It has been almost a year since Edward Culp established a Meetup Group website to attract and connect with local area citizens who were concerned about the peak oil issue. Ed had studied the issue extensively and wanted to meet others who shared his deep concerns about the implications of petroleum depletion. For several months interested people found the website and asked when a peak oil group would be forming in the Washington County area.
In March of this year, several of those original members decided to do something about it and came together to organize a formal grass roots outreach group to address energy depletion issues for Washington County. Ed was joined by Donna, Tatjana, Carla, and Peter and Washington County Peak Oil was born.
Meeting monthly, this core group tackled a significant number of issues to organize the group. They saw the need to create awareness in Washington County about the peak oil crisis and it's economic, environmental and social implications; serve as a community network to identify and share individual and collective strategies to effectively cope with the peak oil crisis; and influence Washington County government policies for constructive and sustainable solutions. They additionally constructed a mission statement, a group vision, decided on meeting times and frequency, organized a book club, identified relevant discussion issues for the group meetings, developed a communications strategy, and identified a number of achievable goals for the first six to nine months. None of this occurred without significant debate, revelations, decisions, and hard work.
The book club was launched in May, introducing readers to the peak oil masterpiece, Power Down, by Richard Heinberg. More people started to join the meetup site as the organizers quietly continued to work on group strategy. This initial organization work resulted in a decision to formally launch the group's monthly public meetings in July of this year in a very public way, by screening a film that addressed the peak oil issue very directly, and which has received numerous international awards; A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash.
A location for the first public meeting and film screening was secured for July 10th, and arrangements were begun. Press releases were prepared and submitted to local media, posters were designed and placed in visible public locations (e.g., Starbucks), a website address tear-off flyer was developed to post in public locations, business-card sized handouts defining the peak oil issue and providing meeting and contact information were created, public presentation rights were secured from the film's producers and U.S. distribution agent, and website content was developed. Simultaneously, the group elected to affiliate with the Relocalization netork of the international Post Carbon Institute; a think, action and education tank offering research, project tools, education and information to implement proactive strategies to adapt to an energy constrained world.
Washington County Peak Oil will follow some important guidelines in its work; namely the group is non-partisan, will not bash political or industrial entities, will not advocate violence, isolationist approaches, survivalism or partisan values, and will uphold and strongly promote relocalization, community principles, and community building approaches. It is the intent of the initial organizers that Washington County Peak Oil will become a formidable and recognized community resource for education, discussion, ideas and information on the energy depletion issue, and a catalyst of solutions to enable the citizens of Washington County to mitigate the risks of the coming energy crisis.
