A Creative Community Response to Peak Oil and Climate Change

Community Rising is a grassroots initiative seeking local solutions to address two of the greatest challenges of our time:
Climate Change and Peak Oil

We started a transition initiative in our community because we are concerned about these realities. We believe that our community presently lacks the resilience to enable us to weather the severe energy shocks that will accompany peak oil and maintain our quality of life. We believe that we are presented with a great opportunity to rethink the way we live and to make conscious choices about our future. Our aim is to explore the diversity of pathways that will reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and rebuild a localized economy.

Our actions are based on these four key assumptions:

• That life with dramatically lower energy consumption is inevitable, and that it’s better to plan for it than to be taken by surprise.
• That our communities presently lack the resilience to enable them to weather the severe energy shocks that will accompany peak oil.
• That we have to act collectively, and we have to act now.
• The most effective response to this change will be a community response. No one can tell when the how fast the changes will arrive and it takes time to build up the resources

By unleashing our collective genius to proactively design a resilient community, we can build ways of living that are richer in meaning, more connected to self/others/nature, and more in harmony with the earth.

We are not alone. We are a part of the rapidly growing UK based Transition Network which gives us access to a range of educational materials, training courses, tools & resources and support to help our Initiative. On July 22, 2008 Ketchum became the 3rd official Transition Initiative in the United States. As of March 1, 2011 there are 352 official initiatives and the list keeps growing.