The Author: Shaun Chamberlin was born and grew up in Kingston upon Thames. He graduated in Philosophy from the University of York in 2001 and then went on to work on a project for marginalized groups and trained to work as a teacher. In 2005, Shaun devoted himself full-time to exploring the challenges facing our global community. Following the Life After OilA" course at Schumacher College in 2006, he started his own website, Darkoptimism.org, and helped form Transition Town Kingston in 2007.

Acknowledgements and context. Foreword by Rob Hopkins. Introduction. Finding your way around this book. Climate change - a summary. Peak oil - a summary. Part I Cultural Stories and Visions of the Future: Why cultural stories matter; Vision 1 - Denial; Vision 2 - Hitting the wall; Vision 3 - The impossible dream; Vision 4 - The transition vision; Our choices. Part II A Deeper Look at the Transition Vision: Population and demographics; Food and water; Electricity and energy; Travel and transport; Health and medicine; Wildcards; An overview - systems thinking. Part III Marking Best Use of this Timeline: Timelines and energy descent plans. Part IV Global Context - Climate Change/Fuel Depletion: Peak oil; Peak oil and climate change - the interplay; Climate change explained; Climate change - the IPCC; Climate change - a reality check. Part V UK Context: Peak oil in the UK; Climate change in the UK. Closing thoughts. Ongoing process/feedback. Appendices. Further reading, references and notes. Index.