While in Berkeley recently, we scoped out a future Peak Moment show with the innovative folks at All Power Labs. They produce (and, with their online forum of local tinkerers, are continuing to improve) a low-cost, open source design, “wood gasifiers experimentation kit” that uses biomass like wood chips to produce a gas which runs a generator to produce electricity.

We got a quick tour from designer Jim Mason. Brilliant design and simple manufacturing, with the right spirit: share and empower others. It enables distributed power generation, like at our place to charge the batteries in our solar power system in winter, or on farms in northern India.

Their units are manufactured from simple stock products, can be shipped worldwide by UPS. Using design templates, they can be manufactured in rural and third-world countries. At this point it’s not quite an off-the-shelf appliance one installs like a washing machine, but a tinkerer will have no problems.

A perfect example of of intermediate technology by and for the people (a la E.F. Shumacher, author of Small is Beautiful, which influenced my thinking about sustainability when I read it in the early 1970s). Thanks to viewer Grant Miller, developer of the Village on Sewanee Creek for this lead.

I’ve wanted to tape a conversation with Chris Martenson since I viewed his Crash Course last spring.

Chris opens the Crash Course by saying the next twenty years will be totally unlike the last twenty: we’ll face “the greatest economic and physical challenge ever seen by our country, if not humanity.”

In this three hour internet video (and DVD) presentation, he demystifies and weaves together the relationships between money, resources, energy and the environment — starting with the mind-boggling power of exponential growth (be it debt or human population). Chris has a gift for making complex stuff understandable and pointing to its impacts on all of us.

We met Chris in Berkeley a day before his talk at the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco (here’s the transcript). Ours was an engaging, fast-paced conversation. Chris started with the three-word analysis for our economic problems: Too Much Debt. And away we went from there — the implications if we continue the way we’re going, and ways to prepare ourselves.

Chris walks his talk. He left his career in the corporate world, sold his home, moved his family to a more sustainable community, and dedicated himself to awakening people about the effects of the crash course we’re all in.

Chris is both a realist and yet optimistic about our future, saying he believes we have the time, resources and know-how needed to meet the challenges ahead. He believes that “if we manage the transition elegantly we can actually improve things.”

I think that’s a pretty big “if” given the lack of political will, the corporate mainstream media’s blackout on these topics, and the comfort of denial by many who are aware of the problems. But I agree that on the other side of transition, life could be better: more connected to one another and the earth, less pollution, more free time, meaningful work. Many of the folks we meet through Peak Moment TV are already well on their way to that future.

Off-camera Chris told us of the small group of men in his community who are preparing and supporting one another to prepare for the times ahead. I hope we can tape their story when we travel East.

Chris is a quietly warm, personable man. He wants a bright future for his children and the planet. I’m impressed by his heartful commitment to finding the best ways to communicate our situation in ways that engage people to act purposefully rather than take refuge in denial. I’m really happy we’re bringing him to Peak Moment viewers.

Richard Heinberg is a big-picture thinker who I find trustworthy and credible. That’s why we’ve produced several Conversations and  presentation DVDs with him. In his latest Museletter he paints a planetary big picture following the Climate Conference in Copenhagen. These excerpts don’t cover his important views on the climate accords, but What Nobody Talked About. I urge you to read the full essay: “The Meaning of Copenhagen.”  His appeal to work locally speaks to our hearts about what we’re doing with Peak Moment TV. 

“Climate change is just one of several enormous interrelated dilemmas that will sink civilization unless all are somehow addressed. These include at least five long-range problems:

•    topsoil loss (25 billion tons per year),
•    worsening fresh water scarcity,
•    the death of the oceans (currently forecast for around 2050 based on current trends),
•    overpopulation and continued population growth, and
•    the accelerating, catastrophic loss of biodiversity.
As events are unfolding now, these problems, together with climate change, will combine over the next few years or decades to trigger a food crisis of a scale and intensity that will dwarf to insignificance any famine in human history.

To make matters even more grim, there are two near-term dilemmas that may make climate change and these other problems much harder to address: peak oil and economic collapse.”
. . .

“Because petroleum has been the driver of most economic expansion during the past few decades and there is no ready substitute for it, peak oil basically means the end of economic growth as we have known it. And without economic growth, our entire financial system comes apart. Indeed, that’s exactly what we’ve been seeing over the past 18 months in the failure of trillions of dollars’ worth of bets on future economic expansion. (For a discussion of the role of peak oil in the financial crisis, see ‘Temporary Recession or the End of Growth?’.”
. . .

“To summarize: three factors—the need for resilience, the lack of effective policy at national and global levels, and the tendency of the best responses to emerge regionally and at a small scale—argue for dealing with the crushing crises of the new century locally, even though there is still undeniable need for larger-scale, global solutions. Does this mean we should give up even trying to work at the national and global levels? Each person will have to make up her or his own mind on that one. To my thinking, Copenhagen is something of a last straw. I have no interest in trying to discourage anyone from undertaking national or global activism. Indeed, there is a danger in taking attention away from national and international affairs: policy could get hijacked not just by parties even less competent than those currently in command, but by ones that are just plain evil.”

“Nevertheless, this writer is finally convinced that, with whatever energies for positive change may be available to us, we are likely to accomplish the most by working locally and on a small scale, while sharing information about successes and failures as widely as possible.”

“A final note: As 2010 begins we are about to enter the second decade of the 21st century. Historians often remark that the character of a new century doesn’t make itself apparent until its second decade (think World War I). Perhaps peak oil, the global financial crash, and the failure of Copenhagen are the signal events that will propel us into the Century of Decline. If these events are indeed indicative, it will be a century of economic contraction rather than growth; a century less about warnings of environmental constraints and consequences than about the fulfillment of past warnings; and a century of local action rather than grand global schemes.”

“I suspect that things are going to be noticeably different from now on. ”

This is the most somber message I’ve read from Richard in the past five years. He seems to have largely given up on national and international policy-makers, given the bitter lack of results at Copenhagen, even with an American president whose campaign promised much more. The work we do in our communities may be far more important than we can imagine.

This year we hadn’t planned to put up a Christmas tree, since we were going to my family’s for an extended holiday. But when colds took over multiple family members, Robyn and I postponed our trip.

Yet as Christmas Eve day dawned, we couldn’t imagine Christmas without even a little tree.

So we headed up and over the hill, found a shaded-out little three-foot fir among many fir youngsters. We invited her to join us, and held her straggly branches as we thanked her for joining us.

Now she’s sitting on our dining room table, aglow with a string of 35 LED lights and consuming 1 tiny watt of electricity. By comparison, the light strings with 32 tiny incandescent bulbs consumes 14 watts. That’s 15 times as much. (And the larger C6 strings take about 100 watts, 100 times as much.)

Until the LEDs replaced the tiny incandescents a year or so ago, we would turn on the Christmas tree lights for only an hour or two each night. (In our off-grid system, we try to charge the batteries as little as possible during the winter, thus saving on propane).

Now the LED light strings let us keep the Christmas tree alight for hours each day, making our hearts glad. They’re a potent symbol that our collective energy usage can be much reduced via efficiency. A next step is conservation — choosing to use less energy. Possibly a harder sell but with lots of potential (at least we think so, living pretty comfortably in a house using 10% of the electricity of the average American home).

Conservation and efficiency won’t get us all the way to sustainability because of the tremendous one-time energy bonanza in oil. But they’re a good start in this, the first phase of powerdown.

And we can still have our hearts glowing like the colorful lights on the little tree by the window. Surely it invites a curious glance from Bear and Deer passing by the humans’ nest in the dark, star-studded night.

Icicles are rare enough here that I just had to share Robyn’s picture. Sunday’s snow was followed by a hard freeze, decorating our house with icicles on all sides (the sun never reaches the house in winter).

The next morning, no hot water! Pipes had frozen in the house’s on-demand hot water heater cabinet. Okay, time for on-the-spot problem solving.

Robyn heated the frozen pipes until the water got moving. I covered the door vents with reflectix (silver mylar + bubble-wrap insulation) to keep cold air from circulating. That night we kept a slow drip going into the bathtub as a preventive (saving that water for toilet flushing, or even backup drinking water). (We don’t use incandescent lightbulbs for heating because we don’t want to draw down the batteries unnecessarily).

A snowstorm is fine resilience practice. Redundancy — having extra supplies, tools and methods for doing a task, as well as experience doing in-the-moment problem solving — is central to our homestead resilience practice.

Knowing we might not get out for a week, what preparation did we do ahead of time?

Food? Stored and fresh. We’re covered for longterm and midterm food storage supplies in the pantry, cooler and refrigerator. But before the storm we headed to town for fresh fruit and vegies for the week.

Electricity? Solar-electric plus backup generator. Being off-grid, we’re not dependent on the power company. Storms reduce the amount of sun available to charge the batteries, so we’re very watchful of the battery capacity, not wanting to run the propane-fueled generator more than necessary. For redundancy purposes, we have a backup portable gasoline generator and several 5-gallon cans of gasoline.

Of course our winter practice for electricity is to use less, so we run the generator less. We try doing more of our activities during daylight hours, and using the skylights in each room, then we don’t need electric lighting until sunset. At that time I light several candles so we can go between rooms without electricity. We turn off the inverter at night so there’s no electrical usage.

Water? Well water plus rainwater buckets. We filled the below-ground storage tanks (from which water is pumped to a pressure tank and then to the house). When we get the gravity-fed water system done, we’ll have two ways to bring water to the house.

If the well water system breaks down, we have about 10 gallons of distilled water in storage. Plus about 15 five-gallon buckets collecting rainwater from the roof. After the first or second rains have cleaned the roofs, that water might be drinkable (after boiling) in a serious emergency.

Heating? Woodstove and propane. I stacked up a week’s worth of firewood on the covered front porch: cozy-warm guaranteed. The propane space heaters are only used in extreme situations like coming home to a cold house after being away for days. We have two portable propane heaters, which use less fuel than the room heater, and keep on hand several full portable propane tanks.

Much of our winter cooking is done on the woodstove, which also heats water for hand-washing the dishes. The water heater is pretty much used only for showers, so if the heater or propane supply went out, we’d heat water on the woodstove and take a sitz bath (in a small metal tub in front of the woodstove to keep warm!)

Phone? Land and cell. The land lines are buried back to the phone pole two miles away, but we are at the mercy of the phone company beyond that. Cell service will depend on various conditions, but usually is back up pretty quickly.

Internet? Dial-up service plus two antennas for cell.  The snowstorm blew the digital internet antenna off-angles, so service went to zero (this is a temporary antenna arrangement). Robyn tried the backup mobile antenna at various points in the house, but alas it had broken in our last auto trip. Up on the roof to turn the antenna, and down to order another mobile unit. If the cell service goes out, but landlines are up, we use the much-slower dialup service.

Vehicles? More than one vehicle, plus extra gasoline. Multiple vehicles won’t do in a post-petroleum future, but in our rural area without public transit (and 1.5 miles to the nearest paved road), an extra vehicle is important at this time (in case of vehicle breakdowns, too).

Well, I’m running out of steam on this list. Robyn is working with the laptop computer beside the fire, dark is descending, and I want to get more firewood in from the woodshed.

What haven’t I mentioned? Only that it takes thought and work to being prepared, and huge comfort in doing so.

When we brought Richard Heinberg to introduce our community to Peak Oil late in 2005, we promised him an update on community responses.

It’s four years later, and I’m amazed and gratified at what’s happening in western Nevada County. Here are a few of the sprouts since then:

APPLE’s monthly public forums - films, presenters, networking
APPLE Sustainability Center: exhibits, resources, networking and events

Food
Local Food Coalition (with Come Home to Eat and Meet Your Farmers events)
A Local Foods guide (printed) of restaurants, growers, retailers, etc.
A Nevada County Grown label and support for farmstands
More CSAs (community-supported agriculture) and another grower’s market
Community gardens
Neighborhood Readiness Project for decentralized bulk food storage intended for you AND your neighbors
A local cow cooperative
A permaculture guild
A seed saving cooperative

Business and Trade
Think Local First awareness campaigns to support independent local businesses
Monthly CD, DVD and Book Swap

Energy
A Clean Energy cooperative
A Seed Saving cooperative
Nevada City working on a city government energy plan

Media
Biweekly Peak Moment TV Conversations
Local TV program “Getting through the economic recession together”

Plus classes and activities in gleaning, local wild edible foods, acorn processing, and more, I’m sure.

What else is happening in our community? Let me know. Maybe I’ll write an open letter to Richard on western Nevada County’s community local-reliance activities.

I have spent the last three days sewing three 100-inch zippers on a raincover for the mobile studio/RV. They’ll let us be active inside the vehicle — running generator and heaters –  while protecting it from rain and snow.

As I work, I think of the factory workers in China who constructed it. Perhaps, as in a documentary we saw, it’s mostly young women from the rural areas working long hours with few breaks, in a fenced-in company compound, with company-provided meals and dorms, on a rigid time clock. Is it really a better life than in the rural areas where the poverty is deeper?

I think of the California family-owned company that manufactures these covers: did they once have a manufacturing plant in the U.S.A.? Just yesterday I read of 65,000 people applying for 2,000 jobs at a VW plant. Would Americans now want to compete for the low-paying jobs making these covers? Could they even get a survival wage to cover their transportation to work from their (non-company-provided) housing and meals?

I hear on the radio of farm workers in Fresno, California, who do not have food security. It’s not because the food isn’t there in the abundant food-production region where they work. It’s because they have neither the money to get the food nor nearby supermarkets which offer fresh foods. They are wage-slaves with possibly fewer provisions than those factory workers in China. This much-touted industrial-capitalism economic system is showing myriad cracks.

I read some of Derrick Jensen’s Endgame Vol. II: Resistance. His thorough analysis demonstrates how this insane industrial civilization is killing the world. It weaves into my thoughts of all the institutions reinforcing this dominator society’s suicidal assault on humans, non-humans and the natural world. From Earth’s perspective, it’s a good thing that this economic system is breaking down.

My thoughts return to the RV cover. Decades from now, will local people be constructing such items closer to home? Might they even be re-using materials like this cover, sewing them into newer and possibly non-discretionary items?

This RV/mobile studio and its cover certainly aren’t sustainable. They’re part of our powerdown transition from a resource-intensive and wasteful industrialism to what John Michael Greer calls “scarcity industrialism.” The mobile studio enables us to affordably tape Peak Moment videos in distant places. From this tiny house we can videotape people living simply, using less energy and materials, leaving less toxicity and waste. We can meet transitioners pioneering re-localization where, in future, local people will be manufacturing items like this raincover in and for their own communities.

They and many others will point the way towards living sustainability, towards reconnecting to the one precious natural world we cannot live without, our true economy and deep home.

No insurance? No healthcare.
Paying cash? No healthcare.
Got insurance? Won’t cover your condition.
Heads you win, tails I lose.

In some tests for her chronic lyme disease last June, Robyn’s thyroid got contradictory results. Wanting to see an endocrinologist about this, we asked the primary care physician for references. She referred it on to a regional health system, whose representative called all over northern California and western Nevada for someone who’d take Robyn.

Nada. Why not? Not taking new patients, some said.

So we just asked for a referral from a naturopathic physician linked somewhat into the medical system. The answer: if you’re insured, we have a referral. If you’re self-pay (uninsured), we don’t have one.

WHAT??? Do doctors not accept cash? If Robyn walks in with a wad of $20 bills and a copy of our savings statement, will they consent to see her? Do we need to post a $1000 bond so they know we’re good for the bills? Have the so-called insurance companies hijacked the system that fully?

We chose not to continue healthcare coverage in 2004. We calculated that, even with high-deductible insurance, we’d have to pay $10,000 per year before any insurance money would kick in. That’s a lot of buckaroos for two people. Besides, the one condition that might need medical care, Robyn’s chronic 20-year lyme — which she has kept in check through a rigorous low-sugars diet and exercise — is not recognized by the so-called insurance companies. Thus they wouldn’t pay for her treatment anyway. Being basically pretty healthy and emphasizing preventive measures, we opted out.

Five years later, some of the $50,000 we saved from not having so-called healthcare insurance has indeed gone to some medical care. As cash payments.

So what’s this doctor’s problem? Even bigger, what kind of stranglehold does this disfunctional system have, where corporate “insurance” middlemen profit by producing nothing of benefit?

Thank you, Dennis Kucinich, for advocating the elimination of for-profit healthcare insurance. Why should we be required to pay for health insurance for illnesses like Robyn’s they won’t cover? And be fined if we don’t buy in? Isn’t that the kind of coercion you see under totalitarian regimes?

Watch video “Innovation Bears Fruit for Family Farm” (Peak Moment episode 162).

In the northeastern Sacramento valley between Paradise and Oroville, gigantic Table Mountain overlooks more than 2000 acres of green in a sea of brown grasslands. Up close, that green turns out to be primarily heritage Mission olive trees, plus other fruit and citrus fruit trees. They’re irrigated by water collected atop the once-volcanic Table Mountain, rising 1100 feet above this, the Chaffin Family Orchards.

We videotaped a Peak Moment tour of this sustainable, organic, integrated farm with engagingly articulate sales manager Chris Kerston. Besides the orchards, the other main components are animals, who Chris aptly noted were “employees” along with the five humans who run the farm.

Instead of using diesel tractors, they’re using goats to prune the tree shoots and brush. Cattle and sheep mow the grasses. They’re followed by chickens who eat the bugs and shorter grasses. And all of the animals fertilize the orchards with their poop! The animals are moved from one orchard site to another, where they’re contained in a large, portable electric fences (each powered with a solar panel) where they have plenty of room to roam. Thanks to the animals, they’ve not needed to buy chemical fertilizer AND they cut their diesel usage down by 85%.  They’ve employed their animals for organic farming practices over the last ten years.

We learned of Chaffin Family Orchards because we subscribed to their Fruit CSA this past summer. In a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), subscribers invest in the farmer’s operations, sharing risks and rewards. We paid our share at the start of summer (giving them finances they can count on). Our reward was a weekly box of 6-10 pounds of fruit. (Part of the risk was losing some long-awaited peaches one week when they all fell off the tree before they could be harvested. But Chris was very good to us, giving us homemade jam and local rice instead).

And not just any fruit! Most of the trees are over 50 years old, so we are savoring heritage fruit with all its specialness. One week when we got three different varieties of apricots, we couldn’t believe it. Flavorful, ripe, subtle, each distinctly flavored — reminded me of the apricots I grew up with in Los Altos, and haven’t found since, even in natural food stores. Re-ignited my love of apricots in a heartbeat! We’ve delighted in several varieties of peaches, nectarines, sweet grapefruit, heritage grapes, pomegranates, even super-creamy heritage Duke avocados whose skin is so thin you just eat it.

On our tour, Chris showed us the egg-mobile, which is rolled along wherever the egg-laying chickens are kept in pasture. It’s their nightly roost, complete with nest boxes. If I remember right, they have about 1500 chickens, 500 mature layers, 500 younger layers, and 500 broiler chickens. They also harvest lamb, goat (the most widely-eaten meat in the world), and beef. Their heritage Mission olive oil just won the top prize in the California competition. Mellow-flavored, not sharp or acidic.

Chris is working on building the niche market for their products. Their emphasis has always been producing for local-scale, rather than being a packing plant for large quantities to ship far away. The Fruit CSA is one part of it; he and his family attend eight regional growers markets in the summer; and has buying clubs in the Bay Area besides the farmstand itself. He’s working to develop a meat CSA, and a winter Fruit CSA too. CSAs are less work for him, provide a more secure financial base, and a reliable source of wonderful food for the members.

The whole enterprise — still in the Chaffin family after more than a hundred years — is resourceful, sustainable, organic, intelligently designed, and stocked with heritage varieties hard to find elsewhere. It’s based on what are now called permacultural principles (founder Del Chaffin was ahead of the game).

Chris says their goal is not a looks-good farm (though I found it down-home wonderful) or picture-perfect fruit, but food that’s flavorful, healthy, organic and sustainable.

Suits our taste perfectly.

Saturday we taped a long-awaited tour of Mark Cooper’s homestead. Over the past decade he has transformed a run-down house and 4 acres into an amazingly diverse, ever-evolving food-producing landscape (at left, Mark shows a  mushroom log).

A sidehill which was covered by blackberry bushes (he brought in goats to graze ‘em down) then became pasture for up to 50 different animals, including unusual Navajo churro sheep and Tibetan yaks. Mark recounted tales of his various animal friends, many of whom became his food, a relationship for which he has heartfelt gratitude.  Now the pasture is home for several sheep, including big white Ram, who lived up to his name.

Mark coaxed the two geese from the pasture into his hand-built pond. He tossed a handful of grain, and they swam into his unique “goose grotto”, a spacious wire cage providing them protection and nesting boxes safe from coyotes.

We met Mark in the early 1990s when he rented a cabin on our property. He has been one of our primary construction/handymen. His imprint is on our woodshed, roof, decks, guest space, and more. If Mark built it, it’s “bomber” and we can depend on it!

When we got a tour of his place in 2008 (see “A Good Neighbor”) I admired the fruits of his handyman skills and resourcefulness using whatever materials he could find. They’re visible all over his place. His big solar dehydrator re-used glass screen door panels, plywood and wood and cost all of $6 (for the plastic screening for the trays).

He demonstrated  his electric composting machine — made of washing machine transmissions turning a big metal tank on a horizontal shaft — commenting that it was kinda cool but probably not worth the life energy it took to build. He gestured at the good old compost pile — is a lot easier, and does the job.

I loved his clever automatic chicken-door opener. It uses a timer and water and weights — and operates even if he’s not there for many days.

His tour took us into a modest orchard with old and new fruit trees, shiitake mushroom logs, and a kitchen garden with containers made from plastic 55 gallon drums … all a testament to a resourceful, grounded, practical guy really at home in the physical universe, keen observation skills, and with a huge array of skills.

We ended the day relaxing in his solarium: a room at the end of the old barn whose south-facing wall he filled with re-used windows. It’s Mark’s favorite place lie in the warm sun on cold winter days.

Robyn and I sat in chairs facing into the pasture hillside behind which the sun had dropped, while Mark lolled in a hammock. With its gray pea-gravel covered floor, and rough-sawn wood walls opposite the glassed-in view, the room has the tranquil quality of a zen garden. The perfect place to end our day’s taping, and for extending our conversational reflections on life, sustainability, and our future.

Mark has carved a path worth following — in his creative approach as well as the achievements of his hard work and dedication. I think you’ll enjoy meeting him in an upcoming Peak Moment Conversation.