Stauntonians have come together to fix the Sears Hill Bridge. Now, can we build a bridge to the future? Photo: taberandrew via Flickr.

Join us for our next conversation in this three part series, “Beyond Green: Why Local Food is Just the Beginning,” Wednesday, November 2 at 7:00pm.

As the economy stagnates, many local families continue to face rising costs, unemployment, and home foreclosures. Now, with energy prices rising again, drivers also have to pay more and more to fill up their tanks. The media tells us things are getting better. Are you convinced?

People are starting to wonder how bad things have to get before they start to get better. They’re tired of wishful thinking, half-solutions, and distractions coming out of Washington. In the Shenandoah Valley, many of us have started taking matters into our own hands with local solutions for land conservation and watershed protection, historic preservation, and promoting local food and local businesses.

These efforts have been effective on their own. But they’ve failed to come together to address the magnitude of challenges to the global and national economy that affect us locally, particularly the high energy costs that started the Recession in 2008 and that continue to threaten families into the foreseeable future.

More than ever, we need a unified response to today’s challenges and a plan for a sustainable future. That’s why Transition Staunton Augusta has scheduled three community conversations this fall on our energy and economic situation, how they’re linked, and what we can do about it. Each talk will consider the big questions while also giving you simple, concrete steps you can take on your own to learn more and prepare yourself and your family for a world beyond peak oil.

A better prescription for downtowns, and its not a bitter pill!

Yesterday I woke up precipitously ill, with strange enough symptoms that, in a rarity for me, I went to the doctor. As a general rule I take a broadly preventative approach to health care focused mainly on diet, exercise, and the use of traditional herbs and roots, along with yoga and meditation.

I even gave birth at home using a midwife over fifteen years ago, when such a choice had even less support than it does today. Perhaps this arose from curiosity about long-standing health practices, or perhaps from something more mundane, such as a coping method after not having had insurance for most of my adult life.

All this is to say how truly unusual it is for me to go to a doctor for anything. But I schlepped out to the top quality County hospital yesterday because it is the final ace in the hole when, once a decade, I feel truly crummy. I don’t have anything against doctors, or Western medicine, generally speaking. It is fair to say that I find some of the gadgetry and pharmaceuticals, skyrocketing costs, and pencil pushing interlocutors an impediment rather than an enhancement to patient care, but who doesn’t. Be that as it may, my real gripe today is about location.

As historic downtowns look to infill empty storefronts and increase residential occupancy they often turn to the great hope of tourism. Plying their cultural organizations to the forefront, they seek market share against myriad other small towns competing for the same slice of the pie. To a greater or lesser extent, they build this out with local restaurants and the appearance of local retail. By appearance I mean that in all but the most hyper-local self manufacturing operations most “local retail” acts as a front end for the distribution of superfluous goods manufactured abroad, usually in China.

Sometimes it doesn’t matter. Tourists are in the market to get away from it all and finally do some spending, so from where goods originate is often of little concern to them and, if complimentary to the overall strategic positioning of the little cultural town that could, such as Staunton, means reliable sales when travelers come for enjoyment.

The hitch comes when we realize the vulnerabilities that come with this global front end outlet. Volatile world markets and volatile energy costs affect not only the traveler, but the cost of goods shipped. Struggling small retailers increasingly shuttering the doors to their tchotchke shops means less for the traveler to enjoy, less revenue for the town, fewer upgrades and services to make the place soar, and hence less of the “whole package” to sell the traveler on. And when one area starts to fail, you can bet other parts are not far behind.

So, what does this have to do with my going to the doctor? Well, I would have loved to hobble downtown yesterday to go to a doctor within walking distance of my downtown home. On peppier days I’d love to skip downtown to the dentist. I’d like a green dry cleaner and a New York size deli-scale grocer, and a working hardware store within a few blocks. Essential services, the basics, need to be more a part of any downtown revitalization because revitalization depends not just on what is imported from without–tourists–but on what grows within–the community.

This is not intended as a swipe against economic developers by any stretch. It is intended as a call to doctors and dentists, specialists, child care centers and service providers of many stripes to also consider yourself a part of the new urbanist entrepreneurial class. You don’t need to think that the first route to success is hanging your shingle on a strip mall with adequate parking. The walking resident wants you!

To truly revitalize small downtowns means first of all to strengthen the community enough to support a broad range of products and services within the local economy. Doctors, as much as anyone enjoying small town amenities want to be able to walk to work, to have their kids walk to school. People working and living downtown want to be able to get to appointments without having to slog out the car and fight the roadways in between meetings or other activities.

The point here is to think strategically about transition culture in such a way that the local economy can somewhat inoculate itself against a declining global and national economy by girding up its core infrastructure from within, in addition to orienting it outward. Magic wands and wishful thinking wont move someone to travel from another town to our town to indulge in its cultural pleasures. That “sell” takes a vast convergence of powerfully positioned marketing undergirded by a web of connections and relationships, collaborations, partnerships, and the individual efforts of given organizations. This can result in great successes, though it almost always rests on significant vulnerabilities. For small towns, and the long arc of small town success, dependency on a stream of outside revenue acts only as a counterweight to what is built from within.

That’s where small town culture and big city life differ greatly. Cities have their own vulnerabilities, of course, but diversity acts as a bulwark against the more immediate exposures that threaten small towns. Here’s where job seekers and prospectors can find their niche.

As urban escapees increasingly seek to downshift toward more localized economies, they can take a page from small town life by getting involved in local government, industry boards, citizen alliances, and independent groups. All these offer avenues to help shape the small town using proven elements from larger cities, such as dense downtown buildouts that support multiple fronts in the viability game. It also meets the crucial (read de rigeur) X factor in small town culture–living where you work and participating in the life of the community.

Part of this involves agitating for fair pricing on the part of owners–a cute town with too many empty storefronts should be lowering rents or negotiating pricing structures that match mutually beneficial performance indexes. Indeed, City government can even penalize absentee landlords with unfilled space through fee structures that motivate renting if its citizens support such a plan.

The bottom line is that you don’t have to think you need $300k in import inventory and a risk the size of Texas to become a relocated entrepreneur. There are thousands if not hundreds of thousands of empty storefronts across the country just waiting to be filled by emerging entrepreneurs offering an array of products and services, including small scale local manufacturing. They key is to find a truly necessary niche, often found in our traditional services, and fill it. The other piece is getting involved to shape the community you want to live in and be a part of building its resiliency and strength.

The Mitsubishi Stubby..no, no, I'm kidding, the Mitsubishi i MiEV. Tee hee...

In surprising news out of the White House, The Washington Post reports today that President Obama targeted $2.4 billion for electric car investments in the form of domestic battery manufacturing. Though the article notes that electric car and battery production currently exceeds consumer demand, and will for the next several years, industry insiders believe future growth will eventually meet demand, putting the U.S. in a good position to compete for a share of the electric car market going forward.

Businessman and former Virginia Democratic gubernatorial primary candidate Terry McCauliffe believes the same thing, hitching his fortune to the MyCar brand in a bid to enter the market and, if possible, bring jobs to Virginia, or another more business-friendly state if he meets opposition here.

But hidden problems shadow both plans.

On the face of it, a fleet of electric cars may seem greener than standard cars, which emit more pollution. However, coal, the dirtiest source of energy in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, makes up roughly half of all U.S. electricity consumption. It stands to reason then that the electric car hides a dirty secret behind the scenes. In the end, a fleet of coal-fueled electric cars and a fleet of petroleum-fueled combustion engines may shake out roughly the same for their essential dependency on fossil fuel use.

The bigger problem, however, is the myriad other infrastructural pieces undergirding the individual auto paradigm and its unsustainability across several fronts. For too long this blind spot has kept both the government and Americans in general from addressing broader elements in resource use and depletion while perpetuating the illusion that personal cars should remain our central transportation fixture.

Too often an analysis of automobile fuel use remains solely focused on the end user, the driver. When the car is driven, it uses (depletes) fossil fuels and emits troubling pollution (creating a host of externalized costs).

But we have to remember how resource-intensive car manufacturing is in the first place. Car making requires fuel to fashion its parts from raw materials–often petroleum in the form of plastics–and in fuel used to run the plant. Finished cars are shipped, often from across the globe, finally to end up trucked to a final destination where it sits on paved lots or under 24-hour a day spotlights in the showroom. All of this uses fossil fuels, and plenty of it.

And that’s just production. Paving and maintaining the miles of byways, roads, and interstates that make up the lion’s share of the U.S. transportation network eats up enormous resources, relies heavily on petroleum-based products, commandeers land, and, as impervious surface, creates compound pollution conditions for waterways and land in concentrated runoff.

In the face of finite resources, this simply isn’t a workable long term model.

Now, some may maintain that government investment in electric cars serves multiple fronts, including the transition model. Here, they might argue, a _slightly_ cleaner end-use product helps the massive scale auto industry lick some of its wounds, giving auto workers continued work, bringing others back onto the job, while manufacturing a more palatable product for a consumer base increasingly demanding green, more or less green, (or the appearance of green) solutions.

Supporters may also argue that investing in electric cars merely diversifies broader transportation infrastructure strategy—that electric cars do not have to be an either/or as _against_ investment in rail. The case may have some merit when placed in this political and economic context. Such a plan may offer a realistic and temporary measure, though it does so in the face of a longer term and more intractable predicament.

The case has less merit, however, when analyzed within the broader context of resource use and depletion and issues of sustainability. I’m not talking about sustainability as green jargon. This is a business and national security issue as much if not more than consumer demands within changing cultural trends.

To shift in response to resource depletion, to build out vast new infrastructure, calls for decades of planning, manufacture, and deployment, all of which is dependent for its success on the use of existing _nonrenewable_ fossil fuels to supply the needed resources and energy for development. By decades we might actually mean a quarter to a half century. With that in mind, any temporary effort that eats up money, time, attention, and nonrenewable supply becomes a diversion with a measurably negative impact on the development of the new paradigm.

Anyway we cut it, whatever high ride Americans enjoyed with the auto industry, the personal car has a dim future. Whether the impact of this hits in five years or forty-five years, shifting is not something we can wait to do. In an economic crunch, when state and federal revenue, along with private investment, needs to be targeted for the greatest gains, the new model of thinking must include long-term strategy with conservation as its central feature. Conservation, as regards transportation, naturally suggests a shift to rail for both cargo and passengers. Personal autos out, mass transit in.

The cult film Who Killed The Electric Car may arouse sympathy for a cleaner end-burning solution for cars, but it still falls within the road-tripping, wind-in-my-hair, check-my-own-ride auto culture, with all its attendant costs and burdens for society.

At this point, when tight dollars are being dispensed for new transportation projects, investment in rail should be our primary target.

But its just a few bucks..

We in America tend to reference gigantic sums of money like its nothing–”…oh, $2.4 billion here, a couple, three trillion bucks there.” Taking this a step further, if we pit a coupla’ billion against other federal allocations in a hyper-ballooned federal budget, yeah, it doesn’t seem like much to throw a bone to battery makers. In that light, my picking on the electric car looks kind of petty. Besides, batter R & D may lead to other applications for clean energy, so it may be worth it beyond the electric car.

Alth0ugh I still believe that the larger context of automobile production and the attendant infrastructure to support it is not only unsustainable, but actually dying before our eyes, still, worse culprits exist than the electric car with its paltry $2.4 billion in federal backing.

Hell, the military industrial complex, with its focus on excessive centralized security and oil wars, most of which are using up nearly the same amount of fuel to secure access to new oil fields than they will win if those oil fields are secured, are getting far more in federal backing than an electric car or battery factory could hope for in its wildest, most surreal dreams. And, outrageous subsidies to oil, coal, and nuclear power in the United States, from which we all benefit, prop up an illusory economy built on essentially the same house of cards that recently brought down the Wall Street double-dealers. To this, $2.4 billion is like a millionaire flipping a quarter at a panhandler. Its nothing!

For that, forgive me electric car market segment; I don’t mean to be making you the boogey-man here. Far more egregious instances of poor planning, waste, expediency, and industry coddling hold our nation hostage, standing to blight America’s long term arc of success. I hardly think $2.4 billion for you will bring down the Republic.

Nonetheless, there are times when a meandering form of political will and viability allow for a more casual, even touchy-feely fvision, decision making, and action. But, if as many analysts claim, we’re at peak oil now, or roughly  will be very soon, the down side of the slope, even if it gives us say, 30 years that look much like the last 30 years, when seen through the lens of greater global competition, rising prices, and limited access, no longer allows for such a laissez faire mood. In that case, true, we’re on a war footing, but not necessarily one where our first battle plan is balls out, guns-a-blazing.

True tacticians evaluate broad context and respond accordingly. One day a reckoning will come. We will either plan for it, or we wont. I hate to think though, that the path of negligence, in the face of plain geologic fact, became the fate of the nation I love so dearly.

We can do better. So let’s.

Rob Hopkins' The Transition Handbook is available for sale online, or locally, at The Sacred Circle.

Funny to finally be tackling the question, What is Transition? after having been a part of this worldwide movement since last December, officially so since Transition Staunton Augusta became the 61st US group this past March.

In part because much of the work we do is self-evident in its intent, and covered in our About Us page, we did not feel a pressing need to remark on the more sweeping historic factors driving the imperatives behind the transition movement.

But consistently being a part of this movement, researching more and more, getting involved and talking to others both locally and in the online community, has now compelled us to address those factors in helping our own community learn more about why we’re doing this, and why we’re doing this now.

The Transition Movement, begun by a permaculture teacher, Rob Hopkins, who is also a writer and profoundly gifted community organizer, takes as its starting point a response to the energy crisis known as “peak oil“.

Essentially a technical term, peak oil refers to the highest point on the bell curve of oil extraction, meaning that point when we’re pumping more of the stuff out of the ground than we ever will again. Peak oil happens not only in individual wells, when the max output occurs and then the rest of the well basically empties out, but also in individual oil fields, when the max comes out of the whole field and then supply goes downhill from there. Similarly this occurs in whole regions, say the United States for example, which, in spite of what the Sarah Palins and Rush Limbaughs of the world would have you believe,  hit the peak of its production in the 1970s. Peak oil also refers to worldwide peak oil–that point when we’re pumping the most out that we possibly can on a global scale, and then after that, we’re on the downward resource slope, never again able to get as much oil out as we once did. Oil is a finite, nonrenewable resource after all. You can’t pump the same well twice.

Add to this peak an increasing worldwide competition for oil due to its nearly magical exponential power output, and we have the twin problems of increasing demand and decreasing supply. Oil is so “magical” in fact, that, however much we must embrace clean energy, nothing green will ever take the place of oil.

That’s the short story of peak oil on what is already becoming too long of a post. You can read more about it in books such as Richard Heinburg’s The Party’s Over and Peak Everything, James Howard Kustler’s The Long Emergency, and John Michael Greer’s The Long Descent, to name a few of my favorites (and the most readable).

Suffice it to say that while peak oil is an undeniable geologic fact its not a topic that government and “leaders” have the stomach for, particularly as they remain beholden to business interests rather than exhibiting the vision and action necessary for the long term arc of success in the broader economic organization of societies. Similarly, the main stream media has better things to talk about, such as Lindsay Lohan’s recent court-ordered  jail time, the merits of Lady Gaga, and LeBron James’ relocation choices.

In the end, the Transition movement is about people who aren’t waiting for government to step up to the plate, for business to “self-correct” in response to market imperatives, or for broadcast media to get the word out about a coming shift in society’s most basic common resource denominator–energy–and the way this affects EVERY aspect of how we live and how we will live going forward.

The Transition movement offers one response to the crisis of peak oil, and is among the most positive responses in that its key feature rests on the involvement of ordinary citizens to strengthen their communities through shared ideas, plans, and actions that relocalize their areas for resilience. By that I mean to address local economy, food, production and manufacturing, transportation issues, water quality and many other of the infrastructural elements undergirding localities. The model could in fact broaden to include states, regions, countries, and the globe, but for now its defining feature is the local nature of the project as expressed in citizen groups throughout the world.

Hopkins built a model for nurturing and developing local involvement, and his founding group, Transition Town Totnes, released a comprehensive Energy Descent Plan governing their local infrastructure that could be a model for localities worldwide. It is our aim to engage the Staunton-Augusta community to produce one for our area. An energy descent plan is considered necessary to transition groups because resource depletion requires a cogent response. If we’re used to living one way, utterly dependent on a fuel source, a sole crop, or any other central infrastructural feature, its absence requires that we adapt to a new reality and craft a workable response so that we can preserve life and social stability.

There’s ten million other things that can be said about peak oil and the Transition Town response model, but this is just one blog entry designed to deepen the conversation at the local level and broaden transition outreach where we can.

One thing worth addressing is the sense of looming catastrophe and social collapse that some in the peak oil movement believe is immanent. That view is not one taken by the Transition movement, which looks to respond with positive local solutions to the predicament of peak oil.

There is no getting around, however, that a permanent decline in a finite resource suggests that the paradigm under which industrial society has developed stands to change. At Transition Staunton Augusta, we’re not in the crystal ball business. Although the transition model engages with scenario planning, looking at a variety of responses and their degree of effectiveness, it does not purport to entirely know the future. In the face of positive planning, there may yet be (and likely will be) mini scenarios that aren’t pretty, whether in the form of disease, safety and security threats, scarcity, and perhaps worse. There are also overly optimistic responses not grounded in physical reality, such as technology saving us with its ever-renewing discoveries. This response fails to acknowledge advanced technology’s complete dependence on fossil fuels, and the role of fossil fuels in the deployment of vast new infrastructure for a giant global population.

In our group we aim to take the middle way approach, planning for the best, preparing for the worst. This is a must do in response to an entire shift of the economic and energy paradigm as we know it today. And while this may take a century or more to fully play out, precipitating events along that trajectory suggest that we can’t wait to begin planning the response. If we look at how vast our given infrastructure is now, in its current state, it does not take much intelligence or insight to recognize that a comprehensive response will take time–the idea that things shift on a dime is a foolish approach.

I hope this small primer helps folks in the Staunton Augusta area (and others reading this online) to begin to think about the pervasive quality of energy in our lives, and the essentially hidden aspect of its role in how we live now, and how we are likely to live going forward. I view this as an opportunity, not only for humanity but frankly, for business.

In my view peak oil is the most serious crisis modern civilization has ever faced, the extent of which will touch all of our lives and, even more, the lives of our descendents. I take the transition to the next paradigm as a moral imperative calling us to engage as stewards, responsible, caring, and committed to the best that can be realized in our human relationships as social creatures at a specific time in history. This is what Transition is about, building the resilience that allows us to advance humanity in a manner that goes beyond current views of progress, and into the unknown, with open hearts and minds, willing hands, individual initiative, and community strength. I hope you’ll join us on this journey.

A clarion call, time to wake up.

In passing glances the occasional journalist points in the direction of us all, suggesting that it is not just rogue oil companies, in-bed government agencies, or an administration on auto-pilot who are responsible for the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. They suggest, perhaps a bit sheepishly, that two other culprits may be to blame here. Those two being you, and me.

But they don’t push it. It’s not part of the marketing plan.

Instead, we get finger pointing, show trials with execs taken to the C-Span woodshed, ritual firings, new policy proposals, and anger at the administration for lacking both a crystal ball and a magic wand. Deserved perhaps, but…

In what amounts to a recapitulation of President George W. Bush’s post 9-11, “…just go shopping” advice, in the wake of the Gulf Gusher, we citizens and consumers are not once asked about our role or our culpability in the economic, environmental, and resource fiasco that the oil economy has become. Instead, we’ve got our regular cast of characters, evil but necessary, to glower over while they continue to run the diabolical show. Didn’t we just play the passive chorus when the great bank heist of 2009 was perpetrated in plain sight and then we handed the thieves a second bag of cash?

Wake up time, kids.

With fossil fuels on the decline, vanishing jobs, a stacked house for a financial system, an economy deep in the toilet, and leadership unwilling to speak the hard truths of our times, its no surprise that we should assume the Durkheimian position of tribalism. “If only they hadn’t done this to us, those corporate types, those greasy politicians.”

My advice? Its a little bit of performance art I like to call Narcissus, Awake! Broadcast one hour with just a mirror on the screen of every channel on TV, of every Internet site in all the world. Gather pals, and gaze.

Until we consumers and citizens share the blame for a resource gambit so dangerous, ultimately useless, and finally catastrophic, the conversation won’t move an inch.

Until we begin participating, really participating, beyond updates on our own Facebook pages and groundbreaking tweets that we imagine will form the final connective tissue of the whole matrix of change, but really, really, really getting engaged with it all, breaking into self consciousness in a way that transcends our imagined impotency and takes on our historical moment, we will again and again simply play the victim and finger point in response, getting nowhere fast with increasing asthma and widening lard asses.

This is just the beginning, the Gulf spew nothing but a clarion call. No executive, no elected official, no government policy, no war, and no new technology will stop the inverse gusher coming our way in the form of fossil fuel decline, the potential disaster of which could make the Gulf crises look like nothing more than a big swimming pool with suntan lotion BUILT RIGHT IN!

Wakey, wakey folks. No one is doing this to you, or at least, not without your consent. It may be learned behavior, but at some point it comes down to you…and me. The first step is admitting you have a problem. I’ll take the lead here.

My name is Lindsay Curren and I am addicted to oil. Its running out and I don’t know what to do. I just know I can’t do nothing and I can’t live like I have. I have to take responsibility for myself and my family. I have to do something. I won’t live with the lies anymore. I wont stop until we are all talking honestly about peak oil and what it means for today and for the future of our country. I am powerful to change this thing, and with truth on my side, I will.

You?

Offshore oil spill despoils water.

Looking at pictures of the Gulf spill, the dirtiness of oil becomes abundantly clear. Its not like we don’t know that already. Oil and gas reek, and a splash of it on skin, stings. No one would debate its toxicity in raw form. After all, billions are being spent to clean up the Gulf. You don’t “clean up” clean things. But start talking about how equally filthy fossil fuels are when burned, what kind of impact they make on water, air quality and health, and all of the sudden it’s considered a debatable “political” issue.

Why?

Having built a national and global economy on the abundance of cheap oil and coal, energy corporations convince us that we’re unavoidably wedded to the stuff. To go in another direction now sounds the alarm against an unholy divorce. That’s to be expected. Why would they want it another way while their profits soar?

Yet myriad problems come with the oil economy, from its pollutant “externalities” to its role in geopolitical tensions. Oil dependence and centralized delivery create energy insecurity while prompting resource wars.  Apparent oil abundance stokes overconsumption while entrenching unsustainable economic expectations. Call it the dirty underbelly, the hidden side of fossil fuels.

Burning oil and coal takes solid filth and through a kind of alchemy conceals its true nature as it disappears into a hidden circuitry, such as billions of sparklingly clear plastic water bottles perennially in reach at precisely 40 degrees. Its MAGIC! Convenient then that we don’t have to look at the repugnant dump pile of discards floating out at sea or the dangerous coal ash slurry ponds surrounding mountaintop removal sites..

Oil subsidies underscore the dirty dealings more, with a ghost balance sheet standing in for the real costs of business.

When alternative energy and clean energy advocates call for a new direction on energy its not because we’re contrary or ungrateful for our standard of living. Nor is it necessarily born out of a hippie-penchant for idealism. Simply put, the oil economy proves itself unsustainable with every gallon used. To seek an alternative is to be grounded in reason and driven by an urge toward lasting economic projections in a sustainable balance.

It might be hard to have confidence in new ideas or even in humanity and nations in a world seemingly dominated by war, gluttony, neglect and the sideshow of a media revealing our collective depravity in high def 24/7. But to call for a new energy model, to urgently advocate for its development and roll out, is to call for a whole new chapter in our material relationship to almost everything. What doesn’t energy touch, or fuel? It touches everything! The kind of energy we use and the world we create with it reveals microcosm as macrocosm. It reminds me of a Biblical verse: By their fruits ye shall know them.

It may not seem very logical for me to call on a spiritual note, but there is reason in faith, however contradictory that may appear.

Some argue that God put coal in them thar hills and oil gushers in land and sea so that we would have them to exploit for our abundance, all part of the Dominionist plan. Then we propose a costly (and currently only theoretical) sequestering system to capture the untenable pollution that burning fossil fuels creates and marvel at our own cleverness. To me, that just sounds like an expensive shell game, and a desperate lie. Perhaps instead God already sequestered fossil fuels and uranium and other toxic magic, burying it deep in the earth to give us an abundantly clean world? A regular Garden of Eden.

Whatever the case or cause or origin, the dirty and hyper-problematic fossil fuel economy is on a dying trend and something must replace it.

To call for an alternative energy paradigm is an economic necessity as much if not more than a quasi-cultural predisposition for “natural things.” Hell, oil is natural. Its production and use is just not harmonious, creates more problems than it solves and, because of its finite nature, must give way at some point or another to the next thing. Far better to build that next thing while we still can, than find ourselves in some Mad Max scenario down the road, or The Road.

Look at the mess we’re in. The dirty mess of the filthy oil economy. Do we really think that one blow out day on Wall Street among a den of short-sighted me-first gaming thieves is going to turn it around? Or that once BP employs enough swiffer jets it’ll be back to business as usual with a clean, fresh Gulf and oceans more to drill, baby, drill?

By their fruits, ye shall know them. We need a better crop.

Developing rail offers key to recovery.

News that China leads the world in high speed train production and railway deployment inspires envy. While the U.S. has dedicated some funds to reinvigorating rail, the amount remains paltry in comparison to China’s huge layout, and small in relation to our continued investment in roadway infrastructure.

Whatever situation we may find ourselves in now relative to current rail beds and railway infrastructure matters little. The preconditions should not inhibit America, Virginia, or localities from taking the initiative now to move forward on rail projects both large and small. Crafting legislation, proposing incentives, and evaluating the network arteries for rail offer significant first steps. From there, lay, baby, lay…tracks that is. Start manufacturing shops in the most out-of-work areas to make needed parts. Get this engine running.

The unflinching reality of Peak Oil and its myriad implications demand that we look closely at the architecture of our future lives. Done right, trains allow communities and nations to move goods and people cheaply and efficiently. Just as we have carved a constitution with the noblest aims, expanded westward, overcome slavery and segregation, built a national highway system, sent a man to the moon, and drilled from semi-submersibles three miles into the earth, we can also envision a nationwide train grid, manufacture its parts, and deploy its infrastucture all while crafting the single largest jobs creation initiative in history. If ever there was a way out of our collective financial morass, this is it, and right on time.

Warren Buffett is buying rail companies and betting on higher oil prices. Image courtesy of OilPrice.net.

The financial world is abuzz with the Sage of Omaha’s latest investment strategy: buy railroads.

“From long-term passion for model trains to stake-building of several years,” OilPrice.net reports, “Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor, has decided to acquire one of United States’ largest freight railway firms, Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF), for $34 bn.”

As the article puts it, Buffett started in the insurance industry, and his investment strategy is still about buying companies that deal well with the risks of the coming economy.

America’s once world-class passenger rail system may today be the envy of Romania, but our freight system is the most extensive in the world, and Buffett knows that rail could become king again once the price of oil rises to a level that makes air and road transportation uncompetitive.

The article’s handy chart shows that, today, while a ton of freight can travel by air for 82 cents a mile and by truck for 26 cents a mile, that same ton goes for the bargain-basement price of only 2.9 cents a mile by rail.

As the article puts it, rather starkly:

Railways made the industrial revolution happen 150 years ago. Trains brought us the modern world as we know it before there were cars and trucks. When cars and trucks are not suitable anymore our civilization will revert to the last known modern means of tranportation, the train. As peak oil sends everyone scrambling for new energy sources, coal which once powered trains will rise again as a suitable fuel for heating and power generation. BNSF virtually has all the coal it needs in its own backyard: the Powder River Basin in the Rockies. 1/5th of all US coal is already being hauled by BNSF, representing 25% of the company’s revenue.

If the world’s most respected investor is bullish on trains because of oil depletion, then it’s time for Virginia to start a breakneck program to modernize our rail system.

Yes, the state is facing record reductions in revenue and big cuts across the board. But now more than ever, it would not be too radical to propose by moving all funds for building new roads into a fund to build modern rail instead.

With oil depletion and high prices looming, we cannot afford to pour millions more in scarce state funds into new road infrastructure that may soon be devalued. We need to start now to build the transportation network we will need to prosper in the next 20 years.

Buy Local Campaigns worked this Christmas, says new study.

It’s easy to get cynical about “buy local” campaigns when you compare the traffic at Main Street shops with the parking lot at Wal-Mart.

Is Buy Local any more effective a slogan than Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No”?

A new survey just says yes. The study, put out by a coalition of business groups, shows that the little guys actually outperformed the big guys this Christmas season. And further, that Buy Local campaigns made a difference.

Holiday sales for independent retailers were up an average of 2.2% while  overall retail sales were down 0.3% in December and up 1.8% in November.

And those retailers in cities with Buy Local campaigns did even better. “Independent retailers in these cities reported an average increase in holiday sales of 3.0%, compared to 1.0% for those in cities without an active Buy Local initiative,” according to the study.

“This survey adds to the growing body of evidence that people are increasingly bypassing big business in favor of local entrepreneurs,” said Stacy Mitchell, senior researcher with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. “Amid the worst downturn in more than 60 years, independent businesses are managing to succeed by emphasizing their community roots and local ownership.”

Ethics vs Pocketbook

But this report has a troubling finding. It suggests that people bought local primarily for ethical reasons — because they want to help their community — rather than for price and quality of products and services or convenience of shopping.

Nearly 80% of those surveyed said public awareness of the value of choosing locally owned businesses had increased in the last year (16% said it had stayed the same).

A small movement can get going by do-gooders. And the Buy Local movement has made progress so far by largely appealing to civic pride.

But doesn’t it take real issues of self-interest for a movement to get big?

Won’t it take local retailers offering a better combination of price-quality-convenience to start to gain real traction over chains?

Boutiques, Not Hardware

As long as local retailers sell mostly home decor, women’s fashions, and other stuff you might want but don’t necessarily need, as they do in downtown Staunton, then there will be a need for others to provide food, appliances, hardware, and other staples. And today, that’s mostly done by chain retailers.

Of course, for local stores to start selling staples, there has to be a consumer market for the higher prices and smaller selection that local retailers would have to offer. Right now, with plenty of free parking at the mall and cheap gas to get there, there’s not much of a market for selling necessities downtown. So it’s a chicken-and-egg problem.

But once peak oil kicks in and energy prices begin to rise, then having stores nearby will become more important. That’s when buying local becomes a real pocketbook issue for shoppers.

(Full disclosure: I sit on the board of a group that regularly runs Buy Local campaigns, the Staunton Downtown Development Association. I’m sometimes skeptical, but I want them to succeed.)

Richard Heinberg says that high oil prices caused the current recession.

We need to burn fewer fossil fuels and release less carbon to slow down climate change. And because of rising demand from developing nations and decreasing supply, it’s easy to see that our economy needs to kick its addiction to fossil fuels for purely economic reasons.

Richard Heinberg and others argue that it was not the subprime mortgage crisis that led to today’s recession, the worst downturn since the 1930s, but that high energy costs were the true culprit.

We all remember paying $4 for gas just before the collapse of September 2009. Similarly, the previous half dozen recessions were all preceded by high energy costs.

Coincidence?

If energy spikes causes recessions, then, in a time of depleting supply and rising energy costs, the only alternative to a stomach-churning ride of economic ups and downs is to start to wean the economy off of fossil fuels.

Indeed, if energy is the basis of today’s economy — even the standard of value for the U.S. dollar, as some have argued — then no lasting recovery will be possible as long as we rely on depleting fossil fuels.

No amount of bank bailouts, stimulus spending, or low interest rates will make much difference unless we kick our coal and oil habit.

The sooner the better for our families and communities, especially in Staunton and Augusta County, where more than 95% of our energy comes from sources outside of our area.

That means dollars leaking out of the community. But even worse, it means local families and businesses are held hostage to national and international energy markets.

It’s time to declare local energy independence, the only path to energy security  with good jobs and lasting prosperity.