| Conservation and Environment Report 3/21/10 As the beauties of April unfold all around us, buds unfurling, birds returning, it’s time once again to focus on Earth Day, this year the fortieth, to celebrate the bounty of the earth and to find ways to protect it. Unfortunately not much positive has happened in the protection category in the past year. Relegated to the back burner by the contentious health care debate and our economic troubles, the climate change bill is stuck between house and senate. Grass roots advocacy is crucial to remind our legislators that precious time is being lost while glaciers melt, vicious storms increase, and wildlife habitat shrinks. Let’s hope we’ll be able to truly celebrate the 41st Earth Day with a solid bill passed, capping carbon emissions and providing incentives to green energy initiatives. In our neighborhood, we have ample opportunities to celebrate. The Will County Forest Preserve District has a new website, www.reconnectwithnature.org, describing events at the various preserves. At Plum Creek Nature Center, throughout April we’re invited to take part in a scavenger hunt. “Just pick up your scavenger hunt form and then set off on our trails of adventure to find the answers to our riddles. Bring your completed form back to the nature center (during open hours, Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m; Sunday 12 to 4,) to be entered to win an Earth Day prize.” From Thorn Creek Nature Center comes the following invitation for April 25, 12 to 3, a program for all ages: Join staff and discover what kind of mark you leave on the earth. Determine your carbon footprint and learn how even small changes make a difference. There will be plenty of children’s activities throughout the day. Players in the effort to protect the earth are not limited to environmental organizations, as has been pointed out recently by Jared Diamond, a professor of geography at the University of California at Los Angeles and author of Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse. His thoughts, expressed in an article that appeared in the December 15 edition of the St Petersburg (FL) Times, under the title “Big Business may save us all” seem well worth sharing. Excerpts are as follows: “There is a widespread view . . . that big businesses are environmentally destructive, evil and driven by short-term profits. I know – because I used to share that view. But today I have more nuanced feelings. Over the years I’ve joined the boards of two environmental organizations World Wildlife Fund and Conservation International, serving alongside many business executives. I’ve worked with executives of oil, mining, retail, logging and financial services companies. I’ve discovered that while some businesses are indeed as destructive as many suspect, others are among the world’s strongest positive forces for environmental sustainability. The embrace of environmental concerns by chief executives has accelerated recently because lower consumption of environmental resources saves money in the short run; maintaining sustainable resource levels and not polluting saves money in the long run; and a clean image – one attained by, say, avoiding oil spills and other environmental disasters – reduces criticism from employees, consumers and government.” Diamond cites examples from Walmart, which has reduced fuel costs by $26 million per year, by installing small auxiliary power units instead of running truck engines all night during mandatory rest stops, (in terms of carbon emissions equivalent to taking 18,300 passenger vehicles off the road), meanwhile working to design trucks that will run on biofuels generated from waste grease at Walmart delis, from Coca Cola, which aims to make its plants in 200 countries water-neutral, returning to the environment water in quantities equal to the amount used in beverages and their production, and from Chevron whose rigorous environmental standards he praises. He concludes: “My friends in the business world keep telling me that Washington can help by investing in green research, offering tax incentives and passing cap-and-trade legislation; and by setting and enforcing tough standards to ensure that companies with cheap, dirty standards don’t have a competitive advantage over those business protecting the environment. As for the rest of us, we should get over the misimpression that American business cares only about immediate profits, and we reward companies that work to keep the planet healthy.” |