TRANSITION - an orderly collapse

Back in 2005, the documentary The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream sent me into the abyss about global warming and energy depletion. Lately, however, the movie has plucked me out again, because it turns out to be central to a new movement that proposes an eyes-wide-open yet fun (yes, fun) path forward for mainstreamers like me who know we have a serious environmental problem but aren’t willing or able to ditch life in "the great megalopolis smudge," as one grim End of Suburbia wonk describes my living arrangement.

This is where Transition taps in. The movement offers a framework for planning an orderly and even a "prosperous way down" the curve, to quote a book well known among Peak Oilers, to a world with less oil.

SHOOT: This is from an article published in ELLE magazine.

clipped from www.elle.com "I assume you’re prepared to be hated by everyone in the room," my boyfriend said as I headed out the door to the screening one bitterly cold night in February. "People do not like to be told that their way of life is coming to an end." He had a point. For four years, I have been quietly freaking out at the e-mails that arrive daily in my inbox, most of which don’t bode well for civilization. One news report that recently showed up said that as the arctic permafrost melts, it releases not only CO2 into the atmosphere, but also methane, which is 25 times more potent, so that we are, in the words of one scientist, "looking now at a future climate that’s beyond anything we’ve considered seriously in climate model simulations." What attracted me to Transition, as the movement is called, was the word resilience, with its implications of being skilled, being ready, being confident, and therefore being optimistic about The Day After Tomorrow.