Transition Culture: Pushing Back to a Greener Future

Submitted photo Soular Brothers: Max Isles, Chris Prelitz and Ron May, core team members of Transition Laguna, atop a home equipped with solar panels in North Laguna. When Becky Prelitz started perusing some of her husband's books with titles such as "Power Down," "Peak Everything," "The Party's Over" and "The Final Energy Crisis," she got depressed. So depressed, in fact, about a future without endless inexpensive gasoline, electricity and water that she slept for six months. "It was too much doom and gloom so I literally took a six-month nap," she claimed.

When she woke up from her Rip-Van-Winkle reaction to what she dubbed post petroleum stress disorder, she found another book on her doorstep, "The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resiliency" by Rob Hopkins and Richard Heinberg. The book replicates the original transition town movement in culturally eclectic Totnes, England, in 2006. She decided to read it.

"It was happy, bubbling over with joy, and I thought, 'I can do that'." "That" became Transition Laguna Beach, a grassroots movement to gradually help "transition" Laguna into a self-sustaining community in terms of food, water and energy with ecologically friendly solutions that bring people together.

Staff photo by Ted Reckas Facing the Future: "Green" Gene Sottosanto and Anna Krajec, members of Transition Laguna's food work group, tendingAt the heart of the movement, said Prelitz, is the simple vision: "To imagine that the future with less oil could be preferable to where we are now."

Last February, Laguna became the 10th official Transition Town in the U.S. and the 129th in the world. Five weeks later, 21 new transition towns popped up, 11 of which were in the states. Boulder, Colo., heralds in as the first U.S. Transition Town (May '08). Los Angeles became the first Transition "City" last December. Laguna is the southernmost T-town in California and, so far, the only one in Orange County.

There are now 29 official U.S. Transition "Initiatives," which include entities other than towns. Carolyne Stayton, executive director of Transition United States in Sebastopol, expects that number to swell to 1,000 in the next two years.

The economic crisis, climate change and last summer's spike in gas prices have made everyone nervous, said Stayton. "The problems are so dire that the positivity of Transition Town counterbalances that. People have such a wonderful experience building community resilience, actually getting to know your neighbors and talking over the fence, and maybe taking down your fence and building a common garden there instead."

To get things moving here, the Prelitzes got out their address book to put a core team together. They whittled the list down to 20 and "seven stuck," Becky Prelitz said. The new-age magnificent seven will work together for one year, she says, "to steer this movement along and usher it in."

Max Isles, yoga teacher and board member of the Ecology Center in San Juan Capistrano who holds a double college degree in environmental science and economics, is one of the core team members. "Even if climate change and peak oil are a big hoax, which I don't believe they are, we'll still be better off. We'll be eating organic food we grow ourselves, walking to places like the coffee shop around the corner and meeting our neighbors. So why not take the transition movement path?" he asked.

At the first Transition Laguna Beach introduction meeting held May 19, Prelitz took the group on a guided meditation, asking them to close their eyes and imagine a future with less dependence on fossil fuel:

Imagine Laguna after the transition necessitated by a declining oil supply and changing climate. People are living selfsustainably with fewer cars, more human-powered transportation and neighborhood gardens where they exchange produce. "You wake up," Prelitz prompted the group, "and there is something different in the sounds you hear. What do you hear?

"You walk out of your house and what do you see? Is there a garden in the front yard? What's happening in what we used to call the street? Who do you meet and what do you talk about? How are you getting around town? Are you walking, biking, taking a trolley? On a horse? In a hybrid? What's your spiritual practice? How do you feel inside?"

The group consensus was that they felt happy. People said they heard birds singing, bike chimes, laughter. Bread was baking and vegetables were fresh from their gardens. Utopia sans autopia.

In practical terms, there are obstacles big and banal. "The problem," said Ziad Mazboudi, a San Juan Capistrano senior civil engineer who attended the meeting, "is how we think about things." Mazboudi proposed a composting toilet as an alternative to expensive sewer lines at a proposed SJC community orchard. "People looked at me like I was crazy and said my idea stinks, but it's time to try new things. The Bronx Zoo's main exhibit these days is their composting toilet," he claimed.

Pardon the skewed pun, but it's not a matter of out with the new and in with the old. "The movement is bringing the best of the old and adding it to the best of today," said Prelitz. "It's not about going back in time or anti-technology."

Over the next year, Transition Laguna Beach plans to increase public awareness by offering free movie nights Wednesdays and Fridays with films on germane topics at YogaWorks in South Laguna and Oasis Child downtown, as well as on-going introduction meetings. Their next meeting is on Tuesday, June 16, at 6:30 p m., upstairs at Laguna Beach Board of Realtors, 939 Glenneyre Street, and their next film, Wednesday, June 17, at 6:30 p.m. is a free screening of "Are We Running Dry?" to be shown at Oasis Child, 380 Glenneyre Street.

Robinson is a longtime Laguna Beach-based writer. herbs, vegetables and fruit-bearing trees in a backyard garden, a practice encouraged in "sustainable" towns.