One of the main aims of every Transition initiative is to develop a plan B for their area – a plan of action for shifting from our reliance on fossil fuels for energy towards a desirable, vibrant, low-carbon future. The first UK Transition initiative, Transition Town Totnes, has just released it’s Energy Descent Plan, which you can check out online or in book form. More info below…
Transition Town Totnes have just released their Energy Descent Action Plan (EDAP). It was recently described by the Chair of Totnes Chamber of Commerce as “the single most important book about Totnes ever published”. It is already turning out to have an impact far beyond that. The EDAP is a comprehensive, lively and colourful community-based guide to reducing local dependence on fossil fuels and reducing the community’s carbon footprint over the next 20 years, a period during which the changes associated with declining oil supplies and the impacts of climate change are anticipated to become more apparent.
Running to over 300 pages and printed in full colour, it also includes some detailed research, such as ‘Can Totnes and District Feed Itself?’ and a full Energy Budget for the area. It opens with a detailed oral history of Totnes in the 1950s, asking what lessons from an energy constrained future can be learnt from an energy constrained past. Packed with humour, imagination and ideas, the Totnes EDAP is the perfect antidote to environmental gloom and doom, showing that peak oil, climate change and the bursting of the debt bubble need not be seen as a crisis, rather as a huge opportunity for entrepreneurship, creativity, community, enhanced resilience and a greater quality of life.
The EDAP was developed by Transition Town Totnes and the community of Totnes and District, a busy market town and its fifteen encircling parishes. Its creation engaged the community in a 20-month process of visioning, backcasting, brainstorming and designing a community pathway to resilience and relocalisation. At the heart of the EDAP are 15 sections covering key sustainability topics from food production to governance. As the world’s first EDAP, this is essential reading for anyone interested in the Transition approach, and in proactive, solutions-focused responses to environmental challenges. You can preview the Totnes EDAP here, and order copies here.
