[Scpg] a report on the Sept 20 Transition event in LA

[LBUZZELL at aol.com]

The “Life  After Oil” Transition event Sept 20 in Los  Angeles 
The “Seeds  Committee” of Transition Town Santa Barbara (Cat, Mark, Roy, 
Linda and Larry)  bundled into our Honda Hybrid at 6:30 am to make the trek to 
the wilds of LA for  the first Transition event we had been to since TTSB began 
a few weeks before in  a local Irish pub.   
We had our  first meeting in this pub for three reasons: (1) in honor of the 
founding of the  Transition movement in Kinsale, Ireland (2) because we heard 
permaculturist  Graham Barnett on Sustainable World Radio tell our own Jill 
Cloutier that his UK  Transition Town effort had also been founded in a pub and 
(3) most importantly,  two of the key concepts in the Transition movement are 
fun and community, and a  good local pub meets both of those criteria! 
We arrived at  a lovely Episcopal church in Westchester (LA) and were 
delighted to see many old  and new friends from up and down the Central and Southern  
California watersheds.  Bob Banner (_www.hopedance.org_ 
(http://www.hopedance.org/) ), Jim  Cole and permaculture teacher Larry Santoyo were among those 
from the SLO  area.  Sarah and Paul Edwards  arrived from Pine Mountain Club.  
We  also enjoyed connecting with other Santa  Barbara and  Central  Coast folks 
like Kristine Haugh and  Heather Mathes who are passionate about Transition 
and we all did a lot of  schmoozing over the delicious vegetarian lunch 
provided by Rev.  Peter. 
Environmental  Change-Makers’ Joanne Poyourow was our guide for the day.  We 
explored the hard facts of global  climate disruption and Peak Oil and 
explored the solutions suggested by  permaculture co-founder David Holmgren, Peak Oil 
expert Richard Heinberg,  ecophilosopher Joanna Macy and Transition founder 
Rob Hopkins.  We watched a You Tube video of Rob and  Joanne also read us a 
special letter to this group meeting in LA from Rob, which  I’ve included below. 
In the spirit  of Transition, there was a lot of grassroots talking and 
networking as we  divided up into geographical regions. Our group did some creative 
brain-storming  about how to bring Transition to the  Central  Coast. 
After an  intense and exhilarating day of Transition Talk we took Larry’s 
Santoyo’s advice  and decompressed in a great Thai restaurant on Hwy 1 in Malibu, 
full of energy  and ideas about how Santa Barbara can transition to far 
greater local  resilience. 
Transition  cheers, 
Linda 
LETTER FROM  ROB HOPKINS TO OUR SEPT 20 TRANSITION EVENT IN LA: 
A while ago  here in Totnes in Devon, a group came to see me from  Brazil.  
They asked if the Transition model would  work in  Brazil.  I asked where in  
Brazil, and they  said Sao Paolo. “You mean you’re asking if a model that 
works in a town of 8000  people will work in a city of 10 million people?  I have 
no idea.”  And I don’t.  I have no way mentally of imagining  anywhere that 
big.  LA is even  bigger, and so likewise, I cannot guarantee that what we have 
developed here  will be successful. 
I do know  that here in the  UK, the way  urban Transition projects (and 
there are many of them now) are working is to  break the city into neighbourhoods 
and then train, inspire and network  them.  Working at the neighbourhood  
scale means working at a scale people feel they can influence.  They are 
developing many new tools and  approaches, and this is what is exciting about 
Transition, we are all making  this up as we go along. 
I would  suggest you don’t call what you are doing Transition  Town LA.  You 
aren’t a town, you are a city, and that is something to  celebrate.  
Transition City  LA.  We  need to find ways of reclaiming what it means to live in a 
sustainable city, not  just wish it were a town.  In doing  this work you will 
develop your own tools, your own insights, your own  vocabulary.  The work you 
are  starting to do is seminally important.  You are pioneers, doing some of 
the most important work to be undertaken  anywhere.  I wish you well, and  
please keep the rest of the many hundreds of communities around the world also  
doing Transition work posted as to your successes, and perhaps most importantly  
your failures.  We tend not to talk  about those, but they are just as, if 
not more, rich with potential for  learning. 
The Transition of the next 10 years will be from a time when one’s  sense of 
wellbeing, prowess, economic status and social standing directly  correlated 
to one’s amount of oil consumption, to one where one’s degree of oil  
dependency is also one’s degree of vulnerability.  This is an astonishing shift for  
somewhere like LA, but it CAN be done, and the more playful, historical and  
empowering we can make the shift, the more likely it will be to happen, and the  
more likely we are to make it.  All  power to your collective elbows



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