[Peakoil] Meetup agenda - organisational

[Alex P]

Hi folks,

We had an informal meetup yesterday afternoon Leigh, Sarah, Paul and 
myself. We ran through the issues we think need addressing for a viable 
oil awareness group.

Please digest this email when you have a few free moments as it is quite 
crowded with ideas.

We discussed frameworks for:
1) Who is in.
2) Constitution -- how strictly worded
3) Vision statements -- what are we actually about
4) Internal communications -- eg email lists
5) External communications -- eg press releases etc
___________________________________________________

1) Who is in, that is, who actually wants to be part of this organisation. 
There are various levels of participation, and the best way of defining 
these may be to set up email lists for various sub-interests and those 
interested join those lists. I'll send out an email about this shortly.

2) We thought about having a strict constitution, versus a loosely worded 
document which relies upon the good faith of the group membership. The 
problem with a strict constitution as I see it is that too often they can 
create tension over whether rules are being followed, and mean that the 
most dedicated participants from time to time do not end up occupying the 
formally responsible positions (dog in the manger situation). So I'm going 
to present drafts of the two alternatives at the next meetup (Wednesday)

3) What are we about? It's actually not clear enough even now. First, 
should we be called "Peak Oil", do people know what this is, and how 
relevant will it be after the Peak in ten years? Maybe "Oil Awareness" 
instead.
But then, is focussing on merely oil a cop-out? There are many "solutions" 
to Peak Oil, once it is acknowledged. We can burn lots of fossil fuels and 
bring on cataclysmic climate change, and have lots more wars. Or we can do 
smarter stuff. This is the central issue of Peak Oil. This is not like the 
climate change argument. The climate change argument is about convincing 
people there is a problem, and the solutions follow pretty logically (or 
rather, convince people there are viable solutions and they will then be 
comfortable about recognising reality).
Peak Oil is different. The problem will be amazingly obvious in a couple 
of years. That argument will be made for us. It will be mixed up with 
economic crises, but it will be obvious. So then, the argument is, what do 
we do about it? And that is constrained by things like the greenhouse 
effect, and the willingness of various peoples to put up with being 
invaded. So we have choices about how hard we want to make this for 
ourselves.
This brings us to the big picture, which is The Limits to Growth. 
Essentially, Peak Oil is the first to humanity is going to bump up against 
one of The Limits in a really obvious and painful way (fisheries depletion 
and climate change are less immediate). So putting a positive spin on 
things, humanity has a big Learning Opportunity with Peak Oil. We can 
learn there are Limits, and instead of crashing into each succesive Limit, 
we can recognise that exponential growth in a finite system will always, 
inevitably, fail. This is an unpopular message, but it is the truth.
I think that Limits to Growth is the essential framework for what we are 
doing. The authors of the book have suggestions for how to turn things 
around, and I'll detail them in another email shortly.
So what we are about is another issue for the next meetup. We need to 
consider where we each see the organisation in 5 to 10 years, and what we 
would do to get there. We ned to think then about implementation of this, 
and what capabilities we need (eg skillsets such as film-making, 
engineering, whatever etc)

4) Internal communications. This basically means email lists, but also 
contact phone numbers. Email lists could probably be used as a way of 
getting the formally recognised structures of the organisation to match 
what really goes on. In a normal organisation with a board and meeting 
minutes, the minutes tell you very little about what is actually 
happening. They are basically for assigning and avoiding responsibility 
(eg "Look in the minutes, you supported it, I didn't"). That doessn't mean 
anyone outside the meeting gets any information from them. Instead, we 
should use email lists to coordinate decision making. That way, everyone 
interested gets to know, things are transparent and it's all recorded. 
Email lists should be established to formally recognise various sub-
interests (eg who wants to help build a demonstration solar power system, 
who will assist design of leaflets etc)

5) External communications. This can be especially contentious. This is 
how the organisation represents itself to the rest of the world. We can 
all send out our own press releases, but who's going to care? By acting as 
an organsisation, we have greater influence. So how is this external 
communication decided? Another issue for the meeting.

Anyhow, some more emails to follow. 

Alex

Canberra Oil Awareness Meetup
http://oilawareness.meetup.com/12/

ACT Peak Oil discussion list
http://www.act-peakoil.org