Well said: "Teaching children real skills and imparting to them how important these are likely to be is very empowering. Children who are aware and prepared now can become the leaders of the future when leadership will be crucial".

Schools should be ripping out ballfields and teaching kids permiculture and animal husbandry skills.  This is not only very instructive, but is a very calming and rewarding experience-- helps promote the cultural mindset of ERoEI > ERoVI. The big sports should become bicycle racing or distance racing to promote cardiovascular fitness and endurance.  Shop classes in bicycle repairs, animal butchering and cooking, sewing & knitting, etc.

Each drainage basin or habitat should be assessing the best methods to Powerdown and achieve sustainability now to preclude later violence.  For example: AZ's Maricopa County has increased by 536,000 in just the past five years [fastest growing in the Nation].  If the area leaders are proactive: they should institute massive Humanure requirements, very high water pricing levels, elimination of night-time external lighting, abolish car-washing, impose high energy taxes to promote Powerdown and fund Kunstler's goal of human-scale cities, and so on.  These proposals would make many local residents migrate to other cities/habitats, reducing the chance of future AZ violence as most of the Phx area would gradually transmute into a sustainable ghosttown.

Otherwise, at crunch time, the sudden cutoff of imports of pipelined energy from Texas & CA will cause all hell to break loose; ERoVI > ERoEI.

Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ  Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?

Good idea, but I'm thinking that the kids would just see it as a more intense version of camping.

What might be more realistic would be to go on a long ski style weekend to a remote lodge. The educators would then power down the area. It would be necessary to insure that the food supply was inadequate and that 'somehow' the fuel in all the cars/ transportation was gone. Of course, no cell or land line phones allowed.

After a day or so all the portable devices batteries would be drained, hunger would kick in, and the experience would start. I'm sure that long weekend scenario would get my kids attention.

The education environment could be played with a bit, for example, turning on the power for 2 minutes, then off again.

To set a good example for the children, why don't you start with yourself? Getting rid of your car is probably a good start.

When Peak Oil recruits Paris Hilton - And we will if I have anything to do with it - We will get the message across.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.

This was one reason I left the chemical industry many years ago to move to a rural area where I could protect my life-style (as simple as it is).  I'm one of those people who has a large PV system, solar hot water, a super insulated house,large garden and orchard, etc.

I live north of Willits, CA with it's relocalization group headed by Jason Bradford.  My community has a relocalization group too and it is having little success getting people interested and keeping them interested.  I don't participate to any degree (although I did give some of them a tour of our place) because none of the groups with which I am aware, including my local one, have ever taken to time to even prioritize what needs to be done.  They are far too warm and fuzzy for my taste.

I need a way to convey to him the hardship and danger that lies ahead that will get his attention -- and I can't use traditional logic because it requires a foundation in experience to relate to -- and he doesn't have that, and nor do the majority of our youth below age 20. The typical twelve year old in any third-world country is far better equipped to cope with the coming implications of PO than 20 year old people in the West.

What is the kid going to say when I tell him that due to the implications of PO that his four years of college will be met not with a job market, a career, country-club and gym memberships, a beemer, a cell-phone and the American Dream... rather it will be met with the start of the worst depression in our history -- one that likely offers massive unemployment, financial destitution for the masses, rampant homelessness, very scarce food supplies and bread/soup lines, a complete breakdown of the transportation system of the country, not even the gas to load up the car (even if you could afford it) and move to [fill in the blank -- any city] to find work (which won't exist there either), and a severely handicapped government at best. His only probable option will be to join the military to participate in the resource wars, or to start working as a farm or manual laboror. So what's he going to say when I tell him all that? He's going to say, "uhhh, yeah...right," and go right back to IM'ing on his cell-phone and listening to his IPod, and murmuring to his friends something about how adults these days are just fricken wierd.

And then, when he does get out of college with a 30-year college mortgage on his back, and confronts all the things I said above, he's going to be very, very pissed off at the adult world thinking that not only did we screw up the world for him, but that we didn't even bother to properly prepare him for the new reality...I mean, like, where's his stock broker?

So what I need -- solid advice on how to adequately explain to and prepare the kids for the new reality -- something they can identify with and understand.

Finally, anyone sending their kids to college in the next five years might seriously consider how to council their kids on wise career choices for the future -- there's not going to be a huge market for Business Administration majors, or Aviation, Computer Science, Hospitality Management, or Interior Design, ...well, you get the idea. Better to guide them toward Permaculture/Agricultural Sciences or Animal Husbandry, Civil Engineering or Solar Power sciences, Building Skills, etc.

The only exception would be if oldies (anyone over 40) had sufficient skills and knowledge (and adequate health / vigour) to justify preserving. Note that those would be skills appropriate and relevent to the then current reality.

Perhaps the saddest thing is that few younger than maybe 70 years old have much in the way of useful skills, and many youngsters seem short on appropriate knowledge. Likely to make for a bigger die off, that. Maybe those oldies who have a lot of skills and knowledge will be treasured if they adapt, who knows. I'm not convinced it will be a too nice world to live in, unless I can be really useful I think, on balance, I would prefer not to.

So you can stop worrying about not having the internet or TV.   Even heat and transportation will eventually transition to all-electric - though it will take a long time.  But at some point we'll all plug our car into the grid at night and we'll do fine without gasoline.   In the meantime, we'll figure out how to make cheap cars that get 100 mpg or more, so there will be some personal transportation for everyone. People will buy cheap electric space heaters to substitute for their oil heat.  Life will not stop.

What we won't have for a while is a lot of the amenities of life that we're used to like transportation options that we now take for granted.  So fewer and far more expensive air travel and sea travel options.  During the transition to electric cars, we'll have less car traffic. But let's remember that peak oil does not mean no oil.  So we'll still be able to buy gas and heating oil - but it will be a lot more expensive.  So people will buy motor scooters as well as using bikes when they can.  And the wealthy will keep driving cars as they always have.  

The other thing we won't have is a robust economy.  For quite a while - at least a decade, I would think, maybe longer - we will have enormous unemployment.   That's the real problem kids need to understand.   But there will be new job opportunities too - anything involved with producing and distributing electricity will be a good career.  Also mining.  Oil sands production.  Railroading.  Designing, selling, installing and servicing solar panels.   There will be lots of good employment opportunities.   Unfortunately, there will also be a lot more unemployed (and inappropriately trained) people looking for those opportunities who will never find them.

So I think we need a little balance in what we teach and what we "vision" for the future.  Yes, it will be very tough.   No, it is not the end of civilization or the world as we know it.

BTW, as a neurologist have you seen an increase in numbers of brain pathologies (perhaps due to chemicals in our environment)? Lately I'm hearing about one person after the next succumbing to maladies of the brain. Is it a coincidence or is something bigger going on?

Everyone realises that everyone else* has gone through a lot, and we are in this together.  Civic involvement is very common and people are actively looking for ways to help the city and each other.

* I do not have a local accent and strangers often ask to find out if I am "preKatrina" resident and not an out-of-town contractor.

Comparing PO, and a greener more personal future world, to that American empire state of mind is actually quite refreshing.  

I couldn't live with myself as a parent if I hadn't tried to mould my children for the world they'll be facing. Laissez faire parenting is a complete abdication of responsibility IMO.

Best,

Matt