Rob Hopkins is the founder of the Transition movement, a radically hopeful and community-driven approach to creating societies independent of fossil fuel.
From his bio at Ted.com:
Hopkins leads a vibrant new movement of towns and cities that utilize local cooperation and interdependence to shrink their ecological footprints. In the face of climate change he developed the concept of Transition Initiatives — communities that produce their own goods and services, curb the need for transportation and take other measures to prepare for a post-oil future. While Transition shares certain principles with greenness and sustainability, it is a deeper vision concerned with re-imagining our future in a self-sufficient way and building resiliency.
Transforming theory to action, Hopkins is also the co-founder and a resident of the first Transition Initiative in the UK, in Totnes, Devon. As he refuses to fly, it is from his home in Totnes that he offers help to hundreds of similar communities that have sprung up around the world, in part through his blog, transitionculture.org
Hopkins, who’s trained in ecological design, wrote the principal work on the subject, Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience, a 12-step manual for a postcarbon future.
Hopkins website is “Transition Culture: An evolving exploration into the head, heart and hands of energy descent“, where he asks “How might our response to peak oil and climate change look more like a party than a protest march? This site explores the emerging transition model in its many manifestations” One of the posts I found most thought provoking on his site is Your Free Guide to Setting Up Local Currencies, available in .pdf for download on that page. He discusses in the video below some communities setting up their own currencies and local economies.
Here is Hopkins giving a talk for Ted.com, filmed this past July and posted there in November this year…