 9,000, and growing every day, man-made chemicals, and they were discovered in the 1930s, were used in the Manhattan Project and the Atomic Bomb, and have been used by the military and industry and consumer products ever since. So why did they use these? Well, they have a lot of useful properties. They're stain-resistant, they're water-resistant, they're stick-resistant, they're long-lasting, they're heat and cold-tolerant, and more. Since the 1970s, both the Department of Defense and industry have known about the many dangers of PFAS. They're called forever chemicals because they do not break down in the environment. They can easily travel through air, dust, food, soil, and water, snow, rain, sleet, you name it. And they can be found in water, oh, lost my first page, better roll on to that, okay, they can be found in water, fish, food, food wrappers, cosmetics, personal care products like dental floss, clothing, firefighting foam, building supplies, and many household products like nonstick pans, rugs, and mattresses. So across the country, PFAS have been found in public water systems and private wells, posing threats to many communities. Here in Vermont, 58 public water systems, mostly in rural areas, had PFAS contamination in their water. And there is also evidence that PFAS is present in rain and snow, as I mentioned earlier, which is how it spreads and is found as far up as the Arctic Circle. The prevalence of PFAS in our everyday lives poses lots of concerning health risks. These chemicals may cause thyroid disease, ulcerative colitis, high cholesterol, pregnancy-induced hypertension, weakened immune systems, a great thing during the COVID pandemic, reproductive health problems and infertility in both men and women, learning and developmental disabilities in infants and children, and various forms of cancer, particularly testicular and kidney cancer have been linked to PFAS. Studies have found that PFAS was present in the breast milk of 100% of women that were tested in a recent study, which means that children are getting that breast milk directly with those infants. The federal government and the Department of Defense have been really slow to act on banning the use of PFAS. In general, states have taken the lead, and we want Vermont to do more, more now and more in the future. First and foremost, we want our legislators and our government officials to practice the precautionary principle. Instead of just approving every product and thing that comes out, it's necessary that industry prove that what they're producing isn't dangerous to us and to the planet. So keep that in mind. We want our legislators to value people and planet more than they value profits. Sometimes it appears that the Chamber of Commerce has more power than we do as individuals, advocating. And we want our legislators to think about future generations. I'm old, I'm not going to be affected by this stuff, but my children and grandchildren are. And it's been 60 years since Rachel Carson's wrote her book, Silent Spring, where she pretty much predicted we're going into the Adarwin effect for our species. We're trying to make ourselves extinct. In this legislative session, we've only had one success on a PFAS-related bill, and that was Senate Bill 113, which is a medical monitoring bill for PFAS and other contaminants. Governors got finally signed that bill yesterday after vetoing it, vetoing it twice before. And we are hoping that the Senate and the Natural Resources Committee will pass H501, which is a regulation for food depackaging. All those McDonald's containers and wrappers and other fast food restaurant containers and wrappers contain PFAS. So we want to see that bill passed, and it does not look like it'll pass this legislative session. So in the future, we want the legislature to ban PFAS as a class of chemicals. We want to end sewage overflows. We want to ban pesticide and herbicide spraying, and many pesticides and herbicides contain PFAS. We want to ban landfills from releasing leachates, which contain PFAS, into our waterways. And we want to ban the use of biosolids, which contain PFAS on agricultural lands and then end up in our food. If you want more information, we have it on the table down here. In addition, you can join our coalition. And we have a great website, www.militarypoisons.org, sorry, I had to think, thanks a lot. Okay, our next speaker is Sylvia Knight. She is a veteran of decades of work fighting to protect pollinators from dangerous pesticides. She's also part of the PFAS coalition and part of other well-meaning organizations to help stop poisons. So here's Sylvia Knight. Next today, I want to observe a moment of silence in memory of Fern Feather, who is murdered recently. I understand that she was part of this celebration for all species every year here in Montpeteur, a free spirit, a moment of silence. Thank you. Thanks for being here on Earth Day. Spring Day brings conflicting feelings to me. I rejoice in new life and I live with pain and sadness knowing that tons of pesticides are being used to control and danger and kill life with busting of state agencies. I perceive a deep disconnect from Earth's community of life, causing people to authorize or to use toxins without awareness or accountability. This is a deeply spiritual issue. What is our attitude toward life? Think about the deep disconnect that allows toxins to kill species already in danger. It allows toxins to enter water without legal consequences. For 30 years, I have worked on pesticide issues. Earth threats to all life, for generations, threats to our immune systems, our mental, physical and reproductive systems, our development as creative, intelligent and cooperative beings. We need each other as part of Earth's community to achieve real change. Stay with me. We are community. We are the change. We are Earth's community. We are the change. I want to share some fundamental truths about pesticides. One, EPA does not claim or allow others to claim safety for pesticides. Pesticides contain secret ingredients, which can be as toxic as the principle ingredient, but are considered confidential business information. There is no way to know how toxic a pesticide is when the ingredients are not identified. There is a bill in Congress now to help. S3283. I'll say that again. S3283. Some information on the table. Some pesticides have toxic effects at smaller doses over a long period of time. They interfere with our hormonal or endocrine systems and immune systems at very small doses. Like parts per billion or parts per trillion, they are called endocrine disruptors. Exposure to low amounts of endocrine disruptors at critical points of development can cause long-lasting health effects. Another way that some pesticides, especially Roundup, proglyphosate damage human and animal life, is by interfering with the microbiota in our bodies that are crucial for our health and immune systems. Even bees have microbiota, which are damaged by exposure to pesticides like glyphosate. Our state does not evaluate pesticides for endocrine disruption or for effects on our essential microbiotic communities. It's time for change. We are Earth community. We are the change. We are Earth community. We are the change. Agency of Agriculture has a division called the Public Healths and Agricultural Resource Management Division, which claims to work to protect human, animal, and plant health. The environment and consumers by providing fair regulatory programs, et cetera. Its acronym is ironically P-H-A-R-M, a farm. P-H-A-R-M. That division oversees pesticide use and regulation. Now the Agriculture Innovation Board is new on the scene, but nothing. Nothing about the interconnectedness of all life, nothing about Earth community, but lots of pesticide use data, nearly a million pounds a year. And the links to the belated revision that website has links to the belated revision of pesticide regulations after 30 years. No real change in the basic premises about pesticides. We must make sure the process for revision of the pesticide regulations is open and transparent. The first hearing is June 15th. Look for information on our table about this process. We are Earth community. We are the change. We are Earth community. We are the change. Agency of Natural Resources includes Department of Environmental Conservation, which oversees water quality standards, also under revision. They also act aquatic nuisance permits to allow use of PFAS-contaminated pesticides to control adult mosquitoes. This is the least effective and most toxic and harmful way to control mosquitoes. The Department of Health has been largely absent from pesticide issues. The last two five-year cancer plans have not mentioned pesticides at all. Their assistant toxicologist retired in 2018. She was chair of Vermont pesticide advisory council for several years. This council issued right-of-way permits for railroads, highways, utilities, and had nothing to do with agriculture from 1985 to 2021. Right-of-way permits cover less than 15% of all pesticide use in Vermont, but much of it is close to water. Herbicides enter water without consequence. So please visit our table for information on ways you can be the change. Thank you. We are Earth community. We are the change. Thank you. Thank you. Protection entity of the Sierra Club, and she's also been involved with several mobilization for pollinator survival events. She's been going to a lot of sessions in witnessing what goes on in the Vermont legislature. So here's Judy Belair's. Brass ball again. Everyone give a big hand for Brass Ball again for leading us on the feedback song. They might be packing it up soon. I don't know who's going to stick around, but let's just give them a huge round of applause. Yay! Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Our truly proud to the web of life, including arts percent of terrestrial birds, feed their young us percent. Scientists have figured out how many tiny caterpillars it takes for chickadees to raise one clutch of chicks. How many? Can you guess how many do you think? 1,000 to 9,000 depending on the size of the clutch. And that's for chickadees that way only a third would take to raise a clutch. We need a lot of insects to feed all the birds. But it's not looking good. From the late 1990s, started raising monarch to 2020, the eastern monarch population has dropped 88 percent, 3 million to just under 45 million. Half of Vermont's bumblebee species has reached decline. The populations of birds that eat insects are falling sharply. The birds that eat are insectivorous birds. Fishermen say populations of catas flies and mayflies that are critical to fish food have vanished. We've had a war on insects since the use of pesticides became widespread after World War II. And now it looks like we've developed pesticides that are so toxic that we're wiping out all the bugs. Pesticides don't discriminate. They kill 97 percent of insects that are good, as well as killing the small percentage of pests that are harmful from a human perspective. So how many of you have heard of neonicotinoid pesticide or neonics? Good. A few. Well, they are the most used insecticides in the world. And scientists around the world believe they are responsible for the insect-coupled apocalypse. Neonics last a long time in the environment, up to 17 years in soil. They easily run off into water and have been found in water bodies and honeybee hives in Vermont. They're systemic, which means they're absorbed by all parts of the plant. Roots, stems, leaves, flowers, pollen. Any insect that consumes any part of the plant gets a dose of poison. They're more toxic to bees than any other insecticide. Only one teaspoon is enough to kill 1.25 billion bees, or 275 tons. Because of neonics, the toxicity of the environment to bees is 48 times worse than it was 20 years ago. Neonics have been banned in all of Europe since 2013 because of the harm they caused to bees. And here in Vermont, thousands of pounds are used every year on ornamental plants and corn and soy seed. Our agency of agriculture continues to argue that based on some tests they have done, neonics are a problem in Vermont. This, despite three decades of scientific studies showing ecosystem-wide impacts on pollinators and other insects, birds, aquatic life, earthworms, and so on. So I guess we're really lucky that Vermont is magically immune from these impacts. There's currently a bill in the legislature that Emily mentioned, H626, that tells the agency of agriculture to develop best management practices for the use of seeds coated with neonics. An earlier version, which was supported by environmental groups and beekeepers, was scrapped because the agency of agriculture didn't like it. So the staff at the agency of agriculture actually wrote a bill. They wrote a weaker bill. And even this bill is facing opposition from pro-pesticide groups and some key legislators. Meanwhile, recommendations to protect pollinators developed by the Legislative-appointed Pollinator Protection Committee five years ago continue to be ignored. So what can you do? Contact your legislators and tell them that we need pesticide laws that take the most toxic and most polluting pesticides off the market. Tell them to enact policies that maintain and improve natural habitats that support insects and other wildlife. And in your own backyard, you can stop mowing some of your lawn for a month. This is a new idea that started in England called No Mo May. On board, a lot of residents there allowed their lawns to go natural in May, letting violence, white clover, and dandelions bloom to provide food for pollinators. Scientists in Appleton found that No Mo May lawns had five times the number of bees and three times more bee species than moaned parks. Amazingly, they also found a rusty patched bumblebee, which is a federally endangered species at a downtown Appleton home. No Mo May has spread to communities in Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, and Montana. Let's bring it to Vermont. Food in all the warm months, not just May, so No Mo May is just a start. And if you'd like to learn more about what's happening to our insects, I recommend this new book. It's called The Insect Crisis, The Fall of the Tiny Empires that Run the World. I hope we can all make a vow this Earth Day to make it a better place for all the tiny empires in the natural world around us. Thanks for listening. Good. Is that all right? All right. So here's a song that Errol Vino wrote. It's called Pollinators, and the words are in your little booklets. And Brian over there is passing out booklets for you to sing along. There's a chorus that's really easy to get to hang out. And the other ones you can probably figure out just by looking at your words too. These butterflies, bats, and birds They're in trouble, have you heard? Flies, birds, and beavers Pollinators, your nature to fly We're killing them with pesticides Banners need protection Are essential To eat the foods we need Let's protect them Thank you so much. I'm going to introduce our next speaker is a young youth activist from Hardwick, Vermont. He's also my son. His name is Liam Lyman Lees. I'm going to go grab his speech just a second. I have an Instagram account. I originally wasn't going to say it, but I want to see a post about You know that the lawn thing in May, the trend, I want to spread your story on my story. And then people will see that you didn't mow your lawn and these flowers are growing. I'm Liam Lyman Lees. I was born and raised on these lands. I've never been outside Vermont long enough to forget how beautiful Vermont is. I became obsessed with finding amphibians and other cool critters in the wilderness. For years my passion for seeing, studying, and investigating wildlife, local, historical, and global was fostered any way I could imagine to foster it. But as I got older, these images and thoughts became too sad for me to handle. As I left my studies, my mind was left to care about investing time and money into ecologically friendly organizations around the world. Right now I focus my hope on the horseshoe bat breeding organization and for trade deals to leave pesticides containing FDA controlled substances such as neonicotinoids in the dust so beekeepers can use native bees rather than importing them all the way from Russia and or genetically altering their scenery out of pocket to protect their sacred honey-makers. Thank you so much, Liam. A situation, an eruption of the Earth's climate system, is easily the single biggest ongoing threat to the survival of people and all species. We know that all over this country and around the world people have been experiencing increasingly hazardous weather events. We know about the wildfires in the west, fire season in many locations that now continues throughout the year. We know about the typhoons in the southeast, west. And we also know, many of us, that population of the US lives someplace that's been affected by extreme weather in just the last few years. So the world, especially in the global south, especially in the most marginalized communities, have been facing these impacts for very much longer. We've seen evidence of severe climate impacts on people's way of life, especially indigenous and other land-based peoples around the world, going back to the 1980s, and some of the information in the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that came out just last summer, documents, places in South Asia and other places in the world where we now know that there are impacts on the daily lives of people and all species going back even to the 1970s. And that if we're not able to stop the use of fossil fuels in really just the next few years, you know, for too many decades, we were saying, we only have 10 years to solve this. Well, we don't have 10 years to solve this anymore. The latest IPCC report says that we have just a few years. We need to, is this too loud? No, you're good. All right, I see somebody holding their ears. Okay, I'm not going to try no microphone, then I won't be able to talk for a week, was I? We don't have 10 years. We need to cut dioxide and other climate-damaging emissions in half. By 2025, that's three years from now. That's really all we have left. And are the people in this building doing enough? No. Are the people in Washington coming close to even reversing the subsidies and other policies that continue to benefit the fossil fuel industry? No. We have a lot further to go and we need to act much faster. Just a little bit specifically since it's the theme for today about effects, direct effects on pollinators. We know that insect populations are incredibly resilient, but we also know now that at three degrees of warming, which is where we're headed if we're not able to meet the most ambitious targets, half of all insect species would lose more than half of their current habitable range. That means that insects are more vulnerable to these climate effects than vertebrates and even than plants. We know that cold weather species like Arctic bumblebees are quickly losing all of their habitat. There was a study just a couple of years ago out of the University of Ottawa saying that populations of all North American bumblebee species are now down by almost half. We know that pollinators are very responsive to earlier spring conditions, that migrations are happening earlier, but that flowering times for the plant species that these organisms depend on are changing much more slowly. We also know that increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is reducing the nutritional value of plants. For example, the very latest IPCC report that came out in February says that the protein in goldenrod pollen, one of the most abundant fall wildflowers that bees depend on in order to be able to get through the coming winter, the protein content of that pollen is down by 30%, and that's directly attributable to climate effects. Stress plants have altered scents and are less attractive to bees. And we also know that crop damaging insects are way out of balance. You may be read about the locus swarms that swept East Africa during last year's growing season and how that situation continues getting worse. We have the emerald ash borer spreading through Vermont, destroying our ash trees. Again, Vermont keeps saying that we want to set a good example, but emissions of greenhouse gases here in Vermont have mostly been rising in recent years, especially for heating and transportation. The legislature is taking incremental steps, some important ones. We have an environmental justice commission, most likely for the first time thanks to a bill that just passed. There's been a huge debate in this building about what they're calling a clean heat standard, which is something we certainly need, but we know it's being manipulated by the fuel dealers and other interests to turn into a subsidy for so-called biofuels, which in many cases we know are worse for the climate than fossil fuels because even though trees and other plants regenerate, the indirect effects of emissions are just at least as bad as from fossil fuels. The Transportation Committee has taken steps to move away from funding-only automobile transportation and taking some measures to do something about our extreme dearth of public transportation options here in Vermont. Folks might remember that the company that runs the bus service between here and Burlington and all of the other long-distance buses in Vermont has been trying to cut service. There might be some funding temporarily to prevent that, but this is happening at a time when we need to rely more on public transportation and less on individual cars to get around, electric or not. So, these incremental steps, but know we need to go much further, we need to radically change the way we live. In addition to this being the 60th anniversary of Silent Spring, as we heard from Marguerite, it's also the 50th anniversary of a famous report that came out in the early 1970s from MIT and other sources called the Limits to Growth. And the Limits to Growth discussion has often been distorted into a narrow focus on individual personal responsibility, that we're going to address the problem of growth, that we're going to address the problem of excess consumption, that we're going to address the problem of climate damaging emissions. We need to fundamentally change the way we live. We need to fundamentally change the economic system and really begin to usher in a greener world. Thank you so much, Brian Tokar. I'm going to introduce an activist from Plainfield. His name is Iraq. He's a brilliant artist and activist. He's super creative in how he approaches big problems in the world. And he's going to read a piece that he wrote. Actually, I've never heard it, so he can tell you about that. OK. This is a poem that I wrote this morning. And yeah, it's a lot of dire news. It's a tough time. I hope this poem can reach us in the heart, give us some of that reflection of the love that we feel for this planet and the species to keep going and keep fighting. And it's called May Day Poem for an Earth Day Song. May Day Poem for an Earth Day Song. Let me draw up some words from the long memory of night. Let these words emerge and take flight like birds reflecting the sun. Let these words be seen as shards of mirror gleaming, shining, stun gun imagery to wake the sleeping souls caught wickedly by greed. Let these words swarm like bees and rise like sea levels. Let these words capsize the yachts of CEO devils and oil tycoons. Let these words sweep like brooms. Clean out the room. Clear out the eyes. Clear the skies. Open the windows of the soul. Let these words stop the bombings and instead fill the bowls of famished masses. Let these so-called leaders and bosses fall to their knees apologizing for all they've ravaged. Let them cry for eons and let these words echo as affirmations from ages beyond our own. From generations unknown. Let this May Day Poem be an Earth Day Song drawn from the memory of night. Let this poem be light as we move together, as we weather the weather, as we rise and shine. Let this be the time. Let this be the time. Let this be the time we rise. So before I go any further, I just want to give a big shout out and thank you to some of the legislators here who have been doing a really great job to try to get protective legislation through. And I want to start with my local legislator, Chip Triano. That's how I got to know how the legislature works. He didn't really know much about pollinators or pesticides when we first talked to him about this issue, but he made it a point to come to community forums and learn about it and he introduced this legislation and the most recent one, and he has been introducing legislation pretty much every year since we started talking to him and keeps getting turned down. So he and Amy Sheldon from Middlebury introduced the latest bill H626 that got turned down. I want to give them a big round of applause for all their work. And a couple of the other legislators in the Senate and House that have been really great supporters are Jim McCullough from Willis-Stem. He has supported and introduced legislation for water quality and he's always supported legislation for stopping pesticides. Also, Chris Pearson, who is the vice chair of the Senate Act Committee, has tried his hardest to keep the substance of the H26 bill intact, but unfortunately it was gutted by the Senate Act Committee. And then similarly, Anthony Polina also really stuck up for the content of that bill. It didn't help. It still got turned down. It still got gutted. And then in the House Agriculture Committee, Heather Supernaut was a big advocate for this bill. She really tried hard, but it's really hard when you're one voice and there's a lot more that are saying that they want to support. They say it's dairy farmers, but it's really not dairy farmers. Let's get real. It's the huge agribusiness, agrochemical corporation, Monsanto. So when the article came out in seven days, that said a lot. Just about a week ago, an article came out in seven days about this H626 bill. And they said a lot about these issues, and it was pretty educational, but one thing they really missed was that they painted as a picture of a struggle between dairy farmers and beleaguered beekeepers. It's not a battle between these struggling farmers. It's the biggest ginormous stakeholder in this battle is the Bayer Monsanto Corporation, this entity that produces and sells toxic treated seeds, not just to farmers in Vermont, but to every single corner of the globe. Why is this important fact left out of the seven days article? I don't know. So there's a little hint of it in the article because they generously quoted Margaret Lagas, who is a dairy farmer and a lobbyist who represents regional dairies and feed sellers. So she comes from a long line of dairy farmers, but she also is a lobbyist, and she doesn't sell... When we're talking about feed sellers, we're not talking about the Willy's Store, these little tiny grocery stores and stuff. We're talking about Bayer Monsanto Corporation. That's who she's on the payroll of. It's not helping out these little corner stores that have a little bag of feed. That's what they want you to think, but that's not what it is. And I, you know, shame on seven days for not being a little bit more real about that. So basically what this points to is an issue that's called conflict of interest. And we have dozens of volunteer activists and struggling stakeholders across Vermont and beekeepers. They come to the Agriculture, the Agency of Agriculture of Vermont Fish and Wildlife. They try to tell their story, but it doesn't matter. The environmental... The taxpayers are dishing out millions of dollars every year thinking that these agencies are actually doing their job, but it isn't happening. Our environment is not getting protected. In fact, it's getting demolished. So conflict of interest is a huge problem. How? Why is it that year after year, they vote against something as common sense as banning toxic substances that have been proven by thousands of studies to cause so much harm to bees, birds, bats and butterflies. And I just wanted to just mention before I move on is that this podium here is actually a drum. It's a wooden drum called a cajon that's mounted on top of a podium. And I want to mic this.