Post Carbon Red Deer

Local food

Toban Black — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 04:09:45 -0700

A community garden photo by "sbcg08"

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A Wall Street Journal video clip about urban farming [via Wild Green Yonder]
Most of the video revolves around one guy who farms neighbourhood lawns in Colorado.

A "No Impact Man" blog post about urban rooftop farming (which definitely couldn't "save the world")
The post includes photos and some web links

A blog post from Joshua about chickens in urban backyards [via Red Jenny]
Some of the post is about legislation issues

An article by Karen Von Hahn (in The Globe & Mail) -
‘People Are Looking For Roots’
What I found interesting about this one is the author's commentary on the culture (e.g. the nostalgia) around local foods

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A couple of related posts at my blog:
- Home-grown food
- Suburban farmland in the United States

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Community garden photo from Groundwork Lawrence

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Toban Black
(http://tobanblack.net/blog/?p=284)

Carp Ridge Ecowellness Centre (CREWC)

It's time to cut our ties to fossil fuels

Toban Black — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 18:26:44 -0700

Elizabeth Douglass in The Los Angeles Times - "Why The Oil Crunch May Grow Worse"
"Peak Oil: The ‘When’ Doesn’t Matter"

What I appreciate about this article is -
a. The tagline about how "The ‘When’ Doesn’t Matter" -- a message that is repeated at the end of the article (and at the end of the exerpts quoted here)
b. How the article clearly communicates the concept of world peak oil. (See the start of the exerpts below.)

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Exerpts -

Some "dread" "that the world has found all the easy-to-reach oil, and the daily supply of the essential black goo will fall further and further behind escalating global demand."

'As much as you’re uncomfortable with today’s oil prices, these are going to be the good old days,' oil expert Robert L. Hirsch told a recent ... gathering of policymakers and environmentalists."

"'There are more and more people who believe that oil supply prospects are not very optimistic,' said Fatih Birol, chief economist at the Paris-based International Energy Agency."

"Birol counts himself among those who believe the world has reached at least 'a peak of easily accessible oil.' That alone is cause for worry, because many economies are built around the assumption that oil would continue to be cheap and plentiful.

Birol is leading a groundbreaking reassessment of the worldwide outlook for oil supplies, investment and production that many believe will deliver bad news when it is released in November.

"Tyson Slocum, director of the energy program at Public Citizen, a Washington-based consumer group, doesn’t care when the peak will come.

'We should be planning as though we’re there,' he said, 'because from a national interest standpoint, from an economic standpoint and from an environmental standpoint, our dependence on oil, whether it comes from California or Saudi Arabia, is unsustainable.'"

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The rest of the article is OK.
It's misleading, however, when the author suggests that there isn't extensive analysis and documentation to back up concerns about impending or present world peak oil.

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Related writing from Richard Heinberg -
Oil Price Falls! Peak Oil a Non-Problem! (July 30th)
..."The fundamental cause of the recent oil price spike has not gone away. Global demand for oil is still increasing; supply isn’t."...

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Toban Black
(http://tobanblack.net/blog/?p=295)

Carp Ridge Ecowellness Centre (CREWC)

Outraged at Canada's participation at the UN Climate Conference in Bali?

Shelby Tay — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 10:26:56 -0800

This is an ad running in Ottawa and Calgary papers put out by the Avaaz team (see below).
If you haven't signed this petition yet, there's still a few hours left - go to http://www.avaaz.org/en/another_canadian_climate_crime/9.php?cl=46187661

Here are some articles reporting on Canada's participation at the UN talks in Bali:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20071212.BALIMAIN12/TPS...
http://www.thestar.com/columnists/article/285171

Here is a message from Avaaz about the petition (Dec13/07):

Dear friends,

Wow - on Tuesday we aimed to get 25,000 Canadians to join the emergency call to Prime Minister Harper to stop blocking the crucial UN climate change talks in Bali - and we hit that target in just 18 hours!! In two days, 71,187 of us have signed the petition, and rising fast [it's now at 98, 607]- one of the largest online petitions in Canadian history!

The petition ads are running in papers tomorrow, including the Ottawa Citizen and the Calgary Sun. At the Bali summit, it is touch and go - with almost the entire world vs. Canada and the US over whether to accept targets on harmful carbon emissions. The draft agreement changes every hour, with carbon targets dropping in and out. We now have just over 24 hours left for an all-out push to get Harper to do the right thing. Let's ramp it up and hit 100,000 voices by Friday! If you haven't yet, please click below to sign up, see our ad, and then forward this email to everyone you know:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/another_canadian_climate_crime/9.php

Let's make sure that experts never again give Canada the "fossil" award for worst country in the world on climate change! If you've already told your friends and family about the petition, try calling Prime Minister Harper's office directly at 613 992 4211, or calling the House of Commons toll free on 1 (866) 599-4999 to talk to your MP about getting Parliament to act on this issue. Harper leads a minority government, he shouldn't be able to get away with ignoring the large majority of us who want real action on climate change.

Our incredible momentum is a wonderful and powerful statement about the Canada we all love and want to see - one that does the right thing in the world, whose flag stands for people and principles -- not the short term profits of big oil corporations. Let's forward this email round, blog this issue, talk about it at the dinner table and at work, and get an emergency people-powered movement going that reaches 100,000 by tomorrow!

With hope,

Ricken and the Avaaz team

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ABOUT AVAAZ
Avaaz.org is an independent, not-for-profit global campaigning organization that works to ensure that the views and values of the world's people inform global decision-making. (Avaaz means "voice" in many languages.) Avaaz receives no money from governments or corporations, and is staffed by a global team based in London, New York, Paris, Washington DC, Geneva, and Rio de Janeiro.

Vancouver Area Relocalisation Network

Local MLA knowledgeable and concerned

quixotic — Fri, 18 May 2007 06:58:31 -0700

Myself and the main rep from Post Carbon Ponoka met with Victor Doerksen (MLA for Red Deer South). We were quite impressed. He told us that if we were able to organize a citizen's forum on the issue of peak oil and natural gas, he would be glad to be a guest speaker. At this point, we will be contacting the Pembina Institute and the Canada West Foundation to see if there are any experts on the issue who would be available to participate in the forum. We'll then contact the local college to see who has experience in facilitating forums. Then we'll try and drum up sponsorship from the local paper, Rotary Club, etc.

Any advice would be welcome.

Thanks in advance.

Post Carbon Red Deer

Article in local paper about mayoralty run by Post Carboner

quixotic — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 19:04:58 -0700

The local press seemed pretty interested in the issue.

Post Carbon Red Deer

End of Suburbia (and end of cheap natural gas in North America)

quixotic — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 11:29:30 -0700

Start: 2007-04-04 18:00

End: 2007-04-04 20:30

Post Carbon Red Deer

Running for mayor. Need feedback and/or advice.

quixotic — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 19:14:23 -0800

Red Deer, Alberta, Canada -- perhaps the global capital of Hummers and urban sprawl -- has an upcoming election (October, 2007), and I plan to run on a platform of peak natural gas sanity. Since we in North America have less than a decade of proven reserves left, I figure that this would be the only way to break through the complacency on other related issues (eg, climate change and peak oil).

I know pretty much what I'm going to say on the natural gas issue. There are lots of graphs and maps that I've taken off the internet (see some of them at www3.telus.net/awareness/actionplan.htm). And I know that I'm fairly limited on the prescription front. I can easily say that one platform plank will be the insistance that any new buildings must be at least R-2000 compliant.

But after that, the prescriptions get a bit hazy. The New Urbanism paradigm would probably be desirable. The world class Drake Landing suburb in Okotoks would also be a desirable example (either as a new suburb or as a neighbourhood retrofit). There are all sorts of transportation issues that would need to come to the fore.

But these are all issues that require a lot of outside expertise, stakeholder dialogue and community buy-in. So I'm currently trying to figure out the best organizational proposal to put in my electoral platform. My theory is that unless we in North America build up our social capital (ie, community ties) a heck of a lot more, then all the technofixes on the planet won't help us. The survivalist faction will survive (for a while), but eventually the whole thing will resemble a Darwinian nightmare.

Accordingly, I've been doing a lot of research into Deliberative Democracy and a subset called Future Search conferences. However, there's no clear road map on how to involve a city of 80,000 in something a complex as its energy future.

My proposal at this point looks like the following:

Initially, get the experts involved. This would include everyone from New Urbanist planners to geothermal engineers. They would make presentations that would be available online (sort of like our own Youtube website), on freely available DVD's and on the local community cable station.

Then, the major stakeholders (including everyone from chamber of commerce representatives to environmental groups) would get involved in a series of Future Search conferences (see http://futuresearch.net to get an idea of what these would be like). Broadcasts of the plenary sessions from the conferences would occur again on the aforementioned website, DVD's, and community cable station.

Finally, if consensus is lacking, we may need to resort to something like a deliberative poll or a citizen's assembly (such as BC had a couple of years ago to determine their voting system and that Ontario is now copying).

There would be three main advantages to doing things this way:

First is that it would be a much more legitimate process than how things have been done in the past (ie, politicians, city planners, and developers doing everything behind closed doors).

Second, it would most certainly result in better outcomes, since all strata of society would be involved in coming up with suggestions and solutions.

The third advantage would be an offshoot from the second. The stakeholder conferences are known to be instrumental in fostering dialogue between disparate sectors of society. This would build up our social capital (ie, community spirit). The result would be less cocooning in front of the boob tube (ie, fascination with Hollywood and pro mega-sports) and more interest in the important trends that are going on in Red Deer and the wider world. Joe/Jane Lunchbox might be less inclined to spend their extra dollars on a new plasma TV and more inclined to improve the insulation in their house.

Any thoughts?

Post Carbon Red Deer

Post Carbon Red Deer

quixotic — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 16:45:51 -0800