Toban Black

On Saturday, May 23rd, this documentary will be streamed online -

This documentary will be shown here — between 9:45am and 10:45am EST.
(Here’s when it will be shown in other time zones. In the UK, people will be watching the documentary in the afternoon, rather than the morning. That time block is part of the schedule for a Transition Towns conference in London, England on that day.)

Here are blog posts are about the documentary -
- “The Online Premiere of ‘In Transition’ …”
- “Make Sure Your Projects Get a Mention in ‘In Transition’”

The documentary is about the Transition Towns movement, which (much like the former Relocalization Network) basically is a collective effort to make localities (e.g. portions of larger cities) more autonomous and sustainable. This Transition network has been expanding out from its current base in the UK.

There’s also a “Handbook” for the Transition Towns movement -
http://uniteddiversity.com/transition-handbook/
(One of the links on that page leads to the Amazon UK web site — which anyone living outside of the UK probably wouldn’t want to use if you were to purchase the printed version of the book.)

This “Transition” revolves around ending fossil fuel dependencies.

The Transition Towns movement tends to be presented and approached as a way of responding to global warming and oil & gas depletion (including world peak oil); yet, this movement has a lot more to offer. Sometimes I highlight the merits of certain forms of local autonomy (e.g. local food) (without going so far as to call for insular parochialism — which would entail a lack of beneficial ties with outside areas). (I also have advocated solidarity that can and should extend well beyond any one locality.)

I still am learning about the “Transition” approach; yet, at this point, I am prepared to say that the Transition movement has important, constructive contributions to offer.

I’m an organizer in a local group called Post-Carbon London, which now is affiliated with the Transition Towns network. We’ve just begun to discuss how we will be linking that local Post-Carbon project into the Transition movement.