Central Florida Democratic Environmental Caucus

MAYRA URIBE WON'T SUPPORT AMENDMENT #4!
Why is she siding with DeSantis?VOTE FOR LINDA STEWART

Why we need the Green Actioneers program in schools everywhere ASAP. We can create a clean and green future without scaring kids and parents, but it is good to know the truth about what is coming.

When will climate change turn life in the U.S. upside down? » Yale Climate Connections Intensifying extreme weather events and an insurance crisis are likely to cause significant economic and political disruption in the U.S. sometime in the next 15 years.

EARLY VOTE TODAY!
EARLY VOTE TOMORROW!
No voting on Monday
TUESDAY IS ELECTION DAY!
VOTE!

MYRA URIBE APPOINTED RANDY ROSS TO A POWERFUL BOARD IN ORANGE COUNTY!
“It’s a sincere honor for Commissioner Uribe to include me on her team as she looks to enhance our already wonderful County,” said Ross.
DO NOT VOTE FOR URIBE!

Thank you for the birthday wishes, the vintage pictures, and the kind and loving words. I am a lucky guy!
See you @ SAVOY Orlando tonight!
❤️

Petula Clark has been upgraded!!!

DUMB DOWN - Deborah Bowman - The Freedom Toast with Parody Project Vocals by Deborah Bowman - Lyrics and Music Performance by The Freedom Toast: Video production by Parody Projecthttps://www.youtube.com/thefreedomtoastTo hel...

I need to build a "launch team" locally for my important book. Do any readers have some energy to contribute to the Green Actioneers school program that is designed to help elementary or K-8 students everywhere (including Florida) to "Go Green" without broaching the controversial climate change issue? I need to find our first school anywhere in the USA brave enough to adopt the full program.

I've spoken and exhibited about our program at PTA conventions around the country and have a list of about 1,000 prospects, but need help to approach them and get buy-in. I'll travel anywhere in the US to help a school that wants to be known as "The school where it started." Wouldn't it be great if it were nearby. See my interview with Jack Canfield for some details.

Jack Canfield - Dave Finnigan interview Jack Canfield interviewed me about Green Actioneers Family Action Guide and our plans to create "Scouting for the 21st Century."

This article was in the New York Times today. I have copied it here so everyone can read it. Our home in Celebration is pesticide free and a nursery for Monarch and Swallowtail butterflies. We raise them from eggs that we find on our 300 milkweed plants and we've released thousands.

What’s driving ominous declines in insects?

While a growing body of research shows decreases in many insect populations, it has been hard for scientists to disentangle the possible causes. Are insects suffering from habitat loss as natural areas are plowed and paved? Is climate change doing them in? What about pesticides?

The latest insight comes from a study on butterflies in the Midwest, published on Thursday in the journal PLOS ONE. Its results don’t discount the serious effects of climate change and habitat loss on butterflies and other insects, but they indicate that agricultural insecticides exerted the biggest impact on the size and diversity of butterfly populations in the Midwest during the study period, 1998 to 2014.

Europe largely banned neonicotinoids in 2018, citing risks to bees. The new findings come as wildlife officials in the United States weigh whether to place monarch butterflies, which range coast to coast, on the endangered species list. (They have already found such protections to be warranted but said they were precluded by higher-priority needs.)

In addition to delighting humans and pollinating plants, butterfly species are a critical food source for other animals, notably birds, during their life stage as caterpillars. In fact, research has linked some bird declines to insect declines.

Especially detrimental, the researchers found, was a class of widely used insecticides called neonicotinoids that are absorbed into the tissues of plants.

“It’s a story about unintended consequences,” said Scott Swinton, a professor of agricultural economics at Michigan State University and one of the study’s authors. “In developing technologies that were very effective at controlling soybean aphid and certain other agricultural pests, non-target species that we care about, butterflies in particular, have been harmed.”

For the new study, researchers integrated multiple data sets and used statistical analysis to make comparisons between different potential drivers of decline across 81 counties in five states. They found that in the median county over the 17-year study period, pesticides were associated with an 8 percent decline in butterflies when compared with a scenario in which pesticide use remained unchanged over the same period. For monarchs, that comparative drop was a whopping 33 percent.

The authors note that these pesticide-related declines began in 2003, coinciding with the appearance and quick adoption of corn and soybean seeds treated with neonicotinoids throughout the Midwest.

Matt Forister, an insect ecologist at the University of Nevada, Reno, who was not affiliated with the study, praised its authors for their “detective work” and for the number of factors they included in the analysis: six groups of pesticides, climate change and land use changes. The study’s finding about neonicotinoids, he said, could be key to helping tackle butterfly declines.

“We often talk like, well, it’s all stressors of the Anthropocene, everything’s accumulating, it’s all bad,” Dr. Forister said. “But when we see one particular thing being bad, as nasty as that looks in the early 2000s, it’s actually kind of hopeful because it means you can make other choices.”

Earlier research by Dr. Forister found that climate change has played an outsized role in butterfly declines in the American West. The authors of the new study were careful to point out that they were not able to evaluate recent impacts from climate change because they had to end their study period in 2014; after that year, the data on neonicotinoid use was no longer available, so they could no longer make the comparisons.

“The last 10 years have been the hottest 10 years on record,” said Leslie Ries, one of the authors and a professor of ecology at Georgetown University. “So what is the impact in the last 10 years? We need to keep studying that, but it’s hard to study it in total when we don’t have neonicotinoid data.”

The Environmental Protection Agency did not respond to questions seeking comment on the study and asking for an explanation of the status of neonicotinoids in the United States.

Climate change isn’t the only factor that appeared less significant in this research than might be the case more broadly. Another is something that happened before the study period: the momentous shift in land use from natural ecosystems to industrial agriculture.

And in a result that seems surprising, the study did not find declines in monarchs from the use of glyphosate, a herbicide commonly sold under the brand name Roundup. Glyphosate eradicates all kinds of weeds including milkweed, the only food source for monarch caterpillars, and its use is widely considered a cause of overall monarch declines. The authors do not contest that consensus; rather they say that, beginning in the early 2000s, the impact from glyphosate “largely disappeared since the largest decline in milkweed had already occurred.”

“That damage is done, and it’s still anchoring monarchs at lower populations than in the past,” Dr. Ries said. “But it’s not explaining declines or changes during that 17 year period.”

Catrin Einhorn covers biodiversity, climate and the environment for The Times. More about Catrin Einhorn

I returned home to Celebration, FL from the 2024 California PTA convention where I got another 50+ schools interested in our Green Actioneers Movement designed for families in K-6, K-8 or K-12 schools Then I went to the Green Schools conference in Maryland and got interest from 21 schools.

It is too bad that here in Florida I have been unable to start a pilot program, but I'm willing to go anywhere to get our first schools that agree to implement the entire program and will be proud to be known as "One of the schools where it started." The program is free to the school and every family in the school gets a free digital copy of the 246-page bilingual (English/Spanish) Green Actioneers Family Action Guide at Green Actioneers Family Night. (pdf is here https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Jr235NxNVTN1y1CqOosM252wogD9rhkQ/view)

Although we got video permission slips signed by every family in both of the Florida schools where we presented last year, at the last minute we were stopped from making a video of the program, and neither school put up the chart on the wall where families could post "sticky notes" telling others what actions they have taken.

Below is how our artist, Jim Haynes, depicts what the chart on the wall would look like either in an individual classroom or in the hallway. The idea is to use it like a "merit badge sash" to motivate kids to urge their parents to take additional actions.

If anyone would like more information please let me know here or txt or call me at 770-329-1152 or e-mail [email protected].

A ray of hope admist the chaos. If you have a fancy job in the U.S. you have health insurance as a "benefit". But, a lot of people work hard in jobs thqt do not offer health insurane ("no benefits"). Before Vice-President Mike Pence and the people who wanted to hang him, there was Joe Biden and a new health care plan proposed by his boss Barrack Barack Obama. I know the joy of people who were able for the first time to buy health insurance under the ACA ("Obamacare") because I had the opportuntiy to go door to door to help people sign up and I saw the joy when they created an account on HealthCare.gov and called a navigator to buy a policy. But, sometimes they conversations took a sad turn when they said they expected to make less than $13,000 a year and all I could offer was the name of charities where they could beg for health care. Obamacare wasn't supposed to be like this. States were supposed to Expand Medicare. But, Florida did not. Not then not even in the recent leglistlive session. So, at my local Democratic Party meeting I moved a resolution to support an initiative petition to directly by a vote of the people amend the Florida State Constitution to expand Medicare. The resolution passed unanomously and now our local Democratic Party, Orange County (FL) Democrats is collecting this petition.

Petitions - Florida Decides Healthcare Florida Medicaid Expansion Petition

https://watermarkonline.com/.../watermarks-2024-waves.../
VOTING ENDS TODAY @ 5PM! I would ❤️ your vote this year for Favorite Realtor. You are required to vote for 15 categories, and you may only vote once. Thank you very much for a few minutes of your time! I always give 10% of my commission back to local non-profits. Please share. 😁

Watermark’s 2024 WAVEs final round – CENTRAL FLORIDA - Watermark Online The Watermark Awards for Variety and Excellence, or the WAVEs as we call them, recognize the best in Central Florida’s LGBTQ+ community in the areas of activism, service, entertainment and […]