10 points about Transition *

1. It offers a positive vision. Instead of telling us that our future will be an apocalyptic nightmare of floods, famine and economic collapse, it acknowledges that there are uncertain times ahead and offers ways to build community resilience.
2. It shows that climate change and peak oil ¹ can be an opportunity to make a happier society which has less ‘stuff’ and more time for friends, family and community.
3. It offers a practical step-by-step guide which is not set in stone and can be modified by different communities to help them work through complex issues such as energy, transport, food supply and waste management.
4. It doesn’t blame anyone. There’s no finger pointing at 4x4s or supermarket shoppers. It knows that the changes ahead will affect everyone and we will only weather the storm if we work together.
5. It doesn’t wait for someone else – government, big business, the UN – to sort it out for us. Local people are making local changes, taking power into their own hands.
6. It welcomes local politicians and knows that the political parties will have to get on board. As the word spreads about this movement currently unelectable policies will become electable.
7. It acts as an umbrella group which acknowledges and supports the work of many others, from green groups and allotment holders to churches and WIs, to local councils and charities who have been working hard in their communities for years.
8. It wants to support local businesses and local farmers developing services such as Oil Vulnerability Audits to help them assess how rising oil prices might affect them.

1. It values everyone, the young people who will inherit our world and the older people who have so much to teach us from their memories of a world that was not driven by fast cars and consumerism.
2. It makes the whole thing fun, encouraging music, art, storytelling and craft as well as hard-headed thinking about the problems we face.

¹ Peak Oil is the circumstance where the world demand for oil begins to exceed the amount of oil in the ground and the cost of extraction increases as the oil becomes increasingly hard to mine.