Hello to anyone who is out there looking for other peak oilers to discuss what's going on with. We are meeting in February to discuss either the financial or the emotional aspects of peak oil. We'll be talking about what is going on and how you can ameliorate your situation. We meet at 10:45 every first Sunday of the month in the Meditation Room, upstairs at the UU Church in Waterville. Take the Waterville/Oakland exit off 95, and head towards Waterville on Kennedy Memorial Drive. It will go downhill and you keep going straight through the light at the bottom of the hill. It will curve to the left and turn into Silver Street. You'll run right into the church.

We are continuing the Light Brigade. We hand out CFL's to people who can use them. We are probably going to do something in Skowhegan next. Contact me if you are interested in helping us out. They may save over a buck a month. That buys about 3 loaves of good bread!

We handed out a lot of CFL's as the Light Brigade and got our names in the paper. We'll try to do this again in the new year. We are meeting again on January 6th at 10:45 am upstairs in the Meditation room of the UU Church in Waterville. We are going to talk about what to do about peak oil in the new year. It's getting real around here. The heating oil situation is really making it obvious to a lot of folks. Electricity is going up again in the spring. LIHEAP funds are being cut. This is the winter of our discontent.
I think that talk is cheap. We need to conserve energy now. We may not have a choice. Efficiency and conservation are amazing ways of making our lives work even if gas and oil go up in price. We have to get together and make it work. Cooperation is a better strategy than competition as energy dwindles.

Well, we're going to start handing out CFL light bulbs again next Saturday. Meet at Jorgensen's at 9am on Saturday, Dec. 8th for breakfast. After breakfast we're headed to some areas of town that can benefit from the compact flourescents. We've handed out 61 so far at the Evening Sandwich Program at the UU Church in Waterville. Ours is not to reason why. It's time for some action, and this is a great way to get started. Call me at 474-7370 if you want to be involved, or meet us there!

I met Steve Athearn at the Augusta Civic Center, and he is working on spreading the peak oil message in Rockland. Great to put a face to a name.

Next regular meeting is on January 6th at the UU Church in Waterville at 10:45 am in the meditation room upstairs. Come join us!

Well we continue the Light Brigade here in Central Maine. Our next meeting, December 2nd will be about action, and what we can do around here to get ready for peak oil. It looks like this winter is the first real taste of high oil prices and it is wreaking havoc with our budgets already. I have heard a lot of stories about people not being able to afford oil to heat their houses already. I think this is the beginning. After 2009 we really start falling off the plateau and the price of oil will go beyond most people's ability to pay for it. We are getting ready for it, but only a pitifully small percentage of the local population is aware of peak oil and what's happening. Still, ours is not to reason why. We'll continue our projects, like the light brigade. Join us!

We meet at 10:45 am every first Sunday of the month. Upstairs in the Meditation room in the UU Church of Waterville.

Welcome to post peak Maine. Heating oil is over $3 a gallon, and winter is coming. It's never been a picnic around here, and people aren't going to be able to heat their houses at this rate.

We are trying to do something about it. Talk is cheap. We meet at the UU Church every first Sunday of the month at 10:45. This month's theme was action. We formed the Light Brigade to hand out CFL's in Waterville, are talking to the town manager about fixing up the bus station and are going to talk to the town about their electrically heated buildings.

It's time to do something. Join us if you want to make a difference.

I am beginning to see signs that peak oil is sneaking up on us here in Maine. We are dependent on supplies of petroleum just to keep our house warm and get around. We cut our own wood to heat our house, but I like to have that oil burner so that we don't have to stoke the woodstove constantly.

Most people did not lock in to heating oil this year because they ended up paying more than it was worth last year. This year the price may go back up by the end of the winter. We'll see. We locked in. Hard to tell what the smart thing to do is. I figure that even if we pay a dime or so more per gallon, it's cheap insurance.

My truck is getting 29 miles per gallon when I do a lot of highway driving. It's a 4 cylinder Ranger and it seems to be working out well. I use it for pickup things about 4 times a week. I am worried about the onset of peak oil and what it will do around here. Most people are driving around in cars and trucks that get around 10 or 15 mpg. They will become very difficult to sustain soon.

Maine has a tradition of self-reliance, and maybe we'll make it through.

Well, how does peak oil actually affect us? I was talking to a friend who is a chef and she told me that the price of food has more than doubled in the past few years. It's been going up and up. Shipping has increased enormously. In a few years the price of shipping may make it hard to get the kinds of food we were used to. That's why I feel that we must support local agriculture. We have a farmer's market in our town, and we buy food there every Saturday. The food is fresh and comes from the local area. It's important to get more of this up and running now, while we can still afford to set things up. A local young farmer is selling milk in the old fashioned bottles. This kind of thing will be crucial in the transition to a world where the cost of shipping makes it impossible to send milk from halfway across the country.

We make our own maple syrup and people from the community visit us whenever there is steam coming out of the sugarhouse. They buy the syrup and feel a sense of ownership in the process. I think it helps to bring us together. Who doesn't like maple syrup? I was looking at a book of paintings by Eastman Johnson from the 1800's. They were about maple sugaring in Maine. He painted certain people, like the kettle tender, the storyteller and the dandies from town who went out to visit the sugar camp. I realized that we have those same people today. I can tell you who the storyteller of the camp is and who the kettle tender is. We do the sugaring every spring. It's a piece of our peak oil strategy, and it also builds community.

The President's State of the Union was good in that it mentioned Oil Addiction. This may have been the first time many even realized that there was a problem with being addicted to fossil fuels. Our culture has been all about promoting oil addiction all this time. Buy a new car, snowmobile, dirt bike or even an energy pig house and you will feel good, for a while. Then like most addictions these things start to eat your hard earned money and time. You feel bad. You need another fix of gas toy to feel good again. I myself suffer from this affliction. Ask my wife. I dream of baby bulldozers and dirtbikes.

Here's what we have done in our house to reduce fossil fuel dependence:

http://www.msad54.org/sahs/appliedarts/artlofving/Energysav/index.htm

We are meeting every first Sunday of the month at the UU Church in
Waterville, Maine on Silver Street

Last month we toured a woodlot and learned about sustainable ways of harvesting firewood and timber.

Jan. 1st we'll see a
DVD and discuss the year of post peak. Please come!