Have you heard about Transition Denver?

Transition Denver is a branch of an international Transition Movement formed to address the issues of Climate Change, Peak Oil and economic instability. We are only now just beginning to hear more about Climate Change and its impact from government leaders and in the media. But there has not been much discussion (especially in the US) about Peak Oil and the effect it will have on economic instability and our lives.

Here is an explanation of Peak Oil from the (International) Transition Initiatives Primer.

Peak Oil is not about “running out of oil” – we’ll never run out of oil. There will always be oil left in the ground because either it’s too hard to reach or it takes too much energy to extract. But regardless of how much money you can make selling oil, once it takes an oil barrel’s worth of energy to extract a barrel of oil, the exploration, the drilling and the pumping will grind to a halt.

Peak Oil is about the end of cheap and plentiful oil, the recognition that the ever increasing volumes of oil being pumped into our economies will peak and then inexorably decline. It’s about understanding how our industrial way of life is absolutely dependent on this ever-increasing supply of cheap oil. (From Transition Initiatives Primer by Ben Brangwyn and Rob Hopkins)

Nothing exemplifies the concept of “Think globally, Act locally” better than Transitions Denver’s Initiatives on our personal responsibility to affect change. The local Initiatives suggest that we re-localize all essential elements that a community needs to sustain themselves and thrive. But the Initiatives do not dictate just how all of this needs to be done.

“One of the things I really love about the Transition model is that it is not prescriptive,” says Transition Denver organizer, Dana Miller. “It does not come into a community and say ‘here are the top ten things you can do to save the planet’. Transition encourages folks to use their ingenuity and creativity to really look at issues in their own communities, their own neighborhoods, their churches, and discover what responses they can come up with locally. What would be helpful in an urban high-rise building would look very different than in a suburban neighborhood. What would work in a low-income neighborhood would be different that in an elite retirement community.”

There are plenty of groups currently supporting the same local model of sustainable living all over Colorado, and Transition Denver considers it their role to collaborate with these other organizations.‏ Indeed, the Grow Local Colorado Campaign came out of the collaboration between Transition Denver, the Living Earth Center, the Mile High Business Alliance and Denver Botanic Gardens.

The fact that we are even discussing something called “Urban Agriculture” is a testament to the direction our country and our world is taking in the way we grow and distribute our food.

The days of growing food in select areas of the country and transporting it thousands of miles to market will be put to bed by Climate Change, Peak Oil and economic instability. Our lives are personally intertwined with nature and a local garden is a wonderful place to get acquainted with it.

To learn more about Transition Denver and the International Transition Movement go to:

http://transitioncolorado.ning.com/group/transitiondenver

http://www.transitionnetwork.org/resources/transition-primer

http://www.transitionus.org