job to go to on Monday morning – may be tested in a way that’s hard to imagine. And there could be considerable hardship if we don’t put those assumptions aside and begin planning for change.

“There are so many things to consider,” Barbara Friend says of life with energy shortages. The prospects can sound grim. How would human waste be handled if electricity shortages shut down a community’s wastewater treatment plant, for instance? How could people without heat be helped? What might happen to medical care in a low-energy future?

But Friend, of Northampton, says she doesn’t see these preparations as steeling for a barren future, but rather as a way people can develop closer links to one another. “I think it can be a joyful experience,” she says.

Friend is member of Transition Northampton, part of a growing movement that might best be described as a community-driven model aimed at making communities more self-sufficient, with localized food sources and economies.

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