ARTICLE: The World’s Youth say we need emergency action to create a “Future We Want.” Hurricane Sandy helped the doubting Toms recognize that the greatest threat to our National Security and humanity is Climate Change. And leaders now believe that frustrated young people are not kidding when they say they want Climate Justice!
The kids have done their homework and the key is protecting trees and reforesting the planet, plus making the Arctic a Sanctuary since as British Parliament said in November, one oil spill under the ice and it’s over. Therefore, kids want us to celebrate our precious LIFE ON EARTH this holiday season by buying living Christmas trees and replanting them, since every green CO2 transformer is critical to their brighter future.
In 2011, UN Secretary General Ki-moon turned over their Billion Tree Program to the next generation through “The Plant-for-the-Planet Foundation,” a visionary youth group based in Germany. Its founder, 9-year-old Felix Finkbeiner, recently told the UN Assembly that we are the majority and we’ve done the math and preserving trees and planting them is critical to our Climate Justice! He got 100+ commitments from determined youth to inspire their countries to plant at least one million trees. Their slogan to world leaders and adults is: “Stop talking and start planting!” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzksgMrS_7o
Felix’s U.S. ally is 12 yr old Xiuh (Shoe) Martinez of Boulder, Colorado, a ‘media phenom’ of Rio+20 Earth Summit where he walked into a meeting of world leaders and told them what the youth need to create a world they want. Xiuh spoke for his Earth Guardians Kids Foundation in 20 states and 100 countries. (Earthguardians.org)
In November, Felix asked Xiuh to lead the billion tree planting campaign in the U.S. since the world’s kids say the US is creating the most CO2 by carelessly wasting energy – for example, Europeans have auto switches to turn off lights. Xiuh agreed because he already began raising awareness that America is behind in saving and replanting trees and created a youtube last Christmas demonstrating how to save holiday trees: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFdBUoH_Ms0
Earth Guardians say that planting this year’s Christmas Trees also restores moisture that is critical for snow and snowmelt to turn around this year’s worst crop drought in U.S. history, especially if you replant these bigger trees in burn areas. 7,135 acres of forest burned in Colorado’s worst wildfire in history not far from Xiuh’s home, so Boulder’s Daily Camera ran the story in November where he encouraged people to buy the native trees this Christmas from specific nurseries that carry potted trees. Come spring, the Earth Guardians will schedule a few days when families can bring their trees up to plant in the burned zone, along with mechanical equipment they hope to get from the city to replant in hard soils to also prevent erosion and mud slides.
Explains Xiuh, “the average Christmas tree is 15 years old, basically a teenager. Instead of buying trees with their legs cut off, we could soon save 35 million trees cut for Christmas in the US, and a billion worldwide.”
National Geographic said that “Deforestation is clearing Earth’s forests on a massive scale, often resulting in damage to the quality of the land. Forests still cover about 30 percent of the world’s land area, but swaths the size of Panama are lost each and every year. And the world’s rain forests could completely vanish in a hundred years at the current rate of deforestation. While the lumber companies plant seedling replacements, many are still young plantations.” http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/deforestation-overview/ Therefore, saving Christmas trees and this awareness is a significant step toward our children surviving and thriving.
It takes years for trees to be able to transform much CO2 into oxygen, so it is critical to preserve these bigger trees. Approximately 17 BILLION BIG TREES ARE KILLED PER YEAR WORLDWIDE! According to Ecology Global Network in 2011, “Nearly 4 billion trees worldwide are cut each year for paper alone, representing about 35 percent of all (12 billion) harvested trees.” Because there are no solid numbers humanity has not made our tree crisis a priority, but it looks like about 5 billion trees burn globally. As firefighters, Indigenous young men who are at one with Nature can also help save the most trees, especially when teamed with Elders leading communities in prayers and raindances, which miraculously stopped the Southwest fire across the street from NM’s Los Alamos Lab last summer.
According to UN’S Food and Agriculture Organization(FAO), “the US has the most fires of any country, and many have 10,000 a year” – a main contributor to global warming. Each of us can help reduce fires by shifting to safe renewable energy and all natural products, and a billion electric cars that get up to 400 mpg, like U.S. high school students designed for a few thousand dollars (http://www.geek.com/articles/news/car-built-by-high-school-students-achieves-444-mpg-20100825/bridgestonecar/).
The smog clouds from this dirty energy, pesticided agriculture and golf courses rob moisture from our forests and coat them with flammable chemicals. Xiuh said, “our worst crop drought and now first winter fire alert in history tells us that we also need to shift to organic farming from our AG using GMO suicide seeds and pesticides that insects have become resistant to so farmers are using many times more.” In 2011, the UN concluded that organic farming yields higher yields long term.
FIRST FAMILIES EATING ORGANIC
The seeds of President Jefferson’s Monticello Gardens created the White House organic Kitchen Garden and First Lady Michelle’s role model Children’s Garden. Since 1994, the First Families, politics aside, have valued the importance of these seeds. Long team US and world tests just concluded that GMOs cause cancer, and pesticides hurt the brain especially of vulnerable children. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/10/09/ge-food-supporters-insist-organic-foods.aspx Xiuh said, “Because American kids want to be as smart as possible to be President some day by eating organics too, this spring is THE time to shift to organics that also require less water.”
For the last six years the UN’s Billion Tree program has planted two billion trees each year. http://www.plant-for-the-planet-billiontreecampaign.org/News.aspx Add that to about three billion a year by the Departments of Forestry, a billion last year by the Earth Day Network’s “Billion Green Acts,” and about 5 billion a year by the paper and lumber industries. Yet half of these approximately 10 billion seedlings die for lack of TLC.
When students understand all this and that the UN’s 192 countries recognized in 2009 that Mother Earth is a living, loving, wise, sensitive being, they are passionate about taking turns taking good care of the trees. Kids, like those in Mexico’s Puerto Vallarta schools, do a little prayer thanking Madre Tierra for nurturing the organic fruit trees they have been planting with the help of our cross-cultural team to help transform Mexico from being No. 1 in children’s diabetes, to a generation of more lean, clean Olympic Gold Medal Soccer stars. Two studies last December found that “eating a diet of fresh raw organic fruits and veggies for one month can end diabetes.” http://www.rawfor30days.com/index5c.html
AWARENESS OF FREE TREES IN US & CANADA
Inspired also by the Super Bowl players and stars wanting to “kick hunger,” I asked my advisor Olivia Ellis PhD (Cherokee), a Master Gardener, if that was possible. Olivia said, “There are FREE organic fruit and other native trees from the State Forestry Departments in the US and each Province in Canada. There is also FREE assistance from the wonderful local Master and Jr. Master Gardeners and 4H in both countries, especially for planting in schools, churches and community areas for erosion prevention. Call or e-mail your state forestry departments:” http://www.extension.org/pages/9925/state-and-provincial-master-gardener-coordinators. Arbor Day can send you 10 FREE seedlings with joining. http://www.arborday.org/index.cfm
WE CAN kick hunger, malnutrition and lift people out of poverty. 50 million Americans, 17 million of them children, would not have to go to bed hungry. At the same time we can catch up to other countries in reforesting our lands to lower our CO2. Felix honored China last year for replanting the most trees, followed by India.
1000 BILLION TREES BY 2020
Xiuh was heartened learning about “The 100 Billion Trees Project,” a Global Initiative of India Leadership Network in support Felix’s Children’s Campaign which has a vision of 1000 billion trees by 2020. It invites professionals globally to connect, strategize and implement their immense skills toward achieving this critical mission. http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Inviting-Leaders-setup-100-Billion-54235.S.135208570
GREEN JOBS
Meanwhile, November’s CBS Sunday Morning shared that stores and restaurants throw away enough food – 40% of it being almost perfect – to feed all Americans, especially Hurricane Sandy victims. On a local level, anyone can be of huge service to his/her community by creating a job or volunteering to connect the two sides. Volunteers can also help kickstart planting FREE organic trees. All school gardening projects lift science and math scores to help fill the three million technology jobs the U.S. needs, and with teachers’ guidance they can inspire the entire learning experience.
Hail to the world’s kids for following God’s First Command (Genesis) in the Garden of Eden: “Plant Fruit Trees!” Israel is a shining example of how their youth led a tree planting campaign in the 70’s that transformed their deserts into flourishing agricultural lands. According to Leonid Sharaskin PhD, UN Forestry advisor, planting organic fruit trees could even prevent the famines in Sub-Saharan Africa. Fresh yummy fruits off the vine are far healthier than canned and processed foods and more cost-effective than emergency food aid. By planting thousands of trees in ski towns, which pull up water from aquifers, they can also restore the eco systems and snowfalls to ski valleys that developers have overcut. Said Xiuh, “So we could make a difference in how long kids can get to ski and snowboard here in Colorado.”
Worldwide, a billion people are hungry, half of them children. Since plankton in the ocean is even more critical for converting CO2 to oxygen than the rainforests, scientists say, BP’s destruction of the Gulf was a major setback to the U.S. and World’s Biosphere and therefore Climate Justice. So the youth urge that a portion of the Gulf spill penalties go toward reforesting the U.S. and Mexico, especially through the schools, as a model for other companies to make amends for hundreds of oil spills a year worldwide, so innocent children have a chance to thrive. 200 of those (unpublicized) spills dwarf the Alaskan and Gulf Catastrophes. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oil_spills)
Olivia cited “The California Fruit Tree Tour,” as the ultimate model of how students can have fun in a few hours planting trees that can start to “feed 1,000 kids for 100 years.” Their Commonvision.org video shows orchards springing up and fruiting in schoolyards across the state in just two years.
Xiuh rallied the youth vote for President Obama in both elections with his viral youtubes. (See Time to Listen to The Children! ) Following the election, Xiuh applauded President Obama for putting a temporary stop to new federal contracts with BP because of the company’s ‘lack of business integrity and criminal proceedings related to the Gulf Disaster.’ Our President also gave great hope for Xiuh’s Canadian friend, 11 year-old Ta’Kaiya Blaney of the First Nations, who was also spotlighted at the Earth Summit for her heart wrenching song about the oil spills destroying their beloved waters and subsistence. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=LkjIkuC_eWM#!
On November 29, CNN covered the outrage about dozens of dolphins “grotesquely murdered in the Mississippi by serial dolphin killers.” The kids say they would finally be proud of their leaders for stopping the serial killing of tens of thousands of dolphins and whales from spills and radiation by shifting from oil and nuclear to renewables. Sweden shifted and they are maintaining the highest standard of living! It would also maximize the longevity of our polar ice refrigerators that protect coastal families from the cruel destruction, deaths and economic strain of more Frankenstorms.
CLIMATE DEFENSE BUDGET
Since the US in ranked 7th out of the G8 countries in green progress, U.S. youth want the White House to host an international Tree Summit to determine a realistic number of trees each country needs to unilaterally plant and limit the cutting/harvesting. Together our Earth Family needs to agree on a game plan with teeth. Hurricane Sandy showed us that the longer we wait the more costly it is to restore our communities, ecosystems, and Climate Justice to preserve our Civilization. Therefore, the youth say that the President and both parties need to agree on the top 2% paying their fair share, and shift the oil subsidies and nuclear loans and a chunk of the war defense budget to a Climate Defense Budget, like other G8 countries. That is critical to realistically solve these emergencies since scientists say we have already tipped over the Biosphere Cliff. “Haven’t these wealthy people realized that giving back makes you feel much better than any toys?,” Xiuh asked his mom Tamara.
REPORT CARDS FOR WORLD LEADERS
To save the dying forests in Canada and the U.S. from the man-made part of the global warming, kids like Xiuh and the First Nations have campaigned to stop the tar sands drilling that is hugely heating up (causing diseases)and poisoning millions of acres of trees along with Indigenous communities. Because the projected U.S. pipeline would also sicken forests and communities all along the way, the youth are counting on President Obama to keep his promise to stop it. Insiders say there is a glut of oil in Texas, Colorado and natural gas in New Mexico and don’t need to import or process Canadian oil, or risk the future of humanity by offshore drilling, especially the Arctic. Then by also making a timetable to shift from oil, nuclear and fracking to wiser renewable energy, the world’s kids would “raise the report cards of most world leaders from Fs to Bs.”
I must have felt I would be killing a beautiful living being since I have never bought a Christmas tree, and later I learned from the tribes and mystics, like Siberia’s Anastasia, what wisdom these “Standing Ones” have, especially the cedars. “When you lean against the grandmother and grandfather trees and share your concerns and ask for advice, they will answer you,” Navajo Elder Betty Box Jr. told students at Vail Academy. Some call them the whales of the land. That is why I bought an organic rosemary herb plant shaped like a little Christmas tree. It is a gift that has kept on giving.
RUSSIAN INSPIRATION
Russian children are proud that their Parliament since 2002 has been giving a hectare/2.47 acres to every family wanting to create a wonderful ancestral domain by planting organic gardens along with about 300 fruit and forest trees. 35 million gardens now produce over 50% of their country’s food today, as our organic Victory Gardens did in WWII, led by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. This shift has cleaned Russia’s air and water to prevent crop droughts and is helping ensure their youth have plenty of snow for their 2014 Sofi Olympics.
This Russian breakthrough was inspired by 100 million people (worldwide) reading the Ringing Cedars(.com) books by Vladimir Megre about Anastasia, who says that purifying their lands of pesticides and GMOs, along with their citizens putting their hands lovingly on Mother Earth, has also “prevented a cataclysm.” (How Mother Earth releases poisons She absorbs, say Elders). An economic boom is expected thanks to a resurgence in tourism by those hungry to see this transformation of Russia’s Motherlands into a stunning Garden of Eden where people can soon drink from the Moskva River running through Moscow, like the skiers in Austria’s Kitzbuhl are already doing thanks to living in more harmony with Nature.
Felix and Xiuh implore us to join the world’s children in saving our Christmas trees, which could spread like wildflowers saving a billion trees worldwide and help smooth our 2012 shift. If local tree sellers do not offer rooted organic/pesticide-free trees (a ball in a container), tell them that’s how you want to buy trees next year. Some families even pre-dig holes for their Christmas trees while the soil is still soft and plant them after Christmas, and others rent living ones. If you already bought a cut tree, here are some easy ways to recycle yours or create a recycling program towards a Zero Waste strategy. http://www.pickyourownchristmastree.org/disposing.php
The kids join me in thanking Mt Abram of Maine, NSAA’s Golden Eagle Eco Award winning ski area, and N.J’s Mt Creek, whose seven award winning green golf courses protect billions of gallons of water, for helping make this progress possible.
Xiuh, Felix, Ta’Kaiya and December’s “CNN Young Wonders” are examples of the prophesy that, “A child shall lead the way.” They are rock stars to the wiser children born today. Xiuh explains to them: “Because each tree is critical for transforming carbon into oxygen, these “OXYGENATORS” are the Super Heroes of the planet who need our help to save us kids. It’s the Oxygenators vs the Terminators who cut too many trees for profit or burn them from carelessness or pollute them through our air or water! So if your parents are Terminators, show them these solutions where everyone wins, since you’re the only one they will listen to, because they love you. And the rest of you, praise your parents and tell them, ‘The best present you can give me is buying a tree we can replant, so together we can have snowy Christmases and a magnificent future we all want!’”
Article is Copr. © 2012 by Suzy Chaffee and originally published on eNewsChannels.com – all commercial and reprint rights reserved. Contact: suzyantivevoices@aol.com.
