地球日我们做什么？

介绍庆祝地球日30周年的一些活动

 

There‘s still time to find somewhere to go or something to do to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Earth Day this Saturday.

There’s still time to find somewhere to go or something to do to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Earth Day this Saturday.

Events will happen around the world, from the Earth Fair 2000 in Washington, D.C., to a car-less day in Sydney, Australia. Wherever you are, celebrating Earth Day can be as simple as planting a tree or cleaning up the sidewalks in your neighborhood to more involved events like the National Parks and Conservation Association‘s annual March for the Parks.

 

Here are just a few of the events going on around the world this Saturday in honor of Mother Earth.

 

Actor Leonardo DiCaprio hosts Earth Fair 2000 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Take environmentally friendly transportation, like a bike or subway, to the free all-day event. Entertainers like James Taylor, Third Eye Blind, Clint Black, Keb ’Mo‘ and Melanie Griffith will speak and perform on the biomass and solar-powered stage starting at noon. Hundreds of environmental groups and pubic agencies will be on hand to answer questions and promote their causes.

 

The NPCA is hosting its 10th annual March for the Parks. Volunteers organize walks through public lands to raise money ?all funds stay at the local level to fund projects identified by local volunteers.

 

America’s first national park, Yellowstone, is hosting an educational fair today at the Ophir School in nearby Big Sky, Montana. Hundreds of students from surrounding communities were invited to the event, which focuses on the Yellowstone ecosystem and planet Earth‘s unique resources and the importance of conservation.

 

In Australia, Friends of the Earth, Nature Conservation Council of New South Wales and others are organizing a car-less day event that will block off Sydney’s central business district streets to cars, drawing attention to air pollution. The car-free streets will be transformed from a loud, congested roadway to a festival celebrating Earth Day with music, theater and educational exhibits.

 

With the help of Massachusetts-based Sacred Earth Network, the country formerly known as the Soviet Union, home to one-sixth of the land mass on Earth, will celebrate its Earth Day with 210 events planned by more than 400 groups.

 

　

 

The increase in Earth Day‘s awareness is due in large part to Internet access availability, according to SEN. In 1989, with the hope of jump starting the region’s struggling environmental movement, SEN co-founder Bill Pfeiffer began smuggling computers over to the former Soviet Union and helping to set up Internet access so that environmental groups could communicate with each other.

 

"This coming Earth Day is the culmination of 10 years of work setting up Internet access across the former Soviet Union. In order for there to be a true global environmental network, you need to have people communicating with one another. The Internet has allowed activists in isolated areas to link up with the global environmental community as never before," said Pfeiffer.

 

More than 6 million Canadians, including most school children, don‘t have an excuse to ignore Earth Day this year. Events in Canada range from several large public events to thousands of small private events staged by schools, employee groups and community groups. A few of the large public events planned include Victoria’s annual Earth Walk; Edmonton‘s Earth Day Festival at Hawrelak Park, which hosts nearly 30,000 participants; Winnipeg’s Earth Day at the Forks with about 20,000 participants; Montreal‘s Concert and Festival; Oakville’s annual Waterways Cleanup and Windsor‘s annual public festival.

 

Environmentalists in Colorado have not only created their own web site to honor Earth Day, they’ve also planned events around the state. The cities of Boulder, Fort Collins and Colorado Springs all have events planned (Denver celebrated Earth Day one week early). The city of Fort Collins, Colorado Public Interest Research Group, the Northern Colorado Alliance, and Poudre School District is sponsoring this year‘s Earth Day 2000 celebration at Colorado State University.

 

地球日的行动2

U.S. Indian tribe begins whale hunt  

By Chris Stetkiewicz

A year after harpooning their first gray whale in 70 years, members of the Makah Indian tribe paddled into the Pacific Ocean on Monday to stalk another whale, angering environmentalists who vowed to stop them.

Eight members of a Makah family launched their hand-carved cedar-log canoe into the early morning mist some 120 miles (193 km) northwest of Seattle with activists riding power boats in hot pursuit.

 

The U.S. Coast Guard seized a 20-foot (6-meter) private vessel that repeatedly violated a 500-yard (457 meter) exclusion zone around the canoe and arrested its captain, an unidentified American man, said Search and Rescue Coordinator Lt. Richard Howes.

 

Howes said a 41-foot (12.5 meter) Coast Guard utility ship had blocked the activists’ path about 200 yards (201 meters) away from the canoe, causing a minor collision. A Canadian woman on board was released after treatment for minor injuries.

 

Jonathan Paul, founder of the Sea Defense Alliance, a 2-year-old "militant pro-whale organization," said the Coast Guard vessel had rammed the activists‘ boat.

 

"We’re going to do what we have to do to stop the killing," Paul said by telephone from his own powerboat, under the watchful eye of a Coast Guard helicopter. "We‘re concerned because the Coast Guard is being aggressive with the protesters."

 

Tribe cites U.S. treaties

 

The Makah, who claim whaling rights from U.S. treaties dating to 1855, stopped hunting gray whales in the 1920s after the practice was banned because whalers had hunted the 50-ton ocean mammals to the brink of extinction.

 

But with the gray whale population back above 20,000 the United States removed it from the endangered species list in 1994 and the International Whaling Commission in 1997 granted a U.S. quota letting the Makah kill 20 whales over five years.

 

If they successfully strike a whale with a steel-tipped harpoon, the Makah would try to finish it off quickly with a .577-caliber rifle in a process deemed more humane than the hunting methods used decades ago.

 

The Makah killed a whale last May after a week of hunting and later hauled it ashore and butchered it, distributing the meat for free to the tribe’s 1,600 members, who consumed it in about two weeks.

 

The hunt was intended to reinvigorate tribal traditions, according to the Makah, who insisted they had no plans to begin commercial whaling, which some activists had alleged.

 

"We never did, ever, harvest them to the point of extinction," said Keith Johnson, president of the Makah Whaling Commission and vice chairman of the Makah tribal council.

 

"We certainly understand (environmentalists‘) caring for and loving this beautiful creature. We have a spiritual connection and love for the whale," Johnson said.

 

The Makah, who could grant up to four more one-whale permits as the whales migrate past their home on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, require applicants to perform religious rites as part of their preparation.

 

"It‘s a sacrament for us," Johnson said. "If crew is not worthy, most likely the whale will not be taken."

 

Environmentalists say the world’s whale pods are threatened by human encroachment and pollution and that hunting under any guise is dangerous to the gentle behemoths.

 

Native peoples in Alaska and Canada have hunted whales for years.