by Cate Ferguson

Created on: October 12, 2009   Last Updated: October 16, 2009

Do you think that our society is ready for a Post Oil future?

Do we even really know what that means?

I heard little sound bytes on the radio or the television every now and again but couldn't really put my finger on what "Post Oil Future" really means. Especially, what it will mean for me and those that I love.

Then I started reading about the Transition Towns movement. Now it started to make sense to me - perhaps I just needed some practical information and things to do to make it really sink in.

Leading up to hearing about the Transition Towns movement I read a book, a good few years ago now, by a man from Australia, called David Holmgren. Now David is pretty smart, committed to living sustainably and teaches extensively so that other people who want to can create sustainable lives too. He was part of the duo who put the pieces together and created the Permaculture movement. Type that word into your browser and just see what an impact those ideas have had on the planet.

This man is to be taken seriously.

So when he started to talk about Peak Oil, I listened.

Now, out of Permaculture thinking (and a lot more too) has come the Transition Town movement. Beginning in England and the brainchild of Rob Hopkins (another thoughtful person) and now popping up all over the world.

Transition Towns. That's an interest word, Transition don't you think?

I mean to me it's much softer than the word Change and yet, at it's deepest level it means much the same thing. I realise it means change but it has so much more potential.

I used to work in a government department that was charged with organisational change - in those days that was shorthand for a lot of people losing their jobs and everyone else being jollied along to pick up the workload. Transition on the other hand means change yes, but it also has the potential to mean "evolution" to something different and that has the potential to mean something better.

Now, my dictionary says that Transition is "the act of changing or passing from one form, state, subject or place to another."

Now that sounds participatory and creative and interesting to me, whereas change sounds nasty, like a top-down decision that I'm just going to have to live with. Transition sounds like it can be pulled off by anyone, with a little style even and that is what I think the Transition Movement, which is spreading all over the world, is all about.

Now this movement under it's current guise, started in the UK but it began spreading itself around

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