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. This is an update of the May 2008 report.

Daniel Lerch on our enduring relationship with the personal automobile, and the potential for a less car-dependent California. Written for the Sacramento Bee's The Conversation.

"Climate change is the greatest environmental crisis that humanity has ever faced, but it is not the only serious challenge confronting us. There is a simultaneous 'source' problem, known as peak oil, arising from the depletion of the fuels we are burning, particularly petroleum," said Richard Heinberg. The Post Carbon Institute's comprehensive 10-point plan will help the United States reach Vice President Al Gore's goal of 100% renewable energy in 10 years.

This excerpt of Daniel Lerch's presentation at the Spirit of Red Hill Valley 2007 lecture in Hamilton, Ontario, categorizes some of the short and long term challenges that peak oil will present to local governments. A good introduction for colleagues who may have heard of peak oil but don't associate it with local issues.

It may be June, but Vermont's Governor and legislature are planning for the potential emergency when high fuel prices and low temperatures coincide this coming winter. The Governor has created the Vermont Fuel and Food Partnership and established a Cabinet-level task force. The state legislature has called an emergency home heating meeting of the Joint Fiscal Committee, all in recognition that plans need to be made for the state's needs sooner rather than later.

It's impossible to understate how crucial cheap oil has become to our way of life. It's shaped how we get our food, what we buy, where we live, how we work, and the way we play. Cheap oil opened up the world to millions of travellers via discount airlines, allowed thousands to buy their first homes in sprawling suburbs, and enabled consumers to get their hands on ever cheaper goods, shipped just in time, from around the globe. Now economists say all of that is at risk.

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.

Planning for likely high oil prices and reduced supply of oil is essential to avoid the worst consequences and ensure public services can be provided in a timely and economic manner. Maribyrnong Council's Peak Oil Policy and Action Plan describes how they will continue to deliver community programs and services in spite of global oil price increases.

Video (1 Nov 2007) presentation of John Kaufmann, former lead staffer for the groundbreaking Portland (Ore.) Peak Oil Task Force, to the Connecticut Legislative Peak Oil and Natural Gas Caucus. Kaufmann is a Senior Policy Analyst at the Oregon Department of Energy.

Clearly an across-the-board reduction in CO2 production will require a more carbon-efficient relationship between transportation and land use, and in the industry and infrastructure that support them. If 60 percent of new development were compact as opposed to conventional sprawl, the total aggregate reduction in national CO2 production over trend would be in the order of 10 percent. This change in the trend, in combination with stringent fuel economy standards, would be sufficient to lower aggregate GHG production attributable to cars and trucks to below 1990 levels. Perhaps of more importance, it would set in place an urban infrastructure far less dependent on the automobile and consequently more resilient to future disruptions in the energy supply.