Going Green in Comfort

When I was in college, I used to go for drives to clear my head before I had a paper to do or before I sat down to study. The school I attended was three hours from my hometown, so, especially at first, I would just marvel at the landscape. The area where I grew up was full of trees and tall hills; the landscape surrounding college was, by comparison, incredibly flat. Any elevations were smaller, "rolling," I believe is the term most often used. Photo by Tom Fisk from Pexels It was on one of those drives that I saw a most unusual hill. It was taller and in kind of a pyramid shape, unlike the other rolling ones in the area. Squares of sod grass covered it, which was obvious as each square seemed to be a different shade of green. This, I could tell, was not a natural feature of the landscape. As I wondered what is was and why it was there, I saw a sign that told me all I needed to know; this behemoth out in the middle of the prairie was the county landfill. Buri...

Photo by Holger Link on Unsplash Amid the stories in my Facebook feed of how deadly Covid-19 was in China and its progression to other nations, was this map: NASA and European Space Agency This shows the nitrogen dioxide — most commonly produced by automobiles and power and industrial facilities — in the air over China from before the Covid-19 quarantines began to a period during the emergency measures. The difference is startling, and as the virus spreads and other governments enact similar quarantines, more nations will also see a drop in nitrogen dioxide until the crisis passes. Since I first saw this comparison, I’ve wondered if this might be the silver lining in an otherwise devastating epidemic? Could this sudden drop in what people continuously pump into our atmosphere buy us more time to make permanent environment-friendly behavior changes? An ABC News story posted March 5, 2020, is not encouraging on this front. Andrea Dutton, a climate scientist at...

( Beverly Omalley / FreeRangeStock.com ) From food to housing to the technology at our hands, we get a lot of use out of our planet. That's why I want to spend this holiday by showing my appreciation. For those who'd like to do the same, I offer the following suggestions for a greener Thanksgiving: Shop locally for what you can. Get as many ingredients as possible from farmers markets and stores with locally sourced foods. It might mean making a few nontraditional side dishes, but this could be the start of new traditions among your family and friends. Minimize your packaging. Cleanup will be tougher if you opt to use your own roasters and pie pans instead of aluminum ones you can throw away, but isn't our planet worth a little extra scrubbing? Likewise, forgo paper plates, plastic utensils and paper cups, if at all possible. Also, when you shop, take your own reusable bags. Put leftovers to use . Food rotting in landfills contributes to up to 25 percent of me...

Recycle or upcycle My daughter and her second-grade classmates recently learned a little about recycling and got to do a little upcycling in the process. The assignment: Turn discarded items you find around the home into something useful. My daughter’s idea: A tin-can “robot army” that functions as a desk organizer. Because a person can use only so many pens and pencils, my husband and I recommended that she scale it down to a single pencil holder, but we both agreed that making it look like a robot would be adorable. She created a face on a circle of cardboard and made robot “feet” out of the bays of an egg carton. She drew start and stop buttons onto used paper, and cut slivers of cardboard and glued them on the side to look like arms. In the end, it looked very little like a robot, and, to be honest, if I were to go to the store and buy a pencil holder, I’d choose one that looked a lot more generic than what she created (though, once the one she made comes b...

In 12 years, my daughter will be 19. Another round of midterms will be just weeks away, and for the first time, my daughter and her peers will be old enough to vote. But if we haven't acted by then to limit global warming to a 1.5 degree Celsius temperature increase, there will likely be little those new voters can do to alter what could be a very bleak future, according to the U.N. report on climate change released Oct. 6, 2018. Even at a 1.5-degree increase, we'd have problems — and already do at the current 1-degree increase. The effects can be felt not just in extreme weather, but in crop yields, heat-related deaths, flooding, and more. But those negative impacts increase rapidly as the world heats up, even by a fraction of a degree, the report shows. The Guardian compiled a graphic showing the impacts and threats by degree, based on the U.N. report, that shows coral reefs already are at high to very high risk. (Scroll down on the previous link to "Rising Tem...

The headlines on climate change over the past couple of weeks have been down-right depressing. Have you missed it? Here are just a few links I recommend. From the New Yorker: The dire warnings from the United Nations' latest climate-change report From CNN: What the new report on climate change expects from you Opinion from The Boston Globe: Climate change: A crisis that can't be ignored From Vox: 4 big takeaways from the UN's alarming climate change report You know that old phrase, "Don't sh*t where you eat"? Well, we've been doing it in spades, and we're already seeing the negative impacts. According to the science outlined in the articles above, we are on course to do serious damage to our food supply and our homes. With the U.S. midterms less than a month away, I urge everyone concerned about the course we're on to get out and vote for the candidate most likely to support protecting our environment. It's the greenest action ...