Michael Jackson's Earth Song

By Marcie Barnes

I don't normally post video without a whole lot of accompanying text, but this video says it all. Thank you Michael, your voice was just not being hearl loud enough. I'm going to do my part to amplify it.

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Yes! President Obama's Ocean Policy & Much News on Global Warming

By Marcie Barnes

What's Going On

I joined twitter in February. I've been following a lot of "green" people, groups, and organizations. Yesterday, I was in a really down mood after watching the film HOME on youtube (what a beautiful film, with a great ending - please set aside an hour and a half to watch it!). It was just hard to watch the beauty and life on this earth being destroyed by man.

Today, I was delighted to see tweet after tweet about our government, our people, our leader -- all working together to reverse this horrible problem!

Now, what I'm talking about is a general problem with pollution and general disregard for the Earth by humans, coupled with the whole global warming crisis. Now for those of you still caught in "global warming denial," this is the way I look at it: let's just go ahead and say that humans are not causing global warming. Fine. I've been watching footage of icecaps melting (both inland and at the poles) and if we start to lose the hundreds or thousands of species that live in these areas, it quite frankly could be the beginning of the destruction of the food chain and loss of a beautiful part of our ecosystem as well. Who cares what the cause is? We need to do all we can to reverse the problem, and hey, let's try reducing "industrial age emissions" just in case.

In my last post I was happy to receive a comment from Anthony Pickles, a Web Editor for the documentary The End of the Line. Please take a moment to watch the trailer on their website and make a pledge to only eat seafood that isn't harming the earth, threatening species, or hurting you!

Twitter gem #1 comes from planetgreen.discovery.com - news about President Obama's Ocean Policy, which is a "soon-to-be-crafted, first-ever national ocean policy that will sustainably manage our country’s oceans" ~~~~hallelujah~~~~! The article suggests that you hop on over to the White House web site and send Mr. Obama a thank you note.

Next gem comes from worldwildlife.org -- an interactive climate map and summary of the "The U.S. Global Change Research Program report “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States." One of the most striking conclusions from this report is this: "Threats to human health will increase. Health impacts of climate change are related to heat stress, waterborne diseases, poor air quality, extreme weather events, and diseases transmitted by insects and rodents."

What You Can Do

1) The Natural Resources Defense Council has a handy-dandy online form you can use to automatically send a message to your lawmakers. This one is specifically in reference to the American Clean Energy and Security Act. Go here, now, fill out the form, and send.

2) Sandy at Green Eco Voice posted an excellent summary of what the average person can do to help. My favorite part: "You can become an extraordinary hero! Practice modesty and courage everyday. Become a leader for social change beginning in your home and your community. Personal actions defeat feelings of hopelessness and you can and will 'Help Save Our Planet'!" Oh, and the movie trailer made me shed a tear - how did I miss that movie???

In Conclusion & More Breaking News

This quote on worldwildlife's article really echoes my sentiments about these issues: “Climate change and what we do about it is going to transform the world much more rapidly than people realize. It’s my goal to get us moving to a world we will want, not one we’ll regret leaving for our children and grandchildren.” - Richard Moss, WWF's Vice President and Managing Director for Climate Change

And today from the White House blog: "An important element of this new report, apart from that it is deliberately written in plain language so we can all read and understand the science in it, is that it dives down in the various regions of the U.S. and provides much more regional detail about possible impacts than ever before – critical information for an effective response. It also breaks down the potential climate change impacts by economic and social sectors, most of which transcend regional boundaries, such as water, energy, health, transportation, and agriculture – all vital components of a healthy and stable society."

Thanks to all the tweeps who helped point me to all this information on twitter: @greenbiztweets(via@NRDC), @thegoodhuman(via @sampsa & @WWFUS), @gristvia@ClimateChangeUS & @whitehouse), and @PlanetGreen