April 17 is coming on Strong -- Saturday and this is great, but........ We Have to See the Big Picture: Coal, Oceans, Weather, etc.

Everyone, Earth Day 2010, Taking it to the Streets, Spokane! is coming along fine. We have sponsors -- Avista (a lot less this year than last); Community Building Foundation, Eco-Depot, and right now, the lead one, Down to Earth Northwest. Even local activist and character, Bart Haggin and his wife, Lindell, donated. Of course, we need more underwriting as April 17 approaches. Plenty of details are about to be broadcast far and wide on what will happen SATURDAY.

11 -- 6 is outside. Tons of groups, organizations, and individuals will be on the streets with stuff to work the magic of community discussion and community enlightenment about their particular areas tied to the global warming and sustainability umbrella that is Earth Day, 2010, 40 Years later.

6 to Mindnight, April 17 -- Music, dancing, music, food, beer, wine. All ages party at the Warehouse, still, on Main, between Isabella's Food and Gin Joint and Merlyn's Fantasy.

For now, though, while we prepare to celebrate Earth Day in Spokane, April 17, (www.earthdayspokane.org & on Facebook, Earth Day Spokane) consider the larger frame. Copenhagen 15 failed, and mountaintop removal is an ugly force, as is nuclear power plant mumbo jumbo. So, here, now, join the petition, join the fight to stop mountaintop removal, to stop coal, to stop dirty dealings between energy giants and weak misinformed politicians:

Sadly, if leaders reached an agreement today, it wouldn't be strong enough to do much good.*

In order to bring global CO2 back to the safe zone, we need a global agreement now. But we can't wait for politicians to do the right thing. We need to turn the political heat way up.

The good news is that civil disobedience works. A coal-fired power plant recently had its permit withdrawn as a result of a community blockade of the Desert Rock site, in Dine (Navajo) territory, and there have been powerful actions throughout Appalachia, on Mount Rushmore, against the Tar Sands in Canada, and elsewhere.

Last March, in DC, thousands of people risked arrest and shut down the coal-fired plant that supplies Congress's power. (While Congress chose the false solution of natural gas instead, the action proved that civil disobedience does get a response.)

But time is far too short to shut down one site at a time. Massive action is needed today, in order to:

• 
  ensure climate justice for the affected communities around the world that contribute the least to the problem, but are already feeling the effects


• 
  implement a real deal that does not rely on carbon trading, offsets, or other false solutions
  keep all fossil fuels in the ground, and drastically reduce emissions


• 
  end subsidies to climate polluters including oil and gas, coal, industrial bio-fuels, nuclear power, etc.


• 
  end mountaintop removal and industrial logging of primary forests immediately
  invest in local union jobs driven by purpose, not profit, and protect our community health

Go to Beyond Talk:

http://www.beyondtalk.net/

Scientists tell us that the maximum level of CO2 our atmosphere can safely bear is 350 parts per million. Beyond that, our our earth and its species are at imminent risk of catastrophic changes we'll never be able to stop — meaning billions of people will die.Today, the level of CO2 in the atmosphere is already at 390 worldwide — and it's rising at 2 parts per million per year.

for information about Earth Day 2010, Taking it to the Streets, Spokane! contact paulha@spokanefalls.edu

Here Are Our Sponsors, Participants, et al -- Older Post on this Blog ---- Updated Frequently

APRIL 17, 11 a.m. to Midnight, On Main:

Earth Day 2010, Taking it to the Streets, Spokane!

Also, http://www.earthdayspokane.org/

And Earth Day Spokane on Facebook

Check out the cool logos here:

http://earthdayspokane2010.blogspot.com/2010/02/ed-2010-taking-it-to-streets-spokane.html

Air Travel, and the Guilt of those Frequent Flyer Miles --- Earth Day 2010, A New Pledge to Stop It!??##$$%%

Yeah, leave it to the British to calculate the guilt, in the unholy allegiance of flying and experiencing multiculturalism and eco-tourism. But it's so true, that this happy flying mania, or as George Monbiot calls it, Love Miles, is helping to kill the planet. It's one of the big problems today in the so-called green community -- flying and the right to unlimited travel is a sacred cow in the USA, even amongst environmentalists, and especially those middle of the road "sustainability" experts who are tooling around the country going to one after another sustainability symposium. This growth in airline runway building, more urban cores destroyed by noise, more junk being purchases on the web and flown around instantly delivered to our doorsteps, just more and more of those jets in the air, the effects are absolutely clear. Unsustainable. In England, even travel agencies, those that have a rougher clientele (Rough Guide to Climate Change as in the outfit producing the series, Rough Guides), are now discouraging all the air miles to get to remote or exotic places.

Hmm....

"The arguments against flying are compelling. One return flight to Florida produces the equivalent carbon dioxide to a year's motoring. A return flight to Australia equals the emissions of three average cars for a year. Fly from London to Edinburgh for the weekend and you produce 193kg of CO2, eight times the 23.8kg you produce by taking the train. Moreover, the pollution is released at an altitude where its effect on climate change is more than double that on the ground.

According to the IPCC aviation accounts for 3.5% of total emissions, the shipping industry accounts for 4.5% and the cement industry for 5%.

• Aircraft release more then 600 million tonnes of CO2 per year


• Aviation generates nearly as much CO2 as that from all of African human activities


• It is expected that aviation travel will continue to grow significantly


• Aircraft release most of their harmful emissions in take off


• At higher altitude the emissions have a greater effect


• Aircraft travel is largely consumer driven and therefore raising the price of travel and encouraging sustainable local vacations is an easier way to cut emissions than tackling other industries


• Research undertaken for the ‘Right Price for Air Travel’ campaign reveals that the European aviation sector receives about £30 billion of subsidies annually, both directly through payments for expansions and surface access and indirectly through exemptions on aviation fuel tax and VAT.


• Currently airlines pay no duty or VAT on aviation fuel, no VAT on airline tickets and no VAT on new aircraft. Duty free sales, a tax payer subsidy, also provide up to 50% of airport revenue although all EU flights are now exempt from duty free sales.


• In the UK airlines would have to pay at least £5 billion a year if they were taxed at the same rate as motorists. This amounts to more than £200 per household in the UK. Effectively we all subsidise the aviation industry to pollute regardless of whether we fly or not
  
  More frightening is the boom in the number of people flying, fuelled by cheap flights with carriers such as Ryanair and Easyjet. In 1970, British airports were used by 32 million people. In 2004, the figure was 216 million. In 2030, according to government forecasts, it will be around 500 million. The trouble is that the people most likely to be aware of these figures, are the ones who probably enjoy popping over to Europe for a weekend. It makes for a large amount of guilt, and a lot of denial."

And the USA's expansion in the number of flights, the number of runways, or full airport expansion projects, is expected to increase by 20 to 30 percent in the next 20 years. Sustainable? Absolutely not.

Check out these attitudes about flying, thanks to Greenpeace (a UK poll, so please take it with a grain of fish and chips):

• Many independent scientists also believe that pollution from aircraft is a serious contributor to climate change. Given that, which of the following do you agree with?
  
  Air travel is now too cheap --------32%
  There should be a tax on fuel for air travel -------52%
  Air travel should be rationed by government------- 21%
  No more airports should be built -------41%
  We should limit our air travel voluntarily------- 59%
  There should be a pollution warning on air tickets ------61%
  Don’t know----- 2%
  None of these ------12%

Evergreen State College and Washington Center for Improving the Quality of Undergraduate Education

Ahh, E to the Fifth Power -- E-5

energy, economy, equity, ecology, and,

EDUCATION:

If Earth Day 2010 isn't about education, then there is nothing to help us understand our communities, far and wide and close and small. Globalization works for ideas, for exchange of cultures, and for mitigating environmental collapse. We need tools to make all areas and communities whole again, food secure, and alive with social justice and enviornmental justice.

One area of note: The Puget Sound

http://www.psp.wa.gov/

Serves up to 4.2 million people. It's Spokane's bioregion too. Think about it.

The Puget Sound and Georgia Basin is composed of Puget Sound and the Straits of Juan de Fuca, Georgia, Rosario, and Haro and the lands and rivers that drain into these coastal waters. Before re-named by western European explorers, these inland fjords, straits and estuaries together were known by Tribal and First Nations peoples as the Salish Sea – the traditional name for the great inland waterway stretching from Puget Sound to the Johnstone Strait. Humans have inhabited the Salish Sea for over 10,000 years, living richly from an almost indescribable bounty of salmon, berries, elk, bear, marine mammals and forest resources.

http://www.evergreen.edu/washcenter/project.asp?pid=62

“Bioregion is a cultural concept, really, not a scientific concept. It should be up to the people to define a bioregion rather than having it come down from the institutional scientific elite.”
Peter Berg

http://www.evergreen.edu/washcenter/home.asp

Bats, Pollinators, Insect Control, more than 1,100 Species Flapping Around Over Towns, Lakes, Coulees, Homes, Fields, Streams

Earth Day 2010, Taking it to the Streets, Spokane! -- We need people to help make bat boxes-houses and birdhouses. Scraps of wood, simple design, and then on the spot put-together, April 17 in the street -- Main, between Division and Browne.

The more than 1,100 species of bats – about one-fifth of all mammal species – are incredibly diverse. They range from the world's smallest mammal, the tiny bumblebee bat that weighs less than a penny to giant flying foxes with six-foot wingspans. Except for the most extreme desert and polar regions, bats have lived in almost every habitat on Earth since the age of the dinosaurs.

Bats can eat their weight in mosquitos. Some, 1,200 mosquitos every night, making them man’s best night flying friend.



Have you ever noticed those night flying creatures that seem to flitter endlessly among date palm trees in the Middle East at night while making distinctive clicking sounds? If you have, chances are these creatures are not birds but Egyptian fruit bats which have been found to have an amazing ability to find their “target” by not aiming their vocal sonar beams directly but by pointing their “sound beams” to either side of the target.

A recent study was made by researchers at Israel’s Weizman Institute of Science, together with the University of Maryland in the USA, and found that their bats emit paired clicking sounds and that the sonar beam created by each click alternated to the left and right of a target. This alternating pattern effectively directed the inside edge, or maximum slope, of each sonar beam onto the target. As a result, any change in the relative position of the target to the bat reflected that large sonar edge back at the bat, delivering the largest possible change in echo intensity.

http://www.batcon.org/
http://www.batcon.org/pdfs/education/batmask1.pdf
http://www.batcon.org/pdfs/bathouses/bathousecriteria.pdf

Native American Knowledge is about Hope, not Fear

“Hopefulness resides with the peoples who continue to find their identities emerge out of what I call a nature-culture nexus, a symbiotic relationship that recognises the fundamental connectedness and relatedness of human communities and societies to the natural environment….This Red Alert expresses a desire for urgent action based on respectful attentiveness. This Red Alert is about hope, not fear.”

Daniel Wildcat is a Native American scholar and activist. he is of the Yuchi and Muscogee tribes, and is currently the director of the American Indian studies programme and the Haskell Environmental Research studies centre at Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas.

His new book, Red Alert! Saving the Planet with Indigenous Knowledge is a powerful call both to action against climate change, but first to listening to and engaging with indigenous peoples

Brids, Birds, Boxes, Early Arrivals

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?pid=1139

Swallows and bluebirds — like this Western Bluebird —are among the earliest northbound migrants to arrive, heralding spring a month before the equinox. Both species will nest only in cavities, such as old woodpecker holes or man-made nestboxes. But the supply of specialized nest sites is limited, and competition is intense. By arriving early, swallows and bluebirds improve their chances of securing unoccupied cavities.

To learn more about building nestboxes, visit Cornell's Al AboutBirds.

A World Class Destination for Birders and Birds

The Rio Grande Valley hosts one of the most spectacular convergences of birds on earth. Almost 500 species have been documented in this unique place. Many breed and nest along the quiet Laguna’s, palm-fringed Resaca’s and in the lush thorn forests. Each year, birders come here to witness this majestic migratory journey. Birders also come to see bird species they can’t find anyplace else in the country…from the Green Jay and the Buff-bellied Hummingbird to the Great Kiskadee and the Altamira Oriole.

http://www.worldbirdingcenter.org/

Very Cool Group of People Fighting the Good Earth Day Fight -----Buffalo!!!

Why Yellowstone Bison Do Not Belong on Ted Turner's Ranch

Yesterday, escorted by Homeland Security agents, four livestock trailers hauled eighty of the eighty-eight Yellowstone buffalo to the private lands of Ted Turner. Buffalo Field Campaign was there to document. Today, the remainder of these Yellowstone buffalo - eight bulls - will be sent to his ranch. Ted Turner is a prominent commercial buffalo rancher and he will get to keep 75% of these Yellowstone buffalo's calves that are born on his land and use them for his commercial gains to improve the genetics of his domestic herds that he raises for meat and canned buffalo hunts.

These Yellowstone buffalo have been stolen from all of us: from the American people and from First Nations who have wanted to bring their relatives home for many, many years. More importantly, these buffalo have been stolen from their wild-born families and the lands that are their birthright.

Montana's Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks (MFWP) and the media would have us all believe that the only options that these buffalo had were going to Turner or to slaughter, and if you are opposed to them going to Turner then you must be for slaughter. Ironic, coming from one of the agencies that participates in the slaughter of wild Yellowstone buffalo. This is a wily way to spin the facts in order gain blind public support for the Turner option, which was their last-minute bail-out plan because they completely failed to use their five years wisely. MFWP broke the promise they fed us when they initiated the Quarantine Feasibility Study: to return these Yellowstone buffalo and their calves to public or tribal lands. Privatization and commercialization were expressly forbidden. And now we are being force-fed the ultimatum of slaughter or a "good home" at Ted Turner's big bison ranch. The fact is, there are other options including millions of acres on public and tribal lands in Montana and throughout the country. This is just one more instance of the government and livestock industry manipulating wildlife and public perceptions. In transferring these wild buffalo to corporate interests, MFWP has broken trust with the public and tribes. We believe they have broken the law. It is not enough to trust that Yellowstone buffalo going to Turner's private lands is better than slaughter. Do not fall prey to the false government line that these are the only options.

There is another reason that Yellowstone buffalo should not go to Turner's land: two years ago there was an anthrax outbreak on Turner's Flying D ranch, a stone's throw from Turner's Green Ranch where the Yellowstone buffalo will be held for five years. Anthrax occurs in the soil and lies dormant under drought conditions until heavy rains occur. Turner lost 257 of his ranched buffalo to anthrax in 2008. It is also believed the outbreak was responsible for the deaths of wildlife: at least 2 deer and 14 elk. One domestic bull died from anthrax, and the Montana State Vet even recommended that cattle ranchers on lands adjacent to Turner's land vaccinate their cattle against anthrax. With this highly deadly bacteria in the soil, this land should never have been an option for further quarantining Yellowstone buffalo.

Buffalo Field Campaign has opposed the Quarantine Feasibility Study from the beginning, knowing strongly that this experiment would manipulate and sacrifice the wild integrity and unique behavior of America's last population of migrating buffalo. Proponents of quarantine would have us all believe that this is the only way that American buffalo will be restored to the landscape, but we advocate for natural bison restoration, one hoof at a time, via migration corridors to vast tracts of historic habitat enjoyed by all other wildlife. Buffalo advocates who honor the free-born bison and their right to roam their native lands should refuse to accept the privatization and commercialization of Yellowstone buffalo, and instead insist that disease-management be focused on domestic cattle. Since stress and confinement are instigators of disease, the only option that makes sense for wild buffalo is to roam free.

------------------------------
* Buffalo Battle Nominated for Genesis Award!

Buffalo Battle, the TV-documentary highlighting the controversy surrounding the management of wild Yellowstone buffalo and the work of Buffalo Field Campaign has been nominated for a Genesis Award, presented by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). According to HSUS, "HSUS's annual Genesis Awards recognizes artists, writers, and others in entertainment and the media who contributed their time and talents over the past year to raise awareness of the plight and suffering of animals."

http://www.buffalofieldcampaign.org

Earth Day is About Following Through -- March 3 Deadline to Protect Beluga Whales!!

The Cook Inlet in Alaska is home to an isolated and distinct population of beluga whale - one of the most endangered populations of marine mammals in the world. Only about 300 individuals remain!

Already on the brink of extinction, the beluga is now facing multiple new threats - increased oil and gas drilling, port expansions, and the proposed Chuitna Coal Strip Mine, just 45 miles west of Anchorage, Alaska.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Fisheries Service has proposed designating more than 3,000 square miles of ocean as critical habitat for the highly endangered Cook Inlet population of the beluga whale. March 3rd is the deadline for the comment period – let them know that designating critical habitat would be a crucial first step in protecting this iconic species. Please sign our petition today to protect critical habitat these magnificent and endangered whales need to survive.

During the 1980s the population numbered approximately 1,300 whales. Even though hunting was curtailed in 1999, the number has continued to drop precipitously, demonstrating that many other factors, such as dramatic increases in offshore oil and gas development, are continuing to harm the whale. The proposed Chuitna Coal Strip Mine would:

Increase dangerous ship traffic through the beluga's critical habitat. According to the current proposals, coal from the proposed mine will be shipped overseas.

Decimate a salmon stream that is part of the Cook Inlet and supplies a portion of the beluga's primary food source.

Dump millions of gallons of toxic mining waste into the Cook Inlet watershed each day.

https://secure2.convio.net/sierra/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&page=UserAction&id=3331&autologin=true&JServSessionIdr004=bnkwrq05t1.app20a

Last Chance to Save Earth?

President and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation breaks down the facts about climate change and our responsibility to life on earth

Last Chance: Preserving Life on EarthLarry J. Schweiger, with a foreword by Theodore Roosevelt IV

Denver, CO (6/25/2009) - Climate change is happening more rapidly than predicted, affecting every region of the United States and the world. To avoid passing on to future generations a fundamentally different planet than the one we have enjoyed, we must take action now to reduce the worst impacts of global warming.

In his book Last Chance, Larry J. Schweiger breaks down the science behind global climate change and takes us from Lake Erie to the icebergs of Greenland, and from Congress to America's classrooms and farmlands. He shares with us how the clean energy economy can provide the solutions we need to avert the worst consequences of global warming and he uses scientific facts and common sense to appeal to the minds and hearts of readers. Ultimately, Schweiger reminds us that we have the duty to think and act as the earth's caretakers, not just its inhabitants.

ED 2010, Taking it to the Streets, Spokane April 17 ............... Some Participants

Earth Day Spokane 2010 is up and running

Earth Day Spokane 2010 is all about celebration, action, caring, and pushing forward the bigger ideas of how to deal with climate instability, warming, Sixth Mass Extinction, Community Survival, and Neighborhood Development.

We'll look at the bigger picture for Spokane, but also, well look at how to make the APRIL 17 Saturday Earth Day Spokane, Taking it to the Streets, impossibly cool for this River City USA.

We'll have performers, activities, organizations, and every sort of thing linked to Earth Day 2010 and other events connected to our community tied to celebrating and protecting the earth.

We'll have all sponsors and all participants who have web sites or blogs linked here. So, stay tuned.

Peace, Pablosharkman