Presentations and reports presented at the 2007 Challenge of Global Warming and Peak Oil for Local Government conference, sponsored by the Municipal Association of Victoria (Australia), illuminate many aspects of the issue for local governments.

The Selectboard of Brattlebro, Vt. voted to dissolve the town's Peak Oil task force after receiving their report. The members were encouraged to work with Brattleboro's Climate Protection Director on integrating their suggestions with the town's climate protection plan.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government is showing great leadership in its efforts to address climate change. This article from Japan for Sustainability describes some of the strategies the TMG has undertaken.

This webinar from the National Association of Counties is an introduction to the issues of "green governance" at the county level. With increasing momentum, green policies and programs have taken shape as counties hunt for the most effective targets, incentives and rewards to help affect behavioral change in their communities. Counties of all regions and compositions are helping us understand that green can be as much about doing the right thing for the environment as it is about being fiscally and socially responsible.

Laurel shares two videos: In one, Santa Barbara's City Council member Das Williams talks about that city's efforts to address energy and climate uncertainty. The other is from the city of Portland's education campaign about bike boxes. Plus, seven other cities using bike boxes to protect cyclists.

In June, 2008, a 5-day national training session will take place at Tufts University to increase citizen and planner leadership capacity in communities and their local governments to initiate and lead a change process to become a sustainable community. This sustainable communities approach has a substantial track record of successful implementation – possibly the most extensive in the world - in over 100 municipalities in Sweden, U.S., and around the world. The objective of the training is to prepare potential local leaders – including citizens, local officials, planners, or municipal staff – to be able to lead a process involving sustainability education, communication, and a strategic implementation process.

Rob Hopkins is the founder of the Transition movement in the UK, "transition" being the term for a process of creating more resilient and self-reliant communities. The handbook is a good guide and motivator to making changes at the local level and includes a compelling argument that peak oil and climate change must be addressed together.

This study by Warren Karlenzig, author of How Green Is Your City?: The SustainLane City Rankings, ranks the largest 50 US cities by their readiness for $4+ a gallon gas and $100+ barrel oil prices. It considers a variety of factors, including city resident public transit use, city carpooling rates, metro public transit ridership, metro area sprawl, telecommuting, biking and walking-to-work rates, and use of heating oil.

One hopes that the government department responsible for energy to heat homes, power cars and so on would be on top of two key issues - a switch to a low-carbon economy and the possibility that oil might run out sooner than we thought. But the UK's BERR seems to be dropping that particular ball.

Many cities have plans in place to reduce greenhouse gases, and a growing number are planning for declining global oil production. But the U.S. city of Spokane, Washington has become the first to tackle climate change and global oil depletion together, marking a new step in local government responses to these increasingly urgent challenges.