EarthAction

US Joins International Renewable Energy Agency

2009-07-05T17:32:27-04:00

The United States today joined 130 other countries as members of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) in an Assembly meeting held here in the seaside resort of Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt at the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula.

Ambassador Reno Harnish, Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans, Environment and Science, signed for the U.S. government. He said: “The United States is extremely pleased to join IRENA. President Obama is committed to renewable energy to mitigate climate change, ensure energy security, create green jobs and lead a green recovery. Joining IRENA allows us to cooperate with 130 other nations to speed market adoption of renewable energy around the world.”

Read more of the ACORE Press Release quoted above.

No More Bull: Take a Position on the Economy!

2009-06-27T12:56:29-04:00

Sign the CASSE position on economic growth. Join David Suzuki, Chris Matthews, Vandana Shiva, Bill McKibben, Wendell Berry, and more than 3,000 others who support the transition to a better economy.

Growth, growth, growth. It’s all economists ever talk about. But a bigger economy isn’t necessarily a better one. Our economy has grown for decades, and now we face the prospect of losing our jobs and our stable climate. It’s time to show support for a new economic paradigm – one that meets the needs of all citizens and maintains a healthy planet. A steady state economy is a true green economy that aims to stabilize population, consumption, and overall use of energy and materials. It’s about development instead of growth and quality instead of quantity.

Take a position and help jumpstart the transition to a better economy! Visit the CASSE website for more information, including other actions you can take to support a sustainable economy.

Want to volunteer in Kenya or Tanzania this summer?

2009-06-03T14:21:40-04:00

Go with the World Computer Exchange and show community leaders and teachers how to use the Internet, make websites, and more! Both trips go from July 10-July 26. Learn more about volunteering in Tanzania or Kenya.

(Photo courtesy of Flickr user eir@si, shared under a Creative Commons license.)

Save Canada's Wild West Coast Salmon from Fish Farm Sea Lice

2009-03-31T15:55:47-04:00

Juvenile pink salmon with sea lice Photo by Alexandra Morton

Action: Please sign the petition below which has grown from 500 to over 10,000 signatures in the last few weeks.

Raising salmon in ocean pens or cages on the west coast of British Columbia, Canada is bad news for Canada's wild salmon, and for the Orca whales, eagles, bears and other animals that depend on the salmon for food. The practice, called 'fish farming', crowds the caged fish in unnatural and unhealthy conditions which breeds diseases and deadly sea lice that overwhelm the healthy natural salmon in adjacent waters. Canada has the only coast with abundant wild salmon to allow this industry.

Alexandra Morton of the Pacific Coast Wild Salmon Society is leading an effort to get the Canadian government and the Province of British Columbia to apply the Federal Fisheries Act to 'fish farms'.

To sign the petition to apply the Fisheries Act to fish farms the way it is applied to fishermen, please click on the link below. The petition is a simple form with the minimum requirements to be effective in the British Columbia's Premier's office and with the Federal Ministry of Fisheries and Oceans. If you are inclined, please forward this to others who care about the wild salmon.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=cEkxX3p3MGFBbWNVVGNVU3lxQnBwQmc6MA

Below is an email appeal from Morton and a copy of her letter to the BC Premier and Canada's Minister of Fisheries. Also included is a recent article in the Toronto Globe and Mail, one of Canada's leading newspapers. Note that raising fish, also called 'aquaculture', can benefit society, but not in the form of ocean net pen feedlots which spread disease. Morton is a biologist who has published on this issue in leading scientific journals including SCIENCE. Morton has been featured in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/04/science/04prof.html

Appeal for Help from Alexandra Morton of the Pacific Coast Wild Salmon Society

Dear Folks

The email below and our letter that is posted on www.adopt-a-fry.org <http://www.adopt-a-fry.org> has been sent every week since February 23rd to the Canadian Minister of Fisheries and the Premier of British Columbia. Still we have had no response.

Please see the Globe and Mail article below. I believe we will need 2-3 times the signatures we have now to move government to do the right thing.

My deepest thanks to all of you.

Alexandra Morton, Director, the Pacific Coast Wild Salmon Society, www.adopt-a-fry.org <http://www.adopt-a-fry.org>

Morton's Letter to the Premier of BC and the Federal Fisheries Minister

Dear Minister of Fisheries the honourable Gail Shea and Premier Campbell:

As noted in the Globe and Mail this morning, March 23, I have been sending you this letter for a month with no reply. What began with 100 signatures from local fishermen has grown to 10,238 signatures from around the world, but predominately British Columbia (5,785).

Premier Campbell, your government has allowed this industry to expand in the face of the most alarming wild salmon declines we have ever seen on this coast.

Minister Shea, this is not a situation of your making, but you have the opportunity to bring reason to this mess.

I will continue to take signatures to help you move past status quo and bring salmon “farming” into compliance with the laws of Canada. BC Supreme Court ruled they are no longer “farms,” they are a fishery. There is debate now as to whether Marine Harvest and the other salmon “farming” companies actually own their fish when they put them into Canadian waters,

All we are asking is for the Fisheries Act to be applied to this industry. As wild salmon decline all the other related fisheries have been increasingly restricted.....except the marine feedlot fishery.

This is a threat to our coastal communities and the economy of British Columbia.

Standing by,

Alexandra Morton

The Globe and Mail
Fisheries ignored 500 names. Can it ignore 5,000?
by Mark Hume
March 23, 2009

VANCOUVER -- The form letter that Premier Gordon Campbell and federal Fisheries Minister Gail Shea keep ignoring is just getting longer.

In circulation for only a few weeks, it already has nearly 5,000 signatories, and more names are being added daily as it circulates on the Web.

When it first went to the politicians, 500 names were affixed. It was ignored, so it went back into circulation and soon was resubmitted with 2,000 names, then with 4,000. It's making the rounds again this week, and is still growing.

Started by research scientist and fisheries activist Alexandra Morton, the letter asks the government to take decisive action to protect wild salmon from the threats posed by salmon farms.

One of the key requests is that salmon farms be moved away from wild salmon migration routes because of the transmission of sea lice from caged fish.

The people who signed the letter worry that salmon farms are an unacceptable risk to wild stocks.

And that fear is about to be heightened by a study being released today that shows juvenile sockeye from the Fraser River are encountering fish farms at an alarming rate.

Michael Price, a biologist with Raincoast Conservation Foundation, and Craig Orr, executive director of Watershed Watch, studied 800 wild sockeye collected in 2007-08 in northern Georgia Strait.

About 70 per cent of those fish had one to 20 sea lice attached to them. And the fish caught near farms were the most likely to be infected.

"The lice levels appear to be higher near farms," said Mr. Price, who is still analyzing the data.

Past studies by Ms. Morton have documented the spread of lice from farms to wild pink and chum salmon in the Broughton Archipelago, an area off Vancouver Island's northeast shoulder.

But the study by Mr. Price and Dr. Orr looks at sockeye, and for the first time uses DNA analysis to trace the infected fish to their watershed of origin.

The researchers conclude most of the sockeye they caught migrating near salmon farms (60 per cent in 2007 and 99 per cent in 2008) came from the Fraser River.

Sockeye are the most valuable of all salmon species because they draw a higher price on the market and because they are the fish of choice for native food and ceremonial fisheries.

Mr. Price and Dr. Orr have now linked the most valuable fish, from B.C.'s most important salmon river, to farms and lice.

Mr. Price said juvenile sockeye can follow three routes as they migrate through Georgia Strait on the outward leg of their journey to the Gulf of Alaska.

"But all these routes converge before the Broughton Archipelago [at the north end of Georgia Strait] where there are a dozen farms," he said.

"It's clear that no fish can make this journey without encountering a farm."

Mr. Price said studies have shown that one to three lice can kill a juvenile pink salmon, so it's fair to assume sockeye are dying as well.

Could this help explain the collapse of Fraser River sockeye stocks?

Some people will no doubt find this an alarming possibility.

The form letter, triggered by concerns about pink and chum, describes wild salmon as "the backbone of the B.C. Coast," and urges both Ms. Shea and Mr. Campbell to protect migrating wild stocks from fish farms.

So far, the politicians have been able to ignore the ever-growing letter. But the new study can only ratchet up the pressure.

Now that people know it's not just pink salmon, but Fraser River sockeye stocks that are at risk, one has to wonder how many more names will get added to that letter.

For more information contact Alexandra Morton: +1 250-655-1877

Archbishop Desmond Tutu: Statement on Tibet, China and the Dalai Lama

2009-03-23T13:45:37-04:00

In a week where the Dalai Lama stuck his neck out, and the Chinese government retaliated with public scorn, Archbishop Desmond Tutu has stepped forward and asked us to raise our voices.

Sign the letter today and stand behind these two moral authorities for the future of the Tibetan religion and culture.

To sign the letter, and to learn more, please visit: http://www.thecommunity.com/

REP Roundup!

2009-01-21T16:29:09-05:00

Hello all! It's time for another edition of the "Rep Roundup!"

If you're unfamiliar with REPs, or Feed-In Tariffs as they are also called, check out the Why REPs? page over at the Alliance for Renewable Energy to find out why this legislation is being called the "the world's most effective renewable energy policy."

At Wind-Works.org Paul Gipe writes about Indiana Representative Matt Pierce introducing REP legislation into the Indiana General Assembly, and other REP activity in the Midwest. (Click here for the article.)

Our friends at FARE are hosting a conference February 3rd to discuss "Effective Renewable Energy Policies: Stimulating Job Creation, Long Term Investments, and Improving Energy Security." If you'll be in the Tallahassee area, do consider coming to what is sure to be a lively, informative, and collaborative conference!

And lastly but not leastly, there's tons of buzz about REPs/Feed-In Tariffs in the blogosphere! Come check out all the sites and articles we're bookmarking on our Delicious site. If you're on Delicious yourself, we encourage you to use the tag "REPs" when you come across REP/FIT articles.

Thanks, and we'll see you soon for another Roundup!

(Photo courtesy of flickr user kimerlyfaye, shared under a creative commons license.)

2008 EarthAction Report

2009-01-12T13:22:03-05:00

EarthAction was plenty busy in 2008 leading a renewable energy campaign in North America, calling for action on 30 issues on our website, surveying our 2,600 Partner Organizations around the world, starting our ‘Social Media’ project, winning an award, and lots more. Click here to read about our accomplishments and let us know your ideas for our future work.

Photo of Long Beach, West Coast of Vancouver Island near Tofino and Clayoquot Sound, British Columbia, Canada. EarthAction has carried out several campaigns to protect the environment in this beautiful part of the planet. Photo by Lois Barber 2008.

2008 EarthAction Partner Organization Technology Survey

2009-01-09T12:50:44-05:00

In 2009 we want to use the Internet more to bring together EarthAction’s 2,600 Partner Organizations in over 160 countries. We want to encourage and enable our Partners to communicate with each other, help each other on projects, share information, skills and expertise. To begin, we carried out a Technology Survey of all the Partners for whom we had email addresses. Click here to see the results of the survey. Send us your ideas of how we can use the EarthAction Network to create a more just, peaceful and sustainable world.

REP Roundup!

2008-12-08T10:43:13-05:00

There's lots of exciting news in the air about REPs/Feed-In Tariffs! So get ready for this first edition of the EarthAction weekly "REP Roundup!"

(For more info about REPs, head on over to the Alliance for Renewable Energy and check out Why REPs?)

First, Australia is under way nationalizing feed-in tariffs, as proposed in a recent bill by Senator Christine Milne. (See this article.)

The UK also recently passed an Energy Bill that makes Feed-In Tariffs law (to be implemented by 2010.) Paul Gipe writes about the incredible news here.

In the US, Gainesville Florida is implementing REPs. (Check out the Florida Alliance For Renewable Energy.) The city of Los Angeles also recently announced plans to "launch one of the continent's largest solar power programs," which will include Feed-In Tariffs. For a critical look at this policy and how Feed-In Tariffs will play a role, see Paul Gipe's article. Wrapping up the US, we also have a call to the energy revolution for Oregonians.

That's it for this week! Exciting progress is being made all around the world to enact this powerful renewable energy legislation. Stay tuned for more exciting news and buzz about REPs/Feed-In Tariffs. (If you have an article or news about REPs you would like to be featured in the weekly roundup, please contact us or leave a comment on this post.)

(Photo courtesy of Papalars, shared under a Creative Commons license.)

Chemicals in our Bodies

2008-11-23T18:52:58-05:00

I was just perusing through articles over at Ode Magazine, and I came across an article submitted by a reader that I thought was a very straightforward summary of the "scary" chemicals found everywhere in our environment. The author talks about wanting to protect his baby from these chemicals and the steps he and his family are taking to do so (avoiding products with sodium laureth and laurel sulfate, etc.) These chemicals are in the lotions and shampoos we put on our bodies, in our detergents, and in our food.

This summer I read Not Just A Pretty Face, an expose on the beauty industry by Stacy Malkan that I highly recommend. I was completely shocked to learn about the dangers and hazards found in most cosmetics, and the US government's lacking regulations. You can learn more at her site, and you can also go to www.cosmeticsdatabase.com to look up the ingredients and health concerns of the products you use.

I believe that we can make a difference in our own lives and those of others with the choices we make everyday. I don't believe that buying things is the answer to many of our environmental concerns, but I will do my best to support those companies whose products I can trust are non-harmful to my body and who are working to create better, more sustainable business models.

(Edit: Mike, the author of the article at Ode Magazine, has also created a site for skin care information at www.myskinbetter.com and has his own line of non harmful products at Emily Skin Soothers.)

(Photo by Jeramy Lim, shared under a creative commons license.)