MANCHESTER — It started with a single peach tree earlier this year.
It yielded 64 jars of peaches, and accomplished two things at once: It represented locally grown food, and in a small way, helped reduce carbon emissions into the atmosphere.
It may be a small drop in a gigantic bucket, but the one peach tree did inspire an idea that will represent Manchester's part in an international event that will take place this Saturday, Oct. 24, said Laura Yanne of Dorset.
Beginning last Aug. 24, 350 fruit trees — apple, cherry, peach, pear and plum — have been sold as part of a campaign to raise awareness of climate change issues in general and the need to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, Yanne said. She is the project manager of the fruit tree initiative, which is moving forward under the auspices of Transition Town Manchester, a local group which is hoping to spark more interest in what local residents can do to assist in a broader effort.
"Every little bit helps," she said. "It's something each and every person can do."
A ceremonial fruit tree will be planted at Adams Park — the former site of the chamber of Commerce's Visitor Information Center — on Saturday, at 1 p.m. Steve Jones, the owner of the Mettowee Mill Nursey, will donate and plant the ceremonial apple tree. But the idea behind the fruit tree planting is that there's more to do after Oct.
"It isn't just a flash-in-the-pan or a feel-good effort," she said. "If you want something out of it you have to be a conscientious steward."
Why 350? That's the number of parts per million that many scientists and climate experts are now saying is the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere, according to the Web site 350.org. Right now the level is nearing 390 parts per million, which is substantially higher than the 275 parts per million typical of the world about 200 years ago, at the outset of the Industrial Revolution. It's also the title of the worldwide event scheduled for this coming Saturday, which will feature activities — like selling 350 fruit trees and holding a ceremonial planting of one — that will take place globally.
All told, there will be about 3,000 events taking place in 170 nations, according to 350.org. The apple tree planted in Adams Park will be part of a gallery of worldwide local actions presented to world leaders.
"We have to be aware that 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere has to be the stopping point, and we've gone past that," said Bill Laberge, one of the organizers of Transition Town Manchester. "What we're hoping to do is raise awareness on the part of everyone that whatever you do can be tied to this common goal. We've had a huge response — we sold out of the trees and have had to turn people away."
The events are designed to focus the attention of the world's political leaders on climate change in advance of a major international conference sponsored by the United Nations that is scheduled to start Dec. 7 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Climate change is accelerating faster than the worst case scenarios anticipated even only a few years ago, said Bill McKibben, a Middlebury College-based climatologist who was among the first to sound the alarm about global warming and mankind's role in it. McKibben, who has relentlessly pushed the issue and appeared here in Manchester about two years ago as part of a debate with John McLaughery, a professed skeptic on climate change, is one of the leading organizers of the 350.org project.
"We felt we needed a global movement about climate change — something that had never existed before," he stated in an e-mail to The Journal. "And we thought we needed to put the focus back on the science — particularly on the number that scientists now tell us is the most important number on the planet. Three hundred and fifty is a reminder that we need to negotiate not so much with China and the EU (European Union) as with physics and chemistry."
The Copenhagen conference is intended to craft a follow up protocol to the Kyoto Treaty, originally drafted in 1997 and formally adopted in 2005. That treaty, which the United States opted not to join, committed the signatory nations to reducing carbon emissions back to 1990 levels. It also placed a heavier burden on Western industrialized nations to meet certain targets than was assigned to "developing" nations like China and India. Those were sticking points for the U.S. Congress, as well as the Bush Administration, which refused to become a party to the treaty.
The first phase of the Kyoto agreement is set to expire in 2012, so the decisions made at Copenhagen will go far to determine how aggressively world leaders will tackle the thorny issues of climate change and carbon reduction, which can involve significant consequences for economic development, assuming the agreed-upon targets are legally binding with real teeth. Compliance with the Kyoto targets has been less than universal. According to The Economist, an international news magazine, Canada will overshoot its Kyoto targets by 29 per cent, but because the treaty has no real mechanism for penalizing Canada for that, the consequences are non-existent.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a climate change bill earlier this year, known as the Waxman-Markey bill, which commits the U.S. to controlling its carbon emissions through a so-called "cap and trade" plan, where by carbon producing entities could buy or sell credits to emit carbon dioxide or be compensated for limiting them. However, the bill's passage has been bogged down in the Senate, which is wrestling with complex legislation involving healthcare reform, and the fate of the House-passed cap-and-trade bill is uncertain. Failure to pass that bill, or something like it, will buttress the stance of those skeptical of the U.S. commitment to whatever comes out of Copenhagen, according to a report published in the New York Times last Sept. 21.
The prospects for such legislation are much stronger if there's a strong public movement that demands real change, McKibben stated. There's an important role for small, local citizen actions, as long as they are linked to other efforts around the world, he said.
Along with the ceremonial tree planting Saturday at Adams Park, there will be a series of events at The Northshire Bookstore, including the creation of a sculpture with 350 books, and a showing of a hour-long HBO documentary titled "Too Hot not to Handle" that evening. Fifty copies of "Now or Never," a book written by Tim Flannery, an Australian climatologist, will be given away. The presentation will be followed by a discussion, said Chris Morrow, the bookstore's general manager.
"We'll try to explain what 350 is all about," Morrow said. "What we're trying to do is raise pressure on the politicos in the lead up to the Copenhagen discussion. This is not just an environmental problem; it's a social problem, a political problem — it affects the fundamentals of our existence on the planet — people talk about the costs of doing something but I worry the costs of not doing something is just so catastrophic there's no comparison."
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