13 results for author: Dan Barth
Come Out and Celebrate Earth Day in Wausau
Alarmed over yet another disastrous oil spill, this one fouling Santa Barbara, California beaches, our own Senator Gaylord Nelson pioneered the first national Earth Day on April 22, 1970. That day, 20 million Americans joined hands with the citizens of Wisconsin to celebrate our one and only home planet.Each year since then, our friends and neighbors across the country, and since 1990 around the world, have made Earth Day an opportunity to joyfully acknowledge our determination to live in harmony with the natural environment on which we all depend.On Saturday, April 27, local members of the Citizen’s Climate Lobby invite you to a celebratory ...
Wisconsin Fish Tales
It was a real eye opener for those of us who fish Wisconsin's waters last week when retired DNR fisheries biologist Frank Pratt spoke at the UW Center for Civic Engagement. He told us how our changing climate already affects the fish in our rivers, lakes and streams, and what is yet to come. The news could hardly have been worse.Careful monitoring and diligent record keeping reveal that the waters our fish live in are warming. Numerous factors determine just how much, but the temperature rise ranges between half and one and a half degree Celsius - as much as almost three degrees Fahrenheit. Seems small, but for the fish and other denizens of the ...
OUR CHERISHED FISH
Despite the fact that scientists from around the world warn us, almost daily now, that we are witnessing the unraveling of the climate we depend on, their message hasn't turned our heads in sharp alarm. If you're thirty or less you might have an excuse because it's been that long since we've had a year with normal temperatures.The earth is heating up. But for the rest of us, well, we just ought to know better. We sure didn't grow up in Wisconsin with regular winter rains, or growing seasons that went past Labor Day weekend. Now we're eating fresh tomatoes from our garden's in late September and even into October, while winter rains are raising havoc ...
Darwin Drove Electric
Let me say that an electric car is a powerful evolutionary force. For years I have been convinced, as have 97% of the world's scientists, that climate change is real, that it is the most serious threat we face and that we are its primary cause. As bad as that sounds it is, in fact, the well from which I draw my optimism and my activism. If we are the source of the problem then we can solve it. That was why I found myself in a Chevy dealership over in Crivitz about to buy my first electric car, to help shrink my carbon footprint.Truth be told, though, I was frightened. We all cut our automotive teeth on the internal combustion engine and buying a ...
Think Outside the Oil Barrel
Many of the world's best scientists just released their latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, their thrust? To continue to rely on fossil fuels is to invite incalculable disaster. Considering the reputation past IPCC reports have earned as much too conservative this one is so alarming then that we ought to rush out with arms opened wide to embrace renewable energy and other sustainable technologies like electric cars.We should exuberantly grow our own food, gladly reduce the amount of meat in our diets and when possible buy locally sourced goods – all to shrink our carbon footprints. To go on living as we are looks ...
Climate Change Defines Our Era
Imagine living where all the hard working citizens unnecessarily export almost $15 billion of their hard earned money out of state each and every year. Imagine what those folks could do with it if they kept that money right where they live: a better standard of living for all, better services and more local jobs to be sure. Of course, the folks I'm talking about are us.According to a Wisconsin State Energy Office report that's what we spend every year on the fossil fuels we heat and light our homes and fill our car's gas tanks with - resources we don't have and must import. Most of it is spent on transportation. Sadly, we are also buying mercury ...
Celebrating Sustainability on Earth Day
Whether sustainability means keeping Earth's environment and climate healthy and stable for our well-being and that of all her living creatures, or whether sustainability means keeping our State and our Country competitive in the rapidly growing renewable energy economy – or both - Earth Day in Wausau has something for you. This Earth Day celebration is for everyone and people of all perspectives will be treated with respect. A healthy planet and a healthy economy benefit us all.From keynote speaker Scott Coenen, Executive Director of the Wisconsin Conservative Energy Forum's discussion of that new, global economy, to presentations about ...
Earth Day March and Celebration
We will celebrate Earth Day and affirm our Support for Science on Saturday, April 22 with a march. We will start at 11 AM where the north entrance to the River Edge Walkway begins at the Wisconsin River end of Winton Street. Bring your signs and banners. Our walk ends at the Oak Island Park shelter just north of Thomas Street at 12 o'clock. We will plant an oak tree nearby. Folks who want a shorter walk can join anywhere along the way or just meet at the park.Mayor Robert Mielke will officiate and dedicate the tree. Retired UWMC Professor of Biology Dr. Ned Grossnickle will speak about climate change, its impacts and what we can do to alleviate it.The ...
SPIRITUALITY, POLITICS AND CLIMATE CHANGE
The ways our spirituality and our politics interact can be profoundly significant. Recently, during a very pleasant conversation I was told that God gave us dominion over the earth. That comment startled me then and has bothered me ever since, germinating a few thoughts along the way.It seems wholly outrageous that our Creator would put us in charge of something as complex as this planet - at least as outrageous as the idea of us accepting the offer. How could we even consider dominating the earth when just by tweaking the carbon dioxide settings in our atmosphere we're doing such weird things to our climate - spring weather in Wisconsin's ...
STAND UP FOR SCIENCE, OUR DEMOCRACY, AND OUR PLANET
It was bad enough when we recently discovered our state DNR had stripped the words “climate change” from its website and added wording that led readers to believe there is controversy in the climate research world about its cause - the only real controversy is political, not scientific. A little later we learned that our Public Service Commission had done the same. Now, we find the new Trump administration erased climate change from the Environmental Protection Agency's website and has silenced EPA staff. Perhaps Orwell should have titled his book “2016” instead of “1984”.We depend on the stability of our world's climate. Actual global ...