Re-Power America: Protect the Clean Air Act and the EPA

So Cool!

As Pheadra said at the 10/10/10 rally infront of the white house, we have to get excited about protecting the EPA. Because Kerry's climate change bill didn't pass this year, the only body left with the authority to regulate GHG emissions is the EPA's under the Clean Air Act. But there are a lot of people lobbying and fighting to make sure this doesn't happen. We have to fight back for our clean air and our climate.

Thousands of Repower America members around the country took a stand for clean air and submitted their photos and videos in support of the Clean Air Act. This new video is a declaration that we won't stay quiet while we lose our last, best line of defense against big polluters. Oh and the music is by Bluebrain!

10/10/10 Get to work rally: Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins

Hello everyone!

This is what I did yesterday! Watch this video and hear Phaedra's point of view that being an "environmentalist" means caring about protecting people's livelihoods, our economy and justice in this country and in the world. What a wonderful woman and point of view!

Oh and that's me holding the sign on the bottom left corner next to the stage!

Support The Land and Water Conservation Fund!

Hi everyone,

This is the campaign I'm working on at The Nature Conservancy! The Fund balances the loss of one natural resource — offshore oil and gas — by using a small portion of the drilling fees to protect important land and water elsewhere.

The program is authorized to receive up to $900 million a year. But despite an increase in energy production, funding for land and water protection has been low and unpredictable— diverted elsewhere by Congress.

Contact Your Senators: Call Their Office or Send a Letter or Email

1. Get the contact information for your senators' officesfrom this U.S. Senate website.
   
2. Use these talking points:
   
   Support comprehensive legislation (S. 3663) that is now pending in the U.S. Senate for land and water conservation that includes:
   
   
   • Investment in our lands and waters in [INSERT YOUR STATE NAME HERE] by fully funding the Land and Water Conservation Fund.
     
   • Protecting and restoring our coastal waters and estuaries, like those in the Gulf of Mexico, by establishing an Ocean Trust Fund.
     
   • Proposals to address the long term problems of the Gulf of Mexico that preceded the impacts of the Deepwater Horizon Spill.
     
3. Be sure to put your name and where you live at the bottom of the letter or email. If you're calling, make sure to tell the office that you are a constituent.

That's all it takes! Thank you for supporting the lands and waters we cherish and cannot live without!

DiscoveryNews: "Should we sell the oceans to save them?"

"the world's oceans are remarkably similar to public bathrooms. No one owns them, and the people who use them have no incentive to keep them clean.

So it is with fishing policies throughout much of the world. While government regulations have shortened fishing seasons and brought lawsuits on some unruly actors, commercial fishing largely remains a "take all you can get any way you can get it" business. As a result, as much as one third of the world's fisheries have collapsed, and many others teeter on the brink.

How can we reverse the sorry state of the seas? How about selling them off? At first glance, it might look like handing a chunk of ocean to a fisherman or an entire fishing company is ludicrous; they'd just hoover up all the fish in the area and move on. But according to a new study, the government of Chile has met with great success in turning over its maritime resources to private industries.

The public bathroom analogy is an idea more often referred to as "the tragedy of the commons." Since the 1960s scientists have understood that any unowned natural resource is likely to be ravaged by people seeking to use those resources, either out of greed or a simple need to survive. It's a clear pattern in humanity's use of almost everything the world has to offer -- water, forests, wildlife populations, even air. Nobody owns them, so everybody exploits them.

This isn't a workable arrangement on any scale. Local, regional, and global populations expand, and eventually a resource is overwhelmed. In parts of the world, some fisheries have already been decimated; for others it remains just a matter of time.

However, Chile has shown that by handing territorial rights to pieces of the ocean to both individual and large-scale fishing interests, they can turn fishermen into responsible stewards and protectors of their environment:

The new laws gave exclusive ocean territories to local 'artisanal' fishers, and excluded the big industrial fishing fleets, which had their own exclusive fishing zone.

Scientists and small fishers then worked together to understand and rebuild the shattered fish stocks in their zone, leading to a shared vision and voluntary agreements on how to manage them. Fishing pressure was reduced in the industrial fishing zone by cutting the number of big vessels.

The authors of the study note that Chile is in many ways a unique example -- the country has recently undergone political upheaval and its leaders have been very open to new ideas about how its resources should be managed. But the country's success should be taken as a hopeful sign that a similar model -- one of privatizing the oceans, in effect -- could be a revolutionary new force for ensuring the long-term sustainability of the planet's immensely important fisheries.

Image: Alessio Viora/Marine Photobank

Source: http://news.discovery.com/earth/should-we-sell-the-oceans-to-save-them.html

Win a guitar from Maroon Five by supporting an environmental Non-Profit!

Green Music Group Launch!

Drake greens his tour and supports greening the block!

This spring, in the months preceding his record release, Drake partnered with Reverb’s Campus Conscious Tour. Reverb is an organization that helps musicians reduce the environmental footprint of their tours while simultaneously conducting grassroots outreach and education to fans. On his tour, Drake traveled to 17 campuses in a dozen states to engage and educate his fans on the benefits of going green and how they can become involved in building a green economy. In order to go green, Drake’s tour bus was run on biodiesel, there were recycling and composting stations at each stop, biodegradable catering supplies and eco-friendly cleaning supplies were used, catering was cooked with local, organic food, CO2 offsets were purchased, and the merchandise sold was made of sustainable materials.

And as part of their efforts to engage students on his tour, Drake and Reverb brought along Green the Block, a national campaign and coalition aimed at helping low-income communities of color become driving forces of the clean-energy economy. Representatives of Green the Block worked with students on each campus to do community events and outreach on how they too can go green. Part of this outreach was getting people to sign the Green the Block pledge, which is ten easy steps one can take to help protect the environment and grow the green economy. Drake himself signed it! Reflecting on his choice to green his tour, Drake said, “The whole green movement has been something that’s been brought more to the forefront. The term green is something that has been refreshing, something that is exciting…for me to be associated with it, I thought personally, it made sense.

A short, cute video that explains the life cycle of Bottled water!

http://storyofstuff.org/bottledwater/

This image was pulled from Gavin Potenza's blog. It is an information graphic mapping out the worst oil spills of all time in comparison to the new BP one in the gulf. Last updated June 14th, 2010.

GIVE IT UP! ..For the Environment

I love this song! Wouldn't it be cool if someone would release a CD with different songs about climate change? There could be songs from different genres and cultures of Music to express the global nature of climate change.

"Pretty Sweet Earth You Might Say, Round..."

Hi, My name is Flo. I'm a student of Global Environmental Politics at American University in DC and I'm tired of feeling like this Earth isn't mine. Of course, I don't own it, none of us do! We all share it, and thats a tough thing to do!

The oil spill disaster has spurred my passion into action. I've got to get the news out there! So, if your looking to learn about ways to reduce the size of your carbon footprint, events going on in DC, NC and around the world you might want to participate in, as well as general news and information, hopefully this will become your new one-web-stop.

My world view is thus. Hopefully everyone has noticed that we only have one earth to live on and that we all share it, both humans and animals. Although it maybe fair to assume I'm liberal leaning, I believe both sides of the aisle have both good and less good ideas. For example, I just learned that those same environmental groups I support may have had to do with the fact that the oil rig was so far off shore and so deep, which has made the problem of fixing the broken rigg more difficult to access. Environmental groups no doubt thought they were lobbying to keep the oil away from the plants and animals in the Gulf, this assumption was merely miss led.

So, everyone has a role to play. Not a politician or a millionaire? Lets start realizing how we can take our power as consumers, producers, innovators and as a basic human being to make the most informed choices to try save, not just the planet, but ourselves and our children's future.

I will be posting SweetEarth tips weekly, here is the first one!

• Boycott BP. Why? Because this company needs to pay for the damage its created. Click this link to join the group on facebook. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Boycott-BP/119101198107726?v=wall
• Companies owned by BP:

Castrol,

Arco,

Aral,

Amoco,

Wild Bean Cafe

• letsmovebeyondoil.org/
• http://www.handsacrossthesand.com/