Speaker links environmental collapse and corporate globalization to militarism in Middle East

Peterman of the Global Justice Ecology Project framed the Middle East conflicts as inseparable from economic globalization and environmental decline, telling the crowd that resource pressures and corporate priorities help fuel military interventions.

"The United States with 6% of the world's population consumes 25% of the world's resources, including 25% of its oil," Peterman said, using the statistic to argue that resource dependency and corporate globalization underpin U.S. foreign policy. Peterman tied ecological loss (citing World Wildlife Fund and Smithsonian estimates during the talk) to rising violence and urged movement tactics beyond conventional protest: "Our tactics are going to have to start being a little bit more civilly disobedient. We are going to have to get out there and stop the machine, shut down business as usual."

Peterman presented the argument as a systems critique linking corporate profit motives, military budgets and environmental degradation; the talk did not include a formal policy proposal from local officials but sought to situate anti-war organizing within broader climate and economic justice campaigns.