Greetings Earthlings. Have you heard about The Sand Wars? We'll be focusing on Southeastern Massachusetts Pine Barrens here but it's happening across the planet because not all sand is alike. Melissa Ferretti, 4th term tribal chairwoman of the Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe; Linda Coombs, member of the Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribe and Meg Sheehan, environmental lawyer and coordinator of Community Land and Water Coalition join us to dig into the issue. At the same time we will be celebrating MA Governor Maura Healey's issueing an Executive Order granting state recognition to the Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe. The Sand Wars are taking place on or near tribal lands. As always, we will also bring you along to meet our Fool-on-the-Hill and Those Whose Brains Were small, as well as a visit to our Enviro Show Echo Chamber, our Doublespeak of the Week and more but first it's time for........Revenge of the Critters! Another listener recommendation: Hippo Attack!
This week's Fool-on-the-Hill is one among many Repugnicans who have lost any semblance of integrity. Rawstory reports: "Bragging about his total fealty to His Malignancy, U.S. Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX) made clear he and and the House Republican Conference are in complete lockstep with the President-elect and will do anything to support their leader.....If His Malignancy says 'jump three feet high and scratch your head,' we all jump three feet high and scratch our heads,” vowed Nehls, a former sheriff who was accused of stolen valor last year."
Speaking of total fealty to The Mad King, we have an entire rogues gallery of Those Whose Brains Were small as the dinosaurs. His Malignancy's appointments for his next reign reads like casting notes for bad actors in some bad Marvel Comics remake. We'd like to start with Matty Gaetz as Attorney General but he bailed (good riddance) and was replaced by Pamela Bondi who would be in a position to shut down federal prosecutors’ ongoing investigation of Elon Musk’s company. U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard appointed for director of national intelligence is another story. Neither have ANY experience to qualify them for the office and both are well.......god awful MAGA Cult members. Why stop there! "climate and environmental campaigners expressed deep concerns about his pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency: Lee Zeldin... Zeldin is expected to pursue the [Repug's] plan to "drill, baby, drill," despite the devastating consequences for the global climate. On Faux News he promised to “roll back” the very protections that keep our air and water clean and safe. It gets worse (if that's possible): His Malignancy's "...pick to lead the Department of Energy is fossil fuel executive Chris Wright — who has misleadingly claimed on LinkedIn that “there is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition either.” Whoa! One GIANT step backwards for mankind. Sorry but there's still more: "If confirmed to be the next U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could be working "closely" with another official who's infamous for his questionable health guidance: Dr. Mehmet Oz, who [His Malignancy] nominated to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services." Finally a nomination for Faux “News” weekend co-host and white supremacist Pete Hegseth to run the Pentagon and command 1.3 million active-duty troops. Hegseth wants to take women out of combat roles and fire “woke” generals who he claims only have their jobs because of “diversity.” The potential Secretary of the Department of Defense, Hegseth has been labeled a white nationalist by the U.S. military, who removed him from President Biden’s inaugural detail in 2021 because of his extremism. That's a lot of unqualified dinosaurs. Wanna' push back? Go HERE.
Interesting things in The Enviro Show Echo Chamber this week. For those of you who once marched around chanting "No Nukes!" you'll be disturbed to know.......They're baaaack! The NY Times tells us, "At last year’s
[COP28] climate conference in the United Arab Emirates, 22 countries pledged,
for the first time, to triple the world’s use of nuclear power by
mid-century to help curb global warming. At this year’s summit in
Azerbaijan, six more countries signed the pledge." Presumably the next occupants of the White House will be signing up as well. Impossibly looong lived radioactive waste for everyone! Speaking of which, this from Connecting the Dots newsletter on Forever Chemicals: A "study, published in the journal ACS ES&T Water, shows that you can't avoid PFAS by buying bottled water. And when it comes to plastic bottles, it's not just the PFAS you have to worry about. Plastic bottles release toxic microplastics and hundreds of other plastic chemicals into the water." 😟 Also Green America informs us: "Millions of Americans enjoy freshly popped Orville Redenbacher's or Act
II popcorn. But what they don't know is that these household brands are
owned by food giant ConAgra, which is including dangerous pesticides in
every bag." You can push back on that HERE. Finally, we just heard this from PETA: "Amherst, Mass. — In a letter
sent today, PETA renews its call for the University of
Massachusetts-Amherst (UMass) to shut down Agnès Lacreuse’s laboratory
after obtaining records showing she killed 10 marmosets in just a month—after
she complained to funders of a supposed “national shortage of marmosets.” Isn't anyone at UMass paying attention??
All that + "It's the Climate Crisis, Stupid!" Where to start? How about COP29? 2024 is officially the hottest on record. This month, European Union scientists confirmed what many of us have feared: This is the first year to breach the Paris Agreement’s 1.5-degree Celsius global warming threshold. The Guardian notes: "The concentration of planet-heating pollutants clogging the atmosphere hit record levels in 2023, the World Meteorological Organization has said. It found carbon dioxide is accumulating faster than at any time in human history, with concentrations having risen by more than 10% in just two decades." O btw, "Countries promised to move away from coal, oil and natural gas at last year’s climate summit. New research shows they’re burning more than ever before." COP29 is so off the rails there's this: "Introducing ‘anti-COP’: A climate summit for activists who are fed up. Last week’s event was a byproduct of the sentiment that, after almost 30 years, COPs are doing too little to address runaway greenhouse gas emissions." Moving on, "Biden administration aides are racing to award hundreds of millions of dollars in grants and finalize environmental regulations in an effort to lock in President Biden’s climate agenda before [His Malignancy] enters the White House."
That brings us appropriately to our Quote of the Week from The Prez's climate guy:
“This is not the end of our fight for a cleaner, safer planet. Facts are still facts. Science is still science. The fight is bigger than one election, one political cycle in one country. This fight is bigger, still, because we are all living through a year defined by the climate crisis in every country of the world.”
- John Podesta
And that reminds us, we are Abidin' with Biden this week not just for being THE first U.S. President to visit the Amazon (which in itself is actually embarrassing) but also for the above and this: "Oil and gas companies for the first time will face fines for emitting methane, a potent greenhouse gas that leaks from wells, pipelines and storage facilities, the Biden administration announced......The Biden administration has made slashing methane a major part of its climate strategy and has encouraged other nations to do the same. When it passed the landmark climate law, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, Congress required that large oil and gas companies pay a fee for methane pollution to encourage them to stop emitting." That said, we are decidedly Backslidin' with Biden when we read: "On Earth Day in 2022, President Joe Biden stood among cherry blossoms and towering Douglas firs in a Seattle park to declare the importance of big, old trees. “There used to be a hell of a lot more forests like this,” he said, calling them “our planet’s lungs” and extolling their power to fight climate change…..The president uncapped his pen, preparing to sign an executive order to protect mature and old-growth forests on federal lands. “I just think this is the beginning of a new day,” Biden said. But two years later, at a timber auction in a federal office in Roseburg, Oregon, this new day was nowhere to be seen." And, of course, guess who is still sending arms to the genocidal IDF in Palestine?
Now it's time for our Doublespeak of the Week. "Prime Minister
Keir Starmer of Britain told delegates at the international climate
talks in Baku, Azerbaijan, that his country would aim to reduce its
emissions of planet-heating greenhouse gases by 81 percent by 2035,
compared with levels in 1990.....The announcement
at the talks, known as COP29, hinted at how Britain is trying to
position itself in the world as a destination for companies that want to
invest in the clean energy transition." How will they do that? "The largest source of renewable energy we consume in the UK is not from
the sun or wind – it’s from Biomass, that is, organic material from
plants or animals." Sorry folks, woody biomass clearcut and exported from the U.S. & Canada and incinerated in operations like Drax is neither clean nor truly renewable....but you already know that, hence the doublespeak.
After the conversation with our guests it's on to the Bus Stop Billboard:
Monday November 25, 6pm. Alice Nash & Linda Coombs will talk about their new books in ILC S240, UMass, Amherst. Coombs (Aquinnah Wampanoag) is an author & historian from the Wampanoag Tribe of Aquinnah, & lives in the Wampanoag community of Mashpee on Cape Cod, MA. In Colonization & the Wampanoag Story, Coombs tells the story of the "discovery" of America, from the perspective of the New England Indigenous Nations that these outsiders found when they arrived. Nash, who teaches history at UMass, is co-author (with Christoph Stobel) of Daily Life of Native Americans from Post-Columbian through Nineteenth-Century America. In it, Nash charts the history of the 500 indigenous groups living in what is now the United States by dispelling myths & stereotypes.
Monday November 25, 6:30 p.m. – Wendell Free Library presents The Return of Old Growth Forests, Film Showing and Q&A with filmmaker. Today there is great interest in ancient, “old-growth” forests. New England, surprisingly, still has some small fragments of such old forests, although they represent less than 1% of its original, pre-settlement forest. A high percentage of central New England land is cloaked in second- growth forest that is recovering from the massive land clearing of former agricultural years. A significant amount of such second- growth, which is at most 150 or so years old, should be set aside to eventually become old-growth once again, allowing it to regain greater biodiversity, an improved gene pool, and therefore enhanced resilience and adaptability (not to mention natural beauty). In this one-hour film, we will learn how to recognize some of the visual characteristics of our remnant, northeastern old-growth forests, with scenes from several of our most beautiful examples. Wendell Depot Road, Wendell MA 01379 Call (978) 544-3559
Thursday November 28, 9am – 7pm. Western Mass Goes to Plymouth for National Day of Mourning 2024. Bus leaves from 1 Roundhouse Plaza, Northampton, at 9 AM. Plan to be on site from 12 PM to 4 PM. Arrive back in Northampton by 7 PM. *N95 masks or equivalent are required while on the bus.* Masks will be available for those who do not have one. Bus fee is $57/seat. Reach out if you would like to join, but the bus fee is not feasible! Since 1970, Indigenous people & their allies have gathered at noon on Cole’s Hill in Plymouth to commemorate a National Day of Mourning on the US Thanksgiving holiday. Many Native people do not celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims & other European settlers. Thanksgiving Day is a reminder of the genocide of millions of Native people, the theft of Native lands and the erasure of Native cultures. Participants in National Day of Mourning honor Indigenous ancestors and Native resilience. It is a day of remembrance and spiritual connection, as well as a protest again. Sign up HERE.
Monday December 2, 7pm 3rd
Annual Ellsberg Lecture —The Ellsberg Initiative for Peace &
Democracy invites you to join us for a lecture with Bill McKibben, the
acclaimed environmentalist who helped found 350.org,
at the Old Chapel, UMass, Amherst. McKibben will offer an overview of
the climate crisis & insights on where the climate movement must go
from here. For more information, see the Ellsberg Initiative website.
Tuesday December 3, 6:00pm. The Climate Fight Ahead. The fight for climate justice continues! Rally with movement leaders and leading members of Congress to learn how we can continue to push for climate, clean energy, and environmental justice during a Trump Administration. We’ll hear from leading climate champions on Capitol Hill about how to push back against Trump’s pro-fossil fuel agenda, as well as from movement leaders about how we can keep up the fight in our communities. Lisner Auditorium at George Washington University • 730 21st St NW, Washington, D.C. , DC 20037 US. Host Contact Info: sara@fossilfree.media
Wednesday December 4, 6pm. The Nature of Oaks reveals what is going on in oak trees month by month, highlighting the seasonal cycles of life, death, and renewal. From woodpeckers who collect and store hundreds of acorns for sustenance to the beauty of jewel caterpillars, Doug Tallamy illuminates and celebrates the wonders that occur right in our own yards and restorations. He also shares practial advice about how to plant and care for an oak, along with information about the best oak species for your area. The Nature of Oaks will inspire you to treasure these trees and to act to nurture and protect them. Go HERE.
Wednesday December 4, 7:00 - 8:00 pm. Join The Walden Woods Project and RESTORE: The North Woods for a virtual presentation from Michael Kellett about the campaign for new national parks, why it is important, and how we can build grassroots support to make this vision a reality. Henry David Thoreau had the far-sighted vision to declare, “Each town should have a park.” Yet, the people in most American towns still do not have ready access to a large public park. Go HERE.
Thursday December 5, 2 p.m. Anti-wildlife forces will soon control all three branches of our federal government. The work ahead will be hard, but we know we can defend the wild. In a live virtual gathering the Center Executive Director Kierán Suckling will join author, activist, and Center board member Terry Tempest Williams. They’ll talk about how we can transform our values and passion into action to protect wildlife and wild places from the dangerous attacks we know are coming. Sign up now to join us for this important and vital hour to celebrate what unites us — and what will keep us strong as we hold the line for life on Earth.
Tuesday December 10, 6 to 8pm. Virtual Town Hall Forum: New Clean Energy Permitting - Next Strategies for Town Activists. Zoom link HERE
Meeting ID: 839 0679 6886, Passcode: 339921 phone: 1-309-205 3325.
Sponsored by: No Assault & Batteries, Wendell, MA. PLEASE RSVP by
emailing: csqueen@outlook.com
Wednesday December 11, 6:30pm. CAN's Wildlands Campaign Meeting. Register HERE. Wildlands are tracts of any size and condition, permanently protected from development, in which management is explicitly intended to allow natural processes to prevail with “free will” and minimal human interference. Priority Wildlands for this campaign include land associated with water (headwaters, riparian zones of streams and rivers, wetlands, vernal pools, etc.), mature and old forests, wildlife corridors, areas with few or no invasive plants, and/or special species or habitats. Join Our Campaign to Protect Wildlands in Massachusetts
That's all folks but do remember to listen to your Mother
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