Here’s a great idea from Portland: a tool lending library. The Oregonian has the story:

If you need a table saw, a 10-foot pipe clamp or a 20-foot pruner, you’ve normally got three choices: Buy it, rent it or borrow it from a neighbor.

Portland is fast becoming a leader in a fourth way: checking it out for free at a tool lending library.

The city’s first nonprofit tool library, founded in 2004 in North Portland, is up to 2,300 members. Its second, in Northeast, has already drawn 800 members in 16 months and just expanded to a far bigger space. A third, in southeast Portland, is scheduled to open this spring, which would make Portland the only U.S. city with a trio.

The volunteer-run tool libraries offer low-cost home and garden lessons as well as tools. They help people save money and connect to their community.

Imagine: guys would no longer have an excuse to stuff their garages with every tool they see at Home Depot. Of course, that wouldn’t stop them. On a positive note, divorce or death (as males mostly croak first) coupled with the surviving spouse’s desire to sweep away the past means a good portion of these boy toys might eventually end up in the library:

About 900 of the more than 1,100 tools at the Northeast Portland Tool Library were donated, helping give the library a hardware store’s worth of inventory.

Now that the dust from the collapse of the Copenhagen talks has settled, we can begin to see what actually happened:  the old world ended at Copenhagen.

Paul Gilding at Business Spectator observes that while Copenhagen failed to deliver action on reducing emissions, it delivered a very clear outcome. It shattered assumptions that had previously framed the debate and so provided an historic shift in the approach to the issue. The world stopped debating the rules of physics and chemistry. As a result, old assumptions about the pace of change and the process by which it would be delivered were finished.

After Copenhagen, it is clear that when the change does come, the pace will be rapid, the process chaotic and the transformation radical. The attempt at consensus is over. Power has shifted to a new club whose membership is dominated by the world’s biggest emitter – the U.S.; China, the world’s second biggest; and India, biggest newcomer in emitter circles.

After Copenhagen, we know that either coal is finished, or Earth’s climate as we know it is finished. The world’s approach to climate change before Copenhagen – embodied in the Kyoto protocol – is too complex and misses the key objective, which is to keep coal (and unconventional sources of oil such as tar sands) in the ground. Coal is the target: every coal mine, every coal company, every coal train and ship.

When governments begin prohibiting new coal plants and demanding that existing plants be phased out, we’ll know they’ve become serious about global warming.

Fat chance, given the implications for the global economy.

Some, like James Hansen, believe it’s both necessary and possible to maintain our high-energy economy. He puts his faith in a techno-miracle: 4th generation nuclear, relying on conventional nuclear to carry us through to the bright day when unlimited, safe power becomes a reality.

Others, such as Jan Lundberg, think we’ll have to give our fantasies of dominating nature and of endless economic growth, reject an unworkable system and culture, and look to the only sustainable model humanity has known: indigenous, traditional society based on tribes.

Then others, such as John Michael Greer, think it’s foolish to imagine that our political leaders could do anything other than what they are doing: try at all costs to keep the present system running as best they can all the while knowing that the fossil fuels necessary to sustain it are being exhausted, putting off the inevitable explosion as long as possible. What will be, will be; and we’re not likely to end up with anything like the complex, centralized nation-states we know today.

I suspect they’re all on to something. While pulling a nuclear rabbit out of the hat seems unlikely, maybe solar thermal  could keep the lights on, however dim. Here, we’re growing food, getting to know others around us who do the same or contribute in other ways, doing our best to help and support each other. Disillusion has set in – we may at last be getting over the illusion that the world will change with the outcome of the next election.

The old world ended at Copenhagen. The new world is beginning to be born, right here and before our eyes.

The Lazar Foundation has given a $1,000 grant to Post Carbon Oregon, saying it “is proud to support your work”.

The Lazar Foundation funds innovative and strategic projects that protect the environment in the Pacific Northwest: Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington.

We do this blog and our newsletter because we believe it is crucial for people to be thinking about what to do to meet the awesome challenges of our time. Peak oil is a threat to civilization as we know it; global warming is a threat not only to our local environment, but to the stability of Earth’s ecosystems upon which all life – including human life – depends. But the funding to do this work has proved to be extremely sparse. So we’ve been doing it on a very short and thin shoestring.

All of us at Goal One Institute are profoundly grateful to The Lazar Foundation for their financial support – and especially for their recognition of the importance of our work.

By Irina Just

A few years ago, downtown Lebanon received its final deathblow when the city council approved the new Super Wal-Mart at the south end of town.

But some Lebanonistas still refuse to surrender. This spring, a group of enthusiastic folk (labeling themselves with the unfortunate moniker “partners for progress”) under the motto “working together for a brighter future” started a Thursday afternoon farmers market – right in the heart of downtown Lebanon.

I was a skeptic, doubting that any effort to bring something new to downtown or to revitalize this misbegotten town would succeed. But from the first Thursday on, I was hooked.

I soon began to plan my entire week around Thursday afternoons. I compiled my shopping list all week long with Thursday afternoons in mind – but I would revise it on the spot should any fresh, new produce surprise me, to take advantage of the bounty of quality, home grown food and home made products. I no longer had to pine for big city markets such as the Pike Place Market I frequented when we lived in Seattle. I no longer had to drive to other farmers markets in Corvallis, Albany, or Sweet Home to get fresh, home grown food.

And what a draw! Vendors came from Jefferson, Harrisburg, Sweet Home, Lebanon and many places in between. There were no junk or antique dealers – just real, fresh, local foods and quality hand-made products.

I was intrigued by the idea that I could buy everything for my entire dinner right here, on a half-block stretch . . . and so I did. I bought pizza dough; bread; dessert cookies; all the veggies imaginable to prepare a week’s-worth of suppers and then more for canning or freezing; fruits for desserts, cakes and pies. I found salad stuff; herbs of all sorts; mushrooms locally grown or picked by hand, varieties I had never before heard of: lobster, pink & Phoenix oyster, chicken, ashy coral, fried chicken, hedgehog. There was organic goat cheese, made right here but usually available only in Portland or Eugene. There were flowers, cut and potted, soaps, lotions and potpourris; hand spun and knitted bags, hats and caps, handcrafted gifts and homemade preserves. And when the egg lady discovered there were only 11 eggs in her carton, she stuck a lemon cucumber in the 12th spot. “There, now it’s full”. I laughed and of course bought the mélange. And from the Worm Lady, I gleaned new insights into composting my kitchen scraps.

But Thursday afternoons in Lebanon were about more than buying great food and other things. It was a chance to chat with the vendors, to learn about their business, to share their experiences, successes, and failures. It was a chance to visit with other customers, to share recipes and ideas. It made for a perfect opportunity to meet your friends for a joint shopping spree. It was personal, direct, communal – and very lively.

The market ran from May 28 to September 24. For 18 weeks, once a week, a dozen dedicated farmers and producers spent four hours sitting in pouring rain, freezing cold, scorching heat, and all kinds of weather in between. They brought what they had grown, harvested, made or produced. I learned about crop failures, about the virtues of greenhouse tomatoes (available much earlier than mine!), about the rarity of some mushrooms, and the reason cheese wasn’t always available (you can’t milk a nursing goat!). I began to understand more about natural processes, about farmers’ problems as well as their successes – and I enjoyed what I discovered.

There was life in the street of downtown Lebanon, a real sense of community and camaraderie. I’ll miss those Thursday afternoons, and fervently hope the organizers will continue their efforts next year.

I will be there, shopping list in hand, ready to abandon it should a great find or a new variety appear to whet my proverbial appetite for fresh, local food, goods and services, with a dose of friendship thrown in gratis.

A post by Jason Bradford at The Oil Drum: Campfire is particularly interesting because it features a lengthy quote from Eugene’s Mary Wood in which she explains how a “carbon challenge” from Mayor Kitty Piercy asking residents to do two new things a month to reduce carbon resulted in changing her and her family’s life. Here’s just a bit of it:

At some point along the way, I noticed that Mayor Kitty Piercy’s carbon challenge had evolved into a new – and infinitely richer – way of life for us. The challenge of two carbon-reducing initiatives a month had grown into a family enterprise, a source of joy and pride, a learning experience, a family identity, and a well-spring of self-esteem and responsibility for our children. Perhaps most important, it had become a shared statement of purpose, a moral fabric for family life – a daily expression of the trust covenant shared with our children. My husband often comes in from the garden and says, “It’s a wonderful life.” And I have to agree. I invite you to embrace this new world ahead — with courage, passion, and a sense of adventure — and join in the Great Family Turning.

That’s a wonderful lesson. Giving up our perverse obsession with growth doesn’t mean living poorer lives. Rather, it means living richer lives, lives infused with purpose, meaning, and joy.

In October 2008 San Francisco formed a Peak Oil Preparedness Task Force charged with assessing the impact of declining supplies and rising prices of fossil fuels and coming up with a plan to mitigate the ill effects. Now the Task Force has posted a working draft of its final report.

To avoid what the Task Force sees as “a much darker future,” the report makes more than 70 recommendations, including:

• Energy: conduct waste audit, develop diverse renewable wind, solar, & tidal energy plan, build smart grid, consider feed-in tariffs.
• Economy: source locally; revise tax policies (“progressive” business taxes, carbon tax, demand-sensitive parking fees, city vehicle tax, gasoline tax based on price floor), invest in infrastructure based on future viability (no “orphan” projects, invest in short-haul water freight, rail).
• Food security: buy local, create city Board of Agriculture, provide incentives to use vacant land available for food production, make city parks and golf courses available for garden plots, tax fast food to fund local food production, plant fruit & nut trees along streets, tear up concrete & plant street-side gardens, allow small-scale animal husbandry, create neighborhood compost centers.
• Transportation: impose congestion & parking charges; make intercity & regional public transit cheap, convenient, direct, reliable; build mixed-use neighborhoods, encourage telecommuting, make biking safe & convenient and establish bike-share program, promote car-free lifestyle & make it possible, switch freight from trucks to rail & water.
• Built environment: require all new buildings to be zero energy, retrofit existing buildings, include blower test in building inspections, require energy audit on sale or remodel, use solar assessment district to finance solar installations.
• Protecting vulnerable populations: Implement grow-your-own food program for low income families, eliminate all parking requirements for new residential construction & convert garage space to living space, provide discounted passes for public transit, implement bicycle & neighborhood electric vehicle plan, provide programs to reduce energy use for low-income families esp. renters, prepare rationing plan to allocate resources during shortages on per capita basis.

The task force is expected to finalize the report by today (Tuesday March 17) and then submit it to the Board of Supervisors.

The city of Belo, Brazil eliminated hunger while at the same time reinvigorating the local farm economy.

Frances Moore Lappé, author of Diet for a Small Planet, writes at Yes! Magazine that Belo, a city of 2.5 million people, once had 11% of its population living in absolute poverty, and almost 20% of its children going hungry. Then in 1993, a newly elected administration declared food a right of citizenship and created a city agency, which included assembling a 20-member council of citizen, labor, business, and church representatives, to advise in the design and implementation of a new food system.

The city offered local family farmers dozens of choice spots of public space on which to sell their produce. Local farmers’ profits grew, while at the same time farm income in the country as a whole was dropping by almost half – and poor people got access to fresh, healthy food.

In addition to the farmer-run stands, the city offers people the opportunity to bid on the right to use well-trafficked plots of city land for “ABC” markets (from the Portuguese acronym for “food at low prices”). 34 ABC markets now offer customers the opportunity to buy about twenty core, healthy items at a price set by the city, about two-thirds of the market price. Everything else the market owners can sell at the market price.

Another innovation involves three large, airy “People’s Restaurants” (Restaurante Popular), plus a few smaller venues, that daily serve 12,000 or more people using mostly locally grown food for the equivalent of less than 50 cents a meal.

Belo’s food security initiatives also include extensive community and school gardens as well as nutrition classes. Plus, money the federal government contributes toward school lunches, once spent on processed, corporate food, now buys whole food mostly from local growers.

Hello, local progressive city mayors and city council people? How about something similar here?

A group of Ashland sustainability activists is seeking to make Ashland the 9th city in the U.S. to be designated a Transition Town. Monthly meetings of the “Sustainability Leaders Dialog” have been drawing over 50 people planning to create volunteer teams to work on problem areas such as food, water, housing and energy.

Imagine all the people, living life in peace . . .

The Transition Town movement has arisen around the question: how can our community respond to the challenges, and opportunities, of peak oil and climate change? Transition towners ask the big question: how do we significantly increase resilience of our community (to mitigate the effects of peak oil) and drastically reduce carbon emissions (to mitigate the effects of climate change) while providing and even improving all those aspects of life that this community needs in order to sustain itself and thrive?

Imagine all the people, sharing all the world . . .

Folks with similar aims but a different focus are behind the “slow city” movement.  The Citta Slow movement is dedicated to relaxation, sustainability, quality of life, community and preservation of tradition. This approach turns traditional planning on its head. Rather than seeing planning as a way to accommodate growth – “smart” or otherwise – its aim is to improve the quality of life for people who live in the town and for the people who visit. Imagine, fighting back against corporatism and giganticism with local food and drink, produced using local products and traditional skills. Imagine having mayors, city councilors, and planning commissions on your side.

Imagine all the people, living for today . . .

Just as you can get your town “officially” designated as a “transition town, you can get it recognized as a “slow town”, too. That’s the kind of boosterism that actually begins to make sense.

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one

Jan Spencer has a great op-ed in the Eugene Register Guard, titled “Disaster? Consider it an opportunity.”

He writes that our system of infinite growth is “built on sand,” and that sand is crumbling around us. Further, peak oil and climate change hold unhappy surprises.

We can choose to embrace the financial crisis as a wake-up call.

“What better opportunity to redefine personal, family and community priorities? A new set of goals, ideals and action plans are called for that are healthy, timely, challenging, positive and uplifting.”

Spencer calls for a local “peace corps” with decentralized “green teams” to lead the way to a far more downsized and localized way of taking care of our needs.

I’ve reproduced the entire piece below the fold.

Read the rest of this entry »

Wendell Berry writes at OrganicToBe.org (also at The Energy Bulletin) that small farms and other locally-run enterprises are failing because the pattern they belong to is failing. The principal reason for this failure the universal adoption of industrial values which see things and places as assets, all relations as mechanical, and competitiveness as the prime human motivator.

Berry lists the values associated with the family farm: conservation, independence, self-reliance, family, and community – values suited to a world lived in by human beings, not to a world exploited by managers, stockholders, and experts.

I think Berry is more right than he knows. We must transform our economy and rebuild it based on the human-scale values he treasures.

“The economy” is no more than an abstraction, a description of how we extract our living from and survive in this world. Valuing it more than the global ecosystem on which it depends is blindness and folly. As we see the world economy collapse around us, the evidence is compelling that industrial values – which place “the economy” above all else – are ultimately destructive of life itself.

Conservation, independence, self-reliance, family, and community: as Berry says, these are the values that offer us survival, not just as farmers, but as human beings. And Berry is right that the transformation that is required cannot be left to others:

“It] cannot be accomplished by the governments, the corporations, or the universities; if it is to be done, the farmers themselves, their families, and their neighbors will have to do it.”