Sunday, October 7, 2007
The smaller but longer pledge from last week works as a To Do list, so I am repeating it.
Pledge to build a sustainable, just, and prosperous world:
1. U.S. shall join a treaty to reduce global warming;
2. Reduce my CO2 pollution and become "carbon neutral;"
3. Promote responsible coal burning;
4. Increase energy efficiency of my home and car;
5. Support laws and policies that expand renewable energy and reduce oil and coal use;
6. Plant trees; preserve and protect forests; and,
7. Support "green" businesses and leaders.
Plus
8. Restore oceans and watersheds; and
9. Prevent species annihilation.
Item 2 assumes that I'm not carbon neutral. As it turns out, I'm probably not. There are 37 trees and 14 large bushes in my yard. The house and outbuildings cover about 2200 square feet of the 1.5 acre that is my yard. The remaining is lawn, garden, and pasture. This is redwood country, it rains a lot and is cool with morning fog. Trees, plants, and grass grow fast and tall. All this abundant greenery is my carbon sink.
I was going to try to quickly get an estimate on use vs. production of CO2 for my plot, but this will take more time than I have this morning. I have to install a water heater and pick up a friend at the airport.
For an urban calculation see My backyard carbon sink. This site referenced a cool Australian site with online carbon calculators.
Monday, October 8, 2007
My friend Dale is visiting for a few days. He is a life-long activist, very liberal in his views. He donates time and money to world hunger projects, and many other charitable efforts. Yet he hadn't put any real thought into the whether or not he has any impact, negative or positive, on the world's pollution crisis. He manages five farmer's markets in the Long Beach/Los Angeles area. The picture below is the new market located in the Bixby Knolls area of Long Beach at Atlantic and 46th Streets. Direct farmer to consumer sales greatly reduces vehicle fuel use. I've read that the average distance that a food item travels to reach a consumer in the United States is 1500 miles. Some of the farmers at the LA area markets drive in from the Central Valley of California, some from the southern desert areas of the state.
Raise the consciousness of your friends and family members. Ask them what they can do to save the world today. Encourage them to have a little fun and visit the local farmers' markets
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
A local crisis has reared it's very ugly head in the form of newspaper articles and county supervisor actions here in Humboldt County to buy time to consider the latest attack on the redwood region by Maxxam Corp, owner, by means of a hostile takeover, of the Pacific Lumber Company. After taking over the asset rich lumber company, which had been operating as one of the most responsible corporations, both in terms of sustainable timber production and also toward it's employees, Maxxam raided the pension plans, harvested the standing timber as fast as possible, siphoned off the profits to affiliates, acquired huge debts based on future operations and then declared bankruptcy in Texas, blaming governmental conservation restrictions. Now they have proposed a reorganization plan to the Texas bankruptcy court chopping 22,000 acres of prime redwood timber production land adjacent to protected ancient forests and the Headwater Forest into ranchlets for the rich.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
I have a guest log entry from my long-time friend, Dale Whitney, Market Manager, Harbor Area Farmers Markets. Thank you Dale.
There has been a lot of re-thinking going on recently about the real overall advantage of shopping for your food at your local Farmers Market.
For a long time we Americans have been socialized to think that CONVENIENCE is the main thing that should influence our decisions on where to shop for our food. If the supermarket was right down the street, then that was the place to go. And then a little more recently we began to look for ORGANIC food over and above all others, as long as the organics weren't TOO much more expensive.
But now our thinking is being forced in a different direction by factors such as Al Gore's AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, which teaches about how our "convenient" lifestyle adversely affects world climate. The upshot of this is that we have now become acutely aware of the evil effects of long supply lines ( = large "carbon footprints" ) bringing us our food. Supermarkets offer us food shipped in from all over the world, while Farmers Markets bring us fresh, locally-grown food with relatively short supply lines (as opposed to the average of 1,500 miles for a typical supermarket item).
And as for the "O" word ( Organic ), more and more modern shoppers are opting for "fresh and local," even if it is not organic, rather than for an organic item that has been shipped in from another continent.
As the 19th Century poet James Russell Lowell put it: "New Occasions Teach New Duties, Time Makes Ancient Good Uncouth." Buying fresh and local - even if it isn't organic or supremely convenient - is now drawing more and more folks into their neighborhood Farmers Market. It's a decision that's good for the planet, and fresh food tastes better as well.
See you at the market - the Farmers Market, that is!
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Prez Bush now believes that human activities contribute to global warming. Regarding global warming, here's a recent summary from Greenpeace. Here's a comment from the Opinion page of the Herald Tribune reporting on what the Bush administration is doing. Here's NPR's take on the UN meeting. Here's Bali's point of view regarding the upcoming 13th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its subsidiary the third Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol. Report from Yahoo News about Bush's meeting, the Major Economies Meeting on Energy Security and Climate Change.
I have to catch up on the issue of global warming, or at least the efforts to slow or stop human contribution
to the trend. The reason that I signed Al Gore's pledge and started this blog is that I am interested in the
various parts of the pledge. The solution to each problem is a worthy goal.
There's just something inherently
wrong with humans trashing the entire earth and damaging other living things on a wholesale scale. That
type of activity belongs to a mindless asteroid.
Several years ago, I read Michael Crichton's State of Fear and his arguments that global warming is a scare story and that good science does not support the idea that human activity has much effect. So I listened to an interview with Charlie Rose to see if he has changed his mind. He indicated that he has not (as of February, 2007). Here is a site that shouts that Michael Crichton is right and outlines the points made in State of Fear. It's more fun to read the book.
Friday, October 12, 2007
In the course of putting together a conservation easement package to be used by our new land trust, I realized that neither the landowner that I was working with, nor I, knew much about sustainable logging practices. So I checked out two books from our local library and have been reading both.
The first is The Redwood Forest, History, Ecology, and Conservation of the Coast Redwoods which is a compilation of
current information (2000) from leading experts in conservation biology, geologic and cultural history,
natural history, ecology, management, and the redwood ecosystem. In the next to the last chapter is a
description of Big Creek Lumber located a little south of
San Francisco. This company is one of the
few which knowledgeable people point to as exemplary, both economically and environmentally.
Their description of their forest management methods, as stated in their web site, is as follows:
Big Creek carefully selects and marks individual trees for harvest. None of Big Creek's forests are "clear-cut." Individual tree selection allows the foresters to leave trees behind that benefit most from thinning. The goal of Big Creek foresters is a forest with healthy, growing trees that can be harvested in the future. During harvesting, soil disturbance is keptto a minimum, temporary trails are covered with foliage and limbs left from the harvest, and permanent roads are maintained to minimize soil erosion and protect water quality. Wildlife habitats can be enhanced, wild fire hazards reduced, and aesthetics preserved by careful selective harvesting methods.
Redwoods have a unique ability among conifer trees to sprout from the stump of a cut stem. This makes our foresters' job of regenerating the forest much easier. Stump sprouts, genetically identical to the "parent tree", grow rapidly, given enough sunlight, and the benefit of an already existing root system below.
Specifics include single-tree selection; small clearing areas such as one-half acre; cut trees must have leave trees within 75 ft, and at least half of the trees in the stand greater than 12" dbh must be retained; near streams, greater than 75 percent canopy retention; areas with marbled murrelet habitat are not entered during the breeding season; critical wildlife habitat trees are retained, including down trees and snags. A 100-year rotation plan is used.
Redwood and Douglas fir are the common timber trees at the lower elevations in the Van Duzen River watershed. Heading inland and at higher elevations, are oak forests and grasslands, and higher still are mixed conifer forests. More on these tomorrow.
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Wild Logging is a study of private land management in various parts of Montana and Oregon. Although the tree species were essentially the same, each landlower managed his forest in a different way because of different circumstances of landforms, weather, and ecological relationships. All were aiming at sustainable management and all achieved it. But each had to take an approach suited to their land, the local conditions, and the specific forest.
Forests are divided into three categories in the United States, government owned, private industrial such as timber companies, and private nonindustrial. A Nonindustrial Private Forest (NIPF) produces commercial quantities of timber, but does not have timber processing facilities. NIPF owners include individuals, families, and partnerships. A small percent are owned by pension funds, foundations, universities, tribal reservations, and other non-timber entities. Most hold less than 160 acres but, depending on the area of the country, NIPF owners own between a one-quarter to one-half of the total forestland.
Most NIPF owners are environmentally conscious, but most do not have forest management plans. Professional foresters can analyse a forest and generate a long-term plan with the goals of the owner in mind. Several of the land owners in Bryan Foster's book read forestry magazines, talked to county extension agents and other experts and over time, developed a program that worked best for them.
So long for this week.
Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them. ~ Bill Vaughan