Recommended Reading (and other multi-media)

Peak Moment: "What a Way to Go" - Meet the Filmmakers
28 minute video with Tim Bennett, Sally Erickson, and Jania Donaldson, 17 Sep 2007, Global Public Media
Tim Bennett and Sally Erickson discuss the influences behind this heartfelt and riveting documentary on "Life at the End of Empire." Framed in Tim's personal story of awakening to the big global issues threatening everyone's survival. It will touch you and make you think. Episode 72.

Janaia Donaldson hosts Peak Moment, a television series emphasizing positive responses to energy decline and climate change through local community action. How can we thrive, build stronger communities, and help one another in the transition from a fossil fuel-based lifestyle?
http://globalpublicmedia.com/peak_moment_what_a_way_to_go_meet_the_filmm...

Peak Moment: Post Carbon Cities - Planning for Energy and Climate Uncertainty
28 minute video with Daniel Lerch and Janaia Donaldson, 17 Sep 2007, Global Public Media
Smart municipalities are planning and preparing for energy vulnerability and climate change. Daniel Lerch, manager of the Post Carbon Cities project, has prepared a guidebook including case studies of cities large and small planning how to maintain essential services in the face of energy and climate uncertainty. Episode 73.
http://globalpublicmedia.com/peak_moment_post_carbon_cities_planning_for...

RE Sources, the RE Store and the 'Sustainable Living Center'
Rick Dubrow, On the Level Podcast, Thu, 26 Jul 2007 14:12:01 PST Format: audio/mp3 File Size: 42,301,440 bytes
Looking for a one-stop location for learning how to reduce your ecological footprint? Consider RE Sources, the umbrella organization of the RE Store. Hear about all of their programs, the diversity of which will surprise you. And learn about their new 'Sustainable Living Center', an interactive learning experience housed in the new location for the RE Store (in the former Wilson Furniture Building at 2309 Meridian St. in Bellingham).
http://www.a1builders.ws/rss/on_the_level_005.mp3

Report/Paper: Uncertain Future: Climate Change and its Effects on Puget Sound
Postcarbon Cities, originally published 18 October 2005 by State of Washington
This report examines current scientific literature and new research to provide an overview of projected climate change impacts on Puget Sound in northwest Washington State. It focuses on the consequences of a warmer climate on the larger Puget Sound ecosystem, including impacts on regional temperature and precipitation, snowpack, streamflow, water quality, and marine ecosystem structure and function. Implications for ecosystem management are also highlighted...By starting now to plan for climate change, the region can build the capacity required to prepare for and cope with climate impacts in the Puget Sound region.
Highlights, with a link to the full report:
http://postcarboncities.net/node/418

Outgrowing hunger
Food Bank Farm Project provides produces to low-income
Matthew Thuney - Whatcom Independent, September 20, 2007
Canned goods, peanut butter, blocks of mystery cheese - that’s the kind of fare that springs to mind when you think of the Food Bank. But farm-fresh vegetables? That’s not something you’d expect to see.
Mike Cohen, executive director of the Bellingham Food Bank, is working to change that expectation....This spring, Cohen met with the folks at the Small Potatoes Gleaning Project, Growing Washington, and Alm Hill Gardens, and the pieces of the growing puzzle came together. Amaris Lunde, community programs director at Growing Washington, describes her group as “a non-profit organization dedicated to on-the-ground efforts to make agriculture more efficient by strengthening local sustainable farms.” She was excited about the chance to work with the Bellingham Food Bank. “We joined the project because it is a perfect fit for our organization,” says Lunde...
http://www.whatcomindy.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1190304527&arc...

The Emergence of Organic Agriculture in Washington State
by David Granatstein and Anne Schwartz
Whatcom Watch, September 207
In 2006, over 60,000 acres of farmland were certified organic in the state of Washington, a 40 percent increase from the previous year, which generated farm gate sales in excess of $100 million. Sixty-two percent of the 554 organic farms were in eastern Washington, leaving 38 percent west of the Cascades. Farm numbers are expected to top 700 in 2007 (based on Washington State Department of Agriculture records to date). While organic still represents less than 1 percent of the farmland in the state, the growth of this sector has been dramatic. Where did this come from? Where might it be headed?
http://www.whatcomwatch.org/php/WW_open.php?id=858

Kids Biking to School: It Equals a Less Congested Commute To Work
by Jennifer Karchmer, Whatcom Watch, September 2007
For the first time, 11-year-old Hannah Carpenter is riding her bike to school. It’s a big step for this Bellingham sixth grader who walked during her elementary days at Roosevelt School. Hannah has been riding a bike for years, but riding it to school is different than tooling around the neighborhood.
http://www.whatcomwatch.org/php/WW_open.php?id=861

Climate can't wait for techno-fixes
by Jan Lundberg , Culture Change Letter #168
Originally published on Sept. 5, 2007 in Grist
Jan Lundberg is, at press time, on the Climate Emergency Fast... It is a response to Mike Tidwell's recent piece in Grist, "Consider Using the N-Word Less." [Tidwell is head of ClimateEmergency.org]
We have to do more to minimize global heating and catastrophic climate change than do the same things differently. Rather, it is time for a revolution in our culture's values and pursuits. Climate scientists bear this out with their findings and warnings, which is why we hear Al Gore now calling for a 90 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions. (At this point he's allowing too many years to reach the objective, but he's on the right track.)

...relying on measures such as simply encouraging better light bulbs and more fuel efficient cars will fail. Knowing that the Earth's climate is shaping up to rapidly shift to a new state -- probably not seen since 55 million years ago -- we cannot play politics with what really needs to be done to make a last attempt to curb greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently. Yet under our system of big business and its influence over both legislation and the content of media, we are witnessing a tragic denial of the need to do the possible, now, to slash greenhouse gas emissions. The present economy is held to be more important.
http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&...

SHOCKED, SHOCKED!
by James Howard Kunstler, September 17, 2007
Dave Ewoldt comments: "This is marginally a review of Alan Greenspan's memoirs, but it's really more connecting the dots between war, oil, overconsumption, and economic meltdown as only Kunstler can. Those of you keeping track of current financial shenanigans should find it an interesting perspective. Or maybe that's just me 'cause it dovetails my own outlook :-)"
Alan Greenspan's memoirs are being flogged across the airwaves, bandwidths and printing presses, and the cohorts of those who comment on public affairs in these media are shocked by the Maestro's confessions -- first, that a housing bubble emerged out of his leadership in the banking sector, and second that the Iraq war is about oil. As usual, they're getting it all wrong -- about as wrong as Al himself got it. But that is the way of things in this age of cultural dissipation and gross cognitive dissonance.

...Now, as to the shock of Al's revelation that the Iraq war is about oil -- the media and the public has got this all wrong, too. The logic here seems to be that because the Iraq war is about oil it is therefore unnecessary,
optional, a mistake, an indulgence, something we should not dirty our hands in. In fact, the Iraq war is not about oil, per se, so much as it is about America's behavior here at home, about the choices we make for how we live on this continent. None of those who complain most loudly about our military presence in Iraq have advanced any proposals for reforming how we live here -- and hence for our enslavement to oil, much of the world's remaining supply of which happens to be in the neighborhood of Iraq. When these complainers start complaining about the ubiquitous acceptance of suburban sprawl and abject car-dependency -- and this includes the environmental boy scouts out there who want to get merit badges for buying hybrid cars -- then they will deserve to be taken seriously. Until then, the American people have got exactly the grinding war that they deserve. Let them whine about it all the way to the Nascar tracks, and let them console themselves with giant plastic bottles of Pepsi Cola and buckets of chicken raised on corn grown with oil byproducts...
http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2007/09/shocke...

Beyond 'Green Shopping'
John Cavanagh and Jerry Mander, The Nation, 6 September 2007
The response of most politicians and corporations to climate change is that new technologies and "green consumerism" will solve the problems. This approach is deeply flawed, argue Jerry Mander and John Cavanagh - any solution should be based on sustainability and equity, not consumerism.

Scientific studies abound on the devastating realities of climate chaos, an imminent "peak" of world oil supplies and a grim future for clean water, forests, fisheries and soil. The response of most politicians and corporations is that new technologies and "green consumerism" will solve the problems: Innovate and shop to save the planet. The Bush Administration is showering the technologies with money: subsidies to develop "clean coal" via carbon
sequestration, proposed subsidies for "clean" nuclear energy and--the big one--massive subsidies to global agribusiness to promote biofuels. Each is deeply flawed...
http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17298