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Peak Oil Preparedness Task Force

Legislation and Initiatives Members Public Awareness

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The Task Force sunsetted on March 27, 2009.

The Peak Oil Preparedness Task Force was charged with coordinating the assessment of San Francisco's vulnerability to energy price shocks and determining appropriate measures to mitigate municipal vulnerability. The Task Force submitted a comprehensive response plan to the Board of Supervisors before it sunsetted in March, 2009.

Legislation and Initiatives

Resolutions

Resolution establishing the Peak Oil Preparedness Task Force to coordinate the assessment of the city of San Francisco's vulnerability to energy price shocks and to determine appropriate measures to mitigate municipal vulnerability and to draft a comprehensive response plan for recommendation to the Board of Supervisors (click to view the resolution).

Resolution acknowledging the challenge of Peak Oil and the need for San Francisco to prepare a plan of response and preparation. (click to view the resolution).

Resolution extending the sunset date of the Peak Oil Preparedness Task Force.
(click to view the resolution).

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Members

The Peak Oil Preparedness Task Force consisted of seven voting members from members of the public that represented interested stakeholders in the Task Force appointed by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

Voting Members:

Patricia Gerber - Architecture and Buildings
Patricia Gerber is a San Francisco author and cartoonist. A life-long environmentalist, she has been active in the anti-war movement since 2002 and remains a member of numerous local and national peace groups. She studied architecture with Paolo Soleri and received a Master of Liberal Arts from Johns Hopkins University in 1979.

Woody Hastings - Energy
Woody Hastings is an environmental professional with over twenty years of experience in community organizing, strategic planning, policy analysis, government relations, media outreach, and project management. Energy-related projects Woody has worked on include solar photovoltaic installations, a landfill gas-to-energy project, alternative fuel vehicle policy, a solar/hydrogen technology demonstration project, and leading a campaign to defeat an oil pipeline. Woody first became concerned about global oil supply limitations on his arrival to California in 1979 to find cars lined up waiting for gas. Woody holds a degree in Environmental Sustainability and Social Justice from San Francisco State University.

Ben Lowe - Transportation
Benjamin Lowe is a researcher and advocate focusing on issues of regional transportation. He has worked on a range of transit projects, working with the Transportation and Land Use Coalition (now TransForm) on a report about the benefits of encouraging school children to walk and bicycle to school, and also served as Treasurer and Marin County Grassroots Organizer for the North Bay Transportation Alliance, a campaign to secure funding for the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART) commuter rail program. Mr. Lowe has also worked on a number of Federal, state, and local emergency management and homeland security projects. For instance, Mr. Lowe helped to draft the Los Angeles Neighborhood Council Emergency Preparedness Plan, and served on the support staff for the Department of Homeland Security team tasked with the National Infrastructure Protection Plan, which outlines Federal policies for protecting U.S. infrastructure from natural disasters, catastrophic failure, and terrorist attack.

Jason Mark - Food
Jason Mark is an author, activist, and urban farmer committed to creating a more ecologically sustainable San Francisco. Mark co-manages Alemany Farm, the City's largest food production site. Alemany Farm uses organic food production to grow green job for low-income communities and promote neighborhood food security. Mark is also the co-author, (with Kevin Danaher and Shannon Biggs) of the book Building the Green Economy: Success Stories from the Grassroots (PoliPointPress). He edits the environmental quarterly magazine Earth Island Journal. His writings on the environment have appeared in The Nation, Orion, E, Yes! The San Francisco Chronicle, Alternet.org, Grist.org, and TomPaine.org.

Bernard Meyerson - Infrastructure
Bernie is Vice President and co-owner of East Bay Resources, Inc., a 20-year old recyclable paper brokerage. Since 1971 he has been a waste and recyclables management consultant to local, state, national, and international clients. He has lectured and given classes at UC Berkeley Extension and San Francisco State. Prior to 1971 he had a 14-year career in International Higher Education in New York City and the University of Illinois. He holds a BA and MA in Political Science and International Relations.

Jeanne-Marie Rosenmeier - Economy
Jeanne-Marie Rosenmeier is a self-employed CPA, who has lived and worked in the Bay Area since 1982. She is active in San Francisco Oil Awareness and San Francisco Post-Carbon, and was a founding member of Diablo Post-Carbon. In 2002, she was the Green Party candidate for California State Treasurer. Her interests focus on the economic and social consequences of the inability of oil supply to expand to meet demand, as well as the interaction between the limits to oil production and climate change. Her undergraduate degree is in mathematics, and she received an MBA from the University of Chicago in 1975.

Cal Simone - Societal Functioning
Cal Simone is a writer, speaker, coach, and teacher influenced by Carl Jung. He began his involvement with Bay area peak oil groups in 2005 as the East Bay post carbon group's first speaker, talking on "Consumerism at the End of the Oil Age" and the societal and psychological implications of a post-peak collapse, and has been writing and speaking about it ever since. His writings on peak oil and a variety of other topics have appeared in Culture Change Letter, the ManKind Project Journal, and Open Exchange magazine. Cal is also active in a men's leadership group that develops and practices cutting-edge methods of governance and collaborative decision-making in groups. Earlier in his life, Cal was a music producer and founded an award-winning Macintosh software company that helped publishing clients automate mundane repetitive tasks.

For public comment on the following topics please click to send an email:

Economy
Energy
Food
Architecture and Buildings
Infrastructure
Societal functioning
Transportation

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Public Awareness

San Francisco Peak Oil Town Hall Meetings

The San Francisco Peak Oil Preparedness Task Force conducted a series of town hall meetings from August 4 through August 20, 2008, to help educate the people of San Francisco on Peak Oil and how we need to prepare ourselves and our city for it.

In partnership with students from the Presidio School of Management and other committed citizens, the meetings covered:

• What's Happening with Oil
• Growing Food in an Urban Environment
• Creating Communities and Local Economies
• Transportation
• Personal Preparation
• Keeping Healthy in a Post Peak World

Meeting #1 - What's Happening With Oil?
In the first meeting we covered:

• the geologic reasons behind peak oil
• the alternatives we have to oil
• the expected impact on climate change from peak oil
• the likely impacts of peak oil on the economy and our societies
• and the kind of response that will be required of us

Meeting #2 - Growing Food in an Urban Environment
In the second meeting we covered:

• the drawbacks of the current food production system
• the dependency of the current food system on fossil fuels
• different types of gardening in cities
• extensive resources for growing food

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