Judy Dearden, President
THANK YOU!
I want to take this opportunity to say thank you to the community, our HHGTF members, and the City of Highland Heights. In spite of challenges over the past two-plus years, our membership has remained strong. We have had successes in the area of environmental awareness over the past 12 years…and have hosted a number of great events. Probably the most popular has been the Freecycle/E-Waste drive. Over the past 12 years, we have been fortunate to have approximately 80 speakers for our “Green Living Speaker Series”…all experts in their fields pertaining to environmental awareness and education.
On Sept. 7th our speaker was Aaron Wilson, – Atmospheric Scientist with the Ohio State University, and the topic was “Climate Change and What We Can Do”. Aaron had a great many statistics for us, verifying that the climate is changing and that there is a real and present danger due to the change. Although the climate has always changed, over the past 100 years or so, the changes are happening at an accelerated rate, and the common belief is that humans are contributing to this high rate of change. Here are some costs associated with natural disasters in Ohio, which are steadily on the increase.
FROM THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE:
2008-2017 Natural Disasters in Ohio
- Flash flooding: $178,548,000
- Heavy rain: $126,000
- Heavy snow: $4,860,000
- Tornadoes: $196,559,000
Also information from Aaron: 2021 was the 6th warmest year since 1880. The top 10 warmest years have occurred since 2005, last seven years are the top seven warmest (since 2015). And if you were born after February 1985, you have never experienced a cooler-than-average month for the planet.
With a climate that is becoming warmer comes sustained heat stress on humans and livestock, along with lower food productivity and reduced quality. The scientific community agrees that we should have acted on this decades ago, but there are still steps that we, as individuals, can take to help. The following are some of Aaron’s tips for action.
TAKE ACTION IN YOUR BACKYARD and COMMUNITY
- Improve your energy efficiency
- Reduce the use of gasoline-powered yard tools
- Reduce the threat of invasive species expansion, choose plants that are native which require less resources
- Reduce water consumption
- Compost kitchen and garden waste
- Plant lots of trees to absorb carbon dioxide
Also:
- Plan car trips so that we are driving less.
- When the need comes to replace appliances, look for the most energy efficient ones.
Reduce the use of plastics, choosing more environmentally friendly alternatives such as glass that can be recycled indefinitely.
The link to Aaron’s full presentation is: https://tinyurl.com/HH-Climate22
UPCOMING EVENTS
- Oct 29: Community Shred Day, Service Dept
- Nov 2: Wed., Highland Heights Green Task Force Year-End membership meeting and elections
- Dec: Holiday Break; no meeting
Thank you to all for continuing to be interested in our shared environment and how to keep it and ourselves healthy. Please visit www.highlandhtsgreen.com or email hhgreentaskforce@yahoo.com or call Judy Dearden @ 440-646-9820 for more information.