Chris Martenson, author of The Crash Course: The Unsustainable Future of Our Energy, Economy and the Environment book and video course, just gave two engaging presentations to our community. I wanted an update from our Peak Moment Conversation in early 2010 The Crash Course - Exponential Growth Meets Reality (episode 166), so we taped a conversation, “Oil Puts the Squeeze on the Economy” (episode 204).Chris said that what he predicted back then is exactly what we’re seeing now: slowing economy, high unemployment, debts teetering, possible sovereign debt defaults across Europe, record people on food stamps.You have to include energy in the economy story, Chris said. “The economy only functions if and only if you have energy.” And not just energy, but liquid fuels. Not only are oil supplies getting tighter, but it’s costing more energy to get energy (deepwater drilling, tar sands, etc.). An economy dependent on growth is getting squeezed by energy constraints.Chris’s first presentation “Our Predicament” is a capsule version of his “Crash Course” (videos free at chrismartenson.com). Chris is a genius at drawing connections between the three E’s of Energy, Economy and the Environment, showing why the next twenty years will be utterly unlike the last twenty. Bottom line: we’re at the end of growth. Basically, just as population and consumption are exploding exponentially, we’re seeing constraints in oil production and natural resources like minerals, water and topsoil. He calls for a vision of a world worth inheriting, noting the vacuum at the national level, but being tried out in various flavors in communities like ours.Chris’s second presentation “Investing in the Future” offers his beliefs about what’s ahead of us. Here are some highlights:

• The rules will be changed.
• The markets are rigged.
• Events will unfold very rapidly. Black Swans (the impossible) will become the rule (like the Fukushima nuclear and Deepwater Horizon catastrophes)
• Energy will consume a growing proportion of our disposable income, with food prices mirroring oil prices. Peak oil will stifle growth and starve the economy slowly but surely.
• Simplicity is coming. Complex systems like our civilization require more energy, and energy is declining.
• Things will happen from the outside in. Want to see what’s coming? Look at the margins, like marginalized populations or countries at the periphery (like Greece right now).
• There’s nearly universal insolvency, and he predicts debts will not be paid back.
• Anything that is unsustainable will someday stop… like the fiscal situation in our country — a U.S. fiscal crisis is highly likely.

Chris calls himself a “thrivalist.” He encouraged us to get our own house in order well before the cultural tipping point, advising people to invest in energy efficiency in their homes, long-term food storage, buying items your family will need over the next few years. Personally, he’s holding physical gold and silver as alternate currencies.Chris’s website offers a wealth of resources [http://www.chrismartenson.com]. (Photo thanks to Jason Wiskerchen).

At the GreenLife EcoFest on May 22, 2011 in Grass Valley, California, Dmitry Orlov presented “The Twilight of the Antipodes and the Cultural Flip” about swapping the market economy for gift economies, as humans have done throughout most of history.

He was followed by Michael C. Ruppert, announcing the presence of a new species on the planet — “Post-Petroleum Human.” Afterwards Dmitry and Mike shared the podium with a question and answer session.Listen to Mike’s presentation on The Lifeboat Hour radio show and watch the video, “Birth of the Post-Petroleum Human.” Watch Dmitry’s presentation video, “The Twilight of the Antipodes and the Cultural Flip.” I’ll post a link to their Q&A when it’s available.

In our Peak Moment Conversation, Mike Ruppert spoke about his observation of this new species of human that is emerging. Post-Petroleum Humans are not distinguished by physical characteristics but by a state of consciousness. They are reaching back into the long human history to remember their essential connection to Mother Earth and all of Life. And they are forging a path to relocalizing their lives while shedding their need for the artifacts and services of this planet-destroying industrial civilization. He also spoke about his work at CollapseNet, daily disseminating important news, empowering members to find one another in their region, and providing other resources. Mike is the author of Confronting Collapse, and the star of the movie Collapse. 

Raised in the Soviet Union, Dmitry emigrated in his teens to the US, but visited the USSR during and after its collapse. His book Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Example and American Prospects draws similarities between the Soviet collapse and what’s now happening in the US. In our Conversation, he pointed out that the USSR was more resilient than America, because they didn’t have the efficient but vulnerable delivery systems the US has. Dmitry encourages people to simplify and reduce their needs. I’m fascinated by his choice to live with his wife aboard a sailboat, and his idea of creating forest gardens on little-used tropical islands. View his presentation here.

Watch or hear Mike: Arrival of the Post-Petroleum Human (Peak Moment episode 196.)

Watch or hear Dmitry: Collapse of the Titans (Peak Moment episode 201).

(Photos courtesy of Darren Aboulafia, CollapseNet.)

Wednesday, May 18, 2011. We taped a lively chat with Janelle Orsi and Jenny Kassan, co-directors of the Sustainable Economies Law Center (SELC) in Oakland, California. These passionate women are using their lawyerly skills to help people form sharing organizations like worker cooperatives and cohousing partnerships. They’re also supporting local enterprises of all types, including reducing the legal barriers to local investment and structures.Working towards a sharing culture centered in local enterprises sounds like the perfect successor to the consumer culture that’s drawing down planetary resources everywhere.Janelle Orsi calls herself a “sharing lawyer.” For several years she lived in a “casual cohousing” arrangement where fences were figuratively taken down between several houses. She so valued the many sharing aspects — shared gardens, shared meals and shared stuff — that she co-authored a book with lawyer Emily Doskow titled The Sharing Solution: How to Save Money, Simplify Your Life & Build Community. It brings together practical ideas, real-life examples, sample agreements and legal information that that will reduce hurdles for sharing (including communications tools for dealing with challenges and conflicts!). It’s a highly readable, thorough compendium that’ll expand your personal sharing economy from casual to small groups to structured organizations.Jenny Kassan’s passion is to keep resources local so they can support local enterprises — especially money. She wants to enable personal savers and retirement funds to invest in local food and businesses. However, laws meant to protect the small investor instituted during the First Great Depression now are a huge hurdle that pretty much keep this from happening. Times and needs have changed. Last summer, two of SELC’s law student interns wrote to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to work towards enabling the small investor to keep some of their money in local enterprises. We’ll have to keep posted on their progress to change a deeply entrenched system.What a gift to have these lawyers’ expertise empowering ordinary people to make clear and legal agreements to share and cooperate! Jenny and Janelle are empowering a perfectly timed cultural revival of sharing and localism.Check out the book The Sharing Solution, the Sustainable Economies Law Center, who introduced me to a pertinent website featuring many facets of sharing — Shareable: Sharing by Design.Watch or hear “Young Lawyers Lower the Bar to Sharing Economy” (episode 210).

We weeded in my mom’s church community garden plot this morning.  Robyn and I joined a work party cleaning paths and rototilling the winter overgrowth in the 12 x 25 foot plots. They were working within a small time window while the clay soil was moist and workable. Another few weeks here in California’s San Joaquin valley, and the soil would be like bricks. (photo: Janaia’s mom Rowena, center).

As I pulled weeds in the gentle sunshine amid sonorous mockingbirds, I thought of community and family gardens starting to be worked on everywhere. This garden is barely a year old, and part of a growing movement across the continent (okay, pun intended). A welcome movement towards relocalizing food.

As I pulled weeds, I thought of the gardens we’ve visited and taped, most recently several community gardens in the Pacific Northwest. From them, I passed along two seed ideas to this garden’s coordinator for future consideration.

One is to create a community garden rather than separate plots. It could be a neighborhood garden like Judy Alexander helped coordinate in Port Townsend (video forthcoming), or the Wendell Berry Garden that John and Maia O’Brien showed us in Olympia, Washington. Rather than waste a lot of space with paths around separate plots, there is one large garden — rows of squash and beans and beets and lettuce and much more. Participants share in the decision making, the work, and the harvest.

This structure uses people’s strengths and capability, rather than each person having to do it all on their own plot. As Judy Alexander remarked, someone who may be physically incapable of physical garden work can do the bookkeeping. Those who are more knowledgeable can teach the newbies.

As John wrote, their garden structure “enables … very high productivity and quality, since we decide collectively what we grow, how much, what variety, etc. instead of 20 little plots each with their 3-4 broccoli plants.” It also permits growing a wider variety of crops and encourages biodiversity. And it trains people  collaborative decision-making, democracy at the grass roots level. Or the beet roots level, in this case.

The second idea comes from our friends Llyn Peabody and Chris Burns, coordinators at Alpine Sharing Garden in Oregon (meet them in my blog “A Sharing Garden That Grows Community”, video forthcoming). Their garden is planted as described above — one large garden whose produce is shared by participants, with surplus going to the local food bank.

The beds are highly mounded. Both the beds and walk spaces between are heavily mulched with straw. I mean heavily — many inches thick! The thick straw  keeps moisture in and weeds down. Chris pulled aside some mulch to show the earth below providing habitat for bacteria and bugs and worms happily at work building soil. He pointed out plant roots stretching into the walkways, expanding the growing space. And of course the straw breaks down to help build soil.

Like these examples, I’m sure there’s a lot of creative genius at work in the gardening movement, flourishing along with the plants. May the movement spread across the land, in every vacant parcel urban, suburban, rural. It produces not only fresh local delicious often-organic beautiful real produce, but also people reconnecting to the living earth and one another. (photo: Ina and Kathy taking a break).

October 30, 2010. We taped a popular show in 2006 with Judy Alexander, How Much Food Can I Grow Around My House? (episode 87). Judy has continued expanding the circles of awareness about food.  We taped a conversation in Port Townsend, Washington with (right to left) Peter Bates and Judy, both members of the Port Townsend steering committee of the Northwest Earth Institute, and Dick Bergeron, president of the local Chimacum Grange.

These three organized 25 discussion groups in early 2010, using Menu for the Future, a slim but impactful study book produced by the Northwest Earth Institute. It contains fascinating short readings from a wide range of authors and perspectives, plus a discussion guide, all around the topic of food.

The groups are for “anyone who eats.” Each 6-week group has 8-10 members who read a chapter per week, and then explore and discuss their values about food in a safe and respectful environment. How and where it’s grown. Additives. Health. Fossil fuels and other resources. Industrial Agriculture. Local food producers. Justice. Security.

The unique touch is that Judy, Dick and Peter brought together people who might not otherwise be in touch with each other but share an interest in food. “Country mouse and City mouse,” is what Dick Bergeron calls them.

It started when Dick brought together local farmers to see what the rural Chimacum Grange could do to help them. Their reply? They needed help to market their products, which also entailed educating the public about the value in their locally-produced food products and producers.

Judy Alexander and Peter Bates had done a lot of local educating through previous NWEI discussion groups in Port Townsend, so they mined their connections to organize 25 groups of 8-10 people (mostly City Mice). In an innovative twist (and with Dick’s assistance), Judy lined up a food producer (Country Mouse) to be in each group.

Surely the groups were far richer with the addition of a food producer — a real person, a face, not an impersonal supermarket shelf. With stories to tell and likely a different perspective.

Look forward to watching this show, and consider sponsoring a Menu for the Future group in your community. Add the Port Townsend/Chimacum twist: invite a local food producer into each group of eaters, and see what happens. I’ll bet it’ll be all the better for it.

View the video “Menu for the Future - Bringing Farmers to the Table” episode 189.

January 10, 2011 update: This final schedule lists most of the 58 programs videotaped in the completed 2010 Pacific Northwest Tour, along with get-togethers with localization/transition groups and media interviews. Links are primarily to Janaia’s Journal entries.

August
3         Rogue River, OR: Backyard garden CSA
4-6     Cottage Grove, OR: Aprovecho Center, human-powered machines, rocket stoves
8         Alpine, OR: Sharing garden
11        Portland, OR: Cargo bikes
11        Portland, OR: Meeting with Transition PDX
13        Portland, OR: Neighborhood urban village
14        Portland, OR: Tool library
16        Portland, OR: Columbia Ecovillage
17        Portland, OR: Dignity Village
18       Portland, OR: Free Geek tour
19        Portland, OR: tour of straw bale house and cob studio
19        Portland, OR: Fruit tree gleaning
23        Rochester, WA: Earthen house
23        Rochester, WA: Midwifery
24        Olympia, WA: Tiny mobile house
25        Olympia, WA: Bakery CSA
28        Seattle, WA: Simple living with Cecile Andrews
29        Seattle, WA: Home remodel and energy retrofit
30        Bainbridge Island, WA: David Korten, Agenda for a New Economy
30        Bainbridge Island, WA: Yes! magazine publisher & editor-in-chief

September
3         Bellingham, WA: Tools for manifesting your dream
4         Bellingham, WA: Mobile chicken harvester
4         Bellingham, WA: Kids engage with food at farm camp
5         Bellingham, WA: Meeting with Transition Whatcom
6         Bellingham, WA: Innovative farm/CSA
7         Whidbey Island, WA: Vicki Robin, your money or your life (Peak Moment episode 186)
8         Port Townsend, WA: Growing community gardens
9         Port Townsend, WA: Investing locally
9         Port Townsend, WA: Janaia interviewed on community TV (Peak Moment episode 183)
9         Port Townsend, WA: Neighbors organizing for emergency preparedness
10        Port Townsend, WA: Bicycle enthusiasts offer free repairs and classes
12        Victoria, B.C.: Guy Dauncey, author of 101 Solutions to Global Warming
12        Victoria, B.C.: Haultain Boulevard commons garden
13        Victoria, B.C.: Eco-sensible house
14        Shawnigan Lake, B.C.: O.U.R. Ecovillage
14        Shawnigan Lake, B.C.: Green burial meets land preservation
15        Gabriola Island, B.C.: New Society Publishers Staff

Sept. 2010 update: Robyn and I are taking a hiatus after six weeks of taping 34 Peak Moment shows in the Pacific Northwest. A health opportunity with a Seattle naturopath for Robyn’s long-term lyme is allowing us to stay in the area for two more months. Below are shows we taped in the greater Seattle area and the return trip south.

September
16         Seattle, WA: Transition Cascadia Convergence

October
10        Seattle, WA: Janaia a guest on Mike Ruppert’s radio program
10, 24        Seattle, WA: “Peak Shrink” Kathy McMahon
14         Seattle, WA: Wallingford Community Kitchen
29        Sequim, WA: organic farmer Nash Huber
30        Port Townsend, WA: Menu of the Future

November
18        Seattle, WA: CSA produce transported by sailboat
27        Seattle, WA: Applying the “Peak oil filter”

December
1        Seattle, WA: Undriving
5        Bellingham, WA: Filmmaker Jon Cooksey, How to Boil A Frog
6        Bellingham, WA: Michelle Long, Business Alliance for Local Living Economies
9        Seattle, WA: a car sharing arrangement between two households
13      Seattle, WA: sail transport of sustainable goods in the south Pacific
16      Portland, OR: Daniel Lerch, editor of The Post Carbon Reader
17      Astoria, OR: Titanic Lifeboat Academy
18     Corvallis, OR: Grain and Bean project, and book Prairie Fire
18     Alpine, OR: The rich frugal life
19     Eugene, OR: Interview on Eugene community TV, meet with relocalizers
21     Crescent City, CA: Derrick Jensen, author of Endgame

September 12, 2010. Beware the subversives on Haultain Boulevard in Victoria, B.C. The friendly women gardening in their edible front yard greet all passers-by with conversation and invitations to harvest food.

Guerrilla gardeners Rainey Hopewell (photo top) and Margot Johnston (photo right) are claiming common ground to use for the common good. With a nod from their city agencies, they’ve planted vegetables in the parking strip in front of their house and offer them free for the taking. The Haultain Common, as they say, is a “neighborhood-supported public food garden on public land, where all may harvest.”

A lovely magic is happening around the Common: community. Neighboring children and adults have joined in to help plant, mulch and harvest the potatoes, tomatoes and squash (above, Grace Vardy).

Chalk messages on the sidewalk tell passers-by when particular vegies are ready to pick. The birth mothers of the Haultain Common note that most people in our culture tend to be reluctant to receive if they haven’t first given. So “we just give them some tomatoes or potatoes and encourage them to come by and harvest in future.” And many of them do just that. For some, this produce helps keep hunger at bay.

The subversiveness is spreading. Edible gardens are appearing on other parking strips. Neighbors are putting in backyard gardens. Harvest parties are being held. People are getting to know one another. A neighborhood community is happening, centered around zero-mile, locally-produced, picked-the-same day food.

Look forward to a delightful conversation with the Haultain Commoners who have catalyzed a neighborhood transformation — with fun, food, sharing and camaraderie.

Watch or listen to the program: Claiming the Commons - Food for All on Haultain Boulevard.

August 31, 2010.  “We need to get free of Wall Street,” David Korten’s eyes blazed, “not try to fix it by tinkering at the margins… It can’t be fixed. It has essentially become a legal crime syndicate” (my paraphrase).

With a David-meets-Goliath fervor, our passionate conversation drew from David’s Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth, just out in an expanded second edition.

We were sitting in the verdant back yard of David and Fran Korten’s home on Bainbridge Island west of Seattle, following a sunny ferry ride from the mainland.

David minced no words about de-throning a corrupt Wall Street, whose phantom wealth is created by doing nothing of value. His solution? Change the cultural story from seeing money as wealth (”money is just accounting numbers”) to seeing that real wealth is in the likes of food, shelter, education, and mutual support.

Where to start? “Walk away from the king.” Create the new reality: rebuild local economies for healthy families, communities and the earth. Change the rules to reduce the power of corporations, the politicians in their pocket, and a destructive money system.

In 2006 we produced a DVD of David presenting The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community, and a conversation about the book “A Defining Moment in History” (episode 48). Today’s conversation is a lively sequel! Watch or listen to the conversation “Taking Back Our Lives from the Wall Street Mafia” (episode 180.

August 28, 2010. My first impression upon entering Cecile Andrews’ cheery house is that simplicity doesn’t mean deprivation. The author of Circle of Simplicity, Less is More and Slow is Beautiful, Cecile lives in a spacious Seattle house brightened with colorful dishes and artwork, beaming cut sunflowers, and inviting book-filled walls.Instead, Cecile said in our conversation, simplicity for her meant having time and freedom to slow down and savor life. For decades her simplicity circles have empowered people to discover and do what really matters to them. She asserts that we need supportive circles when we step outside cultural norms, so we don’t feel all alone.Cecile is building community wherever she goes. Renters live in the upstairs and downstairs of her house. She’s active in neighborhood groups, where people are encouraged to “stop and chat” with their neighbors rather than avoiding one another. She’s part of SCALLOPS (Sustainable Communities All Over Puget Sound) and now Transition Seattle.Cecile notes that good social ties make us feel more secure and happier — in contrast to working harder for more money beyond a level sufficient to meet our needs. Those social connections evoke our caring — for one another and for the whole planet. Celebrating community in ever-widening circles. (www.cecileandrews.com)Watch Simplicity, Joy and Social Change (episode 221).

Thursday, August 19, 2010. Natural builder Lydia Doleman of Flying Hammer Productions gave us plenty of stories about the urban neighborhood community that’s evolving from two adjoining homes she purchased with friends. And she gave us a tour of the cob studio and recently-completed straw bale home.

When Lydia and a friend bought a Craftsman-style home in a Portland neighborhood, they renovated it  earthen wall surfaces, healthier paints and more. Following permacultural principles, Lydia wanted to keep as many resources on site as possible, like rainwater catchment to keep water in the land rather than diverted into the city sewer system. When she built the cob (clay and straw) studio, she included a living roof so the land taken by the studio is “returned” to growing plants.

Some years ago when an adjoining rental house became available, she contacted the owner and purchased it. She took the fence down between the parcels, and put glass french doors on both house sides facing into the central commons. This “social architecture” was an invitation for residents to interact with one another, evolving into a community that now houses about a dozen people in three homes (see “Fences Down: Creating Community in the City“).

Lydia gave us a tour of the recently-completed third home. It’s architecturally modeled like the others yet far more resource efficient. It has a 500 square foot ground floor with a single kitchen, dining, living room plus an extra room, and 300 square feet in the second story with two bedrooms and bath. The structure is framed like a traditional “stick built” home but boasts thick straw bale insulation, hydroponic heating in the floors, natural cob wall finishes, salvaged wood where possible, and custom-built windows. A metal roof feeds rainwater collectors, and it too has a living roof ready for planting. Solar hot water will be joined by solar electricity soon.

She also gave us a tour of the charming small cob studio. But I’m going to let you wait see it in the video!

Building structures, social structures. Starting with what’s already in place and then…enhancing it, bending it towards shared living, a lighter footprint, sustainability. (www.theflyinghammer.com).