Transition Town Collapse

Transition Voice had an excellent interview with John Michael Greer.  I give them credit because to some degree he is not telling them what they want to here, and they posted it without a lot of whining.

Transition plans and meetings a waste of time, says Greer
Erik Currin, Transition Voice, 21 November 2011.

Somebody had to try it, but it doesn’t seem to be working so far. By and large, Transition has fallen into the standard model of contemporary activism—that is, it’s given rise to small groups on the margins of society, pursuing their projects as if the rest of the world was watching, which it isn’t. It’s indicative that in Totnes, one of the two towns on the planet that has actually finished crafting a Transition Plan, only around 5% of the local population took part in the process at any level. Even that level of public involvement appears far beyond the reach of most US Transition groups.

Note this quote is only part of the first answer to the first question.  He particularly takes issue with he consensual approach to governance: a methodology I believe comes from the communist-anarchist movement. There are of course other models for affecting change:

 
• Charismatic leadership driven organizations (cult of personality)
 
• Government top down
 
• Revolution by disaffected elites
 
• Revolution by the masses (peasant revolt, urban bread riots)
 
• Commerce driven enterprises (specialized "gated" communities)
 
• Civic clubs
 
• Individual effort (prepping or survivalism would be the analogous example here)