We are a group of local citizens in Newton, NJ and the surrounding area who have started a transition initiative in our community because we are concerned about the realities of climate change, peak oil and economic instability.
What is Peak Oil?
Peak oil is about the end of cheap and plentiful oil which has fueled the growth of our industrial economy. Oil is a finite resource. Its production is starting to decline while demand keeps on rising, pushing prices up.
What about Climate Change?
Climate change is altering weather patterns, will cause rising sea levels and increase frequency as well as intensity of extreme weather such as flash floods. Climate change will affect not just our environment and weather, but our economies as well.
How is the current global economic instability part of this?
Our food, transportation, and heating are heavily dependent on oil and gas – for fertilizers, irrigation, storage, and distribution. When the price of oil goes up, so does the price of food. Both will keep on rising, unless we reduce our oil dependence.
When these three realities are overlapped and looked at together, it becomes clear that resilience is, alongside the drastic reduction in carbon emissions, a dynamic and useful way of looking at the way forward from here.
Transition Newton will help in four main ways:
Educate Our Citizens
We will show films, hold discussions and workshops and distribute educational materials about how we can enhance our food & water systems, economic security, energy and transportation.
Promote Local Business
We will promote developing our local economy by supporting local businesses in such areas as local food, transportation, energy conservation and clean energy, and in order to build a profitable local market for businesses beyond fossil fuels.
Advocate for Policy Changes
We will approach local governments with policy proposals in areas such as economic incentives and, zoning and development ordinances to create the optimal environment for transition.
Help Build Community Infrastructure
We will work with other citizen groups on projects such as farmers’ markets and craft markets, historic preservation and land conservation to make our community more resilient, to ensure prosperity and good local jobs.
For more information, please contact:
Kevin Maher: kmaher@post.com
Kim Latham: kimmlatham@gmail.com
Eric Derby: derby.eric@gmail.com
2 comments
Comments feed for this article
November 8, 2010 at 3:02 pm
Debra
Great website!
May 23, 2011 at 10:56 pm
Linda Clark
I was the elem. counselor at MAS for 21 years, retiring in 9/08 and moving to Arlington, MA outside Boston to be nearer to my daughter and son-in-law and live in a more progressive area than Sussex Co. (I lived in Sparta)! So hooray for you and what you are doing. If I still lived there, I’d be a charter member! I want to make you aware of Miner Co., South Dakota where their Reimagine Rural Living Center is opening this summer. 10 years ago it was a dying area, losing population for 70 years. Long story short, through the instigation of a HS teacher and his students and the work they did, they found that just by switching 10% of their shopping dollars to the local town of Howard, they began to turn things around. Now people come from around the country to learn from them. Check them out at http://www.rurallearningcenter.org. And good luck.