The Constant Gardner world without oil

Reporting from an urbanized island somewhere on the west coast.


My apologies for not reporting in sooner , but I'll try to catch up quickly:

Initially when the oil prices became an obvious issue I wasn't attending the local community meetings and such so I'll have to report only what others told me....

Some of the ideas at the weekly community meeting revolved around self sufficiency and organic gardening and these were somewhat implemented when some empty lots and city property was turned into community plots
An intriguing idea was proposed to restore the islands streetcar system, but nothing has come of that yet.

Later when the oil crisis started to kick in here locally the community meetings became a bit of bedlam , fortunately a couple of experienced facilitators showed up , who revised the structure into what is called a spokescouncil structure ( http://www.stanford.edu/class/symbsys205/Commentary-StarhawkDirectDemocracy.html ), and meetings are getting more done with better overall sense of participation.

The new structure of the meetings produced a lot of good results via breakout groups and educational workshops. In a later post I'll describe the workshops on hybrid car modification and how lawn and landscape care was transformed from a noisy gasoline based business to a community based electric powered activity .

Electricity has not been a problem so far , however there is no local generators , there was a proposal some time back to build a garbage burning generator on the island , which was vigorously opposed at the time . Some small emergency generators were located on a nearby military base but may be of limited usefulness.

One shocking new development that is affecting some, is the sudden ending of ground service by the US Post Office , no clear reason has been issued for this action though some speculate that it is because of anticipated future unrest, others suggest that there are problems in parts of the country already that we are not being told about. All international mail now is only accepted for air shipment and most of the domestic rates were dramatically raised in such a way as make the air and ground service essentially the same! http://www.usps.com/prices/

Some small protests occurred in front of the main post office and are still continuing occasionally. Some local businesses are desperately seeking alternate shipping arrangements for their goods.

Another area of concern is WATER , the island receives all it's water from the mainland and concern is that if the electric grid fails that the water supply may be cut off as well. So far there has not been workable plan to address that problem.