Permatopia  

I seem to have come across a lot of references to Oregon lately - from MonkeyGrinder's comments about Oregon being perceived as a haven for anarchists, to Code Three's reference to a story by a permaculturist who has "headed for the hills" in rural Oregon, only to decide that maybe the countryside isn't the best location after all, Mike Ruppert's recent speech in Eugene Oregon, Oregonian Ron Beasley occasionally links to me from "Middle Earth Journal", the Post Carbon Institute's "lifeboat" conference in Astoria Oregon and finally Oregonian Mark Robinowitz's "Permatopia".

I should note that I tend to disagree with the linking of peak oil with what a lot of people would consider conspiracy theories about the September 11 events - which are a core feature of both Mike Ruppert's and Mark Robinowitz's web sites - not so much because I disagree with their ideas (I'm agnostic on the subject, and while I'd concede that its suspiciously fortuitous how things worked out subsequently for the neocons in terms of being able to put their insane schemes into practice, I'm not convinced that there is concrete proof of their involvement either) but because I think it can lead a lot of people to discount peak oil as a fringe idea not worthy of serious consideration.

On the same topic, I also think Colin Campbell should probably refrain from his more extreme utterances for a while given that the ASPO is getting referred to by a lot of relatively mainstream sources - having articles discussing economists congratulating themselves on the future adoption of cannibalism to replace beef eating could also be considered a sign of an organisation that isn't going to get taken seriously.

And yes - I concede that coming from me this could be considered a little bit hypocritical, but I'm not likely to get mentioned in major mainstream media outlets - just getting occasional references on sites like Energy Bulletin, WorldChanging and Tom Paine that I read regularly is more than I ever would have expected.

The rough equivalent of Oregon in Australia is the northern rivers region of New South Wales, which is a relatively undeveloped, hilly, rainforested part of the country which has long been a refuge for hippies and the counterculture in general.

The ABC recently reported on a speech by Tim Winton, founder of the PermaForest Trust (presumably unrelated to the famous West Australian author of the same name), at a meeting in Byron Bay discussing how to deal with peak oil.

Next time you fill up your petrol tank, enjoy it, it won't be around forever. Tim Winton is a permaculture expert speaking on the Gold Coast this weekend. He says it’s time for us to get ready for a world with less oil.

“‘Peak oil’ is the time when oil production starts to decline. All resource recoveries go through a bell-shaped curve where first we find the good easy stuff, production increases, eventually production peaks out and then it starts to decline. Anyone who has ever picked fruit will know all about that. It’s just a natural progression that all systems go through”, Tim says.

Tim says energy and the economy are directly linked, “you only have to go back to the 1970s and the oil shocks there to see what happened to the economy. There was high inflation, high interest rates, less jobs, people found it more difficult to pay the bills. If we’re not careful, when ‘peak oil’ arrives these same things will happen, but it will be terminal, there will be no cycling out of it again when oil supplies come back online”.

That’s the bad news. What’s the good news? “There are plenty of positive alternatives. Everyone could live on a fifth of the energy budget they have now. It would mean a change in lifestyle, in the way they do things, and this is a much more difficult challenge than the technical challenges ahead of us”, Tim explains, “I don’t think we’re going back to the days of the horse and cart but I think we will have more localised economies. Really well designed, urban areas are great. There are a lot of solutions, I’ll mention permaculture, it’s custom-designed for living well with less. It was developed during the oil shocks of the seventies, it’s about using design to maximise your energy resources.”

Tim's speech can be found here - his recommendations (something we've all heard before, but it never hurts to repeat them):

• Maintain and Build Public Transport
• Maintain and Enhance Local Food Production
• Avoid Debt
• Focus on Investing in the Bioregional Economy
• Create Local Energy Sources- Biofuels, Wind, Solar
• Power Down: Encourage Conservation and Conserver Lifestyles
• Pedestrian Friendly Urban Planning and Planning Laws
• Reduce Car Dependence
• Education and Community Awareness Raising

The PermaForest Trust does permaculture training, which makes it the local equivalent of Bill Mollison's operation in Tasmania and David Holmgren's in Victoria. They also seem to have a relationship with the Seed Savers Network.

The Permatopia site also mentions another Australian, "deep ecologist" John Seed who will be giving some talks in Oregon later this month. John runs the Rainforest Information Centre in Lismore - the connections between the northern rivers and Oregon seem to run quite deep. The linked interview contains the following quote about his work in Ecuador:

The Rainforest Information Centre’s been involved in protecting the Amazon headwaters in Ecuador since the late ‘80s when we were invited to help the Awa people, a group of hunter-gatherers living on the Colombian border of Ecuador, and at the moment our main work is trying to stop the expansion of the oil industry into the Amazon headwaters. The oil companies from many, many different countries around the world are attempting to push roads into national parks in the Amazon, and a lot of our work with groups in Ecuador and in the South American countries, is to try and limit the damage that the oil companies are doing.

On a related note, TreeHugger has a review of a book on sustainable communities - which are also quite popular in the region (though not cheap to buy into, like most real estate anywhere near the coast here).