Transition Issues

What are Transition Initiatives?

Rapidly spreading around the world, the Transition movement seeks to inspire, catalyse and support community responses to Peak Oil and climate change. It is positive and solutions-focused, and is developing a diversity of tools for building resilience and happiness around the world. From awareness-raising and local food groups, to creating local currencies and developing 'Plan Bs' for their communities, Transition movements seek to embrace the end of the Oil Age as being a tremendous opportunity for a profound rethink of much that we have come to take for granted.^[1]

There are now hundreds of Transition communities in the UK and beyond.

The big issues in brief

Most of us are aware that the future is looking increasingly precarious. Here's a brief look at some of the bigger challenges:

• We are reaching the beginning of the end of cheap oil.
  Our present way of life is built upon the cheap and abundant supply of oil, for food, transport, clothes, everything. But global production has been flat for the last three years, and some senior oil company executives are admitting they can't increase supply. With global demand rising, supplies are peaking. This means oil, and products made from it, will be harder to get and increasingly expensive. Though technology is developing rapidly, there's still no other single energy source that can replace what we get from fossil fuels.
• The earth's climate is warming.
  Most scientists now agree this is largely caused by humans. If we are going to avoid dangerous tipping points of climate change, we need to significantly reduce our carbon emissions. The UK government has so far committed to an 80 percent reduction by 2050^[2], but many scientists are warning that may be too late. Even with lowering our emmissions now, the carbon we've already released will continue to affect our climate. We need to plan for unpredictable and more extreme weather such as storms, droughts and floods.^[3] To achieve all this, government will need local initiative and engagement.

• Our food and water supplies are vulnerable.
  The cost of food is rising, partly due to higher energy costs and changes in climate. With so much of our food grown far away, and the possible effects of climate change looming, we can't take our food supply for granted.^[4] Even water supplies are under threat.^[5]
• World population is booming.
  75 million people are born each year, and by 2025 world population is expected to reach about 8 billion (compared with 6.5 billion people living today).^[6] That's a lot of people needing a share of resources which are already under stress.
• The world economy and financial system is shaking.
  Each trend alone is alarming enough. Taken together, they show us a world with more and more people drawing on fewer and fewer resources. One where we can't rely on a cheap and abundant supply of fossil fuels, where there is a changing and unpredictable physical climate; and where carbon reduction is critical. They point to a way of life that is inevitably changing, in what could be dramatic and traumatic ways. As these forces come together, what does a sustainable future look like? Whatever way things play out, we are standing on the brink of a historic transition.

"Peak Oil and climate change are two of the greatest challenges we face today; the Transition Town movement is firmly rooted in the idea that people taking action now in their communities can not only tackle these environmental threats but also, in the process of doing so, lead more fulfilling lives. It is about hope in an otherwise bleak-seeming future. Above all, it's about the power of an alternative vision for how society could be and not waiting for government or politicians to get it right."
Caroline Lucas MEP, Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales