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Post Carbon Cities :: Newsletter #5, November
2007

IN
THIS ISSUE:

1. Post Carbon
   Cities Fall book tour wraps
   up
2. PCC launches
   weekly blog
3. Group
   functionality and January
   tours
4. Task forces
   ongoing
5. Oil prices -
   uncertainty
   embodied
6. Post Carbon
   Cities welcomes Laurel
   Hoyt

1. Post Carbon Cities
Fall book tour wraps
up

Last week Post
Carbon
Cities Program Manager Daniel
Lerch wrapped up his five-week Northeastern book tour to
promote Post
Carbon Cities: Planning for Energy and Climate
Uncertainty, our new guidebook for local governments
in
the U.S. and Canada. Daniel's whirlwind tour hit 14 different cities in
the northeastern United States and Canada, including over 30 events
such as
public presentations, meetings with local citizen groups, and meetings
with
local officials and staff. Highlights of the tour included:

• Presentation to city staff in Montréal, Québec
• Meeting with Brattleboro (Vermont) Regional Peak Oil Task Force
• Presentation to city staff in Cambridge and Boston, Massachusetts
• Public presentation in Providence, Rhode Island
• Meetings with local groups in Central Massachusetts
• Presentations and meetings in New York City
• Presentation and workshop for regional planners in Philadelphia

The response to the tour has been very positive. The city of
Providence
alone ordered 50 copies of Post
Carbon Cities following Daniel's visit, and peak
oil interest in New England overall is so strong that we're planning on
organizing a Post Carbon Cities conference there in Spring 2008, in
partnership with local citizen groups and city officials. Read more
about
the tour in Daniel's posts to the Post
Carbon Cities blog, and visit www.postcarboncities.net/guidebook
for more information or to order
the book. Also, watch for video of some of Daniel's presentations,
which
we'll post in the next few weeks.

2. PCC launches
weekly blog

Post Carbon Cities has
a
weekly blog! Inaugurated with posts from the East Coast tour, the blog
will
soon expand in scope to provide up-to-date commentary and analysis of
developments in city responses to energy and climate uncertainty. We
will
also soon feature guest posts from your colleagues working in and for
local
government.

Check in weekly; or, if you use an RSS newsreader, subscribe to the Post Carbon Cities blog RSS feed.
(You can subscribe to
all Post Carbon Cities updated content with our Compiled feed.)

3. Coming in 2008:
Online discussion groups, and
Winter Tour

There are a couple of "next big things" coming up for the Post
Carbon Cities program. On the website front, we're launching "online
groups" in January: secure, invitation-only forums for discussions,
collaboration and file-sharing. We're providing this functionality in
response to rising demand for online collaboration space from groups
like
the Brattleboro (Vermont) Regional Peak Oil Task Force (an ad hoc
government-citizen committee) and the Twin Cities Peak Oil Study Group
(an
informal group of local and state staff) -- and it will also be a great
way
for you to share experiences and questions with your professional
colleagues around the world. Look for the launch of online groups in
our
next newsletter.

Also starting in January, Daniel will start the next phase of the
Post Carbon Cities book tour, with
appearances
tentatively planned in California and the Pacific Northwest. We'll post
tour details to www.postcarboncities.net/pcc-tour
as they become available.

4. Local and
State/Provincial Actions

In the last few months,
energy uncertainty task forces have wrapped up their work in Oakland
(CA)
and started up in Austin (TX) and San Francisco. Post Carbon Cities has
supplied copies of Post Carbon Cities to
energy
uncertainty task forces in Austin (TX), San Francisco, Brattleboro (VT)
and
Warminster Township (PA). These groups are working to assess their
communities' vulnerabilities and resources in preparation for energy
uncertainty. If your community is thinking of establishing an energy
uncertainty task force, please let us know and we'll connect you to the
growing body of resources available to help you. And be sure to take a
look at our regularly-updated list
of local government responses to energy uncertainty in the US and
Canada.

We're also starting to see activity at higher levels of government.
In
Connecticut, the new Legislative Peak Oil and Natural Gas Caucus held a
hearing on peak oil at the state legislature on November 1st. State
leaders heard from experts including Tom Whipple and Sally Odland of
the Association
for the Study of Peak Oil, Charley Maxwell of Weeden &
Co, and John Kaufmann of the Oregon Department of Energy. The Caucus
also
released a report exploring the likely impacts of peak oil on
Connecticut,
concluding that "The state is unprepared to address the problems that
will arise ... Connecticut is at risk of economic contraction beyond
anything we have experienced since the 1930s." The report includes a
series of recommendations for the state to undertake, including
establishment a statewide peak oil task force. Read
the report on the Post Carbon Cities website.

5. Oil prices -
uncertainty embodied

With oil prices shimmying ever-closer to the iconic $100 barrel,
there's
a lot of angst and many predictions in the air. While no one can be
sure
what exactly the future holds, it's also not reasonable to simply sit
back
and do nothing. More and more major players --from OPEC to the EIA--
are
hinting that prices aren't going to go down; so regardless of the
justification, cities need to prepare. Everything from heating oil to
food
will be impacted.

A few relevant items from the last month:

The
peak oil crisis: our government is speaking
Published 14 November 2007 by Falls Church News-Press
(VA)
The U.S. government's Energy Information Administration announced bad
news
on the fuel front. The announcement, predicting that gasoline prices
are
due to go up another 20 cents a gallon in the next few weeks, has been
reported on widely. But the real message to take from this announcement
is
that the EIA is seeing, and starting to report, a real change in the
oil
markets.

Q
& A with Julian Darley
Published 1 October 2007 by Urban Land
Charles Lockwood interviews Post Carbon Institute President Julian
Darley about peak oil and what it means for the shape of human
settlement. From the October edition of Urban
Land, published by the Urban
Land Institute.

Peak
oil production is in sight; U.S. is unprepared
Published 10 November 2007 by The Independent (UK)
It is surprising that the world economy has managed to carry on growing
strongly despite the recent rise in oil prices. There's growing
recognition
of the finite limits to global oil production, but also growing demand
that
probably can't be offset by efficiencies in developed countries. While
it's
hard to connect the current US economic slump with oil prices, the
impact
of rising prices will be felt sooner or later.

Establishing
a peak oil task force
We've just posted our guide for establishing and running an energy
depletion task force -- excerpted from Post Carbon Cities:
Planning for Energy and Climate Uncertainty. Remember,
you
can also download an abridged copy of Post Carbon
Cities, which includes the task force how-to and more, at
www.postcarboncities.net/guidebook.

6. Post Carbon Cities
welcomes Laurel Hoyt

We're
pleased to announce the addition
of Laurel
Hoyt to our staff! Laurel has taken over as Editor of the Post
Carbon Cities website, posting daily news, resources, events and
commentary on the challenges cities face with peak oil and climate
change;
she is also providing research, website, writing and administrative
support
for the Post Carbon Cities program overall. Prior to joining Post
Carbon,
Laurel was the Education Coordinator of Free
Geek, where she helped this collectively-managed computer
recycling and computer training non-profit grow into a national model
for
community-based technology centers.

---

Post Carbon Institute
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Email
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