| New York Region
Brendan Finn, chief of staff to Commissioner of Public Affairs, and task force member Randy White (www.thecrashcourse.org/taskforce). Recorded August 23, 2006.
Friday December 22 - 8 pm
Friday December 29 - 8 pm Worldwatch Institute Director of Research Gary Gardner discusses challenges and opportunities as climate change accelerates, and hopeful responses from the grass roots level.
Friday January 5 - 8 pm
Friday February 2 - 8 pm
Friday February 16 - 8 pm Friday February 23 - 8 pm Friday March 2 - 8 pm Friday March 16 - 8 pm Friday March 23 - 8 pm
Friday April 13 - 8 pm
Friday May 11 - 8 pm
Friday June 8 - 8 pm
Janaia Donaldson, host and producer |
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United States |
International |
Michael Shuman advocates "Going Local," showing how local businesses are beating global competition and helping to create self-reliant communities. One innovative idea: invest locally by moving a portion of pension funds into regional stock exchanges. ( 
Joanna Gabriel feels the challenge of Peak Oil is an opportunity "forcing us to create the kind of world we wanted all the time anyway." The coordinator for Post Carbon Ashland explores the challenge of creating a new paradigm of sustainability and sharing while we're living in the old industrial-era paradigm of limitless growth and domination. 
Don Shaffer recounts BALLE's vision of local living economies ensuring that economic power resides locally, where it can enhance community life and natural systems--as a counter to economic globalization. BALLE's autonomous networks of local businesses initiate programs like "Buy Local First." ( 
Catch Sally Lovell's enthusiasm for her electric-assist bicycle. Her comprehensive primer covers bicycle types, battery recharging, practices and products for security, inclement weather, and road safety. Gotta love that trailer for hauling stuff! 
Facilitator and musician Melanie Rios believes life can be much richer after peak oil--with lighter living that gives back time and joy. She facilitates communication skills to help groups "work together to stay together." In performances like her "Three Little Pigs Meet the Peak Oil Wolf," she erases the boundary between audience and performer. 
Tour an urban ecovillage on less than two acres only five minutes by bicycle from the center of Eugene, Oregon. Builder Robert Bolman uses natural materials like sensitively-harvested wood, earth and straw in the several beautiful, well-insulated, non-toxic structures surrounding the central shared gardens. ( 
How can localities buy and build local renewable energy generation capacity? Ken Smokoska describes the opportunities afforded by California's Community Choice law AB117. Nick Alter and Aeron Arlin Genet describe the coalition of business, environmental, university, county and city governments that took part in the summit, and where some of the outcomes can lead.
Yes! magazine counters mainstream media by giving us stories of people creating sustainable, just and positive futures. Executive Editor, Sarah Van Gelder discusses healthcare for all, alternatives to prisons, peak oil, living democracy, climate change, working together, and how each of us can begin creating change. 
How can business help create the world we want? Jill Bamburg, Dean of Bainbridge Graduate Institute's innovative MBA program, examines its basic premise: that doing good for people and the planet is good for business.
San Francisco is the first American city to formally address the challenges of oil depletion. Dennis Brumm and Allyse Heartwell recount how members of SF Oil Awareness envisioned, wrote and presented to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors a Peak Oil resolution, which was passed unanimously in April 2006. They explore next steps: public hearings and plans to create a task force to assess the city's energy vulnerability. ( 
The planet is rapidly confronting us with limits to the exploitative, dominator system of the past 5000 years. David Korten, author of When Corporations Rule the World , and more recently The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community , implores us to replace the old dominator-control stories with new stories -- affirming life values of cooperation, community and interdependence. ( 
Jan Spencer shows his quarter-acre permaculture project transforming a typical suburban lot. Lawn and driveway were replaced with fruit and nut trees, vegetables, brambles, and native habitat, plus a 3500 gallon rainwater catchment system, a sunroom heating the house, and a small detached bungalow to increase residential density. ( 
Francis Ayley established over a dozen local currencies in the UK before moving to the U.S. He contrasts our standard, scarcity- and debt-based money system with local currencies in which "there's always as much as you need." Local currencies like his Fourth Corner Exchange issue money when members trade goods and services. Communities with local currencies will be less affected w hen recession or depression hits the mainstream economy.
Land trusts are an important part of the voluntary protection of working agricultural lands, which can also protect water quality, habitat, and beauty, not to mention food production expertise. Land trust veterans Cheryl Belcher and Dan Macon, himself a farmer, discuss the critical role of small scale food producers in the local economy and the challenges they face -- from misperceptions of farming to policies favoring big agriculture. 
Rick Hartmann covers the data about global oil production and consumption, while Michael Thompson envisions a healthier, better world on the other side of the peak. 
Tour Scott McGuire's "White Sage Gardens" in the back yard of his rental home -- a demonstration site for suburban sustainability. He ponders, "How might a household produce and preserve a significant portion of its own food supply?" Composting, a water-conserving greenhouse, and seed-saving are all facets of this beautiful work in progress. ( 
Otmar Ebenhoech has worked with electric vehicles for decades, watching as popular commercial EVs were developed, then recalled when their legal mandate was overturned. He sees improved battery technologies as the critical factor for viable future EVs. Peek under the hood and watch a test drive of his hot electric Porsche race car conversion (0-60 in less than 5 seconds!). ( 
Organic farmers John Drew and Mary Walker explores the power of growers markets where local growers sell to local consumers--less fuel, fresher goods. Don't miss Mary's original song live in the studio! 
Loretta and Karen O'Brien explore women's emotional responses; concerns for children, family and health; nurturing activities like food-growing and building social networks in community. 
Rita Schenck and Deirdre Grace advocate forming a Vashon Island public utility district to produce electricity locally from renewable resources, starting with an aggressive voluntary conservation program to improve building efficiencies. Check out the Institute for Environmental Research and Education's 10-year plan for community energy independence. ( 
Long involved with intentional communities, Tree Bressen discusses a shared-ownership cooperative household with ten residents, as well as a small, one-car car sharing cooperative. Carshare info and scheduling software available free online. (
Peak oil educator and author Richard Heinberg discusses what communities can do to prepare for peak oil. He covers transportation, including a novel ride-sharing scheme, assessing municipal vulnerabilities, local food and energy production, as well as the Hirsch report's conclusion that 20 years will be needed to make an energy transition -- very possibly more time than we have. 
David Wright, Vic Opperman and Andrea Faste are "making ripples around Puget Sound" by empowering folks in their northwest Seattle community of 70,000 around "the one issue that unites us" -- energy. Sustainable Ballard volunteers educate, facilitate, and collaborate -- working with businesses and organizations on projects like going carbon neutral, a "Vehicle to Grid" conference, and having fun, too! ( 
Karen Biondo and Joe Walling take us on a tour of their big-backyard farm on Vashon Island, Washington. Pet the goats, watch chickens dusting in divots, and crunch a purple carrot. Karen's colorful paintbrush and Joe's creativity with salvaged materials and hot compost combine to create plentiful harvests and playful beauty. 
Tam Hunt outlines a strategy for regional independence from fossil fuels -- and it centers around electricity. Start with efficiency & conservation, add renewables to replace fossil fuels for electricity, then add more renewables to electrify transportation such as plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles.The result? A program "to save America's Environment and Economy one region at a time." ( 
Todd Cory lives in a zero energy home. He started by conserving a whopping 70% of his energy use. Then he installed solar hot water and electricity connected to the grid. This renewable energy installer brims with enthusiastic ideas about having fun consuming less energy, starting with "the low hanging fruit"-- what's easy and cheapest to do. 
Watch a worm birth from a cocoon. See compost produced from food scraps, horse manure, and lots of worms. See the machine that separates castings (worm poop) from compost. The Worm Guy, Mark Yelken, says that worms are "the intestines of the Earth", fertilizing and activating microbial activity. Stick around to learn about the "Worm Wigwam" and "Worm Tea". 
Paul Harton welcomes us to the newly-built BriarPatch Coop natural foods market. It's LEED™ certified (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) and incorporates innovative design throughout. Architect Jeff Gold shows state-of-the-art water and space heating, lighting and skylights, and a polished concrete floor with a "river" running through it. 
Richard Katz and Dennis Brumm burst the technofix dream-bubble by naming the hard stuff: the lack of sufficient alternatives to oil and gas at the enormous scale needed. Overpopulation exceeding the planet's carrying capacity. Potential collapse. But wait! they close with ideas for positive individual responses. 
Three women envisioning a sustainable island share their activities: Sustainable Vashon's Merrilee Runyan describes "Edible Island" and "Green Seed grants." Farmer Lisa Mathias of Vashon Island Growers Association envisions more neighborhood food production. Hillery Crocker coordinates the annual 3-day island Earth Fair celebrating local food, arts, wellness and community. 
Take a whirlwind tour of the one-acre Brookside Energy Farm with Jason Bradford and Christoffer Hansen at planting time. Along with perennials, annuals, a food forest, and dryland crops (grains), they're growing Jerusalem artichoke and dale sorghum to produce both food and energy (ethanol). Watch Chris cut sod with a Swiss glaser hoe -- a 1/6 horsepower guy!