Personal Information:

I live in San Francisco, first learned of peak oil in summer 2004 when I saw "The End of Suburbia" with a friend at New College in San Francisco. Unlike many who don't process its message immediately, it came as no surprise to me that our finite planet would run out of any or all resources, and there would be a problem, although I didn't understand the time frame for oil depletion, nor before the movie did I understand the problem began at midpoint in the curve of use of the resource.

I found a meetup group about peak oil in October, 2004, and joined it; it has since evolved into San Francisco Oil Awareness. I also regularly attend the Post Carbon meeting in San Francisco, as well as the East Bay peak oil meeting in Oakland at the Rockridge Library. As my consciousness evolved around peak oil, I tried with varying degrees of success to explain it to friends and relatives whom I care about, also to almost anyone I didn't know who would hear me out. I showed "The End of Suburbia" and other videos frequently to folks in my home, and some of the people are also now involved with peak oil activism.

I am a native Iowan (New London, Iowa, population hovering around 2000 for the past 50 years), an original member of the Gay Liberation Front in Ames Iowa (1971) - yes, there was such a fine organization there then, and have been involved in political activism off and on throughout my life since the age of 19 because of my start in Gay Lib. A woman friend (the first vegetarian I'd ever met) talked to me about anarchism in about 1975, and as no other system I'd ever heard of explained adequately how I felt the world might better work than the way it seemed to not be working, I chose it as a belief structure, though never have bothered to study it enough to call myself much of an idealogue. Some friends who've heard me rant might disagree with me here. It's pretty obvious, though, that what we have in place now is in the process of destroying us, so my advice would be to the meek and intransigent: why not try something radical and alternative to see if you can't at least feel better about how you are living and what you believe?

In 1998 while managing the accounting department at a produce company in the bay area (it's very hard being an anarchist and a boss) one night I suddenly felt an intense pain that shot from between my shoulder blades down to my butt, and I was diagnosed as having what is known as an Aortic Dissection, Type B (think John Ritter, the former teevee star, who probably had Type A, a bit more fatal). After a few months of struggling to return to work, I went into an early retirement. I am presently happily living on the icing of the cake of my life, and every day now is just an extra bit of time I didn't expect to experience.

After a fairly long time in which I was not active in political stuff, along came our dumbest president ever and his insidious wars, so I returned to the streets. Then along came peak oil, the activism associated with it with any lack of any clear "solution," and that turned a lot of my previous notions of how the world works and how best to "fix" it on end. I have changed a lot in my personal lifestyle since my learning about peak oil, although it was not typical of most Americans anyway.

After a slow start in peak oil groups, mostly because of a lack of continuity in our membership, our local groups have caught some fire in the Bay Area and accomplished a bit in the past year or so. Much of the information surrounding our accomplishments is located on this web site at http://www.sfbayoil.org/ and many of my endeavors associated with San Francisco Oil Awareness are specifically at http://www.sfbayoil.org/sfoa/. My previous history of on again, off again, activism, has been very helpful in helping me to look clearly at the real issues we face with peak oil, and what our future may hold.

I am not in all ways a joiner; I am skeptical of "relocalization" as it is presently presented to us who are peak oil aware (it is generally never explained how it could possibly suddenly work, and platitudes of generalizations are NOT what we need presently), and even though I was instrumental in helping to get the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to pass the 2nd ever resolution in the US acknowleding peak oil (the first in a major American city), I don't believe even local government will be able to save us, so don't get your hopes up too high. If they did what they'd need to do to make a difference, they'd be un-elected so quickly one would wonder what had happened, this especially considering the state of cluelessness that besieges the American public as of 2006. What I think working with city government can do is provide a forum which can help to educate its citizenry, and, by doing that, possibly help in saving some more people down the road in what I personally feel will be a very bumpy, uncomfortable ride.

As of August, 2006, due to ongoing health concerns and the fact I've been doing a lot more than I should for awhile, and it's affecting my moods and my life, I'm stepping back and taking a bit of a rest and respite from peak oil as a sabbatical. Still keeping connected, just not busy.