Surfrider
Originally Posted on June 28, 2016
The Surfrider Foundation, @Surfrider, reached out to me to "Support our National Ocean Policy". Six years ago, our country's first National Ocean Policy was created to help protect and restore our ocean, coasts, and Great Lakes.
From their alert: Unfortunately, some members of Congress are attempting to interfere with the National Ocean Policy through backdoor amendments that would limit its funding or implementation. Halting implementation of the policy would reduce our nation's ability to protect our ocean and coasts and the communities that depend upon them.
I used this tool www.govtrack.us to get the numbers and called our US Senators - our US Representative, recently convicted, recently resigned.
Big topic. make the call? Might take 5 minutes.
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Love the Surfriders, coming together, having fun, doing good things for the natural world.
This week they also retweeted this from @NatlOceanPolicy: The National #Ocean Policy is included in the top 100 examples of @POTUS's leadership in sci, tech, and #innovation!
for the full report: www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/06/21/impact-report-100-examples-president-obamas-leadership-science
Originally Posted on May 15, 2017
It is a cool and sunny Sunday here in Philadelphia - following 36 hours of heavy rain - rain washed - and Mother's Day.
To stop and say to ourselves Mother Earth - is not a cliche - it is a mythic and archetypal truth.
We get the Sunday NY Times and the delivery was late, serendipity I think. I took my coffee and The Drop, the periodic Membership pamphlet from the marvelous (and admirable - such clear and focused thinkers!) SurfRider Foundation . They reminded me, for each of us, there are most important things.
As a founding member of the Earth Initiative team, these two are mine.
One of them is this:
- The Point:
Our Love of the Natural World can bring us together, over all of our modern divides.
If we love the natural world; if we want it to be there, intact, for us, our children, our grandchildren, for 7 generations ahead - we need to act, together, now.
It does not matter who you voted for in our recent election - it does not matter who you would vote for if you could do it again - it only matters that we come together over this, that we work together to roll back the threats to the natural world.
- I wrote about this here: * A Call to Action: Citizen Naturalists | Citizen Sportsmen | Citizens out of doors
The second is that we need to move from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), to the Environmental Protection Movement (the EPM)
- We, the humans, need to include and transcend the cycles of Quarterly Profit, Election Cycles, for we the elders even our own mercurial Life Span. We need to ban together to take the Longer View and the Common Good.
- The last election and the current regime have put us on alert - the US Government is subject to the tempests of political resentments and currents. When we have an EPA, we should celebrate, cherish, be grateful. When it is being dismantled, we should resist in every way we can. We should realize that the EPA is not enough, we cannot rely on it for the long run.
- It would require a Great Coming Together (think of the way America came together, sacrificed, in WWII.
- It would mean all of the marvelous organizations, already working hard to cherish and protect out natural world - in our homes and in daily lives, locally, at our schools and workplaces, across our nations, around the world - to all row together.
- Egos would need to be put aside, who would lead this Movement? Where would the funds go? What is the Mission? (a thought - fund new work for professionals who, in frustration, leave the EPA)
Does either, or both of these ideas speak to you?
Have ideas about the path ahead?
Please weigh in (better, way in?)
Our clock is ticking.
#Climate #OurAmazingWorld #Surfrider #Naturalist #Sportsmen #OutofDoors #BeInconvenient