SF Peak Oil Preparedness Task Force

San Francisco has commissioned a citizens task force whose goal is this:

Resolution establishing the Peak Oil Preparedness Task Force to coordinate the assessment of the city of San Francisco's vulnerability to energy price shocks and to determine appropriate measures to mitigate municipal vulnerability and to draft a comprehensive response plan for recommendation to the Board of Supervisors.

This group meets twice monthly in room 421 of city hall. On the 1st Tuesday we meet from 3-5.30 and on the 3rd Tuesday we meet from 5 to 7.

The meeting on Sept 2 was in large part a presentation by Jason Mark entitled 'Harvesting Chaos: Peak Oil and Food Security'. All docs can be found through the website, and this on can be found by following the link for the Sept 2 agenda. Quite a good presentation.

The goal was to have a report to city council by next month, but the new goal is to have it by December.

Some interesting comments from the meeting:

We can only make recommendations for what the city of SF can do.

We are not considering 'worst case scenarios' for societal breakdown.

The city needs to look at its budget through a peak oil lens.

SF consumes about 1 million tons of food/ yr, the bay area about 6 million tons. A 100 mile circle around SF produces about 20 million tons of food. Though the fruit and melons we produce weigh more per calorie than grains. This is also with cheap fuel and fertilizers.

A more comprehensive report- The Food Shed Assessment, was presented last week for the Slow Food USA Conference. This has more detailed info about the bay areas food production.

Golden Gate Gardening- by Pam Prince- a great resource for what to grow and when in the bay area.