Tompkins County Relocalization Project

[Tompkins County Relocalization Project <tcrp-news AT lists.ibiblio.org>]

Hello TCLocal observers,

I've commented before on the excellent set of audio resources
compiled by the people at globalpublicmedia.com.  The main reason
I like these things is because they allow me to make productive
use of about 30 minutes a day that I spend in mindless activity,
namely, working out on our elliptical trainer.  When we finally
put in a garden, I'll figure out some way to listen to this stuff
while I'm weeding.

Right now I'm slogging through an entire two-day conference held
in October 2005 under the title "National Academies Workshop on
oil supply, demand and peaking in production."  I'm only about a
third of the way through it (two days is a lot of audio!), but I
wanted to recommend this to the rest of you for one basic reason:
this is one of the very few (if not the only) oil depletion
conferences available online that features both pessimists and
optimists, ranging all the way from Matt Simmons and ASPO on the
Peak Oil end to the USGS, IEA, and Cambridge Energy Research
Associates on the "don't worry, be happy" end.  The sound is
admittedly a little wonky, and the organizers committed the
cardinal sin of not providing microphones for questioners in the
Q&A sessions, and you don't get to see the slides... but it's
still worth it (assuming that like me you weren't using that time
for thinking productively about something else).

I believe that it's critical for us to be looking at both sides of
this debate, and I don't think that reading the Peak Oil blogs is
the way to do it and remain sane.  As usual, I find that listening
to the optimists actually makes me more convinced of the risk
we're facing, but it also gives some perspective to the probable
time line.

If you're interested in listening to this workshop, check out

   http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/lectures/542

Jon