Live Earth is coming up soon and they’re having a ”Love, The Climate” Giveaway, where YOU can LEND YOUR VOICE to the environment.
Senators are returning to work and the climate is back in the limelight. Join in our “Love, The Climate” Giveaway before the Climate Bill goes to the Senate floor.
What would the climate have to say if it were happy and healthy and had a voice? What message would it send from its bright future? Now you have a chance to speak for the trees.
Make senators feel like rock stars for being climate leaders. Encourage and motivate them to support a greener future. Be funny, enthusiastic and creative! Thank our senators for creating a world full of green jobs and renewable energy; say goodbye to gas-guzzling clunkers and polluting coal power plants.
UPDATE: Van Jones resigned today from his post as Green Jobs Czar. It’s a shame, actually. The witch hunt won out.
I received this email via Facebook yesterday and thought I’d pass it along. Van Jones is a good guy and is getting a bad rap.
hey all,
as you likely know, Obama’s leading ‘green jobs’ man, Van Jones, has been getting smeared by Fox News. Here’s a letter from best selling author John Robbins (and his son Ocean) addressing it.
It’s good fodder to send to those friends of yours who’ve drunk the Fox News KoolAid.
warmest,
tad
* * *
Dear Friends,
Van Jones, a man whose life and work are committed to building a new green economy while generating jobs for some of the people who need them most, is under attack from the right wing attack machine. For those of us who have been touched by Van’s life and message, now is the time to stand up for him, for the green jobs agenda, and for President Obama.
Van is the special advisor on green jobs for the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Now familiar, negative politics are being used to go after an African-American surrogate for Obama, Van Jones.
It seems like a kind of high-tech witch hunt. A rising African American visionary who works in the White House is being targeted with allegations like that he’s a Communist.
In fact, he’s a best-selling author whose work, and role in the White House, are all about using capitalism to help people and the planet.
He’s been recognized by the World Economic Forum as a social entrepreneur, and his life is dedicated to creating private sector jobs that make the world a better place and improve America’s energy security.
Glenn Beck, Fox News, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, and Bill O’Reilly are saying he’s a dangerous radical extremist. In fact, he’s a kind, warm person who has built bridges across racial divides, class divides, and political divides.
Mr. Beck loves to mention the fact that Van Jones was arrested twice. Again though, Beck never tells his audience that in neither case was Van Jones ever charged with any crime. Furthermore, Beck neglects to mention the fact that Van Jones actually won a lawsuit and monetary compensation based on the illegality of his arrest in one case.
Van Jones is someone worth defending.
And for those of us who know his courageous spirit, his loving heart, and his wisdom, now is the time to speak. We are urging you to post on blogs, to send emails to lists, to contact or submit stories for media outlets, to comment on internet news articles, and to use any other mediums you have to tell the truth about Van Jones as you know him.
In the next few days, we can expect a continued roar of negative publicity, out-of-context quotes, half-truths presented as “fact”, and the continued vilification of a man whose life and work have inspired millions with visions of a socially just, environmentally sustainable, and economically robust economy. If you know the truth about Van, please help get the word out.
Feel free to forward this message widely, or to use any words in it that you find helpful if you wish to reach out to your own lists.
Yours for healthy people and a healthy planet,
John Robbins, author, Diet for a New America and founder of EarthSave International
Ocean Robbins, author, The Power of Partnership and founder of YES!
This weekend, Saturday, March 28th 8:30pm is Earth Hour. Switch off your lights! How are you going to celebrate it? There are events going on around the world with 83 countries particating. We’ll probably light the candles and hang out – nothing big. Several local places are having specials such as Uncommon Ground in Chicago which is having candle-lit festivities on it’s rooftop garden.
Anyway you celebrate, VOTE EARTH and help reach the goal of 1 billion people switching off their lights for 1hr on Saturday night.
BTW – you don’t have to wait until 2010 to celebrate Earth Hour again – you can do it anytime you wish.
The Alberta Tar Sands reminds me very much of MTR – Mountaintop Removal Mining. The illustrious Boreal Forest is being clear cut and turned into a disgusting strip mine. Waterways and the general water table is being contaminated. CO2 is being pumped into the atmosphere at alarming rates. The entire ecosystem of this once pristine landscape is being extinguished all in the name of oil – and greed. As they state in the pod, the Boreal Forest is becoming a dumping ground of the United States. US independence from foreign oil runs right through the province of Alberta.
According to DeSmogBlog, “At least 90% of the fresh water used in the oil sands ends up in ends up in tailing ponds so toxic that propane cannons are used to keep ducks from landing in them. Producing a barrel of oil from the oil sands produces three times more greenhouse gas emissions than a barrel of conventional oil.”
Watch the pod. What do you think? Is this energy indepence? At what cost?
Palin is suing the Federal Government over the Endangered Species Act because protecting polar bears is hindering Alasksa’s ability to look for oil. She also talks about how ANWAR is about the footprint of LAX – and we should explore it.
Al Gore is my homeboy. Decent speech tonight, Al. I’m not really a “what if” type of guy, but what if Al had been elected back in 2000 (well – the people elected him – the electoral college did not). Where would we be today? Al didn’t preach climate change all night, although it did come up. He brought up a quote from Thomas Edison in 1931 that I found particularly interesting.
Edison said to his friends Firestone and Henry Ford, “I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.” 77 years later and look where we’re at.
Al’s funniest line came when he was talking about McCain adopting the Bush policies. “I believe in recycling, but that is ridiculous!”
I wish our community offered this. We compost as much as possible. We have worms in our basement eating most of it and we bury some in the back pile, too. I’d love to have the city compost it. Just throw it in the waste and go. They even give you a kitchen compost pail. Other cities around the country already do this, too. San Francisco, Portland, Minneapolis, soon Boulder.
Did I not mention this yesterday? Well – I happened to be reading through the NeoCon magazine and never thought about how I had access to all of the speakers, etc. This one totally slipped past me. Robert F Kennedy Jr, the son of Bobby Kennedy and the well-known environmentalist was speaking at NeoCon. I looked through the book and initially thought I missed it – nope – 8am, Tuesday June 10th. I’m in.
I got up early to catch the 6:34am train into the office – which happens to be directly across the Chicago river from the Merchandise Mart, home of NeoCon. I got to work in time to pickup my credentials and drop off my laptop. I ran over to the Mart and waited for an elevator. I got in and took the elevator up – the operator informs me that it only went to the 11th floor – I had to get to 14. I exited at 11 and found my way to the 14th floor. I got out and looked around and said “WTF?” The hallway was empty – devoid of life – just shops with Christmas items – weird. It’s now 8am and I look in the program again. Oh shit! It’s at the Holiday Inn Merchandise Mart – connected, but in a different building. I’m not waiting 10min for an elevator again, so I ran down 14 floors of stairs, across the street and made it to the correct venue. Phew – I made it. Guess what – the 8am program didn’t start until 8:25am. A lot of running around for nothing.
If you’ve never heard Robert F Kennedy Jr speak, he has what I can only describe as a type of speech imediment – like he’s gasping for air. He started out a little groggy, but once his words are rolling, he’s fine. I only bring this up because I was a little worried that the speech would lack something. In retrospect, he could have been speaking German and I’d have been fine tuned to every last umlaut. I guess in my case, he was speaking to the choir.
I’m not a big fan of politics – never have been – but it is important to stay in touch with the world. With the latest administration, it’s impossible not to speak about or speak up about, rather, the political landscape. Kennedy made the point that Americans can tell you what color underwear that Lindsey Lohan is wearing, but can’t tell you much, if anything, about what is happening in the world (if you’re keeping score at home, the correct answer is, Lindsey doesn’t wear underwear). I think his quote was, “we’re the most entertained and least informed society anywhere.” People need to get out from under their rock which is general American media which is controlled by about 5 different companies.
Kennedy went over so many facts about the current administration that I had no idea about. He calls out all of these folks who are supporting environmental endeavors in the Bush administration as “former” lobbyists for bad people. I put “former” in quotes because many of these people – when they leave their posts, they go back to where they came from. They go back to the coal and oil companies.
I can’t do any of his speech justice, so I’d suggest taking some time and watching it for yourself. Some of these video clips are pretty much exactly the same speech I heard.
How the media fails us:
Here is a speech that is very similar to the speech he gave today:
Did I not mention this yesterday? Well – I happened to be reading through the NeoCon magazine and never thought about how I had access to all of the speakers, etc. This one totally slipped past me. Robert F Kennedy Jr, the son of Bobby Kennedy and the well-known environmentalist was speaking at NeoCon. I looked through the book and initially thought I missed it – nope – 8am, Tuesday June 10th. I’m in. 
