Ecominds-a Mailing List: UU EcoMinds April 20, 2005

[Joe Lazur & Madalyn Cioci (joemadalyn]

UU EcoMinds-A List

April 20 2005 - Every Day is Earth Day. Never Forget It.

UU EcoMinds promotes lifestyles, policies and technologies that respect
and sustain all life on earth and is a working group of the
Metro Unitatian Universalist Social Justice Alliance (MUUSJA)

**** Attend a UU Earth Day service this Sunday...great things are happening
at MVUUF, First Universalist,
FUS, and others! Details for these events can be found in our archives at
www.muusja.org/ecominds *****

In this posting:
1
NEW EcoMinds Action! Sponsorship of Richard Heinberg presentation on
Peak Oil, June 10.

2
First Universalist to sell CF light bulbs on Earth Day Sunday April 24

3
FUS and UU EcoMinds will conduct July 31 service on Global Warming

4
REMINDER! Call for agenda items for UU EcoMinds Meeting
Thursday, May 5, 7-9pm, FUS (900 Mt. Curve, Mpls)

5
REMINDER! TONIGHT and next WEDNESDAY, 8:00pm catch National Geographic's
"Strange Days on Planet" - A documentary about disruptions and breaks
in the interconnected web of life.

**********************************

1
Richard Heinberg on Peak Oil - Friday, June 10, time TBA, First Universalist

Exciting news! EcoMinds has been selected to host Richard Heinberg, author
of
 The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies and
Powerdown:
 Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World for an important public
 presentation about Peak Oil on June 10 (time TBA).  This has the potential
to
be a large event, raising the profile of the issue of Peak Oil AND that of
 UU EcoMinds.

He will speak at First Universalist, EcoMinds member Marcy Leussler (FUS) is
chairing coordination of the event for UU EcoMinds. Contact Marcy at
wildrhub [at] hotmail.com if you'd like more information or can help with the
event.

There is background about Mr. Heinberg and the issue of Peak Oil at the
end of this posting.

RELATED UPCOMING EVENTS ABOUT PEAK OIL
In advance of Mr. Heinberg's appearance in the Twin Cities, Brian Merchant
will
 be making his presentation, "What 'Peak Oil' Means," on:
Sunday, May 1, 3:00 p.m., at Living Green Expo,
Minnesota State Fairgrounds Grandstand, Room W5;
Sunday, May 8, 10:00 a.m., for the Critical Thinking Club,
Kelly Inn State Capitol, 161 St. Anthony Avenue, St. Paul.

Contact:  Brian Merchant      MnPostCarbon [at] gmail.com        651 699-0063
 -------------------------------------
2
FIRST UNIVERSALIST TO SELL CF BULBS!
Bob Friedman reports that First Universalist WILL be selling both
Blue Sky Guides and compact fluorescent bulbs at their Earth Day event on
April 24. He writes "I am hoping to have a once a month booth in our
social hall with our Global Warming display, selling bulbs, doing education
outreach."

FUS will also be selling the bulbs on Earth Day.
 ----------------------------------------
3
FUS with help from UU EcoMinds will conduct July 31 Sunday service on Global
Warming at FUS
(time, TBA)
Initial planning meeting June 2, 10:00am, First Unitarian Society

If you would like to participate in the service, or have ideas for readings,
poems, or great global warming visual aids, please e-mail Madalyn Cioci,
ecominds-contact [at] muusja.org  Or call 612-926-5249.
 --------------------------------------
4
REMINDER! UU EcoMinds Meeting May 5, 7-9pm, FUS (900 Mt. Curve, Mpls)
Plan to attend and renew your energy!

Please send YOUR suggested agenda items to Madalyn Cioci,
ecominds-contact [at] muusja.org

Likely agenda items for our energized meeting include:
* calculation of CO2 emissions prevented based on Earth Day bulb sales,
* fine tuning our promotion plan for the Heinberg event,
* deciding next steps for achieving our action plan goals, and
* making some important decisions about UU EcoMinds financial processes.
 -------------------------------------
5
ANOTHER EDUCATIONAL TV OPPORTUNITY:  SPREAD THE WORD
National Geographic's Strange Days on Planet Earth
 Wednesday, April 20 and 27 at 8PM, on TPT channel 2

"Strange Days on Planet Earth" directly addresses disruptions and breaks
in the interdependent web of life, and includes segments on global warming.

"Around the globe, scientists are racing to solve a series of mysteries.
Unsettling transformations are sweeping across the planet, and clue by clue,
investigators around the world are assembling a new picture of Earth,
discovering ways that seemingly disparate events are connected. Crumbling
houses in New Orleans are linked to voracious creatures from southern
China...An asthma epidemic in the Caribbean is linked to dust storms in
Africa. Scientists suspect we have entered a time of global change swifter
than any human being has ever witnessed. Where are we headed? What can we do
to alter this course of events? By revealing a cause and effect relationship
between what we as humans do to the Earth and what that in turn does to our
environment and ecosystems, the four-hour series creates a new sense of
environmental urgency."  (from TPT2 website)
 ---------------------------------------------------

E-mail your announcement suggestions to ecominds-editor [at] muusja.org
To subscribe or be removed from this list, visit the the EcoMinds-A Info
Page at
 www.muusja.org/ecominds or send e-mail to fholson "at" cohousing.org
If you have questions and want to talk to a real person, call Madalyn at
 612-926-5249.
----------------------------------------------

BACKGROUND ON RICHARD HEINBERG AND PEAK OIL

James Kunstler calls it "the long emergency":

The term "global oil-production peak" means that a turning point will come
when
the world produces the most oil it will ever produce in a given year and,
after
that, yearly production will inexorably decline.  It is usually represented
graphically as a bell-curve.  The peak is the top of the curve, the halfway
point of the world's all-time total endowment, meaning half the world's oil
will
be left.  That seems like a lot of oil, and it is, but there's a big catch:
It's
the half that is much more difficult to extract, far more costly to get, of
much
poorer quality and located mostly in places where the people hate us.  A
substantial amount of it will never be extracted.

The best estimates of when this will actually happen have been somewhere
between
now and 2010.

No combination of alternative fuels will allow us to run American life the
way
we have been used to running it, or even a substantial fraction of it.

It will change everything about how we live.

Above exerpt from: James Howard Kunstler, "The Long Emergency." Rolling
Stone
Magazine, March 24, 2005.

As Richard Heinberg said, "Perhaps peak oil at last provides the word
sustainability with teeth."  In his books and presentations, he helps us
understand the need to develop an alternative infrastructure for our
society -
one that is organic, small-scale, local, cooperative, human-oriented rather
than
machine-oriented, and ecologically sustainable.  The end result could be far
more humane, enjoyable, and satisfying than life currently is for citizens
of
this grandest of empires.

Ultimately, only a policy of re-localization will permit the survival of a
functional social order.  We can no longer afford to depend on distant,
remote
resource systems.  "True individual and family security will come only with
community solidarity and interdependence."

An exerpt from Heinberg's writings:

"Because they have no solution, politicians on both sides will probably
go to absurd lengths to obscure or mystify the real causes of the
changes engulfing society.  The public will likely not hear or read
much about peaks in the extraction rates of oil or natural gas.
They will see prices for basic commodities increase sharply, but the
ensuing economic turmoil will be held to be the fault of this or that
social, political, ethnic, national, or religious group, rather than being
identified as the unavoidable result of industrialism itself.

The sooner the general public understands the situation industrial
Societies are in, the less suffering will occur as we make the inevitable
but painful transition to a new energy regime."

Richard Heinberg is author of The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of
Industrial Societies and Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon
World,
published by New Society Publishers and distributed by Consortium Book Sales
and
Distribution in St. Paul.  He is featured in the DVD, "The End of Suburbia:
Oil
Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream."

Mr. Heinberg is a member of the core faculty at New College of California in
Santa Rosa.  His Museletter was nominated for the "Best Alternative
Newsletter"
award by Utne Reader in 1993.  He was a principal presenter at the First
U.S.
Conference on Peak Oil and Community Solutions last November in Yellow
Springs,
Ohio.

Mr. Heinberg's appearance in the Twin Cities will come after some extensive
travel in May.  He is scheduled to make presentations in Capetown and
Johannesburg for the South African New Economics Network and to attend the
 fourth annual conference of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil in
 Lisbon, Portugal.

Transcripts of Mr. Heinberg's presentations at the First U.S. Conference on
Peak
 Oil and Community Solutions last November in Ohio can be viewed at:
http://www.communitysolution.org/pconf1.html

His slide presentation on options for a post-carbon future can be viewed at:
http://globalpublicmedia.com/articles/357