The Great Transition is a systemic framework for understanding how we might hospice outworn ways of living that no longer serve us and the Earth, and give birth to an emergent, more compassionate and resilient future. A broad spectrum of grassroots, citizen-led, community initiatives sustain the movement toward the Great Transition against the backdrop of climate change, resource depletion, and economic instability. Purposeful groups of friends and neighbors mitigate these converging global crises by engaging their communities in environmental education and actions that increase local self-reliance and resilience. They catalyze relocalization of economies and low carbon lifestyles by innovating, networking, collaborating, and replicating proven strategies, and respecting the deep patterns of nature and diverse cultures in their localities. “Transitioners” work with deliberation to create a fulfilling and inspiring local way of life that can withstand the shocks of rapidly shifting global systems.
This Environmental Movement page, curated by The Mid-Atlantic Transition Hub (MATH), provides a spectrum of articles that chronicle the move toward the Great Transition. Material on this page reflects MATH’s practice of regenerative self-assessment as the Transition social experiment facilitates the weaning of localities away from fossil fuel addiction toward environmental resilience.
New Economy
The Great Transition Experiment: New Economy Alternatives ~Pamela Boyce Simms and Brett Barndt
The magnitude of the needed game-changing economic transformation calls for a concurrent, equally-as-radical shift in consciousness. Read more...
DIY System Change: Transitioning to a Just Economy with Timebanking ~Stephanie Rearick
Timebanking is a simple and elegant way to catalyze, value, and reward work in spheres that tend to be undervalued and/or exploited by the market economy. Read more...
Keep it Local! The Complementary Currency Alternative ~David McCarthy and Maria Reidelbach
New alternative and complementary currencies are a growing worldwide trend, and many states in the US have created their own local curriencies. Read more...
Blacks-in-Green
Black Food Sovereignty: Rural, Urban and International Connections ~Pamela Boyce Simms
[T]he Earthcare Coalition underscores the need for people of African descent to define, own, and manage their own food and agriculture systems. Read more...
Earthcare Warrior Women ~Pamela Boyce Simms
“This is a female moment in time,” observes Rev Dele, founder of the Virginia-based, Soil Souls. “The Earth and society are about to give birth to a new culture." Read more...
Free the Land: Shirley Sherrod on the Struggle for Black Land and Economic Independence ~The Laura Flanders Show
In 1969 Shirley Sherrod co-founded a collective farm in Lee County, Georgia. At 6,000 acres, it was the largest tract of black-owned land in the United States. Watch...
Pittsburgh Resilience & Relocalization Lessons: Work Smart and Beware the Wolf ~Pamela Boyce Simms
What can distressed communities like Larimer realistically do to chart and clear a pathway out of poverty? What’s possible? And what part does environmental resilience play in the story? Read more...
The Nexus of Gentrification and Environmentalism ~Pamela Boyce Simms
Groundwork typifies the prerequisites for sustained African American involvement: jobs, authentic emergence of programming from the community, compelling cultural relevance, and -- most especially -- African American project governance. Read more...
African Americans, Organizing and the Transition Environmental Movement ~Pamela Boyce Simms
A distinct, robust Afrocentric agroecology movement is growing throughout the Mid-Atlantic region. Its emergence is parallel to the mainstream environmental and eco-justice movements. Read more...
Water Chronicles
The Way of Water ~Betsy Damon
In 1985, inspired by the dry river beds I saw while driving and camping across the United States, I set out to capture the power and rhythm of those rivers. Read more...
World Water Day! – Iconic Woodstock, NY Fights Water Battle and Wins ~Pamela Boyce Simms
Community activists swung into action when the Niagara Bottling Company attempted to syphon off public water resources for private gain in Woodstock, New York. Read more...
Movement Building
Michael Johnson and Pamela Boyce Simms discuss the need for self-accountability in our movements and some of the ways to get there. Listen...
The movement would do well to dig deeper than the convenient, catch all label, “burnout” to describe why the preponderance of Transition initiatives flame up and then fizzle. Read more...
Change is something many would rather avoid, but it's happening now, at pace, regardless, just as it has been for many years in other parts of the world (Syria, Greece, Brazil, to name just 3). Read more...
Community is the Heart of Resilience ~Pamela Boyce Simms
Imagine a respite from the relentless torrent of bad news! Both The Transition Towns (Transition) and Intentional Communities movements facilitate secession, to varying degrees, from the exploitive culture that surrounds us. Read more...
Why we need more mavericks, not less ~Rob Hopkins
[A]s organisations become more and more risk averse, when social media means that the condemnation of perceived mistakes can be so punishing and instant, fewer and fewer people are willing to really put themselves out there. Read more...
This Revolution Will Not Be Centralized: Mid-Atlantic Hub Creates 'Egalitarian Spokescouncil' ~Pamela Boyce Simms
Activists promote, post, and petition for equality. We demand egalitarian treatment of others, and for others. Yet, do our own daily actions indicate that we value each other’s humanity equally? Do the networks and organizations of those who advocate non-hierarchical, egalitarian relationship and governance, in fact reflect those practices? Read more...
Peak oiler? Not Catholic? You should still stand with the pope on climate ~Erik Curren
Let Pope Francis inspire you to finally get serious about climate, a problem that we know is already here and whose future consequences will be unthinkable — unless the world seriously changes its ways, oil crash or not. Read more...
Inspiration for the burned-out localizer ~Erik Curren
While Marx predicted that socialism would follow capitalism, Richard Heinberg predicts the next thing will be localism. Read more...
Reskilling for a Post-Carbon Future
Slow Tech Solutions to Reinvigorate Water Highways ~Andrew Willner
Transition fosters and supports the revitalization of Slow Tech skills and asks us to relearn the proficiency needed to reanimate the skills need to build and navigate sailing vessels and canal boats while reinvigorating our bioregional water highways for a post carbon future. Read more...
Reinvigorating Mid-Atlantic Waterways: Traditional and Artisanal Fishing ~Andrew Willner
There are places where traditional fishing is still practiced, and fishermen have the knowledge to pass on. From Maine to the Carolinas, fishermen and the communities in which they live are starting to “take back” the management of their fisheries. Read more...
The Great Transition: Shifting from Fossil Fuels to Solar and Wind Energy ~Earth Policy Institute
The energy transition is here. As fossil fuel resources shrink, as air pollution worsens, and as concerns about climate instability cast a shadow over the future of coal, oil, and natural gas, a new world energy economy is emerging. The old economy, fueled largely by coal and oil, is being replaced with one powered by solar and wind energy. Read more...
Resources
New envronmentalism and Transition Pittsburgh ~Suzanne Staggenborg & Corrine Ogrodnik
Transition Pittsburgh’s entrepreneurial orientation and commitment to the open space model of organizing support a fluid movement, but limit its capacity to devise strategies and grow as an organization. Read more...
Book Review - 21 Stories of Transition and the Great Imagining: Why Transition Matters ~Erik Lindberg
In advance of this year’s international climate conference (COP21), [Rob] Hopkins assembled into a single collection 21 Stories of Transition, highlighting some of the accomplishments that Transition Groups from around the globe have made. Read more...
The Transition Movement: Questions of Diversity, Power and Affluence ~Esther Alloun and Samuel Alexander
The danger is that the Transition movement may end up as little more than an exclusive middle class club for nice, comfortable people who already have the resources and options to adapt. Read more...
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