In "100 Heartbeats," the second premiere in MSNBC's landmark Future Earth series, famed naturalist Jeff Corwin tells the story of the "Sixth Extinction" - caused by people and which can only be stopped by people. Keep checking futureearth.msnbc.com for information about the next premiere, "Future Earth: 2025," which will air on Dec. 20. You can catch "100 Heartbeats" on MSNBC again on Thanksgiving at 11 a.m. ET.
I was glad to see this show in a Sunday evening slot on msnbc and I really wish to god they'd do more like this ... just blanket their whole weekend programming with this instead of the prison porn they usually do. Why not? Perhaps we should think about a write-in campaign to convince them of that!
I'm suffering a ripple-over, a hangover, of thoughts and I'm attempting to share some of these thoughts here.
There is a lot of bloggage currently over the increasing volume on the xtian's idiocy, see this essay from gottlieb. I was struck this morning by the juxtaposition. I am just... so ... aghast at the hypocrisy and the indignity of their whining ... when this is going on.
This is desecration. This is an unholy war. This is ...
Every year tens of millions of sharks die a slow death because of finning. Finning is the inhumane practice of hacking off the shark's fins and throwing its still living body back into the sea. The sharks either starve to death, are eaten alive by other fish, or drown (if they are not in constant movement their gills cannot extract oxygen from the water). Shark fins are being "harvested" in ever greater numbers to feed the growing demand for shark fin soup, an Asian "delicacy".
Not only is the finning of sharks barbaric, but their indiscriminate slaughter at an unsustainable rate is pushing many species to the brink of extinction. Since the 1970s the populations of several species have been decimated by over 95%. source
I can't begin to tell you how stunned and revolted I was last night when they showed video of it. It took my breath away.
Here's the deal. I'm not going to write about the whole shark thing, or the rest of it. I'm confident that most of DD readers are way ahead of me on all of that. What I'm thinking more about is how do we help move things forward and get this subject more and more into mainstream America's (and world's) consciousness?
When will people get it...? that it's not just about that cute orangutan or gorgeous cheetah.... it's the planet, stupid.
I don't know. I just had to say something.
There's numerous hits when you google shark finning... This one has some actions items, as I'm sure others do as well.
It's not just the sharks, or the other animals the show highlighted. The show did a fair job of pointing out that this is all inter-related, and the demise of our Earth is in the offing. There was some video footage of some dying coral reefs somewhere. I really was just grief-stricken.
Reform Immigration -
March on Washington
