Transition towns anticipating larger changes ahead

When a couple expects their first baby, preparations might include decorating a nursery, shifting financial priorities and juggling work schedules to accommodate their new roles. In other words, they transition. When that child grows toward adulthood, she transitions to the next phase of her life like learning to drive a car and balance a checking account. Both situations can be initially stressful, scary and uncomfortable. But can’t they also be exhilarating, and inspire hope for a better future? This kind of optimism is being shared by proponents involved in what is called the Transition Movement. Also referred to as Transition Towns, the Transition Network or Initiative, it involves preparing communities for two possibilities: climate change and peak oil. Advocates search for how local economies can prosper without endangering the earth and in an era when oil is expensive (at best) or unavailable (at worst). They want communities—neighborhood by neighborhood—to plan how residents will acquire food, work, travel, and maintain a healthy economy without oil. With preparation, they say life can be rich and fulfilling rather than bleak and depressed. Without it, life as we know it could come to an end. “Not to sound overly pessimistic, but we are talking about the potential collapse of civilization if this period we find ourselves in is not managed properly,” says Juliet Sinisterra, an architect, services director of Community-Minded Enterprises, and an organizer in Spokane’s Transition effort. The Transition Movement is a global network of individuals with common concerns and goals, but each Transition Town is organized at neighborhood levels. The movement began in 2005 in Kinsale, Ireland, and today 193 communities are designated Transition Towns. Sandpoint, Idaho, was the 31st, and the second in the U.S., behind Boulder County, Colo. There are now three Transition Towns in Washington state: the Bellingham/Whatcom County area, northeast Seattle and Whidbey Island. Spokane organizers are currently laying groundwork to add the Lilac City to the list. Sinisterra and artist Gabriel Brown were trained by two of the UK-based Transition Town founders last year, and have held two meetings to help establish a core group of leaders. “Many communities start with much less being done regarding building community resiliency and sustainability at the local level,” Sinisterra says. “Spokane is blessed to have so many individuals and organizations already working toward transition, without being labeled part of Transition Spokane.” A key goal of Transition is to impact decisions made by local governments, and Sinisterra says that’s starting to happen, thanks to Susanne Croft, the city’s former sustainability coordinator, and the city’s Sustainability Task Force. For the movement to grow, more citizens need to voice their concerns—and visions—for the future. “From my perspective, building awareness in neighborhoods, at school meetings and in churches is the next step,” Sinisterra said. To understand the Transition Movement, one must understand peak oil. Crude oil, or petroleum, is the unprocessed oil extracted from the upper layers of the earth’s crust. Oil has been used as an energy source for centuries, but the internal combustible engine helped explode its use last century. Because there’s a fixed amount of crude oil, it’s not a renewable resource. “From the start of the 1900s, plentiful oil allowed a coal-based industrialised society to massively accelerate its ‘development,’” the Transition Initiative says in its primer. “And each year, society increased its complexity, its mechanisation, its globalised connectedness and its energy consumption levels.” Today, our agricultural, transportation and industrial systems depend on relatively cheap and highly available oil. Peak oil is the point when the maximum rate of oil extraction is reached. After that, production falls into terminal decline and becomes a seller’s market. The price increases—perhaps alarmingly fast—if demand doesn’t change. Marion King Hubbert, a geoscientist for Shell Research Lab, introduced us to peak oil in 1956. His bell-curve model predicted U.S. oil production would peak between 1965 and 1970, which it did, leading to the energy crisis of the late 1970s. America’s answer? Import more. Worldwide, according to the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas, the peak of oil discovery was passed in the 1960s, and the world started using more oil than was found in new fields by 1981. “The gap between discovery and production has widened since,” the association says. “Many countries, including some important producers, have already passed their peak, suggesting that the world peak of production is now imminent.” Optimistic estimates predict oil will peak in about 90 years. Sinisterra says the aim of Transition Towns is to empower communities with information. “The hope is that most will want to discuss, mobilize and plan for building resiliency with their neighbors,” she says. This resiliency can include growing food locally should international food supplies be reduced, repairing a leaky roof should home-improvement stores cancel shipments, and depending on neighbors in ways that haven’t been necessary for decades. Those areas are already turning into action in Sandpoint. Members of that Transition Initiative worked with city officials to turn about 3/4 of an acre in an unused portion of a city park into a community garden. This summer, residents rented plots and grew food there. During the Festival of Sandpoint, initiative volunteers manned trashcans and helped separate garbage into plastics, aluminum and organic waste. The organic waste went to a local farm for composting. The group also is working with Sandpoint’s mayor, Avista, and others in an energy audit of Sandpoint and neighboring towns. Richard Kuhnel, a Sandpoint’s Transition organizer, says 50 to 100 people are actively working on the initiative and at least 400 have attended events. Kuhnel, a Web programmer and eco-social designer, said that while the thought of motivating the masses to shift lifestyles toward greener and less oil-dependent ways might seem daunting, he embraces the movement’s positive outlook and talks about overhearing conversations about change in town. “If I can envision and work toward something that’s wonderful and beautiful and brings us together and brings forward our creativity … why not do that?” he says. Part of the initiative involves honoring a community’s elders and learning how they lived in less wasteful times. After all, we’ve lived with our current high levels of consumption for only about the last 70 years. “Our consumption of food, larger homes, more cars, more stuff, has expanded exponentially,” she says. “Transition recognizes that for most of history humans have lived with much less.” Kuhnel is adamant that Transition is not about bringing back the past. “We can apply a lot from the past … and combine it with the best of the future and make something completely new,” he says. “We are in a situation that if we don’t change our cultural story, we’re going to have major difficulties ahead.” The Transition Movement acknowledges the innovation and advancements that humans have created over the last century, but asks us to put ingenuity on a new course: finding solutions for future challenges. There are trade-offs, Sinisterra says. “With less complexity comes greater community and support systems, but these often breed jingoistic attitudes and a potential loss of independence,” she says. “Transition encourages folks to be informed, understand these dichotomies and make hard decisions.” Those decisions will be tough—if not impossible—for some to accept. For many, the wakeup call won’t come until gas prices skyrocket. “Many will dismiss it outright, while others might be angry at being kept in the dark for so long,” Sinisterra says. “Others might become depressed, and others might be eternally optimistic in the role that technology might play. There is a whole psychological adjustment that needs to happen once people realize that the lifestyle that they thought was guaranteed is simply not.” The best course of action, according to the Transition Movement, is to plan and stay positive. “The positive vision keeps people moving forward, makes creative thinking possible,” Sinisterra says. “Fear is immobilizing, without the potential for hope and innovation.”