First U.S. Peak Oil Conference Defines the Vision for a Post-Oil Future
Over 200 people gathered from around the country to listen to peak oil experts Richard Heinberg, (The Party’s Over, Powerdown) and Julian Darley (High Noon For Natural Gas) and create strategies for a community-based reponse to global oil peak. Nationally-renown speakers on sustainability and community proposed solutions from the schools of permaculture, agrarianism, ecocities, intentional communities and others.
Coming soon to our website (www.communitysolution.org/) is a full conference report: Downloadable audio and video files, Power Point presentations, transcibed speeches and discussions.
From Richard Heinberg’s closing address: “We have only a dwindling amount of time to build lifeboats-that is, the needed alternative infrastructure. It has been clear for at least 30 years what characteristics this should have-organic, small-scale, local, convivial, cooperative, slower paced, human-oriented rather than machine-oriented, agrarian, diverse, democratic, culturally rich, and ecologically sustainable. We have known for a long time that the status quo-a society that is machine-oriented, competitive, inequitable, fast-paced, globalized, monocultural, corporate-dominated-is deadening to the human spirit and ecologically unsustainable.” (Read entire address below)
Peak Oil Hits Financial Analysts
From this week’s Barron’s, the influential US financial weekly, a measure of the concern about the “entirely different” and “unprecedented” energy crisis which “should have a severe impact, be global in scope, and be difficult to solve”. Maxwell, dubbed by the magazine as the “dean of energy analysts”, subscribes to the Hubbert’s Curve theory of depleting oil resources.
Read More:
www.energybulletin.net/3161.html
CNN Money reports on peak oil in an article titled, “Oil: Is the End at Hand? A once-fringe group saying we’ll run out of oil is gaining attention, even within the oil industry.” The article says, “The end of cheap oil may mean more than just higher gas prices for Americans. It may mean the end of the oil age as we know it.”
Read more:
money.cnn.com/2004/11/02/markets/peak_oil/
New / Recommended Books on Oil
High Noon for Natural Gas: The New Energy Crisis by Julian Darley
Crude; The Story of Oil by Sonia Shah
The End of Oil : On the Edge of a Perilous New World by Paul Roberts
It’s the Crude, Dude: War, Big Oil and the Fight for the Planet by Linda McQuaig
Blood and Oil : The Dangers and Consequences of America’s Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum by Michael T. Klare
Limits to Growth – The 30 Year Update by Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers, Dennis Meadows.
Closing Address to the First US Conference on Peak Oil and Community Solutions, Yellow Springs Ohio, November 14, 2004, by Richard Heinberg
Available here:
www.energybulletin.net/3204.html
