as some of you may have noticed I have not been all that active on tribe lately. September was a very busy month for me... and, if it weren't for the unfortunate fact that a fire took out the sandwich shop I was working at, I would probably still be just trying to 'catch up'! but, since this extra time has suddenly become avalible I thought I would use it to give everyone an update on how things have progressed over the past month.

In Augest I made mention of a group of community members I have been involved with here in Austin know as "Crude Awakening". At the time of my last report we were putting together a presentation to our City Council to follow the lead of other progressive cities (namely Portland and San Fan) adopt a resolution that addresses the issues of energy and resource depletion. Although I was personally unable to attend the presentation I must give credit and high regard to those that made it possible as it seems, so far, to have had the desired effect. The presentation itself was well coordinated with a total of 4 different speakers given their own 3 min section of what was originally intended to be a 15 min presentation. Dispite the obvious hurdels of getting something like this corriographed into a single cohecive statment the presentation managed to catch the attention of all the right people to help move the resolution on to the next phase.

At the last Crude Awakening meeting we were joined by former Austin City Council Member and current Deputy General Manager of Austin Energy, Roger Duncan. Roger has been ~the~ pioneer in making Austin Energy’s Green Choice program the most successful utility-sponsored green power program in the nation with over 665 million subscribed kWh. He has made it his personal mission to see that the issues of Peak Oil (as well as energy depletion in general) are addressed by the city. he has taken it upon himself to spearhead the passing of our resolution and hopes to co-chair the proposed Energy Depletion Risks Task Force… and I doubt we could have hoped for anyone more qualified!

Things are moving fairly quickly on this front now and I will do my best to keep you all in the loop. For now, however, I must return to the job search… wish me luck!