Transition California: December 2012

Monday, December 31, 2012

Post 2012 - A New Beginning

YEAR ONE - POST 2012

Now that we have all successfully transitioned into Year One - Post 2012 we can move forward without so much 'end of the world' noise around our collective transition efforts towards a sustainable planet. We cannot remember ever going through a 365 days cycle around the Sun that had so much intense activity and collective freak out on so many fronts.

We trusted that everything would come back to center and it feels like it has been slowly calming down. The question 'What now?" is reverberating in many circles and from what we have been able to glean it seems that folks are rolling up their sleeves to move onward and upward with renewed commitment.

Transition US is promising to engage in various projects, programs, and expansion campaigns in 2013 for its 'official' groups - their newsletter is currently circulating a whopping 7,500 subscribers in a national population of 350 million people so they have their work definitely cut out for them. Their ideas for 2013 can be read in this 'Transition US - A Year in Review' doc.

As sponsors of the 'unofficial' Transition Towns California Community Network - home to a little over 1500 members within a State population of 33 million - we can only promise our continued commitment and support in time/energy to members of the network through paying the hosting/subscription fees for the platform, providing management/administration, updating information/resources as often as we can, and simply holding space for folks to connect with each other.

The 'what now' for our team is that we are beginning a new phase of our long term agenda that we have been calling our '7 Year Leap'...2013 to 2020.

All of the work we have engaged in since the year 2000 was part of the Y2K to 2012 Agenda (probably been awhile since you thought of the Y2K collective freak out yeah?) We have succeeded in all of our main foundation building efforts and we are excited to be moving into the manifestation stage of over a decades worth of social research and experiments within the sustainability movement.

The information we were able to gather during that time is sufficient for us to proceed with the actual on the ground manifestation of a Low Impact Sustainable Development agenda and we will be documenting and releasing this process onto all of the online networks that we sponsor and manage. The Transition California Network will be the recipient of the bulk of this information and resources over the coming years and we look forward to deepening our existing relationships with all of the members whom we have established strong ties with.

Transition Towns - Source Wikipedia

Transition Towns (also known as Transition network or Transition Movement) is a brand for environmental and social movements “founded (in part) upon the principles of permaculture” ^[1], based originally on Bill Mollison’s seminal Permaculture, a Designers Manual published in 1988. The Transition Towns brand of permaculture uses David Holmgren’s 2003 book, Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability. ^[2] These techniques were included in a student project overseen by permaculture teacher Rob Hopkins at the Kinsale Further Education College in Ireland. The term transition town was coined by Louise Rooney^[3] and Catherine Dunne. Following its start in Kinsale, Ireland it then spread to Totnes, England where Rob Hopkins and Naresh Giangrande developed the concept during 2005 and 2006.^[4] The aim of this community project is to equip communities for the dual challenges of climate change and peak oil. The Transition Towns movement is an example of socioeconomic localisation. In 2007, the UK-based charity Transition Network started up in order to help spread the ideas of transition and support communities around the world as they adopted/adapted the transition model to turn their locale into a more resilient, lower carbon settlement.

History

The Transition concept emerged from work that permaculture designer Rob Hopkins had done with the students of Kinsale Further Education College in writing an "Energy Descent Action Plan". This looked at across-the-board creative adaptations in the realms of energy production, health, education, economy and agriculture as a "road map" to a sustainable future for the town. Two of his students, Louise Rooney and Catherine Dunne, set about developing the transition towns concept and took the far-reaching step of presenting it to Kinsale Town Council, resulting in the historic decision by councillors to adopt the plan and work towards energy independence.

The idea was adapted and expanded through 2005, 2006 and beyond in Hopkins' hometown of Totnes where he is now based. The initiative spread quickly, and as of May 2010, there are over 300 communities^[5] recognized as official Transition Towns in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Italy and Chile. The term transition towns has morphed into transition initiatives to reflect the range and type of communities involved - e.g. villages (Kinsale), neighbourhoods of cities (Portobello, Edinburgh), through council districts (Penwith) to cities and city boroughs (Brixton).

In the United States, transition initiatives have sprung up in many communities. Transition US is the national hub and has a vision "that every community in the United States will have engaged its collective creativity to unleash an extraordinary and historic transition to a future beyond fossil fuels; a future that is more vibrant, abundant and resilient; one that is ultimately preferable to the present". Transition US is a resource and catalyst for building resilient communities across the United States that are able to withstand severe energy, climate or economic shocks while creating a better quality of life in the process. They are accomplishing this mission by inspiring, encouraging, supporting, networking and training individuals and their communities as they consider, adopt, adapt, and implement the transition approach to community empowerment and change.

A large number of state sites have also been set up using the Ning social networking platform. These state sites, under the umbrella of a National Ning site, were set up to help facilitate, network, inform, monitor, and house regional and organizational Transition initiatives and further the rapid spread of the Transition Movement while networking related organizations, projects, ideas and activities. These social networking sites have now begun to spread worldwide.

Monday, December 31, 2012

Post 2012 - A New Beginning

California Federation of Time Banks

Great Economic Transition

A NEW WE

Transition California Videos

Blog Archive

Transition California Member Rachel Kaplan's New Book!

Titans of Transition

Seeds of Sustainability

Transition Towns - Source Wikipedia

History