Save Eco Destinations

Rainbow sunset off Miami Beach, FL

Here are two upcoming eco events for the greenies in Florida, U.S.:

Hands Across the Sand

Save the date: Saturday, February 13, rain or shine, head to your local beach (and if it’s not listed, go ahead and organize an event in your community) to hold hands with other Florida beach lovers to protest oil drilling from 1-2pm EST (get there a little early and plan for parking).

The event is called Hands Across the Sand and the idea is to push for the protection of Florida’s beaches and wildlife from oil drilling.

“This is an opportunity to show your opposition to oil drilling as close as 3 to 10 miles off our coast. This movement will be made of people of all walks of life. This movement is not about politics; it is about protection of our shoreline, our tourism, our valuable properties and our way of life. Let us share our knowledge, energies and passion for protecting our waterways and beaches from the devastating effects of oil drilling.”

Join their Facebook page for Love Tourists Not Drilling Coalition in Pinellas County, Florida, here.

Check it out on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook. You can also sign up for the newsletter here.

It has already received public support from legislators and both governmental and non-governmental organizations like the Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife, the City of Sarasota, Pinellas County, and the Tampa Bay Beaches Chamber of Commerce.

It’s just one hour. You know you want to! Tell your friends!

Take a Hike!

The Florida Forever Coalition is organizing public hikes across the state of Florida to celebrate 20 years of public land acquisition on Saturday, February 20 at 10am EST. You can join or put a hike together in your area by filling out this form and emailing it to info@supportfloridaforever.org.

Already organized are hikes in Central Florida, Tampa Bay, the Panhandle, and Lake Okeechobee. There are none organized in the Everglades thus far, but you can go ahead and set one up!

The coalition is made up of over 125 nonprofits, public agencies and private groups and has protected over 2.4 million acres of Florida land since 2000, according to its website.

Among its successes, Florida Forever counts the preservation of

• 53,600 acres of springs and springsheds
• 5,190 acres of fragile coastline
• 300,000 acres of sustainable forest lands
• 158,700 acres of working agricultural lands

Learn about volunteering, sending emails to your legislators, writing op-eds for Florida newspapers, and more for the cause here.

The coalition is also organizing plenty of lobby days and other events across Florida.

Enjoy!

Al-Shaybah oil field, southeastern Saudi Arabia. (photo by Encyclopedia Britannica)

Saudi Arabia wants to convince you that the reliance on oil will remain throughout the world and for decades to come. The country has issued a warning, no less, against a so-called “premature shift” to renewable energy.

Wha?

Apparently, SA’s Oil Minister spoke at the Energy Pact Conference and asserted that oil, coal, and natural gas ought to remain the energy “workhorses” for a long time-numerous decades! He also said that investing in alternative energy could result in decreased investment in fossil fuels (duh!) and ruin the global economy (huh?).

Sounds like some greedy folk are trying to take advantage of everyone’s fears about the current economic situation to place themselves somewhere most of us agree they (oil magnates) should not be, if only because our priority is becoming ever more green instead of black (which is also kind of green, but only because of the dollar bills).

While SA’s oil minister claims that the world’s need of oil as a primary source of energy will remain for many decades to come, SA’s oil reserves will only last for another 80 years if current production trends persist. The oil reserves in SA are the largest in the world, by the way.

If SA had 200 years’ worth of oil production left, then okay, your greed makes some sense. But 80?? That’s just plain stupid.

If you’re planning a trip to the Middle East, make sure to skip SA and write the country’s government to tell them why!

At this juncture, SA’s words come as an insult to the rest of the world.

While air, water, and soil pollution poison the ecosystem and the region’s inhabitants, thousands of square miles of (previously) pristine Northern Canadian forests in Alberta are being killed for oil. Watch a video here.

Gigantic digging machines are tearing into the soil and harming the forests’ topsoil to the extent that the land becomes sterile. This is going on daily, hourly, constantly, like it previously did in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. And it’s been going on for years. (I’m surprised, Canada!)

What’s great is that the Canadian Government is using several billions of its people’s tax money to go about this destruction of “Canada’s Amazon of the North.” Even in Brazil–in South America, where corruption tops North America’s by a landslide-the government is doing something proactive, taking a responsible ecological stance to help protect its natural habitats (whether the Brazilian Government is achieving its goals is certainly another matter). Evidently, this isn’t even your everyday forest, it’s a vast stretch of dense, rich land-which, as it rots courtesy of the aforementioned digging machines, produces obscene amounts of CO2. And don’t forget the water pollution (and marine wildlife pollution, and the pollution ingested by humans when they consume said wildlife). AND THE OIL.

Well, I guess this are will no longer be an eco destination!

Maybe I don’t know anything and I’m talking out of my —, but I thought Canada was more progressive than the States about things like this. Well, obviously I was wrong: the CO2 emissions originating from the Tar Sands, which Canada is ruining on purpose, puts the country way up there with the U.S. in terms of pollution.

Know this, Canada: all the polar bears drowning in the Arctic because of accelerated glacial melting are cursing you with their last breaths.

So now what? Just like we ought to call Argentina’s president and demand she stop Tartagal’s deforestation, we ought to give Canada’s politicians a beating. Wait. I mean, we should demand a law against ecocide. All of us, around the world. The more the merrier.

Check out comments on this issue here.