Updates on the Take Action! page
I posted this yesterday but we must make the Bush Administration understand that we will not trade an important species such as the polar bears and Alaska’s biodiversity for oil!
The Sierra Club urges everyone to act now to save polar bears from extinction:
A year ago the Bush Administration finally admitted that global warming is a serious and growing threat to polar bears, and proposed protections for this iconic animal under the Endangered Species Act. This effort signified the first major Endangered Species Act initiative taken by the U.S. government because of global warming.
But a year later the polar bear has still not been listed and the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife has announced that they will postpone their decision by a month, citing a backlog of work. Adding insult to injury, the delay is conveniently timed to enable the Bush Administration to continue with plans to sell off oil exploration leases in prime polar bear habitat – Alaska’s Chukchi and Beaumont Seas in early February. This plan, if approved, would only further promote the polar bear’s demise.
We can’t wait until the ice sheets melt and the last polar bear drowns before we deal with global warming. Polar bears would be listed today if it weren’t for powerful special interests fighting the decision at every step.
The polar bear’s future is literally on thin ice and the Bush Administration is focused on allowing more oil drilling in the Arctic. Please take action today and help save the polar bear before it’s too late.
Read this excellent editorial by Kate Truesdell of the “Michigan Daily.” It’s a student-run newspaper and Ms. Truesdell hits harder than even the Sierra Club.
Stop Global Warming reports:
NYC PASSES PLASTIC BAG RECYCLING BILL
Last week, New York City took a giant step forward in the fight against plastic. New York’s City Council passed a bill requiring large stores and retail chains to collect and recycle plastic shopping bags. According to a New York Times report: “New York is by far the largest American city to enact so broad a measure to limit the environmental impact of the bags. Altogether, each year the country is estimated to use 86 billion bags, which end up blowing down city streets, or tangled in the stomachs of whales, sea turtles and birds, or buried in landfills where they enjoy free rent for 1,000 years.”Other cities like Melbourne and San Francisco have banned bags outright. San Francisco was the first city in North America to ban non-recyclable and non-biodegradable bags made from petroleum products. Africa has moved toward a continent-wide plastic bag ban, and just last week, China’s cabinet issued a directive banning their production, prohibiting stores from handing out free plastic bags after June 1st and imposing fees on their usage. People in China use up to 3 billion plastic bags daily! Help keep the momentum going here in the United States and just say no to plastic bags!
Finally, the latest DawnWatch brings a report from the “New York Post” about televised rodeo:
In the Sunday, January 13 edition of the “New York Post,” columnist Phil Mushnick’s “Primetime” column goes after televised rodeos. He writes, “… there’s no squaring any entertainment-for-profit predicated on antagonizing animals. Yet, Fox Sports Net’s latest, desperate attempt to further attract and desensitize a young, male audience – this time through ‘The Toughest Cowboy Presented By Jagermeister’ – is predicated on exactly that.”He writes that he had hoped that in 2008, “… TV would reject excessive animal abuse.” But, “I didn’t make it past Jan. 4, the X-treme rodeo show’s TV debut.”
He notes the “Enormous horses and bulls in unhappy frenzies …” and writes, “While this is the life the cowboys chose, it’s hard to believe that this is the life the animals would prefer that Fox Sports executives select for them.”
You’ll find the whole piece online.
Please take this opportunity to write a quick letter to the editor about rodeos and the abuse of animals for entertainment — appreciative of Mushnick’s comments. The Post takes letters at letters@nypost.com or http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/letters/letters_editor.htm.
Include your name, address and phone number.
I send thanks to Claire for making sure we saw this.
Yours and the animals’,
Karen Dawn(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. You may forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts if you do so unedited — leave DawnWatch in the title and include this parenthesized tag line. If somebody forwards DawnWatch alerts to you, which you enjoy, please help the list grow by signing up. It is free.)
s.
Filed under: animal rights, bears, endangered species, global warming pollution, wildlife conservation
NYC now needs to go one step further, and make all plastic bags degradable.
If the bags are collected they can be recycled, but if they get into the environment they will self-destruct in a short time, leaving no fragments or harmful residues.
Remember though that the bags would need to be OXO-biodegradable because they cost no more than ordinary bags, and the ones made from crops cannot be recycled.
Michael Stephen, Chairman, Symphony Environmental UK