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So why do we need the Transition Movement? Aren’t our governments doing enough about climate change and peak oil? In a word; no. But the Transition Movement isn’t a policy response to what the government is or is not doing. Instead it is a way for communities to explore methods for reducing energy usage as well as increasing their own self-reliance. It’s about taking control of the systems that we depend upon in our communities so that we are not vulnerable to collapse.

Transition Initiatives are based upon four key assumptions:

1. That life with dramatically lower energy consumption is inevitable, and that it’s better to plan for it than to be taken by surprise.
2. That our settlements and communities presently lack the resilience to enable them to weather the severe energy shocks that will accompany peak oil.
3. That we have to act collectively, and we have to act now.
4. That by unleashing the collective genius of those around us to creatively and proactively design our energy descent, we can build ways of living that are more connected, more enriching and that recognise the biological limits of our planet.

See that word ‘resilience’ in point 2? It’s a key term in Transition talk. It is used instead of the term ‘sustainability’. We think this is a great step, as sustainability can have very vague and loose meanings that even the most eloquent of us struggle to get our mouths around. The term resilience on the other hand is far simpler to describe: “the ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change” (Merriam Webster Dictionary). So where sustainability will ask how a community can become more sustainable, resilience asks how a community can become more resilient, in this case to the shocks and impacts of peak oil and climate change.

Each Transition Town is independent, developing its own plans and working on its own priorities. But the common denominator of all Transition Towns is a bottom-up, participatory process for all major decisions in each community. However, the key areas that are commonly examined are food, energy, transportation, local economics, communication, systems of care and the arts.