[OKC] Transition Town OKC

[Shauna Struby]

Greetings friends and members of Sustainable OKC - 

 

I'm writing to tell you about an exciting initiative underway in Oklahoma
City.

 

Transition Town OKC is a project Sustainable OKC is incubating, based on the
Transition Model and The Transition Handbook by Rob Hopkins. 

What is a Transition Town? It all starts when small collection of motivated
individuals from a community come together with a shared concern: How can
our community respond to the challenges and opportunities of peak oil and
climate change? 

The group begins by forming an initiating group and then adopting the
Transition Model (explained
<http://transitiontowns.org/TransitionNetwork/TransitionPrimer> here at
length, and in bits  <http://transitiontowns.org/TransitionNetwork/12Steps>
here and  <http://transitiontowns.org/TransitionNetwork/7Buts> here) with
the intention of engaging a significant proportion of the people in the
community to kick off a Transition Initiative. The Transition movement
started in the England, and is spreading quickly across the globe -
Scotland, Wales, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, U.S., Japan, Italy, Chile,
Germany, Netherlands, Canada all have cities with Transition Town groups.

A Transition Initiative is a community (lots of examples
<http://transitiontowns.org/TransitionNetwork/TransitionCommunities> here)
working together to look peak oil and climate change squarely in the eye and
address this BIG question: 

"For all those aspects of life that this community needs in order to sustain
itself and thrive, how do we significantly increase resilience (to mitigate
the effects of peak oil) and drastically reduce carbon emissions (to
mitigate the effects of climate change)?" 

A Transition Town Initiative recognizes two crucial points: 

 

1.        That we used immense amounts of creativity, ingenuity and
adaptability on the way up the energy upslope, and that there's no reason
for us not to do the same as we transition on the downslope of fossil fuels.

 

2.       If we collectively plan and act early enough there's every
likelihood that we can create a way of living that's significantly more
connected, more vibrant and more in touch with our environment than the
oil-addicted treadmill that we find ourselves on today.

 

In addition to the Transition Model and Hopkins' work, we're pulling from
several other resources (shown at the end of this email). This project
evolved from several small meetings Sustainable OKC (SOKC) hosted last year
(known as the Sustainable Energy Alliance), and is a grass-roots,
community-based effort open to all. 

 

Transition Town OKC Steering Group

The Transition Town OKC steering group is open to anyone who would like to
participate. Project co-chairs are Christine Patton, who, as many of you may
know writes the very clever and informative blog, Peak Oil Hausfrau
<http://peakoilhausfrau.blogspot.com/> , and myself. We have several members
who've heard about this word-of-mouth but we need more.

Transition Town OKC steering group commitment:

.         Be willing to commit to one year of working on the steering group.
After one year, our hope is we'll have a self-sustaining system that will
run without a steering group.

.         Become familiar with Transition Model by reading the online info
and/or The Transition Handbook by Rob Hopkins. The book is not long and is a
quick read. We are using a lot of the information and models in this book
(along with other sources but those are all free). If purchasing the book is
a barrier for anyone, we have a donor who will help with this. 

.         Be willing to meet as needed. Currently we're meeting about every
two weeks at lunch time on a weekday in central Oklahoma City. Meeting
frequency may decrease as we progress. 

The next steering group meeting takes place in about two weeks. 

If you're interested in working with the steering group, please email Shauna
at sstruby at gmail.com ASAP. Thanks!

Resources

.         http://transitionculture.org/  

.         http://www.richardheinberg.com/museletter/192 

.         http://www.postcarbon.org/  

.         http://www.relocalize.net/ 

.         http://postcarboncities.net/ 

::: shauna lawyer struby

President, Sustainable OKC

www.sustainableokc.org 

P please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to

 

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