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The Truth About Alcohol Fuel: Our Path Beyond Petroleum,

with David Blume

Tuesday, July 13, 2010, 5:30 pm

Tucson Public Library, 101 N. Stone Ave.  Lower Level Meeting Room:

Co-Sponsored by the Community Information Resource Center and Sustainable Tucson

Permaculturist David Blume will present the history of alcohol fuel, and outline how localized, small-scale alcohol fuel production can contribute to economic vitality and regional energy and food security.

As oil fouls some of the most precious and productive ecosystems in the US, polls show that Americans are ready for a radical shift away from dependence on oil.  Recently President Obama stated from the Oval Office:

The tragedy unfolding on our coast is the most painful and powerful reminder yet that the time to embrace a clean energy future is now. Now is the moment for this generation to embark on a national mission to unleash American innovation and seize control of our own destiny.

There IS an alternative to oil that we can embrace NOW!    You are invited to spend an evening with David Blume as he discusses appropriate scale alcohol fuel production – a way forward that creates plentiful green jobs and supports our economy, while improving our environment.  And best of all, alcohol fuel can be used in our current autos and trucks to make any car an eco-car!

• David will discuss how the proud history of alcohol fuel (the original auto fuel) has been conveniently left out of the official history of energy in America; and how Big Oil’s billion dollar “Food vs Fuel” PR campaign buried the best alternative to oil under an avalanche of misinformation and propaganda (until now).

•  David will introduce you to a new paradigm of permaculture-based food AND fuel production, and discuss how to unleash an economic and energy renaissance in Tucson, in the Southwest, and beyond.

A biofuel pioneer for over 30 years, David Blume is the author of Alcohol Can Be A Gas, Executive Director of the International Institute of Ecological Agriculture, Permaculturist, and most recently, founder of Blume Distillation, LLC.  David has devoted his career to exploring how to create abundant food and biofuels, sustainably helping navigate the challenge of our time:  the end of the age of cheap, plentiful oil.

There is no charge to attend this event.

Take a look here.

Five theme areas are: Natural Resources, Air Quality, Water, Transportation and Energy, and
Community and Economy, to represent the essence of the community and its influence on
the land and our environment. This report, built on 2006 baseline data, provides trends for key
indicators, and includes a few new indicators. Buffelgrass is featured for the first time and we are monitoring data to track expanding regional progress to control this invasive plant.

The report (large file) is available for download here.

Local chefs cook meals with produce from local gardens at a fundraiser
for Kim Fox’s travels from 4 to 6:30 p.m., Sunday, May 23. $25 to $75.
Mercado San Agustin 100 S. Avenida del Convento. Call 461-1106, or
visit theoriginalhoe.blogspot.com for more information.

Sara Jones of Tucson CSA will make dessert, and Amy Schwemm of Mano Y
Metate will make mole. Rachel Yaseen of The Organic Kitchen and
Justin Dixon of Mercado Sunday Dinners will also be cooking.

TUCSON’S LOCAL FOOD AMBASSADOR

Kim Fox, a Tucson micro-urban farmer and food activist dedicated to
community education and local food production, is embarking on a new
adventure! Up until now, Kim has been busy designing urban sites for
food production and distribution. Her community education programs
focus on local food production, soil science, food security and
health. Now that summer is here, she’s hitting the road with her bike,
and an open plate and mind!

Kim is an observer of and participant in local and international food
ways. She has traveled to 25 countries working on small farms and
urban gardens, visiting farmers’ markets, participating in food
culture and customs, and observing local food production and
distribution methods. Beginning in June 2010, Kim will travel by
bicycle across Europe engaging with people who manage urban and rural
farms, gardens, farmers’ markets, food banks, seed banks, and public
and private agencies in order to exchange perspectives and information
on local sustainable agriculture. In particular, Kim will study and report on
seed saving, climate change consequences, GMO issues, sustainable farming
and urban gardening techniques, and seek to collect recipes straight from the kitchen.

Her community in Tucson and beyond can learn with her, via internet updates
on her blog, at www.theoriginalhoe.blogspot.com or on Facebook “Kim Fox Food Trek 2010.” Your donations or in-kind support will ensure that fresh and enriching ideas, beyond the American perspective, will benefit our community’s local-sustainable food system.

To contribute to her trip or for more information, visit her blog or
contact her at theoriginalhoe@live.com or 520-622-1917. Become a food
trekkie!

Transitioning to a Sustainable Economy: Tucson’s Future?

What is the greatest challenge we now face in Southern Arizona?

This question becomes more important as we join together this year in community conversations about our future. Increasingly, people are realizing the main challenge is not growth, but rather sustaining and improving our quality of life including our economy. Managing growth is necessary, but only part of what is required for success.

Our mounting problems are largely the result of over-dependence on population growth to keep our economy thriving. In addition to our attractive climate, desert landscape, and friendly, diverse culture, people migrate here for the affordable lifestyle. Until recently, we offered many low-cost advantages – cheap water, cheap energy, cheap labor, cheap capital, and cheap land. We also subsidized the expansion of public infrastructure and services to serve growth, mostly out of general revenues. As long as these favorable, artificial conditions for growth prevailed, people continued to move here. Only one year in our history – 1990 – did out-migration outpace population in-flux. And that was a year when our economy last hit bottom.

Our region’s long-term average population growth rate has been a little over 2% per year. The annual growth rate for Arizona as a whole has been more than 3%, resulting in doubling population and the required built environment every two decades. Job creation has generally kept up with population, yielding low unemployment rates, mainly because population growth has been the driver of job growth. Even though public systems and services were under-funded, this growth dynamic benefited most of us as long as the base kept growing.

But what happens when the conditions underpinning growth change? This is the situation we find ourselves in today – a drying, warming Southwest with looming water shortages; the end of cheap oil, natural gas, and coal; unprecedented price rises for food imports; people refusing to subsidize urban sprawl; increasing limitations on jurisdictions to maintain and expand infrastructure and services; a super competitive global economy driven by advances in science and technology; new accounting and costing proposals including measuring and limiting carbon impacts – and in the face of these growing uncertainties – questions about the declining health of the American economy and its financial systems. What does sustainability mean for us here as we confront these major, converging challenges of the 21st century?

Instead of debating the infinite pros and cons of growth, maybe we should focus on what really matters most to us – how are we going to successfully transition to an economy which sustains our quality of life into the future but doesn’t require unsustainable growth to keep it thriving?

The Arizona Department of Commerce initiated an important study several years ago to answer this question. However, that prospectus was mostly neglected and to date, remains little known. The bottom-line finding is that we are well-positioned to sustain our economy by developing a Sustainable Systems Industry based on already existing strengths in engineering, optics, biosciences, environmental design, earth sciences, and natural resources. Our sustainability challenges can all be converted into opportunities for centers of excellence in economic development. These sustainable systems and technologies would include resource-efficient products, services, and practices in the areas of water, energy, food, health, transportation, and housing. And perhaps most important, these industries would supply both the local economy and rapidly growing export markets – all responding to the new demands for higher performance standards.

Development leaders in both Tucson and Phoenix are already discussing the growth limitations of each city – the prospects of “population build-out” in the future. Some say our region should grow to 2 million, some say we can sustain another half million people, but others ask: How will we sustain even the current million people without fundamental economic innovation and investment in our deficient public infrastructure and services to support a new economy? Regardless of scenario, population growth will go away as the driver of the economy.

More immediately, growth is certain to slowdown naturally as development subsidies are reduced and demand for new development declines. Growth patterns will be better managed as we direct development and re-development pressures toward more compact, mixed use, transit-oriented urban form. The big questions that remain are: Will we respond to these sustainability challenges in time to ensure that our quality of life becomes sustained and not further eroded? Will we build a new economy based on the opportunities of sustainability? Or will we witness these converging challenges become the first step of long-term economic decline?

In his inspiring 2008 State of the City address, Mayor Bob Walkup called upon people and groups in the community to join together in building a new sustainable economy. This should be Goal One if we are to build economic resilience and attract sufficient investment within the next five years. Surely, we need clarity about where we are and where we’re headed. And we need a way to common ground, common vision and full community participation.

– Sustainable Tucson, February, 2008

This is how the article begins…

“Just as the heavy use of antibiotics contributed to the rise of drug-resistant supergerms, American farmers’ near-ubiquitous use of the weedkiller Roundup has led to the rapid growth of tenacious new superweeds. To fight them, Mr. Anderson and farmers throughout the East, Midwest and South are being forced to spray fields with more toxic herbicides, pull weeds by hand and return to more labor-intensive methods like regular plowing.”

To read the entire article follow this link.

by Michael Brownlee

Description:

As part of his current book tour, author and climate activist Bill McKibben spoke at the First United Methodist Church in Boulder, CO on April 27, co-sponsored by Boulder Book Store and Transition Colorado. The video of his presentation is below, following the introduction that was given by Michael Brownlee, co-founder of Transition Colorado.

Many of us know Bill McKibben as the inspirational force behind Step It Up and more recently 350.org, which has taken the lead globally in raising awareness about the urgency of meeting the challenge of global warming, coordinating last October what CNN called “the most widespread day of political action in the planet’s history.”

Others of us have known Bill as the author of The End of Nature in 1989, the very first book for a general audience to sound the alarm about global warming.

Still others of us remember when Bill published Deep Economy three years ago, and he was here in this very room then to tell us about the need to relocalize our economies. That was the same year our organization launched what we envisioned as a ten-year campaign to relocalize Boulder County.

Few here may know that Bill is also a member of a strategically significant think tank called Post Carbon Institute, which in 2003 was the first organization to sound the call for relocalization as a crucial response to climate change and peak oil. At Post Carbon, Bill joins nearly 30 of the most important thinkers and researchers on these issues—including such luminaries as Richard Heinberg, Michael Shuman, Rob Hopkins, Majora Carter, Gloria Flora, Wes Jackson, Stephanie Mills, Chris Martenson, David Orr, and Bill Reese.

With these Fellows, Post Carbon Institute is “leading the transition to a more resilient, equitable, and sustainable world,” and is a key strategic partner in the visionary efforts of the Transition Movement, which we’re now a part of. We find it very inspiring that these leaders are joining together to help discover the way forward.

Nearly four years ago, James Hansen said, “We have at most ten years. Not ten years to decide upon action, but ten years to fundamentally alter the trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions.” But we still have not yet begun to do this.

Bill helps us realize that the fiasco at Copenhagen last December gave us two clear signals: First, the scientific consensus is that human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are already having a devastating impact on the ecosphere that supports all life, and this will get very much worse in the future. The clear implication of this, along with the peaking of global oil production, is that our current way of life cannot and will not continue. We are entering an unavoidable period of energy descent.

Secondly, Copenhagen demonstrated that our governments are simply not going to be able to rise to the occasion in time to mitigate the impacts of global warming. We’re going to have to learn how to adapt to the consequences.

Because of Bill McKibben, the numbers 3-5-0 are indelibly embedded in our collective consciousness as a threshold we should never have crossed and now to which we must work our way back down. Bill has helped build awareness of our predicament around the globe, and he has helped us realize that we now must urgently move from awareness-raising to commitment, followed by rigorous action—beginning locally.

As Bill suggests, it takes a community to respond to global warming. And if we take what he is saying seriously, starting right here in Boulder, we must now unequivocally commit together to quickly transitioning off of fossil fuel dependence, to learning how to feed ourselves locally again, and to learning how to make our communities resilient and self-reliant for our most essential needs.

To put it bluntly, if we follow Bill’s arguments, the inescapable conclusion we will come to is that we must commit as communities to simply ending our contribution to global warming. Could that begin here in Boulder? Could we inspire other communities to do the same?

Well, it’s going to take far more than “two techs and a truck” here in Boulder to do this. It’s probably going to take more like ten thousand neighbors and whole fleets of bicycles! And it’s going to take a real revolution in local food and local farming, something we’re helping to catalyze with our county-wide EAT LOCAL! Campaign and 10% Local Food Shift Challenge and Pledge.

Let’s not leave here tonight without making a commitment to Bill and to ourselves that we will rise to the occasion here in Boulder and Boulder County—that we will quickly end our contribution to global warming. And meanwhile, let’s give Bill McKibben the hero’s welcome that he deserves!

WATCH VIDEO HERE.

According to the summary:

“Corn, cotton, and soybean that have been engineered to resist insect pests and herbicides are now planted on almost half of all U.S. cropland. An analysis of the U.S. experience with genetically engineered crops shows that they offer substantial net environmental and economic benefits compared to conventional crops; however, these benefits have not been universal, some may decline over time, and potential benefits and risks may become more numerous as the technology is applied to more crops. Understanding the impacts of genetically engineered crops is vital to ensuring that crop-management practices and future research and development efforts realize the full potential of genetic engineering for commercial as well as public goods purposes, while maintaining the environmental, economic, and social sustainability of U.S. farms.”

The full report can be read online:
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12804

You‚re Invited to a FREE Public Showing

THE WORLD ACCORDING TO MONSANTO

GREEN VALLEY LIBRARY

601 N. LA CANADA

GREEN VALLEY, AZ 85614

Saturday, APRIL 24, 2010—-TIME: 9:30 a.m.

The World According to Monsanto, a film by Marie-Monique Robin, documents the devastating cost of Monsanto‚s race over the last decade to genetically engineer and patent the world‚s crops. Ms. Robin has traveled the globe in an effort to capture the human toll of Monsanto‚s drive for GMO market domination. Her interviews with scientists, legislators, agricultural officials, farmers, shepherds and families affected by GMOs, has made this picture critically-acclaimed in every country where it has opened.

ADMISSION: FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Presented by Thought Provoking DVD Films

and the GMO Free Project of Tucson

CONTACTS:  Alma Sychuk: 520.648.6416

Mascha Miedaner ˆ GMO Free Project of Tucson

520.481.1128 info@gmofreeprojectoftucson.org

www.gmofreeprojectoftucson.org <http://www.gmofreeprojectoftucson.org/>

Published at Energy Bulletin and Guy’s blog: Nature Bats Last

(Guy, a former UA professor, has inspired Sustainable Tucson with his writings and appearances at ST General Meetings during the past four years)

As we continue into the decades-old, but only recently acknowledged era of destruction and extinction, it’s apparent the current model is not working. Truth has fallen and taken liberty with it. A vast majority of Americans are aware the industrial economy clings by the barest of threads but, too fearful of individual retribution to disrupt the industrial culture that is making us crazy and killing us, we hang tightly to the only system we’ve every known. Pathetically reluctant to consider what lies beyond the omnicidal industrial machine, we cling to a system that has failed to nurture the living planet, human individuals, or human communities.

At some point, we simply lost track of the importance of communities, human and otherwise. Along the way to becoming a nation of multitasking, Twittering, Facebook “friends” we abandoned the ability to connect meaningfully, viscerally, individually. If we are to thrive during the post-carbon era, we’ll need to create groups of straight-talking, look-’em-in-the-eye, mean-what-you-say, say-what-you-mean, self-reliant, individuals who are not afraid to ask for help from the neighbors and who, when asked, readily offer assistance.

I know you hate those stories that start with, “When I was a kid, ….” But here goes, regardless. I grew up in a tiny, backwoods, red-neck logging town. By the time I was 18 years old, I’d seen more bar fights than first-run movies. I knew that when a man was driving home after getting whipped in a bar fight, and the man who beat him up drove drunkenly into a ditch on the way home, the guy who got pummeled had no choice but to stop and give a hand to the guy who whipped him. If the whippee didn’t stop to help, and anybody in town found out, he’d be better off driving to the next state than hanging around. Helping neighbors in need was not optional. The benighted community of my youth was a worthless pile of crap. But to me and my neighbors, it was our worthless pile of crap, and an outsider who threatened people in our town would have been better off bobbing for apples in a bucket of piranhas. The people who lived in that town, like the ones who still live there, are shoulder-to-the-wheel, down-to-earth folks who care about their community.

For a diametrically opposed perspective, see contemporary suburbia. Our self-proclaimed independence is a bad joke made possible only by cheap energy. As we leave cheap energy in our wake, it becomes increasingly clear the joke’s on us.

As Dmitry Orlov points out with his usual brilliant wit, communities arise organically. Despite the multi-million dollar efforts of countless scientists at Biosphere II, for example, the resulting collection of communities is a pale and pathetic imitation of the naturally occurring ecosystems they are designed to replicate. As with ecological communities, we know little about human communities and what makes them “work.” Nonetheless, we fill tomes about both kinds of communities. Along the way, a few people, including the always-thoughtful Dan Allen, think before they write. How refreshing is that?

Were I still a self-respecting, objective scientist reluctant to express an opinion or make a forecast, I’d stop with those two endorsements wrapped around a nod to ignorance. Actually, I would proceed to write a grant proposal explaining how I would overcome our collective ignorance for a few hundred grand and 50% overhead. Instead of taking either rational route, it’s onward, through the fog.

Although communities are self-organizing, we are able to nurture them and therefore influence species composition. We can plant trees and pull weeds. We can add water and compost. In fact, we do all these things, and we call the result a garden. As I’ve pointed out in prior posts, scale matters: I’m a huge fan of gardens, for reasons that run from healthy food to healthy psyches, but I detest farms. The former characterize Eden, the latter civilization.

As with ecological communities, I think we can and should nurture our human communities, recognizing and encouraging positive elements and weeding out negative ones. We may not be capable of building communities, but we can work with the ones we’ve got to the betterment of individuals who contribute to the common good. And, as with ecological communities, our ability to nurture human communities will vary. Every community is unique, and will require a unique set of approaches.

Too corny? Maybe. But I’m in the fine company of Plato, Aristotle, and Dan Allen, so I’ll run with it.

As I’ve indicated previously, as recently as my latest post, location is everything. Try nurturing community in the suburban wasteland filling most American cities, and you’ll run smack into the horrifically omnivorous maw of culture. If the most visible portion of every house is the garage, good luck organizing the neighbors into building community gardens fed by harvested rainwater and humanure. If it works in the short run, be sure to keep tabs on all the unprepared, self-indulgent free riders you’ll need to feed and water in the longer run.

I was, and am, quite concerned about my late arrival to the region surrounding the mud hut. As I’ve indicated before, I am quite fortunate to have found a like-minded couple of people who were willing to share their property. Financially, my wife and I could not have pulled this off ourselves. In addition, it would have been unwise from an interpersonal perspective. But our partners have lived in this area for nearly a decade, and they’ve worked hard during that time to develop strong relations with the neighbors. At some level, we’re the free riders I warned about in the previous paragraph. At another level, though, we came to the community with a strong endorsement and a built-in set of human ties.

Thus, my first recommendation: Community starts at home. If you can find somebody who is willing to take you in, I propose pooling resources. Given the increasing poverty in a nation addicted to the stock markets, this counter-cultural notion — which goes against the American cultural ideal of “independence” — is starting to make a lot of sense. I suspect we’ll see a lot more collaboration and a lot less ego-laden, look-at-me-and-my-mansion competition in the years ahead.

After establishing a home-based beachhead, the remainder involves common sense and little else. This ain’t rocket surgery, after all. Make yourself valuable by finding a niche. Provide a service, or set of services, integral to the daily lives of your neighbors. What do they do?

They drink water. So find a way to extract, purify, and deliver water when municipal power is no longer available.

They eat. So find a way to produce healthy food at a smaller scale than the big-box grocery store. Grow chickens, ducks, and goats. Make yogurt, butter, and cheese. And then develop a means of preparing the food without fossil fuels. Think drying racks, sun ovens, and firewood.

They wear clothes. So stock up on needles and strong thread, and sell your skills as a tailor, or even a mender.

They sleep. Make ’em blankets. Or, if you have the requisite skills, beds and other furniture.

Can you care for animals, including human animals? They have tender psyches and bodies that were not designed for the rigors to which they’re about to be subjected. They need therapy, just like the rest of us, and they’ll soon need a lot more. Can you provide it, at a finer scale than the current model, and for barter? Are you a medical herbalist? Can you become one?

They need respite from the drudgery of labor. Already, everything is amazing and nobody is happy. Imagine what our lives will be like when we can’t take our annual summer driving vacation, much less the once-in-a-lifetime trip to Europe or the Caribbean. Can you spin a yarn or play a tune? I recommend traveling minstrel as an occupation about to make a serious comeback.

They want educated people, and some of them want educated children. If you can write a coherent paragraph and perform long division, you’ll be in constant demand in a world without hand calculators. If you can teach children to perform these miracles, get set to launch your career as a post-carbon teacher.

They have sex. Never mind the world’s oldest profession: The potential for midwives and childcare should be obvious.

I could go on, but the point should be clear by now. As we leave the Age of Entitlement and transition into the Age of Consequences, everybody will need to make a contribution to their community. Those who are unwilling or unable to make a contribution will not be welcome. If you value living in a particular place, think about tight-knit Stone Age communities or contemporary Amish communities. The worst possible fate for an individual is to be shunned, because that means you’ll need to find your own way in a large, unknown world.

So, what about me, and my adopted community? What specific steps have I taken, along with my partners at this property?

We barter, and we’re ratcheting up the barter at every opportunity. These efforts are welcome in a valley filled with self-reliant, life-loving economic doomers. We provide plenty of eggs (chicken and duck) and milk, and in return we have received various kinds of food (fruits, vegetables, and the most wondrous imaginable bread), heirloom seeds and bulbs, a large iron triangle for announcing dinner is ready at the outdoor kitchen, a full clean-and-trim job on our goats’ hooves, and other goods and services too numerous to list (and, in my case, too varied and numerous to remember).

On the personal front, I am working hard to befriend members of my community. I’ve joined an effort to reintroduce river otters into the nearby river, and worked shoulder-to-shoulder on constructing government-mandated otter pods for their release (the pods are large boxes built from plywood and construction lumber). I join a gang of locals at the nearest café for coffee every Tuesday morning (and I don’t drink coffee). I substitute teach at the local K-12 school (“today we’re learning about entropy”). I partake of potlucks and dance parties, as well as more formal annual events such as craft fairs. I’m extremely introverted, so each of these social gatherings is painful. As Nietzsche pointed out, what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger. Perhaps it’ll make my community stronger, too.

In the not-so-distant future, we intend to provide a much broader array of services to our community. We can extract water from the ground via solar pump and hand pump. In addition to the daily overload of eggs and milk, we’re making and aging plenty of hard cheeses. We’ve stored some luxurious food and drink that will age well (and I don’t even drink alcohol). We can grind grains. We have the capacity to cook food via sun oven, Earth oven (orno), and wood-fired cook stove. We have solar-powered electricity and an assortment of power tools to aid with minor construction projects. This entire infrastructure is designed not merely for our survival, but also for the survival of others in our community. We thrive when our community thrives. We suffer when our community suffers.

I’m certain I’m missing many things. But any number can play, so please help me out. What can we stock for barter? What’s small, inexpensive, and easy to store, yet useful? What other skills should we learn in anticipation of a contracting economy and therefore an enlarging world? What other services can we provide, within the constraints of a small piece of land and little remaining money?

And what about you? How are you preparing for a life of service in the Age of Consequences?

__________________

This essay is permalinked at Energy Bulletin (with photos and minor editing).
__________________

I’ll be speaking in Sedona, Arizona next week, with an emphasis on water and community. Details are here.

From a March 30 article The Verde Independent:

Most recently, Dr. McPherson served as professor at the UA School of Natural Resources and Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology. In 2009, he was recognized as Faculty of the Year…. Dr. McPherson recently left academia for other pursuits. As he put it in his popular blog, Nature Bats Last: “I departed university life for many reasons, among them to dedicate more time informing the world’s citizens about the consequences of the way we live. My message centers on the twin sides of the fossil-fuel coin: global climate change and energy decline (commonly known as “peak oil”). …These unprecedented phenomena impact every aspect of life on Earth, notably including our ability to protect the living planet on which we depend for our own survival.”

As Albert Einstein once said, “Setting an example is not the main means of influencing others, it is the only means.” While Dr. McPherson might take exception to that thought, he decided to put it into practice. Today, he and his wife live in an off-grid, straw-bale house where they practice sustainable living by organic gardening, raising small animals for eggs and milk, and actively engaging with members of their rural community