Global Warming: Who Turned Up the Heat?

As every Floridian surely noticed, 2001 wasn't a normal year-in fact, it was the second warmest winter in recorded history, according to the National Climatic Data Center. Temperatures in 2001 were second only to 1998, a year influenced by the warming effects of El Nino.

Global warming is no longer a hypothesis-reliable scientists tell us it's a documented, happening thing, part of a clear trend of increasing temperatures over the last 25 years, with no end in sight. Like it or not, we are witnessing the speeded up metabolism of the earth: our planet's pulse pounding in response to the human consumption of fossil fuels.

Staring down these facts, it's easy to feel helpless, as if our very life support system were spinning out of control. We hear that within twenty years, global warming will have caused the melting of all the snow and ice from the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro. In Tallahassee, we wince at the felling of the living forest every day, all over town, and watch the trees replaced by a new shopping center here, a wider road there. We seem completely unable to slow the hamster wheel of growth. We cannot depend upon our leaders in the Bush administrations to see us through this crisis, for they fail to acknowledge what we face, and the necessity of changing our course of action.

So where do we turn for direction? We at Heart of the Earth believe the only real changes will begin at home, within our own families and communities, our own hearts, with responsive actions springing from our willingness to not turn away from what we know: we ourselves are the ones "turning up the planet's heat." And we're the only ones who can turn it down. Won't you join us in our Global Cooling Initiatives?

Global Warming Facts from the National Climatic Data Center Nine of the 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 1990 Temperatures over the last century have been increasing at an average rate of almost 0.6°C/century. Over the last 25 years, however, the rate of warming has reached nearly 2.0°C/century. The widespread nature of the higher-than average temperatures (North America, Europe, northern Africa, and central Asia were particularly hot, with areas of Canada and Asia averaging up to 5°C higher than the mean) shows that warming is truly a global circumstance, not restrained to urban areas or developed countries.

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Leon County Passes Global Warming Resolution

On November 27, 2001, the Leon County Commission passed a resolution acknowledging the serious threats to Florida posed by global warming, including sea level rise, salt water encroachment into our aquifers, increased risk of wildfire, and changes in weather patterns.

Led by Commissioner Cliff Thaell, in response to a request by Heart of the Earth, the Commission called for greater awareness of these impeding threats, and recommended that proactive policy measures be taken. In passing this resolution, Leon County joins 12 other counties and seven cities, which together represent over half of the state's population, a majority of the Congressional districts, in beginning to respond to global warming.

Now, of course, begins the real work of developing meaningful change at every level the county can affect. Heart of the Earth stands ready to assist!

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This spring, Heart of Earth is encouraging the development of Eco-Teams in neighborhoods around Tallahassee.

What is an Eco-Team? It's a structured four-month program to help a small group of friends, family and neighbors to put environmental knowledge to work and actually change their lifestyles. Developed by Global Action Plan (www.globalactionplan.org), the program has helped thousands of households in 17 countries to develop sustainable lifestyle practices. An easy-to-use workbook outlines actions that will make a difference in six areas: reducing garbage, water and energy efficiency, transportation, eco-wise consuming, and empowering others. Teams meet eight times at two-week intervals as they implement changes in their households.

Global Action Plan provides a before and after measurement of your household's impact. Eco-Team participants around the country have reported:

• 41 - 51% less garbage sent into the waste stream
• 25 - 34% less water used
• 9 - 17% less energy used
• 16 - 20% less fuel used for transportation
• and a financial savings of $265 - $389.

  A kick-off meeting for anyone interested in leading a neighborhood Eco-Team will be held at the Leon County Library at 7:00 p.m. on Wed., March 13th, in the Henderson Room on the second floor. Barry Fraser and LucyAnn Walker-Fraser will host a neighborhood group at their home in Killearn Lakes beginning on Thursday, March 7th. Call 668-1364 for details, or e-mail lucyann@heartoftheearth.org.

  "Never doubt that a small group of committed individuals can change the world - indeed it's the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead

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As global warming intensifies, we at Heart of the Earth are responding to what has been called the "primary moral obligation of our time" in the following ways:

• By forming Eco-Teams to bring neighbors together to reduce their environmental impact, particularly in terms of household energy use and transportation.

• By working with city, county and state government to recommend and implement policies that promote energy efficiency and encourage alternative energy development.

• By working with local churches to promote awareness of global climate change.

• By offering many ideas to reduce your personal consumption of fossil fuels through our website, newsletter, household battery recycling program and study circles.

• By offering interpreted hikes and bicycle rides (see calendar) to help us root in the bioregions in which we live, and to experience ourselves as part of a balanced and sustainable ecosystem.

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New Goals for the Walker-Fraser Family (and Heart of the Earth)

Our three-person family is half-way through our 36-month pledge period to reduce our fossil fuel use by 30%, and it seems like a good time for reassessment and recommitment. In our first 18 months, we've done most of the easy things (replaced light bulbs, put up a clothes line, installed a programmable thermostat, etc.), purchased a more energy efficient car, and have saved over $1,300. We have achieved a 33% reduction in our use of fossil fuels for household energy and transportation, and our carbon dioxide emissions over the 18 months were 12 tons less than they would have been had we not embarked on this pledge.

We're now using 58% of the average electricity use per person for Tallahassee.*

However, we believe that there are almost always more ways to reduce fossil fuel use, and so we intend to continue. I got my long-awaited bike baskets for Christmas, and set off on my first trip for many years to the grocery store on a bicycle. We need to buy a more efficient heating and cooling system, and we can do better at combining trips and turning lights and computers off.

Our next goal is to work towards living on half of the Florida or Tallahassee average for energy use.*

As we increase our energy efficiency, further personal reductions are more difficult and have less dramatic return, or are expensive, long-term commitments. While we work towards them, our next biggest contribution may to influence and inspire others.

*(For electricity, the Florida average is 6,084KWH per person, and for Talquin, rought 5,206).

If you are looking for new challenges and new ways to contribute, consider making one or both of these pledges for the "global cooling" focus of our work. "I pledge, as far as I am able, to use less than half of the average fossil fuel use for our area." "I pledge, as far as I am able, to advocate decisions that help to reduce the use of fossil fuels and promote the use of alternative energy by individuals, businesses, other organizations and government." If you are making any Heart of the Earth pledge, or are willing to share your personal actions, e-mail LucyAnn@heartoftheeart.org, or call 668-1364.

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Great News! Annual reductions in CO2 emissions by 11 reporting Heart Of The Earth households exceed 100,000 lbs.! (52.8 tons)

Chuck Jacobson's Household Electric Use Per Person Is Less Than Half the Average for Tallahassee

Chuck Jacobson participated in the A Cappella Choir benefit for Heart of the Earth in April 2001. Although he and his wife, Kathe Poole, had always been conscious of saving energy, he signed our pledge that night and began working on further reducing his energy use.

Chuck started carpooling two or three days a week from his home at the Grassroots Community to SAIL high school with a fellow teacher. Together they save 136 gallons of gas a year, preventing 1.6 tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually.

Chuck and Kathe achieved additional energy savings this year by buying compact fluorescent bulbs, and by using a clothesline most of the time, especially for towels and heavy items that take a long time to dry. These two steps have reduced their household CO2 emissions by 1.1 tons over the previous year - for combined savings from gasoline and electricity of 2.7 tons.

In addition to their recent changes, Chuck and Kathe have been practicing energy efficiency for years. Their hot water heater is insulated and set at 120 ° F, and they use low-flow showerheads. In summer they use ceiling fans generously and air conditioning sparingly. Their heat pump has a switch so the inefficient supplemental heat doesn't come on when it gets really cold. In the coldest months, they use a highly efficient Danish wood stove for heat.

The big story is that their annual electric use of 7,452 KwH for a household of three is only 40 percent of the average for Florida! They produce 9 tons less carbon dioxide for household energy use than the average family of three served by Talquin Electric.

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After taking the Heart of the Earth pledge, Amy McDonald began by buying an insulation jacket and a timer for her hot water heater, so it runs just a few hours a day. "I don't use my heat or air conditioning unless I really need it," she says. "I'm really lucky, because I have trees and shade that keep the house cool." She stays comfortable most of the summer using ceiling fans only. She ran her air conditioning only about four weeks, from late July through early September, mostly to dry out the house.

In cool weather, Amy builds a fire and runs the ceiling fans on reverse, so they circulate the hot air without producing a breeze. She found that she didn't need to turn the heat on in her home, which is just under 1000 square feet, until the temperature reached freezing.

She hangs out clothes instead of using her dryer about half the time. She also installed compact fluorescent bulbs everywhere; she finds the light softer and prefers it to regular incandescent bulbs. They cost more, but last for years and use about a quarter of the electricity of regular light bulbs.

All these changes reduced the amount of CO2 emissions resulting from Amy's electric use by 2.9 in the tons annually. Her electricity use for her 1000 square foot home has dropped from 84% to 59% of the average per person amount for Florida.

Equally important, Amy has become politically active on this issue. She is on the activist list for FPIRG, and regularly lets her representatives know about her concern about global warming and other environmental issues.

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If governments do not act quickly to discourage the building of cities for cars, the international effort to control global warming will become much more difficult, according to the Worldwatch Institute. Sprawling urban areas are helping to make road transportation the fastest growing source of carbon emissions warming the earth's atmosphere.

Cities in the United States have been sprawling for decades, spreading out much faster than population growth. Chicago, for example, saw a 38 percent increase in population from 1950 to 1990, but the city's land area grew more than three times as fast, a 124 percent increase.

Our own city of Tallahassee saw a growth rate in its footprint that was 2 times greater than its population growth rate between 1950 and 1970.

"The United States has the world's most car-reliant cities, " says Molly O'Meara Sheehan in City Limits: Putting the Brakes on Sprawl. "U.S. drivers consume roughly 43 percent of the world's gasoline to propel less than 5 percent of the world's population. The big question facing the United States today is whether we can turn away from a car-centered model and develop better land-use practices and less destructive transportation systems."

Isn't that what we should be asking of our local politicians?

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As if the greenhouse effect from the CO2 emitted from our power plants and our automobiles isn't enough, have you considered the effect of belching cows? The typical cow belches 280 liters of methane a day. Since methane is 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, that's a lot of bang for the belch. Cows and other ruminating domestic farm animals are thought to produce about 15 percent of the atmospheric methane emitted each year.

So consider the effects of the methane belch in addition to the 2,400 gallons of water, the 6 pounds of grain, the 1.6 acres of energy and grazing land, the topsoil eroded by ranching, and the cooking energy required to process one pound of beef ready for consumption. You might see the value in passing up a beef meal this week to do just a bit more to help cool the planet!

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Fourteen petroleum exploration companies lined up early last December with bids for the first sale of federal offshore leases off the coast of Florida in more than a decade, said the Minerals Management Service.

Officials estimate the area up for bidding contains at least 185 million barrels of oil and 1.25 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, which translated into tangible terms would only provide enough gasoline to power the cars of less than 4% of our country's population and the natural gas to provide heat to only 8% of the homes in our country for one year! Think renewable energy sources….

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By Chad W. Hanson
Citizens for Alternative to Pesticides
Capfl@mindspring.com

As the warm months approach, Floridians must brace themselves for the annual inevitable: heat, humidity and swarms of nagging mosquitoes. But we should not have to tolerate toxic chemicals pumped on us by our public health officials to "help" us.

In the summer of 2001, north Florida experienced a so-called "mosquito epidemic." After a number of wild birds infected with the West Nile virus were discovered, the State of Florida's Health Department issued a "Medical Alert," and soon thereafter followed plans to spray pesticides on all of us, whether we cared to be poisoned or not.

The risks associated with organophosphate pesticides such as Dibrom are downright troubling: they suppress immune response, cause kidney failure, liver damage, and birth defects. Risk assessment tests on Dibrom and other organophosphates that affect the central nervous system have not been completed--meaning the jury is still out on just how damaging they really are.

While the West Nile Virus (WNV) can be fatal, broad scale spraying exposes the entire community to toxic chemicals in order to prevent a small percent of fatalities. Only one in every one million mosquitoes is affected by WNV. It is disheartening to learn that those who are poisoning us and our Earth do not actually know what else dies in the process. After aerial spraying of Diborm, countless other creatures die, some of them capable of naturally dispensing with enormous numbers of mosquitoes.

The state of New York has been dealing with WVN for three years: their Health Department has declared that more people have gotten ill from pesticide exposure during mosquito control applications for West Nile Virus than from the disease itself. They also found that more birds died from pesticide exposure than from WNV. Moreover, during New York's worst WNV "epidemic" in 1999, 7 people died from the virus; 2,474 people died from influenza--unrelated to mosquito-borne disease.

Many of us are deeply concerned that we are not being properly informed about all the issues surrounding mosquito control. We know we can reduce our exposure to mosquito-borne viruses by covering our body with clothing and organic sprays. We have decided to educate ourselves and get involved. We encourage all of you to do the same.