There are so many issues impacting the health of the planet, but fortunately our country is full of people who put their hearts and souls every day into protecting our remaining natural resources. I would hate to see what the planet would look like if we didn't have environmental advocates fighting for a healthier world.
I just finished watching Pete McBride's Chasing Water video, in which he follows the 1,500 mile course of the Colorado River from its headwaters in the Rocky Mountain National Park to the high and dry land 80 miles from the sea providing insights on a problem that is desperately in need of solutions. Yesterday, Waterkeeper Alliance filed suit against Taylor Energy for ongoing Clean Water Act and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act violations stemming from an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that has continued to flow for more than seven years.
Josh Fox, director of the Oscar-nominated documentary Gasland, continues to fight for the rights of communities and clean water in his pursuit to expose the environmental and health issues related to the fracking industry. His arrest on Wednesday, while filming a House Science Committee hearing on Capitol Hill that was examining the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's investigation of potential water contamination from natural gas drilling in Pavillion, Wyo., shows the impact a single individual can have in creating change. The fracking issue has ignited one of the largest grassroots environmental efforts our country has ever seen. From the daily formations of new community groups to protect water supplies, like the Citizens for a Healthy Community in Colorado, to the leadership of large organizations like the Sierra Club's Michael Brune denouncing fracking, one cannot underestimate the importance of grassroots advocacy in the fight to restore democracy and prevent the privatization of natural resources.
Unfortunately these fights seems to last so long. The campaign to stop mountaintop removal has been going on for more than a decade. Thanks to Jeff Biggers for his relentless coverage of the issue and call for an immediate moratorium on all mountaintop removal mining operations.
In my more than two decades working on environmental issues, the call to prevent drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) has been a continual battle. On Feb. 1, Republican leaders of the House Natural Resources Committee did the bidding of Big Oil once again and voted to open up the pristine ANWR -- in addition to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the protected eastern Gulf of Mexico and Alaska's Bristol Bay -- to oil drilling, all under the pretext of funding this year's transportation bill.
The fight to protect our food supply is another long-time issue receiving great attention from the grassroots movement. From exposing Monsanto's and other big agriculture's energy-intensive industrial farming practices that rely on toxic chemicals and genetically engineered crops that are making people sick and destroying the planet, to solution-based projects where school lunchrooms support local foods and healthy choices, advocates in communities throughout the world are changing the way people eat.
The work being done by people who care is vital to creating a sustainable future and providing the next generation with a healthy world that will allow them to thrive. The choice is ours. Do we want to continue to pollute the planet, kill ourselves and have no regard for anything wild, or will more people join the grassroots environmental movement and take a stand against corporations that put profits first?
I, for one, am proud to be working with people who value our natural world and understand how we fit within the ecosystem of this incredibly beautiful planet, and feel fortunate every day to be able to promote this work through the online news service, EcoWatch.org.
Follow Stefanie Penn Spear on Twitter: www.twitter.com/EcoWatch
Sean Gerrity: Re-kindling America's Golden Era of Building Large-Scale Parks and Reserves
It's easy just to say no. All Grassroots Advocacy groups are selfish self-centered NIMBY Environmentalist with a mind set of a 2 year old. Do they offer real world solutions? All they offer are the same old tired platitudes never real solutions.
Think of all their solutions, solar, wind, bio-fuels, geothermal ... they all have serious issues & let's not forget all the economic damage these alternatives do for workers in manufacturing competing in an unrestricted free world!
We lost 3 solar cell manufactures last summer, Solyndra- Evergreen-Spectra Watt competing against cheap coal energy made, high NF3 emissions, solar cells from China last year and you NIMBY Environmentalist cheer cheaper solar cells? How ignorant is that? Or Green California Government ordering cheap dirty coal energy made steel from China to make bridges. What is it? do Grassroots Advocacy groups somehow believe Fast Developing nations CO2, NOx, O3, mercury ... emissions are OK & protected by the magic of per capita?
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/01/20/tech/main6120513.shtml
As long as Grassroots Advocacy Groups are NIMBY Environmentalist and don't push for Global Change to force the reduction of fossil fuel usage they will never be part of the solution.
So pat yourself on the back, just like the State of California, for your largest success of exportation of pollution.
I have also always wondered, why cities plant trees in front of all the homes, then later, have to repair the sidewalks runied by the roots and also the damage it costs homeowners for the roots in the sewer systems to their homes?
As for the existing street poles with lights, have someone go through and take them down an sell them for salvage, to buy the little nine foot poles, etd. also, in todays world almost any house has or can get, an outside light that will come on with something moves outside, I also wonder, has anyone ever counted how many people are outside after dark, that needs all this street lights?
Think again about the trees. The planet needs more new trees than there are people to plant them. The trouble isn't with all trees. Cities need to hire arborists who know what trees not to plant that muck up the sidewalk and the sewer system.
Why not simply attach solar panels to existing street lights, and not have to replace poles?
The problem is, almost everyone is illiterate in the ecology of the Earth and the science of ecology. Our current worldview focuses entirely on the financial economy without reflection on the eco-nomy of our ecosystem-dependent Earth or all the reasons Earth supports mankind's existence. The financial economy is underpinned to Earth's ecosystems and their biological diversity, the creators and supporters of ecosystems. The goods of the financial economy are furnished by ecosystems.
Our natural, wild landscapes and their plant and animal biological diversity are an ecosystem, in the economy of oxygen, fresh water, the integrity of the atmosphere, the natural regulation and moderation of the climate, the natural sequestration of the heat trapping, climate warming gases, the nitrogen cycle, the creation and renewal of the soil and
the purification of water and air, the provision of decomposition, pollination, seed dispersal, 75% of all new medicines, 99% of all pest control, the entirety of Earth's biogeochemistry, and the regulation and control of human disease pathogens that cause pandemics, like influenza and the plague.
In wildness...
Plows, bulldozers, chain saws and concrete are as life creating and supporting as the tumble of rocks on the surface of Mars. Several scientists stated several years ago, every day Earth becomes more like Mars. Does Mars support rivers, seas, trees, plants, tigers and wolves, butterflies and fruits, birds and bats, frogs and lizards, salamanders and snakes or life! It is all one, a miracle of life.
It is our most important responsibility.
If we were to gauge modern man's existence on the Earth with a 24 hour clock, our worldview, our lifestyle of killing the economy of the Earth for capitalism, it would have begun at only two minutes until midnight. The first assault was agriculture, then the industrial devolution, and in the last 30 years, Earth killing accelerated rapidly.
Both by huntng and planting
Then they nmoved to the next area