The next time you make a purchase and the clerk blindly puts your 2 item purchase in a bag…….REFUSE. More over educate them. Tell them that you do not want to take a bag that is going get caught in a breeze and wind up decorating an inner city tree this winter. Tell them that you don’t want to choke a seagull. Tell them that you don’t want to clog the sewer at the end of you street and cause a flood.

Tell them that you don’t want a bag because it is simply not required, especially when the milk jug you just purchased already has a handle.

Come on! How asleep are we that we accept a bag for a small single purchase that already comes shrouded in plastic.

While you are at it, there in line make a scene. Take a minute and educate all the other people in line with you and invite them not to take a bag if they don’t need one.

There is a pelican in the Gulf of Mexico somewhere who will owe you one.

The massive efficiencies that we have been able to create in developing our modern society are truly amazing. But meeting the demands of an ever increasing population is putting a burden on the natural environment (on which we are completely dependent) that is unprecedented. This video is not about the big-bad companies that exploit the natural environment, it is about you and me and our role in that exploitation.  I recently went to cut firewood with author and naturalist Jeff Hinich and got a very strong reminder of this.

The convenience of modern life comes at a cost and there are many things you can do to change it.

A rain barrel acts as cistern that captures rain water from your downspout and and makes it available for use in your garden or perhaps in an emergency situation, even a supply of water that you could purify and use for drinking.

I was greatly inspired when I interviewed Jessie Lerner of Sustain Dane at the Midwest Renewable Energy Fair about the difference that having a rain barrel can make.

Sustain Dane is a not-for-profit organization based in Dane County Wisconsin, which is dedicated to creating communities that deeply enjoy, care for and are sustained by their unique environment.

For less than $90 you can equip your house with one of these unique rain barrels. Sustain Dane also offers discussion courses that allow you to educate yourself in creating a more sustainable lifestyle and local community along with fellow global citizens.

Learn more at www.sustaindane.org. RainReserve™ focuses on raising community awareness of water related issues. For additional information rain barrels and indoor water conservation kites for kitchen and bath, visit www.rainfordane.org.

As Americans recognize the un-sustainability of the many trips taken to local or “neighborhood” destinations in wasteful oversized SUVs, there is a new class of electric vehicle that is intended exclusively for this kind of driving. There are a number of manufactures that are developing these kinds of vehicles. They are coming in a surprising variety as well. In this video, I interviewed Tom Shea of International Motor Works in LaCrosse, Wisconsin about an electric delivery van.

It looks like we’ve collectively made a huge mistake: we are fast approaching the point where we’ve extracted half of the cheap, easy-to-get oil and we thought the energy party was going to last forever. Despite decades of warnings, almost our entire infrastructure still runs on oil. In fact, 95% of all transportation energy comes from oil. With gasoline approaching $5/gallon and the certainty that it will go higher, we are looking at the end of our ability to run a complex society. The way we live now depends on abundant and inexpensive oil. Soon the gasoline shortages are going to start and our systems, which are of the highly-tuned just-in-time type, will start to falter and then break. Peak oil educators sometimes call this energy descent.

Historic production (left of dotted line) and predicted oil production at a 4% per annum decline rate. We have been on a production plateau since 2004.

There is still time to get ready, but the window is closing fast. Here are the first three things to take care of when planning for energy descent. Prepare your disaster kit. I recommend this for two reasons. First, recovering from a disaster is going to be much more difficult post-peak than pre-peak. It takes enormous amounts of fuel to move food and water to disaster areas and less of that will happen once the shortages begin. The second reason is because it gets people into the frame of mind needed to really understand the basics of living life. Choose where to live. Although I don’t think they are going to fall apart completely, cities may become unpleasant places to live. High-rise apartments that depend on vast quantities of energy to heat, cool and light them may become particularly unpleasant once the energy supply starts to stutter. James Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency, thinks that the small towns across the United States and Canada are ready to be reactivated, and I think he’s correct. They provide a good balance between access to food crops and access to services, like health care. Prepare for re-employment. The economy will decline as oil declines. Even now, at the very early stages, the airline industry is struggling with over a dozen airlines already bankrupt and more are on the way. It’s just as bad for the domestic car manufacturers, which don’t have the right product mix for a high-priced oil environment (worldwide tourism is reeling, too). One by one each sector the existing economy will fall apart and you will be lucky to have a job. That means you have to be resourceful and find a way to be useful to your community. Get yourself to the productive side of the economy. Learn to make, repair or grow something. And buy what you need now while the equipment and cash are still available. As you prepare, consider that we are moving from a world of cheap resources and expensive labor to exactly the opposite: labor is going to be cheap and resources are going to be very, very expensive.

Good luck on your preparations,

André Angelantoni

This article is based on the Post Peak Living UnCrash Course and The Guide to Post Peak Living. Both are free and are available at PostPeakLiving.com.

Modern industrial society has lost touch with the real value of what it produces. Our wasteful consumption and our disposable attitude toward so much of what we produce and use is going to hurt our children. In spite of the fact that most parents would never eat first and feed their kids what is left over, when it comes to our use of natural resources we are doing just that. As the planet’s population grows and we reach the peak of our oil production capacity along with many other minerals and materials we are robbing our children. We have eaten the best parts of the chicken and we are leaving them with the bone.

When you stop and really think about it, it is unsettling. This video invites you to re-think what you consider to be junk. It invites you to let go of the “What will the neighbors think” mindset and re-look at what you use and see if you can give it a second life.

The treatment and upkeep of those 18 million acres involves another 5 billion dollars worth of chemicals derived from petroleum. To give you an idea of what 18 million acres and 5 billion dollars represents that is 8 times bigger than Yellowstone National Park and 3 times the annual budget of the US National Park Service.

As part of walking the talk of Low Carbon Home, I share my experience of beginning the process of replacing my front lawn. This video was taken towards the end of two very long hot and dirty days of work.

How often does that plastic ware end up going into the garbage without even being used?

A plastic coffee lid is use for about an hour and then thrown away. Plastic bags are used for the trip home from the grocery store and then maybe reused once if you have a dog.  People who work in fast food restaurants habitually hand over plastic forks, knives and spoons, by the millions each day. Mostly no thought is given to the cumulative effect of this. Each day thousands of tons of waste plastic floats down sewers and into rivers around the world.

Most of that ends up in the oceans. In fact the Pacific Ocean has a vortex of circulating plastic that has been caught in a current called the North Pacific Gyre. (Click here to see an animated map created by Green Peace). The combination of plastic garbage and ocean currents have resulted in a literal carpet of garbage the size of Texas in the middle of the Pacific ocean.

Most people in North America eat at least 4 meals outside their home each week. If you are like most of these people you have many opportunities to refuse this plastic. A simple thing you can do is to keep one set of these utensils and re-use them. Plastic knives and forks can be cleaned just as easily as metal ones and will last nearly as long.

The other opportunity is to educate others to do the same. When you refuse the plastic utensils or, coffee lid or plastic bag, make sure that you let the person behind the counter know why you are refusing it. Saving and re-using plastic is the ethical thing to do.

When someone gives you plastic that you don’t need- think of the oceans and think of your kids.

Modern life has left us with the illusion that we are disconnected from wilderness. The virtual nature of the internet and cable television only reinforces this illusion. None the less this notion we are disconnected remains only an illusion. The wilderness areas and the oceans of the world are the lungs of our planet and like someone who has chain smoked for decades, we have no choice but to change our ways.

We have to re-establish our connection to the natural world and beyond that re-educate ourselves on how to live in harmony with it. This video represents some of my thoughts on the matter and more will follow.