We taped a lively non-stop conversation today with authors Paul and Sarah Edwards. In the summer of 2008 they joined us for a conversation about their recent book Middle Class Lifeboat: Careers and Lifestyles for Navigating a Changing Economy. The economy crashed two months later. Prescient or what?

They’d written their book for these times, they said, but they just didn’t expect it to happen so quickly. Today’s conversation was a wide-ranging update, based on their workshop “Sustainable Careers: Now, in Transition, and the Future.” Sarah and Paul are authors of numerous books on home-based businesses, including their latest, Home-Based Business for Dummies, which keeps up with these changing times.

They offered ideas on work and careers not only for right now and for a sustainable future, but for what they call “the gap” or “the transition” between the two.

Sarah noted that they’re seeing more people fall into the “gap” — people whose homes are foreclosed, or their jobs ended with no replacement in sight.

Sarah and Paul emphasize developing local work and local businesses to meet local needs in what they call the Elm Street Economy. That’s in contrast to the Main Street economy, which Paul explained is what we see along most towns’ main streets: franchises and distributorships, with products usually coming from far away.

This couple have really jumped in with both feet into the localization/transition movement since starting their Let’s Live Local group in Pine Mountain Club (CA) in 2005. Their group has begun a wood pellet coop, an organic foods coop with a regional CSA (community supported agriculture), a Cowpool for locally raised beef, and they’re exploring sustainable medicine and more.

Paul and Sarah are following their own advice in developing work that keeps up with the times. I think you’ll enjoy their grounded yet optimistic and forward-looking perspectives in the upcoming conversation, “Transitioning to the Elm Street Economy.”

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.

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.

Watch video “Peak Oil — Adapting for Changes Ahead” (Peak Moment episode 155).

Taped a Peak Moment Conversation yesterday with Bart Anderson, for five years the dedicated full-time volunteer editor of EnergyBulletin.net, a reliable online source of information and thoughtful reflections on fossil fuel energy decline, alternative sources, and the transition to sustainability. (And in the spirit of full disclosure, Peak Moment TV is now available on Energy Bulletin).

We could’ve had a five-hour chat, easily. Bart’s quick playful mind and breadth of knowledge would make for a rollicking good romp into ideas and possibilities around energy, our future, and living sustainability.

I asked Bart: How to proceed? His reply: People first need to know what’s going on with energy decline. And they need to be prepared for the effects, first psychologically.

Prepared to do with less, conserve, spend less money. He suggested we learn to live like graduate students — meeting most needs within walking distance, living on nearly nothing, owning only the bare necessities, enjoying a wide range of inexpensive enriching cultural events, in an environment of ongoing learning.

Bart thinks we’ll see a different world within five years. Tighter constraints on petroleum. We’ll see it in higher prices for food, fuel, nearly everything. We’re especially vulnerable with much of our food being transported a thousand miles or so. He said it’ll be like the song, “Everything You Know is Wrong.” I take that to mean that everything we’re accustomed to, everything the mainstream media and government and corporations tell us — isn’t giving us the real story of what lies ahead.

We videotaped the show in Bart and Paula’s cozy Palo Alto condominium lined with bookshelves — I’m sure I could’ve read contentedly for months. Tucked in the corners between the bicycle and clothes-drying rack are well-loved practical antique furniture pieces like an authentic treadle sewing machine.

Bart and Paula live in walking distance of California Avenue’s vital neighborhood-within-a-town. The natural foods store, a grocery, hardware, bookstore, cafes, restaurants, provide plenty of places to chat with neighbors and feel part of community. The library, the railway station and bus stops less than six blocks away. A fine example of urban living heading towards sustainability.

Bart and Paula walk their talk — and it’s a low eco-footprint life they mostly walk and bike to. One model for an inwardly-rich, materially-sufficient, reduced-energy future.