Transition in Action: Totnes and District 2030, an Energy Descent Action Plan - Softcover

There's a great awakening going on today, driven by accelerating climate change and by the era of cheap oil coming to an end. Very few communities are as yet properly prepared for such changes, but this Action Plan for Totnes demonstrates exactly what can now be done and how all of us can get involved. * Jonathon Porritt * 'By planning for a world in which fossil fuels are no longer cheap and abundant, Totnes has set an example that every town and city in the world should follow. The post-carbon transition can be a creative opportunity for societal renewal, but only if we plan for it. And given the realities of climate change and oil depletion, we are all starting very late in the game. Kudos to this brave community for stepping up to the challenge and producing a thorough, far-sighted document!' * Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow of the Post Carbon Institute and author of The Party's Over and Peak * 'The Energy Descent Action plan is a solid piece of work that tells you how to assess what resources a community has - we're talking skills, ecology, potential for food production, social and creative resources - and clearly sets out ways to utilise them properly. It should give millions of us direction - a critically the confidence - to believe that a sustainable life is within our grasp' * Lucy Siegle, ethical living columnist in the Observer, and author of Green Living in the Urban Jungl *

This is a lively and colourful community-based guide to reducing local dependence on fossil fuels and reducing the local carbon footprint over the next 20 years, a period during which they anticipate changes associated with declining oil supplies and the impacts of climate change to become more apparent. The Energy Descent Action Plan has been developed by and for the community of Totnes and District, a busy market town and its fifteen encircling parishes, by engaging the community in a creative process of preparing for resilience based on localization with understanding, skills and inner preparation for the anticipated changes and some of the biggest challenges civilisation has ever faced. At the heart of the EDAP are 15 sections covering key sustainability topics from food production to governance; within each are scenarios of business as usual versus willingness to change proposed with a vision of 2030. It offers a new story of the future, based on a scenario of positive visions and proposes practical pathways of ideas, activities and policy changes across a series of themed timelines to 2030.