Rob Hopkins: “If it doesn’t create jobs, this change will remain a hobby for the middle class”

The French-speaking public found his outspoken, smiling face with square glasses in the documentary tomorrow (Melanie Laurent and Cyril Dion, 2015). In Totnes, Devon, a town of 7000 inhabitants, where he teaches permaculture, Rob Hopkins began his quest for energy and food autonomy in 2006. Its knowledge comes from a long experience. Born in 1968, Rob Hopkins lived in a Buddhist monastery in Tuscany for a year in the mid-1980s, then the father of four boys moved with his family to Ireland, where he founded an eco-village and bought a farm. He began teaching permaculture in the 2000s and became aware of the urgency of the environmental crisis. The local and community level is the most relevant in its sense to bring about changes in infrastructure and behaviour. He pleads for a rethinking of the education system and more room for imagination (What if we set our imaginations free to create the future we want?, Actes Sud, 2020). The Transition Network, which he started in Totnes in 2007, now has 1,400 member enterprises in 50 countries. In Switzerland, he will visit enterprises in Lausanne, Yverdon-les-Bains, Fricke (AG) and Geneva.There he will participate in the Alternatiba Lehman Festival.