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Health & Fitness

Transition New Port Richey: Envisioning a City That's Less Dependent on Fossil Fuels

Transition New Port Richey is a group that meets to create a positive vision of the future less dependent on fossil fuels.

Are we addicted to fossil fuels in New Port Richey?

Answering this question can lead us to answers we don't like to hear. A veritable can of worms begins to open when you ask questions and start to hear the truth. But asking questions and hearing truth is something our country is founded upon.

When our country asked questions about Slavery, the truths lead to monumental change of a generationally accepted behavior of keeping slaves that seemed inseparable from the Southern Economy but changed when Lincoln Emancipated the slaves.

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When our country asked questions about whether or not African-Americans should be treated the same as Whites, the answers we came up as a country lead to monumental changes of the civil rights movement that changed how we act and behave towards other races in our culture.

When our country asked questions  as to whether women should have the right to vote, our countries answer was that male or female no ones liberties and responsibility to vote is allowed to be stifled based upon their sex. 

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When we ask questions about what we do on a daily unconscious basis ,we find out answers we don't like, but we also have the opportunities to see the solutions and take radically different choices that totally transform and transition ourselves to new levels away from our addiction.

Why do we depend on fossil fuels so much? We as human beings want our comfort. But what if it's uncomfortable to hear that our comfort is causing the suffering of others?

What if it's uncomfortable to know that the oil spill that occurred last year in the Gulf of Mexico goes on regularly in the wetlands in Nigeria where our country gets some of its oil from.

Questions lead to answers: Where is that the major importer of our oil? The answer is our main import of oil comes from Canada where we are taking dump trucks the size of 3 story homes and scouring pristine borreal forests into pits of mud and tar to continue living comfortably.

Is it uncomfortable to know that Anclote Power Plant located in Holiday is one of the dirtiest power plants (EPA ScoreCard-high levels of Mercury {Causes brain damage}, Dioxin {Causes Cancer}) in Florida that burns heavily laden sulphur oil for power, and it's located within 1-3 miles from elementary, middle and high schools? But beyond the things we can see, when we ask questions. We come to realizations of the invisible linkages our addicition to fossil fuels has on our economy, our environment, our health, and our general ability for future generations to live on a planet that can sustain itself.

What is the true cost of our fossil fuel addiction? A recent report stated we spend nearly $491 billion dollars on fossil fuels as motorists every year just driving.  Every year, the military spends $20 billion dollars just purchasing fossil fuels for air conditioning. The economic costs of our addiction continue to rise and according to various studies are going to exponential grow.

Last year, the International Energy Agency reported in the World Energy Outlook that the worlds oil production peaked in 2006 and will plateau short term in production and decline year after year as we continue to exponentially grow our demand for fossil fuels. The peaking of oil will require another blog to write about but you can google to find more information yourself. Question our collective addiction to a rapidly decreasing in available resource!

Coming to grips with addictions is a deeply spiritual thing. It hits the core of what it means to be human being and questions both individual and collective purposes to our lives.

Is our purpose to be as entertained and comfortable as possible? Or is our purpose to aspire for a better world? The Transition Town movement started in England when a group of college students and their professor asked how life with dwindling oil resources would look like. Rob Hopkins, the founder of Transition Towns, came up with the idea of organizing people around using their heads, hearts and hands in creating a more resilient local economy that could withstand the intense impacts of such a predicament.

This worldwide movement started with a handbook that you can read online for free:  Transition Handbook. There are thousands of cities across the world all engaging on this transition from what is to what can be.

For 2 years I've been aspiring for a better world. We've been hosting films at the New Port Richey Library such as "Food Inc.", "Fresh", "Who killed the Electric Car?", "Blue Gold" and learning as a group how our consumption of fossil fuels has direct influence on the larger world. We have been planting vegetable gardens at each other's homes re-affirming the wisdom of the World War 2 Victory garden movement!

As a group, we've been volunteering at various local non-profits such as Habitat for Humanity's or the Angelus. We've hosted various seed and plant swaps and listened to various speakers discuss various topics relating to becoming more sustainable.

I would like a world where Abundance is the name of the game, not scarcity and higher prices for basic living. Where every neighborhood is full of solar panels and vegetable gardens. Where Renewable energy is the norm, not the radical or fringe. A world where my children, grandchild, great-grandchild, great-great-great-grandchildren can feel secure because instead of fighting over the last resources on this planet we collectively worked towards a different vision of cooperation in the Now to form a society that radically changes its behavior.

Cooperation towards a goal of transitioning our local area away from fossil fuels and towards local self-sustaining communities. Our next meeting is October 8th at 1pm in the New Port Richey Library.

The topic for October is "Local Food" and we will have a guest speaker from Green Dreams Fl. speak to us.  Make sure you check out the attached videos on this blog about our group and check out future updates on our Tampa Bay-wide website @ www.codegreencommunity.org.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsRW6IHSUtM - Introduction to Transition New Port Richey

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmw6XsWHYMY - City of NPR introduced to Transition NPR

 

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