----- Original Message -----

From: David Floyd

To: Coordinator HUB

Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2008 6:16 AM

Subject: CoordinatorHUB Local officials policy discussion and hello from Rhode Island

Greetings to all of you "professional rebels"--

I'm David Floyd, from Rhode Island. My introduction is long overdue....I've been a little slow in jumping into the heady discussions that take place on this list. Suffice to say that we're working pretty hard here as well, and you people are amazing. This latest thread on local government policy got my attention, since we are, of course, facing similar challenges.

Our group has been late in forming, but there have been local and statewide sustainability projects active in Rhode Island for some time. We have a number of established organic CSAs,
a local food movement (Brown University hosted the second annual Local Food Forum back in the winter). Providence invited Daniel Lerch and Julian Darley for a "Post Carbon Cities" conference in October 07. The Apeiron Institute (www.apeiron.org) has been doing groundbreaking work for years. We showed TEOS in January of 2005 as part of a progressive film series, but things were slow to get going. I started a relocalization listserv to generate more discussion around peak oil, but only a few people really picked up on the true implications. Antiwar and other progressive projects (including a regional impeachment effort) took over for awhile. Early in 2007, I began shopping around the idea of community gardens. In the fall of 2007, I started doing repeated screenings of Escape from Suburbia, following Jason B.'s example from Willits, in an effort to generate some momentum.

In early January, I set up PostCarbon Rhode Island, with a Wordpress site at www.relocalize.us, using a variety of video resources (like Janaia and Robyn's great Peak Moment series) and current article postings to basically build the case for peak oil planning in Rhode Island. The site, with the help of some established and influential other blogs, has gotten about 50,000 page requests since it went live, so somebody is paying attention.

For some time now, we have had a core group organized around a community garden in our town of South Kingstown, and we have been in discussion with town officials about using town land. Long story short: we now have approval from the town and a local middle school to use a beautiful half-acre site adjacent to the school, with room for expansion when the time comes. Again, acknowledgments to Jason and the example of Brookside Farm for leading us to strongly consider a school garden project. The town is giving us great latitude in the design of the space, and is completely open to the idea of fruit trees, nut trees, berry bushes, etc.

In my talks with town officials, I have directed them to the PostCarbon RI site, and am securing a copy of the PC Cities guidebook for them. We have others in town also in touch with officials advocating for "wise energy use." There was also a fine article written in our local paper about the community garden project that heavily emphasized relocalization. I have been diplomatic in my approach in bringing up peak oil to local officials, and have trusted that, in part, the website and our publicized local meetings speak for themselves. However, there have been some good breakthroughs. Westerly, Rhode Island is 20 miles south. One of our group members is a Westerly resident, and has convinced her town to approve the creation of a peak oil task force. Now that that is established, the potential increases for leveraging to some degree ("Westerly is doing this, what are we doing?")

The other recent breakthrough was Richard Heinberg's appearance at the State House in Providence a few weeks ago. He was invited by State Rep. Art Handy as part of an Earth Day program. Here is the press release http://www.rilin.state.ri.us/News/pr1.asp?prid=4888
I attended the talk, and then wrote an op-ed about peak oil, using Heinberg's appearance as a lead-in. The piece was picked up by several Rhode Island papers, and is linked to on Energy Bulletin (May 9--Outposts)

I had a meeting with State Sen. Susan Sosnowski a few nights ago, with six other people, and referenced the Heinberg event, and basically told her peak oil would greatly compound the many formidable budget challenges the state legislature is already facing. Sosnowski is an organic farmer, and basically understood the implications of peak oil, especially since Art Handy had talked to her after the Heinberg talk, and told her that she should have been there, and that "this is scary stuff." I invited the senator to our upcoming peak oil/sustainability meetup this Saturday, which will also be attended by members of the Westerly task force, Nancy Wood from Mass. (who organized Heinberg's tour of the northeast) and faculty members from Univ. of Rhode Island, among hopefully many others.

I was completely impressed with Andre's summation of the real concerns about energy descent related to municipalities. We have so much work to do to. I have to say I read Jason and others' comments about the lack of commitment on the part of town officials with a degree of consolation, that even though we here are getting a late start, everyone is facing the same challenges in motivating their towns to get serious.

To any of you on this list from the northeastern US, we would certainly welcome the opportunity to do regional work, so please don't hesitate to get in touch.

Thanks to all of you for doing this important work.

Best,
David Floyd
PostCarbon Rhode Island
df@
www.relocalize.us
401-789-3680