Breaking News: 50 Arrests in Global Warming Protest

September 27, 2007

Just moments ago, 50 activists, including Greenpeace USA Executive Director John Passacantando, were arrested in front of the State Department building for participating in a global warming protest.

The activists were protesting outside President Bush's summit of the world's largest global warming polluters - a meeting Bush called under the guise of appearing concerned about global warming even though he has refused to endorse mandatory emissions cuts and targets.

This protest marks the greatest number of activists getting arrested in the name of global warming. But even if you couldn't be with us for today's protests, you can still take a stand in the fight against global warming.

TAKE ACTION NOW!
We know Bush won't take a stand on global warming, so it's up to Members of Congress, and they must act fast. Add your voice to the growing movement to combat global warming. Write to Congress, join our Project Hot Seat campaign, and stay tuned for upcoming activities you'll be able to participate in from your own hometown.

I'll be in touch soon to let you know about other ways you can help stop global warming.

For the Planet,

Chris Miller
Global Warming Campaigner

p.s. Get the full story on our protest and see more images of the arrests.

Don't let Industry Decide Our Future

Do you trust the auto industry and electric utilities to shape our nation's energy policy?

Unfortunately, this could still happen, which is why we need you to fight for a clean energy bill. Will you join the 13,625 and counting SOE activists who have already contacted their members of Congress?

The auto industry is hard at work, promoting their own interests in Congress and putting the two major victories we achieved this summer in the fight to curb global warming in serious jeopardy. We need to counter their voice in Congress with our own!

Click here to remind your members of Congress that you support a strong and clean Energy Bill!

In June the Senate passed an Energy Bill requiring a 35 miles-per-gallon fuel economy standard for our automobiles. In August the House passed an Energy Bill requiring a 15 percent renewable electricity standard, which means electric utilities must obtain more power from clean, renewable sources-such as the wind and sun. This is truly an exciting time, as this fall we have the opportunity to help pass the strongest energy bill to date.

Industry, however, is busy trying to undermine the Senate-passed 35 miles-per-gallon fuel economy standard. Automakers even hired PR firms to orchestrate "made for TV" auto worker rallies in Missouri and Illinois designed to scare consumers about the new fuel economy regulations!

Fuel economy has been stagnant for 20 years. The truth is that a 35 miles-per-gallon fuel economy standard would create over 170,000 new jobs and save consumers over $24 billion at the pump each year.*

Now that Congress is back in session, click here to tell them that auto industry propaganda must not dissuade them from making the choices America needs!

Thank you for your continued dedication to this important issue!

Sincerely,

Julie Waterman
Campaign Director, SaveOurEnvironment.org
info@saveourenvironment.org

* Jobs, Energy, and Fuel Economy, Union of Concerned Scientists, 2007

Support Our Work - Click here now to make a secure online donation to help support our efforts to protect our clean water, clean air, endangered species and wild places.

Donate Today to Document Destructive Forestry Practices

I'm writing to ask you to help us document the destruction of endangered forests in the South by giving an online donation today. In the coming weeks we will fly over the Green Swamp, Great Dismal Swamp, and other unique forests in the Southern US to document the destruction by International Paper of these endangered forests. We'll use special equipment to take photographs and we will bring local people up with us so they can help to spread the word about what we see when we flyover.
To help us document destructive forestry practices this way, please donate today!

Every year over five million acres of forests are logged in the South, the majority of which becomes paper packaging ending up in a landfill. In fact nearly 50% of landfill waste is paper and wood products. The forests of the Southern U.S. are unique amongst forests in the world, and include an incredible array of wildlife. Everyday forests are clearcut for packaging by huge logging companies like International Paper.

We are working to hold these corporations accountable for their forestry practices and packaging choices, and to convince them to end the wasteful destruction of these important forests. One of the ways we can hold International Paper accountable is by documenting their destructive forestry practices and letting the world know what is happening throughout Southern communities and in the most bio-diverse temperate forests in the world.

Of course, the forests are privately owned and we cannot get there on foot, so we will fly over the land to get the proof we need. We'll fly with Southwings, a great organization that is also dedicated to the conservation of Southern forests. Your contribution today will go directly towards the cost of equipment to document the destruction and outreach to spread the word, building the pressure on one of the most powerful and destructive corporations in the world.

We plan to get up there in just a few weeks, so your contribution today will make a big difference in documenting the clearcuts throughout the Green Swamp, Great Dismal Swamp, and other unique forests along the Southeastern coast that are being clearcut for paper packaging.

Holding companies accountable requires proof. Please make a tax-deductible contribution to Dogwood Alliance today of whatever amount is significant for you, by clicking here.


For the forests,

Michelle Smith
Development Director
Dogwood Alliance

TreeHuggerTV: Green Alcatraz, Cool Cob and Toxic Co.

This week TreeHuggerTV brings you something dirty, something clean, and a whole lot of green in between, starting with a look at the Toxic 100 list of the largest corporate polluters. But before you jump to any quick conclusions, we?ll let you know what Toxic 100 company also made the list of Global 100 of the most Sustainable Corporations in the world. In cleaner, less confusing news -- the infamous former federal prison Alcatraz gets greener, British schools move towards carbon neutrality, and kids in California celebrate cob ? reviving a traditional building technique to craft modern benches.

Help expose the Alaska wolf massacre with our new video

Together, we’re saving wolves. With your help, we stopped Alaska’s grisly bounty proposal for wolf paws and blocked Governor Sarah Palin’s plan to allow the use of helicopters to kill hundreds of wolves. Now state officials have approved a $400,000 public relations effort aimed at touting its aerial hunting program, and we need your help to counter their misinformation.

We’ve produced two new videos on Alaska’s aerial hunting program. Please help share them with the world -- Forward the message below to at least 5 friends and help us expose the Alaska wolf massacre.

Dear Wildlife Supporter,

When people think of Alaska, they think of its amazing wildlife and natural beauty. But Alaska has a terrible secret: Each year, the state permits private citizens to chase down and kill dozens of wolves using low-flying aircraft and high-powered rifles.

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and anti-wolf officials in the state have worked hard to obscure the truth about the aerial gunning program, even going so far as to earmark $400,000 in state funds to “educate” Alaskans about the state’s baseless aerial gunning program.

Help us expose Alaska’s secret slaughter. Watch Defenders’ new video online right now and urge Governor Palin to end aerial gunning of wolves.

Warning: This video contains disturbing footage of aerial wolf hunts -- wolves shot down from above, chased to exhaustion and wounded and left to die. If you would prefer to take action without watching the video, please click here.

These are awful images, made all the more so by how senseless the aerial gunning programs are. Under the guise of “wolf management,” state officials set arbitrary goals for the number of wolves to be killed and turn thrill-seeking aerial hunters loose on Alaska’s native wolves.

In the process, the state is flouting a 1972 federal law outlawing aerial hunting and disregarding the majority of Alaska voters, who have twice rejected aerial hunting by private hunters and pilots.

Over the past four years, nearly 700 wolves have been killed under the program. And, if last year is any indication, state officials will be gunning for hundreds more once aerial gunning begins again later this fall.

Learn the truth about Alaska’s aerial gunning program and help put and end to the brutal and unfounded killing of these majestic predators.

Another appalling season of aerial hunting is about to begin. I hope you’ll take just a few moments out of your day to help us turn the national spotlight on this awful practice and save wolves.

Sincerely,


Rodger Schlickeisen
President
Defenders of Wildlife

Help Expose the Truth

Aerial hunting of wolves is Alaska’s dirty secret. Watch our new video and take action to help end this brutal practice.

Aerial Hunting by the Numbers

2	Times Alaskans have rejected the state’s aerial hunting program at the polls
35	Years that aerial hunting has been illegal under federal law
Nearly 700	Wolves killed over the last four years through Alaska’s aerial hunting program
$400,000	Earmarked by state officials to “educate” Alaskans on the state’s aerial hunting activities

Global Warming, Has Congress Flunked Out?

I'm not going back to school this fall, but maybe Congress should. The problem of global warming is a no-brainer. Human activities on Earth are causing the planet to warm up--and that's bad news for everyone. So why do our leaders seem to be failing Global Warming 101? This is no time to be sitting in the corner with a dunce cap on! It's time for us to do a little tutoring, and teach Congress how to improve its grade. Global warming is the most important subject they face, and if they fail, we all lose. So I've got a little homework assignment for YOU. Dust off your keyboard and remove those cobwebs from your dictionary. Let's keep global warming front and center. Congress needs to understand that, "We, the People" want strong leadership and solutions. Take Action - Write a Letter to the Editor Write a letter-to-the-editor in your local paper to help spread the word. Get your name in print while helping to save the planet. It's a win-win situation. Our letter-to-the-editor tool is easy to use. You'll be able to pick local papers and choose talking points from a drag and drop menu. When it comes to stopping global warming--we can't afford to miss the bus--it's too important. For the planet, Samantha Rodgers Global Warming Campaigner What do you do when you have only 12 individuals of an endangered species left in a country? Well, according to the U.S. military, you destroy their last remaining habitat and ensure their demise. That's what the U.S. Marines are proposing to do in Japan, home to a cousin of the manatee called the dugong. The military is planning to pave over a coral reef on Okinawa Island to build an airplane landing strip and expand its airbase. Take Action! Tell Japan to say NO to the marines, because airplanes don't belong in coral reefs. Time is running out for the dugong and thousands of other creatures, including three species of threatened sea turtles, who call the reef and the adjacent seagrass bed home. But it's not too late. Right now, the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for the airbase site is open for public comment. It's crucial that you tell the Japanese government to put a stop to the plan for airbase expansion in Okinawa. And please, be sure to tell your friends to write too. The local people of Okinawa have protested these plans successfully for years, but now they need your support too. Please, help save the dugong! Your friend, John Hocevar Oceans Campaigner

3 Ways to Help 1: Donate Now Help Greenpeace Take a Stand. Become a Member Today. 2: Take Action Visit our Action Center and take action today. 3: Tell a Friend Forward this message to a friend. Help spread the word. Hot Seat Success! We'd like to send a BIG thanks to everyone who came out and participated in Hot Seat Congressional delivery events last month. Your help made this event a smashing success. There were 370 events in 80% of U.S. Congressional districts. As one activist put it, "I walked away feeling really good about the situation and happy to have been able to help voice the importance of this issue." See other activist events by checking out our photo gallery. E-cards and Wallpaper Haven't been to the Greenpeace website in a while? Well, you've been missing out on some great new action e-cards and wallpaper like the dugong one above.

702 H Street, NW
Suite 300
Washington, D.C. 20001

Want to help a prairie dog? Here's how...

Did you know that more than two-thirds of all wildlife protected under the Endangered Species Act -- including Utah prairie dogs and other animals -- make their home on private land? Yet conserving habitat for these species has offered few rewards to farmers, ranchers and other landowners … until now.

Please urge your Representative and Senators to support the Endangered Species Recovery Act of 2007 (H.R. 1422 and S. 700), important legislation that would help private landowners protect imperiled wildlife that live on their property.

The Endangered Species Recovery Act of 2007 would provide tax credits, deductions and exclusions to private landowners who voluntarily take measures to protect and restore endangered species habitat on their lands -- giving imperiled wildlife like Utah prairie dogs a powerful new ally in their struggle to survive.

Our endangered species need all the help they can get. Send your Representative and Senators a message now and urge them to co-sponsor the Endangered Species Recovery Act of 2007 (H.R. 1422 and S. 700).

This important bipartisan legislation is awaiting action in both the House and the Senate. If the bill is ever going to become law, we need to make our voices heard right now.

Please take action now to support this important legislation … and help save Utah prairie dogs and other imperiled wildlife on private lands.

Best Regards,

Rodger Schlickeisen President Defenders of Wildlife

P.S. In its more than 30-year history, the Endangered Species Act has helped bald eagles, wolves, grizzly bears and many other species claw their way back from the brink of extinction. But with global warming, habitat destruction and so many other ongoing threats, imperiled species need all the friends they can get. Please take action now...

The appalling fate of the polar bear, symbol of the Arctic

t has been declared at risk by conservation groups. Yet rich Westerners are paying thousands of dollars for the privilege of shooting an animal whose very existence is already threatened by environmental disaster. Geoffrey Lean reports from Ilulissat, Greenland, on a fight for survival

Published: 09 September 2007

Polar bears – the very symbol of the Arctic's looming environmental disaster – are crashing towards extinction as a result of global warming, the US government has found. The admission, the result of a massive investigation by the Bush administration, could force the President finally to take action against climate change.

The development comes at the end of the most momentous week in the human history of the Arctic, which is warming faster than anywhere else in the world. Satellite observations have revealed that its ice has shrunk to much its lowest ever level, raising fears that it had reached a "tipping point" where it would melt irreversibly, disappearing altogether in summer in less than 25 years, with incalculable global consequences,

And a separate Independent on Sunday investigation has found that polar bears are being shot in alarming numbers by rich trophy hunters from the US, Europe and Japan, even as their increasingly fragile habitat melts beneath them. Campaigners know that climate change and pollution are the biggest threats to polar bear survival, but believe that stopping sports hunting is symbolically important. Former US presidential candidate Senator John Kerry is leading the fight.

"It's time to put the polar bear on the endangered species list, and give them a fighting chance at survival," he said. "Not only must these bears contend with their home melting away, but they are also being hunted in the limited habitat they have left. It's time to take responsibility for their survival."

And Environment Secretary Hilary Benn told the IoS yesterday: "As a result of climate change we are already witnessing the destruction of polar bear habitats, and the idea that people would consider trophy hunting these great creatures is unacceptable."

American hunters exploit a loophole in the Marine Mammal Protection Act that allows them to get licences to import polar bear trophies from Canada. Some 953 have been granted or applied for since 1994. Senator Kerry is now co-sponsoring with Republican Senator Olympia Snowe a proposed Polar Bear Protection Act in the US Senate that would stop the skins being imported.

At the same time comes the polar bear investigation – conducted by the US Geological Survey – which concluded that the world population would be cut by two-thirds by the middle of the century as the result of the melting of the ice. This is likely to be over-optimistic because, as the survey itself admits, it is based on estimates of the rate of the ice's disappearance that fall far short of what is actually taking place. New evidence also suggests that chemical pollution, wafted up to the Arctic, is interfering with the bears' abilities to reproduce.

The study is hugely significant because it was ordered by President Bush's Interior Secretary, Dirk Kempthorne, as a response to pressure to list the species under the US Endangered Species Act. Its conclusions make the listing virtually impossible to refuse. Once the species is covered by the act, US agencies would be bound by law to take into account how their decisions could affect it – leading to action to control the growth of the pollution that causes global warming.

The Arctic crisis has become so compelling that leaders of the world's main religions gathered this weekend on the iceberg-studded sea off this small town, deep in the Arctic Circle on the west Greenland coast, to pray for the planet. Bartholomew I, the Ecumenical Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox church – who convened the group – told them: "the danger of an avoidable catastrophe is now more acute than ever." On Friday senior representatives of the Roman Catholic and protestant churches, Sunni and Shia Islam,and the Hebrew, Hindu, Shinto and Buddhist Zen religions joined the Patriarch in silent prayer on the prow of a liner under a lowering sky in the shadow of giant icebergs.

The icebergs are calving from the rapidly melting Sermeq Kujalleq glacier – near this town of 4,400 people and 2,500 sled dogs – which is disappearing at a rate of a staggering 35 cubic kilometres, or 8.4 cubic miles, a year. Every day enough ice breaks away to provide water for everyone in London for a year. The biggest glacier in Greenland, it is retreating at a rate of 10 miles a year, five times as fast as 10 years ago, as temperatures rise three times as fast as in the rest of the world. Much the same melting is occurring all over the island. The giant Helheim glacier on the east coast, for example – which had remained stable since records began – has retreated four and a half miles. Since 1995 the island's vast icecap has lost 300 feet in height.

Robert Corell, who heads the world's main monitoring project on the region– the international Arctic Climate Impact Assessment – said the melting was becoming "catastrophic", and experts increasingly fear that it is approaching the point where the disappearance of the entire icecap becomes inevitable. That would raise sea-levels worldwide by over 20 feet, inundating coastal cities.

The Arctic's sea ice may already have reached such a tipping point. Up to five years ago the sea around this town – whose name means "iceberg" in the local language – froze every winter; now it remains open throughout the year.

Last week the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Denver, Colorado, announced that the sea ice had shrunk to 2.05 million square miles in August 2007; its previous record low was 2.14 million square miles two years ago. It means that a staggering 200,000 sq miles of ice is now open sea for the first time. This year the fabled Northwest Passage through northern Canada opened, while the North-east Passage around Siberia is blocked by just a single tongue of ice. Scientists expect that they will both shortly open simultaneously, making it possible to sail round the North Pole for the first time

The speed of the melting has taken everyone by surprise; computer models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predict sea ice should not retreat so far until around 2050. Traditionally the ice reaches its annual minimum in the first week of September, so it should soon start increasing again for the winter. But another record low is expected for next summer. Dr Mark Serreze of the Snow and Ice Data Centre describes the ice as being in a "death spiral... If this is not at or near a tipping point right now, then I'd hate to see what that looks like." A couple of years ago he would not have expected the Arctic to lose all its ice until the end of the century; now he expects it by 2030. This is predicted to have massive global consequences, disrupting the monsoon and bringing prolonged drought to the American midwest, which helps to feed 100 nations.

The crisis has already hit this town, where hunters can no longer go out on the ice, threatening the Inuit's very raison d'être. In the past year alone 14 young men committed suicide in this small town. And both polar bear and Inuit are accumulating high concentrations of chemicals in their bodies from pollution brought by the winds from the far south. Polar bears are among the most contaminated animals on earth, while Inuit in Greenland have 70 times as much of one pesticide in their bodies as people in Canada. New evidence suggests that the contamination is affecting the ability of both to reproduce.

Alternative Energy/Solar Movie Project

Two parts

FOX ATTACKS the ENVIRONMENT

You won't believe the lies and misinformation Fox News is spreading about global warming and climate change.