I have been reluctant to write about climate change because it is so controversial. But, after this summer, with an unprecedented number of over 100 degrees Fahrenheit days in Texas and the Southwest, wildfires on Maui completely destroying the historic town of Lahaina, and the increase in temperatures of the waters off Florida (101 degrees F) posing enormous threats to marine life, I can no longer keep quiet! I feel I must address this issue.
Although we have all heard about decreasing our energy expenditures, buying fuel-efficient cars, using public transportation etc. etc., etc., as ways of helping to reduce global warming, there are some simpler things that we can do to help decrease the greenhouse gasses, especially carbon dioxide and methane, that are at the root of our problems. These are the ones I want to write about.
There are two people whose YouTube videos I encourage you to watch and who also have very informative websites. The first person is a well-known landscape architect, Edwina von Gal. She emphasizes sustainability, natural landscapes, and the use of native plants, along with the avoidance of pesticides and herbicides.
She became concerned about the decline in the bird population. Through our use of pesticides and loss of habitat, about 9 billion birds have disappeared in the past fifty years since the 1970s! She also points out that for every building or road that gets built, we are losing birds through loss of habitat. In 2013, she founded the Perfect Earth Project and Two-Thirds for the Birds.
The other person you should be acquainted with is Doug Tallamy, an entomologist and author best known for his books, “Nature’s Best Hope” and “Bringing Nature Home.” He points out that a single pair of chickadees must find 6,000 to 9,000 caterpillars to rear one clutch of young. Caterpillars are the soft, easily digested, high-calorie content baby food that baby birds need. Our efforts to decrease or eradicate garden pests are harming our environment and the future of our life on earth by killing off the creatures that birds need to survive and reducing the pollinators necessary for food production.
Doug Tallamy has spearheaded a movement called “Homegrown National Park.” See the article in the Smithsonian Magazine online from April 2020: “Meet the Ecologist Who Wants You to Unleash the Wild in Your Backyard.”
Here is my advice:
Plant more trees.
The first and most important thing you can do is to plant more trees. Trees shade the earth and keep the blazing sun from heating the earth’s surface and drying out the soil. Tree roots act as pathways for rainwater to percolate through the ground, thus preventing run-off.
Trees and other green plants convert carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas) into oxygen through photosynthesis. Trees are one of the earth’s largest “carbon sinks”; they hold onto carbon and do not release it into the atmosphere.
Trees come in all sizes and shapes. If you have a small plot of land, you can plant smaller trees. Large trees can have what are called understory trees planted under them and nearby to add additional shade and interest to the landscape.
Plant native plants.
The second thing you can do is focus on using plants native to your area. These plants have developed in your particular climate and soil conditions and, thus, are more likely to survive without using fertilizers, pesticides, or excess water. Edwina encourages planting at least 2/3s of your landscape with native trees, shrubs, plants, and grasses and not to use pesticides. That way, the native insects, butterflies, bees, birds, etc. will have the plants they depend on for survival.
Thirty-three states have Native Plant Societies, plus there is a Great Plains Native Plant Society and a Midwest Native Plant Society. The U.S. Forest Service/U.S. Department of Agriculture has a good website with listings of states with plant societies, national botanical gardens, and other information for those wishing to use more native plants. The Xerces Society, an international non-profit dedicated to protecting biological diversity through invertebrate conservation, has wonderful information about plantings for insects such as bees, butterflies, and other pollinators.
Decrease the amount of your lawn and cut it longer.
Consider decreasing your lawn to only the areas where you walk and cutting the grass higher, to 4” to 6”. Leaving the grass higher, rather than “scalping” the lawn, does two important things. First, it shades out the weeds that begin to develop in the spring. Secondly, leaving the grass higher allows the roots of the grass to develop longer. The longer roots protect the grass from drying out during the heat of summer and during droughts. The roots also allow water to percolate deeper into the soil, decreasing run-off.
Consider light colored surfaces for walkways, parking, and roofs. Also, increase the use of permeable surfaces.
The town in which I grew up had a lovely downtown area with department stores and grocery stores. The parking lots at these stores were made of light gray irregular pebbles, and there were islands planted with trees between the parking strips. The surface was permeable to rainwater, and the trees provided shade for both the earth and the cars parked under them. I cringe when I see large parking lots of black top without a tree in sight.
Dark surfaces absorb light, making the environment hotter. By using lighter-colored surfaces for roofs, walkways, and parking lots or painting them a lighter color, we decrease the heat of the earth.
Think permeable when planning a walking surface so the water can soak through instead of running off—for example, pebble walkways or using stepping stones instead of solid concrete. There is a beautiful restored antebellum house in Wilmington, North Carolina, with walkways around it of crushed oyster shells, very permeable when it rains, and readily available when the house was built.
There are many commercial paving products available that are pervious, allowing water to drain through them. There are also open block grid stones that can be planted with a ground cover. They look lovely and are frequently used for parking areas.
Eat more plants.
The last thing you can personally do to help the environment is to move toward a plant-based diet. The drain on our natural resources that it takes to raise livestock for human consumption is tremendous. A majority of the corn and soybeans grown in the Midwest go to feed animals, not humans. Livestock use large amounts of water and feed. Cows are in a category of animals called ruminants this category also includes goats and sheep. They process food by fermentation and produce methane via flatulence and burps. Cows contribute to global warming by producing methane (as a greenhouse gas, it is more potent than carbon dioxide). A single cow produces between 154 to 264 pounds of methane per year.
To put this into perspective, the United States produced 640 million tons of methane in 2021. Say a rancher has 50 cows on his ranch, and each cow produces 250 pounds of methane per year. That equals 6.25 tons of methane from that one ranch! About 37% of methane emissions from human activity are the direct result of livestock and agricultural practices. According to the EPA, about 1.5 billion cattle are raised worldwide for meat production. These cattle emit at least 231 billion pounds of methane into our atmosphere each year.
So, the more plants you eat and the fewer animal products you consume, the more you are helping the earth to decrease methane production.
In conclusion, there are some straightforward things you can personally do to help decrease global warming:
- Plant more trees
- Plant native plants
- Decrease the amount of lawn and cut it longer
- Use permeable and light-colored surfaces as much as possible
- Eat more plants – lots more
