Climate Connection: Keeping Earth Month Sustainable
Tomorrow, April 22, is Earth Day. Many of us think of April as Earth Month with crocuses blooming and the herring returning. The risks this year provoke anxiety – record-breaking temperatures with warmer oceans and return of El Nino. Last year was the eleventh consecutive year with atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) rising by at least 2 parts per million. Fossil fuel infrastructure continues to be developed despite scientists saying that all must stay in the ground to meet the Paris Accords. In the face of so much that we cannot control, here’s how we can take one small step ourselves, day by day, this month and next, making sustainable choices.
Here are a few possibilities: Prepare a meal with chick peas or other vegetable protein in place of meat from farm animals that produce the greenhouse gas methane from their burps and manure. Plan your meals and shopping to avoid food waste. A third of U.S. food is not eaten. If you buy live lettuce in a clamshell at the grocery store, keep a few leaves on the root mass and plant it in a pot on a sunny window ledge for another meal of lettuce. Start composting or giving your kitchen waste to a gardener who composts, even if it is just your coffee grounds, to avoid shipping organic waste to eastern Washington. Take your recyclable corrugated cardboard, newspaper, glass jars and bottles, plastics #1 and #2, and aluminum and tin cans to the Sawmill Creek Recycle Center. Replace your incandescent light bulbs with energy-efficient LED bulbs. Turn down your thermostat or water heater by one degree to save on energy. Donate your unneeded but reusable items to a charity like the White E or Salvation Army Thrift Store, rather than throwing them into our solid waste stream. Walk or ride a bike for an errand instead of taking a car guzzling gasoline. Check into how you can save money with tax credits for heating and transport electrification over the next ten years or get point-of-sale rebates next year. Support indigenous perspectives that seek nonexploitative life in balance with our environment, rather than extraction of our commons for profit.
If you worry that a personal choice a day is not enough, join with others to improve our town with community gardens, updated municipal building codes, advocating for electric school and tourist buses, planning for abundant renewable power sources as we grow out of our hydropower, running for public office, and building a circular self-sufficient economy. If local action is not enough for you, there are groups advocating for federal action and legislation like Citizens Climate Lobby, 350.org, the Sierra Club, and Third Act.
However you choose to decrease pollution that leads to overheating and extreme weather, let it be sustainable for you, so that you continue beyond this Earth month. You will want to tell your children or grandchildren that you did your part to help preserve the earth that we inherited.
-- Kay Kreiss, Transition Sitka
BIHA Board Meets
Baranof Island Housing Authority’s monthly board of commissioners will meet 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 26, at Centennial Hall.
A remote meeting option is also available. Those wishing to attend or participate may submit an email request to info@bihasitka.org before noon on April 26, or call BIHA at 907-747-5088 for assistance.
Far Reaching
Ministries to Visit
Pastor Shawn Stone from Far Reaching Ministries (frmusa.org) will speak at the 2:30 p.m. service on Sunday, May 21, at Calvary Chapel.
Far Reaching Ministries operates in 36 countries, including nine of the 10 most dangerous. Stone serves as director of victims of war, serving widows and orphans suffering from the effects of war, including physical violence, sexual abuse, forced prostitution, forced child brides for Muslim extremists, and poverty.
Calvary Chapel Sitka meets at 502 Hirst Street. Contact Pastor Dug Jensen at (907)747-5454 with questions.
Child Abuse Topic
At Lunch & Learn
Parents, caregivers and community members are invited to a special lunch and learn event 1 p.m. Saturday, April 22, at Centennial Hall.
Food and daycare will be provided at no cost and the presentation will cover strategies to be aware of child abuse, grooming and reporting. The event is being organized by Sitka Tribe of Alaska Social Service Department as part of the Child Abuse Prevention month activities.
Participants can sign up at www.sitkatribe.org. For information contact Krista Perala at 747-7359 or krista.perala@sitkatribe-nsn.gov.
Annual Quilt
Show Ahead
Ocean Wave Quilters will host the 40th Annual Quilt Show May 12-21 in Fraser Hall on the SJ Campus. The theme is ‘‘Ruby.’’
The opening night reception is 5-8 p.m. Friday, May 12. Daily hours will be 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. The Mother’s Day Tea is slated noon-4 p.m. Sunday May 14. The show closes 3 p.m. May 21.
Admission is free.
Rockfish Limit
Reduced in Sitka
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has announced a reduction in the pelagic rockfish limits in the Sitka Area, Central Southeast Outside Section.
The affected area includes the marine waters west of Baranof and Chichagof Islands. Regulations are effective 12:01 a.m. April 24 through 11:59 p.m. Dec. 31.
New limits are: four pelagic rockfish, eight in possession, no size limit, for residents.
The nonresident daily bag limit is two pelagic rockfish, four in possession, no size limit.
For further information, including restricted areas, contact the Sitka ADF&G office at 907-747-5355 or visit the website.
