Background
Transition Leicester is a local response to two hugely significant global challenges: Climate Change and Peak Oil.
Climate Change gives us a strong motivation to greatly reduce our city's greenhouse gas emissions, to play our part in looking after the future wellbeing of people and the Earth's ecosystems. Peak Oil gives us the awareness that over coming decades we will be reducing our use of oil in any case (and then other fossil fuels which will peak in production soon afterwards), whether we choose to do so or not.
Taken together, for both pragmatic and moral reasons, these issues point towards the need to reduce and eventually eliminate our use of fossil fuels for energy. Starting this transition now will enable us both to reduce Leicester's carbon emissions and increase the resilience of Leicester's economy - enabling our city to continue to funcion even if fuel prices increase greatly, or if fossil fuel supplies are interrupted.
It is important to keep in mind that because of Peak Oil, there will be a great transition in our economy and way of life, no matter what we do. The important point as we see it is to start planning now for that transition, so that we can develop the skills and infrastructure we need to make the transition a wonderful experience, rather than a negative one.
Our approach to this work is inspired by Permaculture, which is a system for designing and planning action which focusses on creating sustainable systems, and identifying opportunities for positive change.
We also realise that one of the main things holding back strong action on climate change is the imperative for continuing growth in our economic system. The growth we've seen to date has only been possible through ever-increasing energy supplies, and Peak Oil is likely to usher in the end of that era (if it doesn't collapse of its accord first!). This makes one of the important goals of our Transition project to explore new systems (and in particular new money-systems) to create truly sustainable economies - where we don't face the stark choice of unsustainable growth or the hardship that comes from a collapsing economy.
Last updated 2nd February 2010