The Peak Oil Crisis: The Portland Report (Tom Whipple)

  Last week Portland, Oregon became the first governmental body in the United States to not only acknowledge that imminent peak oil is a reality, but also to publish a plan as to what the city should be doing to cope.

Published on 14 Mar 2007 by Falls Church News-Press. Archived on 14 Mar 2007.

  by Tom Whipple

  Last week Portland, Oregon became the first governmental body in the United States to not only acknowledge that imminent peak oil is a reality, but also to publish a plan as to what the city should be doing to cope. Breaking new ground has both its perils and its rewards. The peril is that you have no guidelines to the road ahead. The advantage is that there is no standard of comparison so your efforts instantly become the textbook to mitigating the effects of peak oil at the local level.

  As someone who is familiar with the literature and follows the peak oil story on a daily basis, I can report that the folks on the Portland Peak Oil Task Force have produced a succinct, outstanding report that should be read by every local official everywhere. While there will naturally be many local variations, Portland’s approach to the problem contains much that seems universally applicable.

  The tone of the Portland report is one of moderation. Although it deals with the most serious issue the world has had to face since the world wars and threats of nuclear holocaust a generation or two ago, the report’s 85 pages methodically makes the way through the peak oil story and what needs to be done. In a matter-of-fact way, the report deals with numerous issues likely to ensue from peak oil and offers many new insights as to what is likely to happen and what we as a civilization should be doing to transition away from fossil fuels and feedstocks.

  Portland clearly benefited from the expertise of the many people who served on the task force and its four expanded subcommittees. This process allowed the task force to break down a large and unwieldy problem into more manageable topics (land use and transportation, food and agriculture, public and social services, and economic change) to come up with some new insights and good recommendations for each.

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