As winter (hopefully) fades away and the first signs of spring (including sunshine and 70-degree weather) has returned to the southeast, I’ve actually been able to find my way outside to take walks and soak up the vitamin D lately. As much as I prefer the coast, I can appreciate the more mountainous area in which Karen and I currently live (the Blue Ridge mountains are visible on the edge of our horizon…personally, that’s still a little too close for me, but they’re cool to look at sometimes). And, as most of you know how depressed I can get in the winter, it’s nice to start seeing some green outside instead of just dead, bare, brown limbs jutting out of tree trunks.
There’s been a controversy lately about a university in Virginia that recently dozed off a hilltop that it owns and placed the school logo all over the top of the hill, so that it’s literally visible from almost anywhere in the city. A lot of people are pretty pissed off at the idea, saying that a lot of trees were cut down for nothing more than advertising (it’s spawned a couple of interesting Facebook groups).
Well, I’m not going to delve into the local controversy here, but I have noticed myself thinking about the environment more lately. Not that I’ve become a tree hugger or anything, but I do think that we do a generally lousy of job of taking care of our environment. Certainly we are in a financial bind in our country because we’re dependent on foreign sources of oil to power our love affair with the automobile. But it just seems to be popping up a lot of late. Yesterday, Dr. Heidi Cullen, host of The Climate Code, did a segment on some of the new hybrid and alternative fuel vehicles that recently debuted at the LA Auto Show, and discussed how amazingly low the environmental by-products of such vehicles are (not to mention the gas mileage made my jaw drop). Perhaps riding the same interest wave, CNN yesterday talked about “geoengineering,” and the wild schemes that some scientists are forumlating to save us from the threat of global warming. And while I’m not ready to become an activist just yet, I do think that we’re facing a problem here.
I have no clever solutions to offer, or snappy banter to throw out about the issue. I just think that God gave us creation for our enjoyment and expects us to be good managers of His property. Yet we seem to want to treat it pretty destructively. So other than the obvious step of buying a hybrid car, which I know isn’t in my budget at the moment, what practical steps are there to try to make a difference in this? If we start doing something about it, then what does it look like?
Let me know what you think.