Post Carbon Relocalization Network Meeting

On Saturday May 20th the Bay Area Outposts of the Post Carbon Institute got together to share what they have been doing. The mission of Post Carbon Institute is to assist communities in the effort to Relocalize and adapt to an energy constrained world. One way they do this is to support the individual Outposts and help them network with each other.

Eventually, as each Outpost learns from working with it's community, it will pass this information back up to PCI, who will compile these into "best practices" which they will then disseminate back to the Outposts. They hope to use the technology of the internet to assist people in joining forces and ultimately having face to face meetings.

Julian Darley, the founder of PCI, explained that they will focus and filter the information they gather because time is of the essence now, and we can't afford to miss any piece. They are upgrading their software, so keep check their website to see what they are offering. New services will roll out soon.

We heard from organizers from Willits to Ventura. Not surprisingly, California has the most Outposts of any state. Each gave a short presentation about their group. Here are some highlights:

• Folks in Pacific Grove (Sustainable Monterey) have found that talking about the economy was a way for people to understand the impact that peak oil will have. They will be inviting folks to come to a "visioning" to discuss what they would like to see in the future.
• Let's Live Local has three goals: to reduce their dependence on fuel (propane bills are as much as $500 a month in the winter); to reduce their dependence of fuel for transportation (car co-ops, ride share, buses); to promote sustainable ways of living (greenhouses, a community garden). They found that people in their community had a high interest in alternative energy.
• Bay Area Relocalize produced a Strategy Summit with business, non profits and officials to connect the community groups with each other. The folks that participated in this have started their own projects. BAR has written "Building a Resiliant Bay Area Economy" which will be distributed soon. They plan on working with a neighborhood and doing an in depth assessment of it.
• Big Sur has had to relocalize. When there are mud slides on Hwy 1 they are cut off for months at a time. They hosted their first event with speakers and a film, and had 70 people come. At their next event they will have committees set up for people to join based on what people wrote that they could contribute after the first event.
• The Powerdown Project is being developed by Richard Heinberg's students at New College of California. They are developing a relocalizing template and will offer themselves as interns to cities when it is complete. They will have a website up at powerdown.org in a couple of weeks.
• One member shared what he learned working in Marin County and going to every city council meeting. He said a big issue was getting past the gate keepers. Politics are complicated even on the local level. Cultivate connections and try to learn the internal dynamics. The city councils plan their agenda months in advance, but there is usually time to allow the public to speak up about their concerns. They can't comment in response because it is not on their agenda for that meeting.
• APPLE (Alliance for Post Petroleum Local Economy) had a big event that they did a major media campaign for. They had 300 people show up. They found that folks were willing to give up an evening, where day long events don't have as much of a draw. They are starting an every other month film and speaker series. The group gets together to work on alternate months. They encourage members to follow their passion.
• Peak Moment is a local public access television series. They hope to take it on the road.
• The San Francisco Oil Awareness Group presented a film about their development. (I sure could relate to the part when people come to one meeting and then never come back.) For more about their biggest accomplishment, see below.
• The San Francisco Post-Carbon Outpost has produced The Oil Poster, which has been distributed to every member of the US Congress. Thanks to folks purchasing the poster, they have been able to give away 2000 of them to educators. They also supported the creation of a college course about peak oil that they hope to adapt to teach to the general public and officials. The students were so excited that they went to the Washington DC conference during Spring Break.
• In the Santa Clara Valley they are working on projects to do outreach to the public and local government, including making speakers available and producing a DVD to hand out. They want to offer workshops in gardening, food storage, etc. They also are fighting to keep 17 acres from being developed. We need the acreage to produce food.
• In Santa Cruz the city council is co-sponsoring a participatory town hall meeting in September.
• The new Diablo Post Carbon Study Group is starting to take action. They have an inventory project and do screenings of the End of Suburbia and the Power of Community (the "Cuba" film).
• The Livability Project is disseminating preparedness information. Every month they take a new theme. They also sponsor a Community Feast at a local cafe.
• There is a "social ecovillage" in Oakland that produces a monthly calendar of events. People focus on making connections. It's been going on for eight years.

After that we had a Q&A with the San Francisco group about how they got their board of supervisors to pass a peak oil resolution. They emphasized the importance of knowing the inner workings, working with aids, inviting the council members to panels, and chance meetings. Apparently words like peak oil, localization, relocalization, even local are hot buttons that may backfire. "Energy vulnerability" seems to be a neutral term (so far.)

Then we had break out sessions. I talked with another member about getting folks to come to meetings. I need to do some more outreach. And our group needs to decide on a project to take on jointly.

We decided to meet quarterly. I hope I can come back for the next one. It was totally inspiring.

Report on the Energy Vulnerability Summit

I am inspired. The Energy Vulnerabilty Summit in Petaluma. CA was perhaps the first time in history when local government officials have gotten together to learn about and discuss peak oil. It was, by all accounts, very successful. Here is my diary of the day:

Up at 5:00 AM: For some reason the stove won't light. Are we out of propane? Harbingers of the future. I have toast instead of eggs. And lots of coffee.

7:15 AM: I join the gang at the Petaluma Community Center. I am put to work folding napkins for lunch. Our event has been "greened" by Green Mary. We use real plates and compost our food. I chat with Daniel Lerch. He is down here from Portland. He brought a white paper he wrote for the Metro Council on "how Metro may approach the possibility of future uncertainty in the supply and price of oil." He found that framing peak oil as "uncertainty" enabled municipalities to tap into the problem with their "risk management" paradigm. I munch on poppyseed muffins. To heck with the diet. And drink more coffee.

8:30 AM: People are starting to register. They expect about 40 local elected and appointed officials. Less than they want, but more than they feared.

9:00 AM: Tanya Narath welcomes us. She is the executive Director for the Leadership Institute for Ecology and the Economy that runs a once-a-month training program about public policy and sustainability issues. She introduces our first keynote speaker, Richard Heinberg, author of Powerdown and The Party's Over and core faculty member at the New College of California.

9:15 AM: Richard leads us through a very skillful introduction to our energy vulnerability (the non-confrontational way to say "peak oil" to municipalities). You can practically see the light bulbs turning on over the participant's heads. Much of it is probably familiar ground to most readers, but I did hear a statistic that is new to me. By 2010 we'll need 30 Mb/day in addition to our current production globally, but we only have 16.5 Mb/day coming on line. So we can plan on being 14.5 Mb/day short in four short years.

He also pointed out the Hirsch reports use of the word "unprecedented" in their report.
Another fact that hasn't gotten any press is about the demand destruction of natural gas. $15/1000 sq Ft costs forced companies to relocate overseas where NG is cheaper. And 100 chemical plants have shut down in the last six months, loosing 100,000 jobs.

His final message was that our primary strategy must be to reduce demand, and secondarily to find alternatives.

10:00 AM: We have a lively Q&A. One theme was the folly of investing in infrastructure for LNG or coal or even uranium because at some point, and in some cases very soon, we will run out of cheap LNG and coal and uranium.

A petroleum engineer said that the decline is not speculation--it is well known and based on thousands of wells and how they decline. She also added that we won't find another giant--they know where the fields are, and the technology to find fields is quite mature.

Richard said that retired oil executives come up to him all the time after his talks and validate peak oil. He even met the guy who did Chevron's "will you join us" campaign. He said that Chevron's CEO wanted to get the word out to people without panicking them.

10:45 AM: After a break, the participants met in groups to discuss the question "what are the vulnerabilities, challenges and obstacles faced by your jurisdiction?" I don't want to violate the confidentiality of the participants by writing about it here, but suffice to say that people began to grapple with the issues that they will face trying to fulfill their responsibilities to provide services with expensive, scarce oil and an eroding tax base.

11:45 AM: We had a yummy lunch catered by Whole Foods. I enjoyed getting to know community leaders who were (now) concerned about peak oil. I switched to decaf.

12:30 PM: Tanya introduced our second keynote speaker, Julian Darley, the founder of the Global Public Media and the Post Carbon Institute and author of High Noon for Natural Gas.
He emphasized the importance of working with local officials--how they are the ones who have the power, and are the ones who are going to be feeling the crunch. The lesson of Katrina is YOYO (you're on your own!)

He shared a survey of what municipalities are doing around the world to deal with their energy vulnerability. I won't go into detail here, but will list them in case you want to do follow up research:

• San Francisco, California
• Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada
• Portland, Oregon
• Kinsale, Ireland
• Denver, Colorado
• Hervey Bay, Queensland, Australia
• Franklin, New York
• Sweden
• Sebastopol, California
• Willits, California
• Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

He is working on a new book with Richard called Relocalize Now!

1:15 PM: Another Q&A session. Julian pointed out that the European carbon trading market has collapsed in the last few weeks. They gave away rights to the companies which set up an inflation pattern. This was probably the result of industry pressures. So he says learn from their mistakes.

He felt that for car co-ops, the best option was public ownership via municipalities. Most co-ops have about 20 cars per person. He pointed out that when we start to share, we immediately get a factor of 10 energy demand reduction instantly.

He explained that many European cities, know for their walkability, were laid out pre-petroleum. The ones that survived were a cluster of people surrounded by farmland. If we want to farm for our energy needs, without petroleum inputs, we need to do careful planning and start early as it takes time.

He also addressed the problem of the absurd amount of regulation we have around thing like getting permits for a vertical wind turbine--it can take $100,000 to go through the permitting process for a $1000 turbine.

1:45 PM: Another break out session, with the question "Discuss specific, actionable ideas that will enable you and your jurisdictions to successfully navigate the vulnerabilities, challenges and opportunities that you identified this morning." Switch from decaf to regular.

2:45 PM: Report back from the groups. My personal favorite actionable idea was that in each suburban tract the city would commandeer a house every half a mile to become the neighborhood store.

My personal commitment is to get a forum going (probably at Post Carbon) for peak oil facilitators/educators. I discovered that this "niche" that I had figured out is one coveted by several other people. I hope we can work together and support each other.

3:15 PM: Close. We had a lovely poem and Tanya thanked the sponsors and volunteers.

I was so pleased that I had the opportunity to participate. They are planning on having another summit the last weekend in September that is open to the public and I hope that I can come to that one as well.

Energy Vulnerability Summit in California

I am heading back to California to further my education, so will be off line for a short while. I will be assisting at an energy summit. Here is the blurb from the Post Carbon Institute newsletter about it:

Energy Vulnerability Summit: Can Local Public Policy Support a Competitive and Sustainable Economy in the Face of Rising Energy Costs?
–May 19 – 8:30-3:30 – Petaluma Community Center – Petaluma, California

The Energy Vulnerability Summit will provide a forum for North Bay elected and appointed officials to explore the local implications of rising energy costs. Richard Heinberg will discuss the main factors influencing energy costs and supplies and Julian Darley will give examples of on how other communities are preparing to diversify their local energy supplies through investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy solutions. This first session is limited to
elected and appointed officials only, but a follow-up summit is planned for September 29 that will include business leaders and the public. For further information contact coleader@ecoleader.org or (707) 578-9133

Action Needed to Safeguard Organic Standards

From my inbox today:

Action Needed to Safeguard Organic Standards

May 10, 2006


It’s time to act fast!

The USDA has announced a very short public comment period (ends May 12, 2006) on a proposal to amend the National Organic Program (read the proposal here) in a manner that would weaken organic standards. The USDA's actions were requested by a very small handful of members of Congress. Take action now and tell the USDA you support strong organic standards!

This legislative backroom deal was born in November 2005 during a late-night, Republican-only session consisting of a few conference committee members who voted to adopt the proposed amendment after congressional negotiators from both sides had adjourned.

In 2006, the amendment resurfaced as a last-minute attachment to the Agricultural Appropriations Bill, thereby avoiding full congressional debate on the content of the amendment. The Appropriations Bill, along with its riders, passed despite over 350,000 letters and phone calls from consumers, farmers, retailers, processors, and other concerned citizens and organizations to their congressional representatives. At the time of its passage, a number of Congressional representatives made statements condemning both the undemocratic process and substance of this change to the organic law.

After 35 years of hard work, the U.S. organic community has built a multi-billion dollar alternative to industrial agriculture.

Now the USDA is proposing to amend the National Organic Program regulations to reflect these legislative changes made in Congress – with very little time allowed for public comment.

The USDA proposal could allow:

Young dairy cows to be treated with antibiotics and fed genetically engineered feed prior to being converted to organic production.

Numerous synthetic substances, including over 500 food contact substances, to be used in organic foods without public review and approval by the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB).

TELL USDA TO KEEP THE ORGANIC LABEL TRUTHFUL. COMMENTS MUST BE RECEIVED BY MAY 12!

"Congress voted to weaken the national organic standards that consumers count on to preserve the integrity of the organic label," said Ronnie Cummins, National Director of the Organic Consumers Association. "The process was profoundly undemocratic and the end result is a serious setback for the multi billion dollar alternative food and farming system that the organic community has so painstakingly built up over the past 35 years.

It’s easy to take action. Click on one or all of these links for streamlined action links and more information.

Organic Consumers Association: has fill-in action link

The Center for Food Safety: has fill-in action link

Consumers Union: has fill-in action link Additional in-depth background and report on the issues, and comment information: National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture: has “click here” action link.

Sincerely,

Georgia Organics
email: info@georgiaorganics.org
phone: 678.702.0400
web: georgiaorganics.org

Action Needed to Safeguard Organic Standards

From my inbox today:

Action Needed to Safeguard Organic Standards

May 10, 2006


It’s time to act fast!

The USDA has announced a very short public comment period (ends May 12, 2006) on a proposal to amend the National Organic Program (read the proposal here) in a manner that would weaken organic standards. The USDA's actions were requested by a very small handful of members of Congress. Take action now and tell the USDA you support strong organic standards!

This legislative backroom deal was born in November 2005 during a late-night, Republican-only session consisting of a few conference committee members who voted to adopt the proposed amendment after congressional negotiators from both sides had adjourned.

In 2006, the amendment resurfaced as a last-minute attachment to the Agricultural Appropriations Bill, thereby avoiding full congressional debate on the content of the amendment. The Appropriations Bill, along with its riders, passed despite over 350,000 letters and phone calls from consumers, farmers, retailers, processors, and other concerned citizens and organizations to their congressional representatives. At the time of its passage, a number of Congressional representatives made statements condemning both the undemocratic process and substance of this change to the organic law.

After 35 years of hard work, the U.S. organic community has built a multi-billion dollar alternative to industrial agriculture.

Now the USDA is proposing to amend the National Organic Program regulations to reflect these legislative changes made in Congress – with very little time allowed for public comment.

The USDA proposal could allow:

Young dairy cows to be treated with antibiotics and fed genetically engineered feed prior to being converted to organic production.

Numerous synthetic substances, including over 500 food contact substances, to be used in organic foods without public review and approval by the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB).

TELL USDA TO KEEP THE ORGANIC LABEL TRUTHFUL. COMMENTS MUST BE RECEIVED BY MAY 12!

"Congress voted to weaken the national organic standards that consumers count on to preserve the integrity of the organic label," said Ronnie Cummins, National Director of the Organic Consumers Association. "The process was profoundly undemocratic and the end result is a serious setback for the multi billion dollar alternative food and farming system that the organic community has so painstakingly built up over the past 35 years.

It’s easy to take action. Click on one or all of these links for streamlined action links and more information.

Organic Consumers Association: has fill-in action link

The Center for Food Safety: has fill-in action link

Consumers Union: has fill-in action link Additional in-depth background and report on the issues, and comment information: National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture: has “click here” action link.

Sincerely,

Georgia Organics
email: info@georgiaorganics.org
phone: 678.702.0400
web: http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=pc45lvbab.0.b75uhpbab.455vg9aab.690&p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.georgiaorganics.org

A query

Mr. Logan and I have been discussing the question of how to inform people about peak oil. I have been of the opinion that people don't want to hear bad news which leads to resistance. He thinks another factor may be coming into play. It is illustrated by a CNN poll released today:

A total of 61 percent blamed "unethical behavior" by people involved in the production of oil and gas for the price increases, which have driven the average U.S. price for self-serve regular gasoline to nearly $3 a gallon.

Another 26 percent said the market forces of supply and demand were responsible.

Mr. Logan explained that there is a point of view that says we do not have a real shortage of oil, the oil companies are manipulating supply in order to get the biggest profits. Along this line of thinking Matthew Simmon's position as an industry insider becomes a liability to his credibility instead of an asset, as he would be supporting the view that there is a shortage because he would gain from it.

The argument that has worked for me is that the oil companies don't want to say there is a shortage to their stockholders, so they would minimize this.

What do you say to people who think it's a conspiracy?

Women and Peak Oil

There are few women's voices in the Peak Oil movement. I have to admit, dear reader, that this has intimidated me somewhat. In writing this blog and finding my own voice I have struggled to give myself permission to have my own point of view, value it, and share it. And I have a long way to go. I rarely write opinion pieces as I am still trying to grasp the facts. Economic, political, social, and scientific analysis eludes me, as much as I admire and appreciate it.

But I do have a feel for things in the realm of communication, group process and emotional expression. These are the areas where I have spent my personal and professional energy. And I have come to believe these arenas are going to be just as important as permaculture, bicycle repair and defense. I am counting on this in fact.

I hope to develop a career that will span pre-, during-, and post- collapse if there could be such a thing. I hope to become and educator and facilitator for communities concerned about peak oil, and relocalizing their energy, economic and food sources. That is why I am educating myself about peak oil and going to workshops about facilitation. I have a long way to go but I feel this is my calling.

My journey went something like this: read peak oil bulletin boards. Get totally overwhelmed. Try to figure out what I should do to prepare. Read threads about jobs skills that will be valuable in the future. Totally freak out because I am not cut out to be a butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker. Have an aha moment based on I what I learned from What Color is your Parachute? People have skills with ideas, with things, and with animals/people. Me, I'm squarely in the people skills category. But none of the jobs that were being described were people skills!

I was stumped by this. My first thought was OMG! My skills won't be needed. They will be a luxury we can't afford. I am going to have to do work I don't like. Misery, etc.

Then I had another aha from my feminist days. The idea that women's work is basically unpaid labor. I thought--these folks are assuming that their mothers, sisters, daughters are going to take care of the people stuff "for free." That they will just give, without expecting to be compensated, and that they will have to do work in addition to this in order to survive.

(I don't mean to imply that men aren't expected to do uncompensated work, I am just explaining my process.)

Somehow this realization enabled me to assert the value of the people skills. Given the stresses that communities will be under, they will probably be more important in the future. So how could I be helpful here? Given that I don't have a lot of experience in close-proximity community living, how could I make this my vocation?

That's when I began my adventures exploring the realm of intentional communities, and one thing led to another and now I am taking facilitation workshops emphasizing cohousing issues.

What brought this whole topic up for me, and gave me the courage to write about it, is a post by Paula Hay on her adaptation zine. (She also has a blog.) She talks about being a woman at the Local Solutions conference woman at the Local Solutions conference in NYC this last weekend.

One of the "real stories" of the Local Solutions conference, from my perspective, was a surprising theme that kept cropping up among the people with whom I spoke. It seems that among the Peak Oil grassroots--or at least among folks at the Local Solutions conference--there is a desire to hear from more women working on Peak Oil and Relocalization. I heard more comments about this than about nearly any other issue, I assume because I am one of the few women engaged in publishing Peak Oil-related information.

This is an emerging theme and I (and Paula) would love to hear your thoughts.