In the coming decades there will likely be 11 billion people on Earth. This population increase, and our diet and lifestyle choices, have driven us to a precipice.

Deforestation is a central cause of climate change, contributing more greenhouse emissions than does the transportation sector. The tropical forests of Central and South America, Africa and Asia are being destroyed to provide land to graze cattle, to grow food for the animals people choose to eat, and for wood and paper products. I discuss the consequences of diet choice in my book length essay, To Save the Animals. (Nearly completed.) This editorial will focus on the need for paper, cardboard and other recycling.

Trees use carbon dioxide in photosynthesis, therefore when they are destroyed, more CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere. In addition, the water from plant transpiration rises, then condenses to form clouds, and falls as rain or snow. Deforestation disrupts this cycle, and much of the land turns into desert. Large quantities of carbon stored in the soil (especially in peat swamps) are then released to the atmosphere.

Primates, elephants, parrots and other fruit-eating jungle animals disperse seeds away from the parent trees, and package the seeds in fertilizer (dung). As we destroy the forests, we are forcing these species to extinction; the forests may well go extinct, too, without their help. We destroy the forests either by setting fire to them or by cutting down the trees. 50% of all animal species live in the rainforests. We set them on fire or starve them when we destroy the forests. Our actions have set in motion the greatest mass extinction of all time, one that is happening 1,000 (perhaps even up to 100,000) times faster than any previous mass extinction. The animals do not have time to adapt to the rapid change, new species cannot evolve.

Climate change is responsible for heat waves and drought that cause tree deaths from disease and infestations, and lead to hotter forest fires that destroy more trees. Recently, British Columbia lost 58,000 square miles of forest in only a decade. The forest fires kill wildlife. Animals suffocate, burn to death, or lose their shelter and sustenance, as in tropical forests. Thousands of fish may suffocate from ash or die from the heated water in a single forest fire.

To help prevent this cruelty and devastation, it is crucial for businesses and residences to recycle cardboard. Options include:

• Allied Waste/435.628.2821. AW charges less for pickup of both recycling and trash than for trash pickup only.
• Blue Sky Recycling/435.673.1400.
• Sol Foods has a cardboard compactor. They bundle then sell the compacted cardboard. The owners, Max and Julie Gregoric, generously allow other Springdale businesses to bring cardboard to the compactor, located at the side of the building, between Sol Foods and the hardware store. Sol Foods bought the compactor from AFS, and Rocky Mountain Recycling purchases the cardboard.
• The post office has a recycle bin that accepts cardboard, plastic and paper. It is not big enough to accommodate cardboard from businesses; however, people may recycle cardboard from packages there.
• The town bins, located past the Community Center and tennis courts on Lion Boulevard, now have a cardboard recycling bin. However, it is not for business use.

Springdale businesses can work together to expand cardboard recycling options. For example, were businesses to contact Dixie Waste to request recycling, it would provide incentive for Dixie Waste to provide such a service.

Businesses and private residences can also make a significant difference by choosing to use recycled paper products – cups, plates, napkins, toilet paper, paper towels.

Springdale is a village, but millions of tourists come here every year. Springdale can help them to recycle plastic, paper and metal cans by placing small recycle bins throughout the town (as is done in Zion National Park). Motels can provide individual recycle bins (metal/plastic/paper) in every room; Cliff Rose Hotel already does this. A competition, either for children and young people, or for people of all ages, could inspire beautiful posters and banners, and fliers to display in store windows to encourage people to recycle. T-shirts, perhaps with designs by children, could promote recycling. Once Springdale has earned bragging rights, there could be bumper stickers and decals as well.

For Springdale to truly be a green community there must be water conservation. The Virgin River provides the water in Springdale. The forecast for the West the coming decades is drought, to where what now is a very dry year will be considered a wet year. The temperature is expected to continue to rise. There will be less snow melt, upon which the Virgin River depends. Springdale can promote water conservation with signs in motel rooms, public restrooms, and restaurants. Businesses and residences that have not yet done so should install water-conserving showerheads, faucets and toilets. Waiters should ask customers if they want water, or partially fill glasses, or restaurants can use smaller glasses. Leftover water should be saved to water plants. Businesses and residences should only water before 8:00 a.m. and after 7 p.m. from mid-April through September; during the heat of the day, much water evaporates. Green laws are water intensive, and therefore not appropriate in Springdale; desert landscaping is beautiful.

There is no more glorious place on Earth and here. Recycling and water conservation are ways to treasure the land and to save wildlife.

Kate Jewel

(Note: The following is an essay written by Louise Excell in response to “Sunday Sermon – Climate Change and Solar Power”. Another essay in response to Louise will be posted in about a day.)

Thank you for the great discussion of climate change and its rather immediate effects on southern Utah and Springdale, based on Dr. Robert Gillies’ lecture at the CCC, compliments of the Zion Canyon Field Institute.

David and I have bought into the scientific facts from the beginning, so we went, knowing that Dr. Gillies would be “preaching to the choir” in our case.  We left, having learned much more about our immediate region, and we were even more sober regarding the climactic future for southern Utah.

Last summer, I spent a week with some very smart people while trying to plan an educational experience for students studying in the environment and the humanities at the University of Utah.  One of my fellow conferees had studied weather and climate change extensively at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and his conclusion—and that of climate experts he cited—is that “it’s too late.”

The window that would have allowed humanity to turn back the human-caused devastation to the climate has closed.  The best we can do now is hunker down and brace for a series of world events like modern humans have never seen.

We may, indeed, be leaving our grandchildren a hellish future that they don’t deserve because we have been so terribly selfish and short-sighted, but let’s not count them out. They are, after all, the best of all of us.

You offered a solution which I agree should be on the table, but I would like to suggest that there are other things we might do:

• Consider a world in which we acknowledge that we have screwed up royally, and we’re now in a position that we never wanted to be.
• Consider a world in which we use the incredible intellectual gifts that nature has given us to solve problems.
• Consider if we start now to prepare everyone for the new future our children will live in and leave to their children.
• Consider if we start with children who are six years old and younger and teach them the science, mathematics, technology and engineering to create the living spaces necessary to sustain human life, and how to nurture the biodiversity of flora and fauna to make a sustainable existence for our species and ALL of the species with whom we share the planet in the new climactic conditions.
• And consider, if at the same time we give them the training in ethics, aesthetics, history, civics, language arts and human compassion necessary to sustain the quality of life we have come to cherish.
• Consider a world in which we admit our errors and correct them.  Imagine the possibilities.