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Print this pageLive Green or Die?
The last 12 months have been the year of living green. GO Magazine jumps on the bandwagon this month to tackle some of the local environmental problems, and what you can do to fix them.
By Dinah Cardin
(page 2 of 6)
Kermit the Frog—that amphibious, googly eyed oracle—must have put it best. It ain’t easy being green. But we might have little choice in the matter since Mother Earth seems to be fighting back. Our minds (and our TV clickers) turn to the full-on, global arsenal of tsunamis and hurricanes. Locally, we have an ice storm that defined our winter and a March 1 tornado that killed a West Plains woman.
In this feature, you’ll find tips for living a greener life and read how local business owners, many of them under 30, are going beyond giving lip service to the planet.
It’s more than just An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore’s Oscar-winning, pop-culture infiltrating documentary. In February, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported in a study summary that it is “very likely” that human actions are causing climate change—that means 90 percent of international scientists actually agree on something (the full study is scheduled for release later this year). Need further proof? President Bush actually uttered the GW phrase —global warming—in January’s State of the Union address and started talking about clean energy.
In March, Springfield (yeah Springfield) hosted, along with Drury University, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Midwest Summit on the Sustainable Redevelopment of Contaminated Properties. That mouthful of a meeting included a bus tour of polluted properties, local businesses that are striving toward sustainability, examined storm water management and green building design.
While many scientists are irritated by the hype surrounding An Inconvenient Truth, irked by oversimplifications and scientific inaccuracies, Dr. Wendy Anderson, associate professor of biology at Drury University, says the documentary did wonders bringing human responsibility into focus. Though she has been teaching ecology and the reality of climate change for years, Anderson said when she came out of the movie theatre with her husband, an ecology professor at Missouri State University, she was “blown away.”
The issue, she says, is not something that is predicted or may happen somewhere out in the future. “It’s upon us. We’re living it. We’re in the midst of it right now and for the rest of our lives and our children will be during their lives,” she says. “If we don’t make some changes right now, we’re going to be fuc*ed!”
 Photo Jay G. Garrott Drury students Lannette Guerra and Kelsey Stein discuss ways to rehabilitate Jordan Valley Park's quarry site during last month's EPA Midwest Summit at Drury University. |
Anderson recently spoke to the Greater Ozarks Audubon Society. Her presentation was called “The Birds and the Bees Don’t Lie.”
“It’s not like the birds are saying I’ll change my flight pattern to prove to those Republicans that global warming is real,” she says.
Whether climate change exists is no longer really up for debate. The debatable point now is whether it is actually caused by humans. Anderson says it is “crystal clear” that the burning of fossil fuels and the practice of rapid deforestation show that we are clearly responsible.
The National Weather Service in Springfield says our region has recently seen an increase in temperatures that can likely be tied to an increase in extreme events. Dating back to the spring of 2003, Warning Coordination Meteorologist Steve Runnels says that locally there has been a steady steam of active weather or drought.
Recent record-setting droughts, which often result in tornados over Kansas and Oklahoma, have done the same here, says Runnels. How these regional events figure in with the rest of the nation and the world will be discovered by scientists compiling the data, he says, adding, “It’s very likely that greenhouse warming is under way and changes the likelihood of extreme weather events on a global scale”.
Regional economies are certainly affected by the erratic weather. In the Ozarks, ponds dried up last summer and lake levels were low. Farmers had to truck in hay to feed their cows in the normally lush summer months; cattle prices dropped. Even our all-important tourism industry revolves around having healthy streams and lakes. Low water levels concentrate pollutants, says Anderson, creating water quality issues.
“If you are going to have a canoe rental business or any business that relies on healthy ecosystems, than you have to have regular rainfall,” she says. Last year was considered the warmest year on record for North America, Anderson says. The National Weather Service says Springfield received well below its average 45 inches of rainfall.
Ironically, even efforts to better our environment can create controversy. For example, a proposed ethanol plant near Rogersville, which would require tapping the local aquifer for a million gallons of water a day, has made people aware of the limited resource of water. Residents have taken to protesting the ethanol plant, which would produce the cleaner-burning fuel substitute, at regular intervals.
Last year’s hoopla over an (eventually approved) coal-fired power plant southwest of Springfield spurred City Utilities to work harder on energy conservation. It’s nice to see that they are working in that direction, says Anderson, even if some of their light bulb rebates seem a bit “lame.” But when the Sierra Club got involved in the hubbub and drove the power plant issue hard, people started viewing those in opposition as “wacko fringe environmentalists,” says Anderson.
Still, she sees the environmental movement of today getting more mainstream attention than it did in the 1970s. “In this latest environmental movement, it’s not like we’re asking everyone to go live in a tent or climb a tree. We want you to drive a more efficient car. Make better choices about the car you drive and how often you drive it.”
