From OIL AGE financial crisis, to sustainable communities + COP 15

Now that the flawed financial system has taken its first fall due to absurd reliance on endless cheap energy, and the financial crisis has hit and is hitting further, now that the climate camp movement is growing, now that we are preparing for COP 15 in Denmark (cop15 call out + The Other call on COP – Nov 30 ’09 global day of action: 10 year aniversary from N30 @ Seattle), …

Id like to pass on healthy ideas that are moving about: that now is the time to build truly sustainable communities and cities.

As eco city guru Richard Register recently said: Build out, don’t Bail out. Ecologically tuned cities are the answer.

Problem: Our recent oil dependance has got us into a lot of trouble!

Hubberts secret: We are running out of oil!

Watch M King Hubbert explain the importance of this graph on this video from 1976

Oil age in terms of Irish Stout. 1900, 2000, 2100 – Colin Cambell

Watch Colin Cambell explain it on The Oil Age – A Turning Point for Mankind

view a powerpoint presentation of his here

We`re consuming 5 times more oil than we`re discovering

Watch Megan Quinn explain it on The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil

So what might tommorrow look like?

Ugo Bardi recently wrote in Back from the future collapse on The Oil Drum:

The basic thesis of “Reinventing Collapse” , by Dmitry Orlov, is that the Soviet Union and the United States are similar organizations that are following identical paths, although shifted in time of a few decades. Sure, there were many obvious differences in the way things were managed in the two superpowers. But the bottom line was that they were two empires whose power was based on mineral resources – mainly crude oil. With the local peak oil in 1987, the Soviet Union had to close shop and disappear. The US saw its national peak oil in 1970, but managed to keep running by taking control of the Middle Eastern oil. However, that was just postponing the unavoidable. The destinies of the two countries are the same and now it is time for the US to experience collapse.

Solution: We must quickly become less oil dependant and create sustainable communities.

View Ugo Bardi, professor of chemistry at the university of Florence and Ignasi Cubiña, biologist and founder of EIG (eco intelligent growth) speaking during the peak oil open day recently in Barcelona (In spanish) about the causes and solutions to the crisis we are living in.

view all related vids on Meridianset

Here in Barcelona things are moving on, little by little. Last night we watched that Cuba film and last weekend we opened a new community garden in the Gracia barrio. We also have ambitious plans Towards a healthier, happier, eco-effective Barcelona

So back again to Richard Register. Author, theorist, philosopher and 35 year veteran of the ecocity movement. Founder of Ecocity Builders and Urban Ecology, author of Ecocities: Rebuilding Cities in Balance with Nature and co-founder of ecocity media, online communication tool for the 7th International Ecocity Conference held in April 2008 in San Francisco, California. His blog is called Ecocity Views.

From Build out, don’t Bail out. Ecologically tuned cities are the answer to It’s the Economy, Stupid!

(June, 2008)

which leads off…

Remember that line? The Clinton for President campaign came up with it in their victorious race against George Bush, Sr. Simple minded as it was, it seemed to have worked.

Here we are now with the largest one-day increase in oil prices in history, $10.75, and the highest closing price in history, $138.54/barrel. Also today we have reports of the highest monthly unemployment increase in 22 years and the Stock Market dropping more, 394 points, than on any other day in the last 15 months. To recast the slogan, “It’s the stupid economy.” Something in the economy seems to have not worked.

“How many times do I have to tell you,” scolded the ecology teacher, “society’s economy is based on nature’s, not vice versa.”

Capitalism has been based on the delusional notion that infinite growth in a limited environment is healthy, that prosperity can and should mean maximum consumption everlasting, world without end. But the world does end in the sense of having limits and ignoring that rather simple and gigantic fact could well be its end. Environmentalism is or should be – certainly ecology is without question – based on the idea of balances that get adjusted pretty quickly and severely when contradicted for long. Infinite growth in a limited environment is a clear formula for massive collapse if not suicide when growth suddenly hits the wall of finite limits.

This is not a capitalist vs. socialist issue in the slightest.

(Link to rest of article)