NEXT PAGE -->
|
| * * * COMPANIES & PRODUCTS * * * |
|---|
Updated Daily!
| * * * IN-HOUSE RESOURCES * * * |
|---|
June 2, 1999
"The animals and birds count on this land to support their entire life cycles. They're not like us. We can go to another grocery store if we have to find somewhere else to get food. The most exciting thing is that it's going to be saved." Trudy Metzger (Florida environmental activist)
Today's SC-ACTION:
I. SWEET VICTORIES: 86 Acres Spared from Suburban Sprawl
II. SIERRA CLUB ACTIVISTS IN ACTION: Earth Month in Georgia
III. SIERRA CLUB NINJA TURTLES: Lobby for Desert
IV. TAKE ACTION: $ for Land Protection
I.SWEET VICTORY for Florida activists who have been fighting to protect Clam Bayou in Pinellas County, one of the most densely populated counties in Florida. Today, it was announced that an agreement was reached to purchase 86 acres of important green space and wildlife habitat on the east shore of Clam Bayou. This will be important for improving the water quality of the bay, and for maintaining open space. Beth Connor, local Sierra Club spokesperson hailed this victory, but called on St. Petersburg to finish the job by buying even more land to create a major regional park. Congratulations to everyone for the hard work that made this victory possible.
III. SIERRA CLUB ACTIVISTS IN ACTION
Earth day is over, but reports of the good work by Sierra Club activists continue to roll in. In Atlanta, Club leaders turned Earth Day into a month of activities aimed at pushing back on Sprawl in one of the nation's most sprawl threatened Cities. Their Tour de Sprawl led by the Georgia Challenge to Sprawl Campaign took 17 community leaders on a bus tour through the Lake Allatoona watershed to discuss how development has and will impact this reservoir, and transportation and school overcrowding issues. Highlights of the Tour included a satellite image analysis which showed the likely effect of highway expansions and development on future tree cover and lake pollution, a hands-on, stream side demonstration water quality testing, visits to shopping centers contrasting poor and good stormwater management approaches. The tour stimulated energetic discussion of how development affects water quality, and whether we can protect water quality when land is developed and about the proposed Outer Perimeter highway. All the participants received a packet with in-depth discussion of non-point source pollution impacts on water quality, of traffic management and of sprawl's impact on quality of life.
Numerous other events -- a Tree Protection rally in DeKalb County, release of a report outside the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT), an open house showing plans for the Outer Perimeter and its threat to the Lake -- kept the issue in the news all month long, with articles, columns and television coverage.
Finally, the Georgia Chapter had a very successful tabling drive at various venues throughout the month, educating the public about sprawl, gathering signatures, and collection postcards on Lake Allatoona. The folks in Georgia are to be congratulated on an incredible Earth Month campaign, and the rest of us should try these techniques at home.
IV. TORTOISES LOBBY FOR DESERT -- Just when you think that you've seen every grassroots lobbying trick under the sun, along come Davey, Jose, Tippy and Christmas to set a new standard. Davey, et al are four Desert Tortoises who have recently been on a whirlwind lobbying tour in Washington DC with Elden and Patty Hughes, longtime Sierra Club leaders to help build support for federal acquisition of some 400,000 acres of private inholdings in the Mojave Desert, much of which is prime desert tortoise habitat. The tortoises opened doors, turned heads, attracted considerable attention on the hill and in the press, and hopefully educated a few folks about this important issue. As the Houston Chronicle said in its headline for the story: "Tortoises Crack DC's Hard Shell."
TAKE ACTION -- HELP THE TORTOISES
These lands in the Mojave, and millions of acres of other wildlands, open space and wildlife habitat will only be saved, if there is money set aside by the federal government to purchase them. The Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) has been the source of most of the funding for such purchases, but unfortunately, for many years the Congress has been failing to fully fund the LWCF, too often they have funneled the money that was supposed to go into this fund for other purposes. What is needed is a permanent, mandatory fund for land protection and acquisition -- one that will not be subject to the yearly whims of Congress. Bills have been introduced in both the House and Senate to do just that. Representative George Miller and Senator Barbara Boxer have sponsored the Resources 2000 Act HR 798 and S 446 respectively. Give the tortoises a helping hand. Write or call your Senators and Representative, and urge them to cosponsor the Resources 2000 Act, a bill that will provide permanent funding for America to protect its land and ocean legacy.
"Another glorious day, the air as delicious to the lungs as nectar to the tongue." John Muir, 'My First Summer in the Sierra,' 1911 Muir founded Sierra Club on May 28, 1892
Take Action: Urge full, fair and permanent LWCF funding.
I. Hard CAFE work pays off with letter to Clinton supporting cleaner SUVs.
II. Sierra Club Bird Dogs Daley on WTO Road Show
III. Newest Sierra Club group releases SPARE America's Wildlands Report in South Dakota
IV. New EPEC organizer to focus on sprawl in Tracy and Livermore, CA
Take Action: Urge full, fair and permanent LWCF funding.
Get the word out on LWCF and oil revenue-sharing bills in Congress -- please write a letter to the editor urging support for Resources 2000.
Last month, we asked you to write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper expressing your support for "Resources 2000," a bill by Rep. George Miller (D-CA) and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) to revitalize the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and to fund an array of conservation programs from offshore oil production revenues (see SC-ACTION Vol. II, #75, April 27, 1999).
Resources 2000 and other similar legislation are gaining momentum in Congress -- hearings have been held and there is talk of marking up the bills in subcommittee this summer. The Sierra Club is very excited about the potential to obtain full and permanent funding for the LWCF and other valuable conservation initiatives this year.
Legislation by Rep. Don Young (R-AK) and Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and Frank Murkowski (R-AK), called the "Conservation and Reinvestment Act" (CARA), would fund important conservation programs as well, but could create incentives for increased offshore oil and gas development. Funding for so-called "coastal impact assistance" in their legislation has no guidelines for its use, and would provide billions of dollars for projects that could potentially harm the environment. In addition, their legislation would impose new harmful restrictions on the Land and Water Conservation Fund, including:
- An arbitrary geographic limitation that requires most of the LWCF to be spent in the east;
- A monetary cap restricting the amount a federal agency can spend on land acquisitions without separate permission from Congress; and
- A ban on land acquisition outside existing National Park, Refuge, and Forest boundaries, making expansion of our national treasures much more difficult.
Because CARA provides funding for LWCF and wildlife protection programs, many people are not aware of its potentially harmful provisions. Fortunately, co-sponsors of all the bills have pledged to work together to iron out differences. In the meantime, we need to let people know about the downsides of CARA, and urge support for Resources 2000. Your letter to the editor can help get that message out.
I. Hard CAFE work pays off with letter to Clinton.
31 Senators Call on President Clinton to Support Cleaner SUVs, Nearing Level to Sustain Presidential Action.
Hard work pays off! Thanks to SC-ACTION readers who called your Senators over the past two months! Senator Feinstein's letter to the President urging him to work with Congress to raise fuel economy standards was wrapped up yesterday with 31 Senators signed on. Thirty-one Senators nears the level needed to support the President in taking action on CAFE standards.
Senator Feinstein's letter emphasizes the pollution cutting and oil saving benefits of the existing standards and the need to take action to address the rapidly increasing amounts of global warming pollution spewing from gas guzzling SUVs.
Here is what Senator Feinstein said on release of the letter: "I believe strongly that global warming is not a problem we can afford to ignore or dismiss. Strengthening the CAFE standards is one of the easiest, most important steps we can take to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and fight global warming." Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), authored the letter and, along with Senators Bryan (D-NV) and Gorton (R-WA), led the effort in the Senate.
If the President heeds the Senators' call by implementing the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) law, it will save consumers money at the gas pump and cut global warming pollution by 240 million tons per year when fully phased in.
Here's a list of Senators who signed on: Feinstein, Bryan, Gorton, Boxer, Dodd, Hollings, Kerry, Lautenberg, Lieberman, Moynihan, Murray, Reed, Toricelli, Wellstone, Wyden, Harkin, Cleland, Schumer, G. Smith, Jeffords, Edwards, Graham, Leahy, Akaka, Kennedy, Reid, Feingold, Inouye, Chafee, Robb, Rockefeller.
Thanks are due to these Senators. Please call your Senator(s) who didn't sign on and ask why they want SUVs to continue to guzzle gas and pollute!
II.
II. Sierra Club Bird Dogs Daley on WTO Road Show
When Commerce Secretary Bill Daley's "National Trade Education Tour" rolled into Milwaukee, Wisconsin, "The Milwaukee County Labor Council, the Sierra Club, and the Washington-based Citizens Trade Campaign did such a good job of organizing the protest outside the Milwaukee School of Engineering [MSOE] building where Daley was set to do his educating that the secretary had to sneak in the back door," writes John Nichols of the Madison, Wisconsin Capital Times ((5/25/99)
"In Milwaukee," observed the Milwaukee Sentinel Journal (5/25/99), "nearly 100 union and Sierra Club members rallied outside MSOE's Todd Wehr Conference Center singing songs and carrying anti-NAFTA signs." The Sierra Club's Cathy Rose gets mega-kudos for working the phones with trade union colleagues to ensure the sizable turnout.
The Chicago-to-Milwaukee bus trip is the second leg of Daley's national bus tour to tout the benefits of the Clinton Administration's free trade policies in the run-up to next November's Summit of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle. Thanks to a strong coalition that included Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, the United Steelworkers of America, and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, "loud, dissenting voices were heard from labor and environmental groups" along the entire route, according to the Chicago Daily Herald. (5/25/99)
As Daley's bus rolled along from Chicago, to Racine, and then on to Milwaukee, "[the Sierra Club's Peter] Kirn and [local organizer Jerry] Jaecks drove alongside the bus with a sign reading "Free Trade Fat Cats Onboard," taped to the rear doors of their van," reported the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. As Kirn told a Journal-Sentinel reporter, "We're here to bring the message to Daley that international trade laws are to protect the U.S. We want responsible trade, not free trade."
In Chicago, Sierra Club staffer Jack Darin gave interviews to WBBM news and to local television at a rally outside the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. In Milwaukee, Carl Zichela spoke to the rally, button-holed reporters, and confronted the Commerce Secretary after his presentation.
The Club's press kit included a flyer that quoted comments made by Chicago's Mayor Richard M. Daley on the Jim Lehrer Newshour last October on the outbreak of the Asian long-horned beetle in Chicago's Ravenswood neighborhood. "You're basically doing to destroy more of nature, not just in an eight or twelve block area. You'll destroy not just this city [but] this state and this nation," Daley said. Richard Daley is Commerce Secretary Bill Daley's brother,
Mayor Daley is not kidding. Forest pathologists believe that the Asian long-horned beetle, an unintended import from China, could cause more damage to America's deciduous forests than chestnut blight, Dutch elm disease, and the gypsy moth combined if it ever breaks out of the 30 isolated urban pockets where it has been detected so far.
What neither the Mayor nor his brother recognize is that as the volume of trade grows, the risk of exotic pests grows too. Yet international trade rules bar effective preventive action. The US Department of Agriculture even admits that it "cannot establish regulations that would contravene other laws and policies associated with trade" such as NAFTA and the WTO.
III. Newest Sierra Club group releases SPARE America's Wildlands Report in South Dakota
Sierra Club's newest group kicked off its wildlands campaign with a bang from the banks of the Missouri River. The Living River Group of South Dakota held a press conference May 25 to unveil the Club's SPARE America's Wildlands Report which features the Missouri River as South Dakota's threatened treasure.
Media from two states covered the event. The theme of the day seemed to be the number 3: Three television camera crews, three radio stations and three newspapers turned out, to report on the three group members who testified to the Missouri's value. The result: Great coverage, including 3 front-page stories and a TV broadcast live from the riverbank.
The Living River Group representatives did an outstanding job describing their plans to make the Missouri River a recreation area that would include more activities such as canoeing and hiking. They called for the park service to address the Missouri River as they do others in the wild and scenic system.
IV. New EPEC organizer to focus on sprawl in Tracy and Livermore, CA
Sierra Club has hired Sean McCartney as its latest Environmental Public Education Campaign (EPEC) organizers. Sean will focus on urban sprawl in the Tracy and Livermore, California, educating residents about growth issues.
After growing up in Tracy, Sean views his move to the Sierra Club as a way to help his hometown community. His first event: An open house in June for all city residents so they can learn about Sierra Club's activities.
Tracy is struggling with rampant sprawl, which is especially threatening the area's farms.
As yesterday's Stockton Record Staff reported: "McCartney will focus on Livermore's transportation issues as well as Tracy's growth debate. McCartney's educational grant prohibits him from any political activity to change a city's growth policy. Instead, he hopes to talk to residents about growth issues and would like to develop between 100 and 500 activists in Tracy and Livermore.
"In April, the club named Tracy and the Tri-Valley region as one of 14 areas in the country that it would prioritize in a nationwide battle against urban sprawl."
"Over the last four years, Congress has been submitting to the pressure of timber, oil, chemical, agribusiness and other big money interests by attempting to weaken critical environmental safeguards. The main reason many politicians side with the polluters over the public's desire for a healthy environment is their never-ending need for campaign cash." -Chuck McGrady, Sierra Club President
Today's SC-ACTION:
I. TAKE ACTION: Stop the Delay on Campaign Finance Reform
II. WAYBURN MESSAGE TO FDA: Ban Unnecessary Drugs at Animal Factories
I. TAKE ACTION: STOP THE DELAY ON CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM
On May 18, U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) stated that he refused to bring campaign-finance reform to the floor for debate until the late month of September. The delay is unacceptable because it means the Senate won't have enough time to act this year to implement reform before the 2000 elections.
Our broken system of electoral financing is inextricably bound together with the legislation that affects our environment. Not only that, but it's one of the main reasons voters have lost trust in our government. Implementing campaign-finance reform would eliminate the influence of donors seeking to weaken environmental laws, shift power back to voters and volunteers, and restore the public's confidence in our democracy.
The Sierra Club supports two reform bills -- the bipartisan campaign-finance reform bill, H.R. 417, sponsored by Reps. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) and Martin Meehan (D-Mass.); and H.R. 1739, the Clean Money, Clean Elections Campaign Finance Reform Act of 1999, sponsored by Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.).
Below is a sample campaign-finance reform letter urging representatives to consider the Shays-Meehan bipartisan bill H.R. 417, and Tierney's H.R. 1739. It asks them to sign a discharge petition, H. Res. 122, that would force the House to consider prompt consideration of campaign-finance reform.
Please write a letter to your member of Congress asking him/her to support these bills. Write to: Rep. ________________, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, DC 20515; or call your representative through the Capitol Hill switchboard at (202) 225-3121.
THANK YOU!!!
II. WAYBURN MESSAGE TO FDA: Ban Unnecessary Drugs at Animal Factories
In response to the "Take Action" item on "Unnecessary Use of Drugs on Livestock" in the May 21 issue of the SC-ACTION (V.II #91), the Sierra Club's honorary president, Dr. Ed Wayburn, has submitted the following letter:
May 24, 1999
Dr. Jane E. Henney, Commissioner Food and Drug Administration 5600 Fishers Lane, Room 14-71 Rockville, MD 20857
Dear Dr. Henney:
Let me express my serious concern over the ongoing use of certain antibiotics to promote growth of livestock to be used for human consumption. The situation has becomes more grave and complex because their proliferating use for livestock has turned into an alarming medical problem. When these same drugs are also used to treat humans, they are apparently causing increased resistance to certain bacteria.
In other words, the desire on the part of livestock producers, such as hog and poultry farmers, to fatten their products artificially, is being allowed to turn into a damaging public health situation. As a retired medical practitioner myself, I am keenly disturbed by this matter from both the aspects of escalating dangers from resistant infection and from the even more basic viewpoint of public health.
Two years ago the World Health Organization called for a ban on use of antibiotics to fatten livestock. Since then, the European Union has adopted such a ban. It is time for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, upon which the American public relies to guard it from avoidable public-health dangers, to step forward firmly and adopt a ban on this unsafe practice in America.
The lobbying efforts of the livestock industry and drug manufacturers must not be allowed to dictate harmful medical effects for Americans. Americans have a right to assume the meat products they purchase will not be detrimental to their health. We urge you to take vigorous regulatory steps before we have a real crisis on our hands.
Sincerely,
Edgar Wayburn, M.D.
NEXT PAGE -->
|
| * * * COMPANIES & PRODUCTS * * * |
|---|
| * * * IN-HOUSE RESOURCES * * * |
|---|