Posted by Rachel Deahl

(image: madaboutasia via flickr.com)

The people of Lawrence, Kentucky, have had oil on the brain. That’s why the community has started its own organization to address the matter. With worries about what the community would do if global oil supplies were to dry up (and the world was to reach what’s dubbed “peak oil”), or the price of crude was to spike significantly, city officials last year created the Lawrence Peak Oil Task force.

Chad Lawton of the Lawrence Journal-World & News writes that the group, which has been meeting since January 2009, has been coming up with both conventional and not-so-conventional ideas about how Lawrence would cope with less oil. One idea includes converting all of the city’s vehicles to electric hybrids. On the more dramatic end, to address a world where modern transportation as we know it is more difficult, the group is considering programs geared at getting residents to make large-scale gardens in their homes, cutting down on the need to leave the house for food. As one member of the task force told Lawton: “When people start feeling the effects of Peak Oil and their budgets are pinched and their mobility is impaired, people will start doing lots of things on their own.”

While it’s still unclear what the task force’s forthcoming final report will focus on, the city’s mayor, Rob Chestnut, who is also a member of the group, said he hopes it will ultimately “look at how the city could take its energy footprint from where it is now to about half of that, if we had a major oil event.” Another task force member said the group’s goal is to present ways to effect long-term change, not quick fixes. “This isn’t going to be a revolution,” Tom Kern, the president of the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce, said. “It will be an evolution. We do want and need to evolve to have a smaller carbon footprint. We need to look at how we can do that over a period of time.”

www.heatingoil.com/