The Transition movement started in 2005 when Rob Hopkins, a teacher of Permaculture at Kinsale Further Education College in Ireland, led his students in the creation of an Energy Descent Action Plan (EDAP), a process for developing projects through which the community could prepare for a dramatic reduction in energy dependency. They developed the Transition Towns concept resulting in the decision by the Kinsale Town Council to adopt the plan to work towards energy independence in 2006.  Hopkins moved to the UK, where he established Transition Town Totnes in 2006.  He then published a guide to the central principles of his work in The Transition Handbook (2008).  A sequel, The Transition Timeline, by Shaun Chamberlin, was published in 2009.

Totnes has served as the model for a “Transition Initiative,” that is, a community in a process of, first, imagining and creating a future that addresses the twin challenges of diminishing cheap oil and gas supplies and climate change, and second, creating the kind of community that we would all want to be part of.  The main aim of the project is to raise awareness of sustainable living through a two-fold process:

1. To explore and then follow practical actions that will reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and carbon emissions.
2. To build the town's resilience, that is, its ability to withstand the challenges of rapid change; through being more self-reliant in areas such as food, energy, health care, local economy and community.

Transition US was founded in 2008 by Jennifer Gray and Pamela Gray, pioneers in the UK Transition Towns movement, as a non-profit organization to support Transition Initiatives across the United States by providing training, networking and inspiration.  The first US Transition Initiative was started in Boulder, Colorado under the leadership of Michael Brownlee, a veteran of the Relocalization Network that preceded Transition US.  The Transition US social network was launched in March 2009.  The number of formal Transition Initiatives in the US and worldwide grows daily.  Transition Centre is a local and independent group within the network.  You can see the current status of the Transition network at http://www.transitionus.org/initiatives and  http://transitiontowns.org/TransitionNetwork/TransitionCommunities. Also watch the Jennifer Gray interview at http://www.wordpress.peakmoment.tv/conversations/?p=254.

The Transition Process is driven by principles, not a program.  It is a grassroots movement adaptable to local conditions and membership.  There are, to start, four key assumptions:

• Life with dramatically lower energy consumption is inevitable, and that it’s better to plan for it than to be taken by surprise;
• Our communities presently lack the resilience to enable them to weather the inevitable challenges that will come;
• We have to act collectively, we have to act now;
• 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 recognize the biological limits of our planet.

David Ehrenfeld summed this basic strategy up in these terms:  “Our first task is to create a shadow economic, social and even technological structure that will be ready to take over as the existing system fails.”

Six Transition Principles:

1. Visioning:  Imagining what it will be like when we achieve our desired outcome.
2. Inclusion:  We are all in this together and must learn to work as a cooperative community.
3. Awareness-raising:  We need clarity about the risk and options before us.
4. Resilience:  Perhaps the central idea — How do our communities absorb the shocks of changing environmental, economic and political realties?
5. Psychological insights:  How to overcome the sense of powerlessness and isolation.  Of equal importance is creating a safe psychological space for people to discuss the issues and plan an alternative future. 
6. Credible and appropriate solutions:  Between individual responses and government programs lies the more human-scaled playing field of the community where we can act synergistically and creatively.

The Transition process involves social entrepreneurship.  It has to be approached in a systematic manner.  There are barriers, mostly of a psychological nature, which are routinely seen as obstacles to launching a Transition Initiative.  Transition Initiatives require no funding or applications for approval.  Personal enthusiasm and community involvement are the currency of the movement.  The model has proven highly successful:  There are now well over 200 Transition Initiatives worldwide in a highly diverse range of countries and cultural environments.  The Transition Handbook provides a systematic overview of successful efforts to establish Transition Initiatives.  Hopkins makes it clear that the Handbook is not prescriptive, but rather a guide.

The first step in launching a Transition Initiative is to “Set up a steering group and design its demise from the outset.”  This group I call a “Mead Minimum.”  Margaret Mead is famous for remarking that not only could a small group change the world but that only a small group could.  Her work pointed towards a minimum of some five people.  I am also referencing Liebig’s Minimum which states that growth is limited by that which is available in the least amount, hence the “Mead Minimum.”  The steering group has as its mission working through the next 11 steps of the plan:   http://transitiontowns.org/TransitionNetwork/12Steps .  The Transition process relies on social capital.  It takes a group of people who are willing to invest the time, love for each other, and compassion for humanity, to start a Transition Initiative.

A major goal of the Transition process is to prepare an Energy Descent Action Plan.  This plan has been interpreted as something of a Declaration of Energy Independence.  The plan seeks to establish what the community will look like in 20 years consuming only a fraction of current fossil fuels.  The EDAP creates a set of assumptions about the future that guide the program for achieving sustainability and a self-sufficient community.  It is not so much a plan as a process.  It involves attaining achievable objectives, celebration of achievements, building community, and a constant reassessment and renewed action as experience is gained.

http://www.transitionus.org/

http://www.transitiontowns.org/

Watch Rob Hopkins give a brief talk on the Transition Response at http://www.postcarbon.org/video/47204-rob-hopkins-2009-ted-talk

You can also watch the Transition movie at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xu_MvGdMzo8