Overview and History of Transition Sebastopol
Transition Sebastopol was formed in the late summer of 2008 with a core group of people who had participated in a local discussion group called Peak Oil Sebastopol which was formed in 2007. Transition Sebastopol became an official Transition Town in December 2008 and was the 9th Transition Town in the US. There are now over 60 Transition initiatives in the US.
Transition Sebastopol's first public event was in January 2009 and in its first year held over 20 local public events. Transition Sebastopol currently has eight active working groups including four sub-groups of the Food Group (iGrow, Local Food Directory, Re-skilling, Seed Bank), two sub-groups of the Heart & Soul Group (Elders Salon, Meditation Collective), an Energy Group, and Transportation Group (Car-lite). Each week there are now several Transition Sebastopol events and many projects underway.
The mission of Transition Sebastopol is to create a positive vision of the future by cultivating community resilience in response to potential challenges of resource depletion, climate change, and economic instability.
Why Transition Sebastopol
The Transition approach empowers communities to squarely face the challenges of peak oil, climate change and global economic instability, and to unleash the collective genius of their own people to find the answers to this momentous question:
For all those aspects of life that this community needs in order to sustain itself and thrive, how are we going to drastically reduce carbon emissions (in response to climate change), significantly rebuild resilience (in response to peak oil), and greatly strengthen our local economy (in response to economic instability)? Transition Initiatives make no claim to have all the answers, but by building on the wisdom of the past and accessing the pool of ingenuity, skills and determination in our communities, the solutions can readily emerge.
Now is the time for us to take stock and to start re-creating our future in ways that are not based on cheap, plentiful and polluting oil but on localized food, sustainable energy sources, resilient local economies and an enlivened sense of community well-being.
Read about the history of the Transition movement on the Transition US site.