Sustainable communitiesIf you ask some people what they plan to do when the cheap and easy oil starts running out, they look blank, look away, or - more likely - look at you as if you're a loony. Or they feel pretty confident that government will provide the answers. In other words, they're not really engaged by the idea.
But there are others who aren't waiting around, and are already formulating their own plans - not just for the advent of peak oil, but also for the challenges presented by climate change. In fact, it was a town in west Cork that came up with a much-lauded plan for the future a couple of years ago. The Kinsale Energy Descent Action Plan, formulated by the permaculture students of Kinsale Further Education College and their teacher, Rob Hopkins, has become a blueprint for other communities that are looking at ways of protecting themselves from the impacts of peak oil and climate change (the document can be downloaded here at www.transitionculture.org/?p=129).
Kinsale's plan - which is supported by the town council - outlines a 15-year strategy to build up local "resilience" to future shortages or insecurities of food, energy, agricultural inputs, building supplies, and everything else that was once sourced locally, but no longer is. By 2021, suggests the plan, the town could have a vibrant and self-sustaining local economy, and could have dramatically reduced its dependence on fossil fuels. This moving towards independence from hydrocarbons inspired the idea of a "Transition Town", and Kinsale is the world's first such community.
Rob Hopkins, one of its chief visionaries, has since moved to Totnes in Devon, now also a Transition Town. That community has recently introduced its own currency, the Totnes Pound, which runs parallel to the national currency. Local currencies (sometimes calculated as time units instead of monetary units) keep value in the community economy, and benefit local workers and smaller businesses.
There are now 21 formally declared Transition Towns (mostly in the UK), plus more than 100 communities that are seriously considering the move (see www.transitiontowns.org). And there are plenty of other towns, villages and communities that are also building plans for a more self-sufficient future (including, in Ireland, Ballydehob, Bandon, Bantry, Clonakilty, Skibbereen, Cloughjordan and Newbridge).
The sustainable communities movement is still in its infancy, taking tiny steps and wobbling as it goes, but it's growing bigger and stronger by the month. This is one baby that we'd be wise to nurture and keep a hopeful eye on. One day it might be looking after us.