Richard Heinberg muses on the passing of the days of cheap air travel: The airline industry has no future. The same is true for airfreight. No air carrier has a viable plan to make a profit with oil at current prices—much less in years to come as the petroleum available to world markets dwindles rapidly.

Patrick Marcus and other motivated citizens sprouted a community garden on city land slated to be a park in Ashland, Oregon. When the garden was threatened by plans to develop the park, they got active. Their research and advocacy led to official policy supporting community gardens in city parks. As the volunteer garden manager, Patrick affirms gardening isn't just for leisure -- it helps build community. It creates bonds among people from diverse social spheres -- through shared work, classes, potlucks and, most of all, shared passion. Episode 106.

Though born and raised elsewhere, Jerry Becker is now a de facto indigenous member of Oregon's Elk River watershed. The credo he lives by is Respect. He and his family have lived lightly "long before it was cool." An ecoforester, Jerry manages the woods sensitively with an eye to its wholeness. For the past thirty years he has worked with Friends of Elk River to protect wilderness regions in the watershed. In the last decade he formed the Elk River Land Trust, working with private landowners to protect agricultural and forest lands from development. Ripples of his gentle respectfulness permeate an entire watershed. (www.foer.org, www.erlt.org.) Episode 105.

From an early start producing biodiesel from used cooking oil in his garage, Ian Hill was instrumental in creating a market for biofuels in the state of Oregon. Now Managing Partner of SeQuential Biofuels in Eugene, he has gone on to build the first retail biofuels station in the state -- and it's not an ordinary fueling station: A solar panel canopy provides 50% of the needed electricity. The convenience store is a passive solar design to help with heating and cooling, and stocks as much locally produced food as possible. Its "living roof", of mostly native plants, helps cool the building in summer, and slow and filter stormwater runoff. This optimistic enteprenuer says he and his family have found that consuming less can bring greater happiness. Episode 104.

Wanting to live a "reasonable, comfortable life" in tune with nature, Ann and Gord Baird are building a "net zero energy" home on rural Vancouver Island. Their plans: a thick-walled cob house with passive solar heating. Wind and solar panels to provide electricity. Solar thermal hot water for domestic use and radiant heating. Composting toilets to enrich the earth for orchard, gardens and chickens. Rainwater catchment and a well for domestic and irrigation water. Episode 103.

Renowned political analyst Kevin Phillips argues successive administrations have imperiled the US economy by a combination of shortsighted policies and a trend against regulation. These include unparalleled credit card debts, the expansion of financial industries such as hedge funds, ballooning national debts, and deliberately altering statistics like inflation and unemployment to mask the accurate picture.

Spurred by a viewer's question about gas prices, Michael Moore talks about the breadth of the problem of peak oil: petroleum is not just a fuel, but a feedstock for most of the material bases for our life.

As U.S. gasoline prices crest the astronomical price of four dollars a gallon, many Americans are complaining that prices are too high to bear. They might spare a thought for the Scottish who would be grateful to pay $8.30 a gallon, if only they could get it.

In this article for HopeDance Magazine, Post Carbon Institute founder Julian Darley
discusses the connections between food and energy, both globally and as locally as your kitchen table.

In this month's MuseLetter, Heinberg shares some material from his upcoming book on coal. Also included are his May column for The Ecologist magazine ("What Car do You Drive?"), a Foreword that he wrote for the new edition of Mat Stein’s brilliant book When Technology Fails, and a brief blog for the Post Carbon Institute website.