Whole Earth sets out to "envision and create a community driven festival of education, music, and art," and "develop a conscious community that will go out into the world after the festival and encourage the values that we hold dear." Lots of this vibrant goal is happening, but one area is a struggle: the speakers at the main stage.

Just noticed the Whole Earth mission statement includes: "We will rely on each other more and rely on corporations and oil less, by carpooling and sharing our homes." Largely a lift from SpaceShare outreach materials, which makes me happy and probably bores you, I'll stop now...

The Skeptics Column:
because manifest is an action verb.

DRAFT in progress

Poll: Help name the coming phenomena that will parallel Peak Oil, where sharing will start to increase again.

Peak Oil And Peak Sharing

Are there any positive trends to mirror peak-oil?

As summer ends, we’ve seen something new in the world of festival carpooling. A few years ago, at a festival like EarthDance you’d see hundreds of people without cars struggling for a way to see their favorite bands, scrambling to find friends or hitch a ride. The heroes of the story were drivers who took a little extra time to check for neighbors who needed rides. As SpaceShare started building festival carpool systems, our goal has been to reach drivers and encourage them to share, hoping to find enough drivers to take everyone in need.

At Solfest in August and again at EarthDance this weekend (9/15/06), we saw something new: people looking for rides almost always found them, and drivers outnumbered riders. EarthDance had a record 634 people signed up to carpool, where a $20 parking fee waived for carpoolers combined with lots of environmental inspiration and reminders, leading to the normal balance of riders and drivers reversing itself. We’ve gotten consistent feedback that riders easily found rides; we’ve heard back from folks needing rides that they had half a dozen offers. With apologies to the drivers, this caught us by surprise: we’ve started hearing back from drivers that they just can’t find anyone to go with them.