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  • From: "TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Fourth U.S. Conference on Peak Oil and Community Solutions
  • Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2007 09:43:37 -0700


"Sharon Astyk, author of the forthcoming book A Nation of Farmers,
shared Wicks’ vision of creating sustainable local food economies. She
said the United States needs 50 million farmers and 200 million home cooks.
"We need to get everyone back in the kitchen," Astyk said, citing
statistics that show one out of every three meals in the U.S. is from a
fast food place and only 80 percent of Americans own a frying pan."

October 26-28, 2007 – Planning for Hard Times, Peak Oil Activists Gather
to Lead the Way During the Fourth U.S. Conference on Peak Oil and Community
Solutions
http://www.communitysolution.org/07conf.html
By Megan Quinn Bachman

Yellow Springs, Ohio – Former professor and author David Korten told
close to 300 applauding Peak Oil activists that they are not a fringe
minority but the leading edge of a super-majority "and it's time we start
acting like it."

Korten issued his rallying call in October at the "Fourth U.S. Conference
on Peak Oil and Community Solutions" where activists from 30 some states
discussed ways to respond to declining oil production and other coming
planetary woes. Korten joined a dozen other speakers in "Planning for Hard
Times," the theme of the three-day conference sponsored by The Community
Solution and held at Antioch College.

"The day of reckoning for our profligate ways has arrived," Korten said.
"Peak Oil, climate chaos, exhaustion of freshwater, species extinction,
financial collapse, and social disintegration are causing a great
unraveling." Now is the time, Korten said, for a great turning from a
5000-year history of empire, driven today by a suicidal competition over
the earth's remaining resources, to a cooperative earth community which
shares resources to maintain healthy communities, families and natural
systems.

Korten, author of The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community, said
that empire "elevates the most power-hungry and ethically challenged to the
highest positions of power." And the former Harvard University business
professor, also author of When Corporations Rule the World, said that
corporations that perpetuate this empire system are best described as
"gigantic pools of money with an artificial legal personalities and
required by law to behave like sociopaths."

Korten cited opinion polls showing 90 percent of Americans believe that
large corporations have too much power and more than 80 percent want to see
greater priority given to the needs of children, family, communities, and a
healthy environment. And he described economic growth as an engine of
environmental destruction which also increases the income gap between rich
and poor, with the need instead to focus on living better with less
(negative economic growth) and moving toward equality through
redistribution of wealth from rich to poor.

Other speakers promoted cooperation and community to create local
sustainable businesses, turn millions of Americans into local farmers, and
find ways to reduce energy use in housing, transportation and food
production.

"It’s about creating a new society, and it begins with us," said Pat
Murphy, executive director of Community Solution, which organizes the
annual conference. This need for a societal transition was a continuing
conference theme.

"During the lifetime of the boomer generation, roughly half the world’s
important non-renewable resources will have been used up…forever," said
Richard Heinberg, a leading peak oil educator and author of The Party’s
Over, Powerdown and more recently Peak Everything. Heinberg said this will
lead to less available energy, more labor needed in agriculture, widespread
relocation of people and a massive replacement of infrastructure.

And he asked: "How do we accomplish this enormous societal reorganization
without chaotic breakdown?"

Start with personal solutions, Heinberg said, adding "adjust your own
oxygen mask before helping others." He suggested working locally and
regionally because "higher levels of administration may not be in a
position to help much with local needs." But, he warned, without national
and international agreements, irreversible ecosystem collapse is likely.

"There is no hope for a soft landing, business as usual…normal life as
we’ve come to know it," Heinberg said. "So get ready for hard times," he
said. "If it’s not too late," Heinberg concluded, "what we do now will
determine whether the outcome is desirable or merely survivable."

Homeowner Larry Halpern’s personal account of dramatically curtailing his
energy use illustrated this potential. "I don’t wish to see other people
suffer because I was unwilling to be inconvenienced and I don’t wish to
suffer later because I didn’t have the time for an inconvenience now," he
said.

After learning about Peak Oil in 2004 and being disillusioned with
traditional activism, Larry said he and his wife, Gail, decided to "take a
time out trying to change the world, and focus a little more on trying to
change ourselves."

Thanks mostly to behavior changes and do-it-yourself projects in their
Springfield, Ohio home, over the next four years they reduced electricity
use from around 400 kilowatt hours per month to 36 kWh, cut natural gas use
by a third, and lowered water use by a factor of five.

Halpern observed "no electricity days" and removed his energy-guzzling air
conditioner and refrigerator. He then replaced some of his appliances with
low-energy alternatives, including a solar cooker, an LED reading light,
solar battery re-chargers and a composting toilet.

The couple, both professional musicians, also ate exclusively from their
own garden, a Community Supported Agriculture subscription farm, the local
farmers’ market and a food cooperative.

"When people are presented with the big picture of peak oil they often get
overwhelmed and close off," Halpern said. "I’ve decided to focus less on
trying to get people to see things my way and more on just trying to help
them live more sustainably and cooperatively."

Another speaker with a post-Peak Oil way of life was Judy Wicks, restaurant
owner and co-founder of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies
and the Sustainable Business Network of Philadelphia. Her Philadelphia
restaurant, The White Dog Café, is a model for just, local, sustainable
business.

The café sources all produce in season from local organic family farms,
uses only humanely raised meat and poultry and gets all fish and seafood
from sustainable fisheries. Wind power generates much of the cafe's
electricity, the first business in Pennsylvania to do so. Entry-level
employees make a minimum living wage.

"Business is about relationships with everyone we buy from and sell to, and
work with, and about our relationship with Earth itself," Wicks said.
"We’ve become disconnected from each other and from our places and
without direct relationships, few of us think about the consequences of our
economic transactions."

Wicks said that "business has been corrupted as an instrument of greed
rather than one of service to the common good. Yet we know that business is
beautiful when we put our creativity and care into producing a product or
service needed by our community."

Sharon Astyk, author of the forthcoming book A Nation of Farmers, shared
Wicks’ vision of creating sustainable local food economies. She said the
United States needs 50 million farmers and 200 million home cooks. "We need
to get everyone back in the kitchen," Astyk said, citing statistics that
show one out of every three meals in the U.S. is from a fast food place and
only 80 percent of Americans own a frying pan.

The Community Solution's Executive Director, Pat Murphy, also went on to
emphasize eating a low-energy diet, including less grain-fed meat and
manufactured foods, where 15 to 30 calories of fossil fuel energy are used
to produce each calorie of food energy.

Among the other detrimental effects of our industrial food system,
according to Murphy, are poor health, tortured animals, lack of crop
diversity, deteriorating soil, poisoned waterways, and the drawdown of
"fossil" water. He compared this to a more agrarian country, China, where
38 percent of the people are in agriculture, and where they generate six
times the amount of calories per acre compared to the United States while
conserving their soil.

Murphy also discussed lifestyle changes in transportation and housing,
pointing out that Americans annually generate 20 tons of carbon dioxide per
person while the International Panel on Climate Change estimates the limit
should be one ton per capita.

Bob Steinbach, a Dayton-area transportation planner shared ways to reduce
transportation fuel through ridesharing while Linda Wigington of Affordable
Comfort, Inc. explained how to reduce the energy use of existing buildings.

With suburbia’s low population density, motor vehicles are the most
viable short-term transportation option, Steinbach said. He added that The
Community Solution’s "Smart Jitney" proposal, a ride-sharing scheme using
cell phones and the Internet, is important because, "fuller cars mean fewer
cars, which means less oil is needed."

Steinbach discussed the biggest obstacle to the success of ridesharing
programs – willing passengers. "The mindset has to change," said
Steinbach, noting that the privacy and flexibility of driving alone
currently trump the environmental and financial benefits of sharing rides.

Wigington discussed "deep retrofit" strategies for existing homes to cut
their energy use by 80 percent, using a standard called the "Passive
House." The principles of this German-based model include tight,
super-insulated homes, with a thick building "envelope" and high
performance windows and doors.

"Our housing is facing a crisis of obsolescence," Wigington said, "and we
have a lion's share of existing houses that need to be dealt with to reduce
energy in the near term."

Wigington said home energy use is not just a function of appliances or the
structure. "How a family lives in a house has a major impact on it," she
said.

Another speaker who emphasized a fundamental societal change was Thomas
Princen, author of The Logic of Sufficiency. "One of the dominant
principles of our economy, efficiency, is not up to the task of dealing
with peak oil and climate change," he said.

Princen described efficiency as the basis of an economic order where raw
materials are extracted rapidly and thoroughly, converted into products
people buy, and disposed of in the least costly and visible manner
possible.

In contrast to claims that we can "grow our economy with green products and
pollute more efficiently" Princen said that efficiency too easily leads to
more consumption, not less, and sufficiency, which is geared toward
curtailing excess, would be more useful.

Participants returned to their communities with both a framework for
widespread change and the practical strategies to reduce their personal and
local energy use. "This has become a special core community to serve the
formation of the new world that's being created next in the midst of total
breakdown and crisis around us," said participant Peter Jones of nearby
Dayton.

Eric Morrison of Battle Creek, Michigan, said, "Now I have a path to take
and…to show others the way too."

To order DVDs of the conference, click here to go to our bookstore, or
contact Megan by email or call 937-767-2161.
http://www.communitysolution.org/07confdvds.html






  • [Livingontheland] Fourth U.S. Conference on Peak Oil and Community Solutions, TradingPostPaul, 11/29/2007

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