Conference Focuses on Individual and Community Survival Strategies for the Energy Crisis
The annual U.S. Conference on Peak Oil and Community Solutions, held in Yellow Springs, Ohio since 2004, will be in Michigan this year. The Halloween weekend conference will focus on individual and community survival strategies in the coming energy crisis. Several hundred community activists, sustainability educators and lifestyle change advocates from Ohio, Michigan and elsewhere are expected at the conference, co-sponsored by Community Solutions, a Yellow Springs nonprofit organization, and the Michigan-based Upland Hills Ecological Awareness Center.
The conference will be from Oct. 31 to Nov. 2 at the Oakland Center at Oakland University in Rochester, 25 miles north of Detroit. Participants will learn how to cut their household energy use and create resilient, sustainable communities to weather the coming economic and ecological storms.
Speakers at the Fifth U.S. Conference on Peak Oil and Community Solutions include keynoters John Michael Greer, author of the forthcoming book, The Long Descent: A User’s Guide to the End of the Industrial Age, and Dmitry Orlov, author of Reinventing Collapse: Soviet Example and American Prospects. Richard Heinberg, the world’s foremost oil depletion educator and author of several best-selling books including The Party’s Over, Powerdown and Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines, will speak via webcast.
There will also be workshops and panels, Connection Café roundtables with area experts, an eco-tour slide show, screenings of award-winning films, entertainment, tours of local sustainably-designed buildings, and healthy, shared meals. Exhibits and exhibitor presentations will be offered free of charge to the public on Saturday from noon to 6 p.m.
“This conference comes at a time when the whole world is beginning to experience the limitations of a high energy way of living,” said Pat Murphy, executive director of Community Solutions. “The title reflects the recent release of my book Plan C: Community Survival Strategies for Peak Oil and Climate Change which is staking out a position of societal transformation as an option to belief in technological breakthroughs. Throughout the world more and more people are beginning to see this as the middle path between more industrialization and the collapse of civilization,” said Murphy, whose work drew praise from the conference's co-sponsor.
“Although hard-hitting, the message of Community Solutions is inspiring—that in transforming our relationship with energy resources and reducing our dependence on fossil fuels, we can transform our communities and lives in ways that are ultimately more satisfying,” said John Batdorf, executive director of the Upland Hills Ecological Awareness Center, an educational and demonstration center in northern Oakland County showcasing ecological design, energy conservation and the latest innovations in alternative energy.
Other conference speakers include Katrin Klingenberg, director of the Passive House Institute U.S., an organization promoting super-efficient, carbon-neutral, cost-effective building; Peter Bane, editor of Permaculture Activist magazine; Murphy, author of Plan C: Community Survival Strategies for Peak Oil and Climate Change; Christopher Bedford, President of the Center for Economic Security and the Sweetwater Local Foods Market; John Richter, co-founder of the Institute for Sustainable Energy Education and former president of the Great Lakes Renewable Energy Association; and Megan Quinn Bachman, Outreach Director of Community Solutions and co-producer of the award-winning film The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil.
For more information or to register, visit www.plancconference.info,
call Upland Hills Ecological Awareness Center at 248-693-1021 or e-mail info@plancconference.info.