Pioneering Welsh town begins the transition to a life without oil

As the supply of cheap fuel dwindles, rural Lampeter embarks on ‘energy descent’

There is, as the ads say, no Plan B. The age of cheap oil is drawing to a close, climate change already threatens, and politicians dither. But the people of Lampeter, a small community in the middle of rural Wales, gathered together earlier this week to mobilise for a new war effort. They decided to plan their “energy descent”.

It was in fact the biggest public meeting in Lampeter anyone could remember. West Wales has a long tradition of alternative living, but the scale of this was different. More than 450 people filed into the hall in a place where the total population is just 4,000. They had come to turn themselves into a Transition Town – one of a rapidly growing network of places that have decided not to wait for government action, but to prepare for life after oil on their own.


First, the coordinator of the Transition Town movement, Rob Hopkins, told them how urgent the crisis is. Hopkins, who helped create the earliest Transition Towns in Kinsale, Ireland, and Totnes, Cornwall, and advises the 20 or so others that have signed up, describes himself as an early topper.

He’s one of those who think that in the next five years we will have reached peak oil – the point at which half the world’s oil reserves have been used up. After that production goes into irreversible and rapid decline and our main source of energy starts running out. Since we have not so far identified another viable energy source to replace it, the only rational response, he said, is to plan our energy descent. “Life after oil will have to look very different.”

The Guardian