Food shortages are suddenly front-page news, but they are not new. Hundreds of millions of people were left starving or malnourished last year, and this has been going on for decades. The only change is that it has become more difficult for the institutions that control the global food chain to manage the situation with smoke-and-mirrors public relations, including celebrations of the low cost of food, that have masked a failed food system.

Our current global food system was designed by U.S.-based, industrial-agribusiness conglomerates like Cargill, Monsanto and ADM. It has been forced into place over the past 50 plus years by the U.S. government, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization. This has been a highly profitable enterprise for the major players who set up the system. It has been a disaster for poor people and for farmers in the United States and abroad who have been schooled to believe that their only hope of survival and prosperity is to produce cash crops for export and alternative fuels. Growing healthy food for local consumption and regional stability has been relegated to the fringes of the conversation, treated with benign neglect at best or open opposition at worst.

We currently have 37 nations with food crises. Meanwhile, Cargill Corp. declares an 86 percent rise in profits and Monsanto reports record sales from its herbicides and genetically modified, patented seeds. Corporate-industrialized agribusiness has promised farmers for decades — directly and through grants to state universities — that the problems farmers faced would be solved by trade deals and technology, in particular genetically modified seeds. Astute observers of the situation have been raising flags about this approach for years.

Recently, University of Kansas research has suggested that the New Green Revolution promised by genetically modified seeds actually reduces food production. And then there’s the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) Global Report. This report was commissioned in partnership with the United Nations after a group of biotech companies asked the World Bank what it thought of genetic-engineering technology as an agricultural strategy for developing countries. The IAASTD Global Report roundly rejects biotechnology and modern-industrial farming as a viable solution to the problems of soaring food prices, hunger, social injustice and environmental degradation. The IAASTD report calls for a major paradigm shift that would place strong focus on small-scale farming and agro-ecological farming methods to feed local communities, address social inequities and protect the environment while scaling back energy-intensive, chemical agriculture and addressing trade imbalances that hurt the rural poor.

There are a few things we can do about world hunger right now. For starters, tell Congress to quit wrangling over the overdue farm bill and make sure that the version that goes to the president’s desk expands programs for getting fresh food from local farms to local consumers. Congress should also use the opportunity of a new farm bill to make sure that farmers can count on reasonable prices for growing the food that Americans need. Congress can do this by providing a safety net that helps farmers survive weather and market disasters, and set up a strategic-grain reserve (like the strategic U.S. petroleum reserve) that can serve as a buffer against inflation in food prices.

Congress can also get off the free-trade bandwagon that has a lot to do with the world-food crisis we’re reading about these days. We need trade and development policies that help developing countries create domestic markets that feed the hungry first rather than feed multinational-corporate profits. This is called food sovereignty. We would do well to institute such a policy here in the United States and do everything possible to make it a centerpiece of our foreign policy and world-trade policy going forward.

— Patrick Bosold,
Fairfield.

ST Core Team member Bob Cook is a member of the Oversight Committee. Contact him for any questions, comments, or suggestions: Bob’s email — unispan@dakotacom.net

S T members have been actively participating at all previous meetings. This is an important community conversation which could shape how sustainability is incorporated into future community plans and investments.

The next meeting is:

Monday, May 12, 2008, 6:00 P.M.
Randolph Golf Course Club House
Copper Room
600 S. Alvernon Way

Quote: As important as it is to change our light bulbs, it’s more important to change our laws.”
(April 2008)
Energy Bulletin contributor Jason Bradford writes:
Al Gore has a brand new presentation that goes beyond his Inconvenient Truth show. Good to see him move more towards the position expressed in Climate Code Red

On April 13, Reuters reported the following from Riyadh:

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah said he had ordered some new oil discoveries left untapped to preserve oil wealth in the world’s top exporter for future generations…

“When there were some new finds, I told them, ‘no, leave it in the ground, with grace from god, our children need it’,” King Abdullah said…

Saudi production capacity stands at around 11.3 million bpd, and is scheduled to rise to 12.5 million bpd next year.

The King’s remarks seem to confirm a statement made last year by Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi who, when asked “How high can your production go?” replied, “We’ll get to 12.5 million barrels a day and then we’ll see.”

If the Saudi announcement was a bombshell, American nearly newspapers ignored it. We decided to canvass experts we respect to see what they thought. Excerpts follow:

Tom Petrie, vice president, Merrill Lynch:

“King Abdullah’s quote speaks to the fast-emerging reality of what I call ‘practical peak oil.’ The Saudis and other exporters are placing a new emphasis on elongating the petroleum exploitation and depletion cycle. This stems from a growing awareness of the challenges of conventional resource maturity, as well as rising resource nationalism. This is likely to result in an earlier occurrence of global peak oil output than many consumers yet recognize.”

Charles T. Maxwell, senior energy analyst, Weeden & Co:

“If Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves are not going to be made available to the world in future years, beyond the expansion they have already signaled (to 12.5 million barrels/day), then the geologic oil supply constraints that we are feeling in many other parts of the world are going to close in on us earlier and more severely than we previously thought. It’s a major change in policy. It’s a powerful message. It makes the geologic message that much more decisive.”

Chris Skrebowski, editor of Petroleum Review:

“King Abdullah’s statement represents the final seal of approval on an emerging Saudi policy of restricting output to save oil for future generations. In recent years the Saudis have been managing expectations of future capacity steadily downwards. No one now talks of their reaching 15mn b/d. If they reach 12.5mn b/d, while maintaining 1-2mn b/d of ‘spare’ capacity, we should plan for Saudi production to be 9-11mn b/d for the foreseeable future.

“High oil prices and bulging treasuries are giving producing countries the option of maximizing plateau production. We may never know if these decisions are being dictated by geology or driven by a political imperative of ‘saving oil for later generations.’ I suspect it’s a mixture of the two.

“In any case, there is now a broad-based move by energy exporters, including Russia, Angola, Azerbaijan, and Norway, to restrict expansion to maximize plateau flows. If this takes hold, then global supplies will reach a peak rather earlier than analysis of future projects would indicate.”

Matt Simmons, chairman of Simmons & Co. International:

“This statement by the Supreme Ruler of Saudi Arabia has far-reaching implications. That King Addullah would now instruct his servants to conserve the oil they pump and save some for the kids and grandkids of today’s Saudi citizens is most profound.

“King Abdullah has exhibited a sense of wisdom not seen since his brother, King Faisal ruled the Kingdom until his tragic assassination. Assuming his health continues, he might lead Saudi Arabia successfully into a post-peak world and create sustainable middle class wealth for the 90% of Saudi Arabia who had accidentally been left behind.

“The world should bless this intelligent pronouncement. It is a reflection that Twilight set in on the oilfields of Arabia a few years ago.”

Richard Nehring, president of Nerhingdatabase.com:

“This development is part of what I’ve called the ‘Prudential Plateau.’ Some key countries with large reserves and resources have decided to maintain production at current levels-but not increase it. This is a two-edged sword: you can no longer count on these countries for increases, but you can count on them for the base. The United Arab Emirates and Qatar will probably join in this shift.”

Jeffrey Rubin, chief economist, CIBC World markets:

“A far more plausible explanation for faltering growth in Saudi production and exports is that they are rapidly approaching maximum production. Given soaring rates of internal consumption for oil, they will soon be exporting less not more crude to world oil markets.

“Russian Natural Resource Minister Yuri Trutnev’s has said that Russian production and exports will fall this year, for the first time in a decade. We forecast that exports from OPEC, Russia and Mexico will actually decline by 2.5 million barrels per day between now and 2012. It’s far from obvious who is going to fill this supply gap, let alone meet the need of future global crude demand growth.”

Jeremy Gilbert, BP’s retired chief petroleum engineer:

“I have no idea whether there was a real choice for the Saudis to make. Perhaps it’s all ’spin’; perhaps there were discoveries, but there was some property of the reservoirs which made them very difficult to develop, and it made sense to delay development until improved technology or much higher prices arrived; perhaps it’s the plain basic truth - a very rare commodity.

“What I do know is that several countries in the Gulf have long chosen to operate their fields with depletion rates far below those that a Western company would consider optimal, or even sensible. Depletion rates of between 1 and 2%/ per year are not uncommon in the United Arab Emirates. Local leaders have repeatedly said that they feel an obligation to preserve some of their natural resources. These feelings must be intensified when their recent production has been sold for US dollars which have depreciated by 25% or more against other strong world currencies over the last four years.

“The countries around the Gulf, which would once have come to the aid of a faltering U.S., now are either delighted about the U.S. plight or just don’t care. They are not going to do anything to reduce world oil prices. Instead, they are going to maximize their economic take while minimizing depletion of their sole natural resource.”

Herman Franssen, president of International Energy Associates:

“King Abdullah’s remarks reflect the new thinking in the Middle East, where the Kuwaiti parliament has also expressed a need to stabilize oil exports. Higher oil prices enable producers to focus more on domestic investments than on increasing exports. All Gulf countries have seen huge growth in domestic demand for power and fuel. By 2015, Iran may consume as much of its crude oil as they export. The King’s remarks mean that we in the industrialized countries better start looking for other solutions.”

Steve Andrews and Randy Udall are two of the five co-founders of ASPO-USA.

Article found at :
http://www.energybulletin.net/newswire.php?id=43048

Original article :
http://www.aspo-usa.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=358&Itemid=91

Through an online community carpool system called icarpool , our members can arrange with eachother to carpool.

If you are interested in this free, safe and easy-to-use service:

Use our Contact Form with the “Carpool Info” topic chosen.

Keely Sinclair will get back with you to walk you through using the carpool service!

MY peas are coming up - sugar snaps and snow peas - and the seeds I scattered out in my cold frame a month ago are now a blanket of baby greens. A few mornings ago, while weeding, I popped a tiny bok choy seedling into my mouth and let its peppery, sweet flavor explode on my tongue.

It’s hard to describe the flavor of something so alive, hardly 10 seconds out of the earth. I want to say that it tastes green, but a grass blade does not taste like bok choy.

It’s something you have to experience yourself, after doing something as simple as planting basil in a window box, or salad greens in one big pot and a no-fail cherry tomato plant in another.

Kitchen gardens are as old as the first hunter-gatherers who decided to settle down and watch the seeds grow. Walled medieval gardens protected carefully tended herbs, greens and fruit trees from marauders, both human and animal. The American colonists planted gardens as soon as they could, sowing seeds brought from Europe.

Call them survivor gardens.

Now, they are being discovered by a new generation of people who worry about just what is in that bag of spinach and how much fuel was consumed to grow it and to fly it a thousand miles.

Roger Doiron, a kitchen gardener in Scarborough, Me., produced so many vegetables last year that there are still a few rutabagas in his root cellar. “Our seed order was $85, and we did not buy a single vegetable from June through January,” he told me by phone earlier this month. He hadn’t planted peas yet, he said, but the spinach he planted last fall was greening up.

Mr. Doiron, 41, spent 10 years in Belgium, running the Brussels headquarters of an international environmental group called Friends of the Earth, where he dealt with contaminated food production issues like mad cow disease. He also met his wife, Jacqueline, there; she grew up in the Belgian countryside, and they often spent weekends there with her parents.

“I would trail after my mother-in-law, watching her harvest things I’d never seen growing before, like Brussels sprouts,” Mr. Doiron said. “In Belgium, these people were eating out of the garden for three seasons, harvesting potatoes and salads nonstop.”

When he and his wife returned to Scarborough, his hometown, seven years ago, with three young sons, they bought a little Cape Cod house with a white picket fence. And they planted their yard, front and back, with vegetables and herbs, not just because they had grown used to the taste of fresh, organic food, but because Mr. Doiron wanted a flagship for the revolution.

Kitchen Gardeners International (www.kitchengardeners.org), a nonprofit organization Mr. Doiron founded in 2003, is a virtual community of 5,200 gardeners from 96 countries. On the Web site, where you can learn how to compost or grow garlic, a YouTube video shows the Doirons in their front yard. Swiss chard and cukes have replaced grass, and a sign poking out of the pumpkin patch reads “1,500 Miles/400 Gallons/Say What?” (The miles refer to the average distance food travels “from field to fork,” Mr. Doiron said; 400 gallons to the amount of oil used to make pesticides, fertilizer and animal feed, and to transport cattle and the like, to feed one person for one year.)

“We’re trying to reframe the backyard in terms of global sustainability, without losing any of the fun,” said Mr. Doiron, who manages to make a living from donations to his nonprofit and a fellowship from the Thomas Jefferson Agricultural Institute. He sees his audience as “people out there who are concerned about peak oil, or the gardening gastronomes who want the freshest food possible,” he said. “Or the people who joined a C.S.A.” - a community-supported agriculture project - “last year, and this year are thinking, you know what? I can do some of this myself.”

Mr. Doiron’s latest cause is challenging the presidential candidates to plant a garden on the White House lawn. He has posted his proposal, “Eat the View,” on www.ondayone.org, a Web site where people record their visions for the next president.

“This would not be a quaint little garden for the White House chef,” he said. “I have something fairly ambitious in mind, that would make a powerful political statement - a garden large enough to cover most of what the White House needs, with an overflow to a local food pantry.”

Mr. Doiron is actually suggesting a return to a tradition as old as the founding fathers. John Adams planted a vegetable garden at the White House to feed his family, “because back then, presidents had to fund their own household,” said Rose Hayden-Smith, a historian and garden educator based at the University of California in Davis.

During World War I, to save fuel and labor, President Woodrow Wilson had sheep grazing on the White House lawn. His wife, Edith, planted vegetables to inspire the Liberty Garden campaign, in which thousands of students, called “Soldiers of the Soil,” grew their own food in their schools and communities, she said. As the Allied powers began to win, the name Liberty Garden was changed to Victory Garden.

Just after Pearl Harbor, Ms. Hayden-Smith said, another Victory Garden campaign was started. Eleanor Roosevelt grew peas and carrots on the White House lawn, and by the end of the war, Ms. Hayden-Smith said, “Americans were producing 40 percent of the country’s produce” in their gardens.

So here we are, at war again, with gasoline over $3 a gallon and a bag of possibly polluted spinach about the same price. Though overall garden sales are slightly down, according to the latest National Gardening Association survey, from 2007, vegetable gardening sales are up by 22 percent and herb gardening sales are up by 52 percent.

I’ve been growing vegetables since I was a child. I don’t remember anyone ever saying, could you run out and grab some Merveille des Quatre Saisons from the kitchen garden? We just grew lettuce in the vegetable garden.

But my gurus took me far beyond the chemical fertilizers and pesticides of my father’s garden: J. L. Rodale, who preached the religion of compost; Shepherd and Ellen Ogden, who started the Cook’s Garden, a mail-order seed company in Vermont that carried French heirlooms; Barbara Damrosch, whose “Garden Primer” was my mud-stained bible; and Rosalind Creasy, who shook up her neighbors in Los Altos, Calif., in 1984, when she dug up her front lawn to plant edibles.

Ms. Creasy’s book, “The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping” (Sierra Club Books, 1982), started a little revolution of its own. Now she is working on a revision, scheduled to be out in 2010.

Interestingly, in March, Ms. Damrosch put out a revised edition of “The Garden Primer” that reflected a greater understanding of the environment, from invasive species to the science of soil.

“I’m a recovered double-digger,” she said, referring to the English tradition of digging deep into the soil and reversing its layers. Doing so destroys the soil’s structure and the complex civilization underground; there’s no double-digging in the new edition.

Chemical fertilizers and pesticides are not discussed either.

“I used to say, ‘I prefer to use compost and add organic matter, but if you use chemical fertilizer, you could do this,’ ” Ms. Damrosch said. Now “there’s none of the if-you-dos. Nobody is coming to me and saying, I want to garden with chemicals.”

These new gardeners are not necessarily back-to-the-land types.

“I think a lot of the young ones are in search of authenticity,” Ms. Damrosch said. “They still have their iPods and their BlackBerrys, but they’re interested in crafts and knitting and acoustic music. They don’t like the fake. They can see through stuff.”

Also, many of them grew up with environmentalism.

Ms. Creasy said: “They have been trained in schools to look at the consequences of what we’re doing. My kids dissected a lung from a smoker in the sixth grade. They study frogs that have been put in ponds with too many pesticides.”

What’s the same for everyone is the joy of tasting that first, just-dug-up potato.

“It seems like a miracle,” Ms. Damrosch said. “Like buried gold. And the flavor is incredible.”

That connection to the earth has never changed.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
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By David Spratt and Philip Sutton
Download report at: http://www.carbonequity.info/climatecodered/5keys.html

Hear two interviews with co-author Philip Sutton by Jason Bradford, Global Public Media:

1) http://globalpublicmedia.com/sustainability_emergency

2) http://globalpublicmedia.com/sustainability_emergency_part_ii

Phil Hart of The Oil Drum: Australia/New Zealand writes:

David Spratt from CarbonEquity and Philip Sutton from Greenleap Strategic Insitute have published a pivotal report in Australia titled “Climate ‘code red’: The case for a sustainability emergency”. This post reproduces the report’s discussion of why peak oil and climate change must be treated together.

The full report is available from the Carbon Equity website. The dominant theme of their report, and indeed their purpose behind it, is to:
Recognise a climate and sustainability emergency, because we need to move at a pace far beyond business and politics as usual.

The usual approach to an emergency is to direct all available resources to resolving the immediate crisis, and to put non-essential concerns on the back burner for the duration. Many people argue that in today’s world we should focus our attention exclusively on climate because a “single issue” approach is a good way to concentrate people’s minds on action, and cut through the competing, lower-priority issues.

While this is a powerful practical argument, is it the right strategy? To test the approach, we need to ask whether there are issues that:
will be seen, in retrospect, to have caused major problems if ignored;
are of great moral significance from a caring/compassionate point of view and therefore should not be ignored;
should be taken into account in the framing of solutions to issues that are tackled during the period of the emergency, because otherwise serious new problems will be created or existing crises will be worsened; or
are so compelling (for any reason) in the short term that they threaten to take attention away from climate if a one-issue-at-a-time approach is applied?
When these questions are asked, it is clear there are several issues that simply must be resolved together with the climate crisis. There are those that cannot be ignored because their impacts on all people, including the rich and powerful, are so great: for example peak oil, severe economic recession, warfare and pandemics. And there are ethical issues that we should not ignore such as poverty - including adequacy of food supply at an affordable price - and biodiversity protection.

Some examples might be useful to see how this multiple issues approach might work.

It is increasingly recognised that the discovery of geological reserves of cheap conventional oil cannot keep pace with growing world demand. This problem is often referred to as “peak oil”. Its emergence is reflected, in part, in rising oil prices and the expectation they will go higher as the gap between supply and demand increases in coming years. A recent Queensland Government task force (2007) found “overwhelming evidence” that world oil production would reach an absolute peak in the next 10 years.

So should we postpone dealing with peak oil until we have solved the climate crisis? Given the enormity of the climate problem, we cannot resolve it before peak oil demands our attention in a very practical way. Or should we put off the resolution of the climate issue until we have sorted out the peak oil issue? It will take at least 10 to 20 years to carry out the economic structuring required to solve the peak oil crisis (Hirsch, Bezdek et al., 2005), yet the economic structural changes that need to be made to solve the climate crisis must be completed in the same time period. Clearly the two issues need to be dealt with together and the solutions integrated.

There are two sets of responses to the peak oil problem, focusing on supply and on demand. The supply-side solution is to substitute new sources of energy for the declining conventional oil resource by using:
non-conventional fossil fuel sources such as shale oil, tar sands or from the conversion of coal or fossil fuel gas to petrol or diesel; or
renewable sources such as biofuels (e.g. ethanol or methanol petrol extenders or diesel derived from carbohydrate-rich plants) or other renewable energy types such as wind, solar and geothermal to charge electric vehicles.
The demand-side solution is to find ways to reduce the need to use petroleum products and energy in general.

So if we are to solve the peak oil and climate issues together, in a way that takes appropriate account of other issues, how can we decide on the right mix of responses and appropriate solutions? To solve the climate crisis we need to eliminate human greenhouse gas emissions, take massive amounts of excess CO2 out of the air and restore the reflectivity of the Earth surface (with clouds and ice being the strongest influences) while maintaining adequate supplies of affordable food and securing the survival of the world’s biodiversity.

If non-conventional fossil fuels were to be used and emissions released into the air, it would significantly worsen global warming. So if this supply solution is to be used, then CO2 must be 100% captured and permanently stored. But since there is already a substantial excess of CO2 in the air which needs to be removed faster than the natural carbon sinks can do it, we need environmentally safe and economical storage options for sequestering it. So the use of unconventional fossil fuels would either directly increase carbon emissions, or would block the sequestration of the excess atmospheric CO2.

So perhaps instead we should use renewable energy feedstocks to replace conventional oil? The easiest way to produce renewable carbon-based fuel is to grow crops for biofuel, but the scale of petroleum use is so huge that enormous areas of arable land would be needed. This clearly competes in many cases with food production and habitat protection or restoration. The conflict with food production is already evident in the rising prices of corn (maize), soy beans and palm oil driven by rising consumption of fuel ethanol and biodiesel, especially in the US and Europe (Vidal, 2007; Sauser, 2007; Styles, 2008; Blanco 2007). And forest clearance to make way for new palm oil trees is accelerating in south-east Asia with serious implications for nature conservation (Butler, 2008).

The other possible class of responses to the peak oil crisis is to actively reduce the demand for energy, for example by replacing current cars with vehicles designed for ultra-efficiency or by enabling a switch from car travel to public transport or walking and bicycles. Another approach is to eliminate the need for mobility by changing land uses to bring destinations together or by making use of electronic “virtual travel” such as video-conferencing.

Another interesting example of the interplay between issues is the connection that now seems to exist between climate, rising oil and food prices, the sub-prime lending crisis and the risk of recession. Since the 1987 Wall Street crash, world monetary authorities have been able to use credit expansion as a tool to stop the economy spiralling into fully-fledged recession. But now that there are strong inflationary pressures driven by rising oil and food prices (and expansionary war expenditure related to Iraq and Afghanistan), monetary authorities are not as free to use credit expansion to increase demand and for the first time in decades there is now a real chance that there will be a global recession (Blas, Giles et al., 2007).

Depending on how authorities respond, the reaction to a recession might either hinder or help effective action on climate change and peak oil. If the recession is allowed to run its course then there could be less money made available for investment in responses to the climate and peak oil crises. Or if governments invest in traditional public infrastructure areas to “prime the economic pump” then we might end up with more roads and freeways which will exacerbate the climate and peak oil problems. Only if pump-priming investment is framed with the climate and peak oil issues in mind will the response to a recession produce a virtuous cycle of change.
Article found at :
http://www.energybulletin.net/newswire.php?id=40081

Original article :
http://anz.theoildrum.com/node/3600

This all-day workshop at St. Mark’s Presbyterian Church (3809 East 3rd Street) will focus mainly on how congregations can become more responsible stewards of the earth’s energy resources. We will learn what it means to be a community of faith in the First World facing the global crisis of climate change that threatens life on the planet.

find out how you can help your faith community become more responsible stewards of the Earth’s precious resources. recrit 1-4 others from your congregation, and sign up for this workshop.

Two of Tucson’s faith communities will share their journeys in becoming green congregations: the Unitarian Universalist Church of Northwest and St. Mark’s Presbyterian Church.

At this environmental audit workshop participant teams from different congregations will have an opportunity to interact with other ecologically oriented faith groups around various related issues in addition to the responsible uses of energy. We shall talk about water conservation, transportation, waste, food and purchasing among other things. Congregational teams will be equipped with action plans to take back to their home faith groups to begin their own conversations regarding the greening of their communities.

The workshop organizers are hoping that this event will not only transform the environmental impact of our different faith communities, but that it will inspire the many hundreds of their individual members to alter their personal lifestyles to be more sustainable as well. To this end, individuals attending the workshop will be able to take with them tools with which to carry out their own home energy audits. They will also be provided with additional suggestions for minimizing each individual’s or family’s carbon footprint.

For further information about this Earth Day workshop please contact Pastor Stuart Taylor at St. Mark’s Presbyterian Church: (520)325-1001, extension 13 or stutaylor*at*mindspring[dot]com

(Just for comparison you might wish to read the article Ten Ways to Prepare for a Post-Oil Society, on this website under Articles.)

Ten Top Things to Do to Make Tucson Sustainable attempts to answer this question: How can we motivate hundreds of thousands of people, beginners and advanced sustainability thinkers alike, to develop sustainable daily habits?

Top Ten Things To Do To Make Tucson Sustainable

(1) Harvest and conserve water
Step One: Remove non-native species from your yard (like grass and oleanders) and replace with native plants watered as much as possible by rainwater only.
At full sustainability Tucsonans will have cisterns, composting toilets, neighborhood water harvesting, and comprehensive water education.

(2) Use the sun’s energy
Step One: Hang your laundry to dry in the sun.
Note: Some communities have restrictions against hanging out laundry.
At full sustainability Tucson will derive all its electricity and transportation from solar energy.

(3) Eat local and native foods
Step One: Visit a farmers market.
Note: Farmers Markets are listed in Tucson Weekly.
At full sustainability Tucson will have a Food Security Council to ensure access to healthy food for all Tucsonans. Large daily farmers markets with bioregional products will supplement neighborhood food production and neighborhood desert food harvesting.

(4) Work outdoors with neighbors
Step One: Organize a neighborhood walk/doorknocking to discover neighborhood assets
and what projects interest your neighbors.
Note: For tips on organizing neighborhood doorknockings, contact Pro Neighborhoods,
(520) 882-5885.
At full sustainability every neighborhood will be safe for pedestrians and bicyclists, have a workable plan for emergencies which cares for all dependents, and engage in sustainable urban food production.

(5) Ride bicycle or walk to your eco-village hub
Step One: Identify your local commercial hub and do errands there without using fossil
fuel; take public transit if your destination is further or you are physically challenged.
Note: As you walk and bike your neighborhood you may notice places which need shade trees. These locations can become urban agriforestry projects.
At full sustainability Tucson will be organized into 60 to 80 complete eco-villages in which people walk or bike. These eco-villages will be connected by a comprehensive system of bike paths which do not mingle with auto traffic.

(6) Plant A Food Bearing Tree
Step One: Dig a hole and bust through the caliche.
Note: This is more fun if you dig with friends and throw a party when the tree is planted. Get hold of a caliche bar. Contact Tucson Botanical Gardens or Tucson Organic Gardeners for best species of trees to plant in your location.
At full sustainability Tucson will be an edible urban forest.

(7) Save food scraps and compost with worms
Step One: Build a simple home made “worm farm.” Many websites teach how, e.g.:
www.earth911.org/master.asp?s=lib&a=organics/composting/wormcompost.asp
Note: Worms create worm castings and worm juice which are rich plant food.
At full sustainability Tucson’s home kitchens, restaurants and cafeteries will be connected by a comprehensive composting program.

(8) Grow food in home garden or community garden
Step One: Contact Tucson’s Community Food Bank or Tucson Organic Gardeners for
information on how to grow food.
Note: We can garden year round in Tucson. Water is our limiting factor; therefore, water harvesting for gardening is crucial. Sustainable Tucson highly recommends Brad
Lancaster’s book Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands, available at Antigone Books, Silverbell Trading, and through Sustainable Tucson in case quantities.
At full sustainability, Tucson and the Sonoran bioregion will be largely food self-sufficient.

(9) Educate yourself and Tucson’s representatives about sustainability.
Step One: Read the voter’s guide when elections are coming up. Who takes sustainable
positions on solar and wind energy, mass transit, bike paths, water conservation?
Note: Sustainability education is enjoyable in a group. Potlucks are a wonderful way to share books, DVD’s, videos, and ideas with each other. Why not start a group in your neighborhood? Then invite a person running for office.
At full sustainability any school child will be able to tell a visitor to Tucson how our
sustainable city works.

(10) Become an entrepreneur in the growing sustainable economy
Step One: Identify your own art/passion/potential product or service.
Note: Many entrepreneurs (self-employed people) market products and services.
At full sustainability, Tucson (including its bioregion) will be mostly self-sufficient for
water, food, energy, and transportation. Tucson’s sustainable infrastructure will need to be planned, installed, and maintained by local businesses attuned to our city’s terrain and culture. Tucson will have a local credit clearing house which keeps our region’s financial resources circulating locally.

Written by Nicole Christine, Bob Cook, Tom Greco, Lindianne Sarno, & Joanie Sawyer.
©Sustainable Tucson 2006.

Comments and suggestions are welcome.

Sustainable Tucson prepared a comprehensive flyer of critical questions on the topic related to sustainability concerns, and distributed it to attendees. [View and download the flyer here]

From these we also submitted questions to the panel. The AZ Start collected more than 100 questions from participants, of which they are printing and answering a few in each Sunday issue (timeframe for continuance undetermined).

One of Sustainable Tucson’s submitted questions was answered the first week by panelist Bill Roe… read on.

Q: In none of the forum presentations was mention
made of climate change and major shifts in ecosystems. How are we to talk
about growth meaningfully, given the uncertainties we face regarding natural
resources?

A: This is the heart of the issue! We have land enough, but water is the
limiting factor … READ FULL STORY/RESPONSE