Rob Hopkins: Transition Towns #relocalization and Local Resilience

Here's the start of the interview transcript.

Rob: So my goal is to introduce my listeners and readers to Transition Town and what they're about. Could you kind of give an overview and describe what you're doing and what they're about?

RH: Well, I suppose the underpinning recognition is that we are nearing or at the end of the age of cheap oil and although that is made possible we are also at a point in history where our dependency on cheap fossil fuels has pushed the global biosphere to the edge of irreversible collapse, and perhaps maybe that's a good moment to take stock and wonder if we could maybe do things any better. And so Transition really starts with the understanding that we need to plan proactively for where we move forward, and we need to base that on asking some realistic questions.

So if we base our planning for the future on the idea that in 20 years' time we'll have more cheap fossil fuels than today, that we'll have more economic growth than today, that we'll have access to more stuff than we have today, then I think those are deeply flawed and dangerous assumptions. And perhaps we might look at a more realistic base...a set of assumptions based on using less and trying to break our addiction to cheap hydrocarbons with considerable urgency so Transition's starting point is actually...what that looks like in practice is something which is driven from the grassroots, and which is based on the idea that it's just a nonsense. For example, the UK sends one and a half million kilos of potatoes to Germany while at the same time it's important one and a half million kilos of potatoes from Germany, and that actually maybe if we...if our settlements were able to produce as much of their own needs as they could, not become self-sufficient but become more resilient in terms of the supply of basics, mostly energy, food and building materials for starters...that actually rather than that being some sort of retreat backwards, that it actually holds the potential for the kind of economic regeneration that our communities need -- they could leave us more skilled, better connected, fitter, healthier and so on....and happier, ultimately, I think. So this is really about whether we can see the climate crisis, the energy challenges that we face as an opportunity rather than a crisis, and shift our focus from focusing on probabilities, focusing upon possibilities and what we can create out of this time.