Post Carbon Newsletter #30 August 2007

1. A RENAISSANCE OF LOCAL! in Boulder, CO
2. Post Carbon Cities
3. Global Public Media
4. Relocalization Network
5. Energy Farms Network
6. Forthcoming Events
7. September Preview

1. A RENAISSANCE OF LOCAL! in Boulder, CO

If you're anywhere near the Boulder (CO) area September 28-30, don't miss a very special event: A RENAISSANCE OF LOCAL!, a county-wide community festival, conference and expo celebrating all things local: food, energy, economy, culture, and community.

The Post Carbon Institute is proud to be sponsoring this gathering with Boulder Going Local Inc. and Boulder Valley Relocalization, one of the country's most innovative local groups, and, we're happy to say, a member of our Relocalization Network.

"If you want to see how much better life can be in a sustainable community where people live in harmony with our planet, plan on spending three days at the RENAISSANCE," said Michael Brownlee, co-founder of Boulder Valley Relocalization and catalyst for Boulder Going Local Inc. "And make sure you're here on Sunday for our very special 'Slow Food Feast' - we'll have the finest Colorado and locally-grown foods, paired with organic and biodynamic wines, served community-style on one of the world's longest banquet tables!"

Julian Darley, President of Post Carbon Institute, emphasized the importance of local culture to the process of relocalizing communities. "Dealing with peak oil and climate change is about so much more than just finding ways to replace fossil fuels," Darley said. "We need to literally change our lives, from where we grow our food to how we design our towns and cities. A RENAISSANCE OF LOCAL! shows the cultural richness of the post-carbon world, from music to art to food."

In addition to a wide range of speakers from around Colorado, the conference will hear from Post Carbon's Julian Darley, from Post Carbon Fellow Richard Heinberg (author of the forthcoming Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines), and from Post Carbon Cities program manager Daniel Lerch (see #2 below for information on Daniel's new book).

2. Post Carbon Cities

An abridged version of Post Carbon Cities: Planning for Energy and Climate Uncertainty, our long-awaited guidebook for local governments, is now available for free download. Visit the Guidebook webpage at www.postcarboncities.net/guidebook to download this 20-page preview, which includes:

• Executive Summary and Table of Contents
• Preface and Introduction
• Guide to making a local government statement on peak oil
• Guide to establishing a peak oil task force.

As energy and climate change become increasingly important issues for businesses and citizens, Post Carbon Cities comes not a moment too soon for local leaders who want to know more about these long-term challenges. Print copies of Post Carbon Cities will be available for pre-order (US$30.00) by the end of the month, with delivery starting mid-September. Visit www.postcarboncities.net/guidebook for more information.

In September and October, Post Carbon Cities Program Manager Daniel Lerch will be traveling to promote the Post Carbon Cities Guidebook. His tour will include public presentations and meetings with government agencies and citizen groups working on local responses to peak oil and global warming. Watch our website in the coming weeks for Daniel's full itinerary, and contact him if you would like to host a presentation when he's in your area.

Preliminary tour schedule:

• 9/10 - 11: in San Francisco Bay Area
• 9/17 - 19: in Washington, D.C. area
• 9/20 - 21: in San Francisco Bay Area
• 10/22 - 23: in Ottawa and Montreal
• 10/26 - 11/3: in New England
• 11/4 - 9: in New York City / New Jersey / Philadelphia area

3. Global Public Media

This month, Global Public Media's Julian Darley talked to author and journalist David Strahan about the mainstreaming of peak oil. Julian Darley and UK Petroleum Review editor Chris Skrebowski took an in depth look at the dramatic shortage of new LNG projects. We featured Richard Heinberg's Museletter "The View from Oil's Peak" and new episodes of Peak Moment Television, Deconstructing Dinner and the Reality Report.

We've added the entire archive of the Lifeboat Radio Show. The Lifeboat Show is an initiative of Astoria, Oregon's local Post Carbon group, the Titanic Lifeboat Academy. The show has featured Dr. William Rees, Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury, Richard Heinberg, Matt Savinar and many others talking about peak oil, climate change and related issues.

And finally, Megan Quinn's popular article "The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil" was translated into Spanish for Global Public Media by GPM volunteer Melisa Chavez Moreno. (Thanks so much Melisa!) If you would like to volunteer to translate or transcribe for GPM click here.

4. Relocalization Network

The Titanic Lifeboat Academy's Lifeboat Show radio program airs every third Monday of the month on local radio and live simulcast. You can also listen to past shows now on Global Public Media. Last summer, the Relocalization Network supported Janaia Donaldson and Robyn Mallgren of Peak Moment TV on their journey across the West Coast of North America visiting communities and interviewing local experts. Read Janaia's reflections on their trip and the people they visited along the way on her blog.

Check out new online tutorials on getting started, creating content and finding users in your area. Local groups across the Network are gearing up for fall film screening festivals. Be the first to review and read reviews of your favorite documentary films, including Escape From Suburbia, Crude Awakening and the 11th Hour, in the online forums. Be one of the first ten people to post a film review in the forum and receive a complimentary DVD copy of "The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil."

Subscribe to the monthly Relocalize Newsletter and visit www.relocalize.net to stay current with all the Relocalization Network activities!

Featured Post Carbon Group: Sunshine Coast

A new peak oil course, energy descent action planning, a community education centre, new community gardens, and new relocalisation groups - the Sunshine Coast in Queensland Australia is powering ahead with relocalisation ideas and projects.

Group coordinators Sonya Wallace (Creating a Sustainable Sunshine Coast - Nambour to Mooloolah - (CASSC)) and Janet Millington (Sunshine Coast Relocalisation- Noosa Eumundi and Districts (SCReNE)) have been working together to develop new ways to engage the community and begin the process of powering their region down in preparation for energy descent.

Janet, an experienced permaculture educator and a school teacher by trade and Sonya, who has a background in government and corporate communications, started the first Time for an Oil Change course in early August with more than 20 people enrolled.

Week by week participants explore different areas of our lives that will be affected by energy descent and develop projects and solutions based on permaculture principles and ethics. These solutions will become the first Sunshine Coast Energy Descent Action Plan, which will then be delivered to local government.

It all started with the idea for a new course based on David Holmgren's text that applied permaculture to the challenges of peak oil and climate change and a meeting between Andi Hazelwood of SustainaBundy, Janet and Sonya.

From there ideas for an education centre soon developed and the Sunshine Coast Energy Action Centre is now open every Saturday morning offering free DVD screenings, workshops and presentations all related to energy descent to the local community.

Janet is involved in the development of new community gardens near Noosa and Sonya has started a new relocalisation group in her local town of Eudlo. In her spare time Janet develops school curriculum based on permaculture and is writing a school garden text book for teachers. Sonya is working on a Master of Communication degree, which will be based on her work on peak oil.

The Sunshine Coast Energy Action Centre's website is www.seac.net.au.

5. Energy Farms Network

Sorghum and Sunflowers at the Willits Energy Farm:

The Energy Farm Program is looking at exciting new projects and monitoring those already underway. Energy Farm test plots at the Solar Living Institute and Rogue River Oregon are showing hearty growth of dale sorghum and peredovic sunflowers respectively. Each of these test plots has a weather station, so we can see what the best cultural practices are for growing these multi-use crops on the west coast of the United States. Sorghum, like the sunflower, is a great example of a crop providing stacked functions. It produces a grain head for food, sweet juice for high calorie syrup or ethanol biofuel, and the stalk is high in potassium that can be pressed into briquettes, shredded and fed to compost, or used as mulch.

The project at Brookside Energy Farm located in Willits, CA continues to amaze and stir up conversation related to relocalization and public education in the realms of food and energy security. In seven months, we have taken the site from bare field to a functioning mini-farm that demonstrates key concepts of the energy farm vision including local food, fertilizer, and biofuel production. August finds the Energy Farm in the midst of a successful composting project and continuing to offer and distribute healthy, colorful baskets of food to the Community Supported Agriculture subscribers.

Julian Darley, Christoffer Hansen and Jason Bradford have been hammering out a plan to test and showcase Stephen Heckeroth's E-7 Electric tractor in a dryland demonstration in Willits. Picking up on the recommendations from Jason Bradford's Food Security Report for the Willits area, Post Carbon Institute will be investing in an effort to relocalize the historic production of small grains in the Willits area. This project is exciting because it will use Heckeroth's scratch-built electric tractor and the recommendations from Bradford's report to provide more information (i.e. expected yields and suitable grain varieties) to Willits and other communities working on local food security. The dryland demonstration illustrates a method of raising crops that uses the natural cycle of winter and spring rains and averts the need to invest in energy intensive and complex irrigation systems.

The Energy Garden Report from Sebastopol:

At the Energy Garden in Sebastopol, we've been carrying out some of the basic activities that support a sustainable, healthy garden, starting with harvesting and saving seed for next year's crops of buckwheat, sunflowers, and flax. Energy Gardner Josh Puckett has also been testing the garden's soil. The garden is located within the Sebastopol Sandy Loam series, which is described as a moderately fertile, well drained soil. Permeability is moderately slow in the subsoil, runoff is medium, and the hazard of erosion is moderate.

Josh has tested soil samples from 4 different areas of the garden: an untreated sample, a sample amended with mango mulch, a sample of purchased compost, and a sample of compost made onsite. Using a basic LaMotte soil test kit and a soil auger, Josh has tested each sample's pH, and the quantities of available nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium. The findings from these tests will guide the preparation and treatment of future energy crops. Read more about soil testing at the Sebastopol Energy Garden.

6. Forthcoming Events

September 10-11, 2007
U.S. Carbon Finance Forum
The Metropolitan Club, New York

Carbon trading across the world trebled to $30bn in 2006, but there is no US federal market. The forum will feature experts on the potential impact (and investment opportunities) of carbon trading on the U.S.

September 14-16, 2007
International Forum on Globalization Teach-in
Washington, DC

Confronting the Global Triple Crisis - Climate Change, Peak Oil, and Global Resource Depletion & Extinction. Post Carbon Fellow Richard Heinberg will be speaking about the findings of his new book, Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines.

September 17-18, 2007
6th Annual ASPO Conference
Cork, Ireland

The annual conference of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas, led by founder Dr. Colin Campbell (who is also a Post Carbon Fellow).

September 21, 2007
Climate Protection Campaign's All-Stars Conference
St. Mary's Cathedral, 1111 Gogh St., San Francisco

A one-day gathering for Bay Area leaders to accelerate action on dealing with global warming. Post Carbon Institute is a co-sponsor of this event.

September 28-30, 2007
A RENAISSANCE OF LOCAL! Relocalization Conference
Planet Bluegrass, Lyons, Colorado

Boulder County Going Local!, one of the country's most energetic relocalization groups, presents "A RENAISSANCE OF LOCAL!", a three-day community festival, conference, and expo on all things local. Julian Darley, president of Post Carbon Institute, Post Carbon Fellow Richard Heinberg, and Post Carbon Cities program manager Daniel Lerch will all be speaking at the conference, Boulder, CO. Call (303) 494-1521 or visit http://www.bouldergoinglocal.com. (See #1 above for additional details.)

October 19-21, 2007
Bioneers 2007 Conference
Marin Center, San Rafael

The Bioneers Conference is a major gathering of leading experts and speakers on every aspect of making the transition to a sustainable world.

October 26-28, 2007
Planning For Hard Times: The 4th Annual US Conference on Peak Oil and Community Solutions
Kelly Hall, Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio

Come learn tactics for Peak Oil education and community organizing, strategies for reducing your personal energy use, and participate in visioning a viable post-peak future. Post Carbon Fellow Richard Heinberg, author of The Party's Over, Powerdown and Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines, is one of the keynote speakers. Visit CommunitySolution.org for more information and to register.

7. September Preview

Reports from the field from Daniel's book tour for Post Carbon Cities.