In The Small-Mart Revolution by Michael Shuman, which is available for borrowing from the PWC library, he lays out a very helpful "purchasing ladder" - a hierarchy of choices that you can make about buying locally. As he puts it, "since few goods and services are perfectly local, how should you weigh various imperfections? Ultimately the answers will reflect your own tastes, values and interests."

Here's what Shuman says works for him (slightly edited for length):  continue reading »

This blog entry is a repository of personal "action items" that I suggest when I give my talk entitled "Going Local: Building a Self-Reliant Richmond, Indiana," first presented in its current form in November, 2007. As I say in the talk:

• You may already know a lot of this stuff
• I don't like telling people how to live, and I very much still aspire to practice some of these things myself, so I don't offer these up with any sort of moral authority
• This can be thought of as a menu of possibilities, rather than a list of imperatives or instructions

If you're not completely sure why it might be a good thing for Richmond to become self-reliant or why these action items might help, then please invite me to give the talk for your group or organization. It's chock full of great information about the energy crisis, climate change, the economy, and the implications for life in Richmond and Wayne County, Indiana. I also tell some jokes.

Now, on to the list, which is largely centered on reducing our dependence on and usage of fossil fuels:  continue reading »

As a part of my work on the committees that are implementing the Comprehensive Plan that Richmond recently developed, I created a list (with some help from Mark) of some transportation goals that have a focus on alternative transportation (read: goals that don't celebrate car culture). Here's what I came up with, in no particular order:

1.Improve funding and infrastructure for public transportation, pursue newer public transportation services like the Smart Jitney (door-to-door route-deviation microbus service)  continue reading »

During the Third U.S. Conference on Peak Oil and Community Solutions that I attended last month, I found myself surrounded by an amazing group of hundreds of people who were trying to make changes in the world to move us (the human species) toward sustainability.  continue reading »