Imagine a world in which your neighbor owns some livestock. She sells it to you using currency only accepted in your township. The currency encourages villagers to buy and sell local, including the goods and services you produce.

This is not a vision of some bygone era. According to Rob Hopkins, it’s the future. A place where we’ve built resilient communities that don’t depend on oil. He says the way to make this leap is to create self-sustained “transition towns”.

Hopkins lives in an Irish town called Totnes (TOT-ness) that’s adopting many transition town philosophies. Rob Hopkins explains what motivated him to begin this movement.