Trees, stripes and swastikas

Stepping outside in the dark after the town council meeting on Monday in a pair of shorts and short sleeves, I wondered if climate change was real and all that bad. It sure has been comfortable at 9,000 feet at night this week. For much of the previous decades in Crested Butte, as soon as it got dark any time of the year — December, March, July or August — people would need to put on an extra layer. 

I still have an old Patagonia fleece in the back of my car for when the sun goes down. I don’t think I’ve worn it this summer or last. Monday night was warm. Thursday night looks warmer. Next week appears a bit more old-school with high temperatures in the 60s instead of the 80s and overnight lows in the low 40s. Whew.

But before the feds silence the science and erase the data, it sure appears the climate is changing fast. Some say it is the normal earth cycle and not unexpected. But the cycle is taking years instead of centuries or millennia. Not only is it warmer longer here, scientists contend things like drought, wildfire and storms are becoming more intense at least in part because humans keep pumping carbon into the atmosphere. Of course, I am one of them and it won’t change much anytime soon. I won’t stop driving, traveling by plane, buying food trucked into the grocery store or living in the high Rocky Mountains during winter in a town whose economy depends on spewing carbon to attract tourists. I also won’t hypocritically claim, as many do here, that I am an earth-warrior enviro. Humans will do human things.

But we can also do what we can and while few will rip out their furnace or exclusively ride a bike for transportation, we can be more aware. We can support and encourage a shift to more renewable energy sources. While the current administration is going in the opposite direction and stepping on the gas for fossil fuels, that won’t last forever. 

Personally, I will renew my contribution at One Tree Planted to help plant more trees. Trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere during their photosynthesis. Their website states that over the past 30 years, Colorado’s average temperature has increased by 2°F — and this trend is already having an impact. The 10 largest fires in Colorado’s history have all occurred since 2002.

Trees may not be a magic wand, and more trees can only do so much, but hopefully it can help a little. Admittedly, trees are part of the natural cycle and when the forests burn in huge wildfires, they release massive amounts of carbon that were previously stored. 

The Climate Portal website says in the mid-1980s, wildfires in the United States consumed just under two million acres a year on average; now, eight million acres burn each year. And there’s a feedback loop: wildfires intensify climate change by releasing large amounts of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. California’s 2018 wildfire season released nearly as much CO₂ as did the state’s electric power plants that year.

But trees do absorb carbon and hopefully by contributing to plant some today, my one-year-old grandkids will feel less of the potential disastrous climate change impacts when they are my age. Monday evening was certainly comfortable but that could mean climate change is bad given the steady increase of a changing climate.

In the meantime, in a sense of optimism I suppose, I will continue to keep that ragged Patagonia fleece in the back of my car.

A couple other quick hits:

Thanks to the Colorado Department of Transportation for jumping in earlier than originally anticipated to stripe the highway south of Crested Butte. What a difference bright lines make on that road. We all appreciate that early effort and hope that next year we can be bumped up even sooner to sometime in June. Thanks! 

And someone mentioned to me on Tuesday that CDOT doesn’t have a 45-miles-per hour sign in the construction zone heading south. Might want to find one soon…especially as I see more road bikers rolling the dice in that stretch with no shoulder.

And given a fair amount of street talk about the turf field vandalism that happened earlier this month, I’ll agree with those who feel that putting the 16-year-old vandals in stocks at Third and Elk and pouring honey over them while releasing ants on their head is a bit much. Using the situation as a learning event however, isn’t.

I agree that consequences should be imposed, and lessons learned—and it appears that is happening both in the school and the community juvenile justice systems. But extreme public shaming of adolescents is not the appropriate tool. Etching a penis in the field gravel is almost predictable. My 16-year-old id thought about how much fun it would be to do some donuts on that field when it was raked out. Alas, I’m no longer 16.

The swastika etching however, tipped the scale and put the action into a more serious category. Just the idea of that hateful symbol scratched into the gravel no doubt got a visceral reaction out of many people in the community, me included. Aside from the fact a teenager’s brain is still developing and part of growing up at that age is pushing boundaries to determine what might be too much, some teenagers are simply dumbasses. There is no justification for throwing around swastikas which signal extreme hate and calls for action against certain peoples. Punishment is appropriate. In theory, those two boys are learning they went way over the boundary, and they have a chance to figure that out and fix it. They deserve that chance.

In the meantime, now is a time to teach not just those two boys, but the rest of the kids at CBCS and the community as a whole, the history and meaning of what a swastika symbolizes. It is tied to hate, murder, cruelty and dehumanization. Throwing one out there like funny bathroom humor is not a joke and those who may be ignorant of what a swastika represents, can be informed through this situation. 

—Mark Reaman