PROJECT GENESIS III ~ GOOD NEWS~ Environmental Heroes

The Hanging Garden Tree on the Tall Tree Trail, Meares Island

[This is posted in conjunction with Project Genesis III,
hosted by Suzan over at Old Grey Mare.
For more info and ideas about how we can all help Mother Earth, visit
http://oldgreymareprimitives.blogspot.com/
to view the many contributors:)

TREES are the lungs of our planet. When rainforests - in the Amazon, in Clayoquot Sound or anywhere - are clearcut or burned, the temperature on earth rises. This will ultimately affect every species, including us. It already is. If this matters to us, we can educate our elected officials (and the CEO's of multinational logging companies!) that sustainability is our only option. (Or lend your support to a group that is working to do this, if you dont know where to start.) Merv Wilkinson, a retired ex-logger on Vancouver Island has, for decades, spent his life PROVING that sustainable logging is not only best for the earth: IT IS PROFITABLE and provides more jobs than current logging practices.

Visit http://www.quantumshift.tv/v/1223682852/ for a brief synopsis on sustainable forestry by the Pioneer of Sustainable Forestry himself, Merv Wilkinson

"If the current rate of deforestation continues, 80 to 90 % of the earth's tropical rainforest system will be gone by 2020." (Rainforest Action Network) This cannot be allowed to happen.

Check out http://www.focs.ca/ The Friends of Clayoquot Sound, whose dedicated volunteers devote themselves to protecting the delicate biosphere in Clayoquot Sound, its ancient rainforest and remaining intact watersheds, from the ravages of multinational logging companies. Through their efforts, the area was declared a Biosphere Reserve a few years ago - but that doesnt mean it is safe. Presently, there is a plan to mine Catface Mountain, across the harbour from Tofino. The work continues.


PLANT TREES! PLANT TREES! PLANT TREES!

Willie Smits is another man-of-action, who has taken a piece of deforested desert and reclaimed it, employing the local people of Borneo to create a sustainable ecosystem. Initially concerned with vanishing habitat for the orangutan, he gathered the local people and re-grew a rainforest. Over the last 30 years, he developed a unique sustainable inter-related ecosystem, that not only employs the locals, and provides habitat. He has developed a method of sustainable energy production using the forest to produce biofuels with a carbon-positive impact. To see what one person can do, watch his explanation of how all of the inter-related processes work together in one small area of the planet, a win/win situation for humans and animals and, ultimately, for the planet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vfuCPFb8wk

FRESH WATER sources are rapidly being depleted and/or contaminated by logging practices, as well as urban and industrial pollution and runoff. We are appalled by big disasters like the BP oil "spill" in the south. But every day, in all of our towns and cities, oil and pollutants go into our waterways, both fresh water and the ocean, in agricultural and industrial runoff.

Encourage your local politicians to look into and improve existing regulations. One voice is heard - a hundred voices create concern, a thousand voices will create CHANGE!

Sproat Lake in February

THE AIR~Air quality is affected by all of us, affects all of us, and can be improved by all of us. We need legislation for tighter air quality controls for individuals and industry. We can all drive less, ride bikes, take transit. Ask your government to look into clean energy. There are many sources of earth-friendly energy available, have been for a long time, but this information has been suppressed by large corporate and money interests. Our politicians want to stay in power, so they are cowed by these interests we have allowed to become too powerful. For the sake of us all, we need to insist that our leaders stand up against these vested interests in the interests of humanity and this earth.

Let your voice be heard. It does make a difference to write or email your elected officials, the House of Commons, the White House.

Wind turbine power photo by Nikolaos D.

For more information about clean energy sources that many dedicated people have spent their lifetimes developing, go to http://www.jeanemanning.com/ Also http://www.bluenergy.com/ to find out about the immensity of untapped power in riptides and other ocean currents. Read about the people who are working hard on clean energy, free energy and zero point energy. From Jeane Manning's site, you can also read about Energy From the Vacuum or Cold Energy, the harnessing of free energy from the vacuum of the air around us, the lifetime passion of Tom Bearden, who has a book and film out on this topic.


Jeane's book is available at her site too :

BREAKTHROUGH POWER BY JEANE MANNING AND JOEL GARBON

Salmon migration in the Stamp River, photo by Jon Merk

THE AIR AND THE OCEAN ARE LINKED. Check out Alexandra Morton's website at http://www.raincoastresearch.org/ and http://www.salmonaresacred.org/ to read about her life's work with the whales who live in her area. In recent years, she has devoted her life to attempting to save the West Coast salmon stock from being wiped out. This woman is working non-stop to make the Department of Fisheries aware and responsible for allowing contamination of salmon stock by effluent from fish farming along migratory routes. Add your voice and support to those working to save our salmon.

Global Warming affects the ocean. The National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) notes the global temperature has warmed by 1 degree F. in the past few decades and says the energy from this is equivalent to dropping 100 MILLION Hiroshima-sized bombs, and warming the bottom 6.2 miles of atmosphere by 40 degrees F. The ocean is storing this heat, but the rise in its temperature is affecting sea life and, ultimately, ours. NOAA says if the annual Arctic summer melt continues at its present rate, all ice will be gone in 30 years, affecting shoreline communities everywhere. This, too, cannot be allowed to happen.

Clayoquot Sound - so dear to my heart - photo through FOCS

We need leaders who are unafraid to go up against the Money Powers and legislate the tough changes NOW that have been needed for thirty years. We are running out of time. But change is possible. If we will it, if we speak it, if we write it, if we dream it, if we envision it, if we want it, if we work for it, if we support it, if we refuse to accept anything else but a healthy, sustainable, equitable and fair planet.

And this must be the place to speak for the animals, whose habitats have been encroached upon and decimated, who are hungry and homeless, who from hunger and necessity, enter "our" territory and are shot and killed........who are becoming extinct at a fast rate....who are helpless in the face of multinational destruction of the planet that is their home, too.

There is a transformation of consciousness struggling to occur on Planet Earth right now. I have to believe that if we become informed and aware, add our voices to those pushing for change, and our will and heart to the struggle, a miraculous shift is possible. Please join me in adding your energy, your belief, your vision, to the shift. Let's WILL this change into being!

BELIEVE In the Possibility of a Sustainable World

- Use your voice for change -

IF YOU LOVE THIS PLANET!!!!!

Save the Earth photo by NASA

Links to check out, if you wish :

http://www.care2.com/ Many success stories of effecting change and legislation through email and online petition signing. Make a difference with a mouse-click.

http://www.amnesty.ca/ Support their work via donation, letter-writing or online petition signing. It has an effect.

http://www.greenpeace.org/ The non-violent international environmental activist network - check them out.

http://www.ran.org/ The Rainforest Action Network aims to transform the global marketplace through education, organizing and non-violent direct action.

http://www.noaa.gov/ The government watchdog for air and water quality, keeping an eye on global warming, drought, temperatures, seafood safety....tell them your concerns.

This begins to look like Radical 101, but I just like being informed! Here is a list of movies I recommend if you're interested:

Fierce Light: When Spirit Meets Action: interviews with Thich Naht Hanh, Desmond Tutu, Joanna Macy and more......some amazing stories of how ordinary people effected significant change.

Whaledreamers : A Julian Lennon production. Aboriginal elders and shamans from around the world are invited to a sacred beach in Australia, to sing the whales in, as the elders did in days of old. A message about the beauty of the natural world and our connection to it.

Nobelity: A look at the world's problems through the eyes of nine Nobel Laureates.

No Boundaries: A PBS documentary about the life of Peter Matthiessen.

The Cove: The documented massacre of dolphins in Japan for their meat - meat which is contaminated with dangerously high levels of mercury, but is still sold for consumption.

An Inconvenient Truth: Al Gore opened our eyes to the gravity of global warming.

All of Michael Moore

Peace Out!! :)