Petition to legalize hemp. Can anyone name one other, totally harmless product, that is illegal? Hemp grows faster than and can replace corn, is a great food source (a complet protein), and can be used for paper, clothing, oil, building materials, etc. Hemp can reduce greenhouse emmissions. It is totally harmless - one cannot get 'high' from hemp. If DEA agents cannot distinguis hemp from marijuana, the issue lies with the agents. Again, and this is a challenge, can anyone name another totally harmless product that is illegal? Our Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper. Ironic?

HB2199 allows companies to do audits and keep the information in it, including violations of law, secret. The information in the audit cannot be used to prosecute them for violations of law either. Please call the governor and ask her to veto it. Every now and then she pays attention to the number of calls that come in 1-(800) 253-0883. Prevent the governor and the state from protecting polluters. Ask the governor to VETO this bill, which does not serve our state in a positive manner!

There's a bill before the Vermont legislature (The Vermont Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act, H. 722), that would require foods with genetically modified ingredients to be labeled as containing GMOs, and would bar GMO foods from bearing an “all-natural” label. Monsanto has threatened to sue the entire state if the bill is passed! Help expose Monsanto as the bully it is: tell Monsanto to back off!

Next to each pump at any given station is a trash can. However there is no place to toss your recyclables like empty bottles and cans. By adding a recycling container next to the existing trash bin, or replacing them with dual trash/recycling bins, the amount of waste going to landfills with be reduced. This is a relatively cheap way to help the burden placed on the environment.

Our pristine Arctic is about to be attacked by Shell Oil. The fragile Beaufort Sea, a critical habitat for whales and polar bears, has never been drilled for oil. This summer, unless we speak up, Shell Oil is preparing to do just that. Right now their drilling rig is getting towed up the Pacific Coast to the Arctic. Let's show Shell we are serious. Vow to cut up your Shell Oil credit card if it does not cease its destructive plan to drill in the Arctic.

Restaurants, bars, clubs, convenience and grocery stores have no mandatory recycling rule in place and no incentive to start. I want to call on everyone who knows and cares about this huge and very important issue to help make it mandatory for any establishment that sells glass bottles or plastic bottles to recycle them. If there is any interest in something like this, then incentives can be created for these places of business to participate and fines can be established and issued to those who do not comply. If a business is allowed to sell glass or plastic bottles, they MUST recycle both. Beach bars and restaurants are especially guilty of filling their dumpsters with glass and plastic bottles. Convenience and grocery stores are guilty of supplying the very bottles that litter our streets and fill our dumpsters. This practice must end now and reasonable incentives need to be put in place to make compliance something that is not resented by targeted business establishments.

Only 1% of world's water is drinkable. Population is booming. Riverbank is a bad place to dump unevaluated toxics. Salmon will absorb 9 million times water concentration in their flesh. 18,000 gallon per hour well will be compromisd. Private homes with kids downsteam have riverbank wells.

I'm sick & tired of taking my son to the park & having to constantly dodge him away from people who insist on smoking while their kids play. I understand that it's an outdoor space, but their smoke travels into the faces of the children & it can cause issues with children with respiratorty problems as well as the multitude of other heath issues caused by smoking.

As one of the largest universities in the state and an advocate for energy sustainability, VCU must do everything in its power to encourage clean, renewable energy projects in Virginia. According to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation, our university is located in the asthma capital of the country -- for two years running. Virginia Beach lands a number eight spot. One of the main reasons is due to poor air quality. VCU has a great opportunity to play a role in changing this by achieving the university's stated goal of carbon neutrality by 2050. Dominion Virginia Power is VCU's sole provider of electricity and VCU cannot "go green" without a shift from Dominion towards clean, renewable energy. Our main goal is to get students across the state to sign on in support of this movement. However, any support we can generate throughout the state will help our overall cause so please, if you sign this petition, clarify whether or not you are associated with VCU.

Senate Bill 2109 Seeks to Extinguish Navajo and Hopi Water Rights - Say No to SB 2109 HR Bill 4067 and the further raping of Native American rights.

By Ed Becenti Censored News http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com TUBA CITY, ARIZONA -- Arizona Senators Jon Kyl (R- AZ) and John McCain (R-AZ) are coming to Tuba City on Thursday, April 5, 2012, to persuade Navajo Nation and Hopi Tribal leaders to give up their peoples’ aboriginal and Treaty-guaranteed priority Water Rights by accepting a “Settlement Agreement” written to benefit some of the West’s most powerful mining and energy corporations. Senate Bill 2109 --the "Navajo-Hopi Little Colorado River Water Rights Settlement Act of 2012" was introduced by Kyl and McCain on February 14, 2012, and is on a fast track to give Arizona corporations and water interests a “100th birthday present” that will close the door forever on Navajo and Hopi food and water sovereignty, security and self-reliance. S.2109 asks the Navajo and Hopi peoples to waive their priority Water Rights to the surface waters of the Little Colorado River “from time immemorial and thereafter, forever” in return for the shallow promise of uncertain federal appropriations to supply minimal amounts of drinking water to a handful of reservation communities. The Bill -- and the ‘Settlement Agreement” it ratifies – do not quantify Navajo and Hopi water rights – the foundation of all other southwestern Indian Water Rights settlements to date – thereby denying the Tribes the economic market value of their water rights, and forcing them into perpetual dependence on uncertain federal funding for any water projects. Senators Kyl and McCain know well that without Water, life is not possible. Yet, their Bill and the ‘Settlement Agreement” close the door forever to any possibility of irrigated agriculture and water conservation projects to heal and restore Navajo and Hopi watersheds (keeping sediment from filling downstream reservoirs); to grow high-value income and employment-producing livestock and crops for Navajo, Hopi and external markets; and to provide once again for healthy, diabetes- and obesity-free nutrition and active lifestyles for all future generations of Navajo and Hopi children. Kyl and McCain Senators Kyl and McCain demand that the Navajo and Hopi people waive and give up all their rights to legal protection of injury to surface and ground water supply and quality in the past, present, and future -- yet the Navajo and Hopi peoples do not even know the full extent and nature of the rights they are being pressured to waive because the details of the “Settlement Agreement” are not being shared with the public. This is wrong. Navajo and Hopi water and public health have already been damaged severely by past uranium and coal mining in and upstream of Navajo and Hopi communities. Senators Kyl and McCain are trying now to take away all rightful legal protections against the present and real danger of such contaminations occurring again. S.2109 and the “Settlement Agreement” deny the Navajo and Hopi people the resources and means to assess comprehensive long-term water needs of every community, village, and watershed; and deny the resources and means to plan for, and develop sufficient domestic, municipal, industrial and agricultural “wet water” projects essential to the permanent well-being, prosperity and health of their homelands and children’s children. This is absolutely counter to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1908 Winter’s Doctrine that explicitly reserves and safeguards the water needed for that permanent well-being and prosperity. S.2109 and the “Settlement Agreement” deny the Navajo and Hopi people the resources and means to bank their own waters, or to recharge their aquifers depleted and damaged by the mining and energy corporations that S.2109 benefits. S.2109 and the “Settlement Agreement” require Navajo and Hopi to give Peabody Coal Mining Company and the Salt River Project and other owners of the Navajo Generating Station (NGS) tens of thousands of acre-feet of Navajo and Hopi water annually – without any compensation – and to force the extension of Peabody and NGS leases without Navajo and Hopi community input, or regard for past and continuing harmful impacts to public health, water supplies and water quality – as necessary pre-conditions to Navajo and Hopi receiving Congressional appropriations for minimal domestic water development. This is coercive and wrong.

It is finding new alternative fuels, which are safer for the environment. It is said that sorghum, sugar cane and kelp can be made into gasoline like oil.