October 11, 2024, Community Happenings

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Category: News

Created on Friday, 11 October 2024 14:59

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Climate Connection: Why Do More Than Eliminate Fossil Fuels?
Last week, this column described nine planetary boundaries that we must not exceed if we want to avoid catastrophic changes in earth systems that provide us stability. These boundaries are climate change, ocean acidification, atmospheric ozone depletion, biodiversity, fresh water change, land systems, nutrient cycles, novel entities, and atmospheric aerosol loading.
Many of us have concentrated on decreasing greenhouse gases from the extraction and burning of fossil fuels. Our rationale is that greenhouse gases absorb sunlight and cause global warming. But 30% of these human-caused gases are absorbed by land and growing plants. If we cut down forests, cause extinction of plant and animal species, and expand urban areas, we interfere with the natural corrective processes that the earth has used to maintain its equilibrium. Already, global warming is accelerating more than can be accounted for by increasing greenhouse gases. Our transgression of 6 of 9 planetary safe boundaries is affecting earth’s health.
Our climate emergency requires more than eliminating greenhouse gases that warm the earth. We also need to address other planetary boundaries, such as our impact on nature. Eating meat and dairy products not only contributes to methane from cow belching and manure handling. It also is responsible for deforestation of the Amazon and other forests as farmers expand the land needed for crops to feed expanding herds.
As we encroach on nature around the world, we have more contact with wild animals that are the source of pandemic viruses that cause such harm to economies and human populations. We eliminate species of plants and animals that exist in natural settings. Why should we care about species extinction?
Extinction decreases genetic diversity which is the basis of ecologic complexity. In a warming earth, complexity is important to adaptation. Scientists have estimated that less than 10 extinctions per million species-years took place before humans changed the earth so much. Now extinctions are estimated at more than 100 times as much. One in 8 million plant and animal species are threatened. More than 10% of genetic diversity has been lost in the last 150 years.
In addition to genetic diversity, there is a functional component to biodiversity that we have exceeded. Starting in the late 19th century, our harvests from land and water and grazing of livestock altered much of the earth’s natural world. The decrease of nature contributes to extinction of other species and destruction of carbon sinks in tilled soil, oceans, and forests.
We have little understanding of how we have affected marine life, although rising ocean temperatures and ocean acidification are changing food webs and fisheries. There is currently an international initiative to preserve 30% of land and seas by 2030 to address biodiversity loss as a planetary boundary.
--Kay Kreiss, Transition Sitka


‘Big Breath In’
Book Event Set
John Straley will discuss his new book ‘‘Big Breath In’’ 4 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 14, at Sitka Public Library.
The event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served, and copies of the book will be available for purchase and to be signed by the author.
For information, call Margot at 907 747-4028 or email margot.oconnell@cityofsitka.org.

Fish Advisory
Council to Meet;
Elections Planned
The Sitka Fish and Game Advisory Committee will be holding a hybrid Zoom and in-person election meeting 6 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 16, at NSRAA and on Zoom.
The agenda will include the election of six advisory council member seats for longline, power troll, charter, at-large, guide and alternate.
Alaska Board of Fish Southeast Finfish proposals on troll and sport proposals will be discussed.
Meetings are open to the public. Residents of the area who attend the meeting and are of legal voting age may make nominations and vote on committee membership, the committee said.
Join the Zoom meeting at https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83733189410?pwd=puAPeYQ5bN0PvqOlHS6b2w8oIOLAJH.1; Meeting ID 837 3318 9410; Passcode sitka. Join by phone at 253 215-8782.
For further information and questions, contact Annie Bartholomew at ADFG Boards Support, annie.bartholomew@alaska.gov or John Murray, Vice Chair, jmfish3@gmail.com.

Unitarians Meet
Jan Steinbright and Kathy Kyle will consider the questions “What is paganism and why, in this day and age, would anyone be a pagan?” at Sunday’s meeting of the Sitka Unitarian Fellowship.
Gathering and coffee begins at 10:30 a.m., with the program beginning at 10:45. Soup and bread follow at noon. The Fellowship Hall is located at 408 Marine Street with parking behind, off Spruce Street.