David Room: Hello, this is David Room with Global Public Media, interviewing Mayor Larry Robinson of Sebastopol on August 26, 2005. Thank you, Larry, for taking my call on such short notice; your willingness to do so expresses urgency to me, am I right about that?
Larry Robinson: Absolutely. Peak Oil is a very urgent issue; it's not getting nearly enough attention in the media, but it's going to be catching up with all of us very soon.
DR: How did you becomes aware of the issue?
LR: Well, the specific issue of Peak Oil, I heard about through a friend of mine, Richard Heinberg, who's been writing extensively about it, in conversations, and then I read his book and start reading other books, and then started conversations with other people about it. Over the last year, there's been more and more written about it in the alternative press, and within the last couple of months we've started to see some attention in the corporate media, too.
DR: How do you explain Peak Oil to your constituents?
LR: If they're already familiar with the concept, I can use that term, but generally I don't use that term because it's an exclusionary jargon, it's shorthand for people who are already familiar with the concept. But for people who aren't it can be a barrier to understanding, so what I talk about is what it looks like to many economics and oil experts, a growing crisis in future energy supplies. And then I'll go into more details about Peak Oil production and increased demand particularly from China, and everybody acknowledges that it is a finite resource, and everybody knows that at some point, we're going to run out. But where the conversation changes is in the whole Hubbert's Peak concept, and most people, once you can begin the conversation, get it.
DR: Ok, you mentioned China. I understand you recently came back from visiting there; what did you learn?
LR: Yes, I was there for two weeks in a number of cities in China and the pace of development that I saw there was really astounding to me. In all my travels throughout the world, my 58 years, I had never seen a level of development like that, and it's all in anticipation of continuing supplies of energy. They're talking about doubling their consumption of fossil fuels in the next 10 years and the people that I talked to in China about it understand the concept of Peak Oil. Their intentions is to lock in as much of the supplies as they can, and I think, frankly, that the Bush administration understands it too; and he's also determined to put a lock on what remains. I think that's a big piece of what is behind our adventure in the Middle East.
DR: Tell me about your responsibilities as mayor, in the context of global oil production peak?
LR: Well, several things. One is to move our city organisation in the direction of preparing for that likelihood and for all of the fallouts of that. Another is to use my office as a bully pulpit to talk to members of my community about it and educate them, by writing editorials in the newspapers. In September the city council is going to be hosting a Town Hall meeting on the issue of Peak Oil, and several things that we want to have comes out of that are, first of all, a citizen's commission that the city council appoints to study the issue to develop a set of contingency plans that the city can adopt if and when different events occur, and also to identify leading indicators that would tell us when to implement different plans. Because nobody really knows what's going to happens, there are so many variables in this. The other outcome that I'm hoping for is a number of local community groups to continue the discussion of how the community itself can prepare.
And finally what I'm trying to do as mayor is shape our future development as a city in such a way that it will minimize, to what ever extent it's possible, the impact of skyrocketing energy costs. And one of the things we've done is to institute a green building program that requires much greater energy efficiency, both in construction and in building use. We also have a "Solar Sebastopol Program" with the goal, within the next year, of generating a third of our electrical use on rooftops within the city limits. Probably the most important thing we can do is encourage higher density development within our city limits.
Urban sprawl and suburban sprawl are probably the most inefficient use of both land and resources, including water and energy. So the new development that we're looking at is going to be much more compact, it's going to be much denser, it will mean higher building height, probably lower parking requirement in anticipation of less automobile use. Those are the kind of things that I think the city is looking at doing.
DR: Tell me a little more about "Solar Sebastopol." Is that a alternative energy co-op? How is that structured?
LR: It's a program that the city initiated in cooperation with a number of private vendors of photovoltaic systems. It started with a co-operative agreement with the energy technology program at Sonoma State University. Several years ago the students of Dr. Alexandra von Meier, who heads up that program, did an inventory of rooftops in Sebastopol --both business and residential-- to determine which ones are suitable for solar installation. So, we have a registry of those so people can get that information very readily, and then we refer them to these vendors who will do a free appraisal. Originally we had a plan to help finance the installation, but we found that's not necessary; with interest rate being so low, it's possible for people essentially to pay off the system in 10 to 12 years, simply from the saving on their utility bill.
DR: Does Sebastopol currently have any car-free zone, and might that also be an area that will increase in importance as you shape future development?
LR: We don't have any car-free zones, we're only two square miles in area; our old industrial area, which is about 30 to 40 acres depending how you look at it, is an area that we are looking to redevelop. We're in the process of developing a specific plan for that, and pedestrian and bicycle orientation is going to be a much higher priority for this than automobiles.
DR: Can you give our audience a little bit more information about Sebastopol? To what extend is it car and freight dependent? Are there many products made locally? What are some of the key things that you think about when you think about Sebastopol?
LR: We're historically a farm market town. We have a population of 7,800 within the city limits, and the greater Sebastopol area is approximately 30,000 people. Very rich farmland. For the last 40 or 50 years, our major export crop has been apples, but that has been transitioning to wine grapes, in particular Pinot Noir. There are also a lot of small organic truck farms in the area, growing fresh produces that's sold in our farmers market and the supermarket in the area.
That's one of the key things we're going to be working with in preparation for Peak Oil, to strengthen our community support for our local agriculture. One of the things that is growing in popularity is what's called "Community Supported Agriculture," in which local organic farmers offer subscriptions to people who pay a certain fixed fee per month, and in exchange they get a box of fresh produces every week. It's either delivered to their houses or they pick it up, so the farmer has a guarantee that his crop is going to be bought and the consumer has a guarantee of a good wholesome locally produced foods.
In line with that, there are two different groups that are working on developing complementary currencies, and I hope that within a year the two groups will have merged and have developed a currency. There are just a few problems that need to be worked out, but I think the city will be participating in that program, as maybe the major financial backer of the effort. That's going to support our local economy by keeping the dollars recirculating through the economy rather than moving out of it.
There is some temporary clothing manufacturing , there's some timber production, there's local manufacture of electrical vehicles, tools manufacture. Most of our manufacturing is pretty small, and I think we do have the resources to convert a lot of those to supply the kind of goods that people are used to importing. I think the time is going to be coming when importing clothing, and shoes, and tools, and the basics of life is going to be a lot more expensive than producing it locally, so we're going to be doing what we can to support that kind of transition.
DR: What is the upside, for you, in being so forthright? Have you experienced any backlash?
LR: Not on this particular issue, but on certainly on other issues; I get a lot of backlashes from being forthright. Our opposition to the Iraq war is one, our criticisms of corporation domination of the culture and of the political process is another. Our criticisms of automobile culture and our attempt to develop affordable housing, our attempt to limit sprawl -- all of those are fairly controversial.
DR: Interesting, because all of those seem to be related to oil consumption and will be affected in some ways when we're reach the time when we have energy constraints. I’m wondering why you haven't had any backlash with the Peak Oil issue.
LR: Well, I was just at a meeting yesterday morning with some of the officers of the chamber of commerce, and quite frankly even the business leaders in this community are realizing that we need to shift to a much more sustainable way of living, that we're all going to pay a high price if we don't. The longer we wait to make that shift, the higher the price is going to be, and the much more suffering it's going to be in dislocation of people and resources. I think this issue brings people together across the political spectrum. Sustainability is the issue that I've always campaigned on, and it's really become kind of the slogan of this community. We're pretty much agreed that we want to make Sebastopol, as much as possible, a model of sustainable community.
DR: How will Sebastopol run essential services, police, fire, garbage, etc. in an energy scarce future? You've mentioned contingency planning; what do you have in place or what are you planning to do?
LR: Well, we have put photovoltaic arrays on our fire department and our public work public building. We're going to be putting them on our city well to pump our water. This year we're going to install them at the police department. We're in negotiations with a private group to partner on a bio-diesel station here. Our fire trucks all run on diesel and number of our public works vehicles do, too. So even though in the long run bio-diesel isn't energy efficient, as long as there's leftover grease and oil in restaurant, we can convert some of that to run our fleet. Our police department can ride bicycle as need be, although we recently bought two hybrid electric vehicles for the police department. That's certainly going to be a priority for every new vehicle we purchase.
We set a target of reducing our municipal greenhouse gas emissions by 30% between our base year of 2000, when we did the research, and 2008. Our vehicle use is the biggest part of that, and so switching over all of our police vehicles especially to hybrids, or at least more efficient conventional gas engines, is going to be a high priority. The essential services for us are water, sewer and public safety, and I think we're in as good a shape as any city, better than most. In term of our ability to keep doing that, it will get more expensive and it may mean simply less driving, maybe more foot and bicycle patrols for the police if supplies are interrupted completely. I think we'll still be able to pump water up to our reservoir up in the hills using photovoltaic power, and then gravity feeds it downhill. Our waste water treatment facility is partially powered by methane that's generated there, and we're going to be installing photovoltaics at the lift system that pump it to the treatment plant as well.
DR: You've done a lot of work! Has most of that come about in the last three or four years? (LR: Yes, yes) You mentioned community supported agriculture; I'm curious if there are any goals for local food production in the Sebastopol area.
LR: Not yet. At the town hall meeting on September 21, that's one of the issues that I'm going to be raising, and hopefully we'll get some community groups working on developing those goals and figuring out how to meet them.
DR: Has there been any thought to adding fruit and nut trees to your smart trees program?
LR: Yes, we've thought about that; that will again be one of the things that we're going to be looking at following the September meeting.
DR: To what extent are you concerned about Sebastopol’s water supply in an energy scarce future? And what type of rainwater catchment, grey water recycling etc., are planned?
LR: Well, our planning department is researching a proposed ordinance for permitting greywater systems, as well as composting toilets. We've just adopted an energy and water conservation ordinance that encourages --and in some cases subsidizes-- energy and water efficiency conversion both in remodels and a new construction, in concert with several other cities that share a ground water basin with us in this county of Sonoma. We're beginning a study of the extent of the aquifer, what it's recharge rate, what’s the dry-down rate, because nobody really knows what's in the aquifer, so we don't have any indication that we've got a problem with it. But we do need to find out what's there, and the energy required to access it. I think we can do that by photovoltaics, although we're also considering the possibility of wind turbines at some sites for that.
DR: Might the city of Sebastopol’s employees eventually go through some type of peak energy training session?
LR: I'm not sure. I guess it will depend on what the recommendations are of this commission we hope to appoint.
DR: Do you have a strategy for slowly weaning Sebastopol off natural gas?
LR: Most people use natural gas heaters for heating their homes or heating their water. We've actually, in a way, moved into greater dependence on natural gas through a wood smoke ordinance, trying to clean up the air and encouraging people to use natural gas rather than wood. But I don't have a solution to that yet, and I'm open to any suggestions.
DR: What do you say to people who advocate nuclear power as a response to Peak Oil?
LR: I'll say, first of all, let's look at the cost, the cost of nuclear versus wind and solar, and point out that it is considerably more expensive. Then I ask them how they plan to dispose of the nuclear waste in a way that's safe, and nobody's got a satisfactory answer to that. The other consideration around nuclear, like coal and natural gas or any big generating facility, is that it's centralized and somebody else is in control of our energy, whereas a photovoltaic system on your rooftop or a small wind generator or a community-owned generator put the power literally in people's own hands. And that's both a much more democratic way and I think ultimately safer and more sustainable.
DR: Earlier you mentioned leading indicators of Peak Oil, and I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about that. What's your intention and how far along are you with that?
LR: Not very far at all. This is again a process that I hope to get started at our September 21 meeting. There has been a fairly organized group that has been meeting for some time to discuss the issues, and last month they hosted a community meeting. Both Richard Heinberg and I spoke there, and they had about 120 people there, this is at the Wilco's farm. And these people are all very interested, so this is the beginning of a base. Last week our Solar Sebastopol Program also held a public meeting about it, and Richard again spoke…, 220 people there, so the interest is growing and I'm hoping by September 21, we'll have 300 or 400 people there, all of who know a little bit about it and want to get more involved. And this is the base of people that I think we can join to develop the leading indicators and the contingency plans and the long term visioning about how to make this transition to a post oil economy.
DR: I know this is contingent on what happens in the town hall meeting, but how might you envision the city supporting on-going discussions in local community group?
LR: By listening to their recommendations, by taking them seriously, by enacting them, as much as possible, by council members sitting in on these discussions and participating in them. But I think there's enough interest here such that not much is going to be required from the city to keep it going.
DR: How can local governments in other places get the opportunity to learn more about what you're doing and possibly following some of the footsteps that you're embarking on?
LR: Well, I think one thing that people can do is contact their local elected official, whether their mayor or council member or county supervisor, and take some time to educate them about it. I'd certainly welcome any phone calls or letters from other cities who are interested in knowing more about what we're doing. In Northern California, most communities have already bought in to the principle of "smart growth," and those are essentially the same organizing principles that are going to be our best preparation for Peak Oil. So I don't think it's going to mean a radical re-visioning of how we do things, at least for the communities that are already on this track -- and that's most of the communities in the Bay Area in Northern California.
DR: How would you grade the current U.S. Administration response to global oil peak?
LR: I'll say an "F." Their approach seems to be to fight for control of the last drop. I think it's suicidal, criminally negligent, is that enough?
DR: (laughs) That's fine. If I was starting my college education today, how would you suggest that I think about what field or course to pursue?
LR: Number one is history…
DR: (laughs) We've seem to forgetting that…
LR: Yes, and the more we forget it, the higher price we pay for learning the lessons all over again. I would encourage young people beginning an education to get as broad an education as possible --in the humanities, which includes poetry and literature-- encourage them to study history, but also to learn some of those things maybe that aren't taught in the universities like, how to built a house, how to fix a bicycle, how to do simple repairs, how to take care of your own health and health of your family, how to grow your own food. There are skills that I think are important for individual survival, but maybe even more important is the survival of our cultural heritage and we're already at risk of losing that, and in time of crisis people have a tendency to withdraw into isolation. Some people talk about putting up a wall around our community or blowing up the Golden Gate Bridge to keep the starving hordes from the Bay Area from coming here, and I think that's absolutely the wrong way. What we need to do is become even more inclusive, and to keep building stronger ties to other communities. This is essential to maintaining the best in our culture, and if we go in that direction of closing ourselves off, then we go in the direction of creating a new dark age, which I don't think is necessary or inevitable.
DR: If you were the average 30 year-old working in corporate America, knowing what you know now about Peak Oil, how might you think about your five-year plan?
LR: I think I would put my highest priority into developing strong community networks, I think everybody should do that, I think that's going to be our greatest resources, our friendship and our connections to other people. So I would put my career in second place to developing close trusting relationships with my neighbour, with my community, with my family.
DR: I understand that Sonoma County, and Sebastopol in particular, has a very high level of social cohesion. Do you see that as a very important strength?
LR: Yes, I think that and our climate, and soil, and water are our greatest resources. And community cohesion --social cohesion-- is not exclusive of political diversity. In Sebastopol, we're not all green and progressive here, but even the traditional conservatives in our community are part of a community; we see each other on the street, we stop and visit, we realize that we're dependent on each other. This is one of the reasons for the series of town hall meetings we're doing, to let all the voices be heard so we can remember that we're all in it together.
DR: Are there any words of encouragement for your constituents and other people preparing for an energy-constrained future that you'd like to leave us with?
LR: Yes, I'll leave you with a poem from Garry Snyder, called: "For the Children", he says:
The rising hills, the slopes, of statistics lie before us. The step climb of everything, going up, up, as we all go down. In the next century or the one beyond that, they say, are valleys, pastures. We can meet there in peace if we make it. To climb these coming crests one word to you, to you and your children: Stay together learn the flowers go light.
DR: Fabulous, thank you so much Larry.
LR: You're very welcome David.
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