Like Totnes, Lewes in East Sussex is keen to embrace some of the "old" way of life and even has plans to create an oral-history archive, interviewing older residents to record their experiences. Andi Mindel is one of the volunteers for Transition Town Lewes and explains that they are gearing up for their "unleashing" today.
"There is a sense that people are ready for this in Lewes. Everybody is welcome to get involved and it is an all-inclusive process. We have had great progress with the town council agreeing to let us use four pieces of land for allotments and we are looking at bulk-buying solar panels as a cooperative. We have been into schools and made a short film [available to view on YouTube] that the local cinema showed before each of its screenings about the concept of peak oil," Mindel said.
It is this feeling of achievement that lies at the heart of the transition towns movement. Duncan Law, volunteer for the Brixton project, said he was attracted to the concept because the community could pull together and make a difference quickly.
"I've found that climate change deals with the invisible and has very little positivity about it, whereas this is all about positivity. Everybody can get stuck in and design the change -- it is very much a bottom-up initiative," he said.
And it isn't just people in the UK who are committing to change without the support of their governments. In the US, 400 mayors have signed up to the US Mayors' Climate Protection Agreement, which pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions and meet the goals of the Kyoto protocol.
Austin, Texas, has a climate protection plan that aims to make city buildings reliant on renewable energy by 2012, and Woodstock, New York -- made world famous by its 1969 festival -- is aiming to erase its carbon footprint within a decade.
Hopkins believes that to motivate people to change you have to present an attractive alternative.
"A future without oil could be better than the present if we use our imagination and think creatively," he said.
The challenge for the transition townies is replicating the success of market towns such as Totnes and Lewes in cities such as Bristol and London.
"I think we have a bigger hill to climb in Brixton than other places. There is not one community here -- it is incredibly diverse and it can be difficult to reach people," Law said.
Hopkins believes the only way the model can work in cities is if they split it into neighborhoods and have one networking body overseeing them all. He admits that as the movement grows, fledgling transition towns, such as Lampeter in Wales, which held its first meeting earlier this month, will need more help to put their ideas into practice.
This should be made easier by recent funding for a Transition Towns Network, which will be based in Totnes and will offer support to new groups, and link up with other organizations such as Friends of the Earth.
"Most people are aware that something is up and they want to take action," Mindel said. "We can do something and this seems to be the way forward. Change is not coming from above, so we will just have to show government the way."
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