The Petrocollapse Conference

Petrocollapse: Social Isolation or Solidarity?

You are invited to attend!

The Community Church of New York Unitarian Universalist
40 E. 35th Street, New York, NY 10016
October 5, 2005 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Sponsored by Culture Change, and co sponsored by
Continuing Education & Public Programs, The Graduate Center, CUNY (City University of New York)

As oil prices rise and crude oil supplies and refined products strain to keep up with demand, as Hurricane Katrina wreaks havoc on the production infrastructure as well as on a devastated population, the isse of Peak Oil is finally becoming acknowledged in the mainstream news.

However, the complete story is still suppressed, misunderstandings abound even among students of peak oil and the public remains in the dark about the vast array of consequences of this looming crisis. Dishonest reporting by OPEC countries and major oil companies have contributed to the illusion that there is sufficient time before we "run out of oil" to transition to a "solution", whether it be cold fusion, hydrogen, renewables or some combination of the above.

In fact, some dozen significant oil producing countries are past their peak in extraction and it is possible that world Peak has already arrived (this cannot be conclusively determined until after the fact). The sudden effects of shortage are likely to hit the global economy within the next three years, possibly even as early as this winter.

The public is also not fully aware of the extent to which oil pervades our lives not simply as fuel for transportation but also in the form of pesticides, fertilizers and plastics. A decline in oil supplies will affect our ability to grow enough food for the current global population of six and a half billion people. Malnutrition and resulting illness can be expected to spread far beyond the 3.7 billion who are currently affected into the developed world.

Our economy also depends on indefinite growth that will not be sustainable once Peak Oil hits. Its arrival is likely to have a paralyzing affect on certain sectors of the economy which will in turn spread both nationally and globally.

At The Petrocollapse Conference we will ask


Conference Audio

Introduction - Jan Lundberg (MP3 7.0MB)
David Pimentel (MP3 7.9MB)
Panel #1 (MP3 2.6MB)
John Darnell (MP3 7.4MB)
James Howard Kunstler (MP3 5.7MB)
Panel #2 (MP3 7.2MB)
Jason Meggs (MP3 4.0MB)
Jenna Orkin (MP3 2.3MB)
Michael Ruppert 1 (MP3 4.9MB)
Press Conference (MP3 12MB)
Michael Kane (MP3 3.9MB)
Pincas Jawetz (MP3 3.8MB)
Michael Ruppert 2 (MP3 5.3MB)
Public Comments (MP3 5.4MB)
Panel #3 (MP3 5.4MB)
Aresh Javadi (MP3 2.0MB)
Aaron Naparstek (MP3 3.3MB)
Panel #4 (MP3 12MB)

Presentations

Albert Bates
John Darnell (Powerpoint 2.7MB)
Michael Kane
James Howard Kunstler
Jan Lundberg
Jenna Orkin

Conference Posters

Black background, stretched logo (JPEG 5.1 MB)
Black background, normal logo (JPEG 5.1 MB)
Green/yellow background (JPEG 5.0 MB)
White background (JPEG 3.1 MB)

Speakers

Albert Bates is author of ten books on law, energy, history and environment, including Climate in Crisis (1990) that accurately predicted the effects of Hurricane Katrina, including latent dangers from toxic wastes. His next book, The Peak Oil Survival Guide and Cookbook, is due in stores in 2006. During his 26-year career as an attorney he argued environmental and civil rights cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and drafted a number of legislative Acts. He holds a number of design patents and was inventor of the concentrating photovoltaic arrays and solar-powered automobile displayed at the 1982 World's Fair. He has been Director of the Global Village Institute for Appropriate Technology (www.i4at.org) since 1984 and the Ecovillage Training Center (www.thefarm.org/etc) since 1994, where he has now taught sustainable design, natural building, agriculture and technology to students from more than 50 nations. He is past President and Chairman of the Board of the Global Ecovillage Network (www.ecovillage.org) and produced the two videotapes currently being used to tell the ecovillage story, Global Ecovillage Network and The Habitat Revolution.

John Darnell currently serves as Energy and Environment Projects Coordinator for U.S. Congressman Roscoe Bartlett, R-MD. During his studies and research toward a PhD in Biochemistry, he acquired a solid grounding in Thermodynamics. The challenge of the Energy Crisis of the '70's and '80's stimulated him to develope concepts for efficient energy conversion applicable to solar, biomass/waste, wind energy and hydropower, heat engines and heat pumps, as well as air, ground and water transportation. He has collaborated with Roscoe Bartlett (a PhD Physiologist himself) on designing and building passive solar homes. Dr. Bartlett went on to build more than 50 solar homes around Frederick MD. After Dr. Bartlett retired and successfully ran for Congress, they resumed their partnership when Darnell joined the Congressman's staff as an advisor on energy and environmental matters.

Pincas Jawetz by education - physical chemist with added degrees in International management and business administration. Studied in 1959 the process of producing oil from oil shales in Spain, then after the first "energy crisis in 1973 got back full time to the subject of energy policy. Under Mr. Herman Kahn of the Hudson Institute was involved in writing the only energy policy the US ever had - the creation of the Synfuels Corporation. With the agreement of Mr. Kahn got involved in biomass fuels including ethanol; developed the concept of using ethanol for purpose of octane in unleaded gasoline. Continued further work on biomass fuels and eventually on all sorts of renewable energy with the Organization of American States and eventually the office of the US Comptroller General, the Center for Strategic and Internationbal studies of Gergetown University etc. Tought Sustainable Development at New York University and prepared the Promptbook on this subject for the UN Summit at Johannesburg. Lately wrote for Culture Change Media and for www.SustainabiliTank.info. Can be contacted via PJ@SustainabiliTank.info

Michael Kane is best known as an investigative reporter for www.FromTheWildernss.com, where he has written extensively on 9/11 and energy issues. He is now intensely investigating renewable energy, having interviewed and questioned many prominent leaders in the field of renewables, as well as reading and reporting on endless industry reports. In June of 2005, Kane attended the Renewable Energy Finance Forum (REFF - Wall St.) at the Waldorf Astoria in NYC, where he questioned Steve Westly, the Controller of California, and Michael Eckhart, the president of the American Council On Renewable Energy (ACORE). Kane contributed a chapter to Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil. He is also an accomplished musician and social worker.

James Howard Kunstler has written on environmental and economic issues for the New York Times Sunday Magazine and Op-Ed page, the Atlantic Monthly, Rolling Stone, and the Guardian. The author of nine novels and four works of nonfiction, he maintains an engaging blog which may be found on his website: http://www.kunstler.com/. His recent book, The Long Emergency, Surviving Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century, was described by author Michael Shuman as the "Dante's Inferno of the twenty-first century."

Jan Lundberg was educated on the high seas as a teenage sailor visiting dozens of countries before returning to his native California. He was active in environmental politics at UCLA and spent the next 15 years with the family business, Lundberg Survey. Its Lundberg Letter became known as the "bible of the oil industry" for predicting the Second Oil Shock in 1979. In 1988 he left industry and founded a nonprofit institute that has evolved into culturechange.org. Throughout the 1990s he worked to decrease society's dependence on petroleum by fighting road construction, publishing Auto-Free Times magazine, and operating Pedal Power Produce in Humboldt County, California. He lives in Berkeley where he writes and organizes cities to enact ordinances for fees on plastic bags dispensed at supermarkets.

Jason Meggs, Co-founder of the Plan B Project to assess legislative and policy barriers to sustainability in the face of both emergency and long-term crises of resource scarcity. Meggs is a graduate student of law and city planning at UC Berkeley. He has a long history leading campaigns for sustainable practices, particularly in the interest of bicycling, walking and mass transportation as well as housing, environmental justice and other civil and human rights. His work has ranged from grass roots organizing to spearheading and shepherding legislative processes at the local, state and national level.

Dan Miner, Senior Vice President, Long Island City Business Development Corporation. Dan has worked in local economic development in Queens and upstate in Orange County, NY since 1990. He has been involved in many activist campaigns, and has served on the Planning Board in Middletown, NY, as well as on the boards of Orange Environment and the National Nutritional Foods Association. At LICBDC, he connects constituents from industrial, commercial, and arts sectors to a variety of business services, and coordinates one of the City's largest annual business-to-business exhibitions. Dan is researching policy options that will enable NYC businesses and civic organizations to rapidly adjust to a fuel-deprived future. He has a B.A. in psychology from NYU, and a J.D. from Cornell University, and is a graduate of the Coro Leadership NY program. He lives in Jackson Heights, Queens. http://www.licbdc.org/

Aaron Naparstek is a journalist, author and community activist. He writes on transportation, energy and urban environmental issues for the New York Press, New York Magazine and on his blog, naparstek.com. He is the author of Honku: The Zen Antidote for Road Rage, a book of haiku poetry inspired by the sociopathic behavior of New York City motorists as observed from his apartment window. As a project coordinator and volunteer for Transportation Alternatives Naparstek has helped to win a major expansion of car-free hours in Prospect Park, on-street bike lanes and traffic-calming for Downtown Brooklyn. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son where he is a founder of the Park Slope Neighbors community group.

Jenna Orkin: The mother of a student at Stuyvesant High School, located four blocks north of the World Trade Center, Jenna Orkin co-founded the World Trade Center Environmental Organization in the wake of 9/11. A graduate of Oxford University in Music and a former cable tv interviewer of writers such as Calvin Trillin, Quentin Crisp and Fran Lebowitz, she has been published in the New York Times and the national Indian newspaper The Hindu. This summer Orkin "lobbied" Congress on Peak Oil which she learned about from the groundbreaking work of Mike Ruppert and Jan Lundberg.

David Pimentel is a professor of ecology and agricultural sciences at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853-0901. His Ph.D. is from Cornell University. His research spans the fields of energy, ecological and economic aspects of pest control, biological control, biotechnology, sustainable agriculture, land and water conservation, and environmental policy. Pimentel has published more than 590 scientific papers and 23 books and has served on many national and government committees including the National Academy of Sciences; President's Science Advisory Council; U.S Department of Agriculture; U.S. Department of Energy; U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare; Office of Technology Assessment of the U.S. Congress; and the U.S. State Department.
Ethanol Production Using Corn, Switchgrass, and Wood; Biodiesel Production Using Soybean and Sunflower (PDF)
Cornell ecologist's study finds that producing ethanol and biodiesel from corn and other crops is not worth the energy

David Room, Director of North American Operations, Post Carbon Institute: Dave is a social entrepreneur with a strong interest and background in environmental affairs and the use of technology for communications and collaboration. Dave manages many aspects of PCI's North American operations including events, projects, web, products, and sales. He also is managing editor and an interviewer for Global Public Media, as well as a frequent lecturer. As a journalist and speaker, he focuses on relocalization in the urban context, youth, politics, and impacts on people of color and the poor. Prior to Post Carbon Institute, he founded a small business importing beverage concentrates from the Philippines and before that a software company that developed a peer-to-peer application for sharing digital information among media properties. Previously, he has also been an environmental and management consultant, intranet developer, and technical sales engineer. He has a Masters in Engineering Economic Systems and a B.S, in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

Michael C. Ruppert is the author of "Crossing The Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil". Published in September 2004, it is the second-largest selling book about the attacks of 9/11 after the Keane Commission report. "Rubicon" is the only book to show that U.S. policy since then has been consistent with Peak Oil imperatives. Mike is also the publisher/editor of "From The Wilderness", a newsletter read in more than 50 countries around the world. Mike is a highly sought after lecturer on Peak Oil, having spoken in ten countries. Mike's current focus is on individual and community preparedness for the challenges now facing us all. Mike is a former LAPD narcotics investigator, whistleblower and a 1973 Honors Graduate of UCLA in Political Science.
GOVERNMENT, FINANCIAL, AND POLITICAL AWARENESS OF PEAK OIL PRIOR TO 2005


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