Hopedance

by Janaia Donaldson


The hot-orange electric Porsche glides silently out the garage door into the bright sunlight. Accelerating into a sharp right turn, it peels rubber beginning its 0-to-60 mph-in-5-second racecar start.

That scene opens Peak Moment Television’s Conversation #53, Return of the Electric Car. It’s also a metaphor for the way Peak Moment’s half-hour weekly show has taken off this past year, with 56 episodes on the internet having over 50,000 viewings, and programs airing weekly on 20 community-access TV stations nationwide from Manhattan to San Francisco.

With a tagline, “community responses for a changing energy future,” the program highlights projects and people working toward re-localizing their economies, some in response to peak oil, climate change, or economic globalization. For some, sustainability is simply the right thing to do.

After taping initial programs early in 2006 from our home base in the Sierra foothill town of Nevada City, my partner Robyn and I decided to get a bead on what’s happening further afield. Last summer-fall we packed video gear into our Vanagon and visited 21 communities from Santa Barbara to Vancouver, B.C. We videotaped around 90 shows, including HopeDance publisher Bob Banner in San Luis Obispo.

Here’s a sampler of who we met and what we saw on the localization scene.

Local food:
Permaculturists, backyard gardens and growers’ markets abounding in nearly every community. The Worm Guy on Vashon Island, including his neighborhood composting bins. Backyard chicken coops, “food forests” and humanure compost. Community, prison, city park and school gardens.

Land trusts holding easements to keep agricultural land available for food-growing in the face of encroaching development.

A suburban block in Santa Barbara forming a “foodshed” group to coordinate plantings, shared compost, harvesting, and preservation while building neighborliness.

A local food coalition’s “Come Home To Eat” Day, celebrating the bond between local farmers and consumers, with a panel of local growers telling it like it really is, and a winter feast of locally raised beef, fruit, wine and greens. “Locavores” everywhere undertaking their own “100-mile diet” to learn what really is produced nearby – or not!

Housing:
Co-housing in many communities. A Vancouver Island ecovillage that forged a new path through county zoning to permit ecovillages. A suburban ecovillage created by a natural builder five minutes by bike from downtown Eugene, featuring shared gardens and a creative variety of housing structures. An Orcas Island land trust that owns residences to keep them affordable.
Buildings and Development

A sustainably-built home, sized for minimal material waste, energized with solar electricity and hot water, with two-story-tall five-foot-diameter metal culverts anchored to the side for rainwater catchment. A Vancouver Island large urban mixed-use development utilizing shower drain water for building heat, a car-share co-op, a natural stream between buildings to incorporate nature as well as slow drainage to the ocean, and biomass electricity co-generation with surplus heat sold to nearby buildings. The nation’s first rural “green” hospital.

Transportation:
An eight-person biodiesel car-sharing cooperative in Eugene. A 2500-member 137-vehicle co-op in urban Vancouver, B.C. Electric bikes and electric car conversions like the hot orange electric Porsche. UC Davis Professor Andy Frank’s “vehicle to grid” concept in which plug-in hybrid vehicles connect to the grid while parked, becoming a “battery on wheels” to power both the vehicle and one’s home.

Alliance for a Post-Petroleum Local Economy (APPLE of Nevada County) producing a daylong “Whatcha Gonna Drive: The future of personal transportation” with a vehicle show including prototypes for a two-person EV and a plug-in hybrid.

Energy:
An energy co-op providing low-cost compact fluorescents for members, with visions of building a local wind farm. A Vancouver, BC, energy farm growing plants for food and fuel, and experimenting with biogas digesters and wind generation. San Luis Obispo’s “Smart Energy Summit” exploring state-sanctioned community-owned renewable energy opportunities. Renewables installers everywhere keeping very, very busy! Community Environmental Council’s tri-county “Fossil Free by ’33” program serving as a model for other communities.

Bio-Fuels:
Russ Teall and Growing Solutions’ biodiesel pilot project growing oil-rich jatropha plants on a landfill undergoing restoration in Santa Barbara. MagneGas, a process using high-voltage electricity to convert waste liquid into a compressed natural gas-like fuel. An ethanol co-op getting underway in Santa Cruz. A biodiesel and ethanol station whose pumps are shaded by banks of photovoltaics, with a green living roof over the mini-market.

Business and Economy:
The Rogue Initiative for a Vital Economy (THRIVE) mounting a colorful “Buy Local” campaign, with tags for locally-produced foods in markets and restaurants. They’re a member of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE), a fast-growing national network supporting locally-minded businesses and more self-reliant communities.

Local alternate currencies springing up in a number of communities. “Why not keep investment money at home by creating local stock exchanges?” asks Michael Shuman, author of The Small-Mart Revolution.

Less waste. At Bellingham’s Re-Store, donated and salvaged building materials are recycled at bargain prices to homeowners and businesses. The Exchange, conveniently located next to the Orcas Island recycle center and transfer station, where reusables are sold for “what it’s worth” to the buyer.

Localization and Sustainability groups. Many of our stops were coordinated by members of Post Carbon Institute’s Relocalization Network. Some groups are educating their community through film showings like “The End of Suburbia,” “Who Killed the Electric Car?” and “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Groups are also sponsoring speakers like Megan Quinn before a showing of “The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil” in Ashland, Oregon, or Julian Darley on “Relocalize Now!” in Port Townsend, Washington. They’re creating presentations and classes on conserving water and energy, emergency preparedness, bike safety, smart growth, rainwater harvesting.

Sustainable Ballard is facilitating connections and collaborative projects like a V2G (Vehicle to Grid) conference and a carbon-neutral program with local businesses and organizations in their Seattle community of 70,000.

Willits Economic Localization (WELL) sponsored the first Regional Localization Networking Conference in 2006 to share localization perspectives and best practices, and are hosting their 2007 conference in May.

Post Carbon Eugene hosted a conference in April 2006 with this tag line: “Relocalization aims to rebuild societies based on the local production of food, energy and goods, while enhancing governance and culture.”
A Sonoma County coalition hosted two Energy Vulnerability events to awaken policy-makers and citizens of coming energy decline as well as relocalization efforts by other cities.

Municipalities. Both San Francisco and Portland’s Peak Oil groups have successfully worked with city officials to pass Peak Oil Resolutions. San Francisco’s Energy and Climate program already has numerous projects in place. A pilot program is turning pet feces into methane (seriously! Pet poop power plant, anyone?). Portland’s Peak Oil citizen task force recently released their recommendations to the city, a blueprint for EveryCity.

Daniel Lerch authored a Post Carbon Toolkit for cities to assess their vulnerability to energy price spikes and shortages [see his article in this issue].

Community-building. A couple teaching permaculture on a small farm and orchard within urban Portland host weekly potlucks with their neighbors. Portland’s City Repair helps people reclaim public spaces.

Bring your lawn chair: a summertime outdoors Power Palooza in Nevada City with a free video showing of Guy Dauncey’s energizing presentation on The New Energy Revolution: 101 Solutions to Global Climate Change.

The list could go on and on – and that’s the wonderful news. Over and over we found ourselves inspired to find in every community that there are more deeply-caring people hard at work than we could have imagined.

Even with all these great efforts going on, the relocalization movement is in its early stages. Groups are challenged in organizing themselves, recruiting volunteers, framing their messages for wider acceptance, building coalitions, strategizing actions. It can be a hard sell – the public hasn’t begun to connect the dots between energy decline, climate change, economic globalization, and the wisdom of building local self-reliance.

The mainstream remains strongly rooted in the technofix myth. Our most popular programs, by the viewer count in YouTube, are about electric cars and bikes. The prevailing attitude seems to be: it’s okay to pay more for efficiencies so long as I don’t need change my lifestyle.

But many people are increasingly hungry to hear these stories as an antidote to mainstream media. Perhaps they feel less powerless as they watch ordinary people like themselves working locally, where we have the most leverage to create change.

In his book The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community, David Korten calls on us to change our stories from those of empire which are destroying our planet and societies, to the life-affirming values of “earth community.”

Mt. Shasta renewable energy installer Todd Cory’s eyes light up during our Peak Moment videotaping as he talks of reducing his household energy use by a whopping 70%. He bursts out, “If there was ever a time to be alive! I am excited about being on the earth right now to help with this transition. Because it’s really big. And to be involved with energy -- I’m just tickled to be here and to be able to help people with this, to be able to research the new technologies, to help people learn how to conserve and use less. It’s just a phenomenal time to be here.”
You said it, Todd. At this “peak moment” in human history, we too feel privileged to be documenting the beginnings of a movement addressing the most critical issues of our time.

All of the Peak Moment Conversations can be viewed online at www.peakmoment.tv, where you can also subscribe to monthly emails, order DVDs, or to help put Peak Moment on your local station. A blog of 2006 journeys is at www.relocalize.net/peakmomenttravels . Janaia Donaldson is host and producer, and Robyn Mallgren is director and videographer of Peak Moment Television. 530-265-4244 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .