Below are links to external sites, categorized as either core lessons of the 1WOW program, or the key issues that the program touches lightly, but which I now believe society will dearly need good leaders skilled in conflict resolution. Browse these suggestions and use as the resources they are. Developing many good leaders during school years is but a step towards a lifetime well engaged. These 7 categories will be developed further, via corresponding blog posts.
Please note: The hyperlinks and information included concerning other organizations are provided as a service to you and do not necessarily reflect endorsement by the One World, Our World School Program.
Jump below to link references about
LeadershipGlobal EdPeace Building
With 4 Conflict Trigger Issues
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Character and Leadership
GIRAFFE PROJECT …finding, commending and publicizing people who stick their necks out for the common good… to get others to follow their lead.
TEACHING TOLERANCE is a national education project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, dedicated to helping teachers foster equity, respect and understanding in the classrooms and beyond. Their materials for teachers are excellent. If you are not already involved with them, this site is a must visit!
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Global and Multicultural Education
THE GLOBAL SCHOOLHOUSE …A fun filled site for parents, teachers and kids… very good ideas for projects. GSH is already one of the most popular sites on the entire net, and has a very similar purpose to 1WOW. GSH has found an intelligent way to let the internet carry the message.
THE WWW VIRTUAL LIBRARY: International Affairs Resources is a frequently updated Internet directory of over 2000 annotated links to high-quality English-language sources of information and analysis in a wide range of international affairs, international relations, international studies, global studies, and global education topics.
PEACE CORPS – WORLD WISE SCHOOLS is Peace Corps’ global education resource outreach for educators. Videos and accompanying teacher guides, or pen pals with students around the globe help students gain understanding of cultures and regions of the world.
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Peace Building and Conflict Resolution
It is one thing to say that conflict resolution training can help avoid the degree of conflict at a school, but how is it implemented? One group we’ve worked with is PEACE PATROL/ a.k.a. Interactions For PEACE
“Interactions for Peace© educates and creates lifelong peaceful problem solvers. A complete curriculum and range of developmentally appropriate programs help develop self-awareness and confidence, cooperation, communication, and conflict resolution skills. We help to create the environment and culture where all are included and treated with dignity and respect.
Primary Peacemakers©’ interactive lessons are designed” … read more
THE ATRIUM SOCIETY’S YOUTH PEACE LITERACY PROGRAM was started in order to educate young people about the roots of conflict as manifested in bullying behavior. In order to accomplish this goal we offer our books online for free to young people and adults, in the hopes that each will benefit greatly and be able to see into the conflict around them. We also offer specialized training for adults that live or work with children. The curricula and workbooks we have developed address the full range of the bully/victim cycle, so young people can become literate in peace, and can gain the skills and understanding to resolve conflict peacefully – from the playground to the battlefield.
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Population
PEOPLE AND THE PLANET – We empower students and young people to be a driving force in creating a better world by training, supporting and mentoring them to be effective change-makers and integrate principles of collective liberation in their campaigns. We work with partners to form strong international coalitions that include affected communities themselves, and together challenge the holders of power at the transnational level.
POPULATION REFERENCE BUREAU … PRB is dedicated to providing timely, objective information on U.S. and international population trends. 1WOW.org used PRB tables for the the population stats in the 1WOW program.
LIMITS TO GROWTH is a study conducted 40 years ago about the future of our planet. On behalf of the Club of Rome, Donnella Meadows, Dennis Meadows, Jorgen Randers and their team worked on systems analysis at Jay W. Forrester’s institute at MIT. They created a computing model which took into account the relations between various global developments and produced computer simulations for alternative scenarios. Part of the modelling were different amounts of possibly available resources, different levels of agricultural productivity, birth control or environmental protection. 12 million copies were distributed in 37 languages. So far their projections are on track, which makes the next 40 years very ominous (Free Report Download)
Population Education, a program of Population Connection, provides K-12 teachers with innovative, hands-on lesson plans and professional development to teach about human population growth and its effects on the environment and human well-being.
Through memorable, standards-aligned classroom activities like simulations, cooperative challenges, and debate, Population Education inspires students to tackle a variety of real-world problems and to become positively engaged in their communities as the next generation of leaders and policy makers.
CARTOGRAM OF THE WORLD POPULATION – If we want to show where the world’s people are we need a population cartogram, a geographical presentation of the world where the size of the countries are not drawn according to the distribution of land, but according to the distribution of people.
THERMODYNAMIC FOOTPRINT – One of many blogs and discussion sites that takes all the above data to the bleak conclusion as to what humans are doing and may yet do as we all similarly try to make the “best life possible” for ourselves – yet assume the future will be some recognizable continuation of the past. It is included here to start your search deeper – for anyone willing to travel beyond the popular story shared in the media.
WHAT IS SUSTAINABLE? – Please meet Richard Adrian Reese, an avid reader on the topic of sustainability and of past cultures. He’s a consistent blogger and author as well. We met during a course on sustainability. He was one of the TAs in the course with whom I’ve become good friends. We adopted each other due to our shared views as to what is sustainable. His blogging is in the form of book reviews – of many books on sustainability. First, this comment he made elsewhere.
You and I would probably not last long as nomadic foragers. At this point, it’s important to understand why the Titanic is taking on water. We are more likely to repeat the mistakes that we don’t understand. My purpose in creating this blog is to explore what worked well, and what failed. This is essential information for the coming generations, and schools are doing a poor job of providing it. There is no control room where the Population Manager moves levers up and down to set the current population. I don’t speculate on theoretical carrying capacity. My crystal ball has foggy images of the future. There are many powerful wild cards — climate, energy, disease, etc. This will be an exciting and memorable century for the youngsters, and they are woefully unprepared for it.
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Food
Sustainability is about being able to continue into the future. One concern for the future is can the global marketing of produce, using fossil fuels for tractors, chemicals, harvesters and more – can it continue? Many are saying we will need to return to locally sourced produce. Is this even feasible? Start with a UN report on this topic:
UNCTAD Report identifies key indicators for the transformation needed in agriculture:
- Increasing soil carbon content and better integration between crop and livestock production, and increased incorporation of agroforestry and wild vegetation
- Reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of livestock production
- Reduction of GHGs through sustainable peatland, forest and grassland management
- Optimization of organic and inorganic fertilizer use, including through closed nutrient cycles in agriculture
- Reduction of waste throughout the food chains
- Changing dietary patterns toward climate-friendly food consumption
- Reform of the international trade regime for food and agriculture
PERMACULTURE – A growing field of horticulture integrating what is known of soil, water management, companion planting and ecological systems is helping improve design. The words definitions vary greatly by website. The above link drops you into a video series by Geoff Lawton. There are concepts that minimize irrigation in the desert, and allow extended growing seasons in cold climates. rooftop gardens, etc. with a wide menu of topics inside the free website.
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Energy
Energy is the ability to do things, and it is measured in in units of calories, joules, and kilowatt-hours. Power is how fast you use energy to actually do those things and is measured in units such as watts or kilowatts or horsepower. Modern society, especially in developed countries, tends to take access to energy sources for granted, yet the fossilized sunlight stored in oil, gas, coal, etc. (fossil fuels) was acquired and deposited over a few hundred million years. Humans have accessed and used half of the potentially accessible deposits in but the past hundred years … the Industrialized Age. At least since World War II, the securing of energy supplies has played a large role in international conflicts, coups, and national strategies. The future will likely see more desperation, more conflict.
Fossil fuels supply about 85% of US energy sales. For access to raw data on US energy use and projected futures, an excellent first stop is the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) which collects, analyzes, and disseminates independent and impartial energy information to promote sound policy-making, efficient markets, and public understanding of energy and its interaction with the economy and the environment.
The current debate over oil supplies, coal supplies, etc. is NOT that they will run out (they won’t.) Rather, serious analysis is over what we can afford to do with the energy we do extract, since all agree that the prices will go higher. Will rich nations buy up and utilize accessible energy at prices few people or companies in poorer nations can access? Good analysis available via sites like EnergyInsights (Oil price news, oil and gas analysis, energy supply & demand, oil technology – Energy Insights brings you the latest energy news, and our own detailed analysis of oil and gas reserves, production and consumption)
Energy has enabled massive changes to the scale and complexity of 
society, but at pollution (=health) costs to the air, land, aquifers and oceans. Soon another risk will be all to apparent, “How will society continue as fossil fuels take too much energy to find, extract and process?” What alternatives exist? and what are the advantages / shortcomings of those alternatives? Too few people are aware of the trade-offs ahead. The politicians and corporations have many who, if they spoke the physical realities, would lose their elections or their jobs. Basically, society runs or stops based upon access to energy. Any messages that discount the continuance of the energy flow, directly counters trust in the status quo. The next two videos are excellent at making sense of the dimension of the problem, while the Cambridge video on the Future of Energy is just a partial example of what could mitigate the conflicts ahead.
There’s No Tomorrow (Peak Oil) Documentary is a 35 min. animated documentary about resource depletion, energy and the impossibility of infinite growth on a finite planet. Inspired by the pro-capitalist cartoons of the 1940s, the film is an introduction to the energy dilemmas facing the world today. Teachers may find it suitable to use in class to promote meaningful discussion.
Note: Richard Heinberg, Prof. Al Bartlett (RIP), and Prof. David Pimental helped guide the story line for this comprehensive film highlighting what is assuredly not sustainable.
Do you understand “Net Energy”? It is often stated as EROEI (Energy Returned On Energy Invested.) Just 5 min. Crash Course: Chapter 17b – Energy Budgeting by Chris Martenson is an essential statement comparing the quality of energy source options.
Crash Course: Chapter 17c – Energy and the Economy (7 min.) relates to money supply and future inflation. It and Crash Course: Chapter 18 – Environmental Data are also very worth viewing. I’ve found Martenson’s problem assessments to be logical and well explained (that may be based upon similar background activities, and I do differ with him on other parts of his course.) One other insertion is a blogger who posts more regularly than me with this “Archdruid Report” as a suggested introduction
It is not all dismal, but the process of transition keeps getting more difficult as we delay the conversion. With the political will power, there are many options available. “The Future of Energy?” (15 min) is one of the more optimistic videos I’ve seen on the subject. See if it doesn’t brighten your outlook. “Three academics look at wind power, carbon capture and storage (CCS) and material efficiency as examples of how we can cut our C02 emissions. They suggest that we must act now in order to avoid the serious risks of man-made global warming, one of our greatest challenges in the 21st century.”
This is too short an introduction, to a huge field. Look for more to appear in subsequent Blog Posts.
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Climate
While political and fiscal authorities since the USA presidential election of 2016 are acting to ignore, under fund research, and or continue subsidizing the extraction of energy from fossilized carbon, the physical consequences of the laws of nature will only allow one answer. Climate matters, it is being changed by human activity, and it will cause hardships ahead. Count on conflicts to arise as the hardships mount.
Suggested References & Materials
Teachers need lesson modules that provide focused rich content and assessment ideas. I have reviewed and consider the Years of Living Dangerously (YEARS) education website a very solid tool for teachers. Additionally, the IPCC, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society (the national science academy of the U.K.) have each published reports explaining the clear evidence that humans are causing climate change, and that the changes will be detrimental to life as we’ve come to expect it.
Forewarned is forearmed.
The same PR firm which obfuscated cigarette literature for decades is currently sending literature to teachers – nationally. Tens of thousands of science teachers in the US have recently received an unsolicited booklet on climate change from the Heartland Institute, a self-described “free-market think tank”, which plans to send a copy to every public school science teacher in the nation—more than 200,000 K-12 teachers.
Climate Feedback asked scientists who actually work on these topics. Read their conclusions for yourself: it could hardly score lower. Scientists found that almost all the claims that made it to the “Key Findings” section are incorrect, misleading, based on flawed logic, or simply factually inaccurate. Serve your students and their future, confirm what lessons are valid before sharing them.
1WOW has no affiliation with the above groups. They are shared as ways of supporting teachers in preparing youth for the world of their future.
Climate Primer – Reviewing the Past 800,000 Years
Yes, there remains debate as to fine tuning the details of how quickly the planetary average temperature will warm, and about which places will exhibit what effects locally, but not over the direction we are trending. As evidence is gathered, this is a helpful link describing what scientists consider a “theory” vs what many people commonly use the term to mean. The planet has many balances that humans have long acknowledged i.e. water cycles, carbon cycles in respiration/ photosynthesis.
While CO2 has varied between 180 ppm and 280 ppm for the past 800,000 years, Human activity has now raised it to 410 ppm. This is certainly throwing the global balances for absorbed heat out of the patterns we evolved to handle during our 2-300,000 years of existence as a species.
Heat absorbed from sunlight vs energy radiation back to space is shifted in its balance by the insulating blanket effect / greenhouse gas of CO2. Through at least the past 800,000 years of Ice Ages, the imbalances in sunlight received varied according to cyclical planetary orbital eccentricities and long term shifts in the angle of the axis of rotation. Through those Ice Ages, CO2 concentrations was forced to shift in response to orbital variations. It repeatedly peaked at about 280 parts per million (ppm) between the Ice Ages, but dropped to 180 ppm in the depths of the cold cycles.
Since the beginning of our Industrial Age (burning fossil fuels – releasing CO2) the atmospheric concentrations have increased 50% beyond the amount of insulation most life forms today evolved to thrive within. Earth passed 420 ppm in 2021. Meanwhile the added CO2 over the oceans has tipped the equilibrium. More CO2 is now absorbed into the oceans where it forms carbonic acid – lowering the pH (making the oceans less alkaline, more acidic.) The increased insulation of 140 ppm of CO2 is warming the planet at an energy equivalent of 5 Hiroshima bombs per sec. (60/60/24/7/365)! That is just the physical and mathematical result of that many more insulating molecules in the air. It is a huge amount, but also a large planet.
The excess energy is mostly stored by warming the water in the oceans. Over 90% of the excess energy is absorbed there.
These are SLOW processes that act to change humidity, rainfall amounts, storm systems and generally more turbulent weather. As the planet warms, it radiates energy faster yet it takes about 40 years for the first half of the energy imbalance to work through, centuries and more to restore an equilibrium. Climate Change events happening today could be said to represent only the CO2 from the industry of the 1970s, while industrialization has accelerated globally. Just over half the CO2 emissions from burning of fossilized carbon has been released since 1988.
Brief Background
Before developing the 1WOW program, before teaching or work in industry and government, my degree earned is a BS in Chemistry from Lehigh University. Since retiring I have explored in depth the implications of Climate Change, including online course work out of Penn State. My independent research coincided well with this course, allowing me to contribute as well as learn. See “CO2 Our Planet’s Thermostat” for a continuation of this primer on Climate, the earliest of the posts under “Climate Change Updates”.
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Submit a Suggestion
We are reviewing our list of various resources and if you’ve a story to tell, link to suggest, please use the below form to share:
