Daniel Lerch bio and materials

As Publications Director of Post Carbon Institute, Daniel is the lead editor and manager of the Institute's major print publications—most recently the four-book Community Resilience Guide series (2012), a report series on shale gas production (2011), and The Post Carbon Reader (2010), a sixteen-author compilation on our interconnected sustainability crises. He is also the author of Post Carbon Cities (2007), the first major local government guidebook on the end of cheap oil.

Daniel has spoken to professional, government, and public audiences across the United States, as well as in Canada and Europe. He has been interviewed in numerous radio, video, and print outlets, and has been quoted in major publications including The New York Times and Business Week. He has a Master of Urban Studies from Portland State University in Oregon, and has worked with urban sustainability and planning issues for fifteen years in the public, private and non-profit sectors.

About Daniel's presentation

Daniel is available for presentations at conferences as well as for government and public audiences. Please contact the PCI Speakers Bureau for speaking fees and availability.

Daniel's core presentation is based on his book, Post Carbon Cities: Planning for Energy and Climate Uncertainty, which explores both the uncertainties that peak oil and global warming are creating for cities and what local decision-makers can do to address them. The presentation lasts 45-60 minutes and covers these points:

• the changing energy and climate contexts of the 21st century;
• the facts and fiction surrounding 'peak oil', and how the problem is really a much broader, more complex issue of 'energy uncertainty';
• what energy uncertainty means for cities, and why local governments in particular should take action on it;
• what 'early actor' cities in the U.S. and Canada have already done in response to energy uncertainty; and
• recommendations for what local governments should do about the combined challenge of 'energy and climate uncertainty.'

Photo credit: Daniel Lerch at Cultivate Centre, 2008. © Eoin Campbell.