While government leaders struggle to find solutions to our country’s—and the world’s—economic woes, a grass-roots movement has quietly sprung up—and continues to grow—to find community solutions to the twin threats of climate change and fossil fuel depletion. The Transition Towns movement, as it is called, came to life in the United Kingdom two to three years ago, inspired by the work of educator and planner Rob Hopkins, and now counts among its numbers more than 600 towns all over the world.

Hopkins has been instrumental in organizing conferences and programs to help educate the public about the challenges he believes society will face in the coming years. In 2005 he worked with second-year students at Kinsale Further Education College (FEC) to develop a comprehensive “energy descent plan,” designed to show how Kinsale could make the transition away from being an oil-dependent culture. In August he published the book The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience, which lays out a methodology for action by people looking to build sustainable communities.

Some of those people live right here in Central Mass., and they have organized local groups to address fossil fuel dependence through a new focus on “relocalization,” where people would get their needs met within or near their communities and would work together to find sustainable alternatives to those aspects of life with high energy demands.

On Thursday, Jan. 8, several of those groups came together in Volunteers Hall to discuss how they might make use of the methodology laid out in Hopkins’ book. Organizers included Carolyn McCreary, chairwoman of Ayer’s Board of Selectman and founder of Ayer Local; Chris Ryan, member of Ayer Local and director of planning and development in Ayer; Sydney Blackwell, cofounder of Harvard Local; and Lisa Wiesner, member of Groton Local. About 30 people attended, from Ayer, Bolton, Boxborough, Concord, Groton, Harvard, Stow, and Westborough. Most of the groups have already made their way through several of the 12 steps laid out in the book for beginning “the transition journey”:

1. Set up a steering group (and design its demise from the outset).
2. Raise awareness (through movie screenings, book groups, discussion groups).
3. Lay the foundations (network with existing groups and activists).
4. Organize a “great unleashing” (some memorable milestone).
5. Form subgroups (to focus on specific aspects of the transition process, such as food, energy, transportation, etc.).
6. Use “open space” (a meeting with no specific agenda, organized to explore a particular topic).
7. Develop visible, practical manifestations of the project (show transition progress).
8. Facilitate the “great reskilling” (relearn skills our grandparents took for granted, those that have been lost to time and modern convenience, such as gardening, cooking, food preservation, bread-making, repairing, etc.).
9. Build a bridge to local government (cultivate positive and productive relationships with local authorities).
10. Honor the elders (learn from their experience).
11. Let it go where it wants to go (act as a catalyst for the community to design its own transition).
12. Create an energy descent plan (put it all together).

The collective group of “Locals” plans to meet again within the next month to work on an “envisioning” process, as a way to clearly articulate what their communities might look like after a transition to a more sustainable way of life. All agreed on the urgency of this planning

Wiesner said, “These are the biggest problems we face of all time.”