Update from some of my favourite sites!

 

This is the latest update from "onlyone."

 

Coming up in The Wave this week, a First Nations chief predicts a violent clash over lobster fishing on Canada’s east coast will reach a boiling point, the Biden Administration introduces its “America the Beautiful” plan, and a new study says Antarctica’s ice could cross a scary threshold within 40 years.

But first, in honor of Mother Ocean Day, we’re celebrating the Hawaiian Islands, where the ocean has been both life-giving and life-affirming for thousands of years.

In this Pacific archipelago of eight main islands, several coral-studded atolls, and more than 100 rocky islets, the cultural and the marine are one. Corals are considered by Hawaiian people to represent Kāne, an akua (“deity”) giving life to both the people and the islands. The living reef ecosystem in Hawaii houses more than 7,000 marine plant and animal species, with a quarter of these found only in this part of the world. Green sea turtles soar through the deep blue waters or bask in the sun on the shoreline, while endangered Hawaiian monk seals forage for fish, spin lobsters, octopuses, and eels. Hawaiian tradition regards all these creatures as our relatives, in no way lesser beings than humans.

When U.S. troops overthrew the Hawaiian Kingdom 130 years ago, without just cause, its Indigenous people were forcibly distanced from their traditional interactions with the ocean. Now, the people of Hawaii are fighting for tomorrow, creating hope by passing maritime knowledge down to the youngr generations and by raising awareness of the need to protect natural resources. 

We’ve created a collection of stories to shine light on the ocean history and future of Hawaii, from pulling renaissance of the art of voyaging from the edge of extinction, to reviving unique fishponds after a time when Native Hawaiian people were prevented from fishing for subsistence. There is much we can learn from “the worldview of the Hawaiian” when it comes to how we approach protecting the global ocean in years to come.

From Earthday.org

April 29, 2021

Washington, D.C. — EARTHDAY.ORG, the global organizer of Earth Day, today announced initial results of Earth Day 2021: Exponential growth and the addition of hundreds of millions of new activists to the movement, united around a set of clear and concise demands presented to the Biden administration and world leaders.

Among Earth Day’s demands are that countries aggressively reduce their carbon emissions, that corporations be held accountable and set ambitious paths to net zero emissions by 2040 or sooner, that all primary and secondary schools globally adopt comprehensive climate literacy and civic skill building to prepare students for a global transition to green jobs, and that global leaders train existing and future workers for the green economy.

Despite year two of the coronavirus pandemic, the Earth Day movement surged ahead. Concurrent with the Biden climate summit, millions participated in three parallel summits representing vast networks of youth, social justice organizations, and educators. In partnership with EARTHDAY.ORG, Education International, representing 32.5 million members, organized the “Teach for the Planet: Global Education Summit.”

“This Earth Day, we experienced a cultural shift comparable to the first Earth Day in 1970,” said Kathleen Rogers, President of EARTHDAY.ORG. “Millions around the world, angry and frustrated with the pace of change, raised their voices and demanded comprehensive climate action from governments and corporations around the world. The environmental movement of 1970 has been reborn. We’ve entered into a new phase of progress, a new barometer of sustainability requirements, and a new chapter of activism. We must continue this momentum.”

Building on its position as the world’s most inclusive instrument to drive the movement forward, Earth Day 2021 boldly staked out its leadership. As the world’s environmental systems continue to collapse, leaving a badly damaged planet, civil society is no longer agreeing to be on the periphery of decision making, but rather is demanding a seat at the table with governments and international institutions to deliver solutions proportionate to the urgency of the climate crisis.

Speaking to Denis Hayes, organizer of the first Earth Day, on the Earth Day Live digital stage, John Kerry, United States Special Presidential Envoy for Climate said, “We have to make 2020 to 2030 a critical decade of real decisions and real actions…The urgency of what we need to do cannot be overstated.”

His Holiness Pope Francis reflected that the challenges we are experiencing with the pandemic that are also manifesting in climate change must drive us toward innovation and invention and to seek new paths. “We become more resilient when we work together instead of doing it alone,” Pope Francis affirmed, adding that there is still time to act even though it is difficult to stop the destruction of nature when it has been triggered.

Around the world, Earth Day 2021 brought massive action.

Over a dozen countries including Italy, Mexico and most recently Peru, Argentina and Brazil committed to climate literacy. 

As of Earth Day 2021, over 500 signatories representing over 100 countries around the world joined EARTHDAY.ORG’s Climate Literacy campaign including groups such as International Labour Organization, Education International and International Trades Union Confederation.

In its second year, Schools for the Earth, an EARTHDAY.ORG partnership with EDUCA, Educación Ambiental Mundial EAM, enrolled nearly 4,000 schools across Mexico and 15 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. The program involves over 800,000 teachers and students in rural communities, urban areas and indigenous intercultural schools.

In the Middle East and North Africa, women’s participation in Earth Day this year increased to 60%. 

Millions of people took part in volunteer activities including planting trees, reforestation projects and The Great Global Cleanup.

Earth Day’s 2021 theme, Restore Our Earth generated thousands of policy commitments and billions of dollars in financial commitments around reforestation, regenerative agriculture and investment in green carbon removal and decarbonization technology. 

Thousands of local government officials from across the planet committed to environmental action for Earth Day. 

Reflecting the power of Earth Day on social media, Earth Day hashtags including #EarthDay, #RestoreOurEarth, #EarthDayLive and #ClimateLiteracy reached over 400 million.

Millions tuned in to Earth Day Live and committed to personal climate and environmental action. Among the speakers were Prince Albert II of Monaco; Alexandria Villaseñor, Founder of Earth Uprising; Mayor Frank Cownie of Des Moines, Iowa and President of ICLEI; Gabriel Quijandría, Minister of the Environment, Peru; Gina McCarthy, White House National Climate Advisor; Greta Thunberg, Youth Climate Activist; Haldis Holst, Deputy General Secretary of Education International; John Kerry, United States Special Presidential Envoy for Climate; Dame Karen Pierce, British Ambassador to the United States; Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, Atlanta, Georgia; Kevin O’Leary, Venture Capitalist; Mary Steenburgen, Actor and Musician; Michael S. Regan, United States EPA Administrator; Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change; Patrizio Bianchi, Minister of Public Education, Italy; His Holiness Pope Francis; Ricky Kej, Grammy® Award Winner; Tom Lovejoy, “Godfather of Biodiversity” and Tom Steyer, NextGen America Founder.

On Earth Day, EARTHDAY.ORG launched the “Earth Definition” campaign aimed at encouraging individuals around the world to learn more about their digital footprint and choose Earth Definition, otherwise known as standard definition, while streaming to reduce emissions. The campaign film has been chosen as a Vimeo Staff Pick.

As a part of the partnership between EARTHDAY.ORG and Facebook, Facebook Watch premiered “Earth Day! The Musical!” on April 22 at 12PM ET which garnered nearly 5 million views. The special featured appearances from Bill Nye, Alexia Akbay, Ben Platt, Charli and Dixie D’Amelio, Chloe Lukasiak, CNCO, Cody Simpson, Desus Nice and The Kid Mero, Fortune Feimster, Gaten Matarazzo, Idina Menzel, Jack Harlow, Jasmine Cephas Jones, Jerome Foster II, Justin Bieber, Karamo, Maluma, Nick Kroll, Phoebe Robinson, Retta, Steve Aoki, Tori Kelly, Xiye Bastida, Zac Efron and more.

For more information on EARTHDAY.ORG’s year-round campaigns and programs, please visit: https://www.earthday.org

 

From Change.org - Lion Aid update

10 de may. de 2021 — 

For over ten years LionAid has campaigned, lobbied, pushed the UK Government to end lion trophy hunting imports. We covered lion statues with black cloths, arranged marches on the streets of London, met with an endless array of politicians, managed to get three debates in UK Parliament, sat around many “round table” discussions with MPs, sat with ministers, sat with committees, provided endless information, sat with African wildlife departments and ministers, funded a seminal conference among African lion range states urging lion conservation, met with local communities in Africa, arranged virtual classrooms across the globe to educate children about lion conservation, challenged major universities and professors and international institutions on their stand in trying to equate lion hunting as “conservation”, delivered well over 700,000 signatures to appeal to the UK government to end lion trophy imports….

Not too bad for a small charity?

A few days ago we received an email from the UK Department of Environment informing us that change was hopefully coming.

Today, the UK media announced that in the upcoming Queen’s Speech, the UK Government will enact a number of animal welfare bills – including something called an “Animals Abroad” bill that will end some trophy hunting products imports into the UK.

 For those who might be puzzled about a “Queen’s Speech” – this is used by the current UK Government to announce future directions.

The fact that this Animals Abroad bill will be introduced is positive but not a “done deal”. It remains an intention?

Nevertheless, hope prevails.

We will update you all further in the days following the delivery of the Queen's Speech, once we find out a bit more detail on what might be developing.

The blog song for today is:"Uncle Sam" by Madness

TTFN

 

 

 

PETA Victories for animals in April 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I thought that after all the recent thought provoking stuff it would be nice to give some uplifting news and to show that we can make a difference!

HUGE NEWS: New Zealand Announces Total Live-Export Ban! 

Posted on 14 April 2021 at 10:45AM by PETA Australia

It’s the news we’ve all been waiting for: New Zealand will finally end its live-export trade.

The country – which currently sends around 3 million live farmed animals every year on horrific voyages around the world to be used as “breeding stock” – will phase out the practice over the next two years.

News reports suggest the New Zealand government delivered a letter to the Chinese Embassy on 31 March signalling the end of the trade.

Tragedy After Tragedy

PETA has written to the New Zealand government several times over the years urging it to ban live export. Just last month, we wrote when a blockage in the Suez Canal trapped at least 20 ships carrying cows and sheep, putting the lives of hundreds of thousands of animals at risk.

We also wrote in September 2020, when the vessel Gulf Livestock 1 went missing in the East China Sea after leaving Napier in New Zealand. Forty-one crew members on board died, alongside nearly 6,000 cattle.

Countless investigations have shown the ghastly conditions in which animals spend weeks travelling at sea, enduring seasickness, crowding, and exposure to all weather conditions.

 

Animals Exported as ‘Breeding Stock’ Still Suffer and Die

Unlike Australia, New Zealand opted to end live-animal exports for slaughter in 2008. However, just because New Zealand’s animals aren’t headed straight to slaughterhouses doesn’t mean they’re any less susceptible to illness and death on board vessels, and if they survive, it certainly doesn’t mean they’ll lead happy lives elsewhere.

In 2020, New Zealand exported almost 3 million live farmed animals, including 110,00 cows who will spend their short lives being forcibly impregnated on intensive dairy farms in China.

Day-old chicks make up the vast majority of exported animals. They’re torn away from their mothers and crammed into boxes by the thousands for transport overseas.

The animals tossed about on rough seas, trampled by their shipmates, suffocated by their own faeces, and dying of dehydration, starvation, and illness aboard these ships don’t care that New Zealand “only” exports “breeding stock”. They still endure gruelling journeys – and face unacceptable risks – only to give birth over and over on depressing factory farms, before being killed in ways which would be illegal in New Zealand.

The New Zealand government has made a historic and compassionate move. With this decision, the Ardern administration said “no more” to sending millions of animals – and many humans – on horrible journeys fraught with injury, dehydration, starvation, illness, and death.

Now, all eyes are on Australia to follow suit. Please join us in calling on Agriculture Minister David Littleproud to end this disgusting, dangerous trade at last:

 

Victory! Australian Surgeons to Stop Mutilating Live Animals

Following an extensive, nearly four-year campaign by PETA and PETA Australia, the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (RACS) has announced that it will stop forcing civilian and military surgeons to cut holes into the throats, chests, and limbs of live pigs and sheep during the Early Management of Severe Trauma (EMST) program. Instead, EMST participants will now learn how to treat traumatic injuries in this course using advanced human-simulation technology. RACS’ announcement comes after more than 100,000 people wrote to RACS officials through PETA’s online action alert, a PETA Australia petition with thousands of signatures, and thought-provoking ads and protests.

Taiwan FDA Finalizes Regulation, Ends Drowning and Electroshock Tests on Animals After PETA Pressure

The Taiwan Food and Drug Administration has finalized a regulation and removed animal-testing recommendations and requirements for companies wanting to make anti-fatigue health marketing claims about their food and beverage products. It will now require only safe and effective human tests. This follows pressure from PETA that included the submission of a detailed scientific critique at the agency’s request and e-mails to agency officials from more than 73,000 supporters opposing animal experiments.

Prior to the agency’s announcement, thousands of animals were tormented and killed in efforts to establish anti-fatigue health claims for marketing food and beverage products. Experimenters fed mice or rats large quantities of the test foods, starved them for up to 24 hours, dropped them into individual beakers filled with water, and observed how long they struggled before drowning or remaining underwater for eight consecutive seconds. Experimenters also fed rats large quantities of the test foods and then put the animals on treadmills equipped with electrified plates to measure how long it took for them to choose repeated electroshocks over continuing to run at increasing speeds and steeper inclines.

 Great news for our animal companions!

The blog song for today is: "Mr Blue Sky" By the ELO

TTFN

 

Bright Green Lies - A documentary that we all should see or read the book

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I recently watched a documentary called Bright Green Lies (here is the official website - https://derrickjensen.org/bright-green-lies) but there is also a book available. (Picture above)

It was a real wake up call to everyone who is fighting for our world and it made me think!

I have copied some of the information on the website commenting on it:

Here are some parts from the book:

Once, environmentalism was about saving wild beings and wild places. “The beauty of the living world I was trying to save has always been uppermost in my mind,” Rachel Carson wrote to a friend. “That, and anger at the senseless, brutish things that were being done.” Silent Spring, which inspired the formation of the modern environmental movement, was more than a critique of pesticides—it was a clarion call against industrialized society’s destruction of the natural world.

That destruction has put us in peril. Like all animals, we need a home: a blanket of air, a cradle of soil, and a vast assemblage of creatures who make both. We can’t create oxygen, but others—from tiny plankton to towering redwoods—can. We can’t build soil, but the slow circling of bacteria, bison, and sweetgrass do.

All of them are bleeding out, species by species, like Noah in reverse, while the carbon swells and the heat burns on. Five decades of environmental activism haven’t stopped the destruction. We haven’t even slowed it. Instead, the beings and biomes who were once the center of our concern have disappeared from the conversation and the goal of environmentalism has been transformed to a singular question: “How can we save industrial civilization?”

Those who concern themselves with this question are known as bright green environmentalists and they are very much on the ascent. They believe that technology and design can render industrial civilization sustainable, and that so-called “green technologies” are good for the planet. Some bright green environmentalists are well-known and beloved politicians and writers like Al Gore, Naomi Klein, and Bill McKibben. The group also includes big, established organizations who are dedicated to fighting climate change like the Sierra Club, Greenpeace International, Audubon, and the Rockefeller Foundation

These committed activists have helped to bring the emergency of climate change into broad consciousness, and that’s a huge win as the glaciers melt and the tundra burns. But we believe the bright greens are solving for the wrong variable. All of the solutions to global warming they present take our current way of living as a given, and the health of the planet as the dependent variable. That is backwards: the health of the planet must be more important than our way of life because without a healthy planet you don’t have any way of life whatsoever.

The only way to build the bright green narrative is to erase every awareness of the creatures and communities being consumed. They simply don’t exist, and if they do exist, they don’t matter. Take, for example, the Florida yew whose home is one single 15-mile stretch, now under threat from biomass production. Or the Scottish wildcat who number a grim 35, all at risk from a proposed wind installation.

“Progress,” Chickasaw writer Linda Hogan reminds us, “is a sort of madness that is a god to people. Decent people commit horrible crimes that are acceptable because of progress.” And so our culture hurtles towards are new industrial paradigm, and the wildcats are consigned to history.

The true facts about supposedly renewable energy are hard, and worse than inconvenient. The first truth is that industrial civilization requires industrial levels of energy. The second is that fossil fuel—especially oil— is functionally irreplaceable. Scaling the current renewable energy technology, like solar, wind, hydro, and biomass, would be tantamount to ecocide. Consider that 12 percent of the continental United States would have to be covered in windfarms to meet current electricity demands. But electricity is only one-sixth of the nation’s energy consumption. To provide for the U.S.A.’s total energy consumption, fully 72 percent of the continent would have to be devoted to wind farms. In reality, solar and wind development threaten to destroy as much land globally as expansion of urban sprawl, oil and gas, coal, and mining combined by 2050.

Third, solar, wind, and battery technology are, in their own right, assaults against the living world. From beginning to end, they require industrial-scale devastation: open-pit mining, deforestation, soil toxification that’s permanent on anything but a geologic timescale, extirpation and extinction of vulnerable species, and use of fossil fuels. In reality, so-called “green” technologies are some of the most destructive industrial processes every invented. They will not save the earth. They will only hasten its demise.

There are solutions once we confront the actual problem. Simply put, we have to stop destroying the planet and let the world come back. A recent study published in Nature found that we could cut the amount of carbon emissions built up in atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution by half by reverting some 30% of the world’s farmland to its natural state. This would have the added benefit of preserving some 70% of endangered animals and plants. This is the lowest of low hanging fruit when it comes to combating climate change and healing our planet. Everywhere we can see examples of when the wounded are healed, the missing appear, and the exiled return. Forests repair, grasses take root, and soil sequesters carbon. It’s not too late.

If environmentalism is going to help save the planet—and if it is going to respond to global warming in any way commensurate with the threat—it needs to return to its roots, remember the love that founders like Rachel Carson and Aldo Leopold had for the land. We need to pledge our loyalty to this planet, the planet that is home to the only life we know of in the universe. Jack D. Forbes wrote that “the universe is our holy book, the earth our genesis, the sky our sacred scroll.” This world is our only home, and to desecrate it is a deep evil. To repair and protect is our calling.

There’s no time for despair. We have to take back our movement and defend our beloved. How can we do less? The yew and the wildcats need us now.

Dr. Vandana Shiva, founder of Navdanya and the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology; author of Earth Democracy and Making Peace with the Earth

“Bright Green Lies exposes the hypocrisy and bankruptcy of leading environmental groups and their most prominent cheerleaders. The best known environmentalists, he illustrates, are not in the business of speaking truth, or even holding up rational solutions to blunt the impending ecocide, but a mendacious and self-serving illusion that provides comfort at the expense of reality. They fail to state the obvious. We cannot continue to wallow in hedonistic consumption and industrial expansion and survive as a species. The environmental debate, Jensen argues, is, because of them, distorted by hubris and the childish desire by those in industrialized nations to sustain the unsustainable. All debates about environmental policy needs to begin with honoring and protecting, not the desires of the human species, but the sanctity of the earth itself. We refuse to ask the right questions because these questions expose a stark truth—we cannot continue to live as we are living. To do so is suicidal folly.

‘Tell me how you seek and I will tell you what you are seeking,’ the German philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein said. This is the power of Bright Green Lies. It asks the questions most refuse to ask and in that questioning, that seeking, uncovers profound truths we ignore at our peril.”

—Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of America: The Farewell Tour

“Bright Green Lies dismantles the illusion of ‘green’ technology in breathtaking, comprehensive detail, revealing a fantasy that must perish if there is to be any hope of preserving what remains of life on Earth. From solar panels to wind turbines, from LED light bulbs to electric cars, no green fantasy escapes Jensen, Keith, and Wilberts revealing peek behind the green curtain. Bright Green Lies is a must-read for all who cherish life on Earth.”

—Jeff Gibbs, writer, director, and producer of the film Planet of the Humans

“This disturbing but very important book makes clear we must dig deeper than the normal solutions we are offered.”

—Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia

 So for all these years we have been led to believe that natural energy (green) is the answer to all our problems when it seems to be the exact opposite.

There was a piece in the film about agriculture and that is playing a very big part in the destruction of our wonderful planet.  There was also interviews with one of the experts trying to put all this green energy across the USA and elsewhere and his reply to the question about the amount of birds and insects that the solar sites were killing, was positively mind blowing.

 To all the people who for years have been championing the "green energy" revolution, my heart goes out to you because I can imagine how you must be feeling about how all this has turned out.

We cannot give up. As you are all aware, we are the first generation to fully know that we are all doing to the Earth.  

The blog song for today is " Out of time" by the Rolling Stones.  

TTFN