Worse, our panicky grabs at holding onto cheap energy (as fuels for machines and food for us) will produce painful collisions with acting to resolve the climate crisis. We need governments to adopt a new prime-planning directive: How do we slash energy demand throughout society enough to let us survive only on energy supplies that won't destroy any hope for a stable climate. 

Today, Salem is completely unprepared. Consider Cherriots, our pitifully underfunded, skeletal transit "system." It doesn't run on Sundays now.

It won't run on Saturdays either if the bond fails again in November. So, just as we most need a high-quality transit system, ours is on life-support. Meanwhile, the local transportation planners claim there isn't enough money to maintain the transportation infrastructure we have -- even as they develop grandiose plans to plow two-thirds of a billion dollars into a third Willamette River bridge. Talk about pouring fuel on the fire.

It doesn't have to be this way. Up the valley, Portland was among the first cities to have recognized the problem; they formed and provided staff support for a citizen-led task force on peak oil, which produced a very solid plan for responding. Bellingham, Wash. just did Portland one better, bringing both the county and city together to start peak oil preparedness planning.  

To encourage that planning here, I gave an excellent book, "Post-Carbon Cities: Planning for Energy and Climate Uncertainty" (available at postcarboncities.net/guidebook), to the mayor, each city council member, each Marion County commissioner, the Salem public works and community development directors, and the two top SKATS staff. I asked them to work together by chartering a local effort to help us plan for what will be a much more difficult future.  

So far, there's been no response at all. Which is where I hope you'll come in: Contact the mayor and your city council rep, and the county commissioners. Tell them you are concerned that, by the time the peak oil and climate crises are undeniable, it will be too late to do anything about them. Tell them that it's time for us to wake up and smell the coffee on energy and climate.