Distractions from political leaders make it more difficult to focus on relocalizing the economy. When politicians who know better propose solutions to high oil prices that ignore the fundamental causes of the high prices, then the time it takes to debunk them eats away from the limited time during which we have abundant energy to use in relocalizing the economy.

Richard Heinberg, one of the foremost peak oil educators in the US, will be coming to Vermont this week. On Wednesday evening (April 23), he will speak in Brattleboro, and on Thursday evening (April 24), he'll be in Montpelier. Details on the places and times for these events, plus how to arrange transportation to the Montpelier event, are at the Vermont Peak Oil Network web site.

Heinberg will also be speaking to legislators at the State House on Thursday at 9 am, and the talk will be broadcast live and streamed by WGDR, 91.1 FM Plainfield. The topic will be "Energy Overview: Navigating the Transition from Fossil Fuels to Renewables."

In the northern half of the state, you can hear me interview him live, Wednesday at 1:05 - 2:00 pm on Equal Time, on WDEV 96.1 & 96.5 FM/550 AM.

In addition to his four books on peak oil, Heinberg writes a monthly Museletter. Several recent Museletters are especially interesting for Vermonters.

The automobile matured as a means of transportation just over a century ago, after a Vermonter bet he could drive one of the contraptions across the country. Now the bets are on how much longer they'll be on the roads.

In 1905, the automobile was considered a fad and a rich-person's toy. Horatio Nelson Jackson, on a visit to San Francisco from his home in Vermont, decided to show that the automobile could make the same transcontinental trip that the train could, and he bet $50 that he could drive a car to New York City.

Jackson won his wager, after nearly two months of adventuresome travel in a 20-horsepower Winton touring car which he dubbed the Vermont. Horse-mounted cowboys towed his car out of sand drifts, bicyclists provided him with maps, and he himself bicycled in search of fuel when the Vermont ran out of gas. When spare tires were not to be had, he continued by winding rope around the wheels. Horatio Nelson Jackson and the Vermont arrived in New York City on July 26, 1903, having burned 800 gallons of gasoline. Jackson was $50 richer from his bet; I don't know how much poorer he was from the gasoline and all the wear and tear on the car.

Since 1903 was also the year the Wright brothers used petroleum to fuel the first airplane flight, you could call it the year the age of petroleum dawned.

Since at least 1980, variations on a different type of wager have been placed: When and how fast the age of petroleum-fueled abundance will come to an end.

GBIC, the Greater Burlington Industrial Corporation, released Wednesday morning its report on The Green Economy and Environmental Enterprise in Vermont. I attended their release ceremony in Montpelier. It was held three minutes by foot from the State House, starting at 8 am, so that legislators could attend before their committees began meeting. It worked. Quite a few legislators, as well as many people who participated in the study, filled the Ethan Allen Room at the Capitol Plaza.

The report, produced by the Snelling Center for Government at the University of Vermont, was the result of conversations that have been happening since last summer with businesses, non-profits, and government representatives. The project began as a way to boost the "Green Economic Sector" in Vermont, with high-wage jobs and entrepreneurial activities. As GBIC's Frank Cioffi introduced the report, however, he recognized that Vermont needs more green jobs just to stay where we are in the present economic climate. "There is going to be more churning in the economy. More people are going to lose their jobs. The world economy is changing, and we need to change right along with it."

"No war for oil" is a common chant among demonstrators against the US war in Iraq. In the March 10 issue of The American Conservative, Robert Bryce turns the phrase around, illuminating how much oil is used for war. It turns out that to the extent that the US invaded Iraq to secure oil supplies, it was an ultimately self-defeating proposition. The military uses so much oil in fighting the war, and the war costs so much, that the US is squandering opportunities secure oil supplies through economic means or to reduce our dependence on oil.

In his article in The American Conservative, Bryce points out,

the average American G.I. in Iraq uses about 20.5 gallons of fuel every day, more than double the daily volume consumed by U.S. soldiers in Iraq in 2004... And nearly every drop of that fuel is imported into Iraq. These massive fuel requirements--just over 3 million gallons per day ...--are a key reason for the soaring cost of the war effort.

The logistics of importing all this fuel into a war zone are staggering. Bryce reports that "about 5,500 tanker trucks" are used to haul the fuel into Iraq, and the delivery costs for each gallon fuel for the US military in Iraq are $42--$42 per gallon!--and that is only delivery; it doesn't even include the cost of the fuel. Bryce calculates that fuel imports alone amount to one-third of all U.S. military expenditures in Iraq.

Outside of Iraq, what about the oil budget for the entire US military?

As we enter the sixth year of the war in Iraq, the longest war in the country's history next to Vietnam, neither George Bush nor any of the major presidential candidates has a plan to end the US presence there. It's worth considering what Vermont can do to bring the war to an end sooner than the Federal government seems likely to do.

By bringing these troops home, and refusing to send any further troops, we could trigger a reaction that could stop the flow of tens of thousands of Guard troops there from other states. Two bills in the legislature would do just that.

Remember some years ago, when there was a chain email circulating urging people not to buy gasoline on a certain day, to force evil oil companies to reduce gas prices? I think I saw it first in 1999. I was car-free at the time, and my response was that it was a great idea, but too limited. Rather than stop buying gas for a day, I thought we could really stick it to the oil companies by not buying it for a month, or half a year. At that point, unless you count a taxi that filled up before taking me on a short trip, I hadn't bought gas in half a year. My gasoline bills were really low!

As oil prices hit record highs nearly every day, I'm not surprised to receive a similar email. This one cautions, "THIS IS NOT THE 'DON'T BUY' GAS FOR ONE DAY, BUT IT WILL SHOW YOU HOW WE CAN GET GAS BACK DOWN TO $1.30 PER GALLON."

With a version of the "friend-of-a-friend" who is the source for most urban legends, the email claims, "This was sent by a retired Coca Cola executive. It came from one of his engineer buddies who retired from Halliburton."

The new idea in the email is about as loopy as the thought of saving taxpayers money by outsourcing soldiers' work to Halliburton:

"There is a factual basis to Peak oil and, in fact, there is reason to believe that Peak Oil may have already occurred."

This was a conclusion of the town-appointed Regional Peak Oil Task Force in Brattleboro. The Task Force made its initial report (PDF) to the Brattleboro Select Board this month. It's not exactly ground-breaking news. It has been ten years since a Scientific American article proclaimed the "end of cheap oil" before 2010, and it has been widely observed that global crude oil production reached at least a temporary peak in May 2005. Peak oil is now even discussed in the pages of the Wall Street Journal.

Still, far from everyone accepts that the planet is fast approaching a long-term decline in oil production, that is, that oil production has reached its peak or soon will. State and local governments, for example, wrestle with how to replace aging bridges or handle parking congestion, without considering how many cars and trucks are likely to be on the roads when we have half as much oil available as now-which could be in less than 25 years. Despite warnings that preparing for a smooth transition to an energy-poor economy can take 20 years of hard effort, the US federal government has no coherent strategy (PDF) for even beginning. The only state government that I'm aware is developing a strategy for addressing peak oil is Queensland, Australia.

It's important, therefore, for state and local governments to educate themselves and prepare themselves for fundamental changes in their lives when oil is less plentiful. And that's how an official organization like the Brattleboro Regional Peak Oil Task Force can be important.

Some people have the strange idea that easy-to-understand technology
isn't technology at all. I was brought up short reading about an Australian ecovillage that has been around since 1974:

Living at Moora Moora is devoid of technological advances. Houses are made out of straw-bale, mud-brick and poured earth, there are compost toilets, wind and solar power, a private spring and an organic veggie garden that feeds the whole community. To save energy, most homes incorporated thermal mass in their design.

My goodness! I get the feeling that reporter Peta Evans has never tried to do anything as practical as build a house or even plant a garden. The amount of design thought that goes into straw-bale houses is huge. Same for compost toilets, wind and solar power, and vegetable gardens.

You can grow your own food, chop your own firewood, bicycle everywhere, build a strong community with your neighbors, and still find all your efforts to relocalize are for naught if George W. Bush labels you a bad person (enemy combatant) and locks you away without access to lawyers or courts. This Wednesday evening, Feb. 13, Allen Gilbert of the Vermont ACLU is a “panelist” on a Web chat on Vermont Public Television with Bill Darrow, an assistant U.S. attorney here in Vermont. The topic is "Civil Liberties in a Changing World." Darrow, I’m told, is pretty aggressive in defending government actions in national security, drugs, death penalty, etc. Thanks to the miracle of the web, you can talk back!