Climate Change

The Thurston Climate Mitigation Plan (https://www.trpc.org/909/Thurston-Climate-Mitigation-Plan) outlines specific steps to reduce greenhouse emissions by 85% by 2050, when our children and grandchildren will be facing the effects of our efforts in the next few years to reduce pollution. We have seen what COVID-19 has done to our economy in addition to its human tolls.  Climate change, if not addressed,...

Kim Adelson 2020 will long be remembered as “the year of COVID-19”. As I am writing this article, almost 300,000 Americans have died from the virus; to put this in perspective, that is more than the number of American combat deaths that resulted from World War II. Many more individuals have become gravely ill. This is truly a tragedy whose impact on our lives, relationships, and livelihoods has been...

By Cindy Levy LMHC, TEP, CHT The news from Audubon’s 2019 Survival by Degrees report is grim: 64% of North American bird species – 389 of 604 – are at risk from climate change. The 2019 report predicted impacts from a rise in global mean annual temperature by 2080. Three warming scenarios were compared: 1.5 degrees, 2.0 degrees, and 3.0 degrees. If we don’t curb climate change immediately,...

By Kim Adelson When I first moved to New Zealand, I was continually shocked at the price of food. Tomatoes could run $7-8 a pound and a whole chicken might cost upwards of $20. (Some items, such as apples, kiwis, and a type of local chard were relatively inexpensive, but in general food felt like an extravagance.) Food prices were a frequent topic of conversation of us expats, and every American I...

by Kim Adelson – It’s New Year’s resolution time! And I am betting that if you are reading this article you care about our environment. There are many ways most of us contribute to pollution – we use toxic chemicals to clean our houses, we waste water – but I am going to focus on two especially important ones in the coming year and here in this piece. First, since greenhouse gas emissions are...

American Oystercatchers and Short-billed Dowitchers – photo Andrea Westmoreland, Wikimedia By Kim Adelson Walking along the coast in Western Washington – along estuaries or on the beach – you can potentially spot about 70-80 species of birds. (This does not count birds you might see from shore, but who are really in nearby habitat such as in trees behind the beach, rarities, or birds you would...

by Kim Dolgin – Everyone knows how e-commerce has taken off in recent years, not just in the United States, but globally. More than half of U.S. purchases are now made electronically, accounting for 9% of all the dollars that consumers spend. (Big-ticket items remain more likely to be bought at a bricks-and-mortar store.) These amounts are increasing rapidly, and since younger folk are more likely...

Last month I wrote about the environmental impact of pet waste (or, what goes out one end …); now I’ll try to convince you to reconsider what you are putting in your furry companion’s other end— your pet’s food. The way many people feed their cats and dogs magnifies, rather than minimizes, their contribution to climate change. And pets do contribute to global warming. Americans collectively own about...

As I indicated in the last issue, several of this year’s climate-change articles will address the impacts of global warming on the Puget Sound region. (Other articles will focus on practical tips to reduce your personal carbon footprint or to make lifestyle changes to positively impact birds and other wildlife.) Here I want to focus on the problem of ocean acidification. Although many of climate change’s...

Click on pic to link to Audubon site. As most of you know, the National Audubon Society considers climate change to be the number-one threat to birds; its scientists predict that global warming could result in the extinction or dramatic range-restriction of nearly half of North American birds by 2080. As birds in Western Washington face this danger, we are at risk of losing more than 40 species, such...