By Mike McQuaide, Sustainable Newton Board Member

We celebrate Arbor Day in Georgia in February (on the 3rd Friday), when weather conditions are best for planting trees.  This year, many communities are scaling back or canceling celebrations dues to COVID-19.  So, we asked board member Mike McQuaide to reflect on his love of trees.

One year into the COVID-19 pandemic, many people have had occasion to focus more clearly on the features of life they value the most.  The adage “you don’t miss your water until your well runs dry” is certainly applicable at this moment in American history.  Being with friends and family indoors, going into restaurants and stores, freely traveling to distant places, and the many dimensions of life are suspended to some extent right now.  Many of us find it insightful to step back and consider more deeply the features of life that we have taken for granted --but now seem out of reach-- at least for the time being.
 
Broadening our appreciation of the world we take for granted can bring a renewed appreciation and desire to protect the natural world.  The natural environment is complex and diverse; one visible aspect of the natural world are the trees around us.  Arbor Day provides an opportunity to step back and consider the many benefits of trees in our shared communities.  The most visibly obvious benefits being the aesthetic advantages of trees.  On a subconscious level, trees can evoke our sense of beauty.  Office workers with a view of trees are more productive than those  in windowless workplaces.  Seeing trees can reduce our blood pressure and help our muscles to relax.

By Maurice Carter, Sustainable Newton President

Extreme weather and widespread power outages in Texas are headline news everywhere this week.  As of today, nearly three million customers remain without power, after record-breaking low temperatures and heavy snowfall struck the state.  It's a dangerous situation, and many of us  have friends and/or family directly impacted.

Emotions are frayed and lives remain at risk.  As with any crisis, priority one is restoring power and tending to those in need.  Lessons learned can wait until safety is restored.

But it's a sad reality we must also contend with disinformation about root causes and contributing factors to the energy portion of this crisis.  Specifically, some clean energy naysayers see an opportunity to push a false narrative that these power outages were primarily caused by a wind power failure.  This simply is not true.

By Maurice Carter, Sustainable Newton President

Wednesday in Washington brought a flurry of environmental executive orders and policy statements from President Biden that delighted environmentalists and climate activists -- while also drawing fire from Republicans seeking to use climate as a wedge issue.  Among the most significant actions the President announced, he:

• Ordered all federal agencies to migrate their fleets to all electric vehicles and to shift to clean energy sources for electricity.
• Established the Civilian Conservation Corps.
• Pledged to conserve at least 30% of national lands and oceans by 2030.
• Committed to researching how farmers might be paid to enhance the carbon-sequestering capabilities of their land.

As I've stated before, it will take much more than Presidential executive action -- namely, bipartisan collaboration and legislation -- to adequately address the Climate Crisis.  But, the actions from the White House this week are significant and urgently needed.  Which is why it's disappointing to see some visible Republicans spread disinformation and false narratives to gain political leverage.

For our 2021 virtual kickoff Friday morning, we visited with Ray C. Anderson Foundation Executive Director John A. Lanier to discuss the Drawdown Georgia initiative.  John gave us a hope-filled, inspiring look at the country's only state-centered climate action program.  If you missed it, please take time to view the replay.

Sustainable Newton is committed to doing all we can to promote the Drawdown Georgia effort and bring its 20 carbon-reduction solutions to households, businesses, and local governments in Newton County. 

Starting a new year is the perfect time to assess what personal changes I can make towards "bringing climate solutions home," as they say at Drawdown Georgia.  Across the five key solution sectors (Electricity, Buildings and Materials, Food and Agriculture, Land Sinks, and Transportation), there are feasible actions we can each take to contribute to the overall 46 megaton carbon-reduction goal for the program.  (Each megaton is one million tons.)

I remember vividly the last time I saw my fellow Sustainable Newton Board members in person, on the evening of March 9, gathered around a table in our usual meeting room at First Presbyterian Church of Covington.

Three days earlier, 21 cases of COVID-19 had been confirmed on a cruise ship off the California coast, and the disease had reached a nursing home in Washington state.  But the World Health Organization had yet to declare a pandemic. 

Still, I recall the awkward silence when a colleague sneezed several times.  "Bless you," we said out loud, but our body language was a little more complicated.  We adjourned at the end of the meeting without saying so, but I suspected we might not see each other again for a month or two.

And, then, all Hell broke loose.

It wasn't always human nature.  But, for those of us born since the middle of the 20th Century, technology is our go-to answer to every problem.  When you think you can invent your way out of any mess, you kick the can down the road.  We tell ourselves we'll deal with it later.

Then, when we finally decide a situation like Climate Change must be addressed, it’s natural we gravitate to technical innovation to save us.  There’s something sexy about gleaming solar panels, sleek wind turbines, smart buildings, and shiny, new Tesla automobiles. 

In our 24 Hours of Reality:  Countdown to the Future presentation on October 10, we asked and answered three key questions about humanity's response to the current climate crisis:

1. Must we change?
2. Can we change?
3. Will we change?

Our resounding "Yes!" to all three questions begs a fourth:  "How will we change?" 

That's where Drawdown Georgia comes in.  With their official launch on October 17, they identified 20 top climate solutions researchers have tagged as critical for Georgia to achieve a 35% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030.

Using Paul Hawken's 2018 book Drawdown as a starting point, scientists from Georgia Tech, the University of Georgia, Emory, and Georgia State University studied the 100 solutions originally identified by Hawken and his colleagues to determine the highest potential actions for our state.  The resulting blueprint for action features 20 solutions across five sectors (Buildings & Materials, Electricity, Transportation, Land Sinks, and Food & Agriculture) that collectively can cut carbon emissions in Georgia from 125 megaton to 79 megatons by 2030.

Even as a climate activist and leader of a sustainability organization, I'm still conflicted over President-Elect Joe Biden's commitment to sign an executive order on his first day in office to rejoin the US in the Paris Climate Agreement.  I'm convinced we have years -- not decades -- to reverse climate change or face dire consequences, and I accept the urgent need for coordinated global action.  The crisis is real.  But, as a political pragmatist, I also know this back-and-forth reliance on executive action without congressional approval is ultimately getting us nowhere.

For anyone paying even the slightest attention to climate news, these are difficult days not to run screaming from the building.  Then again, this summer, outside is no place to be.

From unprecedented dual hurricanes Laura and Marco striking the US gulf coast last month to the scorching heat and raging wildfires now impacting California and Oregon,  we're inundated with news about extreme weather caused by Climate Change.

Throw in Siberian temperatures topping 100 degrees Fahrenheit and collapsing arctic ice shelves in Canada, and it's a little hard to remain hopeful.

OK, nearly impossible.  But, still, hope is not lost.

By Maurice Carter, Sustainable Newton President

"Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone."

As I struggle to express my emotions in these socially-distanced, mostly virtual times, Joni Mitchell's lyrics jump to mind.  Though now it's less about paving paradise than putting it under glass.  Or, perhaps, it's we who are under glass.

Has anyone else watched a television show or a movie recently and felt alarmed by scenes of people standing close together -- perhaps even <gasp!> shaking hands or putting a hand on a shoulder?  Now, it's The Police I hear singing "Don't stand.  Don't stand.  Don't stand so close to me."  It's the same way when I look back at photos of past Sustainable Newton events.

By Maurice Carter, Sustainable Newton President

I’m making my shoulders strong for the young to stand upon,
Stepping lightly on the backs of those who hold me up.

From our early days as individuals uniting to change our world by acting locally in our community, Sustainable Newton has defined sustainability along two dimensions:

1. Applying the "3 Ps"  or "triple bottom line" to important decisions and actions, giving the same consideration to people (society) and planet (environment) that we give to profit (economy)
2. Making choices and acting in ways that consider long-term implications for generations who come after us.

We believe this philosophy can guide individuals, households, businesses, and local governments to make better choices for the overall health and well-being of our society.  Last night, the Covington City Council made a clear statement they agree, by committing to these same principles in the decision making and operational choices of the city.

It's taken longer than I hoped -- weeks in fact -- to get to where I could organize my thoughts to share a few words about how we persevere with sustainability efforts in these troubling times.  But, I suspect you all understand.

It's a striking reminder how much life changed so quickly to reread my last post about Arbor Day written 43 days ago, on February 20.  It was easy then to imagine young seedlings and saplings growing into mighty shade trees to shelter generations to come.  But, thinking about that future is a more difficult task today.

I find myself spending spare moments on days not occupied by the present to reflect on my past.  Or, more accurately, the past of those who gifted life to me long ago.

We added a new word to our vocabulary in 2019 -- more accurately, an acronym.  That acronym was "EtO," short for ethylene oxide. 

This was an unfamiliar term for nearly everyone in Newton County, but news coverage of releases of this known carcinogen from the Becton Dickinson (BD) facility in Covington soon had everyone talking and local governments pressed to act.  In October, we commended the Covington Mayor and City Council for their response to the situation.

Much has happened since, with BD eventually resuming operations at their Industrial Boulevard facility with new air quality testing in place.  However, in late December, BD was again cited by the Georgia Environmental Protection Division (EPD) for not reporting the existence and release of EtO at a warehouse in Covington's Lochridge Business Park.