Saturday, September 19, 2015

Maine veterans to protest military's impact on oceans

Maine veterans to protest military's impact on oceans

 

Group's peace walk to end in Portsmouth

 

YORK, Maine – Maine Veterans for Peace will hold a 175-mile peace walk along Route 1 from Ellsworth to Portsmouth, N.H., from Oct. 9-24.

The walk will draw attention to what the group alleges are the links between the Pentagon’s environmental impact on the oceans and climate change. According to the veterans, the Pentagon has the largest carbon footprint on Earth and was exempted from the Kyoto Protocols. Military operations, the group says, consumes massive amounts of fossil fuels and lays waste to significant environmentally sensitive places on the planet, particularly the oceans.

Navy sonar blasts wreak havoc on marine creatures, disrupting their lives, leaving animals more susceptible to disease and lowered reproductive success, and sometimes injuring and killing them, says Maine Veterans for Peace.

“If the seas die so do humans on Earth and much of the wildlife,” said Maine VFP secretary and walk coordinator Bruce Gagnon. “Now is the time to speak out for ending the massive military impacts on the world’s oceans and for conversion of our fossil fuel dependent military industrial complex to sustainable technologies.”

Walkers will be hosted each night in local churches for community suppers where they will hold public programs about the purpose of the walk. The public is invited to walk for an hour, a day or more. The walk will be led by monks and nuns from the Nipponzan Myohoji Buddhist order that does peace walks around the world. This will be the fourth time VFP has organized a peace walk through Maine in recent years.

The walk is being sponsored by Maine Veterans for Peace, PeaceWorks, CodePink Maine, Citizens Opposing Active Sonar Threats, Peace Action Maine, Veterans for Peace Smedley Butler Brigade, Seacoast Peace Response of Portsmouth and Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. For more information, visit http://bit.ly/1QJwHL7.   


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