Help to Stop Oil Drilling in the Arctic and other Tree-hugger Activities

[Jamila]

OK, I admit it - I AM A TREE HUGGER and dang proud of it!

I love my Mother Nature and will do whatever I can the rest of my life to preserve her beauty and the life which grows on her land (plant and mammal) and swims in her waters and flies in her air.

That is who I am - and unabashedly proud of it.

So, here are two actions I pass along to those who wish to help Mother Nature in her quest to preserve herself. I hope there are a lot of you out there!
------------------------------------------------------------------------

I wanted to give you an update on our efforts to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Last week, the Senate narrowly voted for a budget bill that includes Arctic drilling -- a move that will do nothing to affect rising energy costs, and will do everything to threaten one of our greatest national treasures. The vote was close -- 52-47.

But the battle to protect this sensitive habitat is far from over. This week, the House of Representatives takes up its own -- and even more dangerous -- version of the budget bill. In it are harmful provisions that would not only open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, but also endanger our precious coastlines.

Write your Representative and urge them to vote NO on any budget resolution that contains provisions that would open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or our coasts to drilling.

The good news is that bipartisan opposition to both drilling provisions are steadily building. But we must keep the pressure on! LCV staff will be working to convince House members to keep language that threatens our natural heritage out of the budget process.

But we need your help. Write your Representative today and tell them to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and our coasts!

Don't let Congress use a sneaky backdoor maneuver to hand over our precious public lands to Big Oil and threaten our fragile coastal areas with catastrophic oil spills. The budget process shouldn't be used as a giveaway to an industry already awash in record profits.

Your help is urgently needed! Take action now!

Sincerely,

Deb Callahan,
President,
League of Conservation Voters


http://www.lcv.org

 

[Jamila]

http://action.lcv.org/campaign/arctic_house110805

 

[Jamila]

Tell your senators not to cripple the law that helps hundreds of rare species survive.

Send a message


Urgent Alert - Tell Your Senators to Protect Endangered Species

The U.S. Senate could soon take up a bill that would cripple the Endangered Species Act - putting nearly 1,300 species at risk of extinction. Grizzly bears, grey wolves and bald eagles are part of America's natural heritage, and it's our responsibility to make sure they are here for generations.

That's why Environmental Defense has launched an Emergency Campaign to Save the ESA. The first step is to tell your senators to protect endangered species and our natural heritage.



With your help, we will engage the Senate with an intensive, multi-channel campaign to make sure they hear the voices of scientists, landowners, environmentalists and other concerned Americans. To get the message out, we will:

Run hard-hitting ads.

Mobilize citizens to write letters, make phone calls and send faxes.

Focus on senators who hold key swing votes.

Step up an aggressive press outreach.

Intensify direct lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill.

When the U.S. House of Representatives took up this issue a month ago, they forced through a bill that would:

Make it almost impossible to list new species as threatened or endangered.
Weaken requirements to preserve the habitat of endangered species.

Squander tax money to pay huge sums to developers who could avoid harm to endangered species with only minor adjustments to their projects.

Put simply, this is the wrong approach. If the House-passed bill had been made law 30 years ago, hundreds of species would not be here today. It's that simple.

Our best hope to protect our rare wildlife rests with the Senate. To do that, we must convince reasonable senators that the House approach is dead wrong. Take the first step - send a message to your senators now.


Working together, we have the power to stop this dangerous bill in its tracks. We will update you throughout this campaign about what you can do to protect our nation's most vulnerable species.

Thank you.



http://www.environmentaldefense.org

 

[Jamila]

http://www.environmentaldefense.org/campaigns.cfm

 

[the iron horse]

"OK, I admit it - I AM A TREE HUGGER and dang proud of it!"


OK, I admit it, I cut live trees with a gas-powered chainsaw.

*the 70 plus acres we live on has been logged (selective cutting) for over fifty years or more*

Tress are growing everywhere...critters all around.

We burn firewood for heat.

We also have a vegetable garden and we hunt and fish.

We kill cabbages for food.

We don't believe in Mother Nature, but the one Universal God who spoke this all into existence by a word.


Life is a spinning,

with a smile.

Wanna dance?

 

[financeguy]

I don't mean to be smart....but why is the Arctic uniquely deserving of protection?

And isn't oil a natural product too? I believe that it may be.

But perhaps we should go back to living in the trees, and have average life expectancies of 35. Or maybe not.

But overall, I don't take to hectoring threads like this, whether they come from the left or right.

 

[melon]

OK, I admit it, I cut live trees with a gas-powered chainsaw.

*the 70 plus acres we live on has been logged (selective cutting) for over fifty years or more*

Tress are growing everywhere...critters all around.

We burn firewood for heat.

We also have a vegetable garden and we hunt and fish.

We kill cabbages for food.

We don't believe in Mother Nature, but the one Universal God who spoke this all into existence by a word.

You aren't cutting trees in a wilderness area, though. But I'm glad to hear you, at least, practice managed cutting on your own property.

Melon

 

[financeguy]

We kill cabbages for food.

I hope you realise that you'll burn in hell for that.

 

[melon]

I don't mean to be smart....but why is the Arctic uniquely deserving of protection?

Much of this region is a vital migration ground for several animal species--hence why it is a "national wildlife refuge." Oil pipelines will likely cut them off from their migration patterns.

And isn't oil a natural product too? I believe that it may be.

It's a natural product far beneath the surface. Our extraction of it to the surface is not.

But perhaps we should go back to living in the trees, and have average life expectancies of 35. Or maybe not.

The trouble with drilling in the ANWR is that any potential payoff is negligible. This venture will likely share the same fate as SDI ("Star Wars") in the 1980s: a windfall of government money for private corporations that will later be declared "unfeasible" and be discontinued. Exploration in ANWR will take a minimum of 10 years before even starting to drill for the oil. We could easily take the money we'll waste on drilling in the ANWR and use it to continue perfecting hydrogen fuel cell technology, which could easily be feasible in the next 10-20 years before ANWR produces even one drop of oil for consumption.

Melon

 

[joyfulgirl]

Please take a look at these photographs from the Arctic Refuge. The photographer, Subhankar Banerjee, is someone I know through my work and his work is amazing.

http://www.wwbphoto.com/Photo1-61Icebergs.html

 

[trevster2k]

Did anyone see the West Wing this past week which had a live debate between the two actors running for president.?

Anyway, this question was addressed and Alan Alda, playing the Republican candidate, asked the audience " How many people here have visited the refuge?" No one had been there so his logic was that since no one goes there, it's better to drill up there and keep the drills out of sight. He would never allow drilling in the Grand Canyon but a pristine wildlife reserve almost untouched by humans, why not?

Maybe this is how Shrub thinks too,

joyfulgirl, those pictures are breathtaking.

 

[Jamila]

Yea, I'm beyond worrying about and/or reacting to any type of smart aleck remarks.

I've come to expect them.

Those with any respect for the earth on which we live will read the action alerts and take part in them, whether they post back in this thread or not.

The important thing is preserving our natural wilderness for future generations to enjoy and protect.

And I really am not phased by naysayers and thread busters.

They show themselves for what they are.

LOVE AND PEACE

 

[Jamila]

melon -

 

[DaveC]

I've always wondered why, with the enormous amounts of oilsands in Alberta and wells in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories, the Canadian government doesn't try to sell more oil to the US. It seems to me that it would benefit immediate oil prices (the oil sands are already extremely active and the northern wells are just waiting to be drilled) instead of waiting a decade and a half before ANWR gets up to speed, and it would benefit the Canadian economy through increased exports, while benefiting US oil companies who don't have to ship it from either the far north of Alaska or the Persian Gulf.

Maybe I'm just reading the situation completely wrongly, too.

 

[DaveC]

Yea, I'm beyond worrying about and/or reacting to any type of smart aleck remarks.

I've come to expect them.

Those with any respect for the earth on which we live will read the action alerts and take part in them, whether they post back in this thread or not.

The important thing is preserving our natural wilderness for future generations to enjoy and protect.

And I really am not phased by naysayers and thread busters.

They show themselves for what they are.

LOVE AND PEACE

Well hey now, I respect the Earth and its environment just as much as the next guy.

But I won't write Congressmen or reps before I understand the issue. I don't know enough about the ANWR drilling to make enough of a call either way. My leanings from the bit I know are that it's a bad idea, but that doesn't mean I'm going to jump the gun and immediately sign everything someone tells me to.

That doesn't mean I don't respect the Earth, and it doesn't mean that I "show myself for what I am" by not signing on right away. It means that I want to be informed before I make a choice. That's what democracy's about (well...in theory, at least).

 

[Rono]

I've always wondered why, with the enormous amounts of oilsands in Alberta and wells in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories, the Canadian government doesn't try to sell more oil to the US. It seems to me that it would benefit immediate oil prices (the oil sands are already extremely active and the northern wells are just waiting to be drilled) instead of waiting a decade and a half before ANWR gets up to speed, and it would benefit the Canadian economy through increased exports, while benefiting US oil companies who don't have to ship it from either the far north of Alaska or the Persian Gulf.

Maybe I'm just reading the situation completely wrongly, too.

I have seen a tv program about the day minning of that oilsand, are you proud of the moonlandschaping ?

 

[lmjhitman]

Please take a look at these photographs from the Arctic Refuge. The photographer, Subhankar Banerjee, is someone I know through my work and his work is amazing.

http://www.wwbphoto.com/Photo1-61Icebergs.html

sorry, i don't have much to add to this discussion. i just wanted to thank joyful girl for posting that link.

picture number 10 nearly brought me to tears.

'...we live only by grace.'

beautiful.

 

[hiphop]

Great pics, joyfulgirl.

 

[DaveC]

I have seen a tv program about the day minning of that oilsand, are you proud of the moonlandschaping ?

I don't understand what you're asking...

 

[joyfulgirl]

sorry, i don't have much to add to this discussion. i just wanted to thank joyful girl for posting that link.

picture number 10 nearly brought me to tears.

'...we live only by grace.'

beautiful.

Glad you all like the photos. A bit of history about his exhibit ...

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/visualart/229942_burke25.html

His exhibit's first stop, in 2003, was nearly its last. Hoping to win hearts and minds, the artist was horrified to find himself denounced in Congress and virtually abandoned by the Smithsonian's National Museum of History, where his photos were going to be shown in the main rotunda.

A month before the opening, during a Senate debate about drilling for gas and oil in the refuge, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) held up a Banerjee photo of a polar bear crossing a frozen harbor.

This was a response to drilling advocates, who claimed there was nothing there but, in Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton's phrase, "a flat white nothingness." She was following the line set down by Alaska's former senator Frank Murkowski, who had earlier called the refuge "a frozen wasteland of snow and ice" on the Senate floor.

Because Banerjee shows the area teeming with life, lawmakers such as Alaska's senior senator Ted Stevens were quick to express displeasure. Stevens called Banerjee and former president Jimmy Carter, who endorsed a book of the photos, liars.

The Smithsonian quickly moved the exhibit out of the rotunda and hung it in the equivalent of the basement without wall labels. A Washington Post reporter asking at the front desk for the show's location, was told (wrongly) that it had been canceled.

 

[nbcrusader]

I don't mean to be smart....but why is the Arctic uniquely deserving of protection?

And isn't oil a natural product too? I believe that it may be.

But perhaps we should go back to living in the trees, and have average life expectancies of 35. Or maybe not.

But overall, I don't take to hectoring threads like this, whether they come from the left or right.

The entire area isn't unique in deserving protection.

Most of the area is barren.

The environmentalists would have you think that drilling for oil will kill bambi.

 

[Rono]

I don't understand what you're asking...

 

[randhail]

Most of the area is barren.

I think that it is because of this specfically that the area deserves to be protected. It's beauty lies in its very barreness. It is barren from any touches of mankind...one of the few places left this way. No roads, no restrooms, no fast food. Where else in the country is there a place like that? Our national parks are on their way to being transformed into amusement parks so why not protect the one place free of man's touches?

 

[joyfulgirl]

The entire area isn't unique in deserving protection.

Most of the area is barren.

The environmentalists would have you think that drilling for oil will kill bambi.

Renowned for its wildlife, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is inhabited by forty-five species of land and marine mammals, ranging from the pygmy shrew to the bowhead whale. It was established in 1960 as a promise to the American people to preserve "wildlife, wilderness, and recreational values." Vast and remote, this 19.5-million-acre refuge is the size of South Carolina. While 8.9 million acres are designated as wilderness, the 1.5-million-acre coastal plain, the biological heart of the Refuge, does not yet have wilderness designation. Oil drilling has been proposed on the coastal plain.

The Refuge shares a common border with Ivvavik and Vuntut National Parks in Canada, which in combination constitutes one of the largest conservation areas in the world. North to south, the Refuge extends 200 miles—from the Arctic coast, across the tundra plain, over glacier-capped peaks of the Brooks Range, and into the spruce and birch forests of the Yukon basin. The Refuge preserves a continuum of Arctic and sub-Arctic ecozones.

It contains the greatest variety of plant and animal life of any conservation area in the circumpolar north. It is home to thirty-six species of land mammals; nine marine mammal species live along its coast; thirty-six fish species inhabit its rivers and lakes; and 180 species of birds converge here from six continents.

Caribou migration

 

[sulawesigirl4]

Apparently the only kind of habitation that counts is the human variety.

 

[AvsGirl41]

Yes, thanks for the photos, joyfulgirl. They are incredible.

This one...it's like looking back in time.

 

[AvsGirl41]

 

[DaveC]

Well, as bad as it is, the damage is already done. It's been done for years, too.

There's no reason to turn ANWR into that when there are oilsands already operational directly across the border.

 

[Jamila]

And don't forget the peril that the Endangered Species Act is in.

Personally, I just can't see what's so controversial about saying our natural environment.

Red and Blue people alike can enjoy trees, mountains, prairies, deserts. etc so I just can't understand why people would be against saving as much of our natural world as possible.

 

[anitram]

The oil in the oilsands is much more difficult to extract. It's a lengthy process and as far as pollution goes, extremely damaging.

I don't think we need to sell anymore of our oil to the US at all. Frankly, I wish we'd kill NAFTA and that ridiculous agreement we have where we can't increase domestic production until we increase production to the Americans. We're their bitch for some extra cash. Pathetic. Brian Mulroney really did us in.