By Daniel Lerch, Post Carbon Cities Program Manager

Last week I escaped the cold, rainy Oregon winter for the even colder (but sunnier, at least) Minnesota winter. On an invitation from State Representative Bill Hilty and Phil Muessig of the State Sustainable Communities Network, I ventured up north for a two-day, five-city peak oil presentation whirlwind tour with John Kaufmann of the Oregon Department of Energy. (Hawaiian legislators take note: I still have some dates open over the next few months.)

Our events were variously targeted to state legislators, citizens, and local government officials and staff. With some adjustments for available time and my slowly-improving bronchitis, we did the same standard show at each:

• John introducing the data behind peak oil;
• Daniel discussing the Post Carbon Cities guidebook and how cities are facing a new challenge of "energy and climate uncertainty"; and
• John again, describing the work and recommendations of Portland's Peak Oil Task Force, for which he served as lead support staff last year.

Bill and his wife Laurie trekked with us through cold and snow as far afield as Duluth and Rochester, passing the usual suburban McMansion sprawl as well as two more distinctly Minnesotan icons: cornfields and ethanol plants. Appropriately, both home heating and ethanol figured repeatedly in the questions John and I fielded after our presentations. Minnesotans are understandably worried about how they're going to heat their (increasingly larger) homes as our incoming stream of oil and natural gas starts to shrink. And while more and more observers now recognize that ethanol is a terrible solution for our overdependence on oil, it's also hard to deny the benefits of local energy supply and local jobs that states like Minnesota get from ethanol investment.

Whether it's larger homes that need more heating or larger cars that need more fuel, the trend towards greater and more wasteful consumption --just when we're nearing the global high points of oil and natural gas production-- is more than a little worrying. It also speaks to a broader question I'm often asked after my Post Carbon Cities talks: How can we possibly reduce our overall oil dependence as quickly and drastically as we need to with so many trends of land use, infrastructure investment, government policy and, of course, consumption, all still pointing in the wrong direction?

It's a tough one, and I try not to sugar coat my standard response: the fact is, in peak oil and global warming we're facing rapid, fundamental changes in two of the most complex (and most important) systems we can conceive of: the global economic system and the global ecosystem. Nobody but nobody knows really knows how those fundamental system changes --or our responses to those changes-- will play out. With so much at stake, we shouldn't just sit back and wait for imperfect global markets or national governments to solve the problem for us. We need bold, informed leadership and initiative at all levels --and especially the local level-- from government, business and citizens alike.

I like how John and Bill each spoke to this question at various points during our tour. John took up the recent idea that we need to address peak oil at the level of the Manhattan Project or the Apollo Program. A better analogy, he said, would be the World War II effort in the United States. Why? The war effort here didn't involve just top government scientists and engineers solving a technical problem. Rather, just about every American man, woman and child recognized a responsibility to contribute to (and sacrifice for) the global war against facism -- and did so as Victory Gardeners, volunteer nurses, civil defense team members, recyclers, and of course as soldiers.

Representative Hilty made a more recent analogy. He likened the crisis we face to an interstate highway bridge that thousands cross every hour without a second thought. There's a joint on this bridge with five potential fracture points: growth, energy, climate, the environment, and the economy. Fractures at any one of these points would threaten the structural integrity of the bridge, let alone all five. As Bill summed it up, "We need to do an inspection." -- a point not lost on Minnesotan audiences.

In my next blog post I'll write about some interesting energy initiatives coming down the pike in Minnesota, including a peak oil resolution to be introduced to the State legislature in February and a possible joint-jurisdiction peak oil task force for Minneapolis and St. Paul. In the meantime, be sure to check out these two articles about our Minnesota tour:

• ARTICLE: 23 January 2008, Post-Bulletin (Rochester, Minn.)
  Bill Boyne: Adjustments will be needed as oil supplies dwindle
• ARTICLE: 18 January 2008, The Daily Kos (blog)
  Peak oil event in Minneapolis