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Page added on July 11, 2011
The Transition Movement – Preparing for a World After Peak Oil
How will the world function if fossil fuels become scarcer and their consumption becomes increasingly regulated to fight climate change? How will people live with less oil? What will communities be like?
The advocates of a social movement called Transition think the world is now entering just such an environment of oil-scarcity. Transition organizers think the time is ripe to create new systems to make communities more locally self-sufficient and less dependent on long-range transportation, a globalized economy, non-renewable energy, and industries that damage the environment.
According to Transition Network, a support body for the movement based in Totnes, Dover, UK, the number of official Transition Initiatives worldwide has grown during about the past five years to 374 as of this writing (mid-2011). Most initiatives are operating in Europe (particularly the UK), North America, and Australia. (Photo: Local foods, Transition Town High Wycombe. Credit: VidyaRangayyan)
Local transition groups take on a range of activities, from simple projects such as workshops teaching people to grow their own food or arranging clothing swaps, to more complex undertakings, such as developing a local currency or devising a long-term community transition plan called an Energy Descent Action Plan, a road-map toward local energy independence (see Totnes’ example here).
The concepts of peak oil, climate change, and permaculture are critical to an understanding of the deeper motivations of the Transition Movement. Widespread concerns about climate change have been discussed extensively in the public forum (for an overview of public attitudes, see our story “Does the Public Really Believe Humans Are Causing Climate Change?” However, peak oil and permaculture are less well understood, so let me explain those ideas.
Peak Oil: Are We on the Downward Slope?
Peak oil refers to the point of maximum worldwide extraction of petroleum, which would be followed by an environment of increasing scarcity and cost. Some researchers think the world has already reached that point, some think it will come in the near future, and some critics say it will take a long time or might never come at all. (Photo: Offshore oil platform. Credit: “Mike” Michael L. Baird)
Many observers think peak oil could result in large-scale economic disruption. Dire predictions abound. While admittedly speculative, the 2010 “United States Joint Forces Command Joint Operating Environment” (JOE) report warns in its section on peak oil that
A severe energy crunch is inevitable without a massive expansion of production and refining capacity. While it is difficult to predict precisely what economic, political, and strategic effects such a shortfall might produce, it surely would reduce the prospects for growth in both the developing and developed worlds. Such an economic slowdown would exacerbate other unresolved tensions, push fragile and failing states further down the path toward collapse, and perhaps have serious economic impact on both China and India. At best, it would lead to periods of harsh economic adjustment.
For an entertaining and accessible explanation of peak oil, integrated with a frightening overview of economics, see Chris Martenson’s “Crash Course.”
The Transition movement asks, What does peak oil mean for people’s lifestyles and local communities? What changes does it require, and what can individuals and communities do now to prepare for and cope with a world of declining oil?
In an interview with Global Public Media in 2007 (audio interview here), Andrew McNamara, then newly-appointed Minister for Sustainability, Climate Change, and Innovation in Queensland, Australia, gave his thinking about the appropriate response to oil depletion, sounding very much like a Transition advocate:
There’s no question whatsoever that community-driven local solutions will be essential. That’s where government will certainly have a role to play in assisting and encouraging local networks, who can assist with local supplies of food and fuel and water and jobs and the things we need from shops. It was one of my contentions in the first speech I made on this issue in February of 2005… that we will see a relocalization of the way in which we live that will remind us of not last century, but the one before that. And that’s not a bad thing. Undoubtedly one of the cheaper responses that will be very effective is promoting local consumption, local production, local distribution.
In a 2008 video, Rob Hopkins, co-founder of the Transition Network and Transition Town Totnes, says peak oil makes populations very vulnerable. As an example, during a 2000 lorry-drivers’ strike in the UK, he says, “we were about two days away from a food crisis in this country. It became clear that we’ve dismantled a lot of the resilience that has underpinned our food system up until now and replaced it with very fragile and long supply chains.”
Transition helps to restore that resilience, Hopkins asserts:
Resilience is an idea which emerges from the study of ecology, which is that a system, whether it be an ecosystem, a community or a town, when it experiences a shock from the outside, it doesn’t just fall to pieces. It has built into it the ability to adapt and change to its new circumstances.
Hopkins describes a Transition initiative as “a process which acts as a catalyst within a community to get people to explore themselves, [to respond] to peak oil and climate change,” helping community members “develop a really attractive, enticing vision of how the town could be beyond its current dependence on oil and fossil fuels.”
Permaculture: Designing Sustainable Human Habitats
Permaculture is a methodology for designing sustainable human habitats, modeling them after natural ecosystems. The permaculture model emphasizes a move away from industrial agriculture toward a small-scale, diversified, and localized system of food production. In “The Essence of Permaculture,” David Holmgren, one of the originators of the concept, defines permaculture as
Consciously designed landscapes which mimic the patterns and relationships found in nature, while yielding an abundance of food, fibre and energy for provision of local needs. People, their buildings and the ways in which they organize themselves are central to permaculture. Thus the permaculture vision of permanent or sustainable agriculture has evolved to one of permanent or sustainable culture.
(Photo: Permaculture project, Occidental Arts and Ecology Center. Credit: planet a.)
More precisely, though, Holmgren sees permaculture as “the use of systems thinking and design principles that provide the organizing framework” to implement that vision, so that
… permaculture is not the landscape, or even the skills of organic gardening, sustainable farming, energy efficient building or eco-village development as such, but it can be used to design, establish, manage, and improve these and all other efforts made by individuals, households, and communities towards a sustainable future.
The Transition movement grew in part from Rob Hopkins’ permaculture teaching activities. On his Transition Culture blog, Hopkins writes that a key tool for success in Transition is “the ability to embed good design thinking” in the effort. He believes that “permaculture design offers the clearest and most practical tool for doing so.” Thus permaculture design should underpin the thinking and planning behind a Transition project and any hands-on activities. He cautions that
Although many people associate permaculture design purely with local food initiatives, it ought to be seen as central to the larger process of strategic thinking which the initiative is building up to.
Hopkins likens permaculture to a glue, “a ‘design glue’ if you like, which is used to stick together all the elements that will make up a truly sustainable and resilient culture.” He continues,
If you think of the ingredients that such a culture will depend on, such as local food production, energy generation, skillful management of water, meaningful employment as well as many other elements, what permaculture brings is the ability to assemble those things in the most skillful and beneficial way possible. It has also been described by someone else far more succinct than me as “the art of maximizing beneficial relationships.”
Hopkins thinks that “having at least one person in a Transition group who is steeped in permaculture can make a huge difference to the group… Make sure that some members of your core group have done a Permaculture Design course, and try, where possible, to weave permaculture training and principles through the work of your Transition group.”
Transition Town Totnes, started in 2005, is one of the oldest and most developed Transition efforts. The organization supports nine groups organized along such themes as Building and Housing, Business and Livelihoods, Energy, Food, and Transport. Nearly 40 projects are underway in Totnes, many focused on food, housing, and energy. As an example, one project aims to make Totnes the “Nut Tree Capital of Britain,” says Hopkins in the video mentioned previously. A project group is “planting nut trees within the urban fabric of the town, both as an awareness-raising issue and as a food security project.”
4 Comments on "The Transition Movement – Preparing for a World After Peak Oil"
tahoevalleylines on Mon, 11th Jul 2011 6:50 pm
Resource endowment in North America is sufficient -at this late time- to enable transition through the Oil Interregnum to sustainable agriculture and a comfortable if marginal standard of living. This state of being: “state of opportunity” might be better phrasing, because it is a narrow window!
People of the younger generation are still not being prepared in sufficient numbers to make changes on the scale needed. Permaculture is still marginal, and remains far short of potential until neighborhood associations and municipal zoning bureaus are stripped of power over people’s rights to have kitchen gardens on their residential environs. Kitchen gardens saved the lives of 100’s of thousands of Russians and Chinese during disastrous “Collectivization” of farms… Any person or group denying right to grow your own fruit & vegetables on property you own or rent is simply ignorant. Did I mention chickens for eggs & manure & bug control?
As a Union Of States faced with impending motor fuel emergency, it is extremely important to revisit the comprehensive railway network which essentially laid the groundwork for our oil-based rubber tire economy. The US Freeway (National Interstate Defense Highways) system was enabled by the existing network of rail mains and branch lines in place as the freeways were under construction.
Cheap oil meant massive construction of new roads and cars and trucks; good night to 1000’s of branch line railways and local connection to the national rail matrix. With destruction of America’s local branch rail lines, and more than half of the rail mains, so did the USA become a borrowing not a lending nation. Greater and greater annual percentage of imported oil, you see…
Individuals and neighborhood groups and local associations, Chambers of Commerce, service groups and Unions are all inherently capable of researching legacy rail footprint in their respective locale. “Official Guide” of US railways circa 1950 or prior will give info on the rail links nearby. A more concise source: US Rail Map Atlas Volumes” from a British firm- spv.co.uk are available and useful as reference for local organizations desiring to scope their parallel bar therapy history.
Each of America’s 3000 County Planning Bureaus should have accurate information at hand on their railway corridor past & present. Jitneys and off-grid options and home gardens and self-defense are futile in a North American free-for all without railways”Guarantor of Societal & Commercial COHESION. The Constitution called for “Post Roads” in Article one Section 8… To follow up, an Act of Congress July 10, 1838 declared “All Railroads” to be designated “Post Roads”.
For over 100 years, the US Army/Guard Railroad Operating Battalions based materiel & manpower mobility (Quartermaster Corps) on railway. The military moniker for railway is “Second Dimension Surface Transport Logistics Platform”. Take a look at costs of resupply in Afghanistan without railway option!
Two railway scopings in print are helpful to understand nomenclature and methodology, for students and interested Post Carbon citizens: The 1991 Wibur Smith Associates Nevada County Railroad rebuild is excellent look at a branch line project. For a regional scoping of a new main line (TranSierra) including existing line enhancement, see the 1995 (unabridged) I80/US50 Reno-Tahoe Rail Corridor Study. Original 1995 edition shows better look at the 50 Corridor rail potential. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency may have copy of the first edition if CalTrans stonewalls on making the first edition available.
This is not about High Speed Rail, except in high traffic corridor. This is not about “Light Rail”, unless we build as an Interurban Electric transport element capable of hauling passenger & freight, as seen with the Pacific Electric of Southern California or the Chicacago Aurora & Elgin around Chicago. Perform research with due diligence, so you will be the calm one in the room when Federal Executive Emergency Orders for (1)Motor fuel rationing and, (2) Call-up of Gold/Silver coins & bullion (to maintain oil import costs).
Keep ‘Em Rolling
sunweb on Mon, 11th Jul 2011 8:23 pm
I never see population addressed by transition posts. Growing food by any method without addressing population will only result in same old, same old without fossil fuels.
WE ARE HERE
If we don’t blow ourselves off the face of the earth in the struggle for diminishing scarce resources, humanity will survive. We are a powerfully resourceful and inventive animal. However, if we don’t address the issues below then in the long run it will be same old, same old. We will repeat what all animals do and what is particular to us humans.
As an expression of life, as a representative animal and as ourselves, we are exactly how we would end up. We are not dysfunctional, as some would have it. We did not take a wrong turn in the past, ten thousand years ago at the agricultural revolution. We are not a cancer on the earth and we are not disconnected from our environment.
There are several natural factors that have aimed us at this particular moment in human history, where population pushes against resource availability, where as a social animal we stand against each other, where we are immersed in an environment of our own creative making and where our brilliance threatens us.
We are exactly where we have to be. It is the nature of the beast. Every life form, amoeba, oak tree, aphid, mouse, will make as many of their kind as the resources in the environment permit. And they will use those resources until they are no more and they either die out or relocate to more resources.
We are no different. We have population density because we can. Unlimited growth is written into the code of life. In the universe’s ironic wisdom, not only are we driven by this code, but also it feels good. And, oh my, we know it feels good. So we mate and we do what we can to be able to mate.
And as any lifeform will do, we will use all the resources available to us both for propagation and for enduring in the present. Here enters the second prong of overshoot – population pressure. We are devouring our environment as fast as we find ways to use it.
As David Price states in his great essay that all should read:
“All species expand as much as resources allow and predators, parasites, and physical conditions permit. When a species is introduced into a new habitat with abundant resources that accumulated before its arrival, the population expands rapidly until all the resources are used up.”1
Price is defining the process of overshoot, the convergence of the dual population issues of density and pressure. (See also Catton, William. 1980. Overshoot. University of Illinois Press. Chicago).
There is more of this essay at http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2011/05/we-are-here.html
AND
from – Superman Plays With Kryptonite Dice – http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2010/05/superman-plays-with-kryptonite-dice.html
Population, fueled by agriculture, rose in an upward moving curve. In a repeating ecological pattern, our growing numbers exhausted the land, strained and polluted the water, depleted the forests, and crowded people into unhealthy conditions. Under these pressures, some people relocated using their feet, the wheel and domesticated energy in the form of animals. Or they died of starvation or pestilence or killed each other off.
One of the early Church Fathers, Tertullian (c. A.D. 160 – 240), commented on the effects of human enterprise on the earth: “Farms have replaced wastelands, cultivated land has subdued the forests, cattle have put to flight the wild beast, barren lands have become fertile, rocks have become soil, swamps have been drained, and the number of cities exceeds the number of poor huts found in former times . . . Everywhere there are people, communities – everywhere there is human life!” To such a point that “the world is full. The elements scarcely suffice us. Our needs press . . . Pestilence, famine, wars, [earthquakes] are intended, indeed, as remedies, as prunings, against the growth of the human race.” (Gies, Frances and Gies, Joseph. 1994. Cathederal, Forge, and Waterwheel. Harper Collins. N.Y. p. 6.)
Makati1 on Tue, 12th Jul 2011 3:51 am
So…from the comments above…regarding food vs population. Technically, there is enough land and water to feed 10 billion people, but not on meats and other waste of resources. Americans eat twice what is necessary for a healthy life. It will mean that most go back to growing their own food as in the early 20th century. And the world economy gets dumped regarding food.
Kenz300 on Tue, 12th Jul 2011 3:35 pm
Limited resources of food, water, oil and jobs will begin to take its toll on the world population. Adding a billion people to the world population every 12 years is not sustainable. Will countries resort to wars to supply the needed resources for their people? The unrest in North Africa is just the start.