Personal Information:

The implications from resource depletion first hit me in 1973 in the wake of the Arab Oil Embargo Living in Manhattan and having a car, it became difficult (not to mention expensive) to fill up. Long lines and fights at gasoline stations are still with me, and this shifted my perspective irrevocably about how people behave during resource shortages. From that time on, I lived to some extent in dissonance to the dominant culture. The profligate waste, rabid consumption and the inability of most people to see our actions in context still leaves me shaking my head.

I was not publicly active on energy and resource issues until 2002 when I got involved with an effort related to energy generation in San Francisco. In 2004, I went to a Meet Up event in the city of Alameda on the subject of Oil Awareness where I met some very interesting and clever people. That meeting morphed into monthly get-togethers at the home of David Room (who was the U.S. Coordinator for the Post Carbon Institute). I was in the middle of loads of clever, like-minded, and eccentric people who also stood in some dissonance to the culture.

Another member of the original meeting group, Michael Poremba and I started the San Francisco Post Carbon outpost with monthly meetings at my house. We've now moved to a more accessible and fancy location thanks to Tori Jacobs, we meet in her office conference room. It's thirty-three stories up, overlooking San Francisco Bay and the Bay Bridge! A little ironic, me thinks.

Michael Poremba and I teamed up with Rod Bracken (the poster was his idea) and David Menninger (he's the graphic artist on the project) to produce and distribute the now widely acclaimed Oil Age Poster (www.oilposter.org), which is sold online as well as at special events. Proceeds from the sale of the poster are used to provide gratis posters to educational institutions and educators. We've given away over 2500 so far!

My wife Ann and I live in San Francisco and have installed photovoltaic solar panels on our home. We are "struggling" to grow portion of our own food, and most of our present-day consumptive fever is quenched at local thrift stores.

I try to use less energy in my daily activities, though this is entirely symbolic in nature, you know, "pissing in the wind."