Thanks Super G., PG, HO and Ianqui.

It is a real honor to represent NYC and join TOD community as a local action site. Please leave messages over at [Peak Oil NYC nyc.theoildrum.com] if you are from the NYC Tri-State Area and would like to contribute your own ideas, news, local action alerts, etc.

Also please see my recent post on a meeting that the local peak oil Meet-up group is having next week to start getting organized.

I hope to see you online and in person.

Alone we cannot accomplish much, but together we can change the world we live in to become more sustainable.

SUGGESTION: As you are specializing geographically (great idea!), I suggest that you specialize by topic.  For example, I have been reading with great interest Stuart's attempt at modeling the various consequences of peak oil.  What would happen if there were a sub-topic around Peak Oil Consequences which has an active moderator who does those things that facilitate conversations--summarizing, posing new questions, seeking common ground, etc. which would hopefully serve to advance the argument.

This site will only continue to grow exponentially until it will just clog up. It think it will need to specialize its content.

If there is anyone else interested in starting a Peak Oil Boston site, I'm willing to contribute.

I featured the Portland Peak Oil group on Treehugger not too long ago..

You might want to contact them about joining TOD as a "local chapter".

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/08/portland_peak_o.php

http://www.portlandpeakoil.org/

I'm here at a "ground zero" in southern China. I'd be interested to know if there is anyone else out there in this part of the world, or even in East Asia who is following this issue. I was lucky enough to attend the ASPO conference in Lisbon this year and have been following the issue for several years (I stopped losing sleep over it several weeks after I read every page on dieoff.org which was my introduction!)

As I've said before, I think this site is absolutely outstanding and is my first port of call even ahead of the Energy Bulletin, as good as it is. It's time to start planning to survive this - many won't. I do hope the localisation doesn't result in disintegration. You who live in real communities are luckier than those of us who live in places powered by ultra-materialist turbocapitalism such as is driving this place to oblivion. It's not been a good idea to breathe the air here for the last few days. God know what it will be like when even more coal gets burned.

Another good place to start looking for active local Peak Oil groups is the Post Carbon Institute (http://www.postcarbon.org).

I expect that many local groups may want to 'dual-register' with both TOD and PCI, since the two forums have different approaches and slightly different orientations (PCI requires member groups to be 'non-nuclear' in their energy solutions orientation).

I hope that both PCI and TOD can become great resources for local organizing and discussion about Peak Oil and relocalization.

Your site is useful and informative. At the same time, let me present my (our) views, too. Who cares about countless tiring discussions and useless brain racking arguments centred on petty technical jargon like hybrid car "conversions" and alternative sources of energy and conservation and other optimistic measures, etc., etc.? These, and indeed the whole subject of the future of mankind, are all later issues.  The point to be made now is: we all know that it is the foremost historical necessity and reality of the age that the otherwise invincible centre of world evil - the collossus of Great Babylon (the USA) and its evil petroleum-powered capitalist system has to be utterly ground to dust by a future multinational nuclear strike, and that this can only - and deservedly - be accomplished when it and its greedy and wasteful society are crippled and brought to their knees -- i.e literally to the posture for execution to be carried out; and the only agent capable of totally "softening up" America for us to deliver such a coup de grace to it is Peak Oil... That is why Peak Oil is inevitable and soon to come, and will be successful, because the destruction of Babylon and the End of [these] Times have been universally and diversely prophesized in all religions. Without it, there will be NO OTHER means for the salvation of Humanity and civilisation.

Hi all,
it's Dave here from Sydney Peak Oil.

I was wondering who out of www.postcarbon.org and "The Oil Drum" is going to beat the other to the kudos of hosting BOTH of the meetup.com main functions.

First... there is the online meeting software, hosting the local group "virtually" so that peakniks can get together in their city in reality.
Second... there is no point hosting a group without an easy to access Master Directory! It's the MD for the peak oil world that I am mainly writing about.

Sydney Peak Oil started on meetup.com. At first it was people loggin in, and missing each other by a month or two. No one chatted. No conversations were responded to. It was as if they were logging in and finding out, "No one is home."

So, totally new to peak oil as I was at the time and totally desperate to get it out there, I logged in as Organizer for Sydney. I determined that I was going to welcome every peaknik that dropped by that group. You know what? It worked. 6 months later we were presenting peak oil to the NSW Upper House, and it made a brief appearance in the NSW Upper House parliament the next day.

Why? Was it because we had the strictest set of criteria for a member to join? Or was it because we had the most thorough mission statement? Did we sell 20 different kinds of peak oil books at our site? Did we have the latest, hottest expert on peak oil in our group?

Nah! We had none of that.

We are just concerned citizens that got together. Once we got together we were able to use one another's contacts and talents for peak oil awareness.

My concern is that meetup are charging and new groups are not forming as a result. If you look at the meetup world map, Australian groups are all wiped because no one could be bothered to log in and pay $9 per month for the "privilege" of using meetup.

So my criteria for a successful peak oil group website would be:-
1/ Really easy to use. I like phpbb.com shareware software.
2/ Free
3/ Easy to find your local group! I would allow a database to grow where you could search by Country, State, City, Group Name, Group Website, etc.
4/ No conditions! I would not "test" newcomers to peak oil before they could meet other peakniks. I would not demand that they were against Nuclear power, for example, before they could log in and meet their local peakniks. If they are even remotely sane, and remotely concerned about campaigning for peak oil awareness, I want them! I might tell them my concerns with nuclear power later on, over a cuppa after a meeting. But I would not prevent membership based on a more informed environmental checklist. That kind of system might just confirm some people in their beliefs that peak oil is all just environmental leftie tree hugging hippie crap, when we all know it is hard core science.
5/ Attractive. I hate email lists... and I love cool forums with smilies and graphics and the one discussion thread running all the way down the page, in order, and all the other whiz bang special effects. It makes it so much easier to get the vibe of what people are saying.

So, who is going to set up a system where peakniks can log in and leave their group information in a database? My poor old eclipse server is not cut out for that. Let's get this world movement MOVING! Can oil drum set up a worldwide database that tells new peakniks, definitively, if there is a group in their town?

Dave Lankshear
www.eclipsenow.org
Free peak oil posters for your local notice board.
www.sydneypeakoil.com
Raising Sydney's awareness of global oil depletion and the possible consequences

Worldwide "Master Directory" to local meetings.

• If you meet to campaign for peak oil awareness, please let us know. Fill out the form below, and post a reply to this thread... a moderator will add it into the Master Directory. Thanks, and may you succeed in spreading peak oil awareness peer to peer, peer to government, and peer to any corporation or business that will listen!

• If you have no local meeting, then please start one in Google groups. If you are struggling with a name, just go by the formula "city" peak oil. It's a nice generic but specific name, and it will help internet surfers find you.

Please use the following example format:-

Country:     Australia
State:         New South Wales
City:         Sydney
Name:           Sydney Peak Oil
web:        www.sydneypeakoil.com

http://www.sydneypeakoil.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=444

You can just reply to this forum --  as a guest and without all the hassle of registering -- to have your peak oil MEETING website details added to the Worldwide Directory.

Note: This is not a metadirectory such as Dry Dipstick.
This is not for peak oil primers etc. This is EXCLUSIVELY for campaigning groups!

This is to replace the Meetup.com group finding function, enabling peakniks from all over the globe to find their local meeting no matter who the webhost might be... meetup.com or www.postcarbon, or your own google group.... we don't care. Just leave your details with us by replying to the above thread, and we will add it in. Cheers and good luck with your local campaign for peak oil awareness.

First it was 'thinking globally'.  Then  it was 'acting locally'.  Try thinking and acting 'continentally'.  I am posting this from Canada.  A continental design for survival of our high tech society was designed in 1933 by Technocracy Inc., a non-profit, membership organization.
The proposed structure is based on 'function', not politics or price.  The operation would use energy as the measure and control of both production and consumption.

Globalism is a fading myth.  Community self-sufficiency is a delusion in a modern society.  Continentalism for North America is our last best hope for survival.  We have  the resources, the installed infrastructure, the trained personnel. All we need is to wake up and join the action.
Walt Fryers

 

Sierra Nevada Bioregion, CA Group links:

Sierra Permaculture Listserve:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SierraPermaculture
Practical stuff on survival

APPLE Nevada County:
http://www.postcarbon.org/groups/apple
Relocalization efforts in the Grass Valley/Nevada City, CA area via PostCarbon.org

Stop on by if you're local and get involved!