The second annual Sustainable West Seattle Festival is just around the corner, especially if you find yourself at the Alaska Junction next Sunday May 3.

The fest will expand westward from the Wells Fargo parking lot, as this year nearly 80 exhibitors will participate, up from the high-40’s last year. The five-hour festival opens with Cecile Hansen and Duwamish Drummers and Dancers at 10 a.m. Following them will be opening remarks by Jim McDermott, U.S. congressman, Bill Reiswig, festival president and co-founder of Sustainable West Seattle and Vic Opperman, president and founder of Sustainable Communities All Over Puget Sound, or SCALLOPS.

The festival’s theme is “Building Resilency in our Local Community.”

According to fest organizers, the more citizens can depend on each other locally for transportation and food needs, the more resilient, and sustainable, they will become in the face of the economic downturn and inevitability of future oil shortages and price increases. They say it will result in a more socially just life without depending on the unpredictable winds of local and national government.

“While we have to pressure politicians, we have to help ourselves,” said Ann Scheerer, festival programming coordinator and a West Seattle resident returning to graduate school for sustainable-related studies.

“This festival’s purpose is to pull together ecological sustainability and social justice organizations and focus on how they collide," she said. "Work needs to be focused in the right direction for a better economy, better world and better livelihoods.”

“We’ve all benefited from cheap fossil fuels, but it won’t be around at the end of the century,” warned Bill Reiswig. “In the future we will have to make and grow things more locally. It is a given that our shirts are made in Asia, (in part) because of cheap oil. We’ve forgotten skills that our grandparents knew. We need to regain what we lost."

“Frankly I’m amazed by the questions that aren’t being asked when we have transportation discussions in town,” he added. “How available will gasoline be in the short term? The International Energy Association sees a crunch involving shortages and increased prices in four to five years. So how available will oil be in 30 years?”

He said he is not officially “anti-tunnel” for the replacement of the Alaskan Way Viaduct but pointed out that its design is to accept more automobile traffic. He said that regardless of oil prices being high or low in the future, more traffic means more carbon dioxide emissions that add to global warming.

Added Scheerer on the role of oil, “It’s not just about cars. It’s everything we touch.”

“Local food means healthier food and a healthier local economy,” said Reiswig. “Farmers markets can be vibrant. You can ask about the food, where the food is grown. It is an insecure thing to get your food far away.”

He mentioned Galena White as a positive example as she is establishing a food co-op (storefront) in the Delridge neighborhood. She is scheduled to be on a panel at noon on the main stage with Seattle City Council President Richard Conlin, Executive Director of Community Harvest of Southwest Seattle, Aviva Furman and others.

Events will also be featured at the Senior Center of West Seattle including a program to familiarize the public with Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or “LEED” certification construction.