The Transition Handbook: From oil dependency to local resilience by Rob Hopkins. 

3/5 rating. 213 pages.

Book #37 of 2020. Read June 11, 2020.

The first section is the “head” where he lays out the science behind what is happening to our climate and our ability to retrieve and refine oil. This makes it abundantly clear that society is going to have to decide that we are willing to make some change to our lives. As Charles Wyman once said:

“It’s always going to be difficult to come up with sustainable ways to support our unsustainable lifestyle.”

Rob talks about the interconnectedness of peak oil and climate change. And how the only way to go forward is simultaneous long-term solutions. Building more resilience into our system is Rob’s dream. This would require us to focus more on local agriculture, skills, and products, as well as a more diverse, modular, and loosely-linked system.

Rob then goes into the “heart” section where he lays out some of the amazing ideas and visions that are available for us to achieve if we move towards a more resilient, ecological, and environmentally-focused society.

Rob finishes by talking of some of the early successes of the Transition movements and what this movement could mean to our communities and the world.

He dreams of a world where:

“We will see a flourishing of local businesses, local skills and solutions, and a flowering of ingenuity and creativity. It is a Transition in which we will inevitably grow, and in which our evolution is a precondition for progress. Emerging at the other end, we will not be the same as we were; we will have become more humble, more connected to the natural world, fitter, leaner, more skilled and, ultimately, wiser.”

This book is definitely not for mainstream environmentalists, but if you are truly looking to move us beyond oil and to make a real impact before climate change forces us to make moves we will not wish to make, you should read this uplifting book of how as localities we can turn the page from our current society, to a much more beautiful, vibrant, and connected place.

Quotes:

“Rebuilding local agriculture and food production, localising energy production, rethinking healthcare, rediscovering local building materials in the context of zero energy building, rethinking how we manage waste, all build resilience and offer the potential of an extraordinary renaissance – economic, cultural and spiritual.”

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.” – Albert Einstein

“Tar sands are akin to arriving at the pub to find that all the beer is off, but so desperate are you for a drink that you begin to fantasise that in the thirty years this pub has been open for business, the equivalent of 5,000 pints have been spilt on the carpet, so you design a process whereby you boil up the carpet in order to extract the beer again. It is the desperate, futile action of an alcoholic unable to imagine life without the object of his addiction, and is only viable because oil prices are high and natural gas prices are cheap (high oil prices being the only one of the two we can depend on).”

“Humans are only fully human when we are involved with each other, and the majority of us find happiness most easily through collective achievement. If we join our neighbors in the adventure of building a local economy that supplies and supports us all, true happiness, deep joy, is waiting to be found.”

“We had a very clear example of this in Totnes when we asked the Regional Development Agency if they would fund our Local Food Directory: we were told that they couldn’t, because under the rules of the World Trade Organisation they are unable to fund anything that promotes the idea that local produce is in any way superior to internationally sourced produce.”

“Food is the most sensible place to begin rebuilding community resilience, but building materials, fabrics, timber, energy and currencies follow soon after.”

“To save the planet, we do not need miraculous technical breakthroughs, or vast amounts of capital. Essentially we need a radical change in our thinking and behavior.” – Ted Trainer

“Ultimately, any response that is sufficient to the scale of the challenge is about coming home, about being aware that we are a part of the networks around us, and that we need to nurture and rebuild them, rather than imagining that we can survive independently of them.”

“Creating the world we want is a much more subtle but more powerful mode of operation than destroying the one we don’t want.” – Marianne Williamson

“When we express our concerns, we talk ourselves into addressing them. When we give voice to our visions, we identify the destinations we want to move towards. And by describing the steps we can take, we prepare ourselves for action.”

“Throughout history, the really fundamental changes in societies have come about not from the dictates of governments and the results of battles, but through vast numbers of people changing their minds, sometimes only a little bit.” – Willis Harman

“What would this project need to achieve to make your participation 100% worthwhile.”

“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost, that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.”

“It is important that people can see where they are going and that they like what they see. If we present people with a vision of disaster and social collapse, what incentive do they have to do anything? This is not to say that we should not aim to raise awareness and talk about the issues, but at the same time, simply presenting people with bad news and expecting them to respond by engaging boldly and imaginatively is unrealistic in the extreme.”

“Innovation requires a good idea, initiative, and a few friends.” – Herb Shepard

“The concept of waste is essentially a reflection of poor design. Every output from one system could become the input to another system. We need to think cyclically rather than in linear systems.”

“I can’t save the world on my own. It will take at least three of us.”

“The place we could finish up could be so much nicer than the one we’ve got now!” – Tony Juniper

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