I was feeling pretty optimistic about our clean up of tornado damage at Sleeping Giant State Park (see my previous blog post); that is, until this past Sunday when we worked along the Purple Trail that runs by the Mill River. It was the worst damage I’ve seen so far – tree trunk after massive tree trunk lying across the trail, plus a huge jumble of more downed trees in a nearby ravine. What a mess! If it hadn’t been for the river, I’d have had no idea where I was.
We’ll be working until the weather turn too cold and/or snowy to be out there.
And working there has highlighted a referendum that will hopefully be approved by Connecticut voters on election day, November 6 – to change the state constitution to provide more protection for public lands, so they can’t be sold or given or traded away by government entities without a public hearing, which can happen under current law, even though in most cases there is public input. The General Assembly would also have to vote by a two-thirds majority on any land transfers. The public lands include state forests and state parks (like Sleeping Giant). Please vote Yes.
(And I also support Question 1, another constitutional amendment, which would create a “lock box” for transportation funds that can’t be raided to balance the overall state budget. Because it would include money for mass transit as well, it’s also a pro-climate move.) Click here to learn more about both. (Post-election note: Both amendments garnered about 80% of the vote -- yay!)
With so many trees dying in storms, from disease, from impingement by roads and sidewalks, and from the electric utilities’ chain saws (see an op-ed I wrote about that here) – and with so few new ones getting planted – we are fast losing our tree canopy and all the benefits it provides.
The latest version of the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released in early October, pulls no punches in informing the people of the world that we have until 2030 – 12 years – to drastically change how we live on Earth if we’re to have any hope of staying below a 1.5 degree C (2.7 degree F) increase in global temperature. That’s considered by climate scientists to be the threshold beyond which the planet is likely to begin transforming from its current human- and other species-friendly environment into its opposite. It says one of the biggest bangs for the climate stabilization buck is planting more trees, which absorb CO2. link
And Drawdown, a book to which dozens of climate scientists contributed, ranks forests at #12 out of 100 best ways to draw carbon out of the atmosphere.
We’ll be working until the weather turn too cold and/or snowy to be out there.
And working there has highlighted a referendum that will hopefully be approved by Connecticut voters on election day, November 6 – to change the state constitution to provide more protection for public lands, so they can’t be sold or given or traded away by government entities without a public hearing, which can happen under current law, even though in most cases there is public input. The General Assembly would also have to vote by a two-thirds majority on any land transfers. The public lands include state forests and state parks (like Sleeping Giant). Please vote Yes.
(And I also support Question 1, another constitutional amendment, which would create a “lock box” for transportation funds that can’t be raided to balance the overall state budget. Because it would include money for mass transit as well, it’s also a pro-climate move.) Click here to learn more about both. (Post-election note: Both amendments garnered about 80% of the vote -- yay!)
With so many trees dying in storms, from disease, from impingement by roads and sidewalks, and from the electric utilities’ chain saws (see an op-ed I wrote about that here) – and with so few new ones getting planted – we are fast losing our tree canopy and all the benefits it provides.
The latest version of the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released in early October, pulls no punches in informing the people of the world that we have until 2030 – 12 years – to drastically change how we live on Earth if we’re to have any hope of staying below a 1.5 degree C (2.7 degree F) increase in global temperature. That’s considered by climate scientists to be the threshold beyond which the planet is likely to begin transforming from its current human- and other species-friendly environment into its opposite. It says one of the biggest bangs for the climate stabilization buck is planting more trees, which absorb CO2. link
And Drawdown, a book to which dozens of climate scientists contributed, ranks forests at #12 out of 100 best ways to draw carbon out of the atmosphere.
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