The Transition Handbook: from oil dependency to local resilience
By Rob Hopkins
Chelsea Green, 2008
240 pages; $24.95 (Paperback)

Reviewed by Arianna Alexsandra Grindrod, NESEA Education Director

“Resilience is the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change, so as to still retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and feedbacks.”

The Transition Handbook is a whole-systems thinking, solutions-focused, inside-out approach on how communities can manage  peak oil and climate change. Providing templates to begin the dialogue, Hopkins makes clear that the solutions must come from within the community. This book serves as a model and a starting point to discussing building local resiliency. The Transition Handbook is comprised of three sections and should be read by people who are interested in facilitating the transition process in their community.

Part 1: “The Head” offers the facts and figures of peak oil and climate change and how both must be dealt with simultaneously. Be prepared to feel deflated and overwhelmed while informed. Move through it; grief and fear is part of the process. Breathe through it and remember you are reading this because you want to DO SOMETHING and be an agent for positive change.

Part 2: “ The Heart” goes through the process of finding inspiration– marketing peak oil as an opportunity for living more sustainably within a community’s means while creating a positive vision of the future and suggesting activities to “power-down” and navigate our way down the other side of the peak oil mountain.

Part 3:  “The Hands”, walks the reader through the process of starting a Transition Initiative and provides tips for facilitators. This section is not a how-to for the individual. It is a community initiative on taking the time to develop the social “glue” and performing concrete actionables to feel a sense of accomplishment and to foster motivation for sustainability.

Transition Initiatives work towards building “ways of living that are more connected, more enriching, and recognize the biological limits of the planet.” These Transition Initiatives focus on nurturing the ability of a community to live within its means and provide for its basic needs. A community that is able to source a significant portion of its food, clothing, energy, transportation, building materials locally has local resilience and can fare better in coping with economic, political, and natural challenges.

Readers may not like the stipulation that “renewable energy cannot sustain a consumer society.” Nor appreciate hearing the view that nuclear and bio-fuels are not sustainable methods to support our unsustainable lifestyles, due to their low EREI (energy returned for energy invested) and high carbon intensity.  The Transition Handbook focuses on the importance of practical training in the skills needed for a post-oil society. Through a visioning exercise in Chapter 8, it is made apparent that our youth (and the population at large) are ill equipped for practical living. Gaining life skills such as cooking, mending, sewing and weaving natural fibers, carpentry, sourcing and administering local medicinal plants, and creating, installing and maintaining sustainable energy systems are all vital. Social skills and psychological training, such as compassionate communication, conflict resolution, stewardship delegation and community leadership are also necessary to cope with a changing world.  According to the author, we need to “reskill” ourselves to be more self-reliant as a community. Using a permaculture model of multi-layered systems working together, communities re-learn how to catch and store energy, produce no waste, apply self-regulation and feedback, creatively use (a.k.a. “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.”) and respond to change, and maximize beneficial relationships.  Keep in mind again that this is not a how-to book of practical skills but of how to nurture the creation of transition towns.

The Transition movement has harnessed the collective call to action; it is a glue that is mending the torn fabric of our communities. – Cliona O’Conaill (2007)

For those readers ready for the journey down the oil peak mountain here is your homework: “When you think about making practical steps to make your life less oil dependent, what are the obstacles you put in your way of doing that?” Write your responses down. Share them with a friend, neighbor, family member, or colleague. The point of this activity is to get you started in communicating about the issues. Only when you know what your blocks are, can you then take steps to removing them. Once you work with your blocks, your fears, you can dispel their power and get to the core of what steps you can take towards greater sustainability and resiliency.

Editor’s note: Consider attending the annual Building Energy Conference in Boston this March. Tina Clarke, an official Transition Town trainer in Western Massachusetts, Carl Etnier, founding member of Transition Town Montpelier, and Alastair Lough, one of the first official Transition Trainers in the US will be presenting. http://www.nesea.org/buildingenergy/