Boulder Valley Relocalization

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Boulder Valley Relocalization
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The Energy Crisis
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World Discovery, Production
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ASPO View
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BLACK GOLD

• 1 80,000 lb. truck 45,000 lbs. of freight
• 1 truck x 1 gallon of fuel 5 miles average (up
  a shallow grade)
• 1 person with 1 garden cart 250 lbs/load/trip
• 1 person could manage 20 miles/day or two
  loads/day (5 miles there, 5 miles back and
  repeat)
• Conclusion to move 45,000 lbs., 5 miles up a
  shallow grade, 250 lbs. at a time 90 days of
  work (3 full months, no days off)
• (Note 5 months if you add the weight of the
  truck.)

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The True Value of Oil?

• One gallon of fuel today (Jan. 06)  2.50
• How many miles per hamburger can a person
  go? 90 days of food to fuel one person _at_10/day
   900.00
• The energy density in one barrel of oil is the
  equivalent of eight people working full time for
  one year.
• 8 x 16,000/yr. 128,000 or /42
  gal.per.barrel 3,050/gal.

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Ancient Sunlight

• 100 tons of ancient plant life is required to
  create one gallon of gasoline.
• Over each year of our industrial age, humans have
  required several centuries worth of ancient
  sunlight to keep the economy going.
• The figure for 1997around 422 years of fossil
  sunlightwas typical.

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Developing Nations?

• China has 1.3 billion people, 20 percent of the
  worlds population.
• India has 1.1 billion people, 17 percent of the
  worlds population.
• What percentage of the worlds petroleum are they
  entitled to?
• What percentage of the worlds petroleum do they
  think they are entitled to?

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• A third of humanity doesnt want to ride bikes
  anymore. That has profound geopolitical
  implications.
• Anne KorinInstitute for the Analysis of Global
  Security

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• Currently, the average American consumes 25
  barrels of oil a year.
• In China, the average consumption is 1.3 barrels
  per year in India, less than one.
• If we reduce our consumption by 80, we will
  still be using oil at nearly 5x the rate of the
  Chinese or Indians.

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• Remember the end of cheap oil is not the sort of
  problem you can solve. Its like growing old. You
  cant solve that. However, you can choose to
  respond respectfully, wisely and imaginatively to
  it, so that even ageing can become a source of
  unexpected riches.
• Richard Heinberg

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• Budget deficits explode. Inflation rules. Stock
  markets plunge. Houses foreclose. Great powers
  clash. This may be our future if we do not take
  more serious steps on energy than those offered
  in the energy bill that President Bush recently
  signed.
• Peak oil is coming, but country is
  ill-prepared
• Houston Chronicle, Aug. 22, 2005

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• The second half of the Age of Oil now dawns and
  will be marked by the decline of oil and all that
  depends on it, including financial capital. It
  heralds the collapse of the present financial
  system, and the related political structures I
  am speaking of a second Great Depression.
• Colin Campbell, Ph.D.ASPO Conference 2003

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• The world oil production peak represents an
  unprecedented economic crisis that will wreak
  havoc on national economies, topple governments,
  alter national boundaries, provoke military
  strife, and challenge the continuation of
  civilized life.
• James Howard Kunstler
• The Long Emergency

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• Oil depletion will hit us soon and hard.
  Governments are ignoring the problem. Their lack
  of action will make the coming disruption of the
  worlds economy much worse than it needs to be.
  It is too late to avoid hardship, even in rich
  North America. The longer we avoid facing up to
  the approaching conditions, the greater the
  hardship will be.
• David M. Delaney
• What to Do in a Failing Civilization

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• The world has never faced a problem like this.
  Without massive mitigationthe problem will be
  pervasive and will not be temporary. Previous
  energy transitions were gradual and evolutionary.
  Oil peaking will be abrupt and revolutionary.
• The Hirsch ReportU.S. Department of
  EnergyFebruary 2005

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Peaking

• Its not just the availability of cheap fossil
  fuels that is peaking.
• Our ability to use energy the way we have become
  accustomed to is also peaking.

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Peaking

• Economic growth
• Industrial civilization
• Food production
• Human consumption
• Fossil-fuel-dependent way of life
• Human population

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DECLINE

• Economic growth
• Industrial civilization
• Food production
• Human consumption
• Fossil-fuel-dependent way of life
• Human population

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• We have trouble visualizing decline as positive,
  but this simply reflects the dominance of our
  prior culture of growth The real issue of our
  age is how we make a graceful and ethical
  descent.
• David Holmgren

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• Peaking is only a crisis if
• Weve ignored it
• Weve failed to plan for it
• Were not prepared for it at all

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• Our only reasonable choice is to prepare together
  for the long ride down the curve of an
  energy-constrained future.

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Gathering Storms, Growing Crises

• Resource depletion (esp. fossil fuels)
• Climate change/global warming
• Epidemic disease
• Environment degradation/habitat destruction
• Water scarcity
• Monetary collapse ()
• Terrorism/war

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• A State of Emergency
• All hands on deck!

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Lessons from Katrina

• Optimism, hopefulness, faith in status quo are
  inadequate strategies in the face of real
  disasternatural or man-made.
• Despite planning and preparation, those plans
  failed.
• There was no Plan B.

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Lessons from Katrina

• Denial and lack of foresight constitute a recipe
  for unnecessary catastrophe.
• We cannot rely on government or industry to
  adequately deal with large-scale unpredictable
  events.
• Plan B is left to the publicthe responsibility
  of we the people.

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• Despite assurances of government and industry,
  demand for petroleum is outstripping supply.
• There is no Plan B for this.

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• With less than 5 of the worlds population, and
  with only 2 of the worlds oil reserves, the
  U.S. produces 8 of the worlds oil and consumes
  25 global oil production, of which nearly 60 is
  imported from foreign countries.
• Peak Oil ResolutionU.S. House of
  RepresentativesOctober 24, 2005
• There is no Plan B for this, either.

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• You know, what makes our economy grow is energy.
  And Americans are used to going to the gas tank,
  and when they put that hose in their tank, and
  when I do it, I wanna get gas out of it. And when
  I turn the light switch on, I want the lights to
  go on, and I dont want somebody to tell me I
  gotta change my way of living to satisfy them.
  Because this is America, and this is something
  weve worked our way into, and the American
  people are entitled to it, and if were going to
  improve our standard living you have to consume
  more energy.
• Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa)

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What We Know Now

• We must plan for an energy-constrained future.
• A culture of unbridled consumerism is
  unsustainable and unethical.
• The age of cheap oil and cheap energy is ending,
  and with it will end our current economic system.

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What Few Know

• The oil production-refining-distribution
  infrastructure is already stretched to near the
  breaking point. There is no spare capacity any
  disruptions could have far-reaching effects.
• Major shocks and disruptions are very likely to
  develop in the near-term, long before global oil
  supply has undeniably peaked.

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What Few Know

• Significant shortfalls and outages will almost
  certainly occur, and are likely to be painful,
  chaotic, perhaps even locally catastrophic.
• Some analysts anticipate 5x-10x increases in oil
  prices in the short-term.

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• Whether peak oil arrives this year or next, or in
  five or ten years, there is a high likelihood we
  will experience serious regional emergencies
  along the way.
• There is no Plan B.

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Plan B

• Plan B can only realistically be constructed on a
  community level.
• Community self-sufficiency must be the organizing
  principlelocal energy, local food, local
  economy.
• The alternatives (e.g., Last Man Standing,
  Waiting for the Magic Elixir) are unsustainable.

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The Emergency of a Lifetime

• Will arise from industrial civilizations demand
  for oil outstripping supply
• and the resulting relatively sudden collapse of
  institutions, infrastructures, economies, and
  the American way of life.

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• If human civilization is to survive at all in the
  context of freedom
• we can only do so as a community of self-reliant
  communities
• who have adopted relocalization strategies as
  ethical and evolutionary imperatives.

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• Peak Oil is a defining moment for our species,
  for our communities, and for each of us
  individually.
• Our legacyand the future of life on our
  planetwill be determined by how we respond to
  the challenges and opportunities of Peak Oil/Peak
  Energy.

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• Responding to the challenge of Peak Oil is not
  simply about changing lifestyles or becoming more
  energy-efficient.
• It is about accepting greater responsibility,
  moving from species adolescence to species
  adulthood.

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Childhoods End

• Let us give thanks for this extraordinary period
  of human history we lived through. Let us
  recognize that we are moving into a new phase of
  history. Lets be brave and wise about it, and
  prepare to move on.
• James Howard KunstlerThe Long Emergency

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An appropriate response

• Power-down \ \ n. 1. the energy famine that
  engulfed industrial nations in the early 21st
  century
• 2. the deliberate process of cooperation,
  contraction, and conversion that enabled humanity
  to survive
• 3. a species-wide effort toward self-limitation

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• Ultimately, personal survival will depend on
  community survival.
• Richard Heinberg
• Powerdown

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• A globalized growth economy, based upon a
  culture of consumption, built on widespread
  availability of cheap fossil fuels, destroys
  community.

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• The strategy of individualist survivalism will
  offer only temporary and uncertain refuge during
  the energy downslope. True individual and family
  security will come only with community solidarity
  and interdependence. Living in a community that
  is weathering the downslope well will enhance
  personal chances of surviving and prospering far
  more than will individual efforts at stockpiling
  tools or growing food.
• Richard Heinberg

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• Whats at stake is human freedom.
• If we are dependent on distant sources/foreign
  powers for our essential needs, we will have no
  choice but to pay whatever price we must in order
  to survive. This is how freedom can be sacrificed
  for survival.
• The only viable alternative is to learn how to
  meet our essential needs locally.

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RELOCALIZATION
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• Relocalization is the process of developing
  community self-sufficiency in energy, food and
  economy.
• With the energy crisis, relocalization has now
  become not only necessary but our first and
  foremost priority.

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• There is a great need for a culture of guerilla
  relocalizationa movement that would have as its
  goal to partially prepare communities so that
  they may coalesce more readily into autonomous
  regions when the need becomes apparent.
• David M. DelaneyWhat to Do in a Failing
  Civilization

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PCI Relocalization Network
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PCI Relocalization Network

• Relocalization will herald the creation (and in
  some cases, re-creation) of locally self-reliant
  communities that produce and consume largely
  within the confines of their bioregion, but on a
  far grander scale than examples from the
  historical record.
• In the community-based model, stability will
  only be achieved if neighboring communities are
  also locally self-reliant.

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• Strategic Planning
• like our lives depend on it!

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Strategic Relocalization Planning

• Food Security
• Energy Security
• Economic Security
• Social Security
• Government/infrastructure/policy

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Food Security

• Gardening (household, neighborhood, community)
• Permaculture training, planning, implementation
• Co-ops
• Farming/CSA

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Energy Security

• Renewable energy resources
• Alternative fuels
• Alternative transportation
• Energy efficiency/design (homes and buildings)
• Emergency back-up systems

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Economic Security

• Creating local businesses/jobs
• Complimentary currency
• Local manufacturing
• Relocalization Business Network
• Housing
• Raw Materials

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Social Security

• Education/awareness
• Neighborhood/community organization
• Sharing resources
• Health care/medicine/psychospiritual
• Emergency planning
• Elderly population
• Clothing
• Recreation

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Government/Infrastructure/Policy

• Community energy systems
• Water supply
• Waste management
• Land use
• Transportation
• Emergency management
• Building codes
• Zoning
• Growth management
• Law enforcement

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Learning from other Communities
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Willits Economic LocaLization (WELL)

• Energy Independence Project
• Willits Area Energy Inventory
• Willits Area Energy Independence Plan
• 100 energy independence by 2010
• 50 reduction of energy consumption
• 80 local employment by 2012

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Willits Economic LocaLization (WELL)

• TAKING INVENTORY where we get to be detectives
  and researchers, discovering what we already have
  here and what resources we are starting with
• ENVISIONING THE FUTURE where we get to be
  dreamers visionaries
• PLANNING THE TRANSITION where we get to be
  artists architects of our future
• IMPLEMENTING THE PLAN where we get to be the
  builders of our community

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Willits Economic LocaLization (WELL)

• In a nutshell, we are using a community research
  model. This works by grounding people in the
  reality of the current system i.e., taking the
  Inventory, as a first step towards building
  relationships among themselves and the broader
  community. Tackling questions about the present
  should be easier and much less controversial than
  questions about the future. We build confidence
  and trust before doing the hard parts. By the
  time we get to the Visioning, Planning and Action
  stages we have developed skills, information and
  relationships that will empower us to do
  something as bold as changing the local culture.
  This doesn't mean we don't have an initial, broad
  vision established early on, such as creating a
  sustainable, local economy and a life promoting
  culture. It just means that we pause before
  leaping to action to sort out what we have to
  work with, and make ourselves stronger in the
  process.

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Tompkins County Relocalization

• Peak oil as a county disaster management
  problem

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Tompkins County Relocalization

• Transportation
• Emergency services
• Local food production
• Local food distribution
• Winter food supply
• Hunting
• Health care
• Education
• Employment and training

• Agriculture as a local industry
• Manufacturing as a local industry
• Heating
• Alternative sources of energy
• Water
• Waste disposal
• Social and psychological adjustment

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Tompkins County Questions

• Knowing Our Limits
• What is the carrying capacity of Tompkins
  Countys current agricultural base?
• What would the carrying capacity be if that base
  included all the farmland not currently in
  production and all the former farmland that has
  been taken out of production?
• What would the steady-state carrying capacity of
  the Countys existing and potential farmland be
  if the County were closed to outside inputs of
  cheap fertilizer and fuel?

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Tompkins County Questions

• Urban Farming
• How can families living on the small, shaded lots
  typical of houses in Ithaca create productive
  gardens?
• What would be the optimum way to raise chickens
  on those plots if the present ordinance
  prohibiting the keeping of chickens were changed?
  
• Would it make sense for the city to plant fruit
  trees? How could we ensure that those trees were
  provided with specialized pruning, knowledge of
  the diseases that afflict particular species, and
  water at critical times?
• At what point will the need of city dwellers for
  locally produced food overcome their aversion to
  the mess made by the fruit and flowers dropped by
  productive trees and the wildlife and bees they
  attract?
• How do zoning laws need to change in order to
  maximize the agricultural use of land in the
  County that is now considered to be residential?

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Tompkins County Questions

• Sustainability
• How much organic fertilizer (manure, compost)
  will be needed to keep gardens productive if the
  farms that can no longer afford synthetic
  fertilizer use up all of the organic sources for
  their own needs?
• How do we enable and encourage households to
  compost all their garbage and grass clippings,
  not as a trash abatement measure but rather as an
  essential component of a sustainable food system?
  
• At what point do we start encouraging the use of
  composting toilets?

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Kinsale Energy Descent Action Plan
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Kinsale Energy Descent Action Plan

• Food
• Youth and Community
• Education
• Housing
• Economy and Livelihoods

• Health
• Tourism
• Transport
• Waste
• Energy

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Kinsale Energy Descent Action Plan
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City of Oakland

• Randy Hayes (founder of Rainforest Action
  Network) was appointed Sustainability Director by
  mayor Jerry Brown.
• Hayes is developing plans to make Oakland a
  national leader in solar energy with the goal of
  achieving 100 renewable generated electricity
  within 25 years.
• Currently, Oakland California is debating a food
  policy initiative that would mandate by 2015 the
  growing within a fifty-mile radius of city center
  of 40 percent of the vegetables consumed in the
  city.

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How Cuba Survived Peak Oil

• Cuba has disproved the myth that organic
  agriculture cannot support a modern nation.
• Cubans converted the nation's agriculture from
  high input, fossil fuel-dependent farming, to low
  input, self-reliant, organic farming.
  Permaculture is widely practiced.
• Urban gardens now produce 60 of the vegetables
  consumed in all of Cuba.
• As declining fossil fuel production impacts
  civilization, Cuba may find itself in a position
  to help lead the world into sustainable
  agriculture.
• Cuban agriculture experts are currently teaching
  agro-ecological farming methods to visiting
  farmers and agricultural technicians from
  throughout the Americas (excluding the U.S.), and
  elsewhere.

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Boulder Valley Relocalization

• Local energy
• Local food
• Local economy

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Relocalization Resource Groups

• The energy crisis
• Relocalizing energy/renewables
• Relocalizing food production/distribution
• Relocalizing manufacturing/employment
• Parallel economic infrastructure
• Transportation
• Health care
• Crisis preparedness
• Preparing our community, ourselves

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Strategic Planning Process

• Understanding current reality
• Considering the options
• Creating an achievable vision, setting
  inspirational goals
• Outlining principles and pathways making
  recommendations/proposals
• Building a master plan
• Engaging the community

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1. Understanding Current Reality

• Resource usage, patterns of consumption
• Resource potentials/inventory
• Local expertise
• Risks and vulnerabilities
• Evaluation and report

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2. Considering the Options

• Creative brainstorming
• Scenario planning

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3. Vision/Goals

• Creating an achievable vision
• Setting inspirational goals

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Potential Goals?

• 50 reduction in energy usage
• 100 energy self-reliance
• 75 of food consumption from within 100 miles
• 80 local employment
• 75 of homes become net energy producers
• A response model for other communities

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4. Principles and Pathways

• Formulating specific recommendations
• Developing concrete proposals

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5. Master Plan

• Open source development
• Peer review
• The process demands that the contributions we
  make be nothing less than our very best!

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6. Engaging the Community

• Planning
• Implementation
• Building a sustainable relocalization movement
• Engaging other communities

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Challenges/Opportunities

• We are not doing this only for Boulder Valley.
• Everything we learn, develop and decide will be
  open, accessible, and shared.
• Relocalization has never been achieved.
• This may be the most important endeavor of our
  lives.
• What would be the cost of failure?

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Upcoming Events

• BVR Working Group meeting, March 6
• The Power of Community How Cuba Survived Peak
  Oil, May 12/13 (Present Tense Films, Boulder
  Theater)
• Documentary film and Salsa Dance!