The amazing Jean Arnold, hub of Post Carbon Salt Lake, has compiled a great slide show to introduce audiences to the idea and implications of peak oil. The one-hour version was shown recently on SLC-TV Channel 17 (public access) — shown again today, Thursday, May 31, 1:30pm.

This one-hour presentation is a good introduction for those new to the whole Peak Oil subject, and sufficiently in-depth for those already familiar with the topic.

You can also watch online or order a free DVD. Send your name and address to:

Bill Haight - Bill.haight@slcgov.com
Technology and Software Support Manager
Salt Lake City - Information Management Services
801.535.7977 Office - 801.535.7634 Fax

Members of Post Carbon Salt Lake are learning to present this show to take it on the road. They will be listed with local speakers’ bureaus soon.

• Jean Arnold is the author of “Another inconvenient truth: peak oil: the rise and fall of oil production,” a comprehensive article from the Catalyst, October 2006.

Rob Hopkins, of the amazing Transition Culture in Ireland, lead a recent meeting on energy descent in Lampeter, Wales.

I talked about peak oil and the need to begin preparing for it at a community level. I talked about the experience of Cuba and of the process which gave rise to the Kinsale Energy Descent Plan. 

I happen to know a little (very little) about this town.  My mother’s grandmother was born near there, a fact which drew me to hike up and down the green hills to find my people in my mid-20s. I didn’t find many people, but I found the overgrown foundation of a house and a sense that these small towns didn’t have much need for the technology that shaped my life.

One of the points Hopkins makes fairly frequently is: older structures are already prepared for power down.  This is true for buildings as well as for human structures like governments.

Hopkins mentions the Cuban experience.  My local Post Carbon group recently showed “The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil.”  Wow.  What a film.  An article last summer in Yes! Magazine compares the post-Soviet power down in Cuba and in North Korea.  Guess who survived best.  How and why Cuba was prepared offers very interesting lessons to those of us who will meet (or whose children will meet) peak oil in the near future.

In Australia, the Permaforest Trust’s Centre for Sustainability Education teaches not just the ideas but the practice of sustainability on their 100+-acre property.

Too many people I know, particularly academics, are willing to learn and hear more about sustainability, toss out sarcastic comments, and then feign self-rebuke as they admit that the practice is too difficult for them. That is how my local sustainability group has been going lately.

Where is the action? How do I learn from those who are doing what we all seem to agree must be done to come down gently from our carbon high? I look to models like that at the Centre for Sustainability Education.

Permaforest Trust’s founder, Tim Winton, outlined seven steps to take in preparation for the changes to come. Because we can’t entirely prevent the changes we will see in our warmer, post-carbon world, “your approach to sustainability must now include preparations for life in a fundamentally different world.”

1. Integrate systems thinking
2. Increase self reliance
3. Economic disruption
4. Don’t despair
5. No fighting
6. Planetary emergence
7. Tell this story

His suggestions for action are short and clear. Just be sure you ACT rather than simply taking in more information. (And, yes, I’m telling myself as much as anyone.)

Transition Culture is, bar none, the best site I know on life after peak oil. Rob Hopkins is a teacher of permaculture and a developer of a powerdown community in Ireland. He speaks publicly, he teaches courses, he is active in his community — and he blogs it all to encourage us to prepare for powerdown in our own communities. We find out how his town’s Energy Descent Action Plan is going as it goes.

For those who want to know where to begin in creating their own transition town projects, he has compiled 10 First Steps for a Transition Town Initiative, based on the experience in his town of Totnes.

1. Awareness Raising
2. Lay the Foundations
3. The Official Unleashing
4. Form Groups
5. Use Open Space
6. Develop Visible Practical Manifestations of the Project
7. Facilitate the Great Reskilling
8. Build a Bridge to Local Government
9. Honor the Elders
10. Let it Go Where It Wants to Go and Reflections

Every one of these steps and every post on the Transition Culture blog is a rich inspiration in itself. And, yet, it’s all just plain practical if you are concerned about relocalization. These steps are seriously practical. It makes me think of the statement by Hopi Elders.

Where are you living?
What are you doing?
What are your relationships?
Are you in right relation?
Where is your water?
Know our garden.
It is time to speak your Truth.
Create your community.
Be good to each other.
And do not look outside yourself for the leader.

This could be a good time!

Don’t Panic. That’s what the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy says. During my first semester of doctoral classes, I reminded myself often, Don’t panic don’t panic don’t panic. I’m reminding myself again.

The information available on emergency and disaster preparedness is overwhelming, which is exactly why I intend to play out my own reasonable take on what one should do to prepare for 10,000 emergencies that seem to face us.

But, where do I start? I know I need to prepare for

• winter
• power outage
• drought
• earthquake
• peak oil
• post-carbon world
• climate change
• fascism
• war

There is surely more I have missed.

How far do I go? Where am I going? I’m not going to join an Amish community (as if they’d have me), but I’m sure I can learn from them. I suspect the future will look more like the solutions Cubans have found to the passing of peak oil. Community is important in every solution. I also need to make sure I am prepared to help rather than be helped in an emergency. So, I am going to start by focusing on just a few areas.

1. Learn about what has worked for others faced with crisis.
2. Reach out to my neighbors and larger community frequently.
3. Continue to gather and sort my list of necessary disaster and emergency preparations.
4. Prepare my family, house, and car for winter (though global warming has made that less an issue in the past few years).

On NPR’s Talk of the Nation: Science Friday this week, several guests talked about How Food Finds Its Way to Your Plate. After an interesting discussion of processed foods in our diets (particularly corn and soy), they talked about local foods.

“What about terrorism?”

[This is 38.5 minutes in, if you want to listen to this section.]

Concentrated corporate agriculture, the guest says, leaves our system more a target. The Department of Homeland Security ran a war simulation on how the U.S. would respond to an act of agricultural terrorism. Officials concluded that intense concentration of agriculture and long-distance shipping make us quite vulnerable to both malicious and accidental food contamination. Eating local decentralizes that target.

Then, one guest mentions a poster she has in her office from the New York Farm Bureau:

Homeland Security. Buy local. It matters.

Apparently farmers aren’t all that impressed by the security of imported agricultural products. Earlier this Fall, in the New York Farm Bureau’s newsletter Grassroots, an author wrote in Talking Points:

“homeland security.”

Actually, it’s a great idea. Maybe we should try it.

Yes, wouldn’t that be a good idea. Better yet, let’s you and I buy local, encourage our local economies, and make this less an issue.

Print your own “Homeland Security - Buy Local” poster from the New York Farm Bureau.