Post Carbon Newsletter #9 November 2005

1. Feature Story: Local Money

Our current economic system, with its paradoxical idea of permanent growth based on limited resources, is approaching difficult times. Yet we can take some steps to prepare ourselves, and one of them is to become familiar with different kinds of money. Read more.

2. Post Carbon News In Brief

*From the Petrocollapse Conference, New York, 5 October*

Security in the post-peak world will mean being on very good terms with your neighbors. As we start to build a more sustainable way of life, we shall need to relocalize our economies so that our food, water, energy and other necessities are produced or collected nearby. And in the process of learning how to do this we will come to appreciate the advantages of cooperatives and collectives of cooperatives.

*ASPO-USA Conference, Denver, 10-11 November*

The Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas (ASPO) held its fourth annual conference November 10-11, 2005, in Denver, Colorado. The conference, entitled Beyond Oil: Intelligent Responses to Peak Oil Impacts, aimed to catalyze discussion of peak oil projections, repercussions and what actions can be taken to mitigate its effects. Eminent speakers from the field of peak energy included US Congressman Roscoe Bartlett, and Post Carbon Institute's Julian Darley. The conference also launched the new ASPO-USA chapter. Selected video highlights can be seen at Global Public Media.

*Congress Gets the Picture*

Republican Representative Roscoe Bartlett has taken another step in spreading awareness of the coming shortfall in global energy resources by giving his fellow Congress members a graphic representation of the problem. He has distributed in the House and Senate copies of The Oil Age, a poster which charts the rise and fall in oil production from its start in Pennsylvania in 1859 to its projected end during this century.

Bartlett points out that global peak oil is both "inevitable and quite probably imminent." You, too, can help reinforce his message by writing to your member of Congress and pointing out that the time has come to confront the problem of shrinking energy supplies head on.

3. Featured Outpost: Post Carbon Sweden

Stephen Hinton and his partners started Post Carbon Sweden in April 2005 with the aim of inspiring and assisting a planned powerdown, and have since been hard at work exploring ways to help communities in Sweden relocalize. Stephen is currently working on the sequel to his book 'Inventing for the Sustainable Planet', and plans to focus on relocalization as a main theme.

Post Carbon Sweden has recently launched the beta version of their complementary currency model, Circle of Gifts (COGS), and invites people to log in to the website and test it out and offer any feedback. COGS works internationally.

Steven Hinton said that among the challenges they faced was the need to develop relocalization at the national level, and how to focus on activities that can make a serious difference.

4. Post Carbon Board Member: Richard Douthwaite

Richard Douthwaite is an economist, journalist, and author. His books include The Growth Illusion: How Economics Growth has Enriched the Few, Impoverished the Many and Endangered the Planet (New Society, 1999), The Ecology of Money (Green Books, 1999) and Short Circuit (Green Books, 1996). In his books, Douthwaite gives dozens of examples of currency, banking, energy and food production systems which communities can use to make themselves less dependent on an increasingly unstable world economy.

Douthwaite is co-founder of Feasta, an Irish charity that explores and promotes the characteristics - economic, cultural and environmental - that a society must have in order to be genuinely sustainable. He studied economics at the University of Essex and the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica. He also set up and managed a boatyard in Jamaica on behalf of the island's fishing co-operatives before spending two years as Government Economist in the British colony of Montserrat. In 1998-9 he was a consultant to an EU-funded project to establish experimental community currencies in Scotland, Ireland, Amsterdam and Madrid.

In the light of oil peak, he is currently developing proposals for a system of fossil fuel rationing which countries can introduce independently but which would ease the climate crisis if adopted on a world scale. "If some form of rationing is not introduced, the rich will soon be running their vehicles on biofuels grown on land which used to grow poor people's food," he says.

Richard lives in Westport, County Mayo, Ireland.

5. Global Public Media News

James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency, and Michael Lynch, president, Strategic Energy & Economic Research Inc., debate peak oil and the unsustainability of suburbia with Christopher Lydon on Open Source, a public radio show.

Global Public Media's Kellia Ramares reports on the Gulf of Mexico, where the oil and gas industry's slow recovery from the recent hurricanes has now been worsened by the damage caused by Wilma, the twenty-first of the season.

In the latest edition of Petroleum Review's listing of upcoming so-called oil and gas fields megaprojects, Chris Skebrowski looks at the projections for new capacity and finds that "the numbers do not add up." This article provides full details of all major future oil and gas production for this decade.

6. Fundraising Update: Help Us Plan for Peak!

We are excited to announce that we've recently begun a major fundraising campaign: Post Carbon Plan for Peak. Our goal is to raise $400,000 by the end of 2005.

This funding will allow us to continue to spread the word about peak oil and assist even more communities in their efforts to live locally. Your support will also allow us to develop several exciting new projects that we have in the works right now, such as creating local energy farms and working with local governments to help municipalities plan for energy peak and descent.

We would also like to thank our current members and past donors for their invaluable support. To join us in this important mission, donate now!

7. Next Newsletter Preview

The Oil Depletion Protocol developed by Post Carbon Fellows Colin Campbell and Richard Heinberg. How can the nations of the world prepare cooperatively for the coming decline in oil production?

• Begin building Parallel Public Infrastructure (we are working on research and guidelines)


• Write letters to the editor of your newspapers and to your local politicians-- (mention Peak Oil and Gas)


• Tell your friends and neighbors what's happening


• Start a Post Carbon Outpost


• Forward this newsletter to others


• Support our efforts by becoming a member

Post Carbon Institute is an Initiative of Metafoundation, Incorporated in Eugene, Oregon