It doesn't make sense, it's just how we are

Last year, Americans took more than 10 billion rides on public transportation, the highest level in more than 50 years. But despite the increases, public transit systems are being forced to cut back service, risking losing many of the riders they gained due to high gas prices and a bad economy. In New York, for example, the Metropolitan Transit Authority is moving forward with plans to drastically raise fares and totally eliminate some subway and bus lines. Our latest Transparency is a look at the 15 most popular public transit systems in America that have made or are planning to make cuts. You can see the full list of all cuts and potential cuts at Transportation for America.

(h/t Good magazine)

If you have ever gone to Portland or Eugene for a movie or show

Then make sure you turn out to support the amazing Salem Film Festival. Here. In Salem.

(image from "Blue Gold: World Water Wars," which is having its Oregon premiere at the Salem Film Festival 2009)

Land-sharing: A very LOVEing idea

Story about land-sharing -- people with front and back yards that they want gardened and the people who want to garden but don't have the yards. A great idea for living our values, environmentally speaking, and for responding to the shortage of community garden plots:

With too many gardeners filling up the waiting list for community gardens, it's taking as long as 5 years to finally get a plot of dirt to grow veggies. So gardeners and city officials started a registry to connect homeowners willing to have their yards turned into gardens with the people who are willing to do the gardening. An excellent land-sharing solution, and in sync with the urban homesteading movement.

A most important graphic

Click to enlarge. Note that, of the roughly 98 quads of energy we start with, we only use about 43, with 55 going to entropic and distribution losses. Also note the tiny, almost microscopic scale of renewables next to polluting/depleting sources like coal (which also form nearly all the energy loss, since entropic losses are caused by high-temp energy transformations).

Spring FSELC Calendar

2008-09 Amateur Naturalist Series: Geology of the Columbia River Gorge

Thursday, April 16th, 7:00 p.m. (Optional field trip Sunday, April 19th)
Straub Environmental Learning Center, 1320 A Street, Salem
$5 per person; RSVP required (Call 503-391-4145 or email lisa@fselc.org)

2009 Sustainability Workshops: Green Investment

Tuesday, April 14th, 7:00 p.m.
Straub Environmental Learning Center, 1320 A Street, Salem
Coordinated and co-hosted by Willamette University. Free and open to the public.

10th Annual Earth Day Celebration at Oregon Garden

Saturday, April 18th, 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
The Oregon Garden Earth Day has become a focal point for the Mid-Willamette Valley . Families can enjoy kid's activities, plant and garden sales and educational demonstrations. Local Oregon musicians will be featured throughout the day along with 35 indoor exhibitors and food. Earth Day will continue to be a free event to encourage people to learn about stewardship of the Earth. For more information

Nature Kids: Youth Naturalist Classes

Tree Time! The Importance of Trees
Grades 4 and 5 – Wednesday, April 22nd, 4 – 5:30 p.m.
Straub Environmental Learning Center, 1320 A Street, Salem
Class is free, RSVP REQUIRED. Call or email Lisa at 503-391-4145 or lisa@fselc.org for more information.

2009 Sustainability Workshops
Green Landscape: Tuesday, April 21st, 7:00 p.m.
Green Cuisine: Tuesday, April 28th, 7:00 p.m.

Straub Environmental Learning Center, 1320 A Street, Salem
Coordinated and co-hosted by Willamette University. Free and open to the public.

2008-09 Amateur Naturalist Series: Wildflower Identification

Tuesday and Wednesday, April 21st and 22nd (Optional field trip April 25th)
Straub Environmental Learning Center, 1320 A Street, Salem
$5 per person; RSVP required (Call 503-391-4145 or email lisa@fselc.org)
**Please note: this is a two-night class. Payment is $5 for both sessions and payment is due on the first night.

JUNKride 2009: Spotlighting Environmental and Human Health Impact of Plastic Marine Debris

Wednesday, April 22nd, 7:00 p.m.
Kaneko Auditorium, Willamette University, 1300 Mill St. SE

Dr. Marcus Eriksen and Anna Cummins, who have brought world attention to the “plastic soup” fouling our oceans, are embarking on a 2,000-mile bicycle ride/speaking tour from Vancouver to Tijuana in a quest to end the age of disposable plastics. Join us for their stop in Salem! Sponsored by FSELC and Willamette University Center for Sustainability. Free and open to the public. Note: Parking is located west of Sparks Field on the North side of Bellvue Street – no permit needed at 7:00 p.m. There is a pedestrian sky bridge over 12th Street to reach Tokyo International University of America, where Kaneko Auditorium is located.

2008-09 FSELC Lecture Series: Martin LeBlanc
Working Together to “Leave No Child Inside”

Thursday, April 23rd, 7:00 p.m.
Loucks Auditorium, Salem Public Library, 585 Liberty Street SE, Salem
Free and open to the public

Lisa Olivares
Environmental Education Coordinator
Friends of Straub Environmental Learning Center
Mailing Address: 765 14th Street NE, Salem, OR 97301
Physical Address: 1320 A Street NE, Salem, OR 97301
Phone: (503) 391-4145
www.fselc.org

The future of freight in Salem

This OPB story reminds me of a great line someone came up with:

I have seen the future and it has pedals

The stages of grief

A comment on the prior post about the CBC video introduction to peak oil went:

"We read a story in Wired a while back about Peak Oil. My husband was so down that he didn't read another newspaper or newsmag for months!"

A lot of people go through the stages of grief (Kubler-Ross) when they first realize that the life that abundant cheap oil has given the rich countries cannot survive when oil is no longer cheap: denial, bargaining, anger, depression, acceptance.

On the other hand, peak oil doesn't mean we're running out of oil -- the exact opposite in fact. Peak Oil is the moment of maximum global oil availability. So if there's ever a moment when we ought to be able to afford to prepare for the transition, it's at the peak.

And we better do it, because we will have to invest lots of energy now in the things we will want to rely on later, when oil (and thus all forms of energy) is much less abundant. Even a 2% per year decline in oil flows means that it only takes 36 years to put the world on half-rations for oil. And 2% decline rate is about the lowest that anyone suggests we'll see -- Cantarell in Mexico, the world's second largest field, is plunging at 15% a year or more. Sometimes all the glorious technology people think will save us is only making things worse, faster.

If you or your husband are ready to think about preparing for the coming transition to a post-oil world, you can check out the Salem Transition Initiative for Relocalization (STIR), a group that is just starting to organize around building the social resiliency we'll need to meet the challenge of a future that is likely to look so different from the immediate past.

Interesting video intro to peak oil

The CBC does a nice job with "Preparing for the Worst,"an introduction to peak oil, despite the media's need to constantly portray people preparing for the obviously inevitable as 'extreme' and 'doomers.'

Funny, you never hear firefighters called "doomers" because they think there is a need to be ready to fight fires. The only people who get the disparaging term "doomer" applied to them are the ones who keep insisting that resources are finite on a finite planet. Strange that.

10,000 word pictures -- think carefully on these

(h/t to Soot and Ashes for the pix/nice juxtaposition)

Peak Oil, transit options and community health

Excerpt:

The presence of mass transit, whether local or long haul, simply makes towns and cities livable. That is going to become increasingly important, as we're in a time where a recent prophecy is going to come to pass.

I don't speak of any supernatural explanation of world events, but rather petroleum geologist Marion King Hubbert's 1956 pronouncement than U.S. oil production would peak between 1965 and 1970, with "the global peak coming about half a century from now". Hubbert was a tad optimistic [pessimistic, actually] about his predictions; the U.S. peak was in the spring of 1971 and the apparent global peak in May of 2005 might have been eclipsed by production in the winter of 2008.

Even if we did dodge the peak oil bullet for a full three years the fate of the world's five largest supergiant oil fields is certain. Ghawar, Saudi Arabia's four million barrel a day cash cow, is over 90% consumed and seawater forms an ever increasing percentage of the output as the field nears the time when it will "water out".

The nitrogen pressurized field of Cantarell in the Bay of Campeche has declined from its 2.2 million barrel a day peak to perhaps a third of that and the Mexican government will soon begin capping depleted wells. The Kuwaitis have responsibly managed Burgan and information is spotty on China's Da Qing, but these two fields, at million barrels a day each are geological resources rather than fossil fuel cornucopias and their life spans are not infinite. The [X] field of northern Iraq is largely untouched but due to above ground concerns there it may never be exploited. The condition of these five, once responsible 10% of the global total production, are a good proxy for what is happening with the rest.

This peak oil business is going to be as wrenching a change for us as the industrial revolution was for our ancestors three centuries ago. Many careers from the 20th century are going to fall by the wayside. Rising heating costs will make larger homes less desirable and that goes double for the distant, poorly constructed suburbs that sprang up everywhere during the last decade's bubble. . . .

There are a few bright spots out there and engineer, accountant, New Orleans resident, Katrina survivor, and rail electrification activist Alan Drake is the keeper of a happier vision of our future.

The United States has about 180,000 miles of rail and 36,000 of those miles are good candidates for double or triple tracking coupled with rail electrification. If we undertake this technologically simple duplication of systems already in use in Europe we'll cut our oil consumption by 10%, put millions back to work in new, peak oil proof
careers, and amazingly enough our economy ought to grow 25% during the process.