The week after the DNC, Denver is calm, quiet and exhausted (or maybe it’s just me). After the frenzy of national attention we’ve returned to a normal pace - the tents are gone, the streets are relatively clear and the weather is cool and sunny. A bag full of hard-won credentials, a heap of compostable cups and a bunch of great stories are the best reminders of last week’s flurry.

A quick recap of some end of week highlights:

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In the months following the selection of Denver as the host city for the 2008 Democratic National Convention, I worked to lay the groundwork for it to be the greenest convention ever - supporting Mayor Hickenlooper’s early greening pitch to DNCC chair Howard Dean and organizing a group of advocates and supporters to get the effort underway. Since leaving my role as Greenprint Denver founding Director in June of 2007, life has been relatively quiet. I’ve enjoyed building a new business, being in the private sector, walking to work, supporting local and national clients with sustainability strategy needs and working on a book contract.

But next week the Democratic National Convention comes to Denver, and it’s impossible not to get caught up in the transformation in the city as it prepares for 30,000 guests, and the wild proliferation of “green” events and opportunities related to this historic event.  Read more »

A week ago, the American office of the international Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO-USA) publicly challenged Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) - a prominent oil forecasting think tank, to a wager: a bipartisan group of businessmen and analysts from ASPO offered up $100,000 to be paid if CERA’s 2017 oil production estimates are met. ASPO considers CERA’s forecasts wildly unrealistic at best and dangerously misguided at worst. They seek to challenge the analysis (and resulting policy decisions) that assume that even with steadily declining production from oil fields, worldwide oil production in ten years will continue to increase.  Read more »

WHAT’S A LOCAVORE TO DO IN DENVER?

Two years ago I helped organize (with ASPO-USA) a national Peak Oil conference in Denver that was attended by a healthy mix of local officials, big picture thinkers, petroleum industry reps, and environmental types. On the second day of the conference I moderated a panel discussion regarding local government response to Peak Oil scenarios. The debate centered on the question (made popular by James Howard Kunstler and others) of whether cities outside of strong agricultural zones (read: good soil, mild climate, plentiful water) will be viable in the future, or whether a serious decline in global petroleum supplies will significantly increase the cost of food transportation and require a new movement to rural living, thus signalling the demise of the city as we know it.

Whether or not you buy into the concept of a back to the land movement created by geopolitical crisis (also known as Relocalization), and many don’t, there is a strong and growing movement to support the production and consumption of local foods. Beyond Peak Oil scenarios, the Local Food Movement is being driven by a multitude of factors, including:  Read more »