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some cities are taking up the issue of "peak oil"
As "peak oil," the inevitable point of irreversible decline in the availability of the substance to which U.S. President George W. Bush has belated admitted the country is "addicted," surges in public awareness, some U.S. cities are rushing to address it, while others are burying their heads in the oil sands (formerly tar sands) and doing nothing.
Portland, Oregon,
San Francisco, California, and
Salisbury, Maryland, are all moving rapidly to consider the implications for their residents of the "peak oil" phenomenon.
Portland, Oregon
"In May 2006, Portland City Council created a Peak Oil Task Force to develop recommendations on appropriate responses to uncertainties in the supply and affordability of oil. The Task Force is intended to identify key short-term and long-term vulnerabilities and develop recommendations for addressing these. Twelve citizens were appointed to the Task Force in June, and the Task Force is expected to provide recommendations to City Council in early 2007.
"Changes in the availability of affordable petroleum products may have significant impacts on transportation, housing, food, and other life-essential products and services. Click
here for a set of background materials [94 page PDF] intended to provide an overview of the peak oil issue, excerpts of relevant Portland policy and planning documents, and a number of related resources."
San Francisco, California
"On July 28th, at 2PM, the San Francisco Local Agency Formation Commission will be holding the first of several hearings on the issue of peak oil, at City Hall. The public is invited to attend as San Francisco—the first city in the country to pass a peak oil resolution—launches an effort to develop a plan of response. Indeed, citizen participation is critical, since the future of our city will be determined by our collective effort to face and respond to peak oil."
Salisbury, Maryland
"A small group of Lower Shore residents are interested in having Salisbury's or Wicomico County's governing councils take up the issue in symbolic resolutions, pointing toward Bloomington, Ind., as an example, where the Town Council passed a resolution this month holding that 'the city of Bloomington must prepare for the inevitability of oil peak" and "supports the adoption of a global depletion protocol that will reduce petroleum use, conserving what remains.'
"The movement also has a booster in Maryland Congressman Roscoe G. Bartlett, a Republican from the 6th Congressional District, who spent about an hour this February discussing the problems a dwindling world oil supply will impose on American consumers and the world from the floor of Congress. He described a time 'when the age of oil is finished and there is no more oil that can be gotten without paying more for the oil than you get out of it. ... What will life be like then?' He was joined by another Republican Maryland congressman, the Eastern Shore's Wayne Gilchrest, and several colleagues in establishing a peak oil caucus."
"peak oil" not on the radar yet in Los Angeles, ground zero of oil consumption
The highest visibility so far for peak oil in the City of Los Angeles has been a column entitled
End Times, by
Los Angeles Times automotive reporter Dan Neil, which focuses on the work of James Howard Kunstler, author of
The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century:
"But wait, I say, when I get him on the phone at his house in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. What about plug-in electric vehicles and pure electric vehicles, not a few of which are, here in California, being charged by DIYers' solar panels? What about wind power, biomass or wave power? Kunstler emits a well-practiced harrumph.
"'When confronted with these ideas, people generally go through . . . what was her name? . . . Kubler-Ross' stages of grief,' Kunstler tells me. 'You're still in the bargaining phase.' Nothing, no deliverance of technology, he says, could possibly replace the cheap energy we get from oil, and even if it could we would have to surmount the "incredible passivity" of the American people narcotized by decades of abundant petroleum. Kunstler derides the belief that alternative energy will save us as Jiminy Cricket-like wishing upon a star."
outlaying, smaller Southern California cities see some "peak oil" activity
buy basic books about "peak oil"
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