Defeat Fracking in the Northeast Gateway Region to Yellowstone National Park

Shepherd Mountain in The Beartooth Front Range (Click on photo to enlarge it)

The greed of the frackers is insatiable.  Now they want to frack in the Red Lodge Montana region, a stunningly beautiful ranching and tourism area along the front range of the Beartooth Mountains.

The rolling prairie runs into the mountains at the town of Red Lodge with the tallest mountains of Montana dynamically rising in the distance, and when you take the very scenic ride on the Beartooth Highway from Red Lodge over the Beartooth Mountains, you end up at the Northeast Entrance of Yellowstone National Park!  Besides that, the region has some of the best trout streams in the world.  The Red Lodge area along with the rest of the Beartooth Front is a very special region and should be entirely off-limits to fracking.

To sign the petition and to donate to the campaign to defeat fracking along the Beartooth Front please click HERE.  And of course, contact all of the relevant politicians that you can think of and tell them "No to fracking on the Beartooth Front!"  Let's show all of the frackers around the world that there are some places where they just won't be allowed to frack.

Editor's Update 4/18/2014: See my latest blog post about fracking on the Beartooth Front HERE.  

New Bicycle Job Directory

EarthDirectory's newest directory lists jobs in the  bicycle industry: www.earthdirectory.net/bikejobs.htm.  For other green jobs see EarthDirectory's Environmental Job Blog: http://envirojob.blogspot.com. 

A Call to all Democrats, Environmentalists, Ecologists & Everyone Else to Not Support the Immigration Bill - DRRI Part 11

It's time to give up on the immigration bill and to start over and write a new one.  Originally Americans thought that it would be a bill to provide a fair "Pathway to Citizenship" for the estimated 12 million undocumented workers in the USA while simultaneously fixing our broken immigration system.  Instead it's turned into a grab bag of wish lists for the mass immigration lobby with its amazing variety of proponents - apparently they think that this is their big chance to cram all of their misguided proposals through and to give out American citizenships like Halloween candy.

Many Republicans, and some Democrats, support the immigration bill because they want to import both high-skilled and so called low-skilled workers rather then pay for training American citizens for the high-skilled jobs and paying a decent wage to American citizens for doing the so called low-skilled work.  Meanwhile, the "guilty liberal" faction of the Democratic Party supports an open borders policy basically because they feel guilty for American dominance of the late 20th century and for what they perceive as America's historic misdeeds in the world and they believe that letting in the people of the world is a way of making up for the USA's past transgressions.  Another faction of the Democratic Party is the mass immigration faction which, while not supporting completely open borders, supports mass immigration (millions of permanent immigrants per year) for a variety of reasons including those listed above.  All of these factions are misguided.

Reliable data indicates that within the next ten years the immigration bill in its current form could result in as many as 50 million permanent and "temporary" immigrants, which would include approximately 34 million permanent residents & citizens.  Add this to the nearly 1.5 million natural yearly population increase already existing in the USA and you come up with a yearly population increase of somewhere around 4 to 5 million per year.  This puts us clearly on the path to over 1 billion people in the USA by the year 2100.  Yes, that's within the lifetime of today's toddlers.  See the Census Bureau's own population projections [pdf] or [txt], and when you figure in that we probably already have well over 320 million people when you include the millions of people who intentionally and unintentionally avoided being counted in the most recent census, you'll see that the high immigration levels proposed in the immigration law will put us right on the highest of the four population projections shown in the Census Bureau's projections.

We can have a Pathway to Citizenship and we can also bring in an average of 3 to 4 hundred thousand yearly permanent immigrants and still shoot for keeping our population from never going over half a billion.  Remember, the questions to ask the proponents of mass immigration are 1) How many permanent American residents will their proposals lead to and 2) Can the proponents of mass immigration guarantee that there will be enough resources available to Americans to provide all of the people in the United States with at least a middle class quality of life.

The immigration bill is irresponsible in that it would lead to an unacceptable increase of the population of the USA.  Most Americans intuitively realize that a billion people is way too many people for the United States.  It's time to scrap the immigration bill and to start a new one that includes a Pathway to Citizenship along with provisions that will give American citizens firm control of their borders along with enforceable and strong punishments for employers who illegally hire unauthorized workers in the future (let's not punish the unauthorized workers anymore - their lives are tough enough).

Contact your Senators, your Congressperson and the President and tell them that it's time to rewrite the immigration bill so that it doesn't put the environmental and economic sustainability of the United States at risk.

U. S. and World Population Clock

Democrats for Reasonable and Responsible Immigration (DRRI)        

       

New Directory on Fracking

EarthDirectory's newest directory is The World Directory of Anti-Fracking & Fracking Safety Organizations and Related Sites.  Check it out at www.earthdirectory.net/frack.

HAPPY EARTH DAY!

Maggie Thatcher's Speech to the UN in 1989 Urging Action on Global Warming

For those of you that still don't believe in human-caused global warming and climate change, you might read Margaret Thatcher's environmental speech made to the United Nations in 1989.  At that time she had access to some of the best scientists in the world and in her speech she emphasized the problem of global warming and the need for action way back in the late 1980's.  Her speech can be read at www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107817.

New Directory on Fusion Energy

EarthDirectory's newest directory is The World Directory of Fusion Energy Organizations and Related Sites.  Fusion energy is still in the research stage, but if it's ever perfected it promises to have many advantages which include no air pollution emissions, no greenhouse gas production, no long-lived radioactive waste, no chance of a runaway reaction leading to a meltdown, and a virtually unlimited fuel supply.

Two Questions to Ask Proponents of Mass Immigration -- They Won't Have Good Answers! Democrats for Reasonable and Responsible Immigration (DRRI), Part 10

First question:  Can you tell me what approximate population levels your mass immigration proposals will lead to?  (For example, what will the total population of the USA be in 2050 if your proposals are adopted?)  He or she probably either won't know the answer or if they know the answer they won't want to tell you the answer.

Second Question:  Can you guarantee that there will be enough resources available to provide at least a middle class life for everyone in the USA if your particular mass immigration proposals are carried out? He or she will not have an adequate answer for you.

*Note:  I'm not talking about the "Pathway to Citizenship" people here - they've already immigrated to the USA!  I'm talking about future immigration.

Just as it Took Republicans to Open the Door to China, It Will take Democrats to End the Mass Immigration Juggernaut, DRRI Part 9

Today I was listening to Jeb Bush's speech of March 8th at the Reagan Library & Museum in which he  proposed to admit 1 million high-tech workers as permanent residents to the USA each year and this proposal alone would raise the annual  population increase of the USA to over 3 million total per year.  If you add in all the other proposals of the different interest groups trying to increase immigration of permanent residents via any new immigration law, we're then looking at an annual potential population increase of possibly 4 million or more per year in the USA.  This puts us on track to reach one billion people in the USA sometime around the beginning decades of the next century and almost certainly puts us well over 1/2 billion before the beginning of the next century.

It's time to get real and get a grasp on our mass immigration problem.  Republicans are not going to fix the problem, so it's up to Democrats and other progressives to take charge of the situation, especially ecologists, geographers and other scientists and environmentalists who know darn well that the USA is already probably past its long-term sustainable population, if we want to continue with something resembling the current American standard of living for the foreseeable future.  Just as Republicans were viewed as the more anti-communist party and thus had to be the party opening the door to communist China, the Democrats who are generally viewed as the party more supportive of mass immigration will have to be the party leading the way to ending mass immigration into the USA.

Assuming that some kind of "pathway to citizenship" is passed into law, it's important that after the "pathway" people and the people currently in the pipeline for permanent residency and citizenship are processed, we then adopt an immigration level with a yearly average of a few hundred thousand people per year.

Please write your congressperson, senators and the President and urge them to work towards a long-term goal of an annual immigration rate into the USA of an average of a few hundred thousand people per year in order to keep the population under half a billion by the year 2100.  This goal should be incorporated into any new immigration bill. 

Yes, the time frame that we're looking at here is the lifetime of many of today's toddlers!  We can either work towards a peak population of somewhere around 1/2 billion before the year 2100 or else we'll face the nightmare of a population possibly approaching 1 billion (and rising) around the year 2100.


Editor's update 4/11/2013:  See Democrats for Reasonable and Responsible Immigration for organized links to additional blog posts and for additional information.

Punish the "Illegal Employers" Not the Struggling Undocumented & Unauthorized Immigrant Workers, DRRI Part 8

As the Congress crafts a new bill regarding immigration, it's very important that any new law include severe punishments for "illegal employers."  Leave the undocumented immigrant workers alone if they're otherwise law-abiding -- they've got enough problems already. By cracking down on the illegal employers and making a few showcase examples of some of the worst cases that may also include mistreatment of undocumented workers, the problem of undocumented and unauthorized immigrants in the United States can be greatly diminished.  Accurate verification & appeal procedures can be continually improved to protect employers trying not to break the law and to protect employment rights for authorized workers.

Illegal employers can no longer be accepted as respected members of society, but instead must be shown to the public as the criminals that they actually are.  Their actions are hurting the environmental security of the USA by promoting over-immigration and thus over-population that threatens the long-term sustainability of the USA. Their illegal actions also serve to make a mockery of the attempts of American workers to raise base wage levels to decent amounts that provide hope of a middle class life for all workers in the USA.

Once it's made abundantly clear to all American employers that illegal employers will be severely punished, mostly by very high fines, but occasionally with a few of them actually being sent to prison, the problem will be on its way towards being solved.  The undocumented workers will either leave the United States to find work elsewhere or will eventually become authorized workers within the USA.  Employers will know that hiring unauthorized workers is a crime that will no longer be tolerated and that they will be considered to be common criminals if they engage in illegal hiring practices.

There can no longer be a wink and a nod between politicians and illegal employers.  Please contact your U. S. Representative & Senators and the President and demand severe punishments for illegal employers in any new immigration bill.  

The promotion of mass immigration by many American employers trying to get both "low-skilled" and high skilled workers into the country represents a real over-population threat to the United States. If these employers are allowed to have their way along with the other proponents of mass immigration, the population of the USA could go over 1 billion people within the first decades of the next century, during the lifetimes of many of today's American toddlers.

It's important that Americans also urge Congress and the President to lower the yearly permanent immigration rate from over 1 million to a few hundred thousand people per year, after we get the "Pathway to Citizenship" people and other current citizenship applicants processed,  in order to keep the population level of the USA under half a billion people by the year 2100.    

A Video Showing 131 Years of Global Warming in 26 Seconds

This video was created by NASA and shows 131 years of global warming.