My Local Sustainability Fair Part 2
Click here for Part 1.
After finishing up at the Agriculture presentation, I moved on to the presentation about Water and Climate Change. The first speaker was Charles Montgomery from The Rocky Mountain Climate Organization. His words were very profound to hear spoken to the masses. I have known this info for a while but many people don’t like to discuss or even believe it.
Charles said, “The world is rapidly warming due to the greenhouse gas effect. CO2 and methane are great in small amounts to balance the cold effect but in large amounts, they are disastrous.” The problems really started to escalate in the 1970’s and it is way worse in the western part of the U.S. And ground zero for global warming in the U.S. is CO, UT, NM, AZ. 90% of global warming is caused by human activities (including factory farming). There is a coming crisis in the water supply of the western U.S. From north to south, it will be getting hotter and drier. Where I live will stay approximately the same because I am near the mountains and the runoff. Woo hoo!
He did say with the earth’s temperature increasing, we will be getting more rain rather than snow so there will not be much snowpack in the mountains and also melting will be happening earlier which means the evaporation rates will be accelerating. Really not a good thing for all the states that rely on the Colorado river basin. He said that by the year 2100 or sooner, we are going to dry out the system. We are still currently before the “point of no return” temperature-wise so we need to make major, global changes now before it’s too late for us to be able to do anything about it.
He did leave us with this final thought, “We have to take action now, climate scientists around the world are terrified right now. Think about sustainability collectively.”
The next person to speak, Tracy from the Great Western Initiative spoke about water conservation and all that we can do. He gave examples of what sustainable, technological developments came out of Australia where they have been suffering from severe drought for decades. Another fun fact I learned is that 20% of energy used in the U.S. is to treat, pump and distribute water. I personally think the whole pooping in our water supply is wrong, disgusting and both a waste of energy and polluting of a dwindling valuable resource. I hope we will start to change our thinking on this soon since our water is drying up. There are many alternative options to this.
He also talked about “community based social marketing” which helps to identify what the barriers are to people’s behaviors changing.
What we can do: education: influence the schools, be aware of our own use, check for leaks, how do you spend your money, tell the stores, vote with your dollar.
Communicate: Telling your friends your story will then lead to changing attitudes. Change then becomes part of our social fabric and it becomes sustainable. (Which is why I am blogging about this in such detail).
The last person to speak on water was a woman named Cynthia from Aware Colorado. She spoke about the connection between land use and water being blocked from getting into the land by impervious surfaces. Now some towns are designing parking lots and roads with pavers instead of blacktop so that water can seep back into the land instead of just evaporate. She also talked about new street designs that have swales to catch the water, different street edges for water to get into the soil, xeriscaping, native plants that need less water, gravel roads instead of blacktop to absorb water, rooftop gardens to help with regulating a building’s heating and cooling and natural ecosystems put back in place.
The other two presentations on Alternative Energy and Recycling I didn’t get to hear but since I’ve lived off the grid for a few years I know all about the greatness of solar and wind power and the stupidity of us as a nation not utilizing this free power source. But we can all right now buy wind power through our local power company or a reputable online company.
Recycling in our town went up a notch recently when curbside pickup went single stream and that makes life easier for people who choose not to recycle the items that were not picked up at their house. Now they can recycle much more since almost everything is being picked up from their house and they don’t have to make a special trip to the recycling center. They also had posters up saying they would be doing curbside compost pick up within the next few years for those townspeople that don’t compost or have a garden. Amazing!
All of the speakers I heard that day were very enlightening and really helped get the message out and got people thinking. The best one was the keynote speaker, L. Hunter Lovins. I will write about what her message was in part 3.
November 14 2008 12:00 pm | activism and government and green living and society and special events and sustainability and water
