Connecticut Shortchanging Environment

According to a Hartford Courant article excerpted below, the state of Connecticut is not meeting its environmental goals.

Connecticut is failing to meet its own goals for cleaning up the environment and needs an infusion of money and enthusiasm, and a substantial commitment to control sprawling development, according to a state report.The state should redouble efforts to clean the air, curb water pollution, conserve farms and forest land, and increase recycling and energy efficiency, the state Council on Environmental Quality says in its 2006 annual report, out this week."I think we've all just sort of turned our eyes away from these environmental goals," Thomas Harrison, chairman of the council, said Friday. "We've all maybe gotten a little complacent."
The council's report comes on the heels of two separate accountings that paint a sobering picture of the future of Long Island Sound. One, a federal assessment of estuaries around the nation, says the Sound is in poor condition, with too many contaminants in its fish and its sediments, and too little life on the bottom.The other report, from the Long Island Sound Study, argues that despite progress on many fronts, the state will have to spend billions to clean up the Sound. The report urges the state to adopt more sustainable development to better preserve open space and curb polluted runoff. Despite progress on environmental issues in the past, something shifted over the past two years, said Harrison, of the environmental quality council. "Last year there was a bit of a stall, no gain and no loss. This year's report [is] kind of disturbing to us."

IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Power and Light. Visit us at http://www.irejn.org/.

Climate Change Event May 10 at CCSU

Building a Mass Movement to Confront the Climate Crisis

Thursday, May 10th 7:30 PM
Marcus White Living Room, Marcus White Hall
Central Connecticut State University, 1615 Stanley Street
New Britain, CT

From the countless new scientific reports, to radical ecological shifts like the recent cessation of bear hibernation in Spain, to climatic shifts like the near doubling of Katrina-level storms in the last 35 years, and even calls to action by the insurance industry, the threat of global climate change becomes clearer every day.

Study after study points to the same conclusion: If our civilization's carbon emissions do not decrease dramatically in the coming decades the consequences will be catastrophic within the lifetimes of people alive today. Coastal cities all over the world will be submerged in water. Western Europe and Northeast America could experience a new ice age. A new wave of powerful storms will wreak havoc all over the world. Farm land will turn to desert. Millions of people will lose drinkable water. Wars will break out over newly scarce land and resources. A majority of the species on earth will face extinction.
Under current and all recent US governments the situation only worsens. In the last ten years the rate of increase of carbon emissions has only increased, and the US Energy Department plans to continue increasing it.

How can we build a movement to halt global warming in its tracks while maintaining and improving the living standards of working people? What strategies and alliances have successfully furthered environmental movements and how are groups organizing against environmental destruction around the country right now? What roles are labor organizations playing and how could their work in the environmental movement expand?

Come hear labor and environmental activist Christine Frank discuss the need for a mass environmental movement with a working class perspective and describe the efforts currently underway to build it. A discussion will follow.

Frank is the volunteer coordinator of the Climate Crisis Coalition of the Twin Cities, a Co-Convener of the Labor and Sustainability Conference and a member of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local 13 in the Guthrie Theater Costume Bargaining Unit.

For more information call 860-547-0122
or e-mail http://us.f431.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=dancetothepiper@gmail.comfor directions see:http://www.ccsu.edu/viewbook/find_us.htm

A Socialist Action Forum