[OKC] NY times on transition movement "The End is Near! (Yay!)

[Shauna Struby]

If you’re interested in the Transition movement but haven’t had time to read
The Transition Handbook or visit the Web sites, you can thank writer Jon
Mooallem and the New York Times for a terrifically reported, detailed and
erudite article, “The End is Near! (Yah!)” (love the title) that provides a
comprehensive portrait of this burgeoning movement.

 

Many, many provocative jewels here. Pros and cons fairly presented and
questions raised (and we should always be asking questions!). Lots of food
for thought in the whole magazine issue too, which has a green focus for
Earth Day, but this story in particular reminded me of what good journalism
is and can be 
 a reflection of society to educate, provoke thought and stir
our souls. 

 

Money quotes:

·         What Reuter said he felt was wonderful about the Sandpoint
Transition Initiative was how quickly it was rejuvenating people’s faith
that the changes they craved were worth working for. “To say the group has
only created a community garden so far really isn’t sufficient,” he told me.
“It’s something really more substantive: they’re bringing people to the
process.” 
 The movement wasn’t going to unify everybody in Sandpoint, he
said: “I know that’s their dream, but I just don’t see it happening.” But it
was inspiring for Reuter to watch the group emerge as one fervently turning
gear in the larger mechanism of self-governance.

·         
 as Reuter saw it. “Government used to be the place in our
community where people came together and made civic decisions,” he told me.
“That’s what we should do again, and that’s what’s going to bring us back
together: not having government be this force somehow outside of us, that’s
bearing down on us or annoying us, but as a force that we actually embrace
and want and that does what we want.”

·         For a wide range of not-always-consistent reasons, people in
Sandpoint decided that Transition could help them build the world they
wanted. And now, only because enough people stepped forward and made that
decision, Transition actually looked like a good tool for the job. They were
picking it up by whatever handle they grasped. They were swinging it as
earnestly as they could.

 

More highlights from the story: 

 

·         But those living on the land, whether out of a left- or right-wing
ideology, do have a lot in common, including an astounding amount of
resourcefulness.

·         When I asked her later what she made of the exercise, Hellar told
me: “First of all, I’m not a good-feelings, touchy-feely kind of person.”
She added, “People wanted to talk about where we can put community gardens,
how can we make our downtown more viable.” John T. Reuter, a Republican city
councilman a few seats over, told me that when Berta told them to hold
hands, he was looking around the room, counting up the people he knew
Transition just alienated.

·         Now, maybe because our various crises have escalated, or because
it costs so much to disappear into your own parcel of wilderness, opting out
no longer feels like a possibility. One of Transition’s more oblique
arguments may be that we can’t escape anymore. We have to work together to
remake the places where we already live. 

·         Karl Dye, head of the Bonner County Economic Development
Corporation, told me, “All the things Transition’s doing basically line up
with what we’re trying to do, which is create better-paying jobs.” He saw a
lot of promise in Lanphear’s group, though he also said: “If you start a
business to produce food locally and there are opportunities to make money
by taking it to other areas, you’re going to do it. You may believe in
Transitions and local production and local consumption, but hey, man, we’re
still Americans.”

·         A minister told me she was glad that Transition wasn’t “a greenie,
hippie, far-out thing.” But Michael Boge, the City Council president, seemed
to complain of exactly that, telling me he didn’t understand why the group
had to cheapen a good idea by “inventing a new word for it and wrapping
themselves in that catchphrase.” (The new word Boge objected to wasn’t
“Transition”; it was “sustainability.”)

·         Still, Boge, who owns five drive-in restaurants and is active in a
long-distance motorcycling club called the Iron Butt Association, told me
that he felt allied with Transition’s ideals. “I’ve bitched about this to my
friends for years: we need to make a concerted effort to get off fossil
fuels,” he said. “And I truly believe that with the country and God behind
us, we can do it.” Transition was a prism, offering a slightly different
view of Sandpoint depending on how each person turned it, but always
shooting out lots of rainbows.

·         The vibe was much more
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/w/alice_waters/i
ndex.html?inline=nyt-per> Alice Waters than Mad Max. (Jeff Burns, a local
food activist who joined the food working group, was a conspicuous
exception. “Some people on the food group want to feel good,” he told me,
“and some people want to figure out how to feed 40,000 people in case the
trucks stop rolling.”)

·         Transition doesn’t claim its method is mathematically guaranteed
to succeed. It simply posits that our best hope is to “unleash the
collective genius of the community” and hope all the right pieces spill out.
“We truly don’t know if this will work,” Rob Hopkins asserts in a
mission-statement-like document called the “Cheerful Disclaimer!”

·         “The genius of the Transition message, as I see it, is that it
takes what we should be doing to avert these crises and turns it into
something that sounds inviting and positive and uplifting,” Richard
Heinberg, a Transition U.S. board member, told me in Sebastopol 
 Heinberg
said he worries that Transition risks losing people in the elation it
inspires. He has been debating with Hopkins whether, in addition to devising
a long-term descent, Transition should emphasize preparing for disasters
that Heinberg says are unavoidable or already unfolding, like volatile gas
prices or “being sideswiped by economic catastrophe and weather
disruptions.”

·         I was also surprised by the degree to which Transition members
were intermixing with city authorities. Shortly after the Great Unleashing,
Shelby Rognstad, a young cafe owner and an early Sandpoint Transition
Initiative board member alongside Kühnel and Lanphear, was appointed to the
town’s planning and zoning commission — a significant position, because
Sandpoint was writing its first new comprehensive plan in 30 years.

 

Read the whole article here :::
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/magazine/19town-t.html?pagewanted=1
<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/magazine/19town-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=4&
ref=magazine> &_r=4&ref=magazine 

 

::: shauna lawyer struby

http://thinklady.typepad.com/thinklady/ 

 

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