Trees and the human quality of life

This is a newspaper column I just dashed off.

I saw a sign like this – actually a placard – only one other time in two decades of exploring both natural lands and urban places in Pennsylvania.

And that previous time wasn’t in a spot of public land. It was on the grounds of the Phipps Conservatory in the Squirrel Hill section of Pittsburgh.

The recent find: I was hiking along an urban thoroughfare from Point A (a parking lot in front of a strip mall) to Point B (the Church Street Marketplace) in Burlington, Vt., when the 6X10-inch sign placed at eye level in the crook of a northern oak tree invited me to look closer.

(Learn about the Church Street Marketplace at www.churchstmarketplace.com/).

“Please . . . love this tree,” said the sign’s headline next to a black-on-white impression of a tree with spreading crown.

Then: “It gives you shade and clean air to breathe.”

Indeed it does. Indeed they do.

More: “Water and care for it like it’s your own. This tree was planted by the Burlington Parks and Recreation Department. What type of tree is it?”

The closer: “This tree was grown by volunteers of Branch Out Burlington! In the Bulrington Community Tree Nursery. For more information on urban tree care: www.branchoutburlington.org

So Plant a tree, not a lawn (a.k.a. a turf farm). Here’s why:

-        Trees combat the greenhouse effect (To produce its food, a tree absorbs and locks away carbon dioxide in the wood, roots and leaves. Carbon dioxide is a global warming gas. A forest is a carbon storage area or a "sink" that can lock up as much carbon as it produces. This locking-up process "stores" carbon as wood and not as a global-warming "greenhouse" gas.

-        Trees clean the air;

-        Trees provide oxygen;

-        Trees cool the streets and the city;

-        Trees conserve energy and water;

-        Trees help prevent water pollution;

-        Trees slow runoff and hold soil in place;

-        Trees buffer noise pollution sources;

-        Trees act as wind breaks;

-        Trees make great places to hide in the childhood game of hide-and-seek, and the big ones are perfect locales for tree houses.

I remember many favorite trees, trees that I loved on first glance.

-        My first Alligator Juniper tree in south-central New Mexico;

-        The Shabark Hickory I once gawked at every time I stood near its trunk along Little Nescopeck Creek a mile from Conyngham;

-        The 1,000-year-old Douglas-fir wife Monica photographed me standing next to in the Grove of the Patriarchs, Mt. Rainer National Park, Washington State;

-        The Hackberry I planted in the backyard of our home in Conyngham;

-        And the big Yellow Birch I hugged uphill of the back side of Heart Lake, Adirondacks.

Take a moment; reflect back on your own encounters with the trees of Wild Nature. And ask your local municipality’s leaders why it doesn’t have a similar nature education program in place.

Local greenhouse gas factory

I shot this snapshot at the 5 Corners intersection in Essex Junction, Vt., yesterday. It's a casebook study on the carbon pollution of the great American motor vehicle. Pollute, pollute, pollute . . .

This is ground zero among the local greenhouse gas factories. I watched this traffic debacle yesterday at the vaunted 5 Corners intersection in the village of Essex Junction, Vt. It takes several minutes of watching to find an automobile that has more than one person in it. And that means this: There is no carpooling or ride-sharing. The personal motor vee

hikle still rules the roost, I mean the highway.

A thought about cars and nature

From the late great writer Ed Abbey: "We've got to close the parks to private cars if we want to keep them as parks. The parks are for people, not machines. Let the machines find their own parks."
Hah. One could easily apply this thought to any number of places/sites/neighborhoods/municipalities/counties/states and make, in the process, real contributions to the betterment of our collective quality of life.

What automobiles emit (and walkers breath)

Most motorists will neither care nor give a damn about these facts. Too bad. My daily fitness walks take me right up to the sidewalk vs. street border of the 5 Corners intersection in Essex Junction, Vt. Walkers like me get to breath all this “stuff” as we do our thing, burning calories not a fossil fuel, aka gasoline.

Vehicle emissions are created from the incomplete combustion of gasoline or diesel. Other factors such as emission controls, engine design, and vehicle maintenance may affect vehicle emissions.
Vehicles emit many pollutants into the air, including carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, and volatile organic compounds. These pollutants then combine to form secondary pollutants such as fine particulate matter and ozone. While emissions from an individual vehicle may be minimal compared to an industrial source, emissions from many vehicles on the road at one time can have a serious impact on air quality.
Pollutants emitted from vehicles can lead to poor visibility and health problems such as asthma and respiratory illness. Pollutants also can damage buildings and affect the quality of water resources.
Under the Clean Air Act, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has set protective health-based standards for ozone and other pollutants in the air we breathe. Failure to meet the ozone and other standards over a period of time can result in an area being designated nonattainment by EPA. States strive to achieve attainment with the standards to ensure that public health is protected, promote economic growth, avoid the potential loss of federal highway funding, and preclude the time and cost required to develop and implement plans to re-attain attainment status. Learn more.

The most effective way to reduce emissions from your vehicle is to use it less.

• Ride the bus, carpool, and share trips to reduce the number of cars emitting pollutants. If possible, choose nonpolluting travel such as walking or biking.
• Reduce commuting. Choose to live close to your work.
• Organize a carpool at your work. Call 345-POOL for help.
• Combine trips to the same areas. Once you arrive, park your car and walk between destinations.
• Avoid driving during peak traffic hours or in stop-and-go traffic.

All cars emit some pollutants; poorly maintained cars emit the most. A properly tuned car runs better, gets better gas mileage, and pollutes less.

• Get regular tune-ups. Vehicles with worn spark plugs or clogged fuel or air filters do not run efficiently and emit more pollution.
• Keep tires properly inflated and wheels aligned to reduce tire drag on the road. Gas mileage drops 1% for every pound below the recommended level of pressure.
• Do not top off the gas tank. This allows harmful chemicals to escape into the air.

The harder your engine works, the more gas it burns, and the more tailpipe emissions you create.

• Avoid carrying unneeded items. Each extra 100 pounds increases the amount of gas used by 4%.
• Place items inside the vehicle instead of on roof racks. Remove roof racks when not in use. The wind drag from a rack increases gas consumption by almost 1 mile per gallon.
• Drive at a medium speed. Most cars get the best gas mileage between 35 and 45 miles per hour.
• Drive at a steady speed. Avoid stop-and-go traffic and take it easy on the brake and gas pedals.
• Use the air conditioner only when necessary. Air conditioners can reduce your gas mileage by 20%.
• Avoid long idles at drive-up windows or when waiting. Restarting a warm engine takes less fuel than letting it run for just 30 seconds.
• During hot summer months, fuel vehicles in the evening to facilitate dissipation of volatile organic compounds that contribute to ozone formation.

Audubon Society forest in S.C. sells carboon credits

Some PR came out of the package described in this article. But this alone is hardly going to make a difference. Raising money was the gambit anyway.

Cuts in carbon emissions won't stop climate from changing

It's too far gone for any reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to make any substantial difference at this point. And still, Americans keep on motoring across a landscape that's increasingly comfortable for cars, not humans who cycle or walk. Read this op-ed for the decisive finding on where the world is right now.

Letter to editor: Celebrating EPA's climate action

Here's a nice LTE from the York, Pa., paper. Well said and well argued.

Norway blockades oil rig from activists

That's ONE oil rig. One. While a worthy target of activism and a good photo-op, that's about it; kinda the equivalent of shutting down one coal-fired power plant for one hour as the hundreds of others (in the U.S. alone) churn out megawatt after megawatt. Read about the Norwegian drilling rig.

The cost of NOT creating greenhouse pollution? Small, even tiny

That's the point driven home nicely by columnist Paul Krugman in this piece. Just don't tell the U.S. Chamber of Commerce or its members or any other friends of polluters.

The Big Melt accelerates

And still, the politicians listen only to what the lobbyists for Big Coal and Big Oil polluters are telling them. Oh, and the campaign contributions from those same people/outfits help keep the status quo alive. What a disaster. Read about the Big Melt here.

The Points of No Return

NY Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote this telling piece for today's op-ed page. Somehow, though, I doubt whether any of the deniers will be shake loose from their protective moats of lies.

Another railroad tanker derails near Albany, N.Y.

How many more of these will take place before a tanker rupture occurs and a real awful disaster makes headlines? How about we lessen the chances of that ever happening by backing off our addiction to oil?

Let the EPA do its job

Too bad the EPA is not a cabinet-level agency, as its twins are in country after country. Still, Republicans in Congress, as they suck up to their rich campaign contributors (many of whom are big-time polluters and destroyers of Wild Nature), won't let our Environmental Protection Agency do its job of protecting. Here's an editorial on the subject. 

A look at the shills, skeptics and other climate change denalists

What a crowd. The Earth - our only planet - is entering what conservationists have termed the Sixth Great Extinction - but the shills skeptics and other shrills are worried only about the goodwill of their polluting campaign contributors and the other outliers in the "clean coal" universe. Read a dissection of the denalists.

Op-ed: Don't sell U.S. coal to Asian markets

There is no such thing as "clean" coal. Whether anthracite or bituminous, the stuff is fossilized dirt, and digging it up and shoveling it into a furnace means spreading the filthy, harmful dust. The writer of this NY Times op-ed says it right. If Americans care about the atmosphere we leave for generations to come, we'd better stop burning it, and selling it, too.

Plant a tree: Here's why

All the way back to my days as a college student in the early 1970s, I pondered Americans’ love affair with the lawn – the greenest, purest, most dandelion-free turf that money (and lots of chemicals) could produce. Earning my tuition by mowing turf farms (a k a city parks) for the city of Pocatello, Idaho, just helped solidify my mental picture of it all.

In two-plus years of living in an on-base house on Robins Air Force Base, Ga., 1980-82) I finally formulated a more pleasing-to-the-eye scene: Urban trees as places liked by fellow creatures of Earth. In the case of that residential duplex, the Georgia wildlife the live oak tree attracted was enough to generate page after page of notes in an early field notebook that still has a prominent place in my home library.

Field naturalists are big note takers, recording a lot more than just the day’s high and low temperatures, but also signs of Wild Nature like the first day of swelling buds, the first early-spring appearance outside its winter burrow of the local woodchuck, and new signs of the spread of kudzu, the non-native vine that ate the South.

By planting trees native to our region of the continent (and the list of plants native to Pennsylvania alone is exhaustive), the homeowner can take pride in accomplishing many objectives.

Trees in the home yard do these things and a whole lot more:

- Trees release oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide to freshen the air.

- They trap dust and dirt, and remove pollution particles from the air.

- Trees increase property values. (Read a Wall Street Journal article about this at http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303722604579113230353966564)

- They provide shade in the summer, protection from wind in the winter.

- Trees give us leaves to make the best compost.

- Trees provide habitat for birds.

-        Trees make your neighborhood a more beautiful place.

-        Trees whose spring flowers show off for humans also offer food to native pollinators.

-        Neighborhoods and homes that are barren are known to have a greater incidence of violence in and out of the home than their greener counterparts. Trees and landscaping help reduce the level of fear.

The organization Tree People (treepeople.org) notes on its Web site: “Average temperatures in Los Angeles have risen 6 degrees F in the last 50 years as tree coverage has declined and the number of heat-absorbing roads and buildings has increased.
“Trees cool the city by up to 10 degrees, by shading our homes and streets, breaking up urban ‘heat islands’ and releasing water vapor into the air through their leaves.”
Most importantly in this age of Earth’s changing climate, trees do this: “Global warming is the result of excess greenhouse gases, created by burning fossil fuels and destroying tropical rainforests. Heat from the sun, reflected back from the earth, is trapped in this thickening layer of gases, causing global temperatures to rise.
“Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a major greenhouse gas. Trees absorb CO2, removing and storing the carbon while releasing the oxygen back into the air. In one year, an acre of mature trees absorbs the amount of CO2 produced when you drive your car 26,000 miles.”
You can read, and ponder, the top 22 benefits of trees at www.treepeople.org/top-22-benefits-trees
So this spring, let’s plant a tree, or, better yet, a whole bunch of trees. You can learn about Pennsylvania’s native trees from the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources at www.dcnr.state.pa.us/cs/groups/public/documents/document/dcnr_003489.pdf

Obama's Keystone decision: Just say NO, Mr. President

This NY Times op-ed I just read spells out - quite clearly - why the president should just say no to the monster we know as the Keystone XL pipeline. So, Mr. President, just say no

EPA ballyoes greeenhouse gas reduction plan

But this will do nothing to stop or even slow (a teeny, tiny bit) the greenhouse gas pollution factories I see daily during my six-mile fitness walks. This photo, taken during my recent stay in Boise, Idaho, shows what a greenhouse gas factory in motion looks like.

Here's the EPA's morning cheer:
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today released its annual Climate Protection Partnerships report, highlighting the steps more than 21,000 organizations across the United States have taken to reduce greenhouse gas pollution while achieving significant environmental and economic benefits. 

“The urgency to act on climate change is clear,” said EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy. “Through investments in cleaner technologies and energy-efficient practices, EPA’s Climate Protection Partners show us that we can cut the harmful carbon pollution that fuels climate change and protects public health—while continuing to grow a strong, sustainable economy.”

The achievements outlined in this report support the goals of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan by cutting energy waste, encouraging energy efficiency, and saving money for American families and businesses. The report, "EPA’s Office of Atmospheric Programs Climate Protection Partnerships 2012 Annual Report" includes accomplishments such as:

-- In 2012, EPA's climate protection programs prevented 365 million metric tons of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions—equivalent to the emissions from the annual electricity use of more than 50 million homes.

-- Americans saved more than $26 billion on their utility bills in 2012 with the help of ENERGY STAR® and prevented greenhouse gas emissions equal to the annual electricity use of 35 million homes. 

-- Since the Green Power Partnership was introduced in 2001, more than 1,400 organizations have committed to using about 29 billion kilowatt-hours of green power each year. 

-- More than 450 partners have installed over 5,700 megawatts of new combined heat and power since the Combined Heat and Power Partnership launched in 2001. 

-- In 2012, EPA’s methane and fluorinated greenhouse-gas-program partners used EPA tools and resources to prevent emissions equal to the annual electricity use from more than 10 million homes. 

-- In total, more than 21,000 organizations and millions of Americans have partnered with the EPA through the Office of Atmospheric Programs’ climate partnerships and produced significant environmental benefits.

EPA’s climate protection programs continue to advance greenhouse gas reduction goals and deliver greater benefits each year. These benefits can only grow as more businesses, public sector institutions, households, and others adopt the practices promoted by the climate protection partnerships. All of these benefits are the result of voluntary actions by individuals, businesses and industry. 

These reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are increasingly important to tackle climate change challenges. The global average temperature for every decade since the Industrial Revolution has been hotter than the previous decade, and the 12 hottest years on record have all occurred within the past 15 years. Scientists have observed changes in precipitation, rising sea level, melting ice and altered weather patterns, including more frequent and intense storms.

The report further outlines the environmental accomplishments of these programs. To read the full report:http://www.energystar.gov/about/sites/default/uploads/files/2012_AnnualReport_Final.pdf?3cd5-e266. To learn more about climate change: www.epa.gov/climatechange/