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The Transition Timeline

For a Local, Resilient Future

by Shaun Chamberlin

Foreword by Rob Hopkins

Praise

"Shaun is one of those rare people who combines a deep and detailed knowledge of his subject, a strong passion for it and the ability to write about it in a readable and accessible style."

—Patrick Whitefield, reviewed in Permaculture Magazine

"In this refreshingly real and hopeful book, Shaun Chamberlin lays out the many aspects of the limits to our growth, and highlights the fact that cultural change is likely our only successful path forward. We undoubtedly face serious biological and biophysical constraints that our forebears did not. The Transition Timeline gives us a guide on how to best use science and culture in adapting to our new situation."

—Nate Hagens, Editor of The Oil Drum

"Highly readable and well researched - this book is a hugely valuable contribution to Transition thinking. With grace and wit Shaun Chamberlin ably scopes out the combined dangers of peak oil and climate change and shows us what we can do to avoid their worst impacts. Read it and implement its wisdom if you want to help create a liveable future."

—Dr. Stephan Harding, Co-ordinator of the MSc in Holistic Science at Schumacher College, and author of Animate Earth: Science, Intuition and Gaia.

"The Transition Timeline isn't another climate jeremiad, but a map of the course we'll need to take over the coming decade if we are to save our planet, and ourselves. It is a book of hopeful realism, making clear that the future we want remains in our grasp -- but only for a short while longer."

—Jamais Cascio, Co-founder of WorldChanging.com and founder of OpenTheFuture.com

"Shaun Chamberlin ties down the uncertainties about climate, energy, food, water and population, the big scene setters of our future, with no-nonsense authority. What we get with The Transition Timeline is a map of the landscape we have to find a way through. Don't set out without it. You will have a good idea of where you are, and inspiration about where you are going. It is almost as good as getting there."

—David Fleming, Director of The Lean Economy Connection, and author of Energy and the Common Purpose

"While definitely focused on empowering the community rather than the policy makers, this book is much more than a folksy agenda for comfort in the crisis. It is a serious plan to reconstruct society in the light of ecological and energetic realities, informed by the best evidence about the vortex of forces influencing the global crisis. Chamberlin runs along a knife edge between the harsh realities facing the whole of humanity on the one hand, and hope and pragmatic vision on the other, outlining a pragmatic plan for a society-wide adaptation to the energy descent future. Let's see if we can run along that knife edge; we have nothing to lose."

—David Holmgren, Co-originator of the Permaculture concept, and author of Future Scenarios

"Without a vision of what can be, there is no alternative to a future completely constrained by the past. The ideal future set forth herein is not a useless pipe-dream. There is not a single outcome described in The Transition Timeline that could not realistically be achieved IF we all do things beginning now that are entirely within our ability to do. So here it is: the map and timeline of how to save our world and ourselves. Whether we WILL take up these suggestions as scheduled is a question for the cynics and dreamers to debate. For us realists, the only relevant questions are, Where do we start?, and, Will you join us?"

—Richard Heinberg, Senior fellow of the Post Carbon Institute, and author of eight books, including The Party’s Over and Peak Everything.