From the ASPO-USA 2008 conference: two long-standing peak oil awakeners: author James Howard Kunstler (The Long Emergency) and Post Carbon Institute Founder and President, Julian Darley. ASPO is the Association for the Study of Peak Oil.
Darley, founder of Post Carbon Institute, is big on sharing: Sharing ideas to quickly inform a public largely unaware of peak oil. Sharing cars as a quick way individuals can get fuel usage down. He notes the "Re" in Relocalization means positive actions we can revive from the past to enable the powerdown transition.
Kunstler describes his recent novel World Made by Hand, a richly textured life in a post-oil agrarian community where electricity and phone are rarely working, and people must of necessity rely on each other. He compares America's current financial and political "fiesta of dishonesty" with the 1850s, which preceded the "last great U.S. convulsion."
Yuba Gals Independent Media production partners Robyn Mallgren and Janaia Donaldson have been producing local video programs for community access television since 2002.
The Yuba Gals live in rural Nevada City and their business is named for the nearby South Yuba River, a part of the Wild and Scenic river system in California. They live on 160 acres of forest land, in a 1500 square-foot off-grid home using about 10% of the electricity of the average American home (including home office). Their home is heated by a wood stove using deadfall wood from their property. Propane heats the cookstove, on-demand water heater and backup generator (needed only during gray-day periods in winter). Not yet energy independent, but moving in that direction!