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In October, Ron Slabaugh, Coordinator of Addison County Relocalization Network (ACoRN) volunteered tabling at the Boston Conference along with Carl Etnier of the Vermont Peak Oil Network. Over the course of the three-day event, they spoke with many people in the "peak oil" community, and attended various speaker presentations. Ron Slabaugh was kind enough to write up a report in which he reflects on his experiences at the conference.
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ASPO-USA - Boston Conference - Report

November 6, 2006

Last week I had the opportunity to attend the second annual meeting of ASPO—USA, (United States chapter of the international group, the Association for the Study of Peak Oil), in Boston as a Post Carbon Institute volunteer, staffing a table at the two day conference. We sold lots of copies of Julian’s book, High Noon for Natural Gas, and many Oil Age posters (www.oilposter.org). We passed out a number of Post Carbon Institute brochures and talked to many participants about the Relocalization Network. Best of all, the conference folks put our table right in the meeting room so we could hear all the presentations that ran from 8:00 a.m. each morning to 9:30 each night. I came home buzzing and I’m still processing my experiences.

As we talked following the conference, Shelby asked if I might like to write some kind of summary of the conference for the newsletter. I was hesitant as I haven’t been able to wrap my mind around any kind of summary, maybe because there was a huge diversity in the mix of attendees and presenters. The participants, many members of ASPO—USA and many not, ranged from university scientists, government officials CEO’s, film makers, reporters and other media folks to class room teachers and citizen activists like myself. One of my favorite speakers was Milton Maciel, former Agricultural Minister and an organic farmer from Brazil who told of a sugar mill that grew organic cane and made all its power, plus the power for the nearby city of 500,000 population, from biomass—bagasse--that is a byproduct of sugar production. While I haven’t been able to ‘grok’ the conference overall, I would like to share some vignettes that had a powerful impact on me as I sat in this heterogeneous group gathered around our concern for peak oil.

The first impression was left by a brief demonstration from a citizen group from Chelsea Massachusetts, across the Mystic River from Boston that interrupted the proceedings. They were opposing the siting of a new fuel-oil fired power plant across from a grade school in their community. The demonstrators passed out a one page statement, hung banners over the balcony in the large meeting room at Boston University. Chanting their slogans they interrupted the speaker, Jim Gordon, CEO of EMI, a large, privately held power company. Mr. Gordon was telling us about his company’s proposed off shore wind farm in Nantucket Sound, the “Cape Wind Project.” The basic question that the protesters’ printed sheet raised was “why site the diesel fired plant in Chelsea? Why not wind power there?” The handout suggested that the answer was that Cape Cod (where Mr. Gordon lives), and the islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, with a median income of $60,000, is able to fund expensive lawyers to manage their opposition to Cape Wind on ‘NIMBY’ (Not In My BackYard) grounds. (I’ve read that they’ve spent more on the opposition than EMI has spent promoting the project) Chelsea on the other hand, is a low income, industrialized city, and the people haven’t the resources to fight back in a socially acceptable manner, thus this protest.

In fairness to Gordon, whose Cape Wind project is laudable, he said the Chelsea facility would operate only in peak hours. This would allow other, dirtier plants that have to “idle” to be ready for peak periods to shut down thus reducing overall carbon emission. The new facility would be equipped with state of the art scrubbers that would emit no more than a couple of school bus trips through the neighborhood worth of pollution. All this info came in response to a questioner who wanted to know why EMI was locating the plant in Chelsea and not somewhere else. The question was ignored, leaving me with the impression that the answer was because large corporations can have their way more easily in lower income or otherwise less powerful areas.

In my view, Jim Gordon added emphasis to the point the protesters were making by failing to acknowledge them in any way; he continued his talk, shouting over the demonstrators until earnest ASPO volunteers and armed Boston University police easily ushered them out.

My second image is from a new documentary film, Crude Impact (www.crudeimpact.com) a first film by James Jandak Wood. Crude Impact is a film about how energy use, particularly fossil fuels, has impacted the earth, mankind and other species. Some footage of the impact on the indigenous people and their land and water of drilling for oil in the Ecuadorian Amazon hit me hard in the gut and reminded me of the folks from Chelsea at the hands of EMI, (the relatively powerless citizens versus the large corporation). Watch for this one; the DVD should be available for purchase in a month or two.

Saturday, the day after getting back to Vermont from ASPO, I attended a rally sponsored by a local citizen action group, People for Less Pollution (PLP), against the large multinational corporation, International Paper(IP). The company has obtained a permit, over huge opposition and a outrageous EPA decision, to do a two week test burn of ground-up tires. PLP has a pediatrician who has a public health background and has reviewed the science suggesting that the micro particles that will be released—and not measured in the test—have severe health effects particularly (no pun intended) on the health of children and older folks. I have come to the conclusion that this struggle we are facing to save the Earth and humanity will boil down to pitting the multinationals against “the people.” During the rally, I felt solidarity with the people of Chelsea and the Ecuadorian Amazon. IP is clearly getting ready to ship this facility off shore and doesn’t want to spend any money on state of the art technology.

One more related image: During the question period following the talk of Roger Bezdek, coauthor of the so called ‘Hirsch Report’ that analyses various time-line scenarios for dealing with peak oil, Lynn Benander, director of Coop Power (www.cooppower.coop), a new renewable energy coop in Massachusetts that is building a $7 million biodiesel plant, among other impressive projects, observed that most of the mitigation strategies discussed by Bezdek involved government money to large multinationals (car companies, power companies, etc.). She pointed to the significant work of locally rooted, small, citizen action groups like Coop Power. Unfortunately, many folks had been taking the opportunity to ask a question of a speaker to make long editorial comments and the moderators were attempting to crack down on this and came down particularly hard (rudely, in fact), on Ms. Benander as she described the work of Coop Power, unfortunately giving the impression that ASPO was standing firm with the power brokers and ‘major players.’ (I’ve heard since that she later received private apologies from several ASPO Board members and others.)

In summation, peak oil is a global challenge that will involve action a global scale from governments to individual citizens. (Heinberg was inspiring and articulate, as usual, speaking of his new book, the Oil Depletion Protocol, proposing a global scheme for managing or ‘mitigating’ the depletion transition we face). As we in the Relocalization Network know, local initiatives can mount significant contributions, particularly where it counts: where we live!. It was inspiring to share this concern with such a heterogeneous group of peak oil aware people.

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Ron Slabaugh is the Coordinator of Addison County Relocalization Network (ACoRN). He can be reached via his contact form on the site. Note: you need to be logged in order to send a message.

If you are interested in volunteering at an upcoming event on behalf of Post Carbon Institute and the Relocalization Network, contact us.