Check out sustainable businesses in your area and support them with your $$s.
Go Vegan for a meal, a day, a week... how far can you go?
Get close with animals though animal encounters.
Plan a sustainable trip, summer is coming. Stay in a sustainable hotel.
Leave your car at home. Take a bus or a train to your outdoor event, the local sustainable businesses, a vegan restaurant, animal encounters, or sustainable hotel.
Sierra Club Loxahatchee Group will be staffing 3 Earth Day tabling events. Please Join US, contact Glenn Laufer:
15th Annual Earth Day Celebration at Palm Beach State College, Earth Day: Thurs. April 18, 10:00 AM – 2:00 PM. Location: 3160 PGA Boulevard, Palm Beach Gardens, FL. This will be a wonderful event that celebrates our planet and promotes sustainable living. The outdoor festival will feature more than 20 vendors and exhibitors showcasing and promoting green living, healthy eating, and other ecofriendly initiatives. The goal is to show appreciation for our planet and raise awareness about environmental sustainability.
Celebrate Earth Day at Okeeheelee Nature Center Event: Sat. April 20, 2024, 10:00 AM- 3:00 PM. Location: 7715 Forest Hill Blvd, West Palm Beach, FL 33413. Activities will promote awareness of environmental protection and earth conservation. Celebrate one of the most important milestones in conservation history with your local nature center! Enjoy live animal encounters, eco-friendly crafts, environmental presentations, guided nature walks, a rehabilitated animal release, food trucks, environmental exhibitors, and vendors and much more!
Palm Beach Atlantic University Earth Day:Friday, April 26th, 10:30 AM- 1:00 PM. Location: in front of MacArthur Hall, 901 S Flagler Dr. West Palm Beach FL. There will be exhibitors from all over South Florida demonstrating how they are protecting the environment. You'll find a diverse range of activities, educational booths, and likeminded individuals who share a passion for environmental stewardship. Whether you're interested in sustainable practices, wildlife conservation, or simply enjoying a day outdoors, this Earth Day celebration promises to be an enriching experience.
Quote of the month, for me: “Perfection is the enemy of progress.” Winston Churchill.
We are stronger together!
Thank you so much,
Linda Smithe Destinationloop@gmail.com
Executive Committee Chair
Sierra Club Loxahatchee Group
P.S. The Florida Legislative Session is over. To encourage future legislative champions, we continue to accept donations for the Political Committee’s Political Action Campaign, Sierra Club Florida PAC is HERE.
AN EMAIL TIP!
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Thursday, April 25, 2024, 7:30 PM General Meeting
Detrimental Effects of Light Pollution on Human and Environmental Health
Dr. Mario Motta. FACC Thursday April 25, 2024, 7:30 PM via Zoom
Program: Dr. Motta will talk about the adverse impacts of excessive artificial light-at-night, or light pollution, not only on nocturnal species across the planet, but also on the human species. It turns out that a rtificial light-at-night disrupts Circadian rhythmicity. That disruption suppresses melatonin. Melatonin suppression inhibits the immune system, which allows for the proliferation of breast and prostate cancers and increases depression and psychiatric disturbances. He will evaluate commonly held assumptions about streetlights and safety and how glare emanating from streetlights affects all, but especially for elderly and those with early cataracts. Dr. Motta will close with how darker skies can benefit quality of life and livability for humans and nature.
Mario Motta bio : Mario Motta earned a Bachelor of Science in biology and physics at Boston College and a medical degree at Tufts University. Dr Motta was a cardiologist at North Shore Physicians Group in Salem, Massachusetts. In 2009 he persuaded his hometown of Gloucester to install Dark-Sky International-compliant 3000 Kelvin LED streetlights. Dr. Motta is a longtime Clinical Professor of Medicine at Tufts University and served as a Board member of International Dark Sky Association from 2010 to 2014 and for a longer stint as chair of its Medical Effects of Light Pollution Committee. Prior to serving as an American Medical Association (AMA) trustee for four years, Dr. Motta served on the AMA’s Council on Science and Public Health (CSAPH.) CSAPH’s policy recommendation that streetlights and other outdoor lights should have a color temperature of no greater than 3000 Kelvin (K) was unanimously adopted by the AMA at its June 2016 annual meeting. Along with lead author Richard Stevens, renowned cancer epidemiologist at University of Connecticut’s Department of Community Medicine, Dr Motta was one of five co-authors of the 2014 research paper, Breast Cancer and Circadian Disruption from Electric Lighting in the Modern World.
Protect Okefenokee Wilderness
As you may recall, in January 2023 the State of Georgia released a draft plan for a mine proposed at the doorstep of the Okefenokee Wilderness in southern Georgia. Thousands of you wrote opposing this proposal. Now, we need your help once again!
On February 9, 2024, the Georgia Environmental Protection Division (EPD) released three Twin Pines Minerals LLC draft permits, opening a 60-day public comment period. The Alabama-based mining company is attempting to open a mine that would ultimately reach 8,000 acres on Okefenokee’s Trail Ridge, the prehistoric barrier island that helped create the swamp by holding back its waters.
At more than 400,000 acres, the Okefenokee Swamp is the largest national wildlife refuge in the eastern United States and one of the world’s largest intact blackwater swamps. These qualities help make the Okefenokee important habitat for native wildlife such as black bears, American alligators, and red-cockaded woodpeckers.
The Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge is also an International Dark Sky Park and a National Natural Landmark—a designation reserved for “the best examples of biological and geological features” in the country. The 354,000-acre Okefenokee Wilderness makes up almost 90 percent of the refuge and is one of the largest Wilderness areas in the East.
Water is critical to the well-being of Okefenokee, which is recognized worldwide as a Wetland of International Importance. The proposed mining of heavy mineral sands would destroy over 370 acres of wetlands, pump over a million gallons of fresh groundwater every day, discharge pollutants into the air and waste into the St. Mary’s River basin and disturb the refuge with noise and light pollution. Wilderness values like solitude, silence, and remoteness could be impacted by the close proximity of industrial mining activity and associated development.
Wilderness Watch is a member of the Okefenokee Protection Alliance, a coalition of more than 40 conservation organizations representing millions of members that have joined forces to save the Okefenokee from the proposed mine and other threats. Twin Pines’ proposed mining project has already drawn an unprecedented level of opposition from the coalition and its members. So far, more than 100,000 people from all 50 states and 36 countries have voiced opposition to the mine, including thousands of Wilderness Watch members and supporters. Thank you!
Now it’s critical that we step up once again and let Georgia EPD know that jeopardizing the Okefenokee is unacceptable. Please submit a public comment opposing the proposed Twin Pines Minerals mining permits by April 9.
What Is Inspiring Connections Outdoors and How Can You Support This Important Sierra Club Program?
By Meryl Davids
Inspiring Connections Outdoors (ICO) is a national Sierra Club program created to introduce youth who otherwise lack resources to experience the great outdoors. Our local program is the Palm Beach County ICO. Last year we took more than 150 local youth hiking, biking, kayaking, overnight camping, and on other nature adventures. Kids on our outings get to explore and enjoy nature—and hopefully they will become advocates for the environment as they grow.
The Palm Beach County ICO program got its start more than 20 years ago, in 2002, when a steering committee of the Loxahatchee Group, led by Chas Hunt (who is still involved with the program as treasurer), submitted the paperwork to the Sierra Club's national office, which soon led to the group’s certification.
A few years later in 2005, Sheila Calderon began her long-running tenure as ICO Chair. Sheila was also the group’s fundraising chair, and for many years spearheaded the successful Thanks & Giving celebration whose proceeds go to ICO along with the Elaine Usherson youth scholarship and Sierra Club's conservation efforts.
Under Sheila's strong leadership, Palm Beach County ICO grew to serve numerous children ages 8 to 18 from a variety of the local organizations we partner with. Several long-running groups include the Greenacres Youth Program and the Bridges of Lake Worth West. Sheila cultivated more than a dozen volunteer outings leaders and many non-leader volunteers who helped the program thrive. (One outings leader was actually a youth who began going on ICO activities starting at age 11, who loved them so much he became a trained junior and then adult leader!)
In 2018, Meryl Davids became chair of our ICO group. Although outings were curtailed for several years during the pandemic, the group is now back to regularly taking the youth outdoors. Newer groups we have added to our roster include the Pace Center for Girls and the Palm Beach County School District’s Migrant Education Program.
Our most recent outings brought youth overnight tent camping in Collier Seminole State Park, biking on the nature trails in Riverbend Park, and bird watching at Wakodahatchee Wetlands.
The Palm Beach County ICO group is always looking for adults who enjoy both nature and children to become volunteers in our program. If you're interested, contact Meryl at Meryl.Davids@Florida.Sierraclub.org.
Since our outings are always free to the youth—we pay for all fees, gear, equipment rental, guides, snacks, and lunches—we also always appreciate financial donations. No amount is too small.
Thank you to the thousands of kids over the years who have and continue to make our outings fun and to all the adults who have supported our program and who do so today.
Something to Contemplate?
Sierra Club Loxahatchee Groups Strategic Goals 2024:
The purpose of the Sierra Club is to explore, enjoy, and protect the wild places of the earth; to practice and promote the responsible use of the earth’s ecosystems and resources; to educate and enlist humanity to protect and restore the quality of the natural and human environment; and to use all lawful means to carry out these objectives.
So how do we do this? By creating our Strategic goals, The Sierra Club leadership got together over 2 days and discussed our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. That was heavy enough. Then we had to distill that down.
Stop climate change climate warming: This is a tall order for a small group of volunteers. So how are we going to do it?
With our Goals and objectives -
Re-elect Biden: Wait, I thought Sierra Club was non-partisan? We are. This has nothing to do with Republican or Democrat. This has to do with the candidates and their platforms on the environment and conservation. Re-elect Biden!
Defeat Senator Rick Scott: See above.
Include articles Turtle Tracks and General Meetings. Do you have an article in your imagination? Write it up and submit it to help us make our goal a reality.
Raise awareness about IRA, (Inflation Reduction Act) and IIJA (Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act.) Speak about this to friends, family, and government officials.
Including, but not limited to, preserving the Palm Beach County Agricultural Reserve. Speak about this to friends, family, and government officials.
Start anti-sprawl committee in Martin County. Many of our active leaders live in Palm Beach County. We need some Martin County active volunteers to help us stay engaged.
The final piece is you, a new volunteer, a new volunteer leader, something to contemplate?
Light Pollution Joins the List of Threats to Planet Earth
By Richard Stowe, Sierra Club Loxahatchee Group Executive Committee Member and Energy Committee Chair
In 1968, David Brower, Executive Director of the Sierra Club, and publisher Ian Ballantine approached Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich and Stanford senior conservation biology researcher Anne Ehrlich to write a book about population growth and its relationship to the environment. The Ehrlichs accepted the offer and titled their book Population, Resources, and Environment, but Mr. Ballantine insisted on changing the title to The Population Bomb. This name was appropriated with permission from the Population Crisis Committee’s 1954 pamphlet The Population Bomb is Everyone's Baby . The Ehrlichs' regretted the name change as it misled the public to believe that the Ehrlichs' concerns were “solely focused on human numbers, despite our interest in all the factors affecting the human trajectory.”
It turns out that their concern about the name change to The Population Bomb was prescient, as the inflammatory title may have unintentionally contributed to the birth of “the right to life” movement, a philosophy sanctioned by the Supreme Court’s recent Dobbs v. Jackson decision.
Man’s activities, making man-made things including plastic, tools of war and destroying ecosystem habitats, has turned out to be a more ominous threat than population growth. Burgeoning motor vehicle and airline transportation industries have resulted in global sprawl. Traditional measurements for these activities include air, water and noise pollution, soil contamination and greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels.
In 1988, the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) - now Dark Sky International- was incorporated in Tucson, Arizona. IDA’s mission is to "to preserve and protect the nighttime environment and our heritage of dark skies through quality outdoor lighting.” IDA added “light pollution” to those environmental quality measurement tools as well as host of terms to describe light pollution such as glare, sky glow and light trespass. Over the decades, IDA has set metrics to further their mission by giving recognition to International Dark Sky Sanctuaries, Parks, Preserves, Communities and Urban Night Sky Places. Florida’s Big Cypress National Preserve and Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park were designated as International Dark Sky Places in 2016.
Regarding the Ehrlichs' “all the factors affecting the human trajectory” concern, it took nearly fifty years for world population to double from 4 billion to 8 billion, but just eleven years for light pollution to double. Annual population rates are declining, while sky glow is growing rapidly. Light pollution is measured in both lumens and color temperature spectra.
During the era of high-pressure sodium street lights, sky glow grew at a rate of two percent annually; after widespread introduction of blue-rich white LED street lights, sky glow has been increasing at a rate of ten percent annually. Sky glow in Florida is magnified by its high levels of humidity. Light pollution decimates nocturnal and diurnal species such as sea turtles, migrating birds, fireflies, and bats.
Excessive artificial light-at-night harms the human species, too. Artificial light-at-night disrupts circadian rhythms. That disruption suppresses melatonin. Melatonin suppression inhibits the immune system. This allows for proliferation of breast and prostate cancers and increases in depression and psychiatric disturbances.
To learn more about light pollution, join our General Meeting on Thursday, April 25 at 7:30pm. The topic is "Detrimental Effects of Light Pollution on Human and Environmental Health".
Solar Energy is Good for the Environment, Good for the Economy and Good for the Consumer
By Diane Marks, League of Women Voters
A fifth Solar Co-op in Palm Beach County has started. The last Solar Co-op had 91 members. Each member was interested in putting solar panels on their roof and cutting their energy expenses. By joining the Co-op, the members pick one installer who can cut the installation cost by 20 percent by virtue of having numerous installations.
Through 2024, there is a 30 percent income tax credit so this Co-op, too, can save 50 percent on the total cost of your solar installation. The state LWV has joined with Solar United Neighbors, a non-profit organization that has the technical knowledge to explain solar to the community and handle questions co-op members have. The League of Women Voters has partnered with other energy-conscious organizations to run Solar Co-ops throughout the counties of Florida. We were the 19th county to run a Solar Co-op the first time and other counties have run over 30 more. If you believe in helping the environment and cutting our carbon imprint, please consider converting to solar energy.
There will be virtual Information Meetings each month to explain how Solar panels work, financing and how the Co-op works. If you join the Co-op, there is no obligation. The one installer for the Co-op will visit each member’s home to evaluate the roof and discuss electric usage. The installer will prepare a contract. You can check the contract with other installers and discuss it with anyone you want. Only if you sign the contract will you be obligated.
Solar United Neighbors Palm Beach County Co-op is live! Click here for more information.
The Florida - Solar United Neighbors. site has information about every aspect of solar energy and is a way to start learning about solar power on your roof. To join the co-op, you must own your roof – no apartments or condominiums, sorry. This is a Florida rule. Solar panels are the way of the future as well to increase the value of your house, lower the cost of electricity and cut your energy costs even more if you plan to buy an electric car.
Palm Beach Presentation Join us for our in-person Solar 101 information session where you can learn more about solar energy. - Wednesday, June 26, 6:00pm | Event Information
Click here to register. Registration opens May 19, 2024.
Did you Know?
By Linda Smithe
Did you know Palm Beach County has an Office of Resilience? They do!
The Office of Resilience works to ensure a sustainable and thriving Palm Beach County while confronting a changing climate through adaptation, mitigation, and sustainable development!
On their website you can find:
Information about what they do
Local Projects
Sustainability Tips
Partnerships
News
Events
You can sign up for their monthly newsletter: Office of Resilience (pbcgov.org). Sign up learn something new every month about local resiliency efforts.
The Director is Megan Houston. Do you have a question or suggestion? You can email her at: ResilientPBC@pbcgov.org.
SAM VAN LEER URBAN PARADISE GUILD APRIL 4, 2024, 7PM-8:30PM-VIRTUALLY TOPIC: Forensic Ecology of Broward and How we Got to Now!
Sam grew up in Miami on Biscayne Bay, learning science from his father, a Professor of Physical Oceanography. After an eclectic self-guided education, he stumbled into his first career (information management and consulting, with data architecture on 6 continents), and later some inventing. Unsatisfied living to make shareholders wealthy, he went in search of the reason he was on the planet and found it.
Sam founded Urban Paradise Guild in 2008 at the age of 43 to protect South Florida from Climate Change through projects that would make the world a better place for people and wildlife. He calls this Climate Active. Being ahead of his time was not easy, he created key partnerships that allowed him to accomplish projects that would be impossible with conventional methods. Through learning curves and dedication, he has continued being the driving force behind UPG.
Today, he is excited about the progress, and looks forward to the next chapters of UPG's history. Sam plans shift more focus to staff development, program design, strategic planning, urban design. He plans to resume inventing solutions that make the world safer from GCC.
You can also view the Group Directory and reach out to our group leaders. We would love you to join our committees, such as Conservation; Political; Equity, Inclusion, and Justice; or Communications.
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