FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

October 15 , 2006

Science, News, and Fiction Writer, Dale Allen Pfeiffer,

Publishes The Mountain Sentinel

 “We have the ability to make our lives a heaven or a hell; but in so doing, we must address the issues of our day.”…..Dale Allen Pfeiffer from the Mountain Sentinel

You would think that energy depletion would be environmentally beneficial. Declining hydrocarbon production should decrease the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere, thereby easing the problem of global warming. Decreasing fossil fuel production would also lead to a decrease in chemical outputs, various forms of pollution, and environmental destruction, wouldn't it?

Unfortunately, this is not the case. The problem is that in our desperation to seek out the energy necessary to maintain economic growth, we will (and are) turning to the worse alternatives to oil and natural gas: coal, nuclear energy, ethanol and other biofuels. In our desperation, we are opening up formerly protected areas in order to get at every last little bit of oil and natural gas, and we are increasing the harvesting of tar sands and heavy oils, the extraction of which has a disastrous result on the environment. Furthermore, many of our so-called 'green' alternatives are not green at all. Hybrids consume more energy than gasoline powered cars, and the generation of ethanol consumes more fossil fuel energy than the amount of energy contained in the ethanol.

The only solution is to cut back consumption. If we want to survive, we must abandon consumer capitalism and replace it with something that is more sustainable, and more equitable for all participants. We must also foster a new environmental and community consciousness to make each of us more personally aware of our connection to everything and everyone one around us, and more responsible for our impact upon the world.

All of these issues are addressed at The Mountain Sentinel. Our New York presentation at the Local Solutions Conference, available for free through our website, gave a large overview of these various problems and what could be done to solve them. We have looked at how oil and natural gas depletion will adversely affect global warming in a series of free articles about climate change.

In the first issue of The Mountain Sentinel, we took a critical look at the coal industry as it expands operations to meet growing demand. We also looked at the greed of major oil corporations like Exxon-Mobile and talked about returning control and responsibility over resources to local communities. We also looked at the failure of the environmental movement and the necessity of revolutionary environmental change.

We speculated on the importance of our remaining wilderness and the opening of ANWR, in the second issue of The Mountain Sentinel. The second issue also contains a major examination of biofuels. The third issue of The Mountain Sentinel examines relocalization, the importance of LA's South Central Farm to the community farming movement, and the whole nature of energy.

In future issues, we will feature in depth looks at global dimming and the coal industry, the tar sands industry, a sustainable community in Baja California, and many other issues important to our environmental and our personal health. You can help us to continue this work simply by purchasing The Mountain Sentinel.

Praise for The Mountain Sentinel

"Well-researched and concise, "The Mountain Sentinel" is a very engaging and forward-looking journal. It contains a wide array of topics covering a diverse territory, provides a careful examination of the facts, is thought provoking, scholarly, courageous and compassionate. The format combines news with analysis and offers stories, musings and reflections to encourage the reader to ponder the depth of the Story of Humanity and perhaps make a few personal changes to come into closer harmony with Nature. I find it truly inspirational and an odyssey for the mind and soul.

"Anyone who has ever read Annals of Earth by Ocean Arks International will feel right at home with the "The Mountain Sentinel". — John T. Heinen, Advisory Board member for the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas" – USA (ASPO-USA). Moderator/Administrator for Peak Oil News and Message Boards. Member of American Chemical Society, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Federation of Environmental Technologists.

"Reading "The Dirty Truth about Biofuels" in the Mountain Sentinel, I was greatly relieved to see that it is possible to convey to a general audience the many inconvenient truths about what we do to the earth and ourselves when desperately attempting to prolong our unsustainable lifestyles.  Mr. Pfeiffer has done an outstanding job summarizing the confusing and contradictory literature on the subject of biofuels.  He has focused the much needed attention on the negative environmental aspects of their production, especially in the tropics. Mr. Pfeiffer deserves very high praise for his article." — Tadeusz W. Patzek, Professor of petroleum, chemical and environmental engineering, U.C. Berkley. Member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, and the American Geophysical Union.

"Your stuff is fabulous; have been reading at length. Congrats on a heroic effort. Great on energy, and especially good to see the focus on rich world imperialism." — Ted Trainer, School of Social Work, University of New South Wales

Advance Praise for Eating Fossil Fuels

(due out in Oct. 2006 from New Society Publishers)

"Eating Fossil Fuels is a wake-up call for humanity. It traces how we have stopped eating real food and have started to eat oil with industrialization and globalization, increasing the fossil fuel content of the food chain and threatening the environment, our health and our future. Pfeiffer shows how creating fossil fuel-free ecological and localized food systems has become a central challenge for sustainability, and how you can help make this shift." — Dr. Vandana Shiva, author of Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace and Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply

"People eat — and this book explains in the most lucid way what they eat: namely the product of energy-intensive agriculture. It finds that the Green Revolution, hailed as a breakthrough by which to feed an exploding population, actually degrades the ecosystem, making us ever more dependent on energy inputs from oil and gas. But oil and gas are set to deplete to near exhaustion this century. The challenges are great, but there are solutions. This book is key reading for those wanting to be counted amongst the survivors." — C. J. Campbell, Chairman, The Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO)

"In retrospect, the industrialization of agriculture was one of the greatest blunders in the history of our species; as Dale Allen Pfeiffer shows, it is a mistake that can be undone­ — and, given the imminent peak in global oil production, must be undone as soon as possible. The world's addiction to oil is as personal and prosaic as what's on your dinner plate and how it got there. This is a book of enormous importance." — Richard Heinberg, author of The Party’s Over, Powerdown, and The Oil Depletion Protocol

"As civilization stumbles blindly into the Post-Carbon Age, Dale Allen Pfeiffer has astutely identified our most critical vulnerability: the intimate dependency of our food system on finite fossil fuels. His book also includes a plethora of solutions and resources to help guide us to a sustainable, low-energy future." — John G. Howe, author of The End of Fossil Energy and The Last Chance for Survival

"Eating Fossil Fuels lays out the facts directly and with unstoppable force: the fossil fuel-based "Green Revolution" in agriculture is failing and will collapse with the end of cheap oil. It has brought us world overpopulation while degrading land and water, and demolishing small-scale agriculture. The comparison of the North Korean and Cuban agricultural responses to their Peak Oil scenarios is chilling: collapse versus a return to small-scale farming. It is imperative that communities begin transitioning now to small-scale sustainable agriculture while we have the resources to do so, without waiting for policy-makers to get on board." — Janaia Donaldson, producer and host, "Peak Moment" television

"Few people realize that more fossil fuels are used to provide food than is used for driving or for heating and cooling homes and running appliances. Running short of fossil fuels for cars and houses can be a major inconvenience. Running short of fossil fuels for food production can be life threatening. 

"That’s why Dale Pfeiffer’s new book, Eating Fossil Fuels, is so important. It analyzes the use of fossil fuels for food production in exquisite detail, including the resulting soil degradation and water depletion. And the contrasting experiences of Cuba and North Korea, two countries who have experienced Peak Oil and dealt with it in different ways, are described. Finally, the book outlines 12 fun activities for activists and cautions us about counting on the media or environmental organizations to get the word out. This book is vital for people concerned about peak oil and global warming who are looking both for understanding and an action plan." — E. R. "Pat" Murphy, Executive Director, The Community Solution, and Producer of the film "The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil"

"The fate of the planet depends on how quickly we can get people to grasp the urgency and the magnitude of the sustainability problem we have got ourselves into.  Dale Pfeiffer has made a valuable contribution to this task, in convincingly documenting the fatal flaws in industrialised agriculture, and especially in dealing at length with some of the essential steps that must be taken towards the development of a local agriculture." — Ted Trainer, School of Social Work, University of New South Wales

General Praise

"I have been reading [Dale Allen Pfeiffer's] papers on Peak Oil and its consequences on our life. They are deeply instructive and help me a lot to write my book "Pétrole Apocalypse" (Fayard Publishing, August 2005). They help me also to argue during the political debate in the French Parliament ("Assemblée nationale") about the new law on Energy, voted spring 2005." — Yves Cochet, Member of Parliament, Former Minister of Environment, Paris, France

"Mr. Pfeiffer’s work as one of the editors of FTW (“From The Wilderness”) has been outstanding in fields such as geology, economics of non renewable resources, renewable energy and other topics. I have had the pleasure of collaborating with him in an article on the origin of oil and I can testify his competence, dedication and deep knowledge in these and other scientific matters. His work is internationally known and it appears in translation, for instance, in the site dedicated to fossil fuels that I manage." — Dr. Ugo Bardi, Chair of Aspo Italia; Professor of chemical engineering, University of Florence, Italia

"As a French geologist involved in oil exploration for 50 years, I can testify that [Mr. Pfeiffer's] work is helping the cause of how to handle the coming oil crisis, which will change completely the life of the industrial countries.

"Few geologists are free to speak, as the official policy of governments, agencies and international companies is to deny any future decline. [Mr. Pfeiffer is] within the few to recognize early what is the peak oil and to tell the world through Internet. Now peak oil is heard in the Congress and other places" — Jean Laherrère, Petroleum geologist, retired

"Mr. Pfeiffer's work has been invaluable to a growing network of people concerned with ensuring that our society's response to diminishing fossil fuels his for the highest and best good of all concerned." — Catherine Austin Fitts, President, Solari, Inc.; Former Assistant Secretary of Housing, Bush I