Liberation from Civilization!

Liberation from Civilization!

 Preparing for Civilization's End

,

by Dave Pollard

third chart in my collapse scenario for civilization

For many years the thesis of [my] blog has been: Our civilization is in its final century, and there is nothing we can do to prevent its collapse. When I began writing this, I was largely dismissed as a defeatist and a depressed ‘doomer’ (or worse). As awareness has grown about the now-inevitable end of (a) cheap energy, (b) stable climate and (c) the growth economy, there is a growing acknowledgement that the collapse scenario I have written about is at least conceivable.

This acknowledgement tends to come from people fortunate enough to have the intellectual curiosity, critical thinking ability, undiminished instincts, and time to study and learn how the world really works (not how we are told it works by those powerful and moneyed interests best served by denying the extent and potential impact of these crises and prolonging as long as possible the current unsustainable way we live). And to the extent those knowledgeable people find their way to this blog, they tend to ask the same question:

If the collapse of industrial civilization cannot be prevented, what should we do now?

In a way, much of what I’ve written on this blog is an attempt to answer that question, without being too presumptuous, and appreciating that there is no one right answer to it. My answer: Liberate myself, from civilization’s bonds and destruction, before it collapses on top of me.

Here’s what I’m doing to that end:

1. Understanding what is really going on now

The newspapers and the other media, including most of the independent and progressive media, are of little help in this regard. Here’s what I have written before about more useful reading:

Our world (like all ecological and social systems) is inherently, staggeringly and wonderfully complex, but everything we are taught about the world and how it works (in schools, and in the mainstream media) is reduced to simplistic, mechanistic terms. We continue to believe that “the environment” (something that is portrayed as somehow apart from us) is just facing “problems” that need “solutions” (political, economic, scientific, technological, or spiritual). In complicated systems (like your car), “problems” can be fixed. But in complex systems there are no problems, only predicaments, unintended consequences of actions that cannot be undone.

Nature teaches us (if we will only listen) that we don’t fix a predicament, we adapt to it. The reason so many of our modern crises are so wicked and intractable is that they are not problems, but predicaments, unintended consequences of (mostly) well-intended human actions. To understand how the world really works, and how we can start to learn to adapt to our modern predicaments, we need to understand complexity.

With that context, of the need for adaptation rather than futilely chasing “solutions”, these are the books and articles that have given me a better understanding of how the world really works and what to do about it. Seven books, which I read in approximately this order, have been the most illuminating:

1.     Full House, by Stephen J. Gould. The improbable emergence of humans on Earth.

2.     Story of B, by Daniel Quinn. A radical revisionist history of civilization, in fictional format, and an explanation of how we got to where we are now.

3.     A Language Older Than Words, by Derrick Jensen. A dark explanation of the reason for the core of grief at the heart of the modern age.

4.     A Short History of Progess, by Ronald Wright. Why all civilizations collapse. A survey of past civilizations’ savagery and short-term thinking. Jared Diamond but shorter.

5.     Against the Grain, by Richard Manning. Why Jared Diamond said monoculture agriculture was the greatest mistake in human history, and what it’s come to now.

6.     Straw Dogs, by John Gray. While we have a responsibility to try to make the world better and joyful, for those we love and leave behind, we cannot be other than what we are: a fierce, brilliantly adaptable species destined to bring about the next great extinction, and annihilate ourselves in the process.

7.     The Long Emergency, by James Kunstler. What the near future will look like when this century’s looming ecological, economic, political and resource crises begin to cascade.

I also regularly read the blogs and other resources listed in the Post-Civ Writers section of my Gravitational Community in the right sidebar. And of course I talk regularly with people who have reached a similar understanding of what’s happening in the world. As a result, I think I have a relatively solid understanding of our current situation.

2. Acquiring essential knowledge and abilities for living sustainably in community

As the collapse worsens, large, centralized institutions (corporations, governments, universities, social services, banks etc.) will start to fall apart, as their analogues did in previous dying civilizations. As this happens we will need to re-acquire the knowledge and skills of resilience and community-based, sustainable self-sufficiency. We will have to reinvent local, small-scale institutions within our communities to do all the things we now depend on large, far-away organizations to do for us.

The knowledge we will need includes, first and foremost, knowledge about ourselves: Our strengths, motivations, needs and personality traits. It also includes knowledge of what we’re meant to do in this world, which entails knowing what we are uniquely good at, what we love doing, and what the world needs now that isn’t being provided, or at least not sustainably so. That kind of self-knowledge can’t be learned in books: It requires experiment, exploration, research, discovery, taking risks, just trying things. It’s taken me a lifetime to figure out. There’s a great Jessica Hische poster circulating on Google+ that suggests “The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life.”

Some of the skills we’ll need are technical skills (like growing our own food, making our own clothes and repairing things instead of replacing them), but more of them are ‘soft’ skills and personal and collaborative capacities that we were born with (like curiosity), or which our ancestors learned just to get along in their local communities (like presence, and empathy), but which we no longer learn in our disconnected, fragmented, hyper-competitive society. I created the chart above and this downloadable checklist, to self-assess which of these abilities I have, which I would look for in community partners, and which I aspire to acquire or practice.

One of the critical abilities on this list is the ability to learn. To acquire it, and to instill it in our children, we may all need to deschool ourselves and unschool them. I was fortunate enough to experience a year of unschooling, but completely deschooling myself will be a lifelong endeavour.

When our economic systems collapse, our investments, currencies and commodities will become worthless, so I’m investing in learning instead.

3. Reconnecting with the Earth, with my instincts and senses, with the place I live and the other creatures who live there

Our civilization tries to break the bond between us and the natural world. We are taught that the “environment” is something apart from us. Before I can really understand what is happening and what I can and must do about it, before I can be ready to face the enormous challenges ahead in ways other than denial and attempts to perpetuate the status quo, I need to reconnect, to re-become a part of all life on Earth, to see just how empty, meaningless and intolerably destructive our consumerist industrial civilization really is. I need to become centred, aware, and outraged.

There are many ways to reconnect, and each of us must find the way that works for us. Joanna Macy teaches courses in reconnection, based on the principles of appreciation, presence, and openness. Eckhart Tolle and Richard Moss describe meditation-based ways to live in the Now, instead of being paralyzed by the past or fixated on the future as so many humans have become. Derrick Jensen talks about listening to the land. David Abram shows us how to rediscover the spell of the sensuous by paying attention to the natural world until we just melt into it, become part of it.

This is a long and difficult journey. I’m still trying to find my own way.

4. Living as sustainably and responsibly as possible

Here’s Keith Farnish’s summary of how to do this, which is advice I follow seriously:

Don’t buy anything that you don’t need. If you have to buy something, remember the 4 R’s: Reduce, repair, reuse and respect. Become vegan, or as near as you can to remain healthy. Buy local. Eat simply. Reduce the energy used in your home to the bare minimum. Change your behaviour to allow for this. Become energy independent. Have fewer [than replacement level] children. Travel as little as possible. Don’t fly. Don’t drive. Instead: walk, cycle, use the bus, go by train.

I could do better, but I’m working consciously at it, every day. I understand that this is not enough to make much of a difference, even if everyone in the world could and would do so. But it is still necessary. I feel I must try to stop feeding the machine of industrial civilization, and at the same time try to minimize my personal contribution to the damage that civilization inflicts upon the world, as the sixth great extinction of life on Earth continues to accelerate. I am striving to become a model of a better, more responsible, more sustainable way to live.

5. Daring to tell the truth, and showing others how to prepare for collapse

Talking about the collapse of industrial civilization as inevitable, in “polite company”, takes courage. Most people don’t understand, and don’t want to. They want to believe that the future will be wonderful, that ‘leaders’ will fix what’s broken in the world. As Kenny Ausubel and Nina Simons explain, I have to get past the internalized oppression that I carry inside me, the fear of saying and talking about what I most care about, even though doing so makes me vulnerable and may expose me to disbelief and even ridicule.

I have found it easiest to begin by talking with others that seem to get it — people in the Transition initiative, people living in intentional community and people living an alternative culture lifestyle. But I’ve discovered that even these relatively enlightened people don’t really grasp the speed, extent and inevitability of collapse, and, as a result, are mostly clueless about what really needs to be done. It’s easy to get disheartened, and to stay silent, complicit with the inadequacy of our response to the cataclysm we have unleashed on this planet.

I am striving, through this blog and in my daily conversations, to make the discussion of our civilization’s inevitable collapse and the preparations we need to begin now to equip ourselves and our children for a post-collapse world, part of mainstream social discourse. I will continue to do so until a critical mass of people turn off their TVs and stop listening to the propaganda and denial of the media, corporations and politicians. I believe that the creation of the self-sufficient communities we will need after collapse will only begin when we are ready, in large numbers, to talk about it. I am not optimistic that this will happen in time, but I have to try.

And recently, I am beginning to have this discussion in a new light: Not the grim business of surviving a long series of cascading crises, but the joyful business of liberating ourselves from a way of living that has never been right for us, and which has always been constraining, oppressive, debilitating, and horrifically destructive to our world and to our souls.

6. Fighting back against those destroying the Earth

I have met many of the ‘leaders’ whose actions and organizations are destroying the Earth. I have met few who are doing so intentionally. Many of my post-civ writer colleagues believe that if we’re going to shake ourselves out of our complacency we have to get angry, have to identify the perpetrators of destruction and confront them with all our energy and will. I can’t sustain that kind of anger, but I have no illusions about the fact that we are destroying this planet, so quickly and utterly that its recovery to full health will take centuries, even millennia, after we’re gone. And that destruction is causing unimaginable amounts of suffering.

My passion to reduce suffering motivates me more than anger. So that’s the motivation I’m trying to draw on, to put to work fighting back against the destruction.

The ways in which anyone chooses to fight depend on their personal passions, energy, time and appetite for risk. I’ve decided it’s important to avoid getting sucked into methods of fighting that don’t work (petitions, writing letters, protest demonstrations, and donations to environmental groups seem to me to be usually ineffective, which is why I guess they are the most tolerated forms of activism). I’ve decided it’s equally important that I not exhaust myself quickly (e.g. by getting caught and arrested) — this will be a long fight.

We each must select our own battles and what tactics we’re willing to use. I plan to do my part to fight the Alberta Tar Sands and factory farming, but I’m not yet sure how I will do that. My sense is that I need to meet and collaborate with others who have chosen the same battles. My sense is that guerrilla tactics that capitalize on the vulnerability of civilization’s massively centralized, globalized, hyper-efficient systems will work better than direct confrontation or symbolic actions, no matter how well covered or clever the latter may be.

What matters, I think, is results — less destruction, less suffering, a less ghastly transition to a post-civilization world.

7. Living joyfully

Lately I have been writing a lot about living more joyfully: Spending time with people I love in gentle, natural, beautiful places. Filling my day with healthy, natural pleasures. Finding and conversing with bright, informed, creative people. Learning to laugh, and let go. Playing.

I don’t see this as being at odds with preparing for civilization’s end. Just as I seek to be a model of responsible, sustainable living, I also want to be a model of joyful living. I want to show others that there is a better way to live, a way that does not depend on consumption and acquisition and ownership of stuff for gratification, for fulfillment, for pleasure, for joy. For all the material wealth it bestows on a fortunate few, our civilization is too often a joyless place, a place of endless insecurity, anxiety, envy and despair. The laughter I hear is mostly forced, mean-spirited, alcohol-induced, and almost desperate.

Living a simple, joyful life is not only exemplary, it is essential, I think, to keeping our sanity and our energy in a world seemingly gone mad with acquisitiveness, escapism, violence, war, competition, arrogance, fear, sadness and anger. We need our wits, and our strength, for the challenges ahead.

.     .     .     .     .

Liberation

All seven of these actions — (1) understanding what is really going on, (2) acquiring essential knowledge and abilities, (3) reconnecting with the Earth, (4) living responsibly, (5) showing and telling others why and how to prepare for collapse, (6) fighting back against the destruction, and (7) living joyfully, are aspects of what I am now calling my liberation from civilization. They are analogous to seven steps one might go through to liberate oneself from an abusive spouse or relative.

I feel for that reason ambivalent about liberating myself from civilization. I have become dependent on it. For most of my life I felt it treated me pretty well. Or maybe not — maybe it was just, like an abusive spouse, psychopathically clever at convincing me it was good for me. Part of me says liberation is scary. Not ready to change yet.

But the other part of me, responding to Gaia’s quiet and unwavering voice, cries out for liberation. I long to be feral. As anarchist writer Wolfi Landstreicher wrote:

In a very general way, we know what we want. We want to live as wild, free beings in a world of wild, free beings. The humiliation of having to follow rules, of having to sell our lives away to buy survival, of seeing our usurped desires transformed into abstractions and images in order to sell us commodities fills us with rage. How long will we put up with this misery? We want to make this world into a place where our desires can be immediately realized, not just sporadically, but normally. We want to re-eroticize our lives. We want to live not in a dead world of resources, but in a living world of free wild lovers. We need to start exploring the extent to which we are capable of living these dreams in the present without isolating ourselves. This will give us a clearer understanding of the domination of civilization over our lives, an understanding which will allow us to fight domestication more intensely and so expand the extent to which we can live wildly.

This yearning to be feral is something I feel every time I see a bird or wild animal, every time I harvest and eat wild, raw, pure food, every time I walk in the woods, and every night when I sleep outdoors, naked. It is a yearning to be free, free of a civilization which, with the best of intentions, has abused me, enslaved me, placed a veil between me and the natural world, as it has for everyone.

We can’t prevent civilization’s collapse, but we can still make the world a better place as it falls, and, despite our justifiable fears of the suffering its collapse will surely cause (much as its awesome and brutal reign has) celebrate its fall, and our liberation.

(this article is an attempt to shorten, personalize and update my signature post A Framework for Personal Action)


From How to Save the World @ http://howtosavetheworld.ca/2011/07/19/liberation-from-civilization/
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Transition Towns: A Tonic for the Peak Oil Blues

Transition Towns:

A Tonic for the Peak Oil Blues

 

by Alex Munslow

The term "Peak oil" warns of the end of cheap and plentiful energy. An expanding world population of 6.5 billion suggests a limit for growth will eventually be reached (if it hasn't been already) and no combination of current alternative energy sources will sustain the world's accelerating thirst for power. As oil production inevitably declines and resources become scarce, the world faces a turbulent descent.

We depend on a globalized economy that is completely reliant on ready supplies of this non-renewable resource. But envisioning a life without the luxuries afforded by abundant oil can quickly lead one to denial. It's much easier to absolve our responsibility to some higher authority – the government, the oil companies, technology, God.

The exact tipping point in world oil production cannot be plotted exactly until a clear decline can be seen, by which time it will be too late. Experts analyzing this situation are divided between "early tippers" and "late tippers" – those who think world oil production has already peaked, or is about to peak in the next few years, and those who believe there are decades left. The Hirsch Report, a US Energy Department study into the effects of Peak Oil, claims that without at least a decade of preparation, the world economic, social and political cost would be "unprecedented." Without this "timely mitigation," confronting the effects of Peak Oil and climate change will be like trying to put up a new tent in the dark. If government reports warn us that at least a ten-year transition period is required if we are to survive the energy descent, the burning question is: When do we begin the transition?

In the UK we have seen the emergence of the Transition Town as a preparation for the coming oil crisis. Like most good ideas, it doesn't seem like a new one so much as an idea remembered. Its origins lie in the raised beds of Permaculture, the Australian agricultural design system pioneered by David Holmgrem and Bill Mollison. Inspired by the ideas of author Richard Heinberg and Dr. Colin Campbell of ASPO, a Peak Oil awareness organization, the first Transition Town began in Kinsale, Ireland in 2004. Imagining a sustainable arrangement for life in the post-oil future, permaculturalist teacher Rob Hopkins and students from his Sustainability course collaborated on a town-planning strategy called the "Kinsale Energy Descent Action Plan."

Hopkins and his team presented their plan in a timeline of achievable steps taken over several years. At the heart of their strategy was the idea to turn the obstacles of the energy crisis into opportunities for building local resilience and revitalizing the community. Encouraged by great enthusiasm for the idea, Hopkins took the Transition Town vision to Totnes in Devon.

The Transition strategy begins with the formation of a small steering group (designed with its own demise from the beginning). In the early stages, local awareness is generated by a series of lectures, film viewings, and meetings. Compelling Peak Oil documentaries such as The End of Suburbia and The Power of Community serve as tools of mass tribal initiation at these gatherings, awakening people to the challenges of the coming crisis. After the town hall screenings, local audiences are encouraged to discuss the issues raised by the films and suggest ideas and solutions to their own community's oil dependency.

Existing local environmental and community organizations are invited to jointly organize events that respond to these issues, with smaller groups assigned to specific concerns such as food security, waste and recycling, education, housing, transport and local economy. By a combination of serendipity and synchronicity, these roles are generally filled by the appropriate people at the required time. The momentum behind the project builds up over a period of months until the official "Unleashing" event finally launches the plan to the general public.

In order to assist communities working towards these goals, the Transition Network was set up by activist Ben Brangwyn to support and train town leaders as they adopt Transition Initiatives. Through its work across the UK, the Transition Network aims to "unleash the collective genius" within communities, leading to a more resilient and fulfilling lifestyle. Last September there were only two Transition Towns in the UK; inspired by the successes of Kinsale and Totnes, there are already around 90 towns now at various stages of transition, from "mulling it over" to fully "unleashed."

The Transition Town strategy avoids an "us and them" mentality, building bridges between community members and local government. The approach developed to relocalize the Totnes economy was endorsed by the Town Council, and a new local currency called the "Totnes Pound" is accepted by many local businesses and shops. Strategies like this may one day stop the flow of money out of local communities, providing a protective buffer between a healthy local economy and fluctuations in the national currency.

A general objective of Transition Towns is to preserve or reintroduce the importance of farming within a community, working towards local food production with less reliance on transport and chemicals. The benefits to this shift are obvious: local food production sustains the local economy and bolsters the overall well-being of a community. "Seed swaps" are an excellent means of strengthening local farming and working towards sustainability. At these events, heirloom seed varieties are freely exchanged in an effort to revitalize the genetic diversity of crops while bypassing legislations written to protect corporate monopolies. According to UK law, seeds cannot be sold legally unless they appear on the EU National Seed List.

Registration is expensive, so only a few seeds make it on, and these are generally owned by a handful of companies who have dominated the commercial market with hybridized seeds. These genetically modified seeds are designed to produce sterile plants, forcing farmers to buy a renewed supply each season and resulting in the extinction of many seed varieties. Seed swaps side-step the corporate seed industry and thus play a crucial role in reclaiming control of local food production.

Transition Town meetings often employ the self-organizing method of "open space." According to this arrangement, attendees are invited to create the agenda and host their own discussion groups, within which participants freely move about. Whoever shows up to the meeting are the right people; whenever it starts is the right time; and when it's over, it's over. Those who attend have chosen to be there and are willing to contribute. Each group records the conversations, and at the end of the day, the full group reconvenes for feedback and comments, which are then made available via an internet wiki.

Transition Towns provide training and courses to facilitate what has become known as "The Great Re-Skilling." This begins by interviewing the elders of the community. To return to a lower energy future, it is necessary to engage with those who directly remember a lower energy society and re-learn skills that their generation took for granted. To instigate change, it is important to first understand the psychological barriers to transformation. The Transition Town model offers a set of creative tools for communities to engage with the dual problems of both Peak Oil and climate change. It deals practically with the physical manifestation of the problem and can be conveyed very simply to a large number of people at once.

Cheap oil has allowed western societies to cut through the intricate web of beneficial relationships that once held communities together. Transition Town is a grassroots movement of people learning to relate to each other again. Behind the descent plan is the belief that with creativity and imagination, and under a well-designed strategy, the future without oil could be preferable to the present.

www.transitionculture.org

From Reality Sandwich @ http://www.realitysandwich.com/transition_town_tonic_peak_oil_blues ,

 

 

 

 What is a Transition Initiative?

 

It's a place where there's a community-led process that helps that town/village/city/neighbourhood become stronger and happier.

It's happening in well over a thousand highly diverse communities across the world - from towns in Australia to neighbourhoods in Portugal, from cities in Brazil to rural communities in Slovenia, from urban locations in Britain to islands off the coast of Canada. Many of these initiatives are registered on the Transition Network website.

These communities have started up projects in areas of food, transport, energy, education, housing, waste, arts etc. as small-scale local responses to the global challenges of climate change, economic hardship and shrinking supplies of cheap energy. Together, these small-scale responses make up something much bigger, and help show the way forward for governments, business and the rest of us.

Really, it's the opposite of us sitting in our armchairs complaining about what's wrong, and instead, it's about getting up and doing something constructive about it alongside our neighbours and fellow townsfolk. And people tell us that as a result of being involved in their local "transition initiative", they're happier, their community feels more robust and they have made a lot of new friends.

The video above is a brief introduction to Transition from Rob Hopkins, author of the Transition Handbook, co-founder of Transition Network and Transition Town Totnes.

 

What are we "transitioning" away from?

 

All industrialised countries appear to operate on the assumption that our high levels of energy consumption, our high carbon emissions and our massive environmental impact can go on indefinitely. 




And most developing countries appear to aspire to these ways of living too. However, any rational examination of our energy supplies, our economic inequalities, our diminishing levels of well-being, our ecological crises and the climate chaos that is already hitting millions of people tells us this can't go on much longer. 

We're saying that the best place to start transitioning away from this unviable way of living is right within our own communities, and the best time is right now.

 

 

What are we "transitioning" towards?

 

Whether we like it or not, over the next decade or two, we'll be transitioning to a lower energy future - essential because of climate change and inevitable because of diminishing supplies of fossil fuels (particularly oil). 

There are a variety of possible outcomes depending on whether we stick our heads in the sand or whether we start working for a future that we want.




Transition Initiatives, community by community, are actively and cooperatively creating happier, fairer and stronger communities, places that work for the people living in them and are far better suited to dealing with the shocks that'll accompany our economic and energy challenges and a climate in chaos. And here's how they're doing it...

 

Here's how it all appears to be evolving

 

It begins when a small group comes together with a shared concern about shrinking supplies of cheap energy (peak oil), climate change and increasingly, economic downturn. This group recognises that:

• Climate change and peak oil require urgent action.

• Life with less energy is inevitable. It is better to plan for it than to be taken by surprise.

• Industrial society has lost the resilience to be able to cope with energy shocks.

• We have to act together, now.

• Infinite growth within a finite system (such as planet Earth) is impossible.

• We demonstrated great ingenuity and intelligence as we raced up the energy curve over the last 150 years. There’s no reason why we can’t use those qualities, and more, as we negotiate our way up from the depths back towards the sun and air.

• If we plan and act early enough, and use our creativity and cooperation to unleash the genius within our local communities, we can build a future far more fulfilling and enriching, more connected to and more gentle on the Earth, than the life we have today.

This small initiating group starts learning more about the Transition Model, adapting it to their own local circumstances in order to engage a significant proportion of the people in their community. Some may attend training courses, others buy books, some watch the movie "In Transition 1.0", many search this website for information on how Transition works, or for other people / initiatives / projects near them.

They then:

• start awareness raising around peak oil, climate change and the need to undertake a fair and just community-led process to rebuild resilience and reduce carbon emissions

• connect with existing groups, including local government

• hold focused events that help groups to form to look at all the key areas of life (food, energy, transport, health, psychology of change, economics & livelihoods, etc)

Each of these groups then starts up practical projects such as community supported agriculture, shared transport, local currencies, seed swaps, tool libraries, energy saving clubs, urban orchards, reskilling classes, draught-busting teams. As they do this work, they draw other people in.

As the initiative becomes more experienced, they often engage in a community-wide visioning process that recognises how crucial is it for us to a) cut fossil fuel use and CO2 emissions urgently and b) proactively figure out the kind of future that works for ALL of us rather than waiting for someone else to create a future that works for just a FEW of us.

These groups are beginning to create formal Energy Descent plans and to rebuild their local economies by starting up, for example, local energy companies, social enterprises and cooperative food businesses.

This co-ordinated local response strives to rebuild the resilience we've lost as a result of cheap oil, to address issues of inequality in terms of access to key resources and also to drastically reduce the community's carbon emissions.

And incidentally, in general these initiatives are not asking for permission to start this work - they're just getting on with it, sharing their successes and failures, their hopes and fears.

Where it goes from there is a path as yet untrod...

 

What about local and national governments and businesses?

 

When we emphasise the vital impact that communities can make in this process, we're not saying that national governments are irrelevant or that institutions like businesses aren't important - we know they're all vital. What we are saying is that for most people, their own local community is where they can have the quickest and greatest impact. Our hunch is that when the governments see what communities can do in terms of this transition, it'll be easier for them to make decisions that support this work.

 

The different shapes of Transition

 

The Transition model evolved in the UK, quickly moving to other English-speaking countries such as Australia, New Zealand and the US. We often wondered whether the model would be flexible enough for other cultures that face different challenges. It seems, from a couple of recent notes from Brazil, that it might be:

"In Brazil, climate change and peak oil aren't issues with the same public appeal of that in Europe. Other Brazilians working with TT probably will also have other subjects of main concern, such as assuring education and health for all, protecting biodiversity and enhancing autonomy of traditional (indigenous or not) local communities."

... and another:

"Just a brief message to say that we have enriching Transition processes going on in Brazil right now. Some examples: in Sao Paulo, transition is happening in Granja Viana, Vila Mariana & Brasilandia; there is a strong group in Joao Pessoa and emerging initiatives in Salvador and Recife; Santa Teresa, Grajau in Rio. Petropolis; in your region there is also a small town Andrelandia starting the process. Most recently, after the big land slides, Teresopolis decided to use the principles in their reconstruction process. In two weeks time I'll be running a Transition Training in Vicosa, organised by the Federal University, for which we have opened places for a group from Teresopolis.

We debate peak oil in the context of presal [Brazilian off-shore oil deposits] and as you know Brazil has also been hit by climate change."

We're working hard to ensure that the very broad range of groups experimenting with the Transition model across the world are able to share successes and failures, adding strength and momentum to the whole movement.

So far, initiatives have started up in over 35 countries around the world. It's a start, and there's a long way to go.

 

Cheerful disclaimer!

 

Just in case you were under the impression that Transition is a process defined by people who have all the answers, you need to be aware of a key fact.

We truly don't know if this will work. Transition is a social experiment on a massive scale.

What we are convinced of is this:

    •    if we wait for the governments, it'll be too little, too late
    •    if we act as individuals, it'll be too little
    •    but if we act as communities, it might just be enough, just in time.

Everything that you read on this site is the result of real work undertaken in the real world with community engagement at its heart. There's not an ivory tower in sight, no professors in musty oak-panelled studies churning out incomprehensible papers, no inflexible plans that MUST be adhered to.

This website, just like the Transition model, is brought to you by people who are actively engaged in transition in their own community. People who are learning by doing - and learning all the time. People who understand that we can't sit back and wait for someone else to do the work. People like you, perhaps...

From Transition Network @ http://www.transitionnetwork.org/support/what-transition-initiative

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