SAVE MOTHER EARTH!

CLEAN-ENERGY VIGIL TO COOL DOWN THE PLANET!

(Weather permitting.)

MONDAY, MAY 18, 5:00 PM

PLAZA

MAYDAY BOOKS

301 CEDAR AVENUE SOUTH

WEST BANK, MINNEAPOLIS

SAVE MOTHER EARTH!

SEE YOU THERE!

THIS EVENING’S 3CTC ENVIRONMENTAL FORUM

A FREE SCREENING OF:

SAVING FOREST ECOSYSTEMS

MONDAY, MAY 18, 7:00 PM

MAYDAY BOOKS

301 CEDAR AVENUE SOUTH

WEST BANK, MINNEAPOLIS

WHY TREES MATTER

Not only are the globe’s forests the lungs of the planet by providing the oxygen we breathe, but there is growing evidence that coastal forests in particular function as its heart as well by pumping much-needed moisture that brings rainfall to the interior of the continents. Therefore, vast stands of trees are a necessary component of Earth’s hydrological cycle. Tropical rainforests essentially create their own climate lying in a convergence zone where intense solar energy produces a convection of rising air that loses its moisture through frequent rainstorms. The high humidity contributes to the formation of rain clouds so that forests actually generate from 50-75% of their own precipitation. Even in the Amazon’s dry season, which runs from July to November, the humidity just above the treetops does not differ substantially from that during the rainy season. Through a botanical phenomenon called hydraulic redistribution, humidity and photosynthetic activity remain consistent regardless of the season because of the way many deep-rooted plants transfer water from wet zones to dry ones. Tropical vegetation also helps keep equatorial rainforests on average, 2C cooler than they would be without the plants’ capacity to distribute moisture. However, forest destruction combined with global warming is affecting the hydrological cycle in these ecosystems. Since the mid-1990s, they have experienced severe droughts. The Amazon had one in 2005, and there was also one in Southeast Asia. Dry conditions, logging and agricultural conversion make rainforests more vulnerable to wildfires that become part of a vicious cycle. That is why they must be preserved.

Intact, healthy forests also play a significant role in the global carbon cycle. Biomass and soil store approximately three times the amount of carbon that is currently found in the atmosphere, and the annual exchange of carbon between the air and trees is ten times more than the yearly global carbon emissions from the fossil-fuel combustion that is causing ever-accelerating climate change. Without our forests, Earth would be a rather barren world, much warmer and sparser in Life as it spins in space.

Our woodlands provide many valuable ecological services without which human beings could not survive. These include vital watershed, wildlife habitat, genetic biodiversity and carbon storage as well as food, fodder, fuel, fiber and medicine for the Indigenous Peoples who depend upon them for their livelihoods and sustenance. Trees make a world of difference. Without them, there would be more soil erosion and rapid run-off from hillsides. Farmsteads would be unprotected, and there would be more gullied cropland. Our rivers would be more flood-prone and silted up. Our cities would be sun-baked and dry, Needless to say, without trees, the landscape would look entirely different.

Natural primary forests the world over are steadily being depleted and degraded by over-logging, burning and land clearing for monocrops, ranching, biofuel production to fill the gas tanks of advanced nations not to mention real estate developments. In addition, the brutal deforestation that is proceeding apace contributes to one-fifth of the atmospheric CO2 concentrations, which cause the global warming that is rapidly melting the planet’s ice masses.

Our forest ecosystems must be saved from ruthless and greedy timber, paper-pulp, grazing, metal-mining and energy-extraction interests as well as agribusiness giants who plant genetically-modified monocrops for livestock feed and biofuel production so that developed nations can feed on cheap meat and toot around on cheap fuel. It is greed and the relentless drive for profits that is destroying Earth’s forests, and it must be stopped before it is too late and the last of our forested regions are completely desertified, an essential carbon sink is lost and the climate reaches a catastrophic point of no return.

There will be a free screening of Saving Forest Ecosystems, a film about the impacts of clear-cutting North American old-growth forests. After the logging machines depart, what were once thriving ecosystems teeming with Life either are left as wastelands that erode away, are sold off for development or are transformed into sterile, monocultural, fast-growing tree plantations, which are made devoid of understory by means of herbicides to enable easy harvest for timber and paper pulp. In this informative documentary, viewers will learn why the world’s forests—both temperate and tropical—urgently require protection and restoration in order to stabilize Earth’s climate and ensure a healthy biosphere.

The program is free and open to the public and is sponsored by the Climate Crisis Coalition of the Twin Cities (3CTC). The 3CTC Business Meeting follows the Clean-Energy Vigil at 6:00 PM. All are welcome. For more information, EMAIL: christinefrank@visi.com or PHONE: 612-879-8937.

THE NEXT 3CTC ENVIRONMENTAL FORUM

A FREE SCREENING OF:

THE PIG PICTURE

Produced by the Humane Farming Association’s (HFA) Campaign Against Factory Farming

MONDAY, JUNE 22, 7:00 PM

MAYDAY BOOKS

301 CEDAR AVENUE SOUTH

WEST BANK, MINNEAPOLIS

CONCERNED ABOUT THE FOLLOWING?

• The immense cruelty of confinement experienced by millions of factory–farmed beef cattle, dairy cows, pigs and poultry?
• The spread of the H1N1 swine/avian/human influenza virus that has mutated since first identified in 1998 and whose origins have been located in North Carolina at Smithfield Foods hog factories, whose swine were then exported to Mexico to escape U.S. environmental regulations and Granjos Carrol is now poisoning the air & water of Vera Cruz and infecting hundreds with the virus?
• The spread of pathogens such as avian virus to wild bird populations by huge poultry breeders such as the Thailand-based CP Group, the world’s fourth largest poultry producer?
• The creation of superbugs such as campylobacter, salmonella, E. coli, Enterococcus from antibiotic resistance because of the massive use of antibiotics in filthy, disease-ridden concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) where the animals are so physically tormented and stressed out that their immune systems are severely compromised and disease can sweep through a CAFO in an instant? This would also include the ever-more common methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) flesh-eating bacterium, which is now carried by most hog-farm workers in the Netherlands, where there is the highest density of factory farms of any country on the planet. See the April, 2009 issue of The Ecologist.
• The obesity and diabetes 2 epidemics in the U.S. caused in part by consuming cheap meat full of antibiotics and growth hormones?
• The tons of methane spewed into the atmosphere from manure lagoons and flatulent ruminants, contributing hugely to global warming?
• The nitrogen from manure lagoons that is adding greatly to hypoxic ocean Dead Zones?
• The massive algal blooms from the same nutrient overloading that give rise to the deadly neurotoxin in the Pfiesteria piscicida microbe that causes massive fishkills and serious neurological impairment in human beings and was first documented in the book And the Waters Turned to Blood (1997) by Rodney Barker?
• The human health problems from breathing air and drinking water contaminated by poisonous fumes and the seepage and flooding from manure lagoons?
• The endocrine-disrupting pesticides, used daily to control flies and other insects in factory farms, whose residues are found in the meat as well as local water supplies and cause childhood developmental problems and reproductive cancers later in life?
• The power and political corruption of giant agribusiness concerns that torment helpless creatures for profit, pollute our ecosystems, destroy the health of millions and cause planetary metldown?

IF ANY OR ALL OF THE ABOVE HAVE YOU LOSING SLEEP AT NIGHT, YOU SHOULD SEE THIS FILM AND DISCUSS THE HEALTHY ALTERNATIVES.

SAVE MOTHER EARTH!

SEE YOU THERE!

CHALCHIUTLICUE ENVIRONMENTAL SUMMIT & CULTURAL CELEBRATION

HOSTED BY

DANZA MEXICA CUAUHTEMOC

www.chalchiutlicue.org

612-600-8272

ENVIRONMENTAL SUMMIT

MAY 29, 9:00 AM TO 3:30 PM

PAUL & SHEILA WELLSTONE CENTER

179 ROBIE STREET

ST. PAUL

MARCH FOR WATER & CEREMONIA CHALCHIUTLICUE

SATURDAY, MAY 30, 11:00 AM

MARCH STARTS AT THE MINNEAPOLIS AMERICAN INDIAN CENTER

1530 EAST FRANKLIN AVENUE

MINNEAPOLIS

CEREMONIA IS AT POWDERHORN PARK

3400 15^TH AVENUE SOUTH

MINNEAPOILIS

OFFERING OF FLOWERS CEREMONY

SUNDAY, MAY 31, 9:00 AM

FIESTA, 12:00 NOON

FORT SNELLING STATE PARK

HIGHWAY 5 & POST ROAD

ST. PAUL