Peak oil – Feb 9

February 9, 2007

Click on the headline (link) for the full text.

Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage


Peak Moment: The San Francisco Peak Oil Resolution
(audio and video)
Janaia Donaldson, Global Public Media
San Francisco is the first American city to formally address the challenges of oil depletion. Dennis Brumm and Allyse Heartwell recount how members of SF Oil Awareness envisioned, wrote and presented to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors a Peak Oil resolution, which was passed unanimously in April 2006. They explore next steps: public hearings and plans to create a task force to assess the city’s energy vulnerability. Episode 47.

Janaia Donaldson hosts Peak Moment, a television series emphasizing positive responses to energy decline and climate change through local community action. How can we thrive, build stronger communities, and help one another in the transition from a fossil fuel-based lifestyle?
(29 Jan 2007)


Film Review – ‘A Crude Awakening – the Oil Crash’

Rob Hopkins, Transition Culture
I had the pleasure of watching Basil Gelpke and Ray McCormack’s new film ‘A Crude Awakening’ recently, and was very impressed.

…It is the noble successor to ‘The End of Suburbia (EoS)’, whose crown it steals, becoming, for me, the best exposition of the peak oil argument yet committed to film.

The ‘talking heads’ are very good, some of them familiar (Campbell, Simmons, Savinar..) and others not. All have useful insights to offer on the situation, from perspectives new to the peak oil debate. Unlike EoS’s’ focus on suburbia, or ‘the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world’ as it describes it, this film goes beyond the US experience, being more of a global film, focusing on Europe and the UK as much as the US.
(7 Feb 2007)


Talk to the Soil Association Conference.

Rob Hopkins, Transition Culture
Here is a very lightly edited transcript of the talk I gave to the Soil Association conference on Friday 26th February 2007.

… I want to take you on the pathway, the journey that I’ve gone through since I was where you are all now, where you’ve just heard about peak oil. Through the work that I’ve done I’ve observed the same sort of pattern that happens in people when they find out about peak oil.

I’ve come to identify it as what I call Post Petroleum Stress Disorder, which is something I’ve seen time and time again. It has a number of key symptoms which some of you might have experienced over the last couple of hours. The first one is slight clammy palms, a slight nausea, a sense of this sort of slightly not feeling very comfortable, mild palpitations and the possibility that actually things as you saw them when you came in here might not look quite the same when you go outside and look at them with your new way of looking.

There’s a sense of bewilderment and unreality when you realise, as I was overhearing some people in the tea room just now, talking about ‘Well actually, well that’s made of oil and that’s made of oil and this is made of ….’ and once that sinks in, it’s quite a shift. There’s an Irrational Grasping at Unfeasible Solutions, which is where you say ‘oh no we’ll be fine, we’ll just go to hydrogen, that will be fine, I feel a lot better now.’ Again, you see that lots of times, people just grasp at something instant, nuclear power, hydrogen.
(8 Feb 2007)


ASPO newsletter for February

Dr Colin J Campbell, Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas – Ireland
791. Regional Assessment – MIDDLE EAST (minor)
792. Norwegian Contraction
793. ASPO Norway
794. The Peak of Peaks
795. An Open Letter to CERA
796. Oil & Gas Journal Database
797. Production, Supply, Extraction or Depletion
798. Oil Prices
799. The Soil Association addresses Peak Oil
800. ASPO Canada
801. EU Seventh Research Framework Programme (FP7) call for proposal
(Feb 2007)


The Reality Report: Bart Anderson of Energy Bulletin
(audio)
Jason Bradford, Global Public Media
The Reality Report interviews Bart Anderson a co-editor of Energy Bulletin, an on-line source for news and commentary related to energy, society and the environment. Bart is a trained journalist now specializing in media coverage and the cultural response to peak oil and global warming. This show is a news round-up and discussion of how the press is dealing with issues such as peak oil, rising energy and commodity prices, climate change and the social ramifications.

Jason Bradford hosts The Reality Report, broadcast on KZYX&Z in Mendocino County, CA.
(7 Feb 2007)
Articles discussed on the show are listed at The Energy Round-Up.


Tags: Building Community, Food, Politics