Post Carbon Institute

Post Carbon Institute largely publishes and promotes the work of its Fellows and allies. It maintains two major websites, postcarbon.org for material from its staff and Fellows, and resilience.org for material from allies. Since 2009 it has focused on: publishing articles, reports, and books; running issue-oriented promotional campaigns; and serving as a speakers' bureau for some of its Fellows.

History

2003–2008

Post Carbon Institute was founded by Julian Darley (President) and Celine Rich (Executive Director) in 2003. (Although not explicitly recognized as a founder, Dave Room helped build the Institute from months of its inception into a funded organization.) Its initial purpose was to implement programs to educate the public on issues surrounding global fossil fuel depletion (see peak oil, peak coal, peak gas) and climate change, as well as on possible responses to these challenges. A key tool for this was a film called "The End of Suburbia", which featured Richard Heinberg and James Howard Kunstler among others. Post Carbon promoted the concept of Relocalization, a strategy to build community resilience based on the local production of food, energy, and goods, and the development of more localized governance, economy, and culture.

Post Carbon Institute was one of the few organizations in this period actively promoting the concept of peak oil, along with groups such as the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas, the International Forum on Globalization, and the Transition Towns movement, and websites such as EnergyBulletin.net and The Oil Drum. It ran the predominant online social network focused on community responses to peak oil and climate change, the Relocalization Network. Richard Heinberg joined as a Senior Fellow-in-Residence in 2008. Major activities included:

• Global Public Media, streaming long format audio and video interviews about the issues surrounding fossil fuel depletion.
• The Relocalization Network, a network of groups and individuals working to educate their local communities and develop programs to re-localize food and energy production, and reduce local consumption.
• The Energy Farms Network, a demonstration and partnership program to explore production of feedstocks, fuels and electricity by local farmers for local users.
• The Oil Depletion Protocol (aka the Rimini or Uppsala Protocol), a blueprint for an international agreement to avoid price and supply volatility problems associated with global oil production.

Since 2009

Asher Miller became Executive Director in 2009, and Post Carbon restructured to concentrate its program activities on research and publishing. It broadened its topical focus to include natural resource depletion, climate change, the limits to economic growth, human overpopulation, food, and other issues - partly in response to the changed U.S. political landscape following the 2008 oil crisis, the financial crisis of 2007–2008, and the election of President Barack Obama (see Post Carbon Institute Manifesto). Most of its earlier programs were consolidated or discontinued. It entered into partnerships with Transition US and Energy Bulletin.net, a clearinghouse website on issues surrounding global energy resource depletion. Its roster of Fellows was significantly expanded to include notable figures such as Bill McKibben, Wes Jackson, David Orr, and Majora Carter.