cannabisnews.com: A Day To Celebrate The Planet 





A Day To Celebrate The Planet 
Posted by CN Staff on April 21, 2003 at 22:12:06 PT
By Zack Johnson, Staff Writer 
Source: BeniciaNews.com 
Berkeley - A few billion years ago, the swirling debris circling the sun formed into the hunk of rock hurtling through space that eventually became known as Earth. The species that came up with that name appeared a few million years ago, and the planet hasn't been the same since.But from noon until 5 p.m. on Saturday in Civic Center Park, members of that planet-naming species will celebrate the Earth by listening to music, listening to environmental speakers and eating vegetarian food at the annual Berkeley Earth Day Fair.
Earth Day celebrations have been taking place across the country since 1970. The official Earth Day is April 22."It's a place for people to celebrate the earth, but also to challenge each other to walk more lightly on the planet," said Karen Hester -- http://www.hesternet.net/ -- who has organized the fair for the past nine years.The 180 booths that will fill the park will contain "every kind of environmental group imaginable," from the Sierra Club -- http://www.sierraclub.org/ -- to the Cannabis-Buyers Club-- http://www.marijuana.org/ -- she said. Those interested will have ample opportunity to find out ways to live more simply, educate themselves about solar energy or learn how to compost their waste, she said. Reggae, funk and Latin jazz acts are scheduled to perform. Direct Action to Stop the War -- http://www.actagainstwar.org/ -- will also be providing non-violent civil disobedience training. It's also a place for people to learn how to organize, which is important because a lot environmental protection laws -- laws that many take for granted -- are coming under attack, she said. Vivienne Verdon-Roe, who is a scheduled speaker for the event, agrees that environmental laws are being threatened. Verdon-Roe is an academy-award-winning filmmaker and cofounder of Seaflow -- http://www.seaflow.org/ -- an organization created to protect ocean life from man-made threats.The Pentagon is trying to push Congress into allowing the military to be exempt from certain environmental laws, she said. "We're facing one of the most dire threats to our environment," she said. "They're trying to be above the law." This would mean that the Pentagon would be allowed to cause more pollution and kill endangered species -- even whales, she said.One of the topics she plans to address on Saturday is the United States Navy's use of low-frequency active sonar, a method to locate silent submarines that bombards the sea with a sound blast that can "torture" or kill sea life, she said. "It's been compared to standing next to the (Space Shuttle) Challenger during takeoff," she said. The sonar can burst a whale's eardrums, cause its brain to hemorrhage or drive it to beach itself, she said. But environmental laws can put the readiness of the United States in jeopardy, according to Paul Mayberry, deputy undersecretary of defense for readiness, in an American Forces Press Service article on a Department of Defense website -- http://www.defenselink.mil/ Environmental laws are making it increasingly difficult to find areas that the military can use for training grounds, according to the story.The Endangered Species Act could make about 56 percent of the Marine Corps training grounds at Camp Pendleton, Calif. off-limits to military training, according to Mayberry.According to the article, the department is asking Congress this year to clarify or change parts of the following federal laws: *   Endangered Species Act *   Marine Mammal Protection Act *   Clean Air Act *   Resource Conservation and Recovery Act *   Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act Among other things, these confirmations and changes could make it unnecessary to designate critical habitat on department land and allow the department "up to three years to accommodate or offset emissions from military readiness activities," according to the article. The defense department is also asking that the definition of harassment in the Marine Mammal Protection Act focus on "more biologically significant effects" instead of more ambiguous words such as "annoyance" and "potential to disturb."Inflexible rules can turn training facilities into wildlife refuges, Mayberry said in the article. The relaxing of environmental laws for the Pentagon is not the only way the military, and militarism, runs contrary to the theme of Earth Day, said Verdon-Roe.Earth Day is about realizing that all the people on the planet are component parts of a single giant being, she said. "Each one of us is a cell in the body of the Earth," she said. "(The war in Iraq) is literally one part of the body attacking the other," she said. Another speaker scheduled for Saturday, Ross Mirkarimi, is also concerned about war's effect on the environment. He recently had his account of the environmental effects of war in Iraq published in Mother Jones -- http://www.motherjones.com/"The conduct of war and the protection of the natural environment are fundamentally incompatible objectives," according to Mirkarimi by e-mail. Facilities destroyed during military conflict, such as oil wells or rubber factories, pollute the environment, he wrote.The hundreds of thousands of tons of heavy military equipment, such as tanks, brought to Iraq to wage the current war compacts and disrupts the soil, accelerates erosion and destroys the shallow root systems of some plants, according to Mirkarimi. "Coupled with heavy sandstorms this season, the impact is vast," he wrote.The United States military uses armor-piercing ammunition made from depleted uranium. The long-term ecological effects of this are unknown, but Mirkarimi calls it "an ecological Frankenstein waiting to happen."The environmental impacts of war can be harmful to people, too. The chemicals used to maintain military machinery are highly toxic and even trace amounts can cause skin cancer, birth defects and chromosome damage, he wrote. By looking at the disposable cups, made from petrochemical plastics made from oil, one can see how local habits are connected to the global environment, said Hester. People need to be encouraged not to buy plastics, she said. "(It's) seemingly small, but it's all related to why there's a war in Iraq," she said.Whole families will be educating themselves at the fair on Saturday, she said. "We've got to start with the young getting an education about the environment."The Lawrence Hall of Science will be performing a play designed to teach third- through fifth-graders about air pollution called Who Let the Smog Out. The play follows the journey of a child, Lorelai, trying to discover the roots of her asthma, said Naomi Stein, an actor, writer and educator at the hall. Along the way, Lorelai meets Dr. Particulate, Mr. Smog and other characters in a narrative that also teaches children about the science of air and air pollution, said Stein. Children are more vulnerable to environmental hazards, she said. Education about the environment helps, "...to make the world around them accessible and understandable," Stein said. At the hall, Stein says she tells children that every day is Earth Day."Every day we take things from the Earth ... and every day we have a choice to give something back," she said. The Berkeley Earth Day Fair begins at noon on Saturday and is scheduled to continue until 5 p.m. It will be held in the Civic Center Park, at Martin Luther King Jr. and Allston ways. Organizers encourage fair-goers not to drive to the event, but to use public transportation or take advantage of bicycle valet parking. Source: BeniciaNews.com (CA)Author: Zack Johnson, Staff Writer Published: Friday, April 18, 2003Copyright: 2003 BeniciaNews.comContact: zjohnson getlocalnews.comWebsite: http://www.benicianews.com/CannabisNews -- Cannabis Archiveshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/list/cannabis.shtml
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