The future with less oil could be better than the present, but only if we engage in designing this Transition with creativity and imagination.

--Rob Hopkins, founder of the
Transition Towns movement

The Transition concept is a proactive, grassroots response to the twin crises of climate change and peak oil (the end of cheap oil). 

Through the Transition movement, we Transition society from our current high-power, high-consumption lifestyle toward our inevitable lower-powered future. 

In the near future, forecasts are for great change:  changes in the sedate, predictable weather patterns which humanity has counted on for centuries; changes in economic markets which have been built up upon the presumption of a cheap, abundant, expanding supply of fossil fuels; changes in our transportation habits and the feasibility of globalization; changes in food supplies, water supplies, and more.

... more like a party than a protest march

--Richard Heinberg,
leading peak oil thinker

The Transition model includes relocalization of our lifestyle habits, rebuilding our local economic base, reconnecting our local communities, and retraining people in the skills of a power-down life (a lifestyle that uses less oil, less gas, less electricity, less energy overall).

The goal is to increase societal resilience, our ability to adapt and to weather the great changes ahead. 

There are now over 100 official Transition Initiative sites worldwide -- local areas in the UK, Australia, Japan, and beyond which are preparing for change by organizing themselves and building local resilience.  Projects are in the works in hundreds more areas; in Southern California these include Los Angeles, Orange County, South Bay and San Fernando Valley.  Learn about local Los Angeles "pods" here.

• articles that well capture the spirit of the Transition movement: in The Guardian (Sept 2008), in the Christian Science Monitor (Sept 2008)
• The Transition Handbook , by Rob Hopkins (Green Books, 2008) is a detailed discussion of the Transition concept and a refinement of several years of what Hopkins has explored in the UK
• Transition US
• more Transition resources here