About the Group

We're a grassroots group of concerned local citizens, from different backgrounds, with different interests, who've separately become aware of the looming crisis caused by the peaking of world oil supplies. We’ve come together to try to:

• Develop individual and collective strategies to cope with this crisis
• Create awareness in the Portland community about Peak Oil
• Influence policies of local government to help mitigate the crisis
• Serve as a community resource as the crisis becomes more severe

Several years a ago, a few concerned people in Portland found each other through Meetup.com and met at a small pizza joint to discuss peak oil and its ramifications. The group grew substantially in the spring of 2005 and moved from cramped quarters to the large dining hall of St. Francis Church in Portland, a space donated to the group free of charge once a week. Members decided not to let the space go unused and expanded the schedule from one general meeting per month to events every Wednesday night.

How to get involved:

Portland Peak Oil puts on events every Wednesday night in Southeast Portland. We feature relevant speakers, show films, hold small and large discussion groups, host workshops, etc. Between 30-120 people come each week. In between Wednesday evenings, there are monthly meetings of our working groups: Outreach, Preparedness, Policy, and Business. These monthly meetings are usually regular (e.g. the Business meeting is first Sunday of the month at 6pm). All Wednesday evening events and monthly meetings are posted to the events calendar.

The Outreach working group manages anything having to do with getting the word out about peak oil and the group, including tabling, peak oil 101 presentations around town, planning most of the Wednesday night events, etc. The Preparedness working group manages the first Wednesday night event workshop and works on other projects as well. The Policy working group focuses on influencing public policy at a local level by working with elected officials and bureaus. Finally, the Business group holds it all together: it's the monthly meeting where final decisions are made affecting the operations of Portland Peak Oil overall.

All events and meetings are free and open to the public and there's been great flexibility over the past year in incorporating the skills and energy of new members. We invite you to get involved!