A Guide to Making the Transition Away From Oil

Rob Hopkins is a doctoral student at Plymouth University in England and the founder of the Transition movement—the transition he advocates is away from oil and toward self-sufficiency. He is a proponent of the theory of peak oil, which says that oil production will reach a high point, then begin a cruel decline, and he believes the peak is imminent. Most peak oilers are an apocalyptic lot, thinking that the end of oil will lead to some kind of Mad Max future. Mr. Hopkins, by comparison, is incredibly optimistic.

“The change we have seen over the past 100 years will be nothing compared with what we will see over the next 20,” he said over the phone from his home in Totnes, in southwestern England. “It’s an extraordinary time to be alive. I feel really fortunate to be around.”

Through the Transition movement, Mr. Hopkins has helped to set up dozens of “transition towns” in England, New Zealand, Australia, and other countries. (There are three—including Boulder, Colo.—here in the U.S.) He outlines the methods of establishing a transition initiative in The Transition Handbook, which is coming out soon. (Chelsea Green Publishing offers a deal on orders of more than 20 books for people who are starting Transition initiatives.)

A key tenet of the Transition movement is establishing resilience, or the ability of a place to endure and absorb shocks—everything from food-supply interruptions to economic downturns to energy crises. Mr. Hopkins has a background in permaculture design—that is, designing sustainable, environmentally sensitive human habitats. He taught the subject at the Kinsale Further Education College, in Ireland, where he and his students came up with the Kinsale Energy Descent Action Plan, which tried to imagine how Kinsale would fare in a post-oil world and proved to be a blueprint for the Transition movement.

Colleges are often like little towns of their own, and many colleges are increasingly involved and intertwined with their surrounding communities. So why not form a “transition college”? Colleges are going to have to get serious preparing for future energy crises, and they should start thinking about how they might deal with them now. Most colleges are thinking mainly about cutting carbon emissions, which Mr. Hopkins believes is important but secondary to dealing with the energy crisis. Climate change is an end-of-tailpipe problem, while peak oil is an into-fuel-tank problem, to paraphrase peak-oil proponent Richard Heinberg.

“The degree to which we are dependent on oil is the degree to which we are vulnerable,” Mr. Hopkins says. “I suppose broadly speaking, trying to support what food production exists is central. Linking producers and consumers is central. And also trying to reintroduce urban agriculture and the rethink of the land around the towns is central. Trying to move energy generation more into the control of the community is seen as very important, as is designing for the end of the private motor vehicle—its days are numbered already.”

The Transition Town Totnes program has even come up with its own currency—the Totnes Pound, which can be used as an alternative to real British pounds at dozens of retailers in the community. Mr. Hopkins describes it as a kind of “fair-trade currency” that encourages consumers to buy from local businesses; local businesses, in turn, use Totnes Pounds to pay local workmen or get local supplies. About 8,000 Totnes Pounds are in circulation.

Transition Town Totnes is also trying to reestablish productive land around the community. The organization helped start a program called “Totnes, the Nut Tree Capital of Britain,” in which nut trees—major sources of protein and carbohydrates—are planted in forgotten corners of the town. Locals are trained to care for them.

“Over the past forty years we have become used to looking at our urban landscapes as large areas of grass with a few trees on them, with lots of dog mess on it and a few concrete slabs,” Mr. Hopkins says. “That’s really something strange when you look at it through a historic perspective. It’s only been in the years when we have had more oil than sense that we have been able to abandon the idea that land is something useful.”

The YouTube video above gives a short introduction to the Transition movement. In the hour-long video below, Mr. Hopkins provides a description of peak oil, the philosophy of Transition, and how the Transition movement differs from the environmental movement.