I had lunch with Washington County Commissioner Dick Schouten on Wednesday, October 17th. During lunch I presented Dick with a copy of Daniel Lerch's new book, "Post Carbon Cities: Planning for Energy and Climate Uncertainty". We discussed the operational environment of the Board of Commissioners to help better understand how they work and what their passions are.

A few days later I was copied on the following email from Dick Schouten to Sia Langstrom, the Director of the Vision Action Network; the Washington County Group group focusing on County sustainability:

Sia:
Could you kindly forward the following info on to those who attended the sustainability focus group with me yesterday, it concerns the book I referenced several times during the discussions:
"Post Carbon Cities: Planning for Energy and Climate Uncertainty - A guidebook on Peal Oil and Global Warming for local Governments" (2007) by Daniel Lerch of the Post Carbon Institute.
This book will be out very soon. Peter Lunsford of Washington County Peak Oil was kind enough to give me an advance copy just two days ago. The pertinent web sites about the Post Carbon Institute is: www.postcarbonpress.com ; and the above book: www.postcarboncities.net
Btw, among those contributing to the book are our own Michael Jordan, Metro COO, PSU's Ethan Seltzer and Brendan Finn, Chief of staff for Portland Commissioner Saltzman, along with a long list of academics from places like Rutgers, U. of British Columbia, etc, etc.

He also sent me a personal email that read,

Peter, Thanks. I think the book is excellent. Its well centered, reasonable and the author clearly understands local government.

On October 22nd, I sent the following email to the following elected officials:
Commissioner Tom Brian - mailto:tom.brian@verizon.net
Commissioner Andy Duyck - mailto:andy@duyckmachine.com
Commissioner Dick Schouten - mailto:dick_schouten@co.washington.or.us
Commissioner Desari Strader - mailto:cao@co.washington.or.us
Commissioner Roy Rogers - mailto:royr@rascpas.com
Mayor Bill Bash - mailto:bbash@ci.cornelius.or.us
Mayor Cheri Olson - mailto:info@northplains.org
Mayor Craig Dirksen - mailto:craigd@tigard-or.gov
Mayor Keith Mays - mailto:maysk@ci.sherwood.or.us
Mayor Lou Ogden - mailto:lou.ogden@juno.com
Mayor Richard Kidd - mailto:mayor@groveweb.net
Governor Ted Kulongoski - http://www.governor.state.or.us/Gov/contact_us.shtml
Legislator Chuck Riley - mailto:chuck@chuckriley.org
Congressman David Wu - http://www.house.gov/wu/email.shtml
Senator Gordon Smith - http://gsmith.senate.gov/webform.htm
Senator Ron Wyden - http://wyden.senate.gov/contact.html

This past week, the largest global conference on peak oil was held in Houston, by ASPO-USA. Over 525 people attended this year’s conference, a record for what was already the world’s largest annual conference on peak oil. Some 60 speakers addressed attendees who came from 18 countries and 35 US states. Attendees included an even mix of corporate senior-level management, academic / NGO, students, and general public. Over 25 members of the accredited press attended including AP, New York Times, Bloomberg News, the Houston Chronicle, World Oil magazine, the Oil & Gas Journal, and many others. (You can learn more about ASPO-USA here: www.aspo-usa.com .)

---> The conference discussed global petroleum supplies and production versus demand with the primary concensus being that petroleum supplies would no longer be capable of meeting demand much past 2009 or 2010, causing catastrophic economic consequences across the world.

---> What contingency plans are in place for responding to this crisis in Washington County and its Municipalities? What are you doing about it? How will your solutions mitigate the risks?

Now that you've read my note, why not take a moment and write one yourself? Use your own words, but let them know you want information and think this is an important issue.

Later in the week Dick and I had a brief exchange about a Pacific University student who had been in an email exchange with the Board of Commissioners, trying repeatedly to persuade the Board to sign the Cool Counties Initiative. This is essentially a parallel to our own path with the Board. On October 25th, I met with that college student, Nick Engelfried, and we spent about four hours together discussing the issue. Nick is a passionate young man who is alarmed about global warming. He is actively engaged in tryin gto save the world and is currently working extensively with the Environment Club at Pacific University. We discussed colluding to spread the word about fossil fuel depletion and implications going forward. This is a bright young man that has outstanding writing capabilities, seems very intelligent, and his heart is in the right place. He was personally instrumental in getting the City of Hillsboro to sign onto ICLEI. I think we'll be hearing more from him.

That's it for today.

Peter