Post Peak Living UnCrash Course

We are at the beginning of converging crises, each building on the other: the financial meltdown, peak oil and dramatic climate change. Perhaps with just one we could have managed but the impacts from all three are going to test us in ways we haven't imagined yet. The changes to our lifestyle have already begun and the trajectory is clear. It is now virtually certain that we will watch oil become scarce, crop yields decline, sea levels rise — and our whole financial structure buckle under the strain.

Are you preparing for this perfect storm of global crises? Do you even know how to prepare? Will you simply hunker down or will you see the opportunities to create a new life as well?

http://www.postpeakliving.com/uncrash-course

Our course, led by expert instructors who have been preparing for years, will go beyond preparation and will teach you to become someone who is committed to being a vital member of their community and living a fulfilling life during and after the transition away from fossil fuels. Creating community begins right away as course participants share their knowledge with each other via a private online forum in between course sessions.

Get ready quickly

The instructors have already spent years learning what you need to know and will generously share their knowledge with you. They will tell you the essential skills that are the most valuable to learn now.

Save Money

We'll make sure you don't go down blind alleys we've already investigated or purchase products that won't last or aren't worth the money.

Receive Support Throughout the Course

The course instructors participate in the private forum answering questions and point out additional resources that address your direct question.

Involve the Whole Family

Gather the whole family around the computer to learn new material and afterwards begin working on the homework assignments together.

You can continue to wait for global warming to reduce crop yields, oil to shoot back up over $100 barrel or for deflation or hyperinflation to wipe out the middle class. Or you can start preparing now because you can see that we are all going to experience remarkable lifestyle changes.

In this six week online course, not only will you mentally prepare for a very different world, you will prepare in these key areas:

Health

We have moved the session on Health earlier (to the second week) and have expanded it temporarily to include preparation for the pandemic. The Center for Disease Control is now stating that the best case scenario for this fall's flu season is the following:

• infection rates up to 50% and a mortality rate of 0.5%; this is similar to the Asian flu, which killed approximately two million people in 1957


• for comparison, the seasonal flu infects between 10% and 15% of the populace and has a mortality rate of 0.1%

This is not yet commonly known, so we will cover:

• How to prepare for the pandemic at the same time



• Practices and products to put in place and purchase now

In addition to the above, you will also learn to prepare for a declining health care system in the medium term due to the collapsing economy:

• why getting healthy now could make a big difference later


• key medicines to get while they are widely available


• alternatives to Western medicine that are clinically proven to work

Skills

As unemployment increases, the formal economy will decline and the informal one will grow. This will require a new set of skills so that you can obtain goods and services. Perhaps paradoxically, it's also an excellent time to start a business. Many imported products will disappear from the shelves leaving room for local manufacturers and repair people.

As we get poorer, we believe most jobs that exist today will disappear. They are a product of an energy abundant world. We'll show you how to navigate the transition period — the period when you have to earn money in the current economy while learning your new skill.

In addition, you will learn:

• how to select a skill that returns the greatest profit


• the essential skills everyone should learn



• how to avoid the pitfalls people fall into while transitioning


• how to start learning those skills


• why industrial society will not disappear and how to use that during your preparation

Food

It takes time to learn how to grow food, so we'll get you started right away, plus we'll cover:

• how the "just-in-time" food system will be impacted by the financial crisis, peak oil and climate change — and how to prepare


• growing food in suburban and urban environments


• which kinds of food to grow and what you will need to grow them



• how to get started with backyard animals like chickens and goats

Transportation

In a world of declining oil, transportation will dramatically change. Find out:

• how to prepare for sky-high oil prices and oil shortages, which will greatly impact transportation


• whether we will be driving electric cars or electric bikes, and why



• which of the new transportation technologies we think are worth purchasing (should you buy an electric car? If so, what do you need to look for during your purchase?)


• how to get ready for more difficult mobility


• why even public transportation is going to get more difficult, and how you can prepare for that

Finances and Shelter

As jobs disappear and people watch the prospect of retirement disappear, handling your current wealth will be critical. Also, the nature of shelter is already changing with families and friends moving in with each other; more changes are on the way. In this section, you will learn:

• what to do with your assets


• innovative ways to stay sheltered during the transition


• alternative ways to heat a house


• the most cost-effective efficiency improvements for a home

Disaster Preparation

As Hurricane Katrina showed us, even in a healthy economy the government will strain to help people recover from disasters. As oil declines, you will need to be resilient and have established a strong community around you. In this section, you will learn:

• what makes a great earthquake/disaster kit


• skills to know for a disaster


• how to create a disaster plan for your family


• how much food and water you really need

Throughout the course, we'll point out which books to have on your bookshelf, which skills to begin learning now and which products to buy while they are still available (particularly imported ones).

The course textbook is When Technology Fails: A Manual For Self-Reliance, Sustainability, And Surviving The Long Emergency by Matthew Stein.

Instructors

Your course has one of two instructors.

André Angelantoni, BSc.

Civil Engineering

Previously a sustainability consultant who supported over 35 businesses to obtain their Green Business Certification, Mr. Angelantoni is the Co-Founder of Post Peak Living and the author of The Guide to Post Peak Living. He has been preparing for the impact of peak oil and climate change since 2007. He is a registered Federal Emergency Management Agency volunteer (trained for post-earthquake remediation) and has given preparation presentations to business (Sun, eBay, business groups), politicians and citizen groups throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. Mr. Angelantoni also helped found Post Carbon Marin.

Jason Bradford, Ph.D.

Evolutionary and Population Biology

Dr. Bradford is an expert biologist who has been working in Mendocino, CA on relocalization issues for the past four years. He founded WELL (Willits Economic Localization) and has pioneered how to grow food in suburban environments; he harvests rainwater from his roof and runs an organic, commercial farm (see http://www.well95490.org). Dr. Bradford is also the host of The Reality Report, a long-format interview radio show in Mendocino in which he interviews the leading figures in energy and relocalization (click here for past shows). Dr. Bradford was a key advisor in the development of the UnCrash Course curriculum.

When and Where

The courses take place over six weeks on Saturday or Monday mornings from 10am to 1pm PST and occur completely online. There is a 5-minute break at 11am and noon.

The September course will be taught by André Angelantoni and the November course will be taught by Jason Bradford. The dates are:

September 5 September 12 September 19 September 26 October 3 October 10

Or

November 2 November 9 November 16 November 23 November 30 December 7

The course is best experienced with an Internet connection, however, we can accommodate people with a single voice line by sending materials ahead of time. You will want a good long distance plan or calling cards or you can use a service such as Skype or Jajah.

Price

The early registration price is $199 until three weeks before the course start date (see the registration page for exact dates). Registration includes all six sessions and forum support. Regular registration is priced at $249.

You must be able to attend the first session and at least four of all six sessions.

All homework is submitted each week for instructor feedback. The homework takes between two and eight hours each week. Please register in the course only if you are willing to commit this amount of time to your preparation. This is not a 'listen-only' course.

Families Learn from Each Other

All course participants get a dedicated online forum to exchange information and accelerate their learning. You will have homework. You do not have to do the homework but considering what is at stake that would be unfortunate.

You are registering per household so that means you can have multiple people attend, including older children (ages 14 and up). We will make the tone light so families can participate and we will concentrate on what do to. If your whole family participates, you will definitely have fun together building gardens, building solar ovens and having conversations over dinner.

It's Crunch Time

Time is the most important thing you have available right now. We strongly urge you to register today.

Extra Coaching

Individual coaching is available from both instructors. Please contact us for more information and rates.

Registration is now open for the fall course and we're looking forward to working with you!

Report of the San Francisco Peak Oil Preparedness Task Force

This seven-member body was charged with coordinating the assessment of San Francisco's vulnerability to energy price shocks, determining appropriate measures to mitigate municipal vulnerability, and to draft a comprehensive response plan for recommendation to the Board of Supervisors. The Task Force released this report and held its final meeting on March 17 2009.

---

From the Executive Summary:

San Francisco was born at the beginning of the oil age, and the city has flourished during an era in which fossil fuels became the foundation of our economy and society. Petroleum and natural gas heat our homes and light our offices; they fuel the trucks that bring us our food and the cars and buses that move us around; they drive our industries and power the information technologies that marvel the world. Today, the City and its inhabitants are utterly reliant on fossil fuel energy: 84% of the energy consumed in San Francisco comes from oil and natural gas.

Because petroleum and natural gas are finite resources, this situation cannot last. If San Francisco is to thrive in the 21st century and remain a world-class city, it must begin planning today for how to maintain itself in a post-fossil fuel age.

The rate at which the globe consumes oil is unsustainable. There is about as much petroleum in the ground as has been pumped out and used up to date - which means we are roughly at the halfway point, or the peak, of global supplies. Except during the oil embargoes of the 1970s and their lingering effects, from the 1880s until 2005, enough oil was produced to keep the price of oil between $15 and $30 per barrel (adjusted for inflation, in 2007 dollars). Since 2005, however, worldwide oil production has been on a plateau, leading to a sudden sharp increase in the price of oil to record-high levels, dropping only because of (and contributing in no small part to) a contraction in the economy of the entire globe.

Eventually, this plateau will turn into an inexorable global decline in oil production. A number of major individual producers have already passed their production peak; the United States was once the largest producer in the world, but has seen falling domestic production since 1971 and now must import more than two thirds of its oil. Outside OPEC, oil production is falling about 3 percent a year. Eventually - regardless of much effort is put into extracting oil from their fields - OPEC too will be unable to resist a steady production decline. It is the prospect of this inexorable decline that is referred to as Peak Oil.

...

As production of oil and natural gas eventually begin to decline, San Francisco will face a painful adjustment - unless it prepares in advance. Experts are divided on exactly when the decline will begin, with some arguing that the peak of production may not occur until as late as the 2030s, and others positing that the peak has, in fact, already happened. Regardless of the exact date of the peak, what is clear is that sooner the City of San Francisco addresses this looming threat and prepares for the difficult transition ahead, the better off the City and its residents will be.

It is the job of the Peak Oil Preparedness Task Force to assess the degree and nature of San Francisco's vulnerability to an eventual, inexorable rise in fuel prices, and ultimately a scarcity in oil and natural gas. Because this report addresses both fuels, it refers to the issue as Peak Oil & Gas.

Impacts

Petroleum and natural gas have become essential to existence as we know it; their scarcities threaten to severely disrupt our quality of life. The most important impacts of Peak Oil & Gas on San Francisco will be:

• Violent fluctuations in energy prices


• Rising food prices; possible food shortages


• Damage to the overall national and local economy


• Spreading poverty, as the economy contracts


• Loss of confidence in the future


• Increasing cost of travel and freight, especially by air; declining air traffic


• Increasing pressure on public transit


• Exacerbation of other problems such as climate change and credit contractions



• Increasing gentrification as the affluent move to the City from the suburbs, displacing those who cannot afford to stay


• Declining city government revenue, due to
  
  
  
  • generally lower level of economic activity
  
  
  • fewer conventioneers and tourists
  
  
  • lower revenue-sharing from state and federal governments
  
  
  
  

Strategies

Addressing these impacts will not be easy. The challenges of reducing our overall reliance on energy from fossil fuels and finding new sources of energy are so enormous that they will require an array of adaptive strategies at every level of government. The most important strategies for the City to pursue are:

Energy:

• Instruct City agencies and departments that planning must include a scenario of energy decline


• Implement our city energy buying cooperative, Community Choice Aggregation, and move ahead with the planned efficiency programs and development of electricity based on renewables


• Encourage the installation of local, renewable, distributed electric generating facilities


• Pursue the conversion of the electric system to a smart grid

Food:

• Convert vacant and underutilized public and private properties to food gardens


• Vastly expand urban agriculture programs and services

Transportation:

• Expand passenger capacity of all mass transit


• Avoid infrastructure investments which are predicated on increased auto use


• Convert City equipment, buses, and trucks to 100% biodiesel from reclaimed lipids, as feasible


• Discourage private auto use by disincentivizing car travel and ensuring that alternatives (walking, bicycling, public transportation) are competitive with driving


• Expand the potential for rail and water transport, for both passengers and freight

Recycling:

• Encourage local manufacturing that utilizes recycled material as feedstock

Buildings:

• Retrofit the building stock for energy conservation, efficiency and on-site generation

Societal Functioning:

• Begin an education plan, to inform San Francisco residents about Peak Oil & Gas and its implications

And most importantly, with all of these policies, start now. Conditions will be far better in the long run if the City begins addressing this unfolding challenge immediately. The transition cannot be done quickly; the City faces a limited window of opportunity to begin, after which adaptation will become enormously difficult, painful, and expensive. There is no time to lose.

http://postcarboncities.net/node/4374

What is a Transition Town (or village / city / forest / island)?

Here's how it all appears to be evolving...

It all starts off when a small collection of motivated individuals within a community come together with a shared concern: how can our community respond to the challenges, and opportunities, of Peak Oil and Climate Change?

They begin by forming an initiating group and then adopt the Transition Model (explained here at length, and in bits here and here) with the intention of engaging a significant proportion of the people in their community to kick off a Transition Initiative.

A Transition Initiative is a community (lots of examples here) working together to look Peak Oil and Climate Change squarely in the eye and address this BIG question:

"for all those aspects of life that this community needs in order to sustain itself and thrive, how do we significantly increase resilience (to mitigate the effects of Peak Oil) and drastically reduce carbon emissions (to mitigate the effects of Climate Change)?"

After going through a comprehensive and creative process of:

• awareness raising around peak oil, climate change and the need to undertake a community lead process to rebuild resilience and reduce carbon
  
  
• connecting with existing groups in the community
  
• building bridges to local government
  
• connecting with other transition initiatives
  
• forming groups to look at all the key areas of life (food, energy, transport, health, heart & soul, economics & livelihoods, etc)
  
• kicking off projects aimed at building people's understanding of resilience and carbon issues and community engagement
  
• eventually launching a community defined, community implemented "Energy Descent Action Plan" over a 15 to 20 year timescale
  

This results in a coordinated range of projects across all these areas of life that strives to rebuild the resilience we've lost as a result of cheap oil and reduce the community's carbon emissions drastically.

The community also recognises two crucial points:

• that we used immense amounts of creativity, ingenuity and adaptability on the way up the energy upslope, and that there's no reason for us not to do the same on the downslope
  
• if we collectively plan and act early enough there's every likelihood that we can create a way of living that's significantly more connected, more vibrant and more in touch with our environment than the oil-addicted treadmill that we find ourselves on today.
  

If you want to find out more, check out the other menu items on the left hand site of the page.

Final point

Just to weave the climate change and peak oil situations together...

• Climate change makes this carbon reduction transition essential
  
• Peak oil makes it inevitable
  
• Transition initiatives make it feasible, viable and attractive (as far we can tell so far...)
  

Would You Know How to Survive After the Oil Crash?

By Tara Lohan, AlterNet
Posted on September 17, 2009, Printed on September 17, 2009

http://www.alternet.org/story/142575/

Do you know how to make shoes? Can you build a house? How about grow food? Do you have a doctor and a dentist in your circle of friends?

These are the questions that Andre Angelantoni thinks you should be able to answer in order to plan for the next 10 to 15 years. Angelantoni believes there are radical changes ahead for our society -- and no, it's not the rapture he sees coming, but a post-peak-oil world.

Simply put, peak oil is the point when the world hits the maximum rate of petroleum extraction, and after that, production begins to decline. Since the calculations of geophysicist M. King Hubbert, Ph.D., in 1956, there has been speculation about when (and for some, if) the world will hit its peak production of oil.

Angelantoni is among the crowd of geologists, oil-industry experts and numbers crunchers that believes we are at or near peak, and the way down will be a painful and bumpy ride.

A few years ago, Angelantoni left San Francisco's dot-com (or dot-bomb, as he says) rat race to start a business helping people prepare for life after cheap oil. He offers an online "Uncrash Course" that covers things like how to survive potential disease outbreaks, what career path you should be on and what skills you can offer your community, how you should prepare for an environmental disaster, what do you do about your finances, where should you live, how you will eat and how you will get around.

And he's not alone. Across the country, groups known as "transition towns" are gaining steam, helping their communities become more resilient in the face of a changing energy landscape.

Is Peak Oil for Real?

It would be infinitely more convenient at the moment to dismiss Angelantoni as an end-of-the-world extremist, like the survivalists who have taken to the hills to grow their own food and otherwise live off the land.

Except that there is growing evidence about peak oil and when we may actually hit the top of production (and likewise, what that means for our slide down the decline).

In 2008, Richard Heinberg, a well-known author and educator about peak oil wrote:

Petroleum is a finite substance, and we have reached the inevitable point at which it simply isn't possible to increase the rate at which we extract it from the ground. Most oil-producing countries, including the U.S., have already seen their glory days and are now watching output from their wells gradually dwindle. Only a few nations are early in the production cycle and able to ramp up the rate of flow.

Not everyone shares his certainty. Bill McKibben, the renowned environmental writer and climate-change activist is a little more cautious:

Who knows if we're actually going to see oil production peak sometime soon? Not me. I've read persuasive arguments that we will from writers like Michael Klare and James Howard Kunstler and Paul Roberts. I've also read confident counterarguments from people who've been right in the past, like Daniel Yergin of Cambridge Energy Research Associates.

Oil depletion is not a straightforward physical law, like the fact that the molecular structure of carbon dioxide traps heat that would otherwise radiate back out to space. Instead, it's a detective story that turns on questions like, are the Saudis lying about how fast oil is being depleted in their giant field at Ghawar?

Energy consultant Michael Lynch recently wrote an anti-peak-oil op-ed in the New York Times by. He wrote, "Like many Malthusian beliefs, peak-oil theory has been promoted by a motivated group of scientists and laymen who base their conclusions on poor analyses of data and misinterpretations of technical material."

Joseph Romm, who writes for Climate Progress and previously served as a high-ranking member of the U.S Department of Energy during the Clinton years, quickly challenged Lynch's op-ed.

But the most compelling evidence may now be coming -- the U.S government itself. Michael Klare, author of Resource Wars and Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Petroleum Dependency, wrote in June about the findings of the 2009 report, "International Energy Outlook," from the Energy Information Administration of the U.S. Department of Energy. The EIA has previously scoffed at peak oil charges. Until now.

Klare writes:

For the first time, the well-respected Energy Information Administration appears to be joining with those experts who have long argued that the era of cheap and plentiful oil is drawing to a close. ...

For years now, assorted petroleum geologists and other energy types have been warning that world oil output is approaching a maximum sustainable daily level -- a peak -- and will subsequently go into decline, possibly producing global economic chaos. Whatever the timing of the arrival of peak oil's actual peak, there is growing agreement that we have, at last, made it into peak-oil territory, if not yet to the moment of irreversible decline.

This is groundbreaking coming from the U.S. government, although don't expect President Barack Obama to mention peak oil in any upcoming speeches.

Determining the peak is not so cut and dried, McKibben points out. In addition, tiny market changes, like a period of economic decline where less oil is consumed can mask depleting supplies. But for those who are convinced of the data, they aren't waiting around for the federal government to jump into crisis mode.

What Will a Post-Peak-Oil World Look Like?

It's an intellectual exercise to even imagine what our lives would look like if oil was no longer cheap and plentiful. Sure, there will always be some in the ground, but when it becomes too expensive to get it out, there will be big changes afoot.

We depend on oil to get us to the store and to get our food and goods there as well. It's a huge component of the industrial agriculture model that feeds most of our country. And petroleum is in just about everything we buy -- from bubble gum to tires to eyeglasses.

And when you consider how oil powers our economy, things look bleak.

"The global-energy equation is changing rapidly, and with it is likely to come great power competition, economic peril, rising starvation, growing unrest, environmental disaster and shrinking energy supplies, no matter what steps are taken," Klare wrote.

Peak-oil prophet James Howard Kunstler, who has written extensively on the subject, echoes his sentiments. In his book The Long Emergency, he cautions: "What is generally not comprehended about this predicament is that the developed world will begin to suffer long before the oil and gas actually run out. The American way of life -- which is now virtually synonymous with suburbia -- can run only on reliable supplies of dependably cheap oil and gas."

And it gets worse in his eyes. "Oil led the human race to a threshold of nearly godlike power to transform the world. It was right there in the ground, easy to get. We used it as if there was no tomorrow. Now there may not be one."

Life After the Peak

But Angelantoni doesn't quite see it that way. There will be life after cheap oil, at least for many of us, but it will be vastly different from what most Americans are accustomed to.

We may crash and burn, or we can aim for something Angelantoni calls "creative descent." This involves teaching people about the coming crisis, retraining them in skills that will be useful and helping communities to be more localized.

"The first thing, really is to figure out where you want to live," said Angelantoni. Some areas, like the Southwest, may prove to be fairly unlivable as climate change kicks in as well. And disaster-prone areas, like geological-fault-riddled California may be dicey, he says.

But it's not all bad.

"There will be a lot of opportunity to start new businesses," he said. "We have to localize."

The relocalization movement has been around for decades but has gotten a second wind as the stumbling economy and mounting environmental pressures have shocked many into action. The basic premise is for communities to become more self-sufficient, and hence more resilient. This often means more local-food networks, more local energy and water systems and robust community businesses.

This idea has recently spun into transition towns, which has spread around the U.S. and in 14 countries. They provide a structure for communities to relocalize. Towns form working groups on issues like energy, food, transportation and local economics.

"It's not a political movement, it doesn't have a political bias," said Transition US Executive Director Carolyn Stayton. "Different types of people can be interested in it -- it is an us, not a them, it is about how we all can together create a future that works for us."

Each town has its own priorities and issues it is working on. For instance, in Santa Cruz, Calif., they are holding a reskilling expo where people can learn about composting, beekeeping, water catchment and nonviolent communication, in addition to workshops about peak oil and local economics.

Folks in Berea, Ky., just held a 100-mile potluck to help promote local food and farmers and to grow community awareness about their transition initiatives. 

It's easy, she says, to become paralyzed by fear -- global warming, economic turmoil and the loss of cheap energy can be a lot to take in. Transition towns examine those issues, but then "imagines what can be on the other side," Stayton said.

"What would our future look like? People imagine it looking like a healthy, wholesome place where people don't have to commute, where neighbors know each other, where business is local and vibrant and people have skills that they are sharing. The vision becomes so enticing that the problems shrink in their power, and people get propelled to create a future that solves the problems."

For Angelantoni, this kind of community resilience is the opposite of many survivalists, who head to the hills to see if they can live independently. His version of surviving a post-peak-oil world is dependent on communities coming together and adapting to new ways of supporting each other -- leaving their big cars and their big houses and their many toys behind.

"We are going to have to get much more practical," he said. "Are you going to be the butcher, baker, or candlestick maker in your local community? What are the skills you need? What are the skills you have?"

And the time to start answering those questions is now. "Some people think we have until the end of the century to get off oil. I'm not one of those people," he said. "I think we goofed. I think we are going to see, with the economy cratering, that we may have as little as 10 to 20 years."

Angelantoni echoes what folks like Kunstler have been saying for years -- new technology won't bail us out of this one, and we've started too late on renewable energy and alternative fuels to have them quickly replace fossil fuels in our energy diet.

Taking it to the Next Level

There is a least some amount of shuffling above the neighborhood level when it comes to peak oil.

The city of San Francisco recently put together a Peak Oil Preparedness Task Force, which is getting ready to present its findings to the city's Board of Supervisors. Like most of Americans, San Francisco is fossil-fuel dependent, with 84 percent of the energy consumed coming from oil and natural gas, both likely at or nearing peaks.

So what's a city to do? Here's what the task force says:

• Encourage the installation of local, renewable, distributed electric-generating facilities


• Pursue the conversion of the electric system to a smart grid


• Convert vacant and underutilized public and private properties to food gardens


• Vastly expand urban agriculture programs and services


• Expand passenger capacity of all mass transit


• Avoid infrastructure investments that are predicated on increased auto use



• Convert city equipment, buses and trucks to 100 percent biodiesel from reclaimed lipids, as feasible


• Discourage private auto use by disincentivizing car travel and ensuring that alternatives (walking, bicycling, public transportation) are competitive with driving


• Expand the potential for rail and water transport, for both passengers and freight


• Encourage local manufacturing that utilizes recycled material as feedstock


• Retrofit the building stock for energy conservation, efficiency and on-site generation


• Begin an education plan, to inform San Francisco residents about peak oil and gas and its implications

One of the main things the task force stresses is beginning to take action ... now.

We will only know when we've hit peak oil after it is has already happened, and that means we may be nearing too late.

"The recent spread of peak-oil resolutions and projects by cities and towns across America is thus a very hopeful sign," John Michael Greer wrote in the task force report; he has authored essays about "catabolic collapse." 

"It's going to take drastic changes and a great deal of economic rebuilding before these communities can get by on the more-limited resources of a deindustrial future, but the crucial first steps toward sustainability are at least on the table now. If our future is to be anything but a desperate attempt to keep our balance as we skid down the slope of collapse and decline, these projects may well point the way."

And what can the average person do?

"If you own a house, think about putting solar on it, making it more energy efficient or moving to some place smaller," said Jeanne Rosenmeier, a member of San Francisco's task force. "You should be thinking about how to get around without a car and if you have a place to grow a bit of food. There are people out there saying 'hoard gold, buy guns,' but I'm not advising that."

Angelantoni believes courses like his are a good place to start.

"When people go down the tunnel of thinking about what it will look like, they get stopped at 'I lost my job, how do I make money, what do I do for food,' " he said. "We aim to show them a glimpse of what it could be like on the other side -- people are now thinking about how to become business people -- and less about who's going to hire them.

"People need to get in action now and think of how they can be a resilient citizen, a contributor. We've labeled ourselves as consumers for so long, we don't see ourselves as citizens."

Tara Lohan is a senior editor at AlterNet. You can follow her on Twitter @TaraLohan.

© 2009 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.


View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/142575/