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Peak oil task force for Bellingham
Sam Taylor, Bellingham Herald (Washington)
... Monday night [the Bellingham] council members will discuss the creation of a local peak oil task force that will study how ever-increasing fuel prices and the potential for decreasing oil production will affect the local economy, government and the public.

“I guess I see the handwriting on the wall about what is happening in our country in the overall global outlook of what’s going on with energy,” Weiss said of why he has proposed creating the task force.

He believes its goals would be two fold. First would be creating educational programs for the public and government; second would be creating some form of emergency plan so local governments are prepared if there is a gas shortage. Weiss said that plan would help ensure the government is better off than when the federal government responded to Hurricane Katrina.

... Whatcom County Councilman Carl Weimer doesn’t think Weiss is being too dramatic.

Weimer is also the executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust, the national nonprofit oil and natural gas pipeline watchdog group created after the 1999 Olympic Pipe Line explosion in Bellingham.

Several weeks ago Weimer was speaking with the American Petroleum Institute central steering committee - basically the bigwigs of the oil industry - and he asked them about peak oil.

“When you talk about peak oil in town here, people haven’t thought about it much and the reaction is ‘Oh that’s not going to happen,’ ” Weimer said. “But when you talk about it in a room full of oil company presidents, they don’t argue with you.”
(3 May 2008)
Related:
Easy Oil (Cascadia Weekly May 7) - PDF, article is on page 6-7
City waits for committee look at oil task force (Bellingham Herald - May 6)
Peak Oil Task Force (Northwest Citizen - May 3)

'Peak oil' is here. Now what?
David Floyd, South County Independent (Rhode Island)
Last week, noted author Richard Heinberg, a world authority on oil depletion, spoke at the State House before a small group of lawmakers and members of the general public. Heinberg’s talk was entitled “Going, Going, Gone,” and addressed specifically the issue of “peak oil,” and the imminent decline in the availability of inexpensive fossil-fuel based energy. It is safe to say that the short piece on the evening news documenting Heinberg’s appearance may have been the first introduction to the concept of peak oil for many Rhode Islanders.

Heinberg, the author of books such as “The Party’s Over,” “Powerdown” and “The Oil Depletion Protocol,” described how there are all indications that the global production of crude oil has peaked or will do so in less than a decade. He is not alone in this belief.

... All of this raises a question: If a growing number of experts say that peak oil is imminent, if this peak implies massive economic consequences, and if any switch to an economy that is not largely based on fossil-fuel is decades away at best, what is a community to do? There are more than 190 groups in towns and cities worldwide, driven by peak oil and climate change concerns, working to prepare their communities for a transition to a post-oil economy, emphasizing radical conservation, local food production, locally generated energy and sustainable local business.

Back in 2004, the South Kingstown Justice and Peace Action Group (SK JPAG) showed a film in Peace Dale called “The End of Suburbia,” a groundbreaking documentary about peak oil.
(8 May 2008)
Contributor David Floyd writes:
I felt it appropriate to use Heinberg's appearance as an excuse to do a public rollout of the concept of peak oil (and of our peak oil planning efforts) here in our southern Rhode Island town. This article also appeared in the Providence Journal and the Westerly Sun.

Natural environment shaped Cascadian culture
Douglas Todd, Vancouver Sun
Cascadia was in on the ground floor of the movement led by Greenpeace
Many say the Pacific Northwest is the home of the environmental movement.

It would be challenging to actually prove this claim, but the fact scholars and others think it suggests a lot about the power that the natural environment has had in shaping the culture of B.C., Washington and Oregon.

Evidence can be cited to back the argument that Cascadia was in on the ground floor of eco-activism. Greenpeace, one of the world's most famous environmental organizations, was founded on the Canadian west coast in 1971, aggressively opposing whaling and nuclear-arms testing in Alaska.
(8 May 2008)

Dream of cohesive Cascadia never dies
Douglas Todd, Vancouver Sun
Most advocates for Cascadia don't seriously think about creating a separate, free-standing nation. But they do talk a lot about what could come of closer political, cultural and economic ties
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SEATTLE - Cascadia's original aboriginals certainly never conceived of an invisible, arbitrary east-west border dividing their communities at the so-called "49th latitude."

Aboriginals had long been linked by north-south-running valleys, rivers and trade routes.

Even from the point of view of pioneers and immigrants, the vision of creating a more closely interconnected entity out of the linked mountain ranges, volcanoes, rivers, evergreens and beaches of British Columbia, Washington state and Oregon has been around for almost two centuries.

... The name, Cascadia, first rose up in the 1820s when Scottish botanist David Douglas, after whom the towering Douglas fir is named, marvelled at the region's cascading waterfalls.

The name has since been applied to the region's Cascade Mountains, the Cascade Volcanic Arc and the Pacific Ocean's earthquake-prone Cascadia subduction zone, not to mention several businesses.

The most talked-about symbol of the mythical free-standing Cascadian state is Ernest Callenbach's futuristic novel, Ecotopia.

Although the borders of Callenbach's Ecotopia don't actually include B.C., those who dream of Cascadia tend to like the author's description of the Pacific Northwest as an ecologically-sensitive nation with a female president and free love.

Author Joel Garneau followed Ecotopia with a somewhat more plausible 1981 book, The Nine Nations of North America, which used the same term to describe the U.S. and Canadian northwest as a unified geographic and cultural entity, noted for environmental sensitivities and high quality of life.
(6 May 2008)