Transition

So, once again, a story assignment from the Dependent has me thinking about things relevant to life in Gibsons. This time, it's an idea called Transition. You might've heard of it. I hadn't.

I'm looking at a group called Village Vancouver, which is one of 300-some Transition Initiatives worldwide. The Transition movement is an attempt to cope with the double challenge of peak oil and climate change by building resilience in local communities. Transition Initiatives originate locally and act as community hubs - through them, the idea goes, local people locate each other and begin building the local networks that we'll inevitably have to fall back on once oil prices fly off into the stratosphere. Transition founder Rob Hopkins delivers a pretty good TED talk on the subject here. I think it's worth watching.

The Transition idea is a really simple one, and it's pretty open-ended. At the same time, its simplicity might just make it accessible enough for people to want to participate in it. That it's spread so far and wide suggests that it might have something going for it. Our neighbours in Powell River, by the way, have gone for it.

Anyway, some of you might know an awful lot more about Transition than I do. One of the Village Vancouver people told me that she'd heard that people in Gibsons were interested in forming a Transition Initiative. I'd like to know more about it, so if you're in the know, and you feel like speaking to it, click on the "comment" link under this post. Transition or not, though, this has got me thinking about local community and how I'd like to get in touch with local doers and producers. Which may just come down, as I've suggested before, to time management.

Speaking of which, blogging hours are over for the day! Off to work, now, and into that local community.