Tools

You want to reduce your energy consumption, but what's the most effective way of doing it ? Here's some tools for working out what to do:

Also, do you know how much space you are taking up on the planet ? Use the Ministry for the Environment's ecological footprint calculator to find out.

Localise!

Urban Sustainability

Live locally to save energy

With less energy to go around in the future, everything we do will be done on a smaller scale. Global trade will be limited to scarce resources or specialized goods and services.

The key to living locally is simply to stop and think, "Can I get this closer to where I live?". We can wait until we have a crisis and then start preparing, but by then it will be too late. If we foster local production, crafts, skills, facilities, education then we have a chance to be able to provide for ourselves in the localised economies of the future.

Relocalization needs to be a community exercise. There are many initiatives worldwide, such as the Post Carbon Institute's Relocalization Network that are organising responses to Peak Oil at a community level. Reurbanise will be setting up similar groups for discussing the New Zealand situation in the near future - let us know if you want to be a part of this.