a call to action, and ten steps for individuals

A call to action, by the Post Carbon Institute.

Marching into the new millennium, we as a species have reached a peak that is at once both breathtaking and terrifying. The last century saw an explosion of advances in technology, communication, industry, health, science, mobility, and knowledge. These advances—developed in large part as a result of cheap, abundant energy—have created unprecedented levels of population, life expectancy, and prosperity.

At the same time, our dependence on fossil fuels has reduced our self-reliance, and had incalculable impacts on the environment. And because fossil fuels are non-renewable, we have or are quickly reaching the point when we can’t produce as much of these energy sources as we need.
We are at a cross roads. Business as usual is simply unsustainable.

The climate crisis calls on us to move quickly away from oil, coal, and natural gas for the health and well-being of our planet and people. The depletion of fossil fuels calls on us to move with urgency for our short-term economic survival.

We will use fewer fossil fuels one way or another; but if we fail to adapt intelligently to the post-carbon era, the next few decades will see ever higher energy costs and continued high carbon emissions—leaving us with a ruined environment and a shattered economy, unable to face a future without fossil fuels.

And so it is incumbent upon each of us to face this challenge with courage, creativity, and cooperation.

The suggested 10 (US centric) steps:

1. Understand the issues. Understand your impact.
In order to properly respond to the crises we face resulting from our dependence on fossil fuels, it’s key to understand:

• The ways in which we rely on coal, oil, and natural gas—everything from our modes of transportation, our food, the plastics from which so many of our products are made, and the distance from which most of the goods come.
• The impacts of fossil fuels on the environment—primarily climate change but also deforestation, strip mining, water use, and pollution.
• Peak oil and the decline of other fossil fuels.
• Your role. This includes examining your carbon footprint and your personal dependence on oil and natural gas, in particular.

Resources:
Read What is Peak Oil?
Read Climate Change 101 by Climate Protection Campaign
Watch End of Suburbia
Use Footprint Calculator of Berkeley Institute for the Environment

2. Plan to reduce your impact and increase your self-resilience.
It can be daunting, time consuming, and downright frustrating to know where to begin, let alone substantially change the way we live, travel, and work. But it’s key, once you’ve begun to assess and understand they ways in which you depend on fossil fuels, to make a plan that balances actions that are achievable and ones that have a meaningful impact.

Resources:
Make a plan at Make Me Sustainable
Sign up for the Post Peak Living Uncrash Course
Start or join a Low Carbon Diet Eco Team

3. Reduce your consumption. Reduce your impact.
There’s a reason why reduce is listed first in the Waste Hierarchy. Reducing the amount of waste you produce, the products you buy, the distance you and the things you buy travel, and the electricity you use is not only the lowest hanging fruit, it’s key as a first step in order to know where to invest your resources. For example, before installing solar panels, it’s critical to look at how to reduce the amount of electricity you use.

Resources:
Join Solar Car Share
Take public transportation
Find ways to ride your bike
Get a home energy audit
Reduce your water consumption

4. Share resources, knowledge, and tasks.
Sharing with one’s neighbors has been a universal cultural value across human societies for millennia. And with good reason—because resources were scarce. But sharing in this way is something that, for many Americans in particular, has become unfamiliar, even uncomfortable. As we shift into a post carbon world, however, sharing will become a renewed value. Perhaps the most critical.

We will need not only to share knowledge (something that has been on the ascent with the explosion of the Internet) but also things and tasks. And sharing can have a profound impact, both in terms of reducing our dependency on fossil fuels and re-instilling that sense of community many of us lament not having.

5. Participate in local and global solutions.
Advocate for collective action. Self-resilience is community resilience. No matter how prepared for the energy transition or how much you’ve reduced your own carbon footprint, it will take communal solutions to face these challenges. Therefore, it is critical that each of us participate on the local, regional, and national level by sharing our knowledge and ideas, engaging in local projects, and expressing our priorities at the ballot box.

Resources:
Join the Relocalization Network
Support (your local) County Climate Action Plan
Read the McCain Energy Plan and Obama Energy Plan (or local and central govt)
Vote in local, state and national elections

Note: as stated, these steps are US centric and Sonoma County in particular.
Although we feel that national elections are a sham, local elections can actually make a difference to your life. And although we do not support the concept of voting for people to make local decisions for us, a green or independent vote can, at times, completely change your local council policies. And we may get to a point where conventional ideas and politicians are seen as not working for local people, and you find that the most unlikely of people vote for something different.

6. Reskill to live a life less dependent on fossil fuels.
As our workforces have grown more specialized and our supply chains more globalized, much of the knowledge-base required for community resiliency has disappeared. How many of us know how to mend garments, repair furniture, and grow food? It’s critical that we as individuals and communities look to rebuild these assets. Now, it’s impossible for anyone to know everything. But that is where understanding what resources are around you and sharing become critical.

Resources:
Sign up for a class at Occidental Arts & Ecology Center (or at your local college?)

7. Reinvest your time and money to build a local economy.
It’s no news that with the increasing focus on corporate financial bottom lines, the industrialization of everything from textiles to food, and the globalization of the supply chain, many local economies have suffered. Our own economy in Sonoma County is heavily dependent on tourism, which accounts for about $1 billion annually and $23 million in tax receipts, which helps our local governments fund much needed social services. What will happen to our economy as tourism falters in the wake of higher and higher gas prices?

On average, about 80 cents of every dollar spent leaves the local economy. Just increasing that number to 40% would double the local economy. A quick and rewarding place to start is by focusing on buying local (ideally, organic) food.

Resources:
Visit Local Harvest, which provides a list of farmers’ markets and community supported agriculture in your area.
Farmers Markets in the UK.

8. Generate your own power.
Distributing our electricity production through the use of renewable sources is a key step in building our individual and community self-reliance, and in reducing our impact on the climate. Renewable energy sources vary from region to region. Thankfully, Sonoma County is blessed with ample sunshine and local resources that can help make solar power work for you.

Resources:
Contact Solar Sebastopol or Solar Sonoma County to find out about local resources
Use the Solar Estimator tool by the American Solar Energy Society
Check out the Database of State Incentives for Renewable Energy (DSIRE) for rebate information and Alliance to Save Energy’s guide to energy efficiency mortgages

9. Grow your own food.
As books like Fast Food Nation, Omnivore’s Dilemma and The End of Food well document, our industrialized food system is not only incredibly unhealthy for our bodies and the environment, it’s exceptionally vulnerable to the double crises of climate change and peak oil. The average piece of food travels 1,500 miles to get to your plate. And oil is literally embedded in nearly every element of industrial food production—from pesticides to harvesting and transport.

Growing your own food is one of the most important things you can do to increase your self-reliance and reduce your dependence on fossil fuels. While very, very few of us are able to become self-sufficient in this respect, becoming part of a local food system is critical. If you don’t have your own property or enough land to grow, strike a deal with your neighbors or join a community garden.

Resources:
Visit our Energy Garden to see a practical demonstration close up
Start a community garden
Spin Farming is a non-technical farming system designed specifically for small plots.

10. Monitor your impact and adjust according to realities on the ground.
Reducing your reliance on fossil fuels is a process. Indeed, it’s a journey. For each of us, and for our communities collectively, it’s an unchartered path. And for that reason, it’s critical to get real-time feedback as much as possible, to continuously assess our progress and impact, and to adjust accordingly.

It may surprise you to discover, for example, how much gas you waste when your tires aren’t properly inflated or because of your tendency for quick starts and stops. It’s been proven that with just a little feedback, the average person will reduce their consumption by 20%. Thankfully, there are some handy new tools available that can help.

Resources:
The Kill a Watt Reader will help you determine how much electricity and money individual appliances use
The PowerCost Monitor can tell you how much electricity your whole house is using at any given moment
Devices like Scangauge will show you your current miles per gallon