"The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil" shows that you can have a modern society with much less oil.

The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil
Tuesday, February 21 at 7 pm
Mockingbird Restaurant, 123 W. Beverley Street, downtown Staunton

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990, Cuba’s economy went into a tailspin. With imports of oil cut by more than half – and food by 80 percent – people were desperate. This film tells of the hardships and struggles as well as the community and creativity of the Cuban people during this difficult time.

Cubans share how they transitioned from a highly mechanized, industrial agricultural system to one using organic methods of farming and local, urban gardens. It is an unusual look into the Cuban culture during this economic crisis, which they call “The Special Period.”

The film opens with a short history of Peak Oil, a term for the time in our history when world oil production will reach its all-time peak and begin to decline forever. Cuba, the only country that has faced such a crisis – the massive reduction of fossil fuels – is an example of options and hope.

With energy prices sure to rise in the future in the US, this inspirational film may give us some ideas how to live better with less energy in the Shenandoah Valley and throughout Virginia. We hope you can join us on Tuesday, February 21 at 7 pm at the Mockingbird in Staunton. Come early for dinner!

Visit the film’s website »

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.

Provenzo's installation makes new mental connections.

Yesterday the other “fishbowl” at 107 West Beverley Street in downtown Staunton may have looked like an offbeat art project itself, one of those quirky performance art gigs where pedestrian movements are carried out in a tight space.

In reality, it was author/artist Gene Provenzo and myself installing, through sweat and laughter, THINK, the video advocacy piece Gene made in collaboration with Transition Staunton August for the Minds Wide Open Filling the Glass Half Full: A Storefront Art Initiative project in downtown Staunton.

Provenzo’s piece, a gestalt-driven rapid imagery glance at the modern cultural elements pertinent to our Transition group, sits inside a black box “peep show” style image bank we constructed using black paper, lifts, black foam core, tape and crossed fingers.

Covering energy use and consumption, food production and food waste, cognition, education, sprawl, oil and coal disasters, and the life of Staunton, THINK loops again and again, ending with a question about how we will determine the future of this town amidst larger questions of society and economy.

The short film also uses language, albeit sparingly, in a recapitulating manner, urging the viewer to think on the issues rather than turn away. But one can easily turn away from these questions, not only in ordinary life, but also in relating to the installation.

Disappearing into a black box, the almost secret installation requires the viewer to step into a willing process of engagement. Simply to encounter the piece, one has to be an already aware walker, moving eyes wide open through the Staunton streetscape. Should the viewer happen to see the video hiding in plain sight, he or she must stop, fixing his or her view directly into the screen in its shadowbox home.

Just like the issues of our times that are as plain as the nose on our faces, yet disappearing into the circuitry of our daily lives, buried by the foreground of myriad concerns commandeering our attention, this installation requires conscious encounter to rouse awareness and concern. When will we stop the frantic pace long enough to take a good long look into the deeper issues of our times, issues that will assert themselves inescapably if we do not take them on first?

THINK on it. We invite you to see the Provenzo-TSA collaborative installation until July 27, 2010.

The most fun bummer film we've ever seen.

After the success of our showing of Coal Country at the end of February, we are now announcing the next three showings in Transition Staunton Augusta’s Local Motion Film Series.

These films will make you think. They will inspire you. And they may make you angry. But however they make you feel, we hope the films will offer our community a chance to begin talking together about peak oil, local food, and how to build an economy beyond fossil fuels that will help Staunton and Augusta County enjoy prosperity in the future.

Films are on shown the third Thursday of each month:

March 18 — DIRT! The Movie

April 15 — Fresh

May 20 — The End of Suburbia

All films take place at the Mockingbird restaurant in Staunton and begin at 7:00 p.m. But the doors open at 5:30, so please join us for dinner beforehand.

Come eat great local food, drink local brews, and connect with friends, new and old. We hope to see you there!

Thanks to our friends at the Spencer Center at Mary Baldwin College and Staunton Green 2020, who have helped us put on this series.

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.

NASA's Jim Hansen has a better plan than cap-and-trade.

The Obama Adminstration and its allies in Congress think that cap-and-trade will help us transition towards clean energy and conservation by making fossil fuels more expensive.

They’re right about the second part — oil and coal will become more expensive under this scheme.

But NASA climate scientist Jim Hansen,who’s become an outspoken policy advocate, says that what he calls cap-and-tax won’t help get the economy off of fossil fuels.

Instead, as they become more expensive, the public will just have no choice but to pay more, because cap-and-trade will not encourage alternatives. All the extra cost generated will simply go into the pockets of Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs that developed cap-and-trade in the first place.

Hansen has a solution that’s simple and that should appeal to conservatives and liberals alike: impose a fee on all fossil fuels at the wellhead and then distribute the proceeds as direct payments to all legal U.S. residents.

Washington could define a path that would lead the world toward a clean energy future. And, incidentally, it would solve the climate problem – without requiring anyone to agree that there even is a climate problem.

Hansen outlines his idea in an essay sent to his email list where he also throws some sharp barbs at the New York Times.

Photo: catchesthelight from Flickr via Creative Commons.

Welcome to Transition Staunton Augusta, a citizens’ group to help the city of Staunton and its surrounding area in Augusta County, Virginia, move beyond fossil fuels.

As the world runs out of cheap oil, we will need to make other arrangements.

In the new economy, globalization and massive scale are out and re-localization and human scale are in.

To get there, we will face huge challenges. But there will also be fantastic opportunities for those who are prepared.

In this economy, small cities and their surrounding rural areas can again prosper.

Local food, local manufacturing, and local services offer opportunities for entrepreneurs, good jobs for our families, and a high quality of life in our revitalized communities.

A century ago, Staunton and its surrounding area thrived in a world that used a fraction of today’s energy.

We can look toward that past to inspire us — as we bring the best of modern technology to bear on creating a new economy that is built to last.