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Happy Earth Day!

Join the Stop Global Warming Virtual March

Read the Progress Report

See the HBO Special “Too Hot Not to Handle“. They have also done a great job of creating a list of resources (including organizations who are committed to fighting global warming).

Reward companies that have a triple bottom line: People, Planet AND Profit. Buy Blue.

Visit The Wilderness Society’s collection of past Earth Day memories and practical tips for protecting our planet and its wild places.

Don’t Let Them Scrap Cape Wind

Cape Wind: the proposed offshore wind farm that would provide 75 percent of Cape Cod’s energy needs with wind power and kickstart the nation into a clean energy revolution.

On April 6, a conference committee signed off on an amendment to a spending bill that would grant veto power over Cape Wind to the governor of Massachusetts. Governor Mitt Romney is an outspoken opponent of the project and if Congress accepts the bill it will be the end of Cape Wind.

This veto provision is a blatant example of the kind of backdoor politics that Congress has been claiming it is against. The amendment had to be secretly added in a closed-door committee because it would never have passed in open committee debate. This provision is a sneaky attempt to shutdown America’s move toward a clean energy future.

Cape Wind is currently the largest renewable wind energy project in the country and is very important for a strong and vibrant future for wind power in the United States. Congress needs to get serious about addressing our addiction to oil. We need tangible renewable energy projects to reduce our emissions of dangerous global warming pollution.

Don’t let this backroom deal unravel years of hard work to make Cape Wind a reality.

Contact your senators and urge them to strip this disastrous language from the spending bill before it’s too late.

Stop Weyerhaeuser’s Lumber Slash Zones

2,500 square miles of forests, lakes and rivers north of Kenora, Ontario have sustained the people of Grassy Narrows First Nation for thousands of years. Now Weyerhaeuser, the largest lumber company in the world, is turning the American dream of building a home into a native nightmare in Canada. A majority of the wood taken from Weyerhaeuser’s clear-cutting is used in constructing American homes, which are marketed as being “Built Green.”

By the way, VP George Weyerhaeuser Jr. was just appointed to a National Academy of Sciences committee that will evaluate the impact of forest-management practices on the nation’s water quality. Conflict of interest, anyone?

In the 1990s the Weyerhaeuser company dramatically increased logging rates in Grassy Narrows without the consent or proper consultation of the community, regularly clear-cutting huge tracts of land, spraying the land with herbicides and pesticides, and replanting with monoculture tree plantations. Despite decades of negotiations, environmental appeals, protests, and what has become the longest running road blockade in Canadian history, industrial loggers like Weyerhaeuser continue to use wood systematically extracted from ecologically sensitive old growth areas and destroy the traditional way of life of the Grassy Narrows indigenous community who have lived on the land since pre-Columbian times.

Demand the immediate termination of Weyerhaeuser’s destructive logging without consent from the community – and keep your eye out for local actions as well.

Rebuke Office Max and Demand Changes

Southern forests are being rapidly wiped out to meet surging demands for office copy paper and paper packaging. Unless consumers insist that such throwaway products be produced from recycled fibers instead of trees, the great forest that once cloaked the southeastern U.S. is in danger of being into turned into vast, biologically sterile pine plantations.

OfficeMax, the third largest retail office supply store in the US, threatens forests of the south by doing business with the most irresponsible logging company in the region.

Tell them to stop sourcing paper from endangered forests!

The Southern forest region of the U.S. contains some of the most biologically rich ecosystems in North America. It is home to hundreds of forest and aquatic species — especially amphibians, reptiles, snails and trees — that are found nowhere else on earth. What’s more, paper on the shelves of OfficeMax is contributing to the destruction of endangered forests in the Southern US’s Cumberland Plateau and the Canadian Boreal – two of the most biologically diverse regions on Earth

OfficeMax’s two largest competitors, Staples and Office Depot, have already committed publicly to increase recycled content in the paper they sell and avoid sourcing paper from endangered forests.

Urge Office Max to follow suit. Demand that they:

1. Stop sourcing paper from endangered forests, including endangered forests of the Southern US and the Canadian Boreal.
2. Match the standard 30% industry average post-consumer recycled content for all paper grades that OfficeMax sells.
3. Phase out all sales of 100% virgin paper.
4. Stop purchasing paper from suppliers that convert natural forests to industrial pine plantations.
5. Develop and implement environmental paper policies, and reduce overall paper use in internal company operations.

Tell Office Max CEO Sam Duncan to make a commitment to the environment and Southern Forests.

Protect Yellowstone and the Greater Rockies

The Bureau of Land Management has just released a draft management plan that threatens the spectacular wildlife and geological, historical and cultural treasures that make this national monument a unique place.

Urge the Bureau of Land Management to protect the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument, rather than subject it to an onslaught of jet skis, motor boats, airstrips and hundreds of miles of roads.

The Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument is a place of untamed beauty and flourishing wildlife, rich in cultural history and geological wonders, with the wild and majestic Missouri River at its heart. These wildlands have changed little from what Lewis and Clark saw on their westward journey 200 years ago, or from what Native American tribes experienced for thousands of years before that.

The lands and waters of the monument are home to renowned elk and bighorn sheep herds, bald and golden eagles, and numerous kinds of fish, including rare and endangered species. The Bureau of Land Management is proposing to allow an extensive network of roads — totaling almost 400 miles in length — that would imperil this wildlife and destroy the monument’s unspoiled character. In addition, the six unauthorized airstrips and excessive motorboat use that are part of the proposal would further damage the region’s wild qualities.

The Bureau of Land Management is accepting public comments until April 26th.
Please tell the agency to revise its proposed management plan to protect and preserve the special values of the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument for present and future generations to enjoy.

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