杏吧原创

The founder of the Transition Towns movement explains why he is optimistic that we can survive peak oil and minimise climate change.

Can you tell me more about the Transition Towns movement?

A Transition Town is formed when a group of individuals gets together to ask how their community can mitigate the effects of a potential reduction in oil and drastically reduce their carbon emissions to offset climate change. The scheme has become so successful we now have 250 official Transition Towns and Cities worldwide, with many more interested in becoming involved.

Transition Towns have set up bartering systems like local currencies and seed exchanges; what other initiatives are they taking?

In England, Totnes and Lewes are setting up the first energy companies owned and run by the community 鈥� Transition Stroud has written the local council鈥檚 food strategy. One group in Scotland has managed to get access to land for new allotments in their area and the first university scheme has just been set up at the University of Edinburgh.

You鈥檙e about to launch an . What is it?

It鈥檚 based on the idea that the way out of our current economic situation isn鈥檛 to carry on as normal. We have to look at the local economy and ask what a town could look like in the next 20 years if oil production has peaked 鈥� 鈥減eak oil鈥� 鈥� and climate change is a reality. So the vision for food might be that people have a local food economy with more urban agriculture employing local people. We then work out how we might achieve this. For instance, we look at the land available, how it is used and to what degree the area could be self-reliant.

When do you think we鈥檙e going to run out of oil?

We鈥檙e probably not going to run out of oil in our lifetime. There won鈥檛 be a mythical moment when someone in Leicestershire pours out the last drop into their car and that鈥檚 it; what matters is the point at which we move from having more cheap oil available to having less cheap oil available each year. It鈥檚 the shift from a time when our economic success, our personal prowess and wealth is directly linked to how much fossil fuel we consume, to a time when our degree of oil dependency is a vulnerability. By 2013 we will be entering a time of increasing volatility in terms of price and availability. For an economy which is designed to function on a plentiful supply of cheap oil, that鈥檚 a historic transition.

Are there specific characteristics that make a Transition Town more likely to succeed?

We have a thing called the 鈥渃heerful disclaimer鈥� 鈥� which means we have no idea if the idea is going to work or not. It鈥檚 an invitation to have a go.

If the majority of people in a Transition Town were on-board, are they more likely to survive peak oil or climate change?

There are no guarantees that your community will be immune to climate change. But I think human beings have an in-built survival mechanism.