Vermont
Peak Oil Network Newsletter
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July Monthly News and
Views
Updated 7/01/06.
This
page is updated
monthly. Please send submissions
by the third week in each
month.
Next update scheduled for July 29th.
Special
Events:
An
Inconvenient Truth
Maude Barlow: Who Owns the World's Fresh Water?
12th Annual Vermont Solar Fest!
Non-Violent Communication Workshop
5th Annual Vermont Activists Skills Share
Statewide Eat Local Challenge!
Under
the
Golden Dome:
Scudder
Parker's Energy Plan for Vermont
Pat Leahy
on US Senate Energy Bill (05)
A Stone's Throw Away... Joining the US Conference of
Mayors on Climate Protection
Tracking
Legislation in Vermont
Quote
of
the Month:
From "The Oil
Drum": The difference between PO pessimists and optimists
Editorial:
Whether Report
Guest Editorial:
Altimeter Readers vs. Parachute
Packers
Articles:
Greater Montpelier Peak Oil Awareness
Group Receives Grant
VPON-linked Lecture Squad wows
them at Lamoile County Planning Commission
Burlington College Student Sarah Grillo
Selected to Attend National Peak Oil Leadership Training
Hydrogen Fueling Station Comes to Burlington
CVPS Cow
Power Enrollment Passes Milestone
Independent Country Stores Strengthen Vermont’s
Rural Economy
An Inconvenient Truth, reviewed by Jim Hansen
An
Inconvenient (Half) Truth: Peaking Over the Hedge At Our
Future, reviewed by Vermont's Rob Williams
The Great
Warming
Salad with a Side of Fuel (or perhaps
you'd prefer a Saudi Arabian Breakfast?)
M. K. Hubbert on "Two Intellectual Systems:
Matter-Energy and the Monetary Culture"
You Belong
Here, You are Home: Celebrating the Work of Peter Forbes
In
Vermont News
Welcome
to The Dinner Hour
Summer
Reading
Bugs Bite Me Not
Don't
Kill that (Pig)Weed!
As
the Crow Flies: Reports from Around the State
VPON's Third Gathering
VT Peak
Oil Activists Meet with Julian Darley
ACORN
- Addison County
Cabot
Peak
Oil Network
Mad
River Sustainability Group
PLAN
C - Chittenden
County
Post
Carbon Tunbridge
Post
Oil Solutions - Windham County
Route 12 Loop Group
Second
Tuesdays - East Montpelier
Gold
Stars
to...
The
Localvores!
Local Motion: Bike Safety gets "On The
Bus", literally!
The Burlington Bicycle Council
Action!
"Table" for
Peak Oil, Local
Foods and Local Economies
Organize
a Peak Oil Book Display
Write
a Letter to the Editor of Your Local Paper
Write
a Letter to a Local Representative (two examples)
Write
your Congressman! Securing American
Energy
Independence Act
What's
a Citizen TO DO? newsletter
Plan
Ahead
Local Power: Energy &
Economic
Development in Rural Vermont
Facing
the Media Crisis
Center for Whole Communities Harvest and Courage
Festival
Resources
(click
here to get there!)
Robert Newman's History of Oil (sizzling and informative satire)
Second Tuesdays'
Power Point Presentation on Peak Oil
Connect! - On-line Peak
Oil Discussion Group for Vermonters.
VPON Archives
VT Resources - Sustainability, Food, Farm
& Garden, Energy, Local Economy, Community
Building, Transportation, and Planning.
National Links/Educational
Resources - charts, DVDs, posters, and more.
Special Events
An
Inconvenient Truth
(From Sundance Film Festival Review): Extreme poverty,
intractable
wars, virulent disease, hatred of all stripes–these are a few
of
the
scourges we live with today. And yet global climate change trumps them
all; for if it's not addressed, all life on the planet will be
devastated, regardless of geography, class, race, or creed. The
Inconvenient Truth is the
gripping story of former Vice
President Al
Gore, who became interested
in this startling issue while at
college 30
years ago, and now devotes his life to reversing global warming.
Traveling the world, he has built a visually mesmerizing presentation
designed to disabuse doubters of the notion that climate change is
debatable. The heart of Davis Guggenheim's film is this elegant
multimedia lecture itself, where Gore indisputably correlates CO2
emissions with exponentially rising temperatures, already responsible
for dramatic climactic shifts like ice-cap melting, drought, and rising
sea levels. Interwoven with this riveting public address are intimate
moments revealing the poetic, searching side of Gore as he struggles to
define his purpose in the aftermath of the 2000 election. This is
activist cinema at its very best, for it serves to popularize and
demythologize a problem long obscured by those most threatened by the
solution. With humor and searing intelligence, Gore outlines crucial
steps we must take to avert impending disaster and proves that inaction
is no longer an option–in fact, it's immoral.
The Truth can be seen at these Vermont
theaters; date shown is publicized beginning of the run:
6/23 - Burlington - Roxy
6/24 - Rutland -
Plaza
6/30
- Montpelier -
Savoy
7/1
- Brattleboro - Latchis
Brattleboro
7/1 - Manchester - Village Picture Show
7/1 - St. Johnsbury - Catamount
7/7 - Hanover, NH - Nugget
7/14 - Woodstock - Town Hall Theater
Interesting activism
around
the movie and expanding list of
theaters
showing the film: http://www.climatecrisis.net/
See Vermonter Rob Williams' review
of Gore's movie in this VPON July edition.
Noted Water Activist Maude Barlow:
Two Vermont Speaking Engagements.
July 12th and 13th, 6
p.m. (July 12 at UVM's CC Theater in Burlington and July 13 at
the magnificent Hildene Farm in Manchester.)
VNRC is proud to host
internationally renowned water activist Maude Barlow. Ms. Barlow is the National
Chairperson of The Council of Canadians,
Canada's largest citizen advocacy organization, as well as the
co-founder of the Blue Planet Project, which works to stop
commodification of the world's water. As a best-selling author and
co-author of Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop Corporate Theft of the
World's Water, Ms. Barlow is a leading expert in the increasingly
heated debate over who owns the
world's fresh water.
Please join VNRC July 12 and 13 for what promises to be a compelling
and eye-opening discussion about the threats water privatization poses
in an increasingly thirsty world. Hear how -- without serious state
action -- these challenges will leave Vermont's fresh water resources
vulnerable to depletion and degradation. Perhaps most importantly, find
out what you can do to ensure Vermont takes the steps necessary to
safeguard this life-sustaining resource.
The Vermont Natural Resource
Council
(VNRC) is a sister organization of and frequent collaborator with the
SIERRA CLUB. For more
information, visit VNRC's web site -- www.vnrc.org
-- or contact Johanna Miller at 802-223-2328 or jmiller@vnrc.org.
12th
Annual SolarFest:
Energy Education through the Arts
July 15th and 16th, Middletown Springs, VT
Celebrating the power of renewable energy, the arts, and community
action to change the world. If we don't do it, who will?
Join us in our 12th year for two days of great music on our
solar-powered stages; 25 workshops on renewable energy systems, green
building, biodiesel, wind and micro-hydro, community empowerment and
organizing, sustainable living, organic agriculture, medicinal herbs,
and more. Visit nearly 100 renewable energy and sustainable living
exhibitors and vendors, people whose business it is to provide
practical solutions to the complex problems facing us in a post-carbon
society. More information: info@solarfest.org or
phone: 603.847.9049
During the week leading up to SolarFest we will offer two in-depth
workshops:
Introduction into Photovoltaics and The Basics of Cob Construction
Click Here
for more information on these workshops.
5th
Annual Vermont Activist Skills
Share
Friday July 21
beginning at 1:00 p.m. through Sunday July 23, ending at
1:00
Wheelock
Mountain Farm in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom
We look forward to 3 days of workshops and dialogue focused on
building effective organizations, combating oppression, and cultivating
personal and community sustainability.
*Workshops include: Theatre of the Oppressed, Food
Preservation: Fermentation and Canning, Grant Writing, Creating Caring
Communities, Non-Violent Communication,
Carpentry.
*Discussions include: Collectives, Popular
Education, Building Social Movements in VT, Dealing with Despair,
Social Service and Social Change, Solar and Wind Power, Confronting
Racism, Mental Health in
our Organizing.
*Please check out our tentative schedule on line and we
encourage you to check it regularly as all times and workshops are
subject to change.
Bring a tent and stay the whole weekend or ask about other off-site
accommodations. Bring books
for a book swap. Childcare
provided during workshops. And please...to ensure comfort for all---no
drugs, no alcohol, and no dogs. Suggested donation of $10-15 p/day
(free for children), which includes 3 meals p/day and helps cover costs
of skill share. No one will be turned away for lack of $. For more
information and directions to Wheelock Farm go to http://www.vtactivstskillshare.org
or call 802-533-2296
Nonviolent
Communication
July 29th, 10:00 am -
5:00 pm
The Sanctuary, Westminster West
Facilitated by Wendy Webber
Nonviolent Communication
offers us a
personal practice, a language of compassion, a relationship skill, and
a tool for positive social change. Developed by Dr Marshall
Rosenberg
over 40 years, it is now used worldwide in personal and family life, in
organizational life, in peacemaking, and conflict transformation. The setting for the workshop is a
beautiful space in
nature - so nourish your body, mind and spirit by the gift of this day.
Cost: Sliding scale of $50 - $75 is requested contribution. No one
turned away for lack of funds. Contact: Wendy Webber, Phone:
802-257-5833, wendywebber1947
(at) yahoo.com for
further information and to register.
Statewide
Eat Local Challenge begins August 1st!
Join fellow Vermonters in making a personal commitment to only eat food
grown within 100 miles of your home, or within the state of Vermont,
for the month of August. Help raise awareness that the average food
item travels 1500 miles to reach your plate. Eating local food not only
reduces your environmental footprint by saving fuel and improving the
sustainability of our food system, but also helps our economy and food
security. Learn more, and sign up to take the challenge here.
Under the Golden Dome
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more
violent.
It takes a touch of
genius––and a lot of
courage––to move in the opposite direction.
- attributed to E. F. Schumacher
Scudder
Parker's Energy Plan for Vermont
(Ed note: Although we
are a non-partisan group, the
Vermont Peak Oil Network encourages all citizens to take the
participatory nature of their membership in a democratic society
seriously.)
On June 27th, Scudder Parker released his plan for
Vermont's energy future: "Investing
in Vermont. Investing in Energy." In his plan, he includes
among the energy concerns Vermonters must address, the "looming threat
of peak oil", and the "negative effects of global warming (on)
Vermont's economy." Strategies Parker proposes advocate:
diversifying our energy portfolio, relying on locally generated
renewables, expanding investments in energy efficiency (including job
training), creating and improving existing public transit, and
encouraging smart growth." You can read the plan in its entirety
at: http://www.scudderparker.com/
Pat
Leahy on U.S. Senate Energy Bill
I believe the Senate should reopen the failed Energy Bill of
2005.
That bill included a misguided ethanol mandate, which consumers on the
East Coast are now paying for. We must develop a national
energy
policy that delivers affordable, clean energy from domestic sources
now, not in 30 years or when the oil company CEOs decide the time is
right. This can be done by creating tax incentives that encourage the
use of hybrid and alternative vehicles and by increasing Corporate
Average Fuel Economy standards. Refusing to wean ourselves
away from
our current reliance on polluting fossil fuels jeopardizes our national
security, our environment, and our economy. -
Senator Patrick Leahy, personal
correspondance with the Editor.
A
Stone's Throw Away... Joining the US Conference of Mayors on Climate
Protection
The Hanover, NH Selectboard unanimously signed on to the US
Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement.
Tomorrow evening, (Thur. 6/29, 7PM) there will be a meeting at
the Howe Library in Hanover to begin the process of starting a "Cool
City" Campaign in Hanover. As of June 23, 2006, 250
mayors representing over 46.3 million Americans have accepted the
challenge represented by this agreement, including Burlington's former
Mayor Peter Clavelle. Thetford, Vermont's Sustainable Energy Research
Group (SERG) is working with the Sierra Club and
several other groups on this effort and encourages everyone to get
their towns involved.
Keep
Track
of what's happening with legislation in Montpelier: http://www.leg.state.vt.us/database/database2.cfm
Quote
of the Month
After a vocal argument
between doomers and optimists on The Oil Drum this month, TOD
participant
"cynus" had this to say:
Sometimes I think that the difference between PO pessimists and
optimists is that pessimists say "This is a crisis! We are
going to have to ramp up renewables and nuclear, increase CAFE
standards, import natural gas, develop non-conventional oils, build
mass-transit systems, and develop walkable communities!" while the
optimists say "Relax, there is no crisis. All we have to do
is ramp up renewables and nuclear, increase CAFE standards, import
natural gas, develop non-conventional oils, build mass-transit systems,
and develop walkable communities."
Editorial
Whether Report
by Annie Dunn Watson
Our troubles
arise from
the fact that we do not know what we are, and cannot agree on what we
want to be...
Humanity is part of
nature, a species that evolved among other species.
The more
closely we identify ourselves with
the rest of life,
the more quickly we
will be able to discover the
knowledge on which an enduring ethic, a
sense of preferred direction,
can be built.
-
E. O. Wilson, "The Diversity of Life"
I hang the wind chimes from a low oak branch protruding over the
northwest corner of the garden. The gods of the elements are
appeased - a small breeze nudges the tiny metal tongue to the rim and
fills the air with laughter. There, among the tinkling
and birdsong, my season in the green world begins.
As those of you who garden know, warm earth makes an excellent seed
cradle. We dig in, get the
moist soil under our nails, in our noses, all over our hair and eyes -
until
we're up to the elbows in a kind of frenzied husbandry, impregnating
the ground around us with barely-hidden peas, beans, radishes and
beets.
Promise and birdsong, chime-punctuated breezes on blistery July days
(when we really should be swimming) - the garden calls us back again
and
again until the day we brush the earth from the final potato and
store it for
winter stew.
This spring was far from idyllic, however, as the endless rains of
April sloshed through May and poured endlessly into June. Some of us
began to
despair at what seemed to be our "new climate" (is it possible to grow
rice in Vermont?) Open Heart CSA where my partner and I purchased
a half-share
was temporarily drowned by the floodwaters of the Winooski.
If not their lettuce,
then... whose? we wondered.
The river waters flooded the Intervale
where Open
Heart is located, damaging early
crops and a neighbor's egg farm. According to the Free
Press, John
Cleary, owner of Lucky Ladies Organic Eggs, started collecting his eggs
by canoe. Twenty of his flock of 300 drowned (Cleary's coops
rest on hay wagons that are about four feet off the ground, and water
rose above the level of the wagons).
This little slice of life, so ordinary in the grand scheme of things
when we (that is, those of us who don't farm for a living) know that we
can shrug our shoulders and mowsy on down to Hannaford's to pick up a
head of
lettuce and a dozen eggs, sends a shiver down my spine when I begin to
ask questions like "what
Hannaford's?" The tussle with the wet clayish soil in our own
back garden this year reminded me that weekend farmers (that'd be us!)
don't have much of a chance. This year, even the best among us
watched in misery as rains soaked the hayfields and put the job off for
yet another day.
I wash the dirt from underneath my nails, and wonder, what is food
security? What does it mean for Vermont? When will we ask
the hard questions we need to ask in order to assess our needs as
well as
our resources, to identify the challenges that continue to
compromise
our self-determination as to how Vermont's agricultural
resources should be stewarded? What is our agricultural land
base, and can we really support our present population with our
remaining
farmland? When will we begin to evaluate the goods we import and
actively seek local substitutions, to question what we export, consider
the
possibility of diversifying dairy farms? Will we analyze the
energy situations on our farms and think critically about the
alternatives... figure out the timetable for a transition to
renewables, even to animal traction? What would a sustainable and
nutritious Vermont diet look like? Can we feed animals and
ourselves (and the two are linked) on what Vermont's agricultural land
provides, and nothing more? What's realistic? How much land
for food, for fuel, for development? What does local really mean? Who
decides? Who protects the land, the farmers, the
citizens? And, how will
Vermonters feel when they find out that we need to not only ask
questions like these, but also the deeper questions that have to do
with doing with less if we are going to create solutions that make
sense for Vermont?
Who are we? Have we had the opportunity to
ask ourselves that question lately, to struggle with our conscience
long
enough to become suspicious that maybe we took a wrong turn somewhere?
Cheap and abundant oil made everything so easy... What did we want
to be?
Independent. Comfortable. It's a biological
preference, to seek comfort,
ease, pleasure. Perhaps that's why a
food and energy security bill like H654
wasn't even considered in the VT House this session.
What do we want to be now?
I am not a legislator, and based on my limited successes in the
garden, NOFA won't be soliciting my membership any time soon. Nor am I
an economist, but I
do believe that with the right leadership and sustained community
and statewide efforts to relocalize jobs, goods, and production, we
could create a sustainable economic structure unique to Vermont and its
needs and resources, a structure that would reinvent our eonomy, foster
sustainability, and put us in a position
to become a welcome trade partner with our geographical neighbors. We
could be leaders at a time when innovative thinking and
responsible technologies are essential to well-being worldwide. Whether
or not we will do this
remains one of the biggest questions of all.
I think we will.
The people I have met these past months as
VPON developed and grew have inspired me with their caring, their
thoughtfulness, their
earnest passion for tackling hard questions and evaluating what
"the Good Life" really means, not just for the well-to-do, but for
everybody. Localvores, energy sleuths,
community organizers, farmers, business leaders, educators, parents,
poets and youth... these
are my fellow
citizens
in the Green Mountain state, the state I chose to call home almost 30
years ago. I hope that many of the people I've met this year will
engage in
upcoming discussions about food security and energy here in
Vermont. I think, in fact, that as citizens with a strong desire
to preserve local democracy and self-determination, they surely will.
It's raining today. It will continue to do so for the next few,
and then the garden will lure me out of the house once more. And
there, among the beets and beans and radishes (and all the new weeds),
I'll both remember and forget who I am and want to be.
Whether or not you and I wake up is the question that
remains,
but I've seen glimpses of the possibility.
That seems to be the nature of finding our way back home from a
Long
Forgetting.
(Annie is the editor and
webmistress for the Vermont Peak Oil Network website. She can be
reached
at newsletter (at)
vtpeakoil.net)
Guest Editorial
Altimeter Readers vs.
Parachute Packers
by Robert Riversong
If we are primarily or exclusively focused
on Peak Oil, then we are
merely weathermen shouting into the wind (Chicken Littles) and
difficult to hear.
We need to become Big Chickens and learn to cross
the road. Not just to get to the other side and not simply to
rebuild
the levees,
but to build an ark.
I am troubled by the pessimism that has permeated certain
pronouncements about the Peak Oil crisis and its consequent impact on
our lives and lifestyle. From what I’ve gathered, the Peak
Oil movement is divided (albeit simplistically) into two camps: those
who are checking the altimeter and announcing the timing and extent of
the impending crash, and those who are carefully – or hurriedly
– packing their parachutes and teaching others how to sew
theirs. Most, perhaps, have one foot in each camp.
And, as those who were at the June VPON meeting know, I am one who
believes that we are – and must be – about something much
broader than the issue of Peak Oil, resource depletion, or climate
change.
Some of you are, no doubt, aware of the various and convergent
indigenous prophesies and current signs of Earth Changes – a time
of tumultuous and possibly cataclysmic shift in the very balance of
life on Earth. We may be facing not only climatic change but
climactic changes, including a pole shift, a significant homo sapiens
die-off, an evolutionary up-welling of consciousness, and a realignment
of the homeostasis of Life. These ancient prophesies,
corroborated by traditional elders, are substantiated by many current
events including Peak Oil, climate disruption, and an increase in
global tensions and conflict.
There has been discussion about the necessity of acknowledging both the
painful reality of the coming changes and the opportunities presented
by them – of accepting both the grief and the joy of this time of
transition. It has been said that we must face our fears so that
we don’t dwell in denial.
There are, however, two levels of emotional response: one is
debilitating and restrictive, the other is healing and expansive.
Don’t let the words get in the way of the understanding, since
any choice of words carries baggage. But fear, sadness, and anger
are the constricting emotions which inhibit and limit our choices and
responses. Each causes a tightening of the body, a shortening of
breath, and a narrowing of perspective. Terror, Grief, and Rage
are much deeper, are not directed at a particular object, produce a
release of tension, and broaden our vision. Terror, Grief, and
Rage empty the vessel of the soul and make room for openness, hope, and
a sense of being fully alive.
Sorrow prepares you for joy.
It violently sweeps everything out of your house,
so that new joy can find space to enter.
It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart,
so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place.
It pulls up the rotten roots,
so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow.
Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart,
far better things will take their place.
Jalaluddin Rumi
At the VPON gathering, I mentioned the book by Chellis Glendinning
called “My Name is Chellis and I’m in Recovery from Western
Civilization.” Published in 1994, this ground-breaking book
suggests that "We exist…dislocated from our roots by the
psychological, philosophical, and technological constructions of our
civilization, and this alienation leads to our suffering." This
“dislocation” has resulted in a society addicted to its own
constructs, its myths and its misperceptions, its false promises and
vacuous values. And, as a nation of addicts, we are lost in a fog
of denial, while those attempting recovery from the addiction are often
drowning in a well of despair.
In his powerful documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore astutely
remarks that somewhere between denial and despair we forgot the
intermediate step: action to make the world a better place.
Chellis calls for a return to a nature-based culture, one in which
people live "as if [we] were responsible for building the culture that
the rocks and trees and birds of this place expected of human beings."
Andrew Weil, speaking at the 1990 International Transpersonal
Conference in Eugene, Oregon about our addictive nature, said:
“It's not something to be disowned. You can't do that,
because addiction is part of our core being. It's part of who we
are. Given that, what can we do about addictive behavior? I
can think of only two things to do about it. The first is to try
to move it, to try and shift it so that the forms of its expression are
less harmful rather than more harmful… The biggest mistake we
can make is trying to disown it… We also need to celebrate
it for what it is. Because it connects us with all other people,
it's a source of great compassion and great empathy. It's a motivation
to work with others to try to halt the kinds of destructive behavior
that are happening today. I can think of nothing more important than
that.”
But, because these cultural addictions are so deep and unacknowledged,
they are very difficult to even recognize let alone transform.
Scott Kalechstein, spiritual muse and song channeler, wrote a wonderful
song (to the tune of Breaking Up is Hard to Do):
Don't take my pain away from me.
Don't leave me here without my misery.
'Cause if I let go then what would I do.
This waking up is hard to do.
My challenges they make me wiser;
They help me grow just like some fertilizer.
Wish I could grow without doodoo.
This waking up is hard to do.
The most destructive of all human addictions, the one which maintains
us in a constant state of denial and enslavement, is the addiction to
our limiting emotional responses which are the bars of the cage we
construct around our sense of self and our sense of possibility.
As an experiential, nature-based educator and group leader, my job was
to encourage people to “push the envelope” and expand into
a perceptual territory outside of the habitual sense of limitation that
both our culture and our very nature prescribe. As a
rite-of-passage facilitator, I’ve assisted people, both young and
old, to step beyond the threshold of ordinary reality into a numinous
realm in which dwells both demons and allies – each waiting to
guide us back to ourselves and our purpose in this life.
In truth, the demons that each of us carry on our shoulders like
mascots, are holy beings asking to be recognized. Once recognized
for whom they are, they become allies and their power becomes available
to us rather than conflicting with our imagined desires. To make
this transition, requires a Hero’s Journey into unknown territory
– involving a departure from the known world, battles with our
inner demons (in which they are not slain but transformed), assistance
from allies (who may have been our demons), discovery of Hidden
Treasure (self-understanding), and a return to share our treasure with
the world we left behind (now altered by our expanded vision).
This is also the roadmap of the Vision Quest and of all rites of
passage.
We are in the midst of a Great Awakening, a collective Rite-Of-Passage
from the Age of Fear to the Age of Hope. We must acknowledge but
not cling to our fears as we reach for hope.
If we are primarily or exclusively focused on Peak Oil, then we are
merely weathermen shouting into the wind (Chicken Littles) and
difficult to hear. We need to become Big Chickens and learn to
cross the road. Not just to get to the other side and not simply
to rebuild the levees, but to build an ark. Then, when people
stop in curiosity and ask why, we can simply point to the sky and say:
“Don’t you see those storm clouds coming. And look
how lovely this Ark is. It contains everything I truly need, and
in it I am secure and content. Wouldn’t you like to join
me?”
Fear & cynicism are what is keeping us blind and enslaved.
More fear will not move us out of our cages. Humor, hope &
vision will. These are weapons of mass deconstruction. What
we will then need are tools of mass reconstruction, tools of
conviviality: our famous American inventiveness, determination, and
openness to possibility. We Americans are destined to manifest
love in material form (Spiritual Politics, McLaughlin & Davidson).
In the inspiring movie, Field of Dreams, the tag line was “build
it and they will come.” The field we need to build now is
not a playing field, but rather a field of consciousness which will,
when it becomes strong enough, manifest its own form and function.
Every breakthrough requires a breakdown. Every awful truth
contains an awesome opportunity. Light and darkness are not
opposites. Darkness is the absence of light. Shine a light
on a shadow and the shadow’s power diminishes. We are
living in a time of very deep and lengthening shadows, and our job must
be to cast a very powerful light, first on our own shadows and then on
our collective shadows. That light will then illuminate a new
direction that wasn’t widely perceived.
The old order is winding down, as entropy demands. This spinning,
dizzying top will soon begin to wobble and then to tumble. Life
is the only anti-entropic force. Let’s be pro-life.
Let us together build a new world order based upon a richer balance,
one that was inscribed in our DNA from millennia of being at-one with
nature, and informed by our broader vision of what is possible.
We are an expression of the Universe in search of itself. Let us
celebrate this new opportunity for self-discovery and
self-realization. It’s surely going to be an exhilarating
time!
Robert Riversong is a
designer/builder of super-efficient healthy
homes, on the faculty of Yestermorrow Design/Build School, an
experiential educator and rite-of-passage facilitator, a
firefighter/EMT and rescue specialist, and a life-long peace &
justice activist and tax resister. He can be reached at
Rites-of-Passage
(at) Ponds-Edge.net
Articles
Greater East Montpelier Peak Oil Group (a.k.a. Second
Tuesdays) Receives $1,500 Grant
press release, submitted by
Carl Etnier
The Greater East Montpelier Peak Oil Group (GEMPOG) has received
a
$1,500 grant that it will use to inform Vermonters about the impending
decline in worldwide oil production and its consequences for an economy
addicted to oil, plus to start changes that will lessen those
consequences. The grant was from the New England Grassroots
Environmental Fund, a small grants program designed to foster local
grassroots environmental initiatives in New England.
“World oil production is predicted to peak and then decline
sometime in the next five to fifteen years—and may already have
peaked last year,” said group member Carl Etnier. “Our
whole civilization is built on cheap energy, and oil won’t be
cheap in the future. Coping with the consequences of declining world
oil production is probably the greatest challenge we’ll face in
the first half of the 21st century. Staying warm in the winter,
gainfully employed, and fed—most of us take these for granted
now, but how easy will that be when heating oil and the diesel for
growing and transporting our food cost $10 a gallon?”
GEMPOG grew out of a reading group that a number of people who live in
East Montpelier and Middlesex formed last fall to study the timing and
consequences of peak oil production. “After two meetings, we
decided we needed to move from talk to action,” said Andy
Shapiro, one of the founding members. “We started planning a way
to spread the word to people in a position to make changes now to how
Vermont uses energy and produces food.”
The group prepared a slideshow on peak oil, its potential consequences,
and things that Vermont can be doing. These include ways to
drastically reduce energy costs and to stabilize energy supply by using
energy more efficiently and generating more of it locally from
renewable sources. The slideshow also focuses on
“re-localizing” food, energy production, and other economic
activity, since long-distance transportation of goods will
gradually—or suddenly—decline as oil prices climb.
In March, they presented the slideshow to an invited group of
legislators and others in state and local government and associated
organizations. The Lamoille County Planning Commission got wind of the
discussion and invited GEMPOG to give the presentation at its annual
meeting on June 13, where it was well received. One of the
Commissioners, Scott Noble of the Stowe Planning Commission, commented,
“It’s a very high level presentation. Fascinating. One of
the better ones I've ever seen.”
GEMPOG plans to give its presentation to other boards and commissions
in the coming year. “Ideally, we’d like to meet with every
one of the Regional Planning Commissions,” said group member Doug
Kievit-Kylar.
GEMPOG is a member of the Vermont Peak Oil Network (www.vtpeakoil.net), an umbrella
organization for similar groups around the state.
Group members are also organizing their lives to be prepared. “We
renovated our house with major energy investments a few years
ago,” Etnier said, “and now all we need for heat and hot
water each year is some sunshine, two cords of wood, and about 120
gallons of propane. And between our garden and greenhouse, we eat our
own fresh food almost year round—and put up a lot in the root
cellar and freezer.”
For more information on GEMPOG or VPON, contact Carl Etnier 223-2564 or
carl (at) etnier.net
The New England
Grassroots Environment Fund (NEGEF) is a small grants program designed
to foster local grassroots environmental initiatives in Connecticut,
Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont. It
provides small grants of up to $2,500 to fuel local activism that
results in broader community involvement in projects that address a
wide range of environmental issues and opportunities. Local
groups may be tackling an environmental health problem related to poor
air quality or water pollution, or advocates may be urging citizen
participation in protecting open space or wildlife habitat.
Whatever the issue, the Fund wants to move these efforts forward with
its support. For more information contact NEGEF at P. O. Box
1057, Montpelier, VT 05601, call (802) 223-4622, email info@grassrootsfund.org or
visit the website at www.grassrootsfund.org.
Ace VPON-linked Lecture Squad presents to
Lamoille County Planning Commission
Submitted by Erik Esselstyn
On the evening of June 13th, Carl Etnier, Doug Kievit-Kylar, and Andy
Shapiro, members of the Greater East Montpelier Peak Oil Group,
presented their peak oil slide show at the Lamoille County Planning
Commission’s annual meeting. The Power Point graphs and charts
were followed by a panel discussion addressing key issues flowing from
the presentation as well as responding to questions from a number of
guests.
Peak oil’s impact on transportation issues inspired considerable
interest. Will we find ourselves plowing winter roads less often? How
might peak oil impact the delivery of overall town services - Fire
Departments, EMT coverage, and fuel thirsty school bus fleets? What
about heating school buildings and municipal offices? In exploring
planning’s potential impact on these challenges the panelists
brought forward few easy solutions.
Several panelists brought up the idea of encouraging public
transportation, always a costly and hard-to-sell option in scattered
rural Vermont communities. Many came forward with ideas to encourage
bicycle use - safe, clearly marked "bike only" lanes along highways and
streets, covered bike parking sheds at key community gathering nodes
and schools, and information programs to promote bike use and safety.
Here again, it was clear that the planner’s power to encourage
and recommend, rather than to mandate, probably meant few major changes
until Vermonters faced further painful escalations in fuel costs.
Panelists examined the crucial roles of efficiency and conservation -
the most cost effective oil saving approaches any family, municipality
- or nation! - can undertake. When you leave the
kitchen/basement/bathroom, turn off the light. Turn down the winter
thermostat, especially at night. Do our tiny Vermont hamlets really
need four street lights burning all night? Always look for the Energy
Star label. Take advantage of the obvious savings from meticulous home
insulating and sealing.
The presentation was well received. Scott Noble of the Stowe Planning
Commission prefaced his question saying, "I’d like to compliment
you on the quality of the presentation. Fascinating. One of the
better ones I’ve ever seen."
Though heavily courted by major TV networks and several Los Angeles
based film companies, the lecture team of the Greater East Montpelier
Peak Oil Group intends to remain focused on Vermont. Keep an eye on
local news sources and the VPON Newsletter to find out when their
lively, thought provoking show will be offered in your community.
(By Erik Esselstyn,
mightily assisted by notes from Carl Etnier. Erik and Carl are
members of Second Tuesdays, the greater E. Monpelier group. To
organize a slide-show presentation for your regional planning
commission, contact Carl at carl
(at) etnier.net).
Sarah
Grillo to Attend National Peak Oil Leadership
Training
Burlington College student, Peak Oil activist and Vermont artist Sarah
Grillo has been selected as one of 15 students from across the country
to participate in a national, yearlong program sponsored by 20/20 Vision.
As one of 20/20 Vision's Volunteer Regional Directors, she
will receive training, money and resources to create and facilitate
outreach programs addressing peak oil issues and energy independence in
Vermont, specifically targeting college students. 20/20 Vision launched
its innovative new program to create a student-led Regional Director's
Council, selecting energetic participants from colleges and
universities across the US to train as Volunteer Regional
Directors. Sarah will join 14 of her peers in Washington, D.C.
this July
for an intensive week of hands-on training in non-profit advocacy and
field organizing. During this one school-year term, Sarah and her
fellow participants will be the group's point of contact for a
non-partisan debate on energy security policy and related issues on
their college campuses. At Burlington
College, where we've
already seen Sarah's commitment and leadership on peak oil issues,
we're looking forward to her further contributions to the BC campus and
the
community at large.
Sanders
Unveils Vermont's First Hydrogen Fueling Station
July 3rd, Burlington Electric Department - 585 Pine Street,
Burlington; 11:00 am.
Join Congressman Bernie Sanders and EVermont
in the official opening of Vermont's first hydrogen fueling station and
the first fueling of Vermont's first hydrogen powered car. The
purpose of the project is to test the viability of hydrogen as a
transportation fuel in a cold climate with hilly terrain and a rural
settlement pattern. EVermont, Northern
Power Systems, and Proton
Energy Systems partnered in the project, with additional support
from Air Products and
Chemicals, Inc. The new system will convert electric energy and
water into clean hydrogen fuel, which will be stored on-site and then
dispensed into clean and efficient hydrogen-fueled vehicles. The
project was funded by a nearly $1 million Department of Energy (DOE)
grant secured by Congressman Sanders.
(Ed note:
Critical thinkers and the curious alike have many questions...
this will be an interesting project to watch. Is hydrogen a
viable alternative? It's an energy storage medium, not a fuel
source. Hydrogen is often called "the Houdini of Elements" - how
was that problem dealt with? Great that hydrogen, at the tailpipe
end, is clean, but what about the manufacturing process? Hats off
to the project team for looking into wind generation for the
electricity; again a question about best use of that electricity...
what's the EROI on that vehicle, from start to finish? We may all
learn a great deal at a time when creative thinking and new strategies
of all kinds are part of finding the solutions. Best wishes to
the project and congratulations to the team.)
CVPS
Cow Power™ Enrollment Passes Milestone
From
Steve Costello, of Central Vermont Public Service
RUTLAND – CVPS Cow Power™ enrollment has surpassed
3,000 customers, making the renewable choice program one of the most
strongly customer-supported offerings in the country.
“Our goal has been to make CVPS Cow Power one of the top 10
programs in the country by year-end-2010, and we are well on our way
toward meeting that goal,” CVPS President Bob Young
said. “Customers continue to enroll by the dozens
each week, voting with their energy choice for Vermont farming, an
improved environment and renewable energy production.”
CVPS Cow Power™ now has 3,052 customers enrolled, just over 2
percent of Central Vermont Public Service’s 151,000
customers. According to the Department of Energy, nearly 600
utilities in the United States offer some kind of renewable choice
program, with a median participation rate of 1 percent.
CVPS’s participation rate puts CVPS Cow Power™ into
the top quartile in the nation after just 20 months.
“Cow Power has struck a chord with customers, and is a
perfect example of the value of giving customers choice when it comes
to alternative energy programs,” said David
O’Brien, commissioner of the Department of Public
Service. “In developing Cow Power, CVPS worked with
the DPS and myriad governmental and non-profit groups focused on
improving Vermont’s environment and fostering alternative
energy solutions.”
CVPS Cow Power™ is the nation’s only direct
farm-to-consumer renewable energy program, creating a market for
farmers who want to process cow manure and other farm waste to generate
electricity. CVPS customers can choose to receive all, half
or a quarter of their electrical energy through Cow Power.
Customers pay a premium of 4 cents per kilowatt hour for CVPS Cow
Power™, which goes to participating farm-producers, to
purchase renewable energy credits when enough farm energy
isn’t available, or to the CVPS Renewable Development
Fund. The fund provides grants to farm owners to develop
on-farm generation. Farm-producers are also paid 95 percent of the
market price for the energy sold to CVPS.
Blue Spruce Farm in Bridport was the first farm producer, starting in
2005. Four more farms are in the process of developing
generators and are expected on-line late this year or early in
2007. The four farms include:
* Green Mountain Dairy Farm in Sheldon, owned by Brian and
Bill Rowell, with 1,250 cows expected to produce 1.7 million
kilowatt-hours per year;
* Montagne Farms in St. Albans, two farms owned by Dave
Montagne, with 1,200 cows expected to produce 1.7 million
kilowatt-hours of energy per year;
* Newmont Farms LLC in Fairlee, owned by Walter and Margaret
Gladstone, with 1,020 cows expected to produce 1.4 million
kilowatt-hours per year;
* and Deer Flats Farm in West Pawlet, owned by Dick and Rich
Hulett, who plan to use surplus crops and 210 cows to produce 3.6
million kilowatt-hours per year.
Manure and other farm waste are held in a sealed concrete tank at the
same temperature as a cow’s stomach, 101 degrees. Bacteria
digest the volatile components, creating methane and killing pathogens
and weed seeds. The methane fuels an engine/generator, and
the energy is put onto CVPS’s power lines for delivery to
customers.
“As the energy economy changes due to factors outside our
control, it is good to see new renewable energy sources being developed
right here in Vermont,” said Tim Maker, executive director of
the Biomass Energy Resource Center in Montpelier.
“These farmers are in the vanguard nationally, showing that
family dairy farms can produce home-grown power.”
For
more information,
including how to enroll in the program, contact: Steve Costello (802)
747-5427.
Independent
Country Stores Strengthen Vermont’s Rural Economy
By Carl Etnier
I was trolling the Vermont History Expo, looking for organizations to
connect with the Vermont Peak Oil Network (VPON), when I was delighted
to find the stand of the Vermont Alliance of Independent Country Stores
(VAICS). VPON and independent
country stores are natural allies.
VAICS describes itself as “a nonprofit organization whose mission
is to promote and enhance country stores, while preserving their unique
heritage and contributions to their communities.” To become a
Member of the alliance, a store must have been operating in the same
building or as the same business since the 1927 flood, and there are
certain goods it must stock. (Other businesses may join as Associates
or Friends.) Member stores must also serve local demand and meet local
community needs; carry perishables, shelf staples, and newspapers; be
majority owned by a local resident(s) who has independent
decision-making authority over the business; be open year round; and be
located in a rural area or in a village.
When oil production starts declining—or when a hurricane or
terrorist attack takes a significant portion of oil production off line
overnight—oil prices are likely to jump so high that we’ll
look back with nostalgia at $3.00/gallon gasoline. With transportation
costs skyrocketing, most economic activity is likely to become more
local.
Independent country stores embody part of the resilience the state
needs in an energy-constrained future. They are located near where
people live, so people can get their groceries without burning large
amounts of expensive gasoline. The connections that people make at the
stores can help them find each other to create new local enterprises
when the chain stores’ 12,000-mile supply chains become too
costly to maintain.
Next time you’re traveling around Vermont, consider checking the
country store locator map at www.vaics.org
to find country stores to
stop at along the way.
(Carl is a member of
East Montpelier's Second Tuesdays group. He can be reached at carl (at) etnier.net)
An
Inconvenient Truth (based on the book by Al gore,
An
Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What
We Can Do About It)
Reviewed by Jim Hansen.
Animals are on the run. Plants are migrating too. The Earth's
creatures, save for one species, do not have thermostats in their
living rooms that they can adjust for an optimum environment.
...Indeed, Gore was prescient. For decades he has maintained that the
Earth was teetering in the balance, even when doing so subjected him to
ridicule from other politicians and cost him votes. By telling the
story of climate change with striking clarity in both his book and
movie, Al Gore may have done for global warming what Silent Spring did
for pesticides. He will be attacked, but the public will have the
information needed to distinguish our long-term well-being from
short-term special interests.
...An Inconvenient Truth is about Gore himself as well as global
warming. It shows the man that I met in the 1980s at scientific
roundtable discussions, passionate and knowledgeable, true to the
message he has delivered for years. It makes one wonder whether the
American public has not been deceived by the distorted images of him
that have been presented by the press and television. Perhaps the
country came close to having the leadership it needed to deal with a
grave threat to the planet, but did not realize it. Read more.
(Jim Hansen is
Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
and Adjunct Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia
University's Earth Institute. His opinions are expressed here, he
writes, "as personal views under the protection of the First Amendment
of the United States Constitution.")
An
Inconvenient (Half) Truth: Peeking Over The Hedge At Our Future
Reviewed by
Rob Williams
Al Gore has made a timely movie about what
he calls
the most important moral issue of our time, a movie I really wanted to
like,
because Al Gore seems like a bright guy burning a whole lot of
jet fuel to hammer home an important message to the world.
I just took my two kids to see the most important film of the summer.
I mean “Over the Hedge,” of course, Dreamworks' new
movie that satirically celebrates America’s great gift to the
world: The suburbs.
Thanks be to those zany animators for providing impressionable American
tykes with a playful picture of the most unsustainable living
arrangement the world has ever seen, a world we can now condition our
wee ones to laugh about in all of its fossil-fuel powered, cell
phone-obsessed, television-addicted, nacho cheese snorting glory.
The plot: Bruce Willis gives voice to rascally raccoon R.J., who
botches a theft attempt in Vincent the Bear’s (Nick Nolte)
lair. The outraged ursus charges the desperate R.J. with the task of
recovering all of Vincent’s collected suburban cave goodies
– a red wagon, a blue plastic cooler, potato chips, assorted
snacks – or be killed. The manipulative R.J. then enlists the
help of a motley collection of unsuspecting woodland creatures
– a control freak turtle, a jacked-up hyperactive squirrel, a
quarrelsome but loving porcupine family - who live over the
hedge from the newly-constructed suburbs, subsisting only on tree bark.
R.J. sells these poor primitive animated slobs on the promise of
exquisitely tasty processed food and 1001 other suburban delights that
lie over said hedge, if only they might help him heist the loot from a
well-coiffed goose-stepping realtor who hires a goofball exterminator
to do all of them in. A few lame jokes and several slapstick scenes
later, the story neatly resolves itself, in that Dreamworks’
sort of way that I leave for you to discover for yourselves.
Now I hate to ruin anyone’s good time, especially during
summer blockbuster movie season. But the problem with this Pixar-driven
yuk yuck-fest, of course, is that we and our children have some
difficult 21st century problems to solve, dilemmas involving the END of
suburbia and cheap fossil fuel energy, dilemmas that cut to the heart
of our current living arrangement so trivially mocked in
“Over the Hedge.”
So what to do? (Drum roll please).
Enter the earnest Mac-wielding Democrat Al Gore: “I used to
be the next president of the United States of America,” he
says by way of welcome at the beginning of his new documentary
“An Inconvenient Truth.” Har har. I’m so
glad we can all laugh about the fact that now two national presidential
“elections” (and I use the term loosely) have been
stolen from the candidate who actually won the majority of the votes.
Put these inconvenient facts behind us for a moment, though, and
acknowledge this: Al Gore has made a timely movie about what he calls
the most important moral issue of our time, a movie I really wanted to
like, because Al Gore seems like a bright guy burning a whole lot of
jet fuel to hammer home an important message to the world.
The data seems clear, the evidence conclusive. The debate among folks
who put their faith in the scientific method is over. Human-induced
global warming is a reality that threatens our collective future.
Now, if you’ve seen this movie’s fantastic
theatrical trailer or read any of the advance buzz (“This
movie will scare you to death!” scream all the national movie
pundits), you’re in for a disappointment, for Gore builds his
story around a live lecture he gives to an attentive if slightly-bored
looking audience, complete with a wide variety of hi-tech visuals,
charts, and diagrams. Typical for Gore, he makes his case methodically
and thoughtfully. He’s at his best in his occasional
voice-over asides and he relies on a number of engaging stories and
visuals to help tell his story, but he refuses to take off the gloves
when it comes to the well-funded corporate spin doctors of the
“global warming is a giant hoax being perpetrated on the
American people by liberal environmentalist wackos” camp.
But here are two big problems with Gore’s movie.
First, Gore never once mentions our global peak oil situation
– the fact that the world is running out of cheap and
abundant fossil fuel energy. Talking about global warming and our
collective future without addressing this reality makes his film an
“inconvenient HALF truth,” as it is our century-old
addiction to fossil fuel energy that has helped create global warming
in the first place.
Interestingly, I broke my self-imposed two decade long “no
TV” taboo to watch Al Gore being interviewed on
Larry “Softball Question” King the night I went to
see his new film. Predictably, Gore was his usual cautious,
self-effacing and circumspect self, but on at least two occasions, he
became somewhat animated when discussing global warming. He even
uttered the phrase “peak oil” in passing during the
last minute of his 45 minute interview with King (the other fifteen
minutes of the hour being devoted to commercial interruptions, many of
them, ironically enough, for automobiles, which are the single greatest
collective contributor to global warming globally).
But to not directly and honestly address our uncertain energy future
seems incredibly irresponsible for a world leader of Al
Gore’s stature.
Which leads to the second big problem with his new film. Gore offers
little in the way of solutions, beyond tiresome and empty “we
must do the right thing” rhetoric. “Political will
is a renewable resource,” Gore explains to enthusiastic
applause.
Yes, yes, but what must we do? Decrease global population? Give up our
dependence on technologies that make our way of life so darn
convenient? Downsize our lives? Use energy more efficiently? Decrease
our energy use? Who’d like to be first in line? And will
Gore’s film change people’s minds?
The truth is, it doesn’t matter. This is the wrong question,
just like Gore’s insistence on framing global warming as a
“moral” and not a “political”
issue is misguided. Morality aside, global warming and global peak oil
are looming political AND economic issues, two faces of a very
inconvenient 21st century dilemma that doesn’t just threaten
polar bears or residents of the planet’s low-lying
communities in Florida, Shanghai, and lower Manhattan. All of us have a
big stake in this conversation. And what needs to be changed our not
our minds, but our actions.
And this is very hard to do - Gore’s political platitudes and
ahistorical analogies aside - when our political and economic life are
both governed by the very players – giant multinational
corporations and the politicians who serve them - most interested in
preserving the status quo.
We best get busy. I can feel the temperature rising.
Historian,
media educator, musician and peaceable secessionist Rob Williams (http://www.robwilliamsmedia.com)
lives in Vermont’s Mad River Valley. Rob has also
written a review of The Great Warming, which you can read at: http://vtcommons.org/node/508
The
Great Warming
from
Henry Swayze, Post Carbon Tunbridge
Climate change is happening faster than scientists predicted. The human
fingerprint is all over climate change. Warming will cause dramatic
shifts in rainfall patterns making human habitation difficult in many
well populated areas of the world. If we continue business as usual 400
million people will starve to death by 2050 as a consequence of drought
(leaked from upcoming Intergovernmental Panel Report on Climate Change
(IPCC).) Warming will drive great variations of hot-cold, dry-wet, and
more intense storms. (During the 1982-83 El Nina fishing
villages in Peru received 55 years of rainfall in 3 months.)
Sustainable energy development, together with conservation, are
required for us and for the world. (China has 5 times the
number of people as the USA and is buying cars like crazy. Their
present rate of car ownership is lower than it was for the USA when the
first model A rolled off the line.) Conservation must be a step at a
time and must be by how we design our buildings and where we place them
as well. No one should feel attacked - it’s just
that it is time to do better. This is not just a ecological issue, or a
financial issue; it is a moral issue. Our society is starting
to pay attention like they never did before. Thinking of our
children’s lives and their children’s lives will
create a working together that is necessary to improve our future
world. The Great Warming is a must see movie for all that care what the
world will be like for their children and grandchildren. Take people
you know with you. This is a much under-publicized event. Now showing
in South Burlington at 9 Palace theater on RT7 South.
802-864-5610
Great Warming Homepage:
http://www.thegreatwarming.com/
Salad
with a Side of Fuel?
By
Lynda King (of Harvard Local: a Peak Oil Awareness and Response Group
based in Harvard, Massachusetts)
Friday, June 16, 2006
Transportation costs are only a fraction of the oil-related costs that
go into the mass-production of America's food. In an article he wrote
in 2004 for From the Wilderness publications, geologist Dale Allen
Pfeiffer said that, in the U.S., it takes 400 gallons of oil
(equivalents) to feed each person in the country for a year (as of data
available in 1994). He said that 31 percent of agricultural energy
consumption in this country is used for the manufacture of inorganic
fertilizer, 19 percent for the operation of field machinery, 16 percent
for transportation, 13 percent for irrigation, 8 percent for raising
livestock (not including feed), 5 percent for crop drying, 5 percent
for pesticide production and 8 percent for miscellaneous operations.
Dr. David Pimentel, professor of ecology and systems at Cornell
University, "has estimated that, if all the world ate the way the
Unites States eats, humanity would exhaust all known global fossil-fuel
reserves in seven to 10 years." Read
more.
---
And if you're STILL hungry, see My Saudi
Arabian Breakfast - "Please join me for breakfast. It's time
to fuel up again." U.C. Journalism student Chad Heeter's
exploration of just how much the phrase "you are what you eat" (even
for breakfast) catches our peak oil moment.
Two Intellectual Systems: Matter-Energy
and the Monetary Culture
summary, by M. King Hubbert
True
conservation begins wherever people are, and with whatever trouble
people are in.
- Stewart Udall.
(Ed note: In his
essay for our June
issue (archived at: http://vtpeakoil.net/6.06whatsnew.html), Carl Carlson referenced this
little-known work by M. King Hubbert, summarizing Hubbert's view
that our current growth-based economies depend upon "an expanding
population to sustain the requisite economic expansion, as well as upon
expanding matter and energy supplies to be processed and consumed by
the expanding population in support of the expanding economy" (Carl C).
Sounds
like a mouthful, but it might be one explanation for the trouble we're
in. Hubbert's theories have also become part of a conversation on the
Vermont Peak Oil Discussion Group: you can review comments at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vtpeakoil/
- this is a Yahoo group, and requires sign-up. Following are excerpts
from Hubbert's paper; a link is provided if
you would like to read more.)
"The world's present industrial civilization is handicapped by the
coexistence of two universal, overlapping, and incompatible
intellectual systems: the accumulated knowledge of the last four
centuries of the properties and interrelationships of matter and
energy; and the associated monetary culture which has evloved from
folkways of prehistoric origin.
"The first of these two systems has been responsible for the
spectacular rise, principally during the last two centuries, of the
present industrial system and is essential for its continuance. The
second, an inheritance from the prescientific past, operates by rules
of its own having little in common with those of the matter-energy
system. Nevertheless, the monetary system, by means of a loose
coupling, exercises a general control over the matter-energy system
upon which it is super[im]posed.
"Despite their inherent incompatibilities, these two systems during the
last two centuries have had one fundamental characteristic in common,
namely, exponential growth, which has made a reasonably stable
coexistence possible. But, for various reasons, it is impossible for
the matter-energy system to sustain exponential growth for more than a
few tens of doublings, and this phase is by now almost over. The
monetary system has no such constraints, and, according to one of its
most fundamental rules, it must continue to grow by compound interest.
This disparity between a monetary system which continues to grow
exponentially and a physical system which is unable to do so leads to
an increase with time in the ratio of money to the output of the
physical system. This manifests itself as price inflation. A monetary
alternative corresponding to a zero physical growth rate would be a
zero interest rate. The result in either case would be large-scale
financial instability.
"With such relationships in mind, a review will be made of the
evolution of the world's matter-energy system culminating in the
present industrial society. Questions will then be considered regarding
the future:
What are the constraints and
possibilities imposed by the matter-energy
system? human society sustained at near optimum conditions?
Will it be possible to so reform
the monetary system that it can serve
as a control system to achieve these results?
If not, can an accounting and
control system of a non-monetary nature
be devised that would be appropriate for the management of an advanced
industrial system?
"It appears that the stage is now set for a critical examination of
this problem, and that out of such inquries, if a catastrophic solution
can be avoided, there can hardly fail to emerge what the historian of
science, Thomas S. Kuhn, has called a major scientific and intellectual
revolution." Read more.
You
Belong Here, You are Home
Celebrating the work
of Peter Forbes
by Annie Dunn Watson
Land conservation can become the story
of how the soul of the land became the soul of our culture, signaling
over and over our place in the world.
- Peter Forbes.
Before
I knew who he was, I had marked him as the individual with the most
engaging smile in the room. "Our country needs a new story
about people and the land," Peter Forbes suggested in his welcoming
address to the Vermont
Earth
Institute's Third Annual Sustainable Living
Celebration. "We live in a culture that now produces more
malls than high schools, more prisoners than farmers, and devours the
land at the warp speed of 365 acres per hour. Today, the average
American can recognize one thousand corporate logos, but can't identify
ten plants and animals native to their region." So, what in
the world was he smiling about?
Peter Forbes, co-founder and director of the
Center for Whole Communities
very simply, loves, believes in and cultivates in others an abiding
love for the land. His address to this gathering of
Vermonters and their neighbors, each committed to living more
sustainably on the Earth, captured our most earnest hopes for the
future, even if it did not completely quell our fears. He bid
us recall the role of Place in our pasts, the yardstick of memory by
which many of us measure the vibrant resiliency of the places we
now
call home. He spoke about the American spirit in its noblest
sense, a spirit drenched in community, generosity, self-reliance and
cooperation – and how these qualities emerged as a result of
the traditions of how we once lived on the land.
He also reminded us that today "greed and the loss of places we have
loved" are what dominate the American story. Wounded, lost,
disenfranchaised, we wander the Earth without seeing it or ourselves,
and
unwittingly add to its suffering. The consequences of having
lost our way are all around us. We have overstepped our niche,
having misperceived our proper place within it. Our
civilization prospered and flourished (and our population along with
it) at great cost to the environment, to other species, and to our own
kind. We may be rendering the air unbreatheable, our agricultural soils
unuseable; clean and abundant water may become no more than a nostalgic
memory. And with the depletion of readily available supplies
of oil, pressure on the environment may actually increase rather than
subside as those desperate to continue their accustomed way of life (or
unable to imagine an alternative) grasp at unsustainable solutions in
an attempt to do so.
Ironically, the path home is also the place in which we stand - it is here
that we need to remember how to be. This knowledge is what so empowers
relocalization efforts, and re-educates us to the importance of
preserving the most essential resource - the land itself.
"Many communities in this country have revitalized their traditions,
become more democratic, experienced stronger economies because of their
efforts to protect and re-connect to their local land." Peter
writes, speaks, and in many ways teaches about land conservation as the
remedy to the excesses and burdgeoning catastrophes of our industrial
age. He believes that "land conservation can become the story
of how the soul of the land became the soul of our culture, signaling
over and over our place in the world."
What is this Place? What does it want from us? What
makes us call it "home?" and how might we preserve it for
ourselves and our descendants? If we have never before been so urgently
called upon to answer these questions, we are certainly called to do so
today.
Peter has the smile of one who knows his Place, and is willing to stand
for it and within it. In so many words and actions, he invites us to do
the same.
An interview with Peter Forbes appears at: http://www.tpl.org/tier3_cd.cfm?content_item_id=5482&folder_id=831
Reading about The
Center for Whole Communities (at
Knoll Farm) will also provide an insight into the values that motivate
Peter and his wife Helen Whybrow in their work.
In
Vermont News...
www.wcax.com/Global/story.asp?S=4896358
Based on Channel 3, WCAX's Wind Power Poll Results (May 12, 2006), the
vast majority of residents support wind power in Vermont, even if they
can see turbines from their property.
www.wcax.com/Global/story.asp?S=4908820
"Wind On Its Way?" - also from Channel 3, WCAX, (May 15, 2006).
Acknowledging the importance of public support for any wind
project, Jim Harrison and Peter Cross met with the Milton selectboard
in mid-May as a first step toward seeking
a state permit to put up an
anemometer tower on Georgia Mountain.
www.rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2006606030370
"Biodiesel fuel arrives in
southern Vermont" - Rutland Herald, June 5,
2006: Dorr Oil Company has started dispensing B05, a blend of
95% soy oil and 5% ordinary diesel, at its diesel station on Route 30
near Manchester. "As they say, it’s clean, it’s
green, and it comes from a bean," says Dorr company president Don Dorr.
www.bartonchronicle.com/html/biodiesel.HTM
"Local, Used Restaurant Oil Might
Heat Area Homes" - from the Barton
Chronicle Reporter: Joseph Gresser tells the tale of Kingdom Grease
Recycling, Ed Goodwin’s West Burke-based biodiesel company
that refines used oil from local restaurants. Goodwin is in the process
of upgrading capacity from 200 gallons to 2,000 gallons per week.
Long-term plans include partnering with a heating oil company to
produce fuel blends for discounted distribution to low-income
Vermonters and pressing oil from local crops for discounted sale to
local restaurants.
www.vermontguardian.com/local/062006/NewWindRegs.shtml
"Wind Developer Pulls Up Stakes,
State Issues New Regs" - Vermont
Guardian, June 9, 2006. As the Agency of Natural Resources
issues its wind power guidelines, REV member Catamount Energy shelves
the Glebe Mountain project, and local consumers lose out on as much as
$700,000 in annual cost savings. The ANR document appears at: http://www.vermontwindpolicy.org/wrkpaprs.html
- click on links in sidebars to
learn more. Public comment on the guidelines ended June 30th, as
noted in the VPON e-newsletter 6/29.
Welcome
to The Dinner Hour!
The Dinner Hour
is a one hour radio show that airs weekly on WMRW-LP Warren - Community
Radio for the Mad River Valley (95.1 on the FM Dial). The
show is on
Tuesdays from 5:00pm to 6:00pm. Your hostesses for
the show are Robin
McDermott and Serena Fox.
On The Dinner Hour, the topic is
food with
a focus on fresh and local. You can see a listing of past
topics, and
find out what's coming up, at: http://dinnerhour.wmrw.org/
Fox and McDermott welcome your
comments and thoughts about our previous shows, the
current show or ideas for future shows. Please e-mail them with
you questions, thoughts,
kitchen tips, recipes. They would love to hear from
you.
Summer
Reading
VPIRG
Library - The Vermont Public
Interest Research Group has everything you ever wanted to know about
clean energy and global warming, environmental health, clean water,
GMOs, and consumer health hazards.
Bugs
Bite Me Not
from Annie Dunn Watson
It's summer, that irritating time of year when the only place
you want
to be is outdoors, and the bugs have made you question your sanity for
even considering it. For the second year in a row, we are trying
to coax lemon grass into flourishing here in Vermont's
northern climate. The plants, which began their lives
as grocery store acquired cuttings, spend winters indoors by a
southern window; in late May or early June, they migrate out to summer
by the garden beds. We learned about lemon grass and its mosquite
repellant qualities on the Journey to Forever
website; although we enjoy its delicious flavor in Asian-inspired
cooking, lemon grass is incredibly distasteful to mosquitos because it
contains citronella
oil. The folks at Journy to Forever claim it is more effective
than true citronella, and certainly better for us than DEET. Here
are a few words from their article on using lemon grass as a repellant;
you'll find their recipe for making lemon grass repellant on their website:
"Rubbing the long, grassy leaves on the skin worked well, but the stalk
worked even better. Take one stalk of fresh lemon grass (grip it near
the ground and give it a sharp sideways tug to break it off from the
clump), peel off the outer leaves, snap off the grass blades behind the
swollen stem at the base. Bend the stem between your fingers, loosening
it, then rub it vigorously between your palms so that it fractures into
a kind of fibrous juicy mass, and rub this mess over all exposed skin,
covering thoroughly at least once. Pleasant on the skin and effective:
98% protection at the Beach House at sundown, 100% any other time, and
the effect lasts about 4-5 hours." Take Back the Summer!
(Annie live in the woods in Essex where she attempts to
garden and hold the mosquitos at bay.)
Don't
Kill That (Pig)Weed!
submitted
by Moshe Braner
According to Wikipedia, omega-3 can be obtained from "vegetable sources
such as the seeds of chia, perilla, flax (linseed), walnuts, purslane,
lingonberry, seabuckthorn, and hemp." Of these only flax and walnut
products might be readily purchased. Common Purslane is a widespread
(and tasty) garden weed.
"Portulaca oleracea (Common Purslane, also known as Pigweed, Little
Hogweed or Pusley), is an annual succulent in the family Portulacaceae,
which can reach 40 cm in height. It is a native of India and the Middle
East, but is naturalised elsewhere and in some regions is considered an
invasive weed."
"Purslane contains more Omega-3 fatty acids than any other leafy
vegetable plant. It is one of the very few plants that contains the
long-chain omega-3 EPA. [1] It also contains vitamins (mainly vitamin
C, and some vitamin B and carotenoids, as well as dietary minerals,
such as magnesium, calcium, potassium and iron. Also present are two
types of betalain alkaloid pigments, the reddish betacyanins (visible
in the coloration of the stems) and the yellow betaxanthins (noticeable
in the flowers and in the slight yellowish cast of the leaves). Both of
these pigment types are potent antioxidants and have been found to have
antimutagenic properties in laboratory studies." See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portulaca_oleracea
Biointensive farmer John Jeavons (author of "How
to Grow More Vegetables...than you ever thought possible on less land
than you can imagine") says that
"pigweed" is a good cover crop. (But can you get rid of it
when you want to?!)
(Moshe is a member of
Plan C in Chittendent County, dabbles seriously in gardening, and
remains endlessly curious about just about everything. You can
contact him about topics relating to energy and sustainability, esp.
"the inescapable arithmetic of exponential growth in a finite world."
mbraner (at)
highstream.net)
As the Crow Flies:
Reports from Around the State
VPON's
Third Gathering
Minutes of the June 24th VPON Meeting
(convened in East Montpelier).
Member groups represented: Second Tuesdays (East Montpelier),
ACoRN (Addison County), Tunbridge Post Carbon, Mad River Sustainability
Group, Cabot Peak Oil Network, Route 12 Loop Group (new name for
Randolph/Northfield group), Newbury start up group, Plan C (Chittenden
County). Meeting was co-facilitated and documented by Annie D-W
and Lee Blackwell.
Reports from each of the groups were collected during lunch.
These appear under each group’s section of “As the Crow Flies”, below, on
this Monthly News and Views page.
AGENDA ITEMS AND DISCUSSION.
1. Why Should We Care About Peak Oil?
Several regional groups have expressed difficulty in bringing people
“on board” re: the peak oil discussion.
- not sure why/if a problem at all
- perception that peak oil-concerned folks might actually be
survivalists/doom & gloomers
Those present shared that when we discuss peak oil related problems and
possibilities from the angle of a common concern or interest, listeners
tend to find more access. Dave Grundy from the E. Montpelier
group put it this way: “it’s like throwing mud at the wall
– a little of it sticks, and a whole lot falls away. But
that little bit adds up, after awhile.”
Here is a list of 25 reasons we
generated as to why we care about peak oil:
1) chance favors the prepared mind
2) sovereignty/independence
3) oil lifestyle fuels worldwide aggression/misery
4) we’d rather not freeze in the dark
5) a lack of petroleum will trigger economic collapse/business closures
6) everything (from eating to affluence) is based on fossil fuels
7) we care about what life will be like for our grandchildren
8) resilient communities will be best prepared to deal with the
challenges oil reduction presents
9) this is a global rite of passage to a new paradigm
10) opportunity to get in touch the natural world/ecosystems in a
direct and personal way
11) a return to what’s important, taking control of ourselves,
our lives, responsibility for setting and obeying our limits
12) learning more skills, reconnect with more natural way of living
13) present “comfort” is based on resource that is in
decline
14) “Does anybody really like the life of an addict?”
15) endless growth is impossible: “Even if the earth itself
was made of 100% petroleum, at our present rate of demand/consumption,
all of that would be exhausted in 300 years.”
16) Ecological destabilization is unacceptable
17) This is a quiet revolution; we believe that others will join us as
they see the need and/or wisdom in doing so
18) The skills we are learning will provide refuge in a storm
19) Confluence of issues: community/climate/social/eco-justice
20) Oil gluttony is cross-generational sabotage.
21) Local/living economies, when improved and sustained, are more
healthy, more sustainable for all
22) Local food is more nutritious
23) No one else will do it for us – “we are the ones we
have been waiting for” – “be the change you want to
see in the world (Ghandi)”
24) Personal survival
25) An understanding of the issue, of the confluence of climate/peak
oil/social justice issues, will illustrate why our lives have to change
soon. It’s in our best interests.
2. And Just Who Are We, Anyway?
Organizations with similar agendas have begun to approach some of us,
inviting a “VPON perspective” or VPON representation on
various projects and collaborations. This generated a discussion about
who we are, and whether/when a “VPON perspective” might be
one any member of the network could claim to reflect. First, a
refresher glance at the standing stated mission/purpose of the network:
VPON Mission and Purpose (from website
homepage):
* Helping Vermonters prepare for a sustainable and satisfying
post-fossil fuel way of life.
* VPON is a statewide network of individuals and groups working
regionally on issues of relocalization and sustainability.
* The VPON website serves as a newsletter and clearinghouse for
information and resources promoting intelligent, community-based
responses to the challenges of peak oil.
Related Challenges
During our discussion, we realized that these functions do not
necessarily prescribe nor do they exclude any particular way of
addressing the challenges peak oil presents to the state of
Vermont. The ability to influence (“have a voice”)
would certainly be a benefit to organizing; however, it could put undue
pressure on those who are currently (or want to be) involved for the
support the network gives them to do their work regionally.
This led to the following line of questions and replies:
Who are we?
1) A network of relocalizers
2) Educators, interfacing at times with legislators and local planners
3) A network representative of varied individual and group efforts,
providing resources for ourselves and others in response to peak oil
4) Peak Oil groups bring forth peak oil explanations (based on
geological evidence), and bring that emphasis to other conversations,
suggesting that “a change in our arrangements” (Kunstler)
is needed, and why.
5) Everything we do includes peak oil in the lens, but also may
include: economics, climate, community.
6) we are willing to provide resources and presenters who can educate
on peak oil and how it interfaces with other issues (speaker’s
bureau, database)
7) a network is who we are, first and foremost.
And what do we want to do?
How to address the occasional urge to “DO!” something, to
move ahead on an issue or project, seeing as we do not have by-laws,
ways of voting/deciding on initiatives, committees, etc. Do we
need everyone’s agreement to go forward?
Whole network discussion/evaluation would be necessary perhaps only in
situations where everyone else would be affected (as in a conference
that might require donations of time, money, effort), or when the
network as a whole would be represented as “endorsing” a
particular point of view or project.
Lee, Anita, Henry and others advocated for “staying as a
network”, and simply encouraging others to follow their projects,
do their part as their talent, time and energy allowed (like Post Oil
Solutions model).
The preference for Ad Hoc groups formed around topics of interest and
ability, rather than standing committees or projects that would require
whole group sign-off, was suggested. Annie offered to collect
information for a database of persons (and their skills/areas of
interest) who are willing to be called upon to work on projects as they
arise. All members were also reminded that they can initiate
projects at any point – VPON reps have one another’s
emails, and are encouraged to collaborate or put out the call for help
when the spirit moves them.
From another shore.
Dave Grundy, of East Montpelier group, offered to write up a sample
“by laws” document for VPON, should anyone want to consider
that approach. All present agreed we would need to convene on another
occasion to discuss the merits and drawbacks of pursuing this.
3) A VPON Conference
Four members of the network (Nils Behn, Greg Strong, Carl Etnier, Annie
D-W) formed an ad hoc group to look into the possibility of hosting a
conference in the spring of 07 in response to suggestion of the idea at
April VPON gathering. A report summarizing their discussions and
research was distributed to all present. More thorough
description appears in the unabridged report on this meeting,
distributed by email to all VPON reps on 6/29.
Representatives present at
Saturday’s VPON meeting expressed both
interest and concern/caution:
Anita (Randolph/Northfield): worried that the
conference would take
energy from local groups. Maybe better off encouraging other groups to
have this as part of their conferences.
Robert (Mad River): One of 3 people who organized
national no
nukes conference in 3 months. Can happen.
Dave (E. Montpelier): Good idea. Maybe start with
one day first time.
Will (Addision County): Am torn. Maybe Vermont
should consolidate
conferences.
Dennis (Mad River): Great idea. Good for peak oil to
be focus of
an event, rather than integrated into a larger agenda.
Henry (Tunbridge): Looking for way to differentiate
what we are
doing from other conferences that have happened. Networking is that
possibly.
Cornelia (Tunbridge): Can be done with 4 people, to
make a good
conference.
Moshe (Chittenden County): There have been lots of
conferences. What's
going to be different? Maybe more Vermont specific if inserted into
other organizations' conferences.
Linda (Newbury): Terrific idea. Are there other
groups doing
similar things? Don't be redundant. Who is audience? Initiated or
uninformed public?
Lee (Cabot): Very ambitious, maybe overly. Not sure
peak oil
conference is what we need right now. Want to have a broad conversation
about how to change our way of living in Vermont. I don't have energy
for those conversations. I want to have conversations with people about
how we use renewable energy more.
Doug (E. Montpelier): Is putting together statewide
conference for
small businesses. Resources and money are important. Needed GM Power
and Coffee Roasters to come forward and provide resources. If we had
financial backers, I'd have more comfort.
Ron (Addison County): Am naturally enthusiastic. Did
Vermont Biofuels
annual meeting, 160 people. Event planner that handled details.
Robert (Mad River): Have keynote speaker a free
public event
Linda (Newbury): People are looking for specific,
practical
answers. Contractors, for example.
There was general concern that the scope/size of the
conference as presented (500 – 1000
people) was overly ambitioust.
However, all present agreed that if a group within the larger
network wanted to go forward with this idea, they should do so!
Lee (Cabot): Why not call conference peak oil,
relocalization, and climate change? Thus, creating a conference
that continues the conversation we are
all part of – not just VPON groups, but all groups with a common
agenda – those asking what to do about the pressing issues of our
time. The
synergy is apparent, and working with this may help guide the
conference and increase its utility (as well as its attendance).
The conference committee will consider these suggestions/concerns and
report back to the VPON reps in August. In the meantime, a
questionnaire was distributed and will be made available through email
to newsletter recipients to survey interests in such a conference on a
broader level.
4) Adjourning the meeting.
It was suggested we meet again in late August – date to be
determined. We will revisit the conference idea, and perhaps
consider organizational structure, alternatives, etc. Other
agenda items will be solicited as the time draws nearer.
ACTION ITEMS:
1) Please send information about your area of interest/expertise on the
matters of peak oil, its consequences, mitigation strategies, related
topics to Annie, if you are willing to be called upon to help on an
effort that requires your special skills/knowledge. She will
compile the information for a database which will be made available to
all network member groups. (This is different than the
speakers’ bureau, although information from that list will be
transferred to this new one.)
2) Please respond to the questionnaire that you will receive via email
concerning the development of a peak oil conference. All
responses will be forwarded to the conference idea committee. At
this time, there is no official steering committee for such a
conference (although if you are interested in being involved at that
level, you will have the opportunity to say so via the questionnaire).
Tabled items:
- Accessibility to the media (using current forums, radio, e-lists,
conferences)
- VPON logo?
- Powering our Future Tool Kit (an e-request has gone out about this
project; thank you to those who have forwarded their responses to Rob
Williams).
- “After the Harvest” fall networking and social event
- submitted by Annie Dunn Watson.
VT
Peak Oil Activists meet with Julian Darley
submitted
by Tom
Fugate, Mad River Sustainability Group
On
Friday, June 9th about a dozen Peak Oil activists from around the state
met for dinner, drinks and discussion at RI RA in Burlington with
Julian Darley, Director of the Post Carbon Institute in Vancouver,
BC. Julian was in town to speak at the BALLE Local Currency
Conference. Also joining us was author, lecturer and activist
Frances Moore Lappe who was also in town to give the key note speech at
the conference.
Julian gave an overview of the Post Carbon Institute's
activities. The PCI has grown in just one year from a
full-time paid staff of zero to a paid staff of fourteen.
They are receiving funding primarily from private family foundations
mostly in California. Julian said there is rapidly growing
awareness of the predicament we are in. In addition to their
existing PCI web site and Global Public Media which focuses on
interviews about peak oil and gas, they have launched a new web site,
www.relocalize.net, which will track the progress of the relocalization
network of which the Mad River Sustainability Group is a part.
Julian is very articulate and gets a lot of speaking
engagements. He said his British accent makes some of the bad
news he gives more palatable to American audiences. One of
the new services PCI is providing is post-carbon speaker
training. They also have a new array of publications on
re-localization which he passed around.
One of Julian's insights came in response to a question about the
severity of the problem. He said if you find yourself shoved
from an airplane which would you rather have, an altimeter or a
parachute? He said too many peak oil activists are focusing
on the altimeter and not the parachute. I did ask him what
his altimeter was telling him right now, are we at peak, past peak or
what? He said its a little hard to tell but he believes we
are past peak on both oil AND natural gas WORLD WIDE. I said
past peak light sweet crude or all liquids? He said he thinks
we are past peak all liquids. I said past peak natural gas
world wide is a minority view. He said yes but 4 of the 5
largest natural gas producers are now in decline. I guess its
time to get that parachute.
Each of us gave a brief update on our local groups
activities. The most active seems to be the Middlebury group
who are working on local hydro power production from Otter Creek among
other things. They had three representatives there.
The brand new Chittenden County group sent one person who reported they
are still getting organized. They are working on a local
currency project. Carl Etnier from Montpelier reported that
the state-wide VPON organization is considering a conference for next
year. Carl is planning a transition into working nearly full
time on peak oil organizing in Vermont; he is in the process of
discerning the institutional arrangements through which he could carry
out this work. Others reported that their groups had various
problems getting organized and getting people interested.
I reported on our groups activities over the past year. I
said we had some success with our skill seminars but hadnt really made
any progress in organizing the wider community, although there is now
an active local food movement. I also reported that our
members decided on a name change in order to gain wider
acceptance. Whether that happens remains to be
seen. I said we are going to have serious difficulties
because we are highly car dependent and live in a resort area with an
economy dependent on tourism. I mentioned that I gave a talk
to the Rotary Club where afterward the first question was what will
happen to the skiing industry? Julian agreed that there is no
good news about the existing economy and we need to be honest about
that.
After our good discussion at 10 pm the DJ started and we all went
outside for a few final words. I asked Julian what's the best
case scenario given that we are so badly overpopulated and oil
addicted, are wrecking the planets atmosphere, losing species left and
right, etc. He said the best case scenario is North Americans
don't start shooting each other. He said that's his biggest
fear - that with all the guns in private hands things may get
violent. What do you think the federal government is going to
do to try and control things, I asked. He said he didn't
expect the federal government to do much, maybe just try to protect
themselves, but that state and local governments are getting the
message and that's where he is focusing his efforts, to try to change
zoning laws and get parallel infrastructure built in time.
I have a lot of respect
and admiration for people like Julian Darley who somehow find the
energy and drive to go about changing the situation.
ACoRN
- Addison County Relocalization Network
ACoRN is a
cooperative response
to an energy-constrained future. Our
mission is to revitalize our local economy to help our communities
provide sustainable sources of food, water, energy, employment and
other essential resources, and to promote conservation and a healthy
environment.
ACoRN meets on the fourth Thursday of each month, usually at the Ilsley
Public
Library in Middlebury. The Renewable Energy Cooperative and Local Food
supply remain priorities. A local farmers directory is being
developed. A small micro hydro project is being explored (city planners
are interested), as well as an idea for a Renewable Energy storefront,
and locally owned energy production. Founding member Greg Pahl's book
on locally owned energy (among other things) is at the publishers.
Meetings are informative and participatory.
ACoRN
periodically screens End of Suburbia and hosts a discussion group after
the film.
ACoRN recently received a grant from the New England Grassroots
Environmental Fund; we will post specifics on the funded project
once we hear from them on that. Congratulations, ACoRN.
For more information about
ACoRN,
contact Greg at gpahl
(at) sover (dot) net
CPON:
Cabot Peak Oil Network
CPON continues to develop interfaces between farmers in Cabot.
Organic dairy farmers are aware of peak oil. Grass-fed
dairy, beef and poultry are, from beginning to end,
"sustainability."
This raises the question of what we feed chickens when "all you
have is what you have." Lee is working with the town through the
Democracy Committee, using his conflict management skills. He
recommends Non Violent Communication training, a skill he feels we will
need to facilitate good relationships in hard times. For more
information about CPON, contact Lee: leeb
(at) pivot (dot)
net
Plan
C - Chittenden
County Peak Oil Group
A
group with representatives from Burlington,
Charlotte,
Essex, and Richmond came together in March, and welcomes your input
and participation. A variety of committees have been formed, and
a social event this June 24th allowed members of the group and their
families to get to know one another better.
For
more information, please e-mail ccpeakoil
(at) yahoo (dot) com
Plan
C has developed the following
Committees:
A. Education/Outreach - communicating through other groups, though
workplaces, through websites and meetings. It will spiderweb outward.
Positive and fun events will be offered. Cultivate newspaper coverage,
local experts interviewed, flyers, postings and radio. A
Skillshare list is being formulated. Proposal to have a
monthly
"skills practice" meeting. A list of organizations and
schools
group members are connected with is being formed.
B. Big Picture Group - Assessment of what the county needs, including
statistics. Jobs, local economy, Cedo, Livable Community Project.
Also assess county's existing assets.
C. Policy: Some members of the larger network have met with legislators
and Leahy in past months. September is a good time for political
action. Money may be needed for a statewide resource data base - the
work could be hired out. The
government has money for such projects. Should Vermont have
Community Choice Laws as some states do, choosing where they can buy
their power from? The wind power debate must be kept open.
Communication with other organizations is important,
especially if we can send out emails to their members. How do we
prepare State for
$100 barrel oil? Greg will contact Gioia Thompson (Gioia.Thompson@uvm.edu),
Sustainability
Coordinator at UVM to ask about students that can do service projects
for us,
research, grant writing, whatever needed.
D. Entertainment Group: working to keep the membership connected and
happy!
E. Service Committee (new): This committee, which may rotate every few
months, will make sure that there is an agenda and a facilitator for
meetings, make sure we have a meeting place, and will take a higher
level of responsibility. Discussion: is such a committee necessary?
Thoughts-it may increase effectiveness; may be necessary as members
increase. Suggestion: we ask Greg and Cara and Rachel to try it. Greg
accepts.
Mad
River Sustainability Group
Meets
third Tuesday of the
month at 5:30 p.m., with a topical discussion or event to kick off each
meeting. For more information: nbehn
(at) northernpower (dot) com
PRESENTATION:
-Robert
Riversong presented his superb
power point presentation on "Measures of Sustainability", with a focus
on house construction and operating impacts, and covering 7 different
tools for measuring ecological impact and sustainability.
NEWS:
-After the presentation we discussed The work of Brian Mitchell at
Trevalen Farm who is developing Skills Swap weekends and alternative
currency. Dorothy can tell you more.
-Mad River Localvore meeting is tonight at 5:30 at Yestermorrow.
-Mad River Sustainability Group and the Mad River Localvores will be
collaborating on various projects and will be cosponsoring events in
the future.
PROJECT:
-Resource Mapping project is moving forward. We will be inviting some
members of the Mad River Regional Planning Commission and local energy
coordinators to our next meeting to get their input on our project so
we can learn what work has already been done that we can incorporate
and to get direction from them as to the kind of information they would
find useful..
-HERE IS A DESCRIPTION OF THE PROJECT:
The Resource Mapping Project's goal is to identify resources within the
Mad River Valley that are pertinent to building a sustainable local
subsistence. Examples of the areas of interest are: Types and
quantities of energy sources, agricultural resources, and skills
resources among others. We plan to work with local government and other
stakeholder groups in an effort to create a document that will help our
community to gain autonomy and build a common network and understanding
of what we have and what we need in order to claim our independence
from the declining and polluting energy source of oil.
NEXT MEETING:
July 18th at RootsWork. 5:30PM.
All good to all,
Nils Behn
Mad River Sustainability Group
Tel. Office: (802)496-7272
Please visit us at:
VPON-regional <http://vtpeakoil.net/regional.html>
And
Relocalization Network | Post Carbon Institute <http://www.postcarbon.org/groups/>
Post
Carbon Tunbridge
Meeting 2nd and 4th
Mondays of each month. Proposed
Mission
statement: "Work together to maximize quality of
life as we
reduce dependency on oil."
Post Carbon Tunbridge news: on Monday the 26th we showed
The Power of Community, How Cuba Survived Peak Oil, produced by Community Solutions
(937-767-2161). It was well received with 18 in attendance, many
of them new faces to our meeting. We continue to look for a
common action plan. Henry Swayze has been surveying wind and
micro hydro sites and looking into the production of liquid fuel to
power our vehicles that could be produced locally. We are
investigating going as a group to view An Inconvenient Truth with a
discussion following. This may be scheduled for the 6th at the
Savoy in Montpelier or over the weekend in Woodstock. All of us
should go and take others to see it as it is sweeping through Vermont
now. Contact Henry at: swayze
(at)
pngusa (dot) net
Post
Oil Solutions (Windham County)
Post Oil Solutions is a Windham County group working to advance
cooperative, sustainable communities in an age of global climate change
and declining fossil fuels. They meet in Brattleboro on the
first
and third Wednesday evenings of each month. For more
information, email