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Going Green for Peace

Climate change, energy resilience, and environmental protection

THESE ARE PEACE ISSUES TOO
    Because of St. Anthony Park Neighbors for Peace, more people have had the courage to stand up and speak out. We have succeeded in assuring each other that we are not alone in abhorring the horrors of war.

    Now, some of us are turning more attention to hands-on projects at the local level in response to the twin crises of climate change and peak oil, which are intertwined with population growth and other issues that affect peace and social and economic justice.

    Our website www.ParkPeace.org, is also changing its focus to the issues of climate change, energy resilience, and environmental protection. Watch this website for links to important resources reflecting our new direction.

    To achieve a more peaceful world, we must use our activism and peacemaking skills to influence change.

    The damage to the earth from our dependence on carbon fuels is as destructive as war and violence.

    St. Anthony Park Neighbors for Peace as an organization may appear to becoming somewhat dormant, but as individuals, we are not finished working for peace and justice.

  • Learn more from St. Anthony Park Neighbors for Peace: Green is a Peace Issue

  • Neighbors for Peace speak out about energy and climate change in the SAP Bugle Commentary and Letters to the Editor.


Peak oil, global warming, and community transitions

THESE ARE PEACE ISSUES TOO
  • Human use of fossil fuels puts much more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than we take out, upsetting nature's balance, causing global warming.
  • Climate change results from global warming, which occurs when the Earth's average temperature at the surface and in the atmosphere increases, even slightly.
  • Climate change makes the transition off of fossil fuels essential.
  • Peak oil makes the transition off fossil fuels inevitable.
  • Local initiatives make the transition off of fossil fuels feasible, viable, and attractive.
BACKGROUND

  • TippingPoint: Perspective of a Climatologist – James Hansen
    Our home planet is dangerously near a tipping point at which human-made greenhouse gases reach a level where major climate changes can proceed mostly under their own momentum... humans must move to a fundamentally different energy pathway within a decade, or it will be too late for one-third of the world's animal and plant species, and millions of the most vulnerable people. – State of the Wild, Wildlife Conservation Society, 2008–2009

  • 350 Science – 350.org
    350 parts per million (ppm) is what many scientists, climate experts, and progressive national governments are now saying is the safe upper limit for CO2 in our atmosphere. We're currently at 392 ppm and rising.

  • The Greenhouse Effect – University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
    Earth has an average surface temperature comfortably between the boiling point and freezing point of water, and thus is suitable for our sort of life. Learn also about Global Climate Change.

    • Peak oil refers to the fact that world oil production will peak sometime and then decline. We won't know for sure when the peak will be until some time after it occurs. However, evidence suggests we could be at the peak now, and that in each coming year less oil will be available to us.

  • Peak Oil Primer – Adam Grubb
    Once we have used up about half of the original oil reserves, oil production begins a terminal decline, hence 'peak'. The peak does not signify 'running out of oil', but it does mean the end of cheap oil. – Energy Bulletin, February 23, 2010

  • Interactive Oil Depletion Atlas – David Strahan
    There are currently 98 oil producing countries in the world, of which 64 are thought to have passed their geologically imposed production peak. See which countries have reached peak oil, their peak year and output, and which countries have yet to reach it, and the expected peak year. – The Last Oil Shock, 2010

    • Local initiatives are springing up around the world to increase communities' resilience to shocks, whether energy shocks, financial shocks, or whatever.

  • What is a Transition Town (or village / city / forest / island)? – Transition Towns WIKI
    It all starts off when a small collection of motivated individuals within a community come together with a shared concern: how can our community respond to the challenges, and opportunities, of Peak Oil and Climate Change?

  • Transition United States
    A nonprofit for Transition Initiatives across the US, a vibrant, grassroots movement that seeks to build community resilience in the face of such challenges as peak oil, climate change and the economic crisis.