Friday, August 7, 2009

Transitions to a Sustainable Future

I have been reading The Transition Handbook by Rob Hopkins. He does a really wonderful job of mapping out paths "from oil dependency to local resilience."
In fact, the Transition recipe he describes has been kitchen-tested in England, and looks appetizing enough to have inspired similar groups in California towns such as Cotati, Santa Cruz, Sebastopol, Laguna Beach, Pine Mountain, Los Angeles, Mount Shasta, Paso Robles, San Luis Obispo, and Santa Barbara.
And we don't have to wait for the government, cap-and-trade, or corporations to lead the way. We can just do it. We each have the power to make changes in our lives that shrink our ecological footprint but not our quality of life. And coordinating these changes with each other, in our neighborhoods and towns, just offers more leverage.
One place to start is by figuring out just what is really essential about "the American Way of Life." Is it the Constitution? Cheap gas and fast cars? A chicken in every pot? Happy families? Capitalism?
What do you think is essential?