resilience

One response to the global crisis that is gaining enthusiastic momentum is the Transition Towns movement. Jennifer Gray, a pioneer in the Transition Initiative in the UK and cofounder of Transition US, describes it as "a community-led response to the twin crises of peak oil and climate change. It's ... positive, pro-active [and] engages the whole community in building resilience into their world." Episode 139.

Richard Heinberg, author of “Peak Everything”, reviews the acceleratingevents since mid-2007, including the credit crunch and fossil fuelprice volatility, noting that we’ve missed most of the bestopportunities to manage collapse. He asks, “how far down the staircaseof complexity will our global civilization have to go until we’resustainable?” His answer: when managed properly, with deliberatesimplification, not as far as we might otherwise. In addition to longterm efforts to relocalize our economies, he advocates developingcommunity “resilience” to withstand short-term catastrophic events likefood shortages or extreme weather. Noting that healthy fear can move usinto action, he encourages an attitude of clarity, concern and informedaction in this “calm before the storm” that he feels is soon coming toan end. Episode 115. With transcript.

The following is a proposal to help make communities better able to respond to the coming economic shocks from resource depletion, beginning with Peak Oil, and perhaps also to shocks from other causes (such as the ongoing subprime mortgage and credit collapse). Making existing petroleum-reliant communities truly sustainable is a huge task. Virtually every system must be redesigned—from transport to food, sanitation, health care, and manufacturing.