This is a People's Campaign. Accept the challenge to UNPLUG on October 13th.
The U.S. is currently the largest energy market in the world and right
behind Canada when it comes to per capita consumption. Since 1940
Americans alone have used up as large a share of the earth's mineral
resources as all previous generations put together. In the last 200 years
we have lost 50% of our wetlands, 90% of our northwestern old-growth
forests, 99% of our tall-grass prairie, 490 of our native plants and
animals and put another 9,000 at risk. The U.S. is the largest consumer
of energy in the world, using 5 times more than the global average.
Americans own more cars and drive longer distances than anyone else in the
world. The U.S. leads the world in the consumption of pre-packaged and
frozen foods. The U.S. produces one-third of the world's paper and
Americans consume 7 times more wood per capita than any other
industrialized country. The typical American discards nearly a ton of
trash per year.
Everything we consume has an impact on the environment. Large scale,
unnecessary consumption strains our natural resources and causes our
policy makers to allow unsustainable extraction, devastation, production,
and contamination of our lands, water and air. This addiction to maintain
our fix on consumption is allowing Congress to cave-in to pressures to
weaken federal environmental, conservation, and endangered species
protection laws.
UNPLUG on October 13th and learn to live simply. Use as little as you can
and think about what you consume. Where does your power come from? Your
paper? Your gas? What are the alternatives? Take time studying solar,
wind, and conservation potentials. Take a day off and think about these
things. We need to take action and save our resources. Our people - the
human people - depend on it today and for the generations to come.
Achieving sustainability depends on changing both our ways of consumption
and the way our products are manufactured, packaged, delivered and
disposed. In the meantime, here are a few simple things we can do today
and everyday to preserve what we have and to help the earth to restore
herself.
1. For one day - completely disconnect from using electricity or fossil-
fuels. Take the day off, close the shop and do sometime that is a
earth-life-restoring activity. Plant trees, etc.
2. Avoid buying things you don't need.
3. Recycle and reuse. Use products that contain recycled materials.
4. Leave the fossil-fuel burning vehicle at home. Walk, canoe, bike,
skate, run, take public transit, etc.
5. Cut down on toxic and dioxin-producing household products.
6. Turn off the lights for the day and use the sunlight.
7. Use energy-efficient lighting, avoid styrofoam, use only recycled or
tree-free paper products.
8. Spend time at home or out in the park or country educating yourself,
family, friends, or community about environment, health, energy and
sustainable economies.
9. Spend time insulating and weatherproofing your home or office.
Cut off your engines and celebrate your freedom from consumption.
The coal we burn to generate electricity produces toxic materials and acid
rain that severely pollutes our air, soil, and water. It also releases
mercury into our lakes where it contaminates our fish and food chain. The
gas we burn in our cars creates smog which pollutes the air, destroys the
ozone and causes global warming. Our huge demand for paper and wood
products not only causes the thinning and clear-cutting of millions of
acres of our forest, but also, the release of tons of dioxins and related
compounds into the air and water from pulp and paper mills. Plant and
habitat are destroyed. Industrial waste water, pesticides and fertilizers
used in agriculture pollute rivers, lakes, and groundwater. Approximately
500,000 tons of 600 different types of known pesticides are applied
annually in the U.S.
Uranium, coal, natural gas, oil, timber, water, and other minerals are
found on Indigenous lands both in the U.S. and Canada. Indigenous lands
hold valuable resources that have long been exploited by corporations
unconcerned with the effects on our environment. Environmental racism has
created an injustice with the failure of the U.S. to assist the Indigenous
governments to develop environmental protection infrastructures as
compared to the near 24 years of support the federal government provided
the state governments. Basically, environmental protection, regulations,
monitoring, and enforcement on Indigenous lands is none existent. The
degradation of these lands has a major and immediate impact on all of
North America - Turtle Island.
The U.S. government continues to solicit Indigenous Nations to host
nuclear waste. Nuclear power plants are creating waste that no one wants
in their backyard. Nuclear power plants are running out of storage
space. Nuclear power is not clean energy. The energy policy of the U.S.
is at the expense of Indigenous Peoples.
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, home to the Gwich'in Peoples and
porcupine caribou herd is threatened with Congress considering opening up
this protected refuge to oil leasing. Oil development would devastate the
calving grounds of the caribou and the lives of the Gwich'in who maintain
a subsistence culture from the caribou and the environment. Exxon and Rio
Algom are trying to open a copper/zinc mine next door to the Mole Lake
Ojibwe in Wisconsin. The Mole Lake Band of Ojibwe are opposed to this
mine because sulfide mining will de-water their lakes and destroy the wild
rice beds and contaminate the wildlife and environment. The Mole Lake
Ojibwe still maintain a subsistence culture and harvest the wild rice.
The Dine' (Navajo) at Big Mountain in Arizona have been trying to stop
massive coal mining activities that is de-watering the acquirer and
polluting the environment.
UNPLUG campaigns must recognize the principles of environmental justice.
Everyone has a right to live, work, and play in a healthy environment. No
one segment of society should have a monopoly on a clean environment.
Nevertheless, some individuals, neighborhoods, and communities are forced
to bear the brunt of the nation's pollution problem. People of color,
working class people, Indigenous reservations, and the poor are
disproportionately impacted by industrial toxins, dirty air and drinking
water, and the location of noxious facilities such as municipal landfills,
incinerators, and hazardous waste treatment, storage, and disposal
facilities. Environmental injustice does not stop at the U.S. borders.
Environmental destruction by industry and the military apparatus is a
threat to world peace. U.S. toxic waste, hazardous industries offshore,
the dumping of military weapons to Third World countries and the poisoning
of workers and nearby residents by the maquiladoras is unacceptable.
The UNPLUG campaign against consumption must apply the principle of
environmental justice that affirms the sacredness of Mother Earth,
ecological unity and the interdependence of all species, and the right to
be free from ecological destruction. Environmental justice mandates the
right to ethical, balanced and responsible uses of land and renewable
resources in the interest of a sustainable planet for humans and other
living things. Environmental justice calls for universal protection from
nuclear testing and the extraction, production and disposal of toxic/
hazardous wastes and poisons that threaten the fundamental self-
determination of all peoples. Environmental justice demands the cessation
of the production of all toxins, hazardous wastes and radioactive
materials, and that all past and current producers be held strictly
accountable to the people for detoxification and the containment at the
point of production. Environmental justice demands that public policy be
based on mutual respect and justice for all peoples, free from any form of
discrimination or bias. Environmental justice must recognize a special
legal and natural relationship of Indigenous Nations to the U.S.
Government through treaties, agreements, compacts, and covenants affirming
sovereignty and self-determination. Environmental justice affirms the
need for urban and rural ecological policies to clean-up and rebuild our
cities, rural areas, and reservations in balance with nature, honoring the
cultural integrity of all our communities, and providing fair access for
all to the full range of services. Environmental justice calls for the
education of present and future generations which emphasizes social and
environmental issues, based on our experience and an appreciation of our
diverse cultural perspectives. Environmental justice requires that we, as
individuals, make personal and consumer choices to consume as little of
Mother Earth's resources and to produce as little waste as possible; and
make the conscious decision to challenge and reprioritize our lifestyles
to insure the health of the natural world for present and future
generations.
STOP USING AND THINK ABOUT WHAT WE'RE LOSING! UNPLUG! Please cross
post on appropriate conferences. Spread the word. Adopt this campaign -
it's yours.
Indigenous Environmental Network - POB 485 Bemidji MN 56601 -
<ien@igc.apc.org> Indigenous Womens Network - 13621 FM 2769 -
Austin, TX 78726/or Rt.1 Box 308 - Ponsford, MN 56575/or Settee -
107 Engineering Bldg. - U of Manitoba, Winnipeg Canada R3T-2N2
Seventh Generation Fund - POB 4569 - Arcata, CA 95521