How does one prepare for peak oil and peak gas, as the outcome is their outcomes are so unpredictable? Some peakers are promoting head-to-the-hills survivalist preparations. This list focuses instead on community-based response and reducing energy consumption. While fear is natural, the loner stance is simply unworkable. We are all interdependent in many ways. While we will need to engage in individual actions, we will also need to work together collectively – whether we live in cities or small communities. The federal and state governments may not respond appropriately or in a timely manner, so it might fall on us at the local grassroots level to arrive at responses to peak oil and gas.

Weaning away from petro addiction is a step-by-step process, we can’t quit cold turkey. The Oil Depletion Protocol calls on people to reduce fossil fuel consumption 2-3 percent per year, which doesn’t sound like much, but over a ten-year period it adds up to 25 percent. The areas of biggest impact are heating, transportation, and food choices. Focusing on changing more impactful habits, such as driving, is better than agonizing over smaller issues. Some of these suggestions may seem excessive or radical now; they will seem less so as the price of energy climbs.

INDIVIDUAL ACTIONS

- Study and implement Catalyst’s sustainability checklists in the April and July 2006 issues, available at Catalyst Magazine – offering many tips for reducing energy usage. The suggestions listed here are a supplement to those checklists.

- Many homes locally are heated with natural gas. Save your utility bills as a feedback mechanism. Catalyst’s April list offers many energy-saving home heating and cooling tips. Get the highest R-value insulation you can. Double-glazed windows can reduce heat loss through windows by 50 percent. If replacing your furnace, consider a heat pump system rather than a gas furnace, for both heating and cooling: Geoexchange. When replacing a water heater, consider either a solar or an on-demand one. For alternatives to gas heat, read “Natural Home Heating: The Complete Guide to Renewable Energy Options,” by Greg Pahl, covering numerous options, such as wood stoves, biomass, heat pumps, and solar.

- Transportation is a biggie: consider purchasing a more efficient vehicle, even a hybrid, then drive less – walk, bicycle, carpool, use public transit, and coordinate errands. For ridesharing and carpooling, use Salt Lake Craigslist rideshare, Erideshare, and Community Solution's rideshare. For safety tips on urban bicycling: Bicyclesafe. Convert a diesel vehicle to run on vegetable oil: Greasecar and Goldenfuelsystems – or buy B20 biodiesel (no conversion required): Biodiesel.org. Also visit: Utah Biodiesel Cooperative.

- Travel less. Businesses could use teleconferencing, rather than sending employees on business trips. Take more local, less exotic vacations. Consider travel by bus or Amtrak. Longer flights are more fuel-efficient than driving to the same destination, but shorter flights are less so. Two or more passengers makes driving more favorable. Emissions in the stratosphere have a worse effect.

- Buy locally raised produce, meat, and dairy products as much as possible. In choosing between organic or local, choose local. Pesticides and fertilizers are made from fossil fuels, so buy local organic when you can. Participate in farmer’s markets and community supported agriculture. Buy less processed, less packaged foods, and less frozen foods. If possible, grow your own vegetables, even learn to can or dry foods. Plant fruit and nut trees. Compost food and garden waste. Eat lower on the food chain.

- Conserve water, as it requires energy to purify water and run pumping stations.

- Buy fewer new clothes – prefer clothing made from linen, organic cotton, or the new fabrics such as soy, bamboo, and hemp. Non-organic cotton production uses vast amounts of oil-based pesticides. Polyester, acetate, nylon, and acrylic fabrics are all petroleum-based. Rayon takes a lot of energy to make. Buy used clothing, in any fabric you want.

- Choose natural, petroleum-free cleaning and personal care products.

- Get out of debt and reduce consumption. Downsize your lifestyle. Prefer local businesses over chains. Buy less stuff, especially plastic things. Notice where goods are shipped from, and choose those made closer to home.

- Spread the word about our energy situation, telling friends, family, neighbors – be gentle and patient in doing so. Don’t be surprised if those around you don’t get it, don’t want to hear about it, or believe a technofix will take care of everything. Try not to talk about it too much.

- For coping with the emotional aspects of learning about and understanding peak oil: Peak Oil Blues. Develop meditation, deep breathing, or other centering practices.

- Consider joining a co-housing project, an intentional community, or an ecovillage: Cohousing, Intentional Communities, Global Ecovillage Network/. Community Solution advocates living in small communities: Community Solution. Co-housing in Salt Lake: Wasatch Commons Co-housing.

-Learn about permaculture – the philosophy and design system of sustainable homes, gardens, and communities. Many permaculturists are developing responses to peak oil. Visit: Permaculture.net, Permaculture Activist.

- Consider having just one child, or no children. In many ways, the human population is now exceeding the carrying capacity of the planet.

DEEP STRUCTURAL CHANGES

- Join up with others who are aware and involved, such as Post Carbon Salt Lake.

- Write letters to the editor. Write or call those in power, telling them to get serious about ending fossil-fuel addiction. Educate local politicians about Peak Oil - they may be the most important ones we need to reach.

- On the federal level advocate: implementing a carbon tax, eliminating oil, gas, and corn ethanol subsidies; substantially raising CAFE standards; lowering the speed limit; massively increasing R&D for renewable energy; maintaining and raising the wind power tax credit; reviving the railroad infrastructure for both freight and passengers; and legalizing hemp cultivation for ethanol and biodiesel.

- Call on all levels of government launch large-scale public awareness campaigns calling for energy conservation & efficiency at all levels.

- Get our city to pass a Peak Oil Resolution: Peak Oil Resolutions to get a funded, city-wide assessment and response. Initially issues such as mass transit, city fleets, zoning, and asphalt will need to be addressed. Eventually much food production will need to be local – cities will need to address this. Also advocate that the city endorse the Oil Depletion Protocol: Oil Depletion Protocol. Call on all levels of government to adopt it.

- Join the campaign to pressure Ford to develop more efficient vehicles, and eventually fossil-free vehicles: Jump Start Ford.

- The Apollo Alliance is an impressive coalition of labor groups, environmental groups, justice- and faith-based groups, foundations, and business partners working to advance the development and implementation of clean energy solutions, and energy-saving solutions for the nation, for states, cities, and universities (available in comprehensive reports at their website.) Visit: Apollo Alliance.

- Healthcare professionals should start considering peak oil’s impact on the health care system and ways to mitigate. Visit: Peak Oil Medicine.

- Learn about, then work to eliminate corporate personhood. This is a good place to start: Reclaim Democracy. Work to bring about campaign finance reform.

- “Unlimited” energy supply, “unlimited” growth, and “unlimited” currency are all intertwined, and may be about to hit the wall on this finite planet – which would necessitate an overhaul of the monetary system. One possibility is to institute a local currency system, redeemable locally only, as Ithaca has done: Ithaca Hours. This will promote community self-reliance and the local economy. A local currency could also provide loans for energy-saving or energy-making devices. Learn about steady-state economics, and study ways to implement it. Websites: Feasta, Schumacher Society, Steady State, Time Banks, Reinventing Money.