Sign the US Mayors Climate Protection Agreement

The future is not somewhere we are going. It is something we are creating. Every day we do things that make some futures more probable and others less likely.

Global warming already disrupts millions of lives daily in the forms of destructive weather patterns and loss of habitat. What is already happening is only the tip of the melting iceberg, for it is our children and grandchildren who may suffer most from the effects of global warming. Hundreds of millions of people may be exposed to famine, water shortages, extreme weather conditions and a 20 - 30% loss of animal and plant species if we do not reduce the rate of global warming and reduce GHG emissions.On the other hand, having warmer winters means longer growing seasons in temperate and subarctic climes, sometimes allowing an additional crop to be planted and harvested each year, or simply making the existing crops more productive. This article outlines some ways that you can act to help prevent the Earth from warming further. While humankind has the ability to destroy the planet, we can also help protect and sustain it.

Reducing your carbon and greenhouse gas emissions will not only make your personal living space more sustainable but it will also save you money in both the short- and long-term. Global warming is occurring more rapidly than it was originally expected to. Only forty years ago, the big worry was global cooling. Even if you remain a cynic, however, and disagree with the consensus of scientists, you will benefit from reduced pollution, a more healthful lifestyle and increased savings from enacting these simple activities that will not reduce the quality of your life.

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Go Green! Save the Environment.
 

I plan to send all those in my e-mail address book a copy of the 11thhouraction site, I usually carpool to places if I'm not using my bike, and I plan to sign the Climate Protection Agreement.

Will tell all friends and family about this website.

I have already made efforts to reduce my energy use at home (ie. CFL light bulbs, improved insulation, etc.) but I will begin  composting and educated myself further to lighten the ecological footprint of my home.

Animals raised for food contribute more carbon emissions to the atmosphere than all forms of transportation combined. I can't afford an electric car yet, but I also can't afford to eat animals. They're bad for me. They're carcinogenic and harmful to my cardiovascular health and, most importantly, killing and abusing others because I'm too lazy to find another way to survive is bad for my spirit.

For that same reason, I will pressure my political leaders from the city assembly all the way up to the president and every corrupt beefeater in between to stop our country from conducting terror campaigns against other countries (and our own citizens). We waste an unrecoverable amount of resources and create more harm to the earth and our fellow human beings through this selfishness than we can ever repair. Our species cannot survive this century if we will not evolve enough to stop institutionalizing violence.

Yes, I'll recycle everything at my home, work, and school that can be recycled in my town and advocate for expansion of our recycling program. I'll also recycle my body by donating blood when the blood bank comes to town and keeping myself a healthy candidate for organ donation, and part of that will be riding my bicycle more. But the most important thing I can do to save the world for the next generation is to bring peace to the earth beginning with me.

 EcoVision 2008International Festival of Environment & CinemaPalermo, June 5 – 10, 2008 The fourth edition of the "EcoVision Festival 2008", international festival of environment and cinema, will take place in the prestigious setting of the Botanical Garden in Palermo (Italy), from 5 to 10 of June 2008, where also in this fourth edition, a parterre will set under the shade of ancient plants and rareness tropical botany.The EcoVision Festival will see, as is its custom, the attendance of authors of the audiovisual scope, coming from every part of the world, involved in the safeguard of the environment and in the education of the respect of the rules to actualize for a more healthy utilization of the energies and technologies.During the years, the EcoVision Festival has encouraged a series of relationships and exchanges with the other cultural areas of the world and has received, among the others, the prestigious patronage of the Italian Committee of the UNESCO.Catalyst and first of all, also this year, the topic of the festival: "the environment", seen from all its facets. The aim of the festival is to intensify and promote the cinematographic and documentary production having as topics the relationship man-environment, the safeguard of the territory, the human rights, the felling of forests, the relationships with the city and new technologies, the radioactive tests in the several worlds’area, the eco-sustainable development, how the concept of environment in rich countries differs from that belonging to poor countries, but also mere descriptions of meaningful environmental areas, and all the productions concerning any aspect of environment and nature.Works from any country, realized from 2006 to 2008, can take part in the EcoVision Festival 2008, having as topic the object of the Festival: the “environment”, considered both as natural and cultural environment, with all questions correlated with them.The Festival will consider as a preferential title, the unpublished films presented.The EcoVision Festival grew during the years in prestige and national and international interest, so become an important point of reference for: filmmakers, the professionals in the field, the specialized press and the audience sensitized to the environmental and sociological problems of all our planet.            The festival sets itself as a significant and characterizing moment of meeting and comparison for all the Italian and international independent cinema; its aim is to promote the knowledge and contribute to the diffusion of films made from directors who express themes and subjects with new emerging sensibilities and, in the meantime, they represent innovative moments of authentic linguistic, formal and artistic pursuit.            Different languages in comparison, with common thematics such as war, death, generational relationship, love, inconvenience.             The EcoVision Festival will offer to the audience, the opportunity to compare itself with a different  features but, in some way, near our own sensibilities, giving birth to that magic that always confers to the cinematographic image both the capability to condense a common sense and to get discover unknown lands.            The evidence of the interest about the festival, is the number of the countries that have participated, sending works of fiction and documentary from every part of the world, from the United Arab Emirates to Polynesia, from Chile to India beyond 75 countries of the world every years.The EcoVision Festival, place itself  as an annual appointment of cultural debate and meeting, in order to be confronted on the good rules to follow for the safeguard and the development of the environment and on the importance of the cinematographic and multimedia communication.The thematics of the festival will be four: Environmental, Sociological, Ecotourist and Panorama (that’s includes the screening of works concerning any subject). The thematic face up doesn’t take in consideration only the film product regarding  the nature, but the concept regarding man-environment, with all the problematic that are connect  between them. The program will schedule two parallel sections: Short Film Section (no more than 30 minutes) and Special Section (over 30 minutes); both the sections, in their turn, will be divided in 3 genres: Fiction, Documentary and Animation.The International Jury, composed by journalists, crtitics and personalities of the artistic, scientific, cultural and cinematographic world will award the “Great Prize EcoVision Festival 2008” to the most meritorious film in the ideation, the realization, the educational values and the content.The “Fondazione Banco di Sicilia”, in the 2007 edition, awarded the “Great Prize Fondazione Banco di Sicilia EcoVision Festival 2007” to the Greek director Yorgos Avgeropoulos and his film “Delta, Oil’s Dirty Business”, offering to him a cash prize of € 20.000,00 that the director is investing for his last production that will have as location the Antarctic. This new work couldn’t be realized without the prize awarded to him, given the highest expenses of production.Briefly, the “Great Prize EcoVision Festival 2008” has a considerable significance for the independent cinema, since the filmmakers must often produce themselves; in addition, the Jury will award other three Cash Prizes for the Films judged meritorious.Festival staff will offer hospitality to one representative of the selected film (director, producer or main character): for two days if resident in Italy, for three days if resident in one of the European Union countries, for four days if resident in a non-European Union country; moreover the Festival Committee will participate in part to the travelling and transfer expenses of the participants.