The delegation from British Columbia received a standing ovation from about 200 people attending the April 7-9 Regional Localization Network Conference at Brooktrails Lodge.
No, it wasn’t for the distance the Canadians had traveled to attend, but for the way the Vancouver-based Post Carbon Institute (PCI) has begun to shrink the distance between communities around the world planning for a post-oil future.
By clicking on one of the red dots on the organization’s website map, it’s possible to interact with Post Carbon Tokyo, Tarim Heirloom Project of Yemen, Karamea Sustainable Living of New Zealand, Queensland After Oil of Australia, Post Carbon Dublin, Post Carbon Sweden, Nova Scotia Post Carbon…Each of the groups has joined PCI’s Relocalization Network.
In North America, dots show up in such unexpected places as Hampton, Georgia; Greenville, South Carolina; Berea Kentucky; and Weatherford, Texas. Less surprising are the clusters of dots along the coast of California, Oregon, Washington state, and British Columbia so thick that an enlargement map is provided to tease them apart.
“There were so many dots in California we decided to come down and see what was going on,” PCI founder Julian Darley told participants at the conference sponsored by Willits Economic LocaLization (WELL) with the help of a $1,500 grant from the City of Willits.
What was going on at the conference included information sharing, problem solving, and support for representatives of 30 localization groups from British Columbia, Washington state, Oregon, Colorado, and California. The California delegates were drawn from the entire state, including Los Angeles to the south, Nevada County to the east, and Siskiyou County to the north.
Geography was used as a way to break the participants into working groups, enhancing the opportunities for neighboring communities to form cooperative links.
With that sort of cooperation in mind, keynote speaker David A. Schaller, a former member of the United States delegation to the United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development, and Sustainable Development Coordinator with the EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency), suggested redefining the boundaries of what is considered local in order to enclose the resources needed to support a post-oil economy. He pointed out the political boundaries of cities, counties, and zip codes generally have little or nothing to do with the natural landscape.
Schaller also noted the natural features are in flux. “Those defining boundaries,” he said, “must acknowledge climate change, shifts in precipitation… Many of the shifts,” he noted, h”ave been caused by poor stewardship on the part of human beings. By the same token, humans can create near miracles of environmental restoration.”
Schaller offered the example of Gaviotas, a model city east of the Andes mountains in Colombia in what was once a desert.
The first act of the pioneering community was to plant pine trees to change the climate. After moisture was restored, seeds from at least 40 plant species dormant for thousands of years began to sprout, reproducing the ancient forest and attracting populations of deer and other animals.
In the altered climate and with the help of greenhouses erected everywhere – including the interior of the new hospital powered with methane and wind mills – Gaviotans began producing and sharing their own food.
The exports? Solar water heating systems now serving the presidential palace in Bogata and huge public housing units in both Bogata and Medellin.
If they could do that there, then we could do anything, said Schaller. Im making the case for abundance.
“Like the dormant seeds in Gaviotas,” Schaller said, “untapped renewable resources, often overlooked by global, oil-based industries, can be accessed when abundance extends to the local imagination.”
His examples included the wool used in the production of Thermafleece, a building insulation more efficient than fiberglass. The producers of Thermafleece, Schaller said, created a flourishing local industry, protected grazing lands, saved a scarce species of sheep, and provided jobs.
Another example is an eco-beer manufacturing process in which the byproduct is used to produce bread and grow edible mushrooms. After those secondary products have been extracted, the leftovers are in the right shape to be digested by livestock. The animal manure, in turn, produces mushroom-feeding carbon dioxide, supports the growth of the nutritional algae spirilina, and fertilizes the fields for the cultivation of more beer-producing hops.
By contrast, Schaller said, the use of resources in the oil-based manufacturing system is like a dancer using only 10 percent of the stage. Using the whole stage, he said, involves completing the sustainability cycle and can be accomplished best at the local level:
Design all outputs to be someone or somethings input. Theres a way out of the scarcity trap.
Other contributors to the Regional Localization Network Conference included Dr. Robert Gitlin, who reduced the cost of renting Brooktrails Lodge and the adjoining motel; Frey Vinyards, which supplied the wine; the Ukiah Brewing Company, which supplied the beer; Printing Express, Mendo Mill and Sanhedrin Nursery.
