Personal Information:

I first became aware of the Peak Oil issue after meeting Charles Shaw at a United for Peace and Justice retreat in December of 2004. Soon afterward, Charles offered to let me write for an online publication he had founded called Newtopia Magazine. Newtopia turned out to be much more than a magazine. It was a community of gifted and edgy writers, many of whom had experience in different areas of activism, including those that were considered off the reservation by the more mainstream peace and justice movement. It was working with Newtopia that inspired the genesis of what turned into a three-part series I wrote on sustainability that was published by Peace Journalism and reprinted in various other publications.

As an organizer for the Mt. Diablo Peace and Justice Center, based in Walnut Creek, I invited Richard Heinberg to speak to our community to educate them on Peak Oil this past February. A colleague who was more of a Peak Oil skeptic invited the former CEO of Pemex, Jose Alberro, to provide a "different perspective." It was the first one of our presentations where a reporter for the Contra Costa Times actually showed up. To my pleasant surprise, we got a very good write-up that appeared on the front page of the business section. Interestingly enough, Alberro did not deny the concept of Peak Oil but asserted that it would not happen for several decades and that the market was equipped to deal with it. So everyone can just go back to sleep now and not worry about it!

Around this same time, Tyler Snortum-Phelps, a local Green Party activist, had started a discussion group on Peak Oil in the Walnut Creek area called the Diablo Post Carbon Group. Since my focus was starting to move more toward Peak Oil and sustainability, it was a natural partnership.

I still have one foot in the peace and justice movement but have found it somewhat of a challenge to elicit serious interest in Peak Oil and sustainability from that quarter since many on the traditional left have not incorporated ecological sustainability into their analysis in any systemic way. Environmental concerns are too often tacked on as an afterthought to variations of Marxist thinking (oh, and by the way, we should throw a bone to the environment). Hence, the fundamental questioning of our excessively consumptive lifestyle here in America, which is necessitated by Peak Oil and other ecological crises, is not something that even most lefties want to deal with.