Local Self Reliance, self determination, community resilience is not a new idea, so some of the criticisms being hurled seems non-productive or irrelevant. Either an activity is post petroleum relocalization or it is not – or perhaps a useful shade of transitional grey. How can it be accused of being white middle class? Co opting is always a danger, and as we GO LOCAL we will also find that corruption is just as possible in small town as it is on corporate high rises.

Speaking of co-opting, how about Republicans latest redefinition of McCarthyism? ugh?

There are several things we can do RIGHT NOW to radically cut down oil use. Eat Vegan, grow food, change lights, reduce auto use, car pool, use rapid transit. Our consumption habits can achieve some production changes.

How about these activists who eat meat, drive all over the planet and never change their lights? Right now millions of people are throwing out CFLs due to mercury scare, and re installing old bulbs.

We need a total transformation in the way energy is used produced and used in the whole world and this is needed quickly. We also need to adapt to the changes climate change will bring in a fair way.

In the UK we probably need a zero carbon energy policy.

A lot of the solutions to climate change and peak oil can only be bought about by government (a new transport infrstructure, massive investment in new energy generating technologies, stringent informcement of energy use in buildings, compulsory resinsulation of housing stock, the changes in agriculture policy to encrouage local food production).

I think that this can only be bought about by building a mass movement. There are people with theories of non-voilent change on this level, here is a link to one of the most well known http://www.aeinstein.org/ devoted to the work of Gene Sharp. They have researched and advised on non-violent struggle around the world.

We need a conversion plan for a zero carbon britain that is fair and just. I’d like to see a movement that calls for this.

The transition town movement is using community development methods to discuss, plan and hopefully inplement energy descent on local levels. Trapese, from what I remember of them, use participatory education to discuss and plan actions around anti-capitalist/anarcho/eco activist struggles.

Both use particpatory education/community development models of organising, but no one, as far as I can see is calling for a mass movement that calls for a just transition for the UK, never mind the whole world. To creat the force necersarry to bring about the changes in government policy that is needed to tackle these issues a huge force is needed. Such a movement would probably need to be democratic in its organising (and therefore probaly use sinilar techniques to the ones Trapese and Transition Towns use) and form coalitions with unions, church groups, development groups, anti-poverty campaigners, peace campaigners, residents groups, student groups etc etc. Because coalitions are the way political force is built up.

I see many initiatives in the town I live amongst lots of groups on climate change these days but no one is pulling them together to create a well thought out strategy and concerted actions.

It would have to analyse what the blocks to implimenting a just conversion plan would be and tackle them. The techniques used by trapese and transition towns could just as well be used to decide how to tackle government departments as anything else.

Open space on possible allies in a UK climate mass movement anyone? Fishbowl on strategy on tackling the Department of Transport?

The last time I saw a popular, sutained, mass movement in the UK was against the Poll Tax, yet the changes needed to tackle climate change are much bigger than that. This is the sort of movement I want to see.

Here is the problem.
When I was getting my MS in Labor Studies, one of my research profs was discussing how labor think tanks get funding for research. ” We get money from the Ford Foundation, and a few others foundations set up by DWM (dead white male) capitalists.”
“Do they control your research?” I asked.
“Oh, no” she sighed . “If they approve a research project they never interfere.”
“Approve?”
“Yeah, there’s a few topics the told us they would never fund research for”
“Such As?”
“Minimum wage issues”
There is such a thing as being too inclusive. Too non-blaming. There is such a thing as being subtly controlled. Of being co-opted. Especially in the area of funding. Does TI inclusiveness mean that they will accept any grants from any institutions with any strings attached? Is TI transparent about where its funding comes from? The people screwing up the planet right now have names and addresses. Are we welcoming them and their money into TI?

It’s this elitist approach accounts for why nobody has heard of the Trapese Colective yet TI gets on the Archers. Of course TI wont smash the State. Nobody said it would or should.

Brilliant comment. I was having a discussion with a transition group that are facing the prospect of ASDA supermarket coming into town and there’s a debate around whether the transition people ought to get involved.

I think it’s crucial that any protest has a flipside – a group working towards something that will render the offending institution redundant. If we take the local food subject to its logical conclusion, there’s no place for supermarkets with their hi-carbon, lo-resilience supply model. They’ll either transform or die.

The transformation will need to be something like this:
a) dig up the carparks
b) put the land into a community trust
c) encourage community supported growing
d) open up their retail space as an undercover market.

How likely is that? Not very, you may think. But what if the long distance food model falls apart quickly, their business model fails and the local authority compulsorily purchases the land under the “food security” measures? Some of these things could change much much faster than we can envisage…

I believe with Rob Hopkins that empowering people to make the the positive changes at a local level that will change the system. Every person who grows part of their food, and takes other positive actions to change how we collectively live, is striking a blow against the entrenched system in a powerful and new way.

Currently in the city where I live, Santa Barbara California, a group of dedicated environmentalists is fighting the bad guys to stop the use of pesticide. They are trying to change laws locally and at the State level to allow local authorities to regulate pesticide use. I intend to propose as part of a Transition Town effort that we also engage in providing people with the gardening skills and knowledge so that they have the confidence to not use pesticide. That is a simple example of “re-skilling” the population and handling them a positive solution instead of imposing laws and creating fights. If the majority of the population no longer feels that they need pesticides, the “bad guys” have lost their market and the laws don’t matter as much.

Why all this dogma and infighting? You can bet the heads of Exxon dont waste time aguing about the true nature of capitaism, they wake up early each morning, shave, put on a suit and set about screwing the planet. Whatever our response to Peak Oil and climate change, we should support eachother and learn from eachother – at the climate camp or the village hall.

(I’m bored of this debate already, Can we move on?)

“Yes there are tremendously powerful global forces at work, doing appalling things with increasing boldness, but they function as such because, in many cases, we have given them, consciously or unconsciously, the power to do so. The individuals involved in those global forces are locked into them just like everyone else and there is nothing to be gained by demonising them. There is also always the danger that by adopting demonising, depersonalising approaches means that there is a risk that we do whatever it takes to bring about the change we want, rather than modelling, through our daily lives, the kind of change we want to see”

It really hard to avoid making the piont that this statement could only come from someone with litle interaction with any real power over them. Sure i get the power over/power too duality.

Lets be clear, TT will be successful so long as it doesnt challenge the status quo in any real or meaningful way. Capitalism will absorb it, but if anyone is under the illusion that the rich and powerful elite willwake up some day and see that their power has been robbed from under there noses by a network of TT is either dillusional or dishonest or hasn’t really thought about it.

There are lot of validity in some of the rhetoric of TT, but it makes me blush when i here it supporter describe anarchists as ‘niave’.
Can anyone else the spot crossover of two of the significant misnomers of UK activism.
“That a life of ahistorical individual actions (however they might seem to be linked together)devoid of any understanding of capital, power, pedagody culture and resistance can ever take the place of though out political collectivity and action” Of course change starts with us but its a bit of an ego jump to then think that can all collectively work on transforming society, but dont mention capital-socail relationship etc. these are essentially vision as lots of Euro activist projects around place, full of good intent, full of fervour, but no recognition of the need for a clear critique of whats causing the problems, where tension lie etc. Everyone gets caught up in makin g themselves what is essentailly, a nice place to live.

If i could ever think of a good way of stopping people getting involved with the idea and practice of making meaningful radical change in society, id make sure a very non threatening, green tinge feel good, non political and overly permissive movement was at the lead making a rallying call. make poverty history was neutralised by Bono and Geldof…are we to repeat the mistake of unchallenging and resisting those at the center of empire, so long as our own project can keep running.

When the oil is running out, and say you have the land to grow food, whose gonna protect it when they come looking for it? Who really hold power? avoiding conflict( and i really hate conflict but know that it is part of the deal, just the same as having hope is part iof the deal)is like the school kid who sits in the corner afraid to contradict the teacher even though he knows teacher is wrong. The threat is enough to force us to unconsciously find dispersal activities.

Anyone who comment that there is an end to left versus right might have some validity since the collapse of actually exist socialism and the move of most former revolutionary groups across europe’s move to social democracies, however this does invalidate ideas. We either support equality and democracy and work/organise/struggle to that end, which by definition means understanding what makes up the relaionships that shape explotation and injustice and climate change etc.(here its pretty hard not to avoid the obvious role of capitalism deforming characteristic, patriarchy, nationalism etc) To be involved in transistion you need to know not just where you want to go, you need to know where you are and to that end you need history (local and global) and you need to take yourselves seriously politically (not po faced or anything but with genuine revolt for those that hold and shape power and welath for themselves) anything else is like religion, brilliant for individual comfort and useful, but ultimately a cover for respondsiblity and collectivity

A publication like this needs to be based on a much better understanding of the movement it is attempting to critique. The left has traditionally done a fantastic job of uniting its enemies and dividing its friends. I would not like to see the RRTT creating unnecessary divisions within the environmental activist movement, based on a lack of experience of the Transition Movement.