Transition Sautee is a growing collection of motivated individuals coming together with a shared concern: how can our community respond to the challenges, and opportunities, of Peak Oil and Climate Change?

Here’s how it all appears to be evolving…

They begin by forming an initiating group and then adopt the Transition Model with the intention of engaging a significant proportion of the people in their community to kick off a Transition Initiative.

A Transition Initiative is a community 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)?”

After going through a comprehensive and creative process of:

Awareness raising around peak oil, climate change and the need to undertake a community lead process to rebuild resilience and reduce carbon

Connecting with existing groups in the community.

Building bridges to local government.

Connecting with other transition initiatives.

Forming groups to look at all the key areas of life (food, energy, transport, health, heart & soul, economics & livelihoods, etc)

Kicking off projects aimed at building people’s understanding of resilience and carbon issues and community engagement.

Eventually launching a community defined, community implemented “Energy Descent Action Plan” over a 15 to 20 year timescale.

This results in a coordinated range of projects across all these areas of life that strives to rebuild the resilience we’ve lost as a result of cheap oil and reduce the community’s carbon emissions drastically.

The community also recognizes two crucial points:

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 on the downslope

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.

If you want to find out more, check out the other menu items on the left hand site of the page.

Final point

Just to weave the climate change and peak oil situations together…

Climate change makes this carbon reduction transition essential

Peak oil makes it inevitable

Transition initiatives make it feasible, viable and attractive

Cheerful disclaimer!

Just in case you were under the impression that Transition is a process defined by people who have all the answers, you need to be aware of a key fact.

We truly don’t know if this will work. Transition is a social experiment on a massive scale.

What we are convinced of is this:

If we wait for the governments, it’ll be too little, too late

If we act as individuals, it’ll be too little

But if we act as communities, it might just be enough, just in time.

Everything that you read on this site is the result of real work undertaken in the real world with community engagement at its heart. This site, just like the transition model, is brought to you by people who are actively engaged in transition in a community. People who are learning by doing – and learning all the time. People who understand that we can’t sit back and wait for someone else to do the work. People like you.

The Future is Local

Transition Sautee Initiating Group

Note:  This is an excerpt adapted for our use from the Transition Handbook, authored by Rob Hopkins.