A Practical Peacemaker Ponders . . .

Organizers of the Green Book Festival, to be held later this month in San Francisco, have announced the winners of book awards in over a dozen categories.*  I learned of this because a book to which I contributed a chapter was the winner of the Business category.  The book, Greening Libraries, published by Library Juice Press in 2012, showcases librarians who have pioneered ways to educate their patrons about environmental and sustainability issues.

My chapter, “Library-Sponsored Sustainable Living Outreach in Denver,” describes programs I and a few other librarians working for the Denver Public Library have implemented toward that goal. [I am now retired, but worked as a DPL librarian for 14 years.] These programs included successfully urging a large library fundraising event to “go green” with recyclable table service, locally produced foods, and website information about libraries’ environmentally beneficial aspects.  Continue reading →

I had the opportunity to attend a pre-release screening of a new documentary, Chasing Ice.  The title might sound like another travel/adventure film, and it is, but much more.  It may finally take us to the tipping point in convincing the general public that climate change is real and that we must not delay in addressing it.
Environmental photographer James Balog and his crew placed cameras at a couple of dozen places in the Arctic to take time-lapse photos of glaciers over a period of several years.  The results are startling and undeniable: glaciers are melting at an unprecedented and astonishing rate.  Such indisputable visual evidence, obtained at great expense and under difficult conditions, reaches viewers in a much more dramatic way than previous films like An Inconvenient Truth.  We follow the crew as they penetrate remote and highly inhospitable locations to place the cameras and later to retrieve the images.  We gain a sense of Balog’s determination to produce the evidence that will stimulate a mass movement to take action.  The livability of our planet is at stake, and time is critical.
Find out more, watch the trailer, and check showtimes here.  In the Denver area, see it at Chez Artiste Nov. 23 – 29.

Wildfires have burned in Colorado early and often this year, with unprecedented losses of personal property and forest acreage.  Increasing numbers of people–now 1 out of 5 in Colorado- -live in so-called “red zones,” areas at high risk of fires. Climate change has also been a factor, bringing warmer and dryer weather.  Throughout the centuries, naturally occurring fires kept forest acreage healthy, but in the last century fires have been largely suppressed, contributing to more growth of underbrush. This growth, allowed to accumulate, gives pine beetles more to chew on, creates more fuel for fires, and makes new fires harder to control. Continue reading →