Editor's Note: We'll consider this an "open thread" on Obama's emerging presidency - updated regularly.

Here are some articles to consider:

Posted November 11, 2008: Richard Sanders, coordinator of the Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade, pens a stunning indictment of Obama's regressive domestic and foreign policy positions in an article entitled A Rough Guide to Obama On $2.3 Billion A Day.

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Dreaming Vermont’s Destiny: Crafting Position/Options Papers on Self-sufficiency, Sustainability and Sovereignty

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Small-Mart Revolution author Michael Shuman gave a fascinating talk at the Vermont statehouse the other day.

We've compressed it and hosted it at YouTube - follow the first part below to the whole talk.

Shuman is full of good ideas for decentralizing our economic life.

His talk is worth watching, and you can find out more at his web site.

John Michael Greer  wonders whether the Transition Town Movement is engaging in "premature triumphalism." As a part of the initiating group in Transition Town Montpelier, which on Tuesday received official recognition from the international transition folks, I doubt it.

We're happy if people even notice what we're up to.

Luckily, there's a chance Monday for everyone in the central Vermont area to find out more about Transition Towns and judge for themselves. Naresh Giangrande, co-founder of the first Transition Town, Totnes in the UK, will speak on “Transition Towns: From Oil Dependency to Resilient Communities.” The talk is Monday, November 24, 7 pm. Unitarian Church, Main Street, Montpelier. We're being contacted by people as far away as Maine and Massachusetts who want to hear the talk, so come early!

Greer provides a nice summary of the Transition Town movement:

There's a thought-provoking article in Sunday's Boston Globe (via Matt Yglesias) on how a 21st century US depression would look different from the 1930s depression. The author, Drake Bennett, makes the case that the US is so different now that the depression would look different in fundamental ways. Healthcare costs more than it did in the 1930s, relative to food, for example, so there'd be lines outside of emergency rooms rather than at soup kitchens (though he acknowledges that soup kitchens are already being visited by more people).

Drake is open to the view that people will raise more of their own food, growing gardens on lawns and keeping chickens in the backyard. I don't agree with his argument that farmers in New England will do poorly, though:

At the high end of the market, specialty and organic foods - which drove the success of chains like Whole Foods - would seem pointlessly expensive; the booming organic food movement could suffer as people start to see specially grown produce as more of a luxury than a moral choice. New England's surviving farmers would be particularly hard-hit, as demand for their seasonal, relatively high-cost products dried up.

To the extent that there is a price premium on New England agricultural products, I think it's due to high costs of labor compared to energy, subsidies to industrial-scale agriculture, and niche marketing. A depression, together with peak oil, would change the ratio of labor to energy costs. Subsidies to industrial-scale agriculture can be changed. And niche marketing of premium products--well, that might not become more widespread, at least. Hard to say whether the market for premium New England food will wither or whether the wealthy will switch from caviar to camembert produced in Vermont.

In Vermont we're seeing a stronger and more sophisticated push for policies that support local businesses, including farmers. Michael Shuman's talk yesterday in the Statehouse was a good example.

Those of us who follow the details of monthly or weekly oil data reports have long been awaiting the International Energy Agency's 2008 edition of their annual World Energy Outlook. The IEA has long been a cockeyed optimist about future oil availability, along with the US Energy Information Administration. But the IEA has been indicating since this summer that they were revising their future projections of oil availability downward. Would the new report constitute a recognition of imminent peak oil from a Very Official Institution?

The new report came out today.

You can read the slides (PDF) for the presentation to the press or the executive summary (PDF) for free. The full report costs €120 in PDF format. 

Fortunately, the good analysts over at TheOilDrum.com are on the case, with a series of articles over the next couple weeks. Nate Hagens kicked off the series today, with an overview.

The nickel version: The report has a Jekyll-and-Hyde feel of being written by competing camps of urgency and complacency. On the one hand, the IEA warns that global trends in energy supply and consumption are unsustainable, and that an energy revolution is needed. On the other hand, they say that oil is available for world needs for  the next several decades, with sufficient investment. On the third hand, they say that the world needs to bring on line the equivalent of six new Saudi Arabias in the next 22 years--an almost magical feat.

More under the fold.

Who can resist the circus? Especially when it’s billed as “a potpourri of radical music, art, theater, circus, conversation, politics, and community aimed at fomenting a Genteel Revolution against the Empire.” The icing on the cake? The circus (a.k.a., Second Vermont Republic Convention) was being held at the State House. So Vermont. I simply had to go.

We hosted Chellis Glendinning, Kirkpatrick Sale and Thomas Naylor in the WDEV studio today.

Quite a conversation - listen to the podcast here.

And we remember the close to thirty Vermont soldiers who have fallen in battle in foreign lands these past five years, courtesy of the U.S. Empire.

On this Veterans Day.

There's a fight brewing in the U.S. House over who will chair the Energy and Commerce Committee in the next session. Michigan Representative John Dingell now holds the chair. California Representative Henry Waxman wants it.

According to Frank O'Donnell at Gristmill, the battle is decades old between Waxman, who wants more regulation for clean air, and "Tailpipe Johnny" Dingell, who apparently thinks clean air regulations would hurt the auto industry in his home state.

Peter Welch told me Friday he supports Waxman. If Congress and the Obama administration are to move quickly on meaningful climate change legislation, it sounds to me like Waxman is the far better choice.

Waxman now chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which Welch serves on.