“What would it look like if the best responses to peak oil and climate change came not from committees and Acts of Parliament, but from you and me and the people around us?”
It’s a big question, which is why it requires this relatively big book to address it, but I think you’re going to enjoy the pages ahead, and the journey they will take you on. For the first The Transition Handbook, published in 2008, this was pretty much a speculative question, but for this new book we are able to draw from what has, in effect, been a five-year worldwide experiment, an attempt to try to put the Transition idea into practice. I think it is one of the most important social experiments happening anywhere in the world at the moment. I hope that by the end of this book you will agree, that if you aren’t involved you will want to get involved, and if you are already involved, it will affirm, inspire and deepen what you are doing and give you a new way of looking at it.
I spent most of the day yesterday around St. Pauls’ Cathedral visiting the Occupy London Stock Exchange camp there. With hindsight I probably didn’t pick the best day. November 9th was also the day of the student protests and the police presence in the city was the biggest I think I have ever seen in my life. From the moment I left St. Pauls’ tube station, there were ranks of police, policevans, dogs, horses, all kinds of different police units all over the place. During the day I was often reminded of ‘Apocalypse Now’ or ‘Boyz in the Hood’, given the constant noise of helicopters overhead, which at times, even made conversation difficult.
If you’re a transitioner yourself, chances are you’re well aware of this book. You may even have a hand in it somewhere, having sent in a story, a photo or a quote. You may have read the draft chapters as they were posted on Rob’s Transition Culture blog, or suggested a title. The Transition Companion: Making your community more resilient in uncertain times is the follow-up to The Transition Handbook. Where the first book proposed a movement and speculated about how it might be created, the second reports on a dynamic and growing world of Transition. It is packed with examples, stories, experience and friendly advice, gathered together from Transition groups around the UK and as far afield as Brazil and South Africa. It is a crowd-sourced answer to the book’s central question: “What would it look like if the best responses to peak oil and climate change came not from committees and acts of parliament, but from you and me and the people around us?”
How might our response to peak oil and climate change look more like a party than a protest march? This site explores the emerging transition model in its many manifestations
Read more»
Subscribe
Keep up to date with my posts by subscribing to email updates:
