Tilting at Windmills
The Gristle, by TIm Johnson, Cascadia Weekly
...The politics and economics of energy shift as states - particularly across the West - create renewable energy mandates and the federal government moves glacially toward limiting carbon emissions. Some advocates guage the Northwest coast as "ground zero" for looming energy debates. Offshore, winds blow strong and steady, and could potentially produce 900,000 megawatts of electricity...The U.S. Dept. of Energy rates the Northwest coast as "outstanding" for wind generation...
Pages 6 and 7 of this pdf file: http://www.cascadiaweekly.com/pdfs/issues/200834.pdf

Rob Hopkins on "Transition Towns" and Peak Oil
Scott Carlson, Urbanite Baltimore
Sustainability expert Rob Hopkins talks about “transition towns” and explains how to brace ourselves for life without oil.
For someone who believes that world oil supplies are about to begin an inexorable decline, possibly dragging down civil society in the process, Rob Hopkins is a rather cheery fellow. Hopkins, a 40-year-old doctoral student at Plymouth University in the United Kingdom, is the founder of the Transition movement, which encourages people to wean their neighborhoods, communities, and towns off oil and nudge them onto a path of self-sufficiency in an increasingly energy-scarce world. “The change we have seen over the past hundred years will be nothing compared with what we will see over the next twenty,” he says. But it’s not a dire warning; it’s an adventure. “This is an extraordinary time to be alive. I feel really fortunate to be around-it’s going to be a fascinating time in history.”

Hopkins was teaching permaculture design, or the design of sustainable human settlements, when he stumbled across the idea of “peak oil,” which holds that an irreversible decline in global oil production is imminent. That led him to create “Transition Towns”-among them the village of Totnes in southwestern England where he now lives. Hopkins and his colleagues have encouraged the planting of gardens and nut trees for local food sources, the establishment of gas-free transportation (including a rickshaw service), and the support of local businesses and local skilled labor. Totnes also has its own local, transition currency, the Totnes pound.
http://www.urbanitebaltimore.com/sub.cfm?ArticleID=1032&IssueID=64&SectionID=4
Buy the book: The Transition Handbook by Rob Hopkins

Read Hopkins' Masters' thesis: Energy Descent Pathways

Read the Kinsale Energy Descent Action Plan by Rob Hopkins and his students

Read Hopkins' response to Transition critics

For the first time in human history, the North Pole can be circumnavigated
Melting ice opens up North-west and North-east passages simultaneously. Scientists warn Arctic icecap is entering a 'death spiral'
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor, The Independent,Sunday, 31 August 2008
Open water now stretches all the way round the Arctic, making it possible for the first time in human history to circumnavigate the North Pole, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. New satellite images, taken only two days ago, show that melting ice last week opened up both the fabled North-west and North-east passages, in the most important geographical landmark to date to signal the unexpectedly rapid progress of global warming.
http://www.independent.co.uk

9 sq mile Ice Sheet Breaks Loose in Canada
A chunk of ice shelf nearly the size of Manhattan has broken away from Ellesmere Island in Canada's northern Arctic, another dramatic indication of how warmer temperatures are changing the polar frontier, scientists said Wednesday.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080904/ap_on_re_ca/arctic_ice_shelf

The Long Descent: A User’s Guide to the End of the Industrial Age
By John Michael Greer
259 pp. New Society Publishers – Sept. 2008. $18.95.
Americans are expressing deep concern about US dependence on petroleum, rising energy prices, and the threat of climate change. Unlike the energy crisis of the 1970s, however, there is a lurking fear that now the times are different and the crisis may not easily be resolved.

"The Long Descent" examines the basis of such fear through three core themes: Industrial society is following the same well-worn path that has led other civilizations into decline, a path involving a much slower and more complex transformation than the sudden catastrophes imagined by so many social critics today.The roots of the crisis lie in the cultural stories that shape the way we understand the world. Since problems cannot be solved with the same thinking that created them, these ways of thinking need to be replaced with others better suited to the needs of our time.It is too late for massive programs for top-down change; the change must come from individuals.

Hope exists in actions that range from taking up a handicraft or adopting an "obsolete" technology, through planting an organic vegetable garden, taking charge of your own health care or spirituality, and building community.

Focusing eloquently on constructive adaptation to massive change, this book will have wide appeal.

John Michael Greer is a certified Master Conserver, organic gardener, and scholar of ecological history. The current Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America (AODA), his widely-cited blog, The Archdruid Report (thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com) deals with peak oil, among other issues. He is a WWU graduate and lives in Ashland, Oregon.
Buy The Long Descent Now at Village Books

Review: 'The Long Descent' by John Michael Greer
by Frank Kaminski, Seattle Peak Oil Awareness
The Long Descent is one of the most highly anticipated peak oil books of the year, and it lives up to every ounce of hype. Greer is a captivating, brilliantly inventive writer with a deep knowledge of history, an impressive amount of mechanical savvy, a flair for storytelling and a gift for drawing apt analogies. He is perhaps the most spiritual out of all the current thinkers on peak oil, as well as one of the most eclectic and wryly humorous. No other peak oil writer possesses his same blend of aptitudes, and only a few approach his cunning. His new book presents an astonishing view of our society’s past, present and future trajectory—one that is unmatched in its breadth and depth.
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/46454

Did you know you can add events to our community calendar? We designed this calendar to be a convenient place for community members and organizations to post to and browse for events related to sustainability and creating a healthy, vibrant community. And when you're planning an event, you can check the calendar to see what else might be happening on that date.

Here's how it's done:

1) On the calendar, click the plus sign on the date of your event. Or go directly to this 'Add Event' page: http://sustainablebellingham.org/events/community-calendar/event/add/

2) Fill out the form, which includes Event Title, and Description of Event

3) Category = General. Even though there's only one category option, you must select 'General' for your event.

4) Select the appropriate Date, Start time, and the duration of the event. Entering additional Contact Info, Email, and Url is optional.

5) Click on 'Add Event' and you're done! Approval of your event usually takes little more than an hour or so.

An email list I'm on is currently discussing an article in Wired magazine about Shai Agassi's Audacious Plan to Put Electric Cars on the Road. Agassi's goal is to get us off of oil by putting a large number of electric cars on the road. His audacious business plan is not to make money on the sale of the cars, but instead sell them cheaply and make money from charging and switching out batteries.

Agassi's approach to the problem, thinking outside the box with systems thinking is impressive. However, a comment on WIRED's website points out that he's merely positioning himself as a gatekeeper between the EV and the utility grid, selling an interface which is completely unnecessary.

Others on my email list point out other problems - a logistical nightmare, and where is all this extra supply of electricity that will be needed going to come from? Hydrogen is an energy carrier rather than an energy source...and we're quite a ways away from hydrogen being an efficient energy carrier. As for nuclear power, note that John Rawlins, who is a retired nuclear physicist (Hanford), is now firmly convinced that nuclear power is no solution (see his article here). Natural Gas - the signs are that conventional natural gas in North America has peaked, though we're now seeing a growing amount of unconventional (and costly) natural gas becoming available. How much supply will be available long term is hard to say - some say not very long). So, are we ready to beef up our national coal-based power grid for battery vehicles?

Why is it that when we discuss solutions to the oil crisis, we go right to ideas for how to continue our current lifestyle? Specifically, ideas to continue the culture of the private automobile which currently dominates our economy and our way of life and has had a huge negative impact on our planet and our communities. The private automobile represents freedom to most Americans. But how free are we when the average speed is 5 mph (when you take into account the hours you have to work to pay for the car, time spent in traffic jams and stop lights, etc.)

Vancouver needs to plan for a post-oil world -- now
Barbara Yaffe, Vancouver Sun
From the article...
"North American cities had better start adapting to a future characterized by climate change and depleting oil. Fewer parking lots. More condominiums. No more big highway upgrades. No further airport expansion. Emergency response and health care systems that can respond to the potential impacts of global warming and energy shocks...."

Link:
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/editorial/story.html?id=0801ee2a-4a23-44a7-882e-1417bc650b0c

David Holmgren and FutureScenarios.org (Part 1)
Jason Bradford, Reality Report via Global Public Media
From the link...
"The Reality Report interviews David Holmgren. David co-invented permaculture over 30 years ago and has been a practitioner and teacher ever since, both at his home in Australia and as a consultant around world. In 2002 he published the book Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability that reviewed permaculture in the context of peak energy. More recently, David created a web site called Future Scenarios, see www.futurescenarios.org. This interview is based on that web site and was recorded on July 14, 2008."

"The complete interview is nearly two hours long and is therefore broken into two segments. In this first installment, we discuss a broad view of history as related to ecology, energy and societal complexity. The development of permaculture in the context of 1970s economic woes is reviewed. David explains why he created http://FutureScenarios.org as an alternative to the predominant beliefs in either business as usual or a smooth steady state transition towards “sustainability,” as well as the simplistic notion of a “Mad Max” type collapse."

"The second installment (to be posted) covers four “energy descent” scenario groups that correspond to potential variation in the severity of both peak oil and climate change.
(14 July 2008, but just posted)"

Link
http://globalpublicmedia.com/reality_report_david_holmgren_and_futurescenarios_org_part_1

Come celebrate The RE Store's 15 Year Anniversary and the Grand Opening of the Sustainable Living Center, our newly finished education/event

When? Saturday, August 23rd from 2-5 P.M.
Where? The RE Store, 2309 Meridian Street (corner of Meridian and Broadway in Bellingham)
What is happening??
- Free music with the Gallus Brothers
- Make art at the Free Recycled Art Station for kids and artists of all ages
- Funky Junk Mini Putt Golf Course (9 holes! - Cost 5.00)
- Tour our Sustainable Living Center and Be Cool exhibit

http://www.re-store.org/15year.htm

The Energy Resource Scarcity / Peak Oil task force (ERSPO) will hold it's first meeting August 6th, a video conference co-sponsored by Sustainable Bellingham and Bellingham Technical College. 

Following the short introductory meeting will be a video conference with Daniel Lerch, author of Post Carbon Cities: Planning for Energy and Climate Uncertainty, and John Kaufman of the Oregon Department of Energy and former lead staff for the Portland Peak Oil Task Force.  Both now are staff at the Post Carbon Institute.  Task force members will be joined for the video conference by invited guests including others from the task force applicant pool as well as members of the County Council, Bellingham Council and perhaps other city councils from around the county.

Due to limited seating, this meeting is by invitation only...if you have an interest and would like to be invited, please email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Schedule Change!

We will be meeting on the 2nd and 4th Monday evenings every month
7pm (sharp) until 9:30 pm (sharp)
Location: Cindi Landreth’s home
516 Ridgeway Dr. Bellingham
(See directions below)

Please consider coming to the home of Cindi Landreth to work toward building a world that will work for all: gather and share perspective, build community and awareness, inspire and be inspired about the changes we are facing with regards to issues around social justice, spiritual fulfillment and environmental issues.

Co-sponsored by Sustainable Bellingham