ENVIRONMENT
DESCENDING THE PEAK
ILLUSTRATION BY MO OH
Vermonters in the Transition Town movement address an uncertain energy future BY L AU REN OBER
30 FEATURE
SEVEN DAYS
06.08.11-06.15.11
SEVENDAYSVT.COM
T
he table at the back of the Hayes Room in Montpelier’s Kellogg-Hubbard Library holds a colorful bounty of prepared dishes. There’s a pot of venison chili, a slab of broccoli quiche, a loaf of freshly baked zucchini bread and a bowl of salad made with eggs laid that morning by backyard chickens. There’s so much food that no empty spot is left on the table. But that’s good, because there are a lot of mouths to feed. About 65 people have squeezed themselves into the small community room on this Saturday afternoon — the highest turnout yet in the many months the event has been recurring. The participants have brought an abundance of provisions, but they’re here to talk about a dearth — specifically, an impending dearth of oil on the planet. It’s not a topic that would draw most people out of bed, let alone to a meeting in a stuffy library, on a sunny weekend day. But increasingly, at least in central Vermont, peak oil is on people’s minds. And understandably so. A growing body of scientific evidence suggests we have reached, or will soon reach, the point at which half of global oil reserves are gone. And considering that everything from sneakers to computers to contact lenses is made from oil, that prospect threatens life as we know it. The potluck is one of a handful of events organized by Transition Town Montpelier, a diffuse but burgeoning social movement dedicated to helping people build resilient communities to prepare for the twin challenges of peak oil and climate change. The Montpelier
group is one of 90 official Transition Initiatives operating in the United States and one of 360 such efforts worldwide. The idea underlying a Transition Town is that, currently, communities are not prepared to weather a major climate disaster or energy crisis. Much of what we consume is made with oil or requires oil to get to us. We rely heavily on imports, because local economies provide only a sliver of what we need to survive. As crude oil prices climb and increasingly extreme weather events wreak havoc around the world, some communities are seeking ways to deal with what they consider inevitable changes. If oil becomes so scarce that it’s prohibitively expensive or disappears altogether, how will we carry on? Transition Initiatives help people prepare for and adapt to a future beyond fossil fuels through the two pillars of
transition philosophy: relocalizing and reskilling. The movement’s devotees reason that, by producing some or much of what we need in our own communities — food, clothing, medicine, building materials — we will be able to withstand severe climate, energy and economic shock while actually improving our quality of life. “This is an opportunity to take the future in our own hands,” says Carolyne Stayton, executive director of Transition United States, based in Petaluma, Calif. The transition movement began just five years ago in Totnes, England, and has spread to 34 countries and more than half of the States. The concept of Transition stems from the work of a permaculture teacher and natural builder named Rob Hopkins, who sought a
proactive solution to the world’s worsening energy and climate travails. In his 2008 book The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience, published by White River Junction’s Chelsea Green, Hopkins outlines strategies for preparing communities as they face potentially dire changes. He sums up the movement’s mission this way: 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.