Afraid of the Dark?

When I was a wee tot about a millennia ago a bedroom became available in my house and my mother decided that it was time that I should have my own room. So they moved me into the bedroom next to the one I had shared with my older brother pretty much for all of my entire young life. Now when it came time to go to bed my mother thought that I might be afraid of the dark, though I had slept in complete darkness my whole life, this would be the first time alone. So to head off this problem she decided to leave the desk lamp on hoping that this would help me to not be afraid of sleeping alone in the dark. I screamed bloody murder.

The desk lamp threw-off garish shadows from the bed, closet and desk, which I was sure all the monsters in the world were hiding in. After several nights of this my mother decided to try it without the lamp, and I slept just fine. As it turned out I was maybe the only child on the planet who was not afraid of the dark but indeed afraid of the light. My entire life I have spent taking great comfort in the night, feeling very safe surrounded by the darkness, which I could slip off into and none of my enemies could find me. There has never been any fear for me when the sun goes down which seems to be a sentiment very few people on the rest of this planet seem to share.

When I originally moved into this house eight years ago with my now ex-wife there was street light in the back yard up at the peak of our roof which illuminated the entire back yard turning night to day. The switch for this light was down in the basement, not easily accessed, but since this large halogen light had a sensor that would turn it on at dusk and shut it off when the sun rose it was always left on. My wife and the kids were greatly comforted by this light and the only time I remember it being shut off was on a couple occasions when the ex and I went skinny dipping in our pool and at least one occasion when we slept out in a tent which was when I found out that our neighbor's young adult kids liked to skinny dip in our pool as well. The wife, kids, pool, and the neighbor's kids are all gone now but that light is still there turning night to day.

About two months ago I was down in the basement and I saw the switch to that light and decided I really didn't need it running all night long, so I shut it off. As with many people I have been trying to lower my footprint on the planet, to help in any way I can to put less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which means shutting off those unnecessary lights wherever possible. Now this may only be one light, and one might think that shutting off one light won't make much of a difference, but it can. As it turns out that one light, that I paid little attention to before, was responsible for 25% of my electric bill! Fully one quarter of the electric I consume was being generated for one light whose only purpose was to light up the back yard, and most of the time it was doing it was while I was asleep, benefiting no one! Now that seems like a good bit of savings, not only for the environment, but for my wallet as well.

Now its not like its totally dark out there at night, the street lights running up and down my street do a good job of turning night to day, because apparently the headlights on peoples cars aren't good enough. Out back there is plenty of light provided by the old shop across the field that closed down last year but still has a dozen street lights illuminating their entire parking area for no one except one guard, and has at least one of those street lights that burns both night and day. The moon and stars do a pretty good job of lighting up the night, what little of them you can see anymore, as they are mostly blocked out by all those lights we seem to have some need to burn all night.

Which makes me wonder are all the people still so afraid of the dark that they can't just let the night be the night. Are they still worried about predators in the darkness, even though we've wiped most of them out, that they feel a need to wipe out the darkness as well. Can't they enjoy the charms that the night brings, that any skinny dipper will tell you, has its advantages. After all, the only monsters I've found in the darkness seem to be lurking high atop those telephone poles...

Plant a Tree... Save the World...

TREES ABSORB CARBON DIOXIDE.

CARBON DIOXIDE IS THE GAS THAT CAUSES GLOBAL WARMING.

PLANT A TREE...SAVE THE WORLD...

I don't know how I can make it any clearer. It's early morning, the sun is just rising on this New Years day 2007 and it's a balmy 50 degrees F. and raining outside when it should be 20 degrees with 2 feet of snow on the ground.

We are deforesting our planet, killing off the one thing that can save us. There is no more time for argument and debate, because while people talk, the temperature is rising.

In 2006 I managed to plant 22 trees in my yard and have many more in my "tree bed" waiting to go in this year. Here are some tree facts for you taken from the Colorado Tree Coalition.

Carbon Sequestration:

· Heat from Earth is trapped in the atmosphere due to high levels of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other heat-trapping gases that prohibit it from releasing heat into space -- creating a phenomenon known as the "greenhouse effect." Trees remove (sequester) CO₂ from the atmosphere during photosynthesis to form carbohydrates that are used in plant structure/function and return oxygen back to the atmosphere as a byproduct. About half of the greenhouse effect is caused by CO₂. Trees therefore act as a carbon sink by removing the carbon and storing it as cellulose in their trunk, branches, leaves and roots while releasing oxygen back into the air.

· Trees also reduce the greenhouse effect by shading our homes and office buildings. This reduces air conditioning needs up to 30%, thereby reducing the amount of fossil fuels burned to produce electricity. This combination of CO₂ removal from the atmosphere, carbon storage in wood, and the cooling effect makes trees a very efficient tool in fighting the greenhouse effect.

· One tree that shades your home in the city will also save fossil fuel, cutting CO₂ buildup as much as 15 forest trees.

· Approximately 800 million tons of carbon are stored in U.S. urban forests with a $22 billion equivalent in control costs.

· Planting trees remains one of the cheapest, most effective means of drawing excess CO₂ from the atmosphere.

· A single mature tree can absorb carbon dioxide at a rate of 48 lbs./year and release enough oxygen back into the atmosphere to support 2 human beings.

· Each person in the U.S. generates approximately 2.3 tons of CO₂ each year. A healthy tree stores about 13 pounds of carbon annually -- or 2.6 tons per acre each year. An acre of trees absorbs enough CO₂ over one year to equal the amount produced by driving a car 26,000 miles. An estimate of carbon emitted per vehicle mile is between 0.88 lb. CO₂/mi. – 1.06 lb. CO₂/mi. (Nowak, 1993). Thus, a car driven 26,000 miles will emit between 22,880 lbs CO₂ and 27,647 lbs. CO₂. Thus, one acre of tree cover in Brooklyn can compensate for automobile fuel use equivalent to driving a car between 7,200 and 8,700 miles.

· If every American family planted just one tree, the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere would be reduced by one billion lbs annually. This is almost 5% of the amount that human activity pumps into the atmosphere each year.

· The U.S. Forest Service estimates that all the forests in the United States combined sequestered a net of approximately 309 million tons of carbon per year from 1952 to 1992, offsetting approximately 25% of U.S. human-caused emissions of carbon during that period.

· Over a 50-year lifetime, a tree generates $31,250 worth of oxygen, provides $62,000 worth of air pollution control, recycles $37,500 worth of water, and controls $31,250 worth of soil erosion.

If you live in an apartment or don't have any place to plant a tree here are some people at AmericanForests.org that will plant trees for you.

Please try to make it your New Years Resolution to help do something about this environmental catastrophe that is going on all around us.