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Dear Colleagues,

At the ASTC meeting in Ft. Worth, there was considerable talk of climate 
change, but little or none of the end of cheap oil. Obviously, the two 
are connected, rather as Ying/Yang, but the end of cheap oil has equal 
or greater potential for early harsh societal impacts. The crucial link 
is the 4 - 5 calories of industrial energy required by modern factory 
farming to send one calorie of food out of the farm gate.

There is a useful literature with many references developing around 
"peak oil," much of it generated by the British movement "Transition 
Towns," started by Rob Hopkins in Totnes, Devonshire, UK. These include:

The Transition Handbook - Rob Hopkins - Pub. Chelsea Green , White River 
Junction, VT
The Transition Timeline - Shaun Chamberlin - Pub. Chelsea Green
Future Scenarios - David Holmgren - Pub. Chelsea Green

A number of cities, towns and villages have signed up as Transition 
Towns, including several in the USA and Canada - including my own city, 
Victoria BC, which is how I learned of this movement. Its basic thrust, 
as I see it, is to generate demonstrations of good adaptive practices 
for when costly oil compels the general public and politicians to change 
habits.

There have been criticisms of Hopkins' work , e.g. see Alex Steffen 
critique:

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/010672.html
and Rob Hopkins’ response:
http://transitionculture.org/2009/11/03/responding-to-alex-steffens-critique-of-transition-at-worldchanging/

I find Rob Hopkins to be the better reasoned of the two.

Interestingly, Cuba was forced to undergo much of the scarce oil 
transition when The Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, and their oil supply 
was vastly reduced. The average Cuban lost 20 lbs. in the food shortage 
that followed, but they are now happily rotund again, having entirely 
reformed their agriculture and much of their transportation and other 
things. This is well shown in a 53 minute movie "The Power of Community: 
How Cuba Survived Peak Oil" available from Amazon on disk. It was on 
line (YouTube + elsewhere) but the copyright holder seems to have got it 
withdrawn.

Apologies to those who know about all this already -

Peter Anderson
1449 Grant Street
Victoria BC
Canada V8R 1M4
250-885-6724
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