Post Carbon Newsletter #37 March 2008

1. Post Carbon Cities
2. Relocalization Network
3. Global Public Media
4. Energy Farms
5. Forthcoming Events
6. April 2008 Preview

1. Post Carbon Cities

We were happy to read Erica Etelson's review of the Post Carbon Cities guidebook in the Spring 2008 issue of Permaculture Activist. Although it's not currently on their website, we've been given permission to share the article: read it on our site.

"Spend a few minutes surfing most of the peak oil websites, and you will quickly arrive at the grim conclusion that civilization is doomed, or worse -- we oil-addicted humans are all going to die of starvation or be killed in the violence of a society in its death throes. Time to close your web browser and open Post Carbon Cities, a reference manual that offers a cautiously optimistic and pragmatic assessment of the looming twin crises of peak oil and climate change."
   — Erica Etelson, in Permaculture Activist, Spring 2008

And while you're there, check out the current state of the local government peak oil responses map and table, which are updated regularly. In late February, we learned that a peak oil task force in Haines Borough, Alaska had just released its final report for public comment. At 2,241 people, Haines Borough is the smallest local government that we know of working on peak oil.

Even further afield, Post Carbon Cities' Daniel Lerch will be in Ireland and the United Kingdom in early April with a full slate of appearances, including presentations to the Dublin City Council, the Belfast City Council, Cultivate Centre's annual Convergence gathering, and the annual Transition Network gathering. See Daniel's full tour schedule here.

And remember, read the Post Carbon Cities blog or newsletter for more news and analysis from our local government support program.

2. Relocalization Network

The Diablo Post Carbon Study Group will be tabling this Saturday, March 15th at "A Surge for Peace" March and Rally in Walnut Creek, CA. To learn more about the group, visit their website and join their mailing list.

On Sunday the 13th of April, SustainaBundy will host their first ever Permablitz as members and supporters work together to help transform a Bundaberg back yard into an oasis of sustainability with a food forest, chickens and a worm farm! The permablitz concept originated with permaculture designer Dan Palmer in Melbourne - it's the permaculture version of a Backyard Blitz. Read more about permablitzes here

North Country Peak Oil Action/Study Group in Canton, New York will be exhibiting at the 2008 North Country Sustainable Energy Fair on April 26-27, 2008, New York's longest running and largest community energy event. Senior Post Carbon Fellow Richard Heinberg will be the keynote speaker, kicking off two days of 50 workshops alongside local exhibitors and vendors. The event will cover over everything from solar, wind, green building and biofuels to peak oil, climate change, off-grid living and hands-on skills.

If you or your group is interested in joining the Relocalization Network and building a strong and collaborative network of community groups, contact us.

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

Tomorrow Matters — Monterey, CA

This month we caught up with Deborah and Spencer Lindsay, in Monterey, California. Together they produce and host Tomorrow Matters, a talk radio program that puts the spotlight on environmental solutions to the global ecological crises — for a better world tomorrow. Topics on the show include climate change, peak oil, permaculture, green business, alternative transportation, renewable energy and more. Listen to this daily program to "learn how the Central Coast is lowering their collective footprint and how you can make a difference in your life, one step at a time, because for all of us, tomorrow really matters." Visit the website, www.deborahlindsay.com for show details. Stay tuned for the April Relocalize Newsletter for a full interview recap with Deborah Lindsay on the inside scoop about running a daily talk radio show!

2008 SustainaBundy Directory and Guide Release

A 100-page guide printed locally in Bundaberg, Australia, on recycled paper with vegetable based inks on a waterless press, The 2008 SustainaBundy Directory and Guide is an annual publication that local residents can keep at the ready!

The publication includes a directory of local businesses to help residents be more environmentally responsible at home and in the office, how-to articles on reducing consumption and waste, harvesting, storing and conserving water, natural resource management, eating fresh, local food and much more. It also includes calendars for keeping tabs on regional, national and worldwide environmental events, a local produce availability guide provided by the Bundaberg Fruit and Vegetable Growers, and a guide to the various markets in the region.

For more information about the guide or other Sustainabundy projects, visit sustainabundy.org.

3. Global Public Media

There was a special treat on Global Public Media this month, a reading by Post Carbon Fellow James Howard Kunstler from his new novel, World Made by Hand. After his great successes at visualizing the impact of Peak Oil on our future in non-fiction books like The Long Emergency, Kunstler has turned to fiction to give us a fully-worked out story of people in upstate New York struggling to survive in a post-peak oil world.

For more on Kunstler's views on where we're headed, you can also listen to The KunstlerCast, a weekly audio show where Kunstler and host/producer Duncan Crary explore the tragic comedy of suburban sprawl, with oil depletion as its backdrop. In this episode, James Howard Kunstler describes the impending end of cheap oil, which he calls "The Long Emergency." Suburbia is a living arrangement with no future, and big cities may not do well either. But small cities that exist at a scale that can be rebuilt are the places of the future.

Kunstler and other Peak Oil analysts agree that the U.S. will need millions of new farmers, because our current oil-based system of agriculture cannot survive in a peak-oil world. (See Post Carbon Fellow Richard Heinberg's "50 Million Farmers.") If you want to get a head-start on becoming an organic farmer, listen to "Starting Your Organic Farm," a workshop from the 2008 annual conference of the Certified Organic Associations of British Columbia.

You can also check out the second part of "The Case for a Sustainability Emergency," the second of two interviews with Philip Sutton, coauthor with David Spratt of a recent report titled Climate Code Red: The Case for a Sustainability Emergency. On this section, Sutton discusses how, with a shared sense of purpose and heroic leadership, humans have the technical and social capacity to go into "emergency" mode and design an economic and environmental turn-around in 10-20 years. The first part of this interview is here.

4. Energy Farms

As crude oil reaches record highs of $110 a barrel, the connection between the cost of food and the rise in energy prices is becoming painfully obvious. In a recent statement, Josette Sheeran, executive director of the UN's World Food Program, said the global economy had created:

"a perfect storm for the world's hungry, caused by high oil and food prices and low food stocks... Higher food prices will increase social unrest in a number! of countries which are sensitive to inflationary pressures and are import-dependent. We will see a repeat of the riots we have already reported on the streets such as we have seen in Burkina Faso, Mexico, Cameroon and Senegal."

In other news, while farmers appear to enjoy record commodity prices, the recent spikes in the cost of fertilizer and fuel are eroding gains:

• the price of nitrogen fertilizer risen 113% since 2000
• potash has risen from $225 a ton to nearly $500 a ton
• increasingly scarce phosphate has gone from $312 to between $800 and $900 a ton this year

Also, this month, the world's largest poultry processor closed a U.S. processing plant while cutting 1,100 jobs. The company blames record feed prices for the current industry-wide crisis. Even if you are a vegetarian, this news is still hard to hear. We can see plainly that agribusiness is designed to grow profit, not healthy food. Once their profit margins are at risk, the corporate producers may simply quit the job of growing food.

Brookside Farm

While both the news and data are unsettling, we are all the more confident in the course that our Energy Farm demonstration project is progressing in Willits, California. Our oil-free toolset is proving its value again as we ready spring beds for new transplants and seeding of cool season annuals.

The longer daylight hours are having an effect on cover crops that are adding nitrogen-rich biomass. These crops are crucial for the farm because they provide the nitrogen and micro-nutrients that allow us to secure fertility without off-farm inputs.

To get a sneak peek at our crop plans and calculations, checkout our online spreadsheet. After downloading the spreadsheet you can alter it to match the crops and climate that best suit your locale!

Sebastopol Energy Garden

With spring fast approaching, we've been working on increasing our sheltered growing space as well as our soil building capacities. Currently, we have a worm bin and three bins for compost. We built the new system in the middle of the garden and it will serve as the fourth stage of composting. From this bin, we will sift the compost and create our soil mixes. Because of its placement, it is ideal for distributing the soil and seedlings throughout the garden.

We used twenty-one straw bales for the walls, and onsite scrap lumber for the frame of the cover. The cover is plastic, and we plan on upgrading it with windows from the local recycle center. The growing space is separated from the compost bin by a wall of straw bales.

To integrate the two spaces we cut sections of rain gutter, which was onsite from our water catchment project, and put them through the straw bale wall. This allows the solar gain from the cold frame to heat up the compost pile during the day, and it encourages the compost pile to release some of its heat into the cold frame during the night.

We have extended our growing season, soil building capacity, and when the system starts to decompose the straw will make an excellent top dressing throughout the garden. The cold frame and compost bin are also well insulated by the straw bales.

5. Forthcoming Events

March 26-30, 2008
The Future of Our Shared Environment - Today
The Aspen Institute, Aspen, CO

Participants will begin Day One: Scenes from a Changing Planet by examining the latest research and theories about the environment, move into a discussion of the issues and opportunities in the field on Day Two: Questions, Limits and Challenges, and culminate on Day Three: Environmentally Sustainable Solutions.

March 27-28, 2008
Biodiversity & Ecosystem Finance: Mainstreaming Biodiversity and Ecosystem Finance
New York City, NY

Supported by the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity and endorsed by UNEP FI, this two day conference will explore all the issues relating to the developing area of Biodiversity & Ecosystem Finance. Speakers will be a balance of industry experts, financial institutions, and early adopter best practice case studies.

March 27-28, 2008
Bioenergy North America 2008
Chicago, Illinois

This major conference on biofuels and biomass will provide an overview of the biofuels marketplace, including the "food v fuel" debate, carbon markets, lessons learned from Brazil, and next generation biofuels.

March 31 - April 2, 2008
Exeter Skills for Sustainability: Putting the Pieces Together
University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

As the key annual sustainability event for UK Further and Higher Education, this important conference will encourage and inspire to identify essential skills and knowledge and go on to equip them to embed skills for sustainability in their own staff and students.

April 7-8, 2008
Energy Information Administration 2008 Energy Conference: 30 Years of Energy Information and Analysis
Washington Convention Center, Washington, DC

The EIA's annual conference features speakers on peak oil, nuclear, coal, LNG, and energy modeling.

April 8-9 2008
Sustainable Manufacturing Summit
Cutting emissions from design, operations, suppliers and consumption
Art Institute of Chicago Chicago, IL, USA

How can manufacturers grow their business while reducing their total carbon emissions? How can you get smaller suppliers involved in your sustainability initiatives? How can you label the carbon intensity of individual products, and will your customers demand this? The Sustainable Manufacturing Summit takes a detailed view of the relationship between climate response and the manufacturing process. The program covers carbon reduction at every stage of the manufacturing process from design through to consumption.

WEB CAST:

April 10, 2008 - 11am to 4pm EDT
Converging Environmental Crises
Teach-in on Energy, Climate Change, Water, Agriculture and Population (PDF 432k)

Web-based conference on current environment and health concerns with top researchers and practicioners. See the complete speaker list here. (PDF 432k)

April 11-12, 2008
2008 MIT Energy Conference: Solutions that Scale to Meet the Energy Challenge
Marriott Hotel in Kendall Square, Cambridge, MA, USA

The goal of the MIT Energy Conference is to bring together leaders in the fields of technology, policy, industry, and finance to develop solutions for the tremendous challenges present in today's energy markets. The MIT Energy Conference will showcase promising technology and policy approaches that have the potential to achieve critical scale and make a significant impact on the global energy landscape.

April 14-15, 2008
Low Carbon Fuels 2008
Sacramento Convention Center, Sacramento, CA, USA

During this two-day summit, Low Carbon Fuels 2008 will showcase the fuels and technologies, policies and actions, and other ongoing efforts that will allow California to meet its policy goals, reduce Greenhouse Gas emissions, diversify its transportation fuel supplies, and establish a sustainable market for cleaner-burning fuels.

April 15-18, 2008
The American Association of Blacks in Energy (AABE) 31st Annual Conference
Houston Americas Hotel, Houston, TX, USA

AABE is a national association of energy professionals founded and dedicated to ensure the input of African Americans and other minorities into the discussions and developments of energy policies regulations, R&D technologies, and environmental issues. The agenda for this conference will focus on energy technology, strategy, and policy.

April 20-27, 2008
Appropriate Technology for the Developing World
Chiapas, Mexico

This workshop provides an overview of technologies which promote small scale renewable energy and resource management systems in the developing world. With an emphasis on the unique challenges presented by international project work, the workshop is ideal for people wanting to get involved in sustainable development work, organizations working in rural areas, and those who wish to reduce their own ecological impact. This course will be taught in both English and Spanish. Este curso sera dictado en ingles y espanol.

April 21-22, 2008
Canada's Ocean Energy Future: New Partnerships and Wider Opportunities
Palace Royal Hotel, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada

How much renewable energy can Canada gain from the ocean? The Ocean Renewable Energy Group is a non-profit trade association, formed in 2004, which is holding this conference to explore Canada's ocean energy resources and technologies.

April 21-22, 2009
Renewable Energy PowerGen 2008
Radisson SAS, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

This conference is focused on how EU power producers are going to meet the European Commission calling for 20% of energy produced by 2020 to come from renewable resources.

April 26-27, 2008
2008 North Country Sustainable Energy Fair
SUNY Canton Campus Center, Canton, NY, USA

Keynote Speaker: Post Carbon Institute Senior Fellow Richard Heinberg. New York's longest running and largest community energy event will feature two days of 50 workshops and 60 exhibitors and vendors. The event will cover over everything from solar, wind, green building and biofuels to peak oil, climate change, off-grid living and hands-on skills.

6. April 2008 Preview

Bill McKibben is now an advisor to Post Carbon Institute and the Relocalization Network.