For 65 years Community Service Inc. has advocated for small, local community as the most fulfilling, healthy way to live. Yet during this period the world moved more and more toward urbanization and industrialization based on the availability of cheap, abundant fossil fuels. The results have been environmental degradation, alienation and inequity. We believe Peak Oil is an opportunity to reverse this trend.

So in 2003 we developed The Community Solution Program, whose mission is to promote the re-emergence of the small community and a more agrarian, low-energy-use way of life as the solution to "Peak Oil." Through this program, we are focusing on public education regarding "Peak Oil" and have begun modeling and designing local, community-based solutions. We believe that encouraging individual lifestyle changes and developing small, low-energy sustainable communities are of utmost importance rather than the high tech energy solutions which are leading to severe global climate change.

We advocate for Plan C: Curtailment and Community, seeks an alternative to both non-renewables (hydrogen, large scale coal/gas-to-liquids, carbon sequestration, tar sands, etc.) which we call "Plan A" and renewables (large scale wind systems, biofuels, solar, etc.), which we call "Plan B." Plans A and B are risky and intended to maintain inequitable and unsustainable levels of resource consumption.

The U.S., with 5 percent of the global population, consumes 57 Barrels of Oil Equivalent (BOE) per capita per year while the the Third World, with 85% of the world’s population, consumes 7.3 BOE per capita per year. This ratio cannot cannot continue in a post-peak oil world. Our focus is to dramatically reduce the amount of energy consumed in the U.S. We concentrate on the half of the U.S. consumption (28 BOE) under direct control of each individual, particularly the energy used in food, housing and transportation.

We were the first to propose lifestyle change solutions and suggest peak oil as an opportunity to a less materialistic but more fulfilling way of life. CSI organized and ran the First, Second, and Third U.S. Conferences on Peak Oil and Community Solutions with more than 900 attendees combined, and recently produced the highly acclaimed film, The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil.

The two aspects of Plan C are curtailment and community. Curtailment, or cutting energy use, is the objective and community is the context in which we can do so. Community refers to the local area but also the spirit of cooperation and the sharing of resources. For tranportation we have a project called the Smart Jitney, which is a ridesharing system using reservation and cell phone technology. For housing we have a project called Retrofit for Humanity, where we determine what the most effective energy efficiency retrofitting options for homeowners are. Energy used in housing accounts for 40% of the country’s energy, more than for food or tranportation.

To give you a little history, Community Service, Inc. (CSI) was founded in 1940 by engineer and educator Arthur E. Morgan to research and promote small community. He believed small community was "the seed bed of society" and implemented his beliefs within his home town of Yellow Springs, Ohio. As President of Antioch College, he integrated both formal education and work study efforts within the context of a local community. In his position as head of the Tennessee Valley Authority, he created small towns for the workers and their families at the dam building sites. He was also the inspiration for a young follower of Gandhi who started a rural school in South India, called Mitraniketan (Abode of Friends), known all over India for its innovative and holistic approach to education. CSI also founded the Fellowship for Intentional Community, now a separate, thriving non-profit organization with over 1500 member intentional communities.

The intentional community movement now includes many thriving ecovillages, which are focused on sustainable living, and cohousing communities, the more mainstream version where people live in multifamily units and typically share amenities like garden space and a community house. Morgan viewed intentional communities as "research centers" for how to live interdependently with close-knit relationships as humans have done for thousands of generations. Without oil, we’ll have to start exchanging goods and services with our neighbors and communities again, and intentional communities can help us deal with the interpersonal issues that will inevitably arise.

We also are in the planning stages of our own community called Agraria. Thought it won’t be completely intentional in the sense of requiring membership, it will look similar to a co-housing community in that it will be human-scale with cars on the edge and will have multifamily dwellings and shared amenities including a community farm. The focus with Agraria is incorporating agriculture, as the name suggests, as well as conserving energy with small, efficient homes and local offices and workshops.

In answering the question "How should we live now?" my immediate answer is "not how we’ve been living." But what that looks like I’m not exactly sure. Yet creating the vision is so critical, because if we don’t have a vision of a better world that resonates with people, then we as a world will end up taking the easy road, which is likely war for the rest of our lifetimes, possibly nuclear war, and certainly immense human suffering and ecological damage. So we need to have an alternative vision for people when they realize where we’re headed, when they realize the consequences of their actions. The vision cannot just be about sacrifice and hardship, though we must experience plenty of both, but about the wonderful things that living a more sustainable, low-energy will bring. We need to communicate our vision in a way that invites and inspires people, not frightens them with the alternative.

That’s why I think models are so important, because models instruct us but also inspire us. It takes it out of the theoretical and shows people a vision that they can experience directly. We need replicable models, which is what we’re focused on creating. A new kind of neighborhood we people grow their own food, a ridesharing system to utilize our current infrastructure, which is based upon cars, and retrofitting tools and information because we have 100 million buildings in this country that we’ll use as shelter in the future. There are also a lot of initiatives at the community level, as well as examples across the Third world where they survive on far less energy.

We are interested in discussing how we can share these examples and work together to share our successes and failures. Coordination is key because these are global problems and no individuals or communities are really isolated, especially with global climate change and the nuclear threat. Its like we need seedsaving and exchanging but with ideas, strategies, technologies, and knowledge. Of course, we need real seedsaving too.

I want to say a few words about timing because I think it is critical. This meeting is coming just in time, in my opinion. This time that we have before the devastating economic and ecological crisis has hit is a gift and we need to use it to develop the vision and the models. Though we may not have a large population right now, we should work with what we have and have the solution ready for people when they arrive at the realization that they must change for the world to have a viable future. If we cannot reach everybody in the mainstream right now, we shouldn’t worry. To reach them now, we likely have to compromise our message, as has been done with the words "sustainable" and "green." I think we should focus on planning and strategizing, as we are this weekend, and developing replicable models throughout the world. We look forward to working with you on this tremendous challenge and exciting opportunity.

Thank you.

– Megan Quinn Bachman is the outreach director of The Community Solution, a program of Community Service, Inc.