Greener for Christmas

Sure enough, the season for cheering and sharing and singing and bell-ringing is also the environment's worst time of the year with trash and pollution leading the parade.

Here are some tips for respecting the environment this holiday season.

• Bolster the green in your holiday meals with fresh, local ingredients or visit the organic section of your grocery store.
• Don't buy food because it's for sale. About one third of the food bought during the holidays ends up in the trash.

• Consider an "experience" gift (gift certificates, tickets to an event, or an offer to help a friend clean out a closet don't require any wrapping) that doesn't need wrapping and won't end up in the garbage.
• Give a pass to state or national parks to help your special people reconnect to the world around them.
• Minimize your time behind the wheel by planning carefully.
  
• Consider having a local celebration with nearby family, friends, and neighbors and save on driving time and pollution.
• Plant your tree. A potted or balled tree with roots attached can be planted post-holiday, reducing your celebration's carbon footprint.
  
• Decorate a live tree in your backyard.
• Use natural decorations: Cinnamon sticks, pine cones, and the classic popcorn or cranberry garland
• Use LED lights. They last much longer and consume a fraction of the energy, which leads to greater savings for years to come.
• The U.S. Department of Energy reports that if all conventional incandescent Christmas lights in the country were replaced with LED lights this season, annual energy savings would total two billion kilowatt-hours—enough energy to power nearly 200,000 homes for an entire year.
• Use artwork your kids bring home to wrap presents. Or use brown paper bags that your kids can help decorate.
• Instead of buying gift tags, use last year's holiday cards. Cut them out in interesting shapes and sizes, and write your "to" and "from" on the flip side.

These tips come to you from The Environmental Protection Magazine.

Wilderness proposal

The rumbling I'm hearing now concerns a bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives that would save nearly 25 million acres of valuable wilderness land in three Western states from encroachment by roads or development. Or, as the other side would put it, a bill that would wipe off the map opportunities for commercial growth and turn existing communities near the proposed area into ghost towns.

The bill had its first hearing in the House last Thursday, October 18, as H. R. 1975, and it was introduced by Carolyn Maloney, New York. The bill calls for a designation of about 25 million acres of undeveloped mountain land as wilderness. The area includes nearly 7 million acres of wilderness in Montana, 9.5 million acres of wilderness in Idaho, 5 million acres of wilderness in Wyoming, 750,000 acres in eastern Oregon, and 500,000 acres in eastern Washington. Included in this total is over 3 million acres in Yellowstone, Glacier and Grand Teton National Parks.

I may find a noose on my door in the morning, but I do not go along with Idaho land owners who oppose wilderness legislation because it might infringe on their rights to do as they wish with their property.

Nobody has an infinite right to anything in this world. We have to give and take or give up and take...the exit. Don't tell that to the folks who rise up in anger every time someone suggests a move that would save, restore, or protect something in our mountains and streams. Thousands of delicate plants, animals, birds, and fish are present in these beautiful, untouched mountains, rivers, streams, and rocks. Doesn't matter if you feel you have an inalienable right to build whatever you wish wherever you wish as long as you own the land.

Before you write this legislation off as an attack against freedom, please take a look at what the Sierra Club has to say about this pristine country. Or visit the Wild Rockies Action Fund. Or check out exactly what took place during the first public hearing of this proposed legislation by going to the House of Representatives web site dealing with this bill.

It's an opportunity to preserve pristine mountain areas in our beautiful state. If we don't do anything to keep these acres safe and free for nature's wonders, they will be destroyed forever.

A Tornado of Fire

Today the fires in California are rumbling. The environment screams as the heat-stirred Santa Ana winds howl through the rocks and trees.

Southern California is one of the greatest places I've called home. For the several years I lived in the Los Angeles area, I grew to love the mountains and deserts and beautiful cities and homes in California from San Diego and north.

Now it is a federal disaster area. Idaho volunteers are leaving today to help fight the war against the fire storm. A million people have fled their homes. Five deaths have been reported. From shacks in the countryside to multi-level palatial houses, thousands have lost everything they owned. Now they wait for time to pass in temporary shelters, aching for it all to end and for a life they'll never be able to resume to come back to them.

Why did this disaster happen? Hot, dry conditions with plenty to burn and the relentless blowing of the wind are the main factors. Human beings may have started some of the fires, for reasons we may never know.

Abuse it, try to manipulate it, get angry at it. Doesn't matter. The environment will do what it must do.

Nobel Prize for Telling it Like it Is

Our former vice president Al Gore has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on behalf of the environment.

His award, according to the text of the citation, went to a man who is "probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted."

He received the prestigious award not for a scientific breakthrough, discovery, or invention, but for his work in telling the people of America what they need to know about their environment. Al Gore has been recognized recently for his passion in this area:

• Academy award for "An Inconvenient Truth," a documentary on climate change
• No. 1 New York Times best-seller list for his book, The Assault on Reason
• An Emmy for his interactive cable network, Current TV

We have the information. What we need most is understanding--and the courage to do something about what we learn before it's too late. This blog can do about as much work as an ant carrying dirt onto a major construction site, but what we can do, we will do.

Whose Environment is it Anyway?

The environment surrounds us and rumbles in our ears. Noisy, but without emotion.The environment only responds to the way we treat it. Except for the N factor. Nature has its own set of rumblings that we don't understand enough to control. Climates change. Storms destroy. Earthquakes pry the rocks apart.

This blog is an attempt to bridge the gap from breaking news and scientific research and ordinary folks like you and me who just want to know what's going on.

It's our environment, yours and mine.