Author Archives: Rob Hopkins

I started this  COP21 fortnight on the London Climate March with a slightly random selection of my extended family, spent five hectic days in Paris and have since been following and reflecting on the talks with colleagues and friends. I’ve felt the impact of these experiences on my mind, body and spirit and am now […]

We are at the end of the two weeks of the COP 21 Climate talks here in Paris. I never thought I would get so much out of this event. A year ago, I thought, “Oh, great, another set of Climate talks. It will probably be like Copenhagen, a lot of hot air, huge amounts […]

Our Transition team had been very busy running around in Paris for almost a week covering various official and fringe events of COP21. In spite of the constant running around, I accepted an invitation from Olivier, a member of the Transition Initiative Levallois en Transition (a neighborhood in the outskirts of Paris) to talk about […]

Continuing our exploration of the Transition Story project, we asked different National Hubs for their reflections on the blog that opened our theme on the Transition Story.  Today Cristiano Bottone of Transition Monteveglio and the Transition Italia Hub shares his thoughts: “At the Paris COP21 we’ve seen heads of State, one after the other, declare their understanding […]

If Ernest Hemingway was still alive he might well have said: “If you are lucky enough to have been in Paris for the past two weeks and been part of the movement against climate change, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it will stay with you, for Paris is now a […]

Continuing our exploration of the Transition Story project, we asked different National Hubs for their reflections on the blog that opened our theme on the Transition Story.  Today Silvana Bañados of the Transition Chile Hub shares her thoughts:  “During our first Chile National Hub meeting, different answers were generated referring to the question Rob set out, that […]

I don’t remember a winter as mild as the one the UK is currently experiencing.  Today was only the second frost of the year and it’s the 9th of December.  That comes, of course, in the context of what climatologists argue looks 97% likely to be the hottest year on record.  My father passed away […]

The Solutions COP21 event at Grand Palais that I had visited the previous day was, thanks to its paucity of actual solutions, potentially liable to being sued under the French version of the Trades Descriptions Act.  Anyone wandering its halls would have been hard put to find much that actually built resilient local economies, social […]

Today was the most thought-provoking day, at times viscerally so.  The logo for COP21 says ‘Tous ensemble pour le climat’, or “all together for the climate” (see right).  Yet today was a day when the battle lines felt clearly drawn, or rather the two extremes on display here came into stark, and alarming contrast.  Out […]

A guest blog from Naresh Giangrande: I am not in Paris. I have been following events there in the mainstream and alt media and via Transition Network’s coverage, and our own internal Silent Skype feed.   Over here, in the UK, it feels like madness to be negotiating the most important treaty in history amid […]

I’m now over half way through my time here in Paris, and it is pretty hectic really.  It can feel like being pulled in many different directions and really quite intense and tiring sometimes.  It is useful then, in such moments, to reconnect with what it is that we in Transition are doing, and why […]

I spent the morning at Place to B doing interviews, one for National Geographic France, and the other with an online magazine who wanted to know what my ideal house would be like in 2050.  Enjoyed that.  Given that I would be 82 by then, it was a rather fetching strawbale home with clay plasters, […]

Chris Bird guest blogs from Paris: A few weeks ago we showed Naomi Kleins’ film – ‘This Changes Everything’ at the Totnes Film Festival. The film outlines how, over the past 400 years the predominant story about us and the planet is that we can subdue and control Nature to meet our needs. Kleins’ film […]

This shouldn’t take so long as today was, compared to past days, relatively uneventful.  Its first half was dominated by the Transition Network website going down, leading to lots of scrabbling around and my being unable to upload various things that I needed to upload.  I got to Le Bourget at about 11, and found […]

Tuesday was kind of a catch up day really, until the evening. I spent most of the day at Place to B near Gare du Nord, catching up with stuff and doing interviews.  Did one of those at about 10 which resulted in the interviewer telling my colleague that not only did he have everything […]

Our Guest Reporter Henry Owen reports: Last night I found myself heading to the Champs-Élysées with an assorted bunch of Transitioners and Transition Network staff to a very unusual event for us – a glitzy film premiere! The film – Demain – focuses on solutions to the environmental crises we face, and takes a fairly holistic view. It […]

Our Paris Roving Reporter Henry Owen reports: So I’m in Paris for COP21 – but of course, not actually for COP21, but for all of the amazing and energetic events and actions that are planned to coincide with it. I arrived Wednesday with some friends by car (driving in Paris is, it turns out, a […]

Today was my first visit to La Bourget, the vast conference centre complex on the edge of Paris where COP21 is taking place.  Amid very tight security, helicopters flying overhead, Robocop-style policemen and police on horseback, it certainly felt very different to the events and venues I had been at so far.  About 10,000 people […]

From our Roving Reporter, Henry Owen: So on Saturday I was lucky enough to visit Le Pré-Saint-Gervais en Transition‘s ‘Disco Soupe’ event! This municipality – one of the poorer districts around Paris, just outside the ring road to the North East – has a population of about 15,000 and a transition group about 2 years old. The […]

Paris authorities banned the planned Peoples’ Climate March that was supposed to take place in Paris today on security grounds although, as Naomi Klein pointed out, football matches were allowed to proceed on the grounds that “life must go on”.  “Indeed it must”, she replied, “that’s why I joined the climate movement”. It was odd […]

This will be a brief report given that it’s late and I need to get some sleep!  Emilio Mula (filmmaker) and I, after a very early bleary start from Totnes, arrived in Paris around 3pm to be met by some Paris Transitioners, who, among other things, told us about the climate activists in Paris who […]

[Original here]. Launched in time for COP21 in Paris, 21 Stories of Transition shows what 21 projects have done to move away from destructive, fossil fuel ‘business as usual’, demonstrating that it is possible to create positive change on a community-wide scale. Be inspired! Published as the Transition movement’s contribution to the COP21 negotiations beginning in […]

I am one of the people who made it to the end of watching the series ‘Lost’.  I really quite enjoyed it in places, but in the end it got bogged down in its own silliness, with plot lines that went nowhere and the promise that the whole thing would eventually make sense (which it […]

COP21 is the international climate negotiations which, it is hoped, will produce a global binding agreement on carbon emissions.  It’s a moment in history, and many Transitioners are feeling drawn to being there.  Sadly, following the recent violence in Paris, there is some uncertainty around a few of the planned events.  Please treat this guide […]

Last weekend’s dreadful events in Paris were appalling.  Like many people I am still in shock and grief, and want to send huge love and support to everyone affected, especially our friends doing Transition across Paris.  I hope they are all safe.  I also recognise that we live in a world with a ‘hierarchy of […]

Today Erik Lindberg of Transition Milwaukee reviews ’21 Stories of Transition’ (available here).     Rio, Kyoto, Copenhagen, and Paris In December, representatives from governments from across the Earth will descend upon Paris in hopes, once again, of hammering out a global agreement to limit carbon dioxide emissions to the point where human civilization might […]

If your kitchen table is like ours, a stream of unrelated inanimate and animate objects drift across its surface on a daily basis: a puncture repair kit; pots of PVA glue (without their tops); electricity bills, the cat…  Yesterday I was thrilled to see my copy of 21 Stories of Transition there and scooted the […]

With fewer than three weeks to go until the start of COP21, the UN’s climate negotiations in Paris, a question arises: Will this gathering make the slightest difference?  For Rob Hopkins, editor of a new book from Transition Network, 21 Stories of Transition, answer is yes – but a different kind of yes than the global leaders […]

Last week we introduced a piece of work we have been doing at Transition Network called ‘The Transition Story’, which is also our theme for November and December.  In a blog entitled ‘The Transition Story: time to stop talking about climate change?‘, I gave a brief overview of the basic idea and the new suggested […]

Yesterday we gathered with Totnes Mayor Jacqi Hodgson to formally launch our new book ’21 Stories of Transition’.  Our last publication, ‘The Power of Just Doing Stuff’ was launched into the River Dart two years ago with the previous Totnes Mayor in a boat fashioned from a pumpkin.  We did also ‘launch’ that book into […]

On Monday we launch our new book ’21 Stories of Transition’ and today we begin our build up to COP21 in Paris which starts at the end of the month.  Often our default setting as people who are motivated by climate change is to lobby, demonstrate and campaign to try to bring pressure to bear […]

In our final post on our theme of fairness, we talk to Julie Brown.  Julie is Director of Growing Communities, a social enterprise based in Hackney in North East London. They run a box scheme which supplies vegetables  to about 1000 households in Hackney and run the weekly Stoke Newington Farmers’ Market.  They also do […]

Back in 2010 a few of us hardy souls formed Northaw Transition, in our little village in South Hertfordshire. We ran a number of small scale initiatives involving the local village and primary school; battery and clothes recycling projects, environmental audits, a small school orchard, educational awareness campaigns and stalls, a community garden, a community […]

Over the last 2 months we have been looking into Fairness from a variety of angles.  We opened with an editorial by Sophy Banks which put fairness at the heart of what we are trying to do in Transition. We spoke to Juliet Davenport of Good Energy, sponsors of the 2015 Transition Network International Conference, […]

Today we have a guest post from Tracey Wheatley, co-ordinator of the Transition Hungary Hub: This is a response to the story recently posted on the Transition homepage about the Refugee Camp in Brussels and the role of Transitioners in getting it up and going. I’m not going to write much about the actual predicament […]

When I went to the recent 2015 International Permaculture Convergence, one workshop I really wanted to go to was about permaculture and prisons.  I couldn’t go though, as I had to be somewhere else. So I subsequently got in touch with Nicole Vosper, who led that workshop, and interviewed her instead!  Nicole lives in Somerset, […]

We recently came across this great article, written by Tracy L Barnett for Magis Magazine (original here) which she very kindly allowed us to repost here.   “One of the early Transition Town initiatives was launched in Ensenada, Baja California, by an American expat, Robert Frey. Frey went to Queretaro, Mexico, in 2010 to a permaculture […]

Over the next couple of months we’ll be exploring Practical Projects, one element of our Support Offer.  Our  Transition Initiative Support Coordinator Mike Thomas introduces the theme:  Practical Projects Practical projects show that change is possible and that Transition is a real thing that exists. They can be creative, great fun, an opportunity to learn new […]

Lay out the map of Hannover and the first thing that strikes you is the amount of green space in the city.  About 25% of the city is green space, it includes a forest, and it is home to 20,000 ‘Kleingärten’ (small gardens), which are larger than allotments, and managed by associations.  It also has […]

It’s a question many people are asking, and it’s one that was discussed at the Transition Network conference a couple of weeks ago.  While there is no definitive answer, and the response will look different in each place, I thought you might be inspired to hear the story I recently heard when I visited Brussels. […]

I was recently travelling to Ungersheim in France to give a talk, a journey that involved passing through several train stations.  On the journey I had been reading Michael Shuman’s fantastic new book ‘The Local Economy Solution’ (highly recommended).  In it, he paints a rigorous and passionate case for economic localisation, and in particular what […]

On me demande souvent à quoi cela ressemblerait si un gouvernement local prenait réellement la transition par les cornes, la démarrait, et agissait comme un catalyseur pour que la communauté puisse démarrer un processus de transition significatif et impactant. Après avoir visité Ungersheim en Alsace, une région de l’Est de la France, je peux maintenant […]

I am often asked the question what it might look like if a local government really took Transition by the horns, initiated it, and acted as the catalyst for the community to start a meaningful and impactful Transition process.  Having visited Ungersheim in the Alsace region of eastern France, I can now tell you exactly […]

The 2015 Transition Network International Conference was the first we’d run since 2012, which was at Battersea Arts Centre in London.  Our home was the very beautiful Seale Hayne, near Newton Abbot, and a remarkable few days it was too.  While the amazing Transition Network team, supported this year by Dan Hurring of Another World […]

It’s a few weeks since the Exeter Pound, which we last caught up with a few months ago, was launched.  As we explore our theme of fairness, we asked Martyn Goss, one of the currency’s Directors, to share this thoughts as to how the scheme will make Exeter a fairer city:   “September 2015 saw […]

Richard Wilkinson is Emeritus Professor of Social Epidemiology at the University of Nottingham.  He is the co-author, with Kate Pickett, of the seminal book ‘The Spirit Level’.  Much of his work has focused on health inequalities and the effects of income inequality on population health.  We started our conversation, given our theme this month, with […]

One of the highlights of the recent International Permaculture Conference in London was a keynote by permaculture educator and designer Geoff Lawton.  Geoff is renowned through his website for his online videos and courses, and is perhaps best known for his greening the desert work.  The second day of the conference looked at scaling up, […]

While government can famously tend to be siloed, each department working in isolation from each other, at the community scale, that’s not a problem we face.  Making communities more resilient is all about joining things up, making connections.  As a result, we look at energy generation in a very different way to Energy Secretary Amber […]

Juliet Davenport is the founder and CEO of Good Energy, who are the main sponsors of the 2015 Transition Network International Conference.  As part of our current theme on ‘Fairness’, we spoke to Juliet and started by asking her what, for her, does a fair energy system look like? Here’s the audio, followed by a […]

Sophy Banks reflects on why this year’s Transition Network International Conference looks set to have the greatest buzz of any so far… This year’s Transition Conference in Devon is looking set to be the most global event Transition Network has hosted so far. People are coming from countries that haven’t been represented before, as well […]

It’s just over 2 weeks until the Transition Network International Conference.  We think it’s going to be a fantastic, life-changing, reaffirming, inspirational few days.  But don’t just take it from us.  If you are still deciding whether to come or not, we thought you might like to see a selection of the feedback from our […]

Clare Power just finished her PhD looking at Transition in Australia, and wanted to share her key findings through the following letter to Transitioners.  She has also kindly made her full research available, you can download it further down the page. Over to you Clare… Dear fellow Transitioners Firstly I’d like to honour and acknowledge […]