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Hours after returning from the coast of Maine...
Obama Signs Executive Order For A National Ocean Policy!
Yesterday, President Obama called for by executive order a National Ocean Policy to better protect, maintain and restore our nation’s oceans, coasts and Great Lakes. The President’s actions are a culmination of a year-long process that started when the President convened the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force. The Task Force held public comment listening sessions across the land and met with interest groups. The Task Force received 5,000 letters from individuals including many from ORI’s ecostewards.
President Obama has put us on the path to healthier oceans, coasts and Great Lakes by ordering the twenty-two agencies with ocean responsibilities to coordinate and become better stewards. The National Ocean Policy will provide a guiding vision for government and a needed mandate for the future protection and restoration of our great waters and waterways.
“If our oceans are to survive acidification,” writes Sigourney Weaver, “there are two critical steps we must take. First and foremost, we must cut our carbon emissions and transition to a clean energy economy routed in efficiency and renewable power. And second, we must make our oceans as healthy, and therefore resilient, as possible in the face of the coming impacts - President Obama has set us on that path today.”
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In January thousands of folks organized parties and rallies for Wear Blue For The Oceans. ORI rallied at the Cambridge Community Center. You took pictures, wrote letters, and made videos telling President Obama to protect our seas. Many of ORI's ecostewards wrote letters to Obama, telling him why the oceans and great lakes matter and urging him to issue the Executive Order for a National Ocean Policy. He did it!
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Sherman’s Lagoon syndicated cartoonist Jim Toomey and Blue Frontier Campaign president David Helvarg talk with Rob about the goals and accomplishments of the National Ocean Policy Task Force. What began with Sherman Lagoon’s Claudia the crab and Finley the fish wearing blue shirts in a comic strip grew to a national movement involving thousands of people for ocean conservation. David Helvarg’s “Seaweed Rebellion, Blue Frontier Campaign” has brought people together, provided unity and focus while enhancing awareness of the grassroots (seaweed holdfasts) ocean movement.
Mike Dunmeyer, Ocean Champions Executive Director, will join in with us for a frothy discussion of the Ocean Policy Task Force’s work to create a National Ocean Management Policy Framework and their recently released draft: “Interim Framework for Effective Coastal and Marine Spatial Planning.” Hold on to your mask and flippers.
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On July 24-25 at the Seaport Center, Planet Hugger is offering free haircuts to attendees in hopes of producing up to 500 hair booms to be shipped to the Gulf of Mexico to help clean up the oil spill.
Planet Hugger has graciously given ORI complimentary tickets. We'll give tickets away to first inquiries. Tom Chapin will be singing, Holistic Moms living the green, and plenty of marine educators will be there with at least one tidepool touch tank to get wet with ocean life. Planet Hugger is saving the planet one event at a time.
This planet-friendly festival is dedicated to educating, inspiring, and empowering children and adults, individuals and families, urbanites and small town folks, and kitten-caboodle to come together in their communities and workplaces to create a more sustainable planet.
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Discover how with the knowledge of Rachel Carson and the courage of Achilles individuals are making a difference for healthier oceans, rivers, watersheds and skies. Choose from twenty-five podcast episodes of Moir's Environmental Dialogues, Ocean River Shields of Achilles. Also available free on iTunes, search "Moir's" or "Achilles."
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Ocean River Institute
12 Eliot Street | Cambridge, MA 02138 | 617.661.6647 |
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