The magnitude of the energy crisis we now face in the U.S. cannot be overstated. It is not just about cutting the emission of greenhouse gases, the increasing price of petroleum or the fact that we are dependent for oil on countries that only hold us in high regard as customers. It is about the fact that our entire physical landscape and a large part of our social and economic interactions are predicated on the assumption of cheap petroleum, an assumption that is no longer valid.

Petroleum will continue to rise in price as I have consistently predicted in this column. We are most likely going through peak oil and when we accept responsibility for contributing to global warming we realize that all fossil fuels and the burning of them has incredibly dire unintended consequences. In addition we are a debtor nation with a crumbling and in need of repair infrastructure. Where is this leading us?

I have long been a fan of James Howard Kunstler’s book ‘The Long Emergency’ and have recommended it to many people. [In addition his blog is one I recommend in conversation and have recommended on my links page since the inception of Evolution Shift.]� This best selling book details in a persuasive manner the coming deconstruction of American society due to the converging crises mentioned above. Having read this non-fiction book from a novelist, it was no surprise to find that Kunstler was writing a novel about ��post long emergency’ America. It is called ‘World Made …

We are all more aware of global warming than we were years ago.  As a country we passed through the tipping point of awareness in the last year.  We have a better understanding of what it is that we each do to contribute to global warming, and a number of us have taken action to lessen those contributions as much as possible.  We now need to change some of the language we use in this area as it will help us to continue to change our thinking and perhaps our behavior. 

I have heard a number of relatively environmentally aware people speak about their cars with a MPG reference.  People speak about ‘doing their part’ by driving a car that is rated as a 30 mpg vehicle, or that they just bought a hybrid to help cut down on harmful emissions and to save on gasoline.  That is great, no question.  What is needed now is for those people, and all of us, to not rest on our laurels based upon what we have purchased, and move to how we use what we have purchased.

The question should be “What is your carbon footprint?” not what is the mpg rating of your car.  For example, let’s assume a green thinking consumer has just bought a car with a 30mpg rating, having shed her big SUV that only got 15 miles per gallon.  That’s great, but she should ask herself what her carbon footprint is before she wears even a scarf of self …

In the prior post I gave a general definition and overview of peak oil for those that have yet to track this development.  Until recently, the brightest minds unencumbered by vested oil interests have strongly suggested, and with good documentation, that the world could well run out of extractable petroleum sometime around the mid twenty-first century.

Up until a year ago, this was cause for great alarm.  Most countries in the world, with the U.S. being at the top of the list, have, in the last 50 years, allowed economic development, urban planning, real estate development and transportation issues to be made within the context of always having cheap oil to allow us to construct a society around the internal combustion engine.  If you were to look at a time lapse photographic history of the U.S .landscape from 1900 to 2000, taking one photograph a month for 100 years, the changes will be almost entirely based on an automotive culture.  This culture, while transforming the countryside, has basically been using the same mechanical invention, the internal combustion engine the entire time.  It has been as though once we fell in love with the car and the cheap gasoline that powered it we decided that we arrived at the highest point of civilization and our infatuation blinded us to any kind of consequence other than some nasty smog and ever lengthening drive times.  These were judged to be small prices to pay for an American Dream that gave us 300 horsepower …

We are now into the global stage of humanity’s evolution.  When viewed over the span of the past 10,000 years it is clear that we have moved from tribe to village to city, to state, to country to planet.  In speeches I give around the country I discuss this “Flow to Global” as one of the forces currently reshaping and restructuring the world.

This reorganization into a global economy and market place has, can, and will cause pain at the local level.  Industrial Age manufacturing businesses in this country have been moved offshore to lower cost countries.  Call centers open in India and the Philippines. As individuals we have to understand our economic value is increasingly measured on the global stage.  Unfortunately, our political leaders seem to be reactive and pander to those in pain rather than provide new direction. What can local communities do to stay robust, promote community and still be a part of this global trend? 

Great Barrington, Massachusetts has come up with an answer that is creative, fun and sounds like it might actually work.  This town is in the Berkshire Mountains.  A number of local businesses have agreed to accept an alternative currency called BerkShares and to give a discount of ten percent to those who use them.  These alternative bills have different people on them than the dead presidents and statesmen on US currency.  Herman Melville is on the twenty, Norman Rockwell on the fifty, Robyn Wan En a champion of locally supported agriculture is on …