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Post Carbon Newsletter #27 May 2007
1. Richard Heinberg Wins Book Award
2. Let's Talk
3. Post Carbon Cities on a Roll
4. Global Public Media
5. Relocalization Network
6. Energy Farms Network
7. Featured Post Carbon Group
8. Forthcoming Events
9. June Preview
1. Richard Heinberg Wins Book Award
We are very pleased to announce that Post Carbon Fellow Richard Heinberg has just been awarded the Bronze medal in Current Affairs in the 2007 Independent Publisher Book Awards for The Oil Depletion Protocol. The Protocol is an international agreement that will enable the world's nations to cooperatively reduce their dependence on oil.
The Oil Depletion Protocol Project is a program of Post Carbon Institute to lay the groundwork for and facilitate the successful adoption and implementation of the Protocol.
2. Let's Talk!
 Join the dialogue! You can now post your comments on all of Post Carbon’s websites. People across the U.S. and Canada and around the world are logging into Post Carbon's family of websites and talking about peak oil, global warming and relocalization. What's happening where you live? Has your town or city put together a relocalization strategy? What is your opinion of the articles and information we post.
At the bottom of every new post or article there is a bar for commenting. You can register or login if you’re already registered and post away. And once you’ve registered on one website, you can login to each website with the same user ID and password:
3. Post Carbon Cities on a Roll
April was a busy time for Post Carbon Cities, our new initiative for urban planners and local elected officials.
Program manager Daniel Lerch started the month at the American Planning Association conference in Philadelphia, the top annual event for planners and elected officials in the U.S. Read Daniel’s report on the conference, and how urban sustainability is emerging as a high-profile issue among planners, in the Features section of the Post Carbon Cities website. Then a few weeks later, Daniel gave the opening presentation at the Lane County (Oregon) Relocalization Conference, organized by Relocalization Network member Post Carbon Eugene.
The website has grown exponentially this past month as we’ve added a fresh crop of Features and Resources, in addition to our daily News updates.
Don't forget to subscribe to our monthly Post Carbon Cities newsletter, which will keep you informed of the most important developments on energy and climate uncertainty for local governments.
Our long-awaited guidebook for local governments, Post Carbon Cities: Planning for Energy and Climate Uncertainty, has made it through final reviews and is now on its way to the layout artists and printers. Watch www.postcarboncities.net for pre-ordering information, coming soon!
4. Global Public Media
If you think this week's high gas prices are a result of oil company price gouging, think again, says Post Carbon Fellow Richard Heinberg. In a GPM interview, Heinberg explains: "These high prices are not something that's going to go away once this driving season is over and we get back to some kind of "normal" condition- there is no more normal. We've all been living in a fool's paradise of cheap gasoline, cheap oil for the last several decades, and that's coming to an end."
This month, Global Public Media welcomes its new Coordinator, Rick Baraff, who brings several years of film and video, advertising/PR work, and script and web writing experience to the challenge of keeping GPM humming.
Rick has just put up an excellent video with noted author Barbara Kingsolver, who was in the San Francisco Bay Area promoting her newest book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. The book is a bit of a change for those of you who know her wonderful novels like The Poisonwood Bible. In her new non-fiction book, she details her family's struggle to "buy only food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it" for an entire year.
And while we're dealing with the power of words, take a listen to Post Carbon fellow Richard Heinberg reading his latest Museletter, "Talking Ourselves to Extinction." A well-known lecturer on Peak Oil and the post carbon world, Richard, in his smooth, calm tone, raises some very serious questions about whether humans can talk ourselves out of the mess that being able to talk has gotten us into in the first place!
Finally, don't miss Post Carbon Institute President Julian Darley's audio-plus-Powerpoint presentation at the May 5th Sustainable Enterprise Conference on how relocalizing our communities offers great new opportunities for locally-based businesses.
5. Relocalization Network
 Janet Beazlie just joined the Post Carbon Team as the Program Manager for the Relocalization Network. She brings more than 20 years of training and consulting experience with change management and organizational effectiveness along with a lifelong passion for sustainability issues - read her first blog here.
The 2006 Relocalization Network Report is available online! The report features a look back on the activities and events of 2006 and highlights reports submitted by Local Groups in the Network.
Post Carbon Eugene’s Lane County Relocalization Conference was a big success. Visit their website for a recap of the event and group reports. The Titanic Lifeboat Academy’s radio Lifeboat Show airs every third Monday of the month at 9:30am PST or listen online. Post Carbon Institute Founder Julian Darley's August presentation "Relocalize Now" can be seen and heard on Global Public Media, along with new episodes of Peak Moment Television, a Local Post Carbon Group in Nevada County, California.
This month we are also welcoming four new groups to the Network: Boise Sustainable Living Community in Idaho, Post Carbon Macomb in Michigan, Campaign For Our Lives in Arizona, and the County Sustainability Group in Ontario, Canada.
Visit www.relocalize.net for updated news and events posted by all the local groups around the world.
6. Energy Farms Network
Chris Hansen reports on what's happening at the Willits Energy Farm:
 Rapid development of the Willits Energy Farm continues as we move into the prime agricultural season for the Willits area. A majority of the cool season annual crops are established, and recently, we planted 1500 Sq Ft of potatoes. The potato section is an impressive site to behold and contains eleven different varieties that are expected to yield a total of 1500-2000 pounds of food. In addition, the soil has been cleared and prepared for warm season vegetable crops that include: cucumbers, sunflowers, tomatoes, tomatillos, peppers, corn, beans, squash, sorghum, and quinoa. Our unique human-powered tool set has proven both flexible and dependable as it seems to be able to meet the challenge of preparing and maintaining food and biofuel crops without relying on petroleum inputs.
 We are moving into the final phase of crop preparation at the Willits Energy Farm and seek to remove the sod to ready the land for the farm’s primary energy crop of Dale Sorghum. Sweet sorghum is in the corn family and produces syrup in the stalk, similar to sugar cane. Not only do we want to test the suitability of this crop for the Mediterranean climate of Willits, but we also plan to make 95% ethanol from the syrup. This project is intended to troubleshoot small scale biofuel production with sorghum and will help us create a template and recommended toolset for those who seek to make biofuels for local consumption and on-farm applications.
Energy Garden Report from Sebastopol
We have turned our new Post Carbon HQ yard into a demonstration Energy Garden. We have about 1/3 of an acre and are growing a small plot of every kind of energy crop that grows at this latitude.
We want to show two things: 1) what the plants and seeds look like and how little end fuel you get from plants and 2) that it is possible to grow and produce bio fuels locally. Therefore if we reduce our consumption we can meet some of our energy needs locally.
7. Featured Post Carbon Group--Garden Route Energy Emergency Action Network (GREEAN), Southern Cape, South Africa
GREEAN offers the community of the Garden Route in South Africa - in particular those living in George, Wilderness, Oudshoorn, Knysna & Mosselbay and surrounds - the opportunity to become informed and proactive, to network, to be empowered and to use their community and consumer voice to make a real difference in the region and to help build a more sustainable life for future generations and beyond.
We have just very recently been founded and getting started. Our first victory was getting an article on Peak Oil in the country’s foremost magazine devoted to farmers. We have also been invited to write an article on Peak Oil, in response to a former article debunking Peak Oil, in Maverick, a well-read business magazine.
We have also contacted in a major FaxBlitz just about every single national and regional government department and or minister, to request their Official Position on Peak Oil, and if they did not have one, to provide them with a 3 page Peak Oil Fact Sheet. The response has been better than expected, with several Governmental Offices acknowledging receipt and taking note of the request.
8. Forthcoming Events
Leading the Evolution of Local Living Economies
May 31 – June2 in Berkeley, California
Create an economy that preserves community character, promotes economic vitality, and protects ecological health. The Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) 5th Annual Conference speakers include Kenny Ausubel, Bo Burlingham, Michael Dimock, Malaika Edwards, Paul Hawken, Van Jones, David Korten, Winona LaDuke, Michael Shuman, Judy Wicks, and many others. Workshops include Sustainable Cities, Growing Local Food Systems, Financing Your Community-Based Business, Renewable Energy: Distributed Solutions, Big Box Stores, Jobs, and Politics, New Vehicles for Local Investing, and many others.
Transition Town Inaugural
May 31st, Ruskin Mill, Nailsworth, Glouscestershire, UK
Richard Heinberg will be discussing peak oil at the Ruskin Mill Transition Town Network Conference. The conference’s purpose is to add momentum to existing Transition Towns and increase the connections between them.
Preparing Your Community for Climate and Energy Change: Opportunities for Local Sustainability
June 6, 8:30 AM – 4:00 PM, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA
Julian Darley, President of Post Carbon Institute, will give the keynote address at Minnesota Sustainable Communities Network's local government conference on climate and energy change.
World Environment Day - Climate Change Exposition
June 9 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM, Australia
The Sunshine Coast Environment Council will host a Climate Change Exposition for World Environment Day.
Southern California Sustainable Living Intensive Workshop
July 9-15, Lyle Center for Regenerative Studies, California State Polytechnic University, California
The Solar Living Institute has partnered with the Lyle Center for Regenerative Studies to offer a comprehensive series of workshops in sustainable and regenerative living.
9. June Preview
Post Carbon Cities will be bringing you the latest news about the ever-expanding network of cities and towns across North America who are finding their own solutions to energy and climate uncertainty.
Post Carbon Institute encourages the following courses of action:
- Begin implementing Relocalization strategies in your community
- Please tell a friend about the Post Carbon Institute
- Encourage your friends, family members, co-workers, planners, policy makers, and politicians to subscribe.
- If you're not yet a member of the Relocalization Network, then please sign up
- Donate to Post Carbon Institute
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Post Carbon Institute is a 501c3 registered charity chartered in Eugene, Oregon USA
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