Post Carbon Institute, a think and action tank that explores what culture, governance, and economies might look like without fossil fuels, announces the formation of its new board of directors.
(PRWEB) April 23, 2005 -- Post Carbon Institute was established in January 2003 to raise awareness of global oil peak and begin preparations for a post-petroleum economy. The board appointees announced today bring, among other things, recognized expertise in ecology, oil and gas peak, local money, climate change, community, city design, online activism, local organizing, and relocalization.
The new board appointees are Richard Heinberg, professor at New College of California (USA), Richard Douthwaite, co-founder of Feasta (Ireland), Bill Rees, professor at University of British Columbia (Canada), Faith Morgan, Board President and Trustee of Community Service, Inc. (USA), James Howard Kunstler, author (USA), Dick Bell, executive with Friends of the Earth (USA), and Jason Bradford, founder of Willits Economic Localization (USA). They join the Post Carbon team of Julian Darley, David Room and Celine Rich, who are also directors.
Julian Darley, founder of Post Carbon Institute and Global Public Media, serves as chairman.
"We're thrilled that we have such a high caliber board, whose members reflect a range of backgrounds and professions, and who also represent a global cross-section of perspectives," said Darley in announcing the appointees. "They all have experience in questioning the current system of waste and violence, asking tough questions, not accepting business-as-usual lite answers, and proposing different ways of thinking about how we interact with the planet and one other.
New Directors
- Richard Heinberg is the author of six books including The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies (New Society, 2003), and Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World (New Society, 2004). He is a journalist, educator, editor, lecturer, and a Core Faculty member of New College of California, where he teaches a program on Culture, Ecology and Sustainable Community." His monthly MuseLetter was nominated in 1994 for an Alternative Press Award and has been included in Utne Reader's annual list of Best Alternative Newsletters. His essays and articles have appeared in many journals including Z Magazine, The Futurist, Earth Island Journal, Wild Matters, Alternative Press Review, and The Sun.
- Richard Douthwaite is an economist and author. His books, The Growth Illusion: How Economics Growth has Enriched the Few, Impoverished the Many and Endangered the Planet (New Society, 1999) and Short Circuit (Green Books, 1996), give dozens of examples of currency, banking, energy and food production systems which communities can use to make themselves less dependent on an increasingly unstable world economy. In 1998-9 he was a consultant to an EU-funded project to establish experimental community currencies in Scotland, Ireland, Amsterdam and Madrid.
- Dr. William Rees is a Professor in the School of Community and Regional Planning, UBC. His teaching and research emphasize the public policy and planning implications of global environmental trends and the necessary ecological conditions for sustaining socioeconomic activity. Much of his work is in the realm of ecological economics and human ecology. He is best known in this field for his invention of 'ecological footprint analysis', a quantitative tool that estimates humanity's ecological impact on the ecosphere in terms of appropriated ecosystem (land and water) area. Dr. Rees was awarded a UBC Killam Research Prize (1996) in acknowledgement of his research achievements.
- Faith Morgan is the trustee and treasurer of Community Service, Inc., a non-profit organization founded in 1940 by engineer and educator Arthur E. Morgan to research and promote small communities. They are working on Agraria, a prototype housing development that promotes energy-efficient building techniques, a sense of community, economic sustainability and local food production. Agraria features small, highly energy-efficient houses clustered together to preserve green space, which can then be used for gardens, orchards, open space and recreation areas.
- Dick Bell has had a long and distinguished career bringing political and activist organizations to the online world. He is currently serving as media director for Friends of the Earth. He served as Blogmaster for the Kerry-Edwards presidential campaign. During his tenure at the Democratic National Committee between 1993-1996, he oversaw the development of the first national party website and a massive bulletin board. He served as vice president for communications at the Worldwatch Institute from 1997-2002. He won the 1982 National Council of Teachers English "George Orwell Award" as co-author of "Nukespeak: Nuclear Language, Myths, and Mindset" (Sierra Club Books).
- James Howard Kunstler is the author of four non-fiction works on cities and the challenges facing American society including The Geography of Nowhere, Home From Nowhere, The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, (Simon & Schuster / Free Press), and his latest work, about the energy crisis, "The Long Emergency" (Grove-Atlantic, 2005). He is featured in the documentary, The End of Suburbia: Oil Decline and the Collapse of the American Dream.
- Dr. Jason Bradford is the founder of Willits Economic Localization, a group of citizens in the Willits region (Mendocino county, California), working together to create a local economy based on the principles of sufficiency, responsibility, and life promoting actions. He was previously a Research Scientist with the Missouri Botanical Gardens Center for Conservation and Sustainable Development. He has a PhD in Evolutionary and Population Biology from Washington University in St. Louis and has considerable expertise in the relationship between biodiversity and climate change.
"This is an exciting time for Post Carbon Institute," said David Room, Director of North American Operations. "As the new board assembles, we plan to greatly broaden our audience, member participation, and scope of operations."
Darley concluded, "I look forward to working with our new board members in developing and integrating effective responses to oil and gas peak and climate change."
Post Carbon Institute is a think and action tank that explores in theory and practice what cultures, civilization, governance & economies might look like without the use of (non-renewable) hydrocarbons as energy and chemical feedstocks. Post Carbon Institute advocates global relocalization as an essential response to peak oil, resource conflicts, climate change and other ecological problems. Post Carbon Institutes Outpost" program is designed to start the relocalization process by mobilizing community groups to experiment with ways of meeting their essential needs within walking distance. http://www.postcarbon.org.
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