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).

I always appreciate Dave Ewoldt’s inclusion of reconnecting with the natural world as an essential element in creating a sustainable future. It’s there in almost everything he writes. It makes sense. As this psychologist noted in our conversation, what goes on inside us is embedded in the human and natural communities “outside.”

I’ve been reading his thoughtful essays since 2006, when we learned of his Sustainable Bellingham (WA), which he co-founded. But like ships passing through the night, he and Allison moved to Arizona just before we arrived in Bellingham to tape Peak Moment programs that summer. So when they contacted us recently during their west coast “Coalitions of Mutual Endeavor” tour, the only answer was a long-awaited Yes.

I kicked off our Peak Moment conversation quoting Dave: “The fact is that we’re not in a recession; we’re at the end of an historic period in Western civilization.”  Dave noted this period began when the commons were progressively taken over by the wealthy, and an economy emerged which required infinite growth. Infinite growth is impossible on a finite planet. And here we are, meeting the limits to growth in what Dave calls the Triumvirate of Collapse - Peak Oil, global warming, and corporatism.

What’s the alternative? I asked. Dave believes a technologically advanced society can exist within the carrying capacity of our supportive ecosystems — but must balance population, consumption and waste assimilation. How? by following natural systems principles that ecosystems use. Relocalization. Steady-state local living economies. And reconnecting with our roots in nature — and that capability is already there in us, even if obscured by industrial civilization.

After taping the conversation with Dave, we hosted a salon, an informal dialogue with a small group of community members, to learn  about Dave’s vision of forming coalitions to effect critical change in this culture that is destroying the planet, and the workshops in which he and Allison provide tools and models for local coalition-builders.

Look forward to big picture perspectives and optimism from a man who ran as an independent in the Arizona state senator race in 2010 to get the issues out there. I think Dave passionately wants to contribute to turning the ship of human culture in the right direction before it’s too late for many of the more-than-human beings and places on the planet. Read his essays (and sign up for his emails) at naturalsystems.blogspot.com.

(Top photo by Allison Ewoldt; Bottom photos by Robyn Mallgren).

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).

Rowena was six years old when the stock market crashed in 1929. Her family had moved to southern California from British Columbia only four years before. Her father got occasional work in construction. The family scraped by.Soon thereafter her parents separated, and her mother had to find a livelihood. Raised on a farm, she turned to baking chicken pies for restaurants, with chickens raised in their backyard. Rowena and her two younger siblings helped pluck and clean the harvested chickens.From their father the children learned to work with wood and mechanical tools. In time he garnered skills to build a house. Her mother did their household plumbing, electrical and structural fix-its herself, along with cooking, canning, sewing, and knitting. And everything was on a cash basis. There was no credit.”If the money wasn’t there,” Rowena said, “we didn’t buy anything.”Rowena spoke about people giving them hand-me-down clothes and a bag of groceries from time to time. “But we never felt deprived,” she told me. “And having hand-me-downs is nothing to be ashamed of.”"I think we’re in the Second Great Depression now,” she said. Rowena feels that some of what she learned could be instructive for all of us going forward. As do we, which is why we taped this conversation with her.Those formative years shaped the values and skills she relayed to her children in the early 1950s: frugality, self-reliance, resourcefulness, initiative. And how to make and fix things themselves.Perhaps because of what she learned in the First Great Depression, Rowena is living to the fullest right now, with a sparkling pulse of self-determination and vitality. She’s 88 going on 68, a breast cancer survivor who sings and dances every week, and is active in her church, including their new church community garden.The person you just met is Rowena Donaldson. My Mother.You go, mom!Watch or hear our conversation “Growing Up in the First Great Depression” (episode 209).

Join us this Sunday October 10th when Janaia will be interviewed live by Michael C. Ruppert on his “Lifeboat Hour” on internet Progressive Radio at 6 pm Pacific Time.

We’ll focus on what Robyn and I are seeing on the ground, especially during our Pacific Northwest 2010 tour. The fun people are having, the creativity, the community spirit growing as people share gardens, tool libraries, fruit tree gleaning, local investing, disaster-prepared neighborhoods, and start localization groups like attendees at the recent Transition Cascadia 2010 summit.

Just before 6 pm Pacific Time, go to http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/ and click on the button “Listen Here” at the upper right of the home page. During the show, phone in with your questions and comments at 888-878-4888 or email lifeboathour@collapsenet.com.

We taped a Peak Moment Conversation with Mike in 2006 “Pondering our Post-Petroleum Future.”  He’s the star of the documentary “Collapse” - (www.collapsemovie.com/) a stunning and very moving one-person narrative telling it like it is. Mike has recently formed Collapse Network, to help link together those who are creating “lifeboats” in their area for weathering the turbulence as society collapses.

If you can’t listen in, the interview will be archived at the same website. You can listen to it here.

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.

Saturday August 14, 2010. The helpful volunteers at the Northeast Portland Tool Lending Library greeted a steady stream of people this day. People were returning garden tools, construction tools, mechanical tools, and electrical tools they’d borrowed the week before — all due by 10 am. And the steady stream continued, as people borrowed or renewed tools for the next week’s project, until the Tool Library closed at 2 pm.

All free, just like a public book library. Unless you were late returning a tool — and were fined from $1 to $7 depending on the tool.

Surely this is an idea whose time has … come back around again. Founder Tom Thompson noted that people shared tools during the first Great Depression. And certainly much earlier. Contrary to our consumerist culture’s incessant message to Buy Buy Buy, it makes no sense for people to buy a tool they’ll use once or twice a year. And the economic collapse of 2008 is making this idea ripe for return: Sharing rather than buying or doing without.

We happened to be there on the second anniversary of this Tool Library, and they were celebrating later with raffles, food and drink (another great way to build community!). Tom and board chair Karen Tarnow talked about its beginnings, rapid growth of borrowers AND donated and purchased tools.

This all-volunteer enterprise is meeting a big need. And it is building community among its members. Very few tools have not been returned. It’s bringing out peoples’ generosity — like someone returning a saw with additional blades purchased during a project. Karen noted that a full half of the borrowers are women.

And the Tool Library idea is spreading. Steve Couche (who is graciously hosting our mobile studio in his quiet cul-de-sac in Southeast Portland), joined us to describe his founding the Southeast Portland Tool Library only a few months before. After the taping, we dropped in to take a look. Some of the tools were donated by its elder brother Northeast Portland Tool Library, but it seems to be off to a healthy start.

Steve mentioned others planning to expand on the lending library idea. Some are starting a Home Goods Library, with flatware, dish settings, serving dishes (which reduce waste from by avoiding disposable cups and plates for parties), food dehydrators, sewing machines, and the like.

There are lots of good reasons for many kinds of lending libraries to spring up: Less of the planet being destroyed to create more stuff; a longer life for many items that might otherwise gather dust or fill landfills; encouraging people to learn handy skills, and enabling a practical experience of community, mutual trust and sharing.

For meeting an essential need in these economically challenging times, these Tool Libraries hit the nail right on the head.

Watch the  program: “Portland’s Neighborhood Tool Sharing Libraries” (Peak Moment Conversation 194).

It was a Peak Moment Conversation destined to be, and the angels must’ve worked overtime to bring it together.

It started last week when I “just happened” to see an email message for the filmmakers group on the Transitionus.ning website — a list I check maybe once a month if that. There was one message from someone videotaping a documentary who needed a place for two guys to stay overnight in San Francisco. I forwarded his request to friends there, and then transmitted to positive response to the filmmaker, Dave Gardner.

Dave replied with thanks, and to my surprise added:

“I’ve actually tried to email you a few times about this trip - was thinking you might be interested in interviewing me about this film project while I’m out there. Regardless of whether you’re interested or not, and whether you could even put the shoot together in our time-frame, I’d love to meet and visit if you have time.”

I checked out his website, growthbusters.org which had information about Dave’s documentary work-in-progress titled Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity. Dave had a superb in-depth review of Bill McKibben’s new book Eaarth (yes, that’s spelled right) and a video interview with McKibben. We were on the same page. I said yes, I’d like to tape a conversation.

Turns out Dave was coming from Portland and would be taping a quick few shots at Oroville dam — which is basically in our bigger backyard. Couldn’t be more perfect: no long drive and a new place to discover.

So on Wednesday Cinco de Mayo, Robyn and I arrived at the dam and met up with Dave and his colleague Jason, and quickly found a good location overlooking the reservoir. As Robyn and I started setup, I was horrified to realize I’d forgotten the second tripod for this two-camera shoot. But hey, this guest is a videographer (our first) and had a tripod we could use. Angel assistance number two.

Just as we neared the final stages of setup, a park ranger drove up. Officer Carlson stepped out, calm and polite, and asked what we were doing. Dave and I quickly explained about my interview of him, the documentary filmmaker. Officer Carlson nodded and then asked to see our Film Permit.

Film permit!? My jaw dropped. Never heard of it. Never needed one. Officer Carlson explained that any filming on public property required a permit.

Robyn paused from setup work, thinking it might be curtains. Dave and I answered Officer Carlson’s questions. No, this taping wasn’t for commercial purposes, we said. We don’t make money from Peak Moment shows, we don’t have advertising.

By now you can be sure my mind was racing to figure where we could tape and still try to fit into Dave’s very, very tight schedule that day.

“Are you media?” Officer Carlson asked, and explained that journalists (media) can tape without permits. Yes, our work is journalism. But then, “if you’re media, he asked, “Do you have a press pass?”

No, I didn’t have a press pass, but I whipped out my Peak Moment business card, while Dave explained that Peak Moment distribution was through the internet, not the normal media outlets, but was certainly journalism.

There must have been several angel wings flapping really hard about then, because somehow,  Officer Carlson seemed satisfied that our online video series qualified as media, and he let us proceed.

Taking a collective deep breath, we rapidly finished setup and began taping. I could see why we got some help from the Universe for this conversation. Dave is articulate, passionate, well-informed about the predicament we’re in, and the need to take action.

Dave’s a storyteller. He talked about the “looney” way we’re living as the limits to growth are staring us in the face. Economic growth. Urban growth. Over-consumption. Dave also fearlessly named population overshoot as a symptom of the limits, but admits to no easy answers.

Dave had just come from a De-Growth Conference in Vancouver, B.C., where it was noted that humanity is now using 130% of the planet’s resources. We’re borrowing from future generations. He wants a world worth living in for his kids and grandkids. And he isn’t expecting the entrenched political and corporate institutions to take effective action anytime soon: his trust is in local communities and local action.

Look forward to a fast-paced and engaging conversation that’ll give you a flavor for an upcoming non-profit documentary film that’s being “crowd-funded, crowd-produced and crowd-distributed” by a worldwide network of growthbusters supporters (more wanted, of course. Join him).

Watch or listen to the finished show, “Hooked on Growth - Meet the filmmaker” (episode 177).

For months now, I’ve wanted to videotape a conversation with Keith Farnish, British author of Time’s Up: An Uncivilized Solution to a Global Crisis, and this week showed up as the right time. In the meantime, Sean Brodrick, Florida author of The Ultimate Suburban Survivalist Guide, became available, too. So we had a two-fer videotaping day using a friend’s DSL line and Skype internet video.

Keith spoke to us from Essex, U.K. He and his family are packing to move to a small town in southern Scotland for a simpler life. The packing boxes in his video “set” weren’t visible onscreen, but held up his notes!

I asked Keith what he meant by his book title “Time’s Up.” Time is up for industrial civilization, he replied. It’s rapidly destroying the planet with the economy’s incessant drive for infinite growth.

What we need is to reconnect with the natural world and with ourselves, he said, but the whole system is designed to keep us disconnected. Keith has identified ten tools of disconnection. He gave an example of selected freedom with the upcoming elections in Britain, where people are “free” to vote, but there’s really not much choice, because the two major party candidates are essentially the same.

We only dipped a toe into the water of his “Hundred Ways to Undermine the Industrial Machine” from Keith’s Earth Blog: Giving the Earth a Future. Sounds scary and maybe dangerous, but many of his suggestions are practiced by Peak Moment viewers, like reducing your personal impact on the planet. Keith’s book is available free online at www.timesupbook.com.

He touched us both with his closing words: “The day we lost our connection with the rest of the natural world was the day we started killing our life-support system…” (excerpt).

Sean Brodrick spoke to us from Jupiter, Florida. He’s a natural resource analyst for Weiss Research, Inc. and a contributor to Uncommon Wisdom Daily.com.

Robyn and I have heard Sean in a number of online programs. Besides being really enjoyable to listen to, we feel that Sean has his finger right on the pulse of the economy, the money system, natural resources, and what’s happening both on Wall Street and Main Street.

Sean seems to be one of the few in the financial industry that we’ve come across who acknowledges that climate change and peak oil are real (although he thinks the latter may be a ways off). He’s refreshingly candid about the theft and lies coming from Wall Street, the precarious nature of the American economy and  the high levels of debt (echoes of Chris Martenson’s “Crash Course” conversation, right?).

Sean said he was compelled to write The Ultimate Suburban Survivalist Guide because he lives in Florida, big time hurricane country. He saw many Floridians go through a hurricane and learn nothing from it — like being prepared for the next one! He expanded this book to include emergency preparedness for everything from natural disasters to human-caused emergencies, like economic depression or hyperinflation.

He talked about several preparedness topics. About home security, he noted that the best defense is knowing your neighbors. Sean’s family held a few neighborhood barbecues — and found real riches among the people there.

I had a lot of fun in this fast-paced conversation with Sean — his breadth of knowledge and colorful expressiveness makes for a lively and interesting conversation.

Sean’s content may stretch the envelope of what we’ve generally done on Peak Moment conversations, but then, we like being somewhat out-of-the-box on Peak Moment TV. Even in his own field, Sean Brodrick is refreshingly and certainly that!

Watch Sean’s program “Preparing for Disasters and Hard Times” (episode 170).