I have been living in California so long that I very often forget that people from other parts of North America easily chuckle and think, “those crazy Californians”.  Crazy, different, fore-thinking, because we are always doing things, for lack of a better word, “Organically”. In fact I think I have, more than once, used the fact that I live in California to explain away my crazy thinking or behavior. Which, of course, made those thoughts understandably okay, as if there was nothing that I could do but to succumb to what living in California had made me, and perhaps that is true.

In my recent trip to the Carolinas it wasn’t until the end of my trip that I noticed the first recycling bins as I stood in line to board the plane home.  But it isn’t all that out there - how about simply recycling? At the hotel where we stayed in Myrtle Beach, there were no recycling bins, nor did I see any in the malls. I remember thinking,  “Are we Californians the only ones trying to save the planet?”

I guess this thought was prompted by my entire experience the week that I had been away.  Several years earlier on a trip to France I had been engaged in a conversation about what action could be taken to reverse the greenhouse effect on the earth.  A young man had said ” just planting more trees could easily make a very big difference.”  So, that week in the Carolinas, the massive bare lawns most houses sported that could easily support a tree, or even ten struck me as an opportunity lost to help the earth.

Trees have always been a part of my life, spending a good portion of my teens living or visiting my aunt and uncle on 20 acres of orchard in British Columbia.  In fact both my cousins are still very involved with trees - one works for PRT, which is the largest producer of container forest seedlings in North America. We talked at length about reforestation. Bottom line seems to be that big companies can buy carbon credits at such a low rate that it is not yet viable for a company like PRT to create a market for this service.  So for now they sell only to lumber companies who are required by law to replant the forests they clear for the purpose of producing 2 x 4’s.

But what about land that could be reforested?  With the acres of farmland no longer viable for farming. who might pay the cost of planting the trees to help us become carbon mutual?  It doesn’t seem like farmers at this point…. just like farming wheat, it has to be worthwhile for the farmers, and right now the cost of carbon credits is too low to make it worthwhile to plant a tree, which seems like a shame.

At the Stanford Terrace Inn  a Palo Alto hotel we are always looking for ways to lessen our carbon footprint, we have no place to plant trees, so recently we started our composting program, producing 32 gallons weekly. Nearly 43% of our ‘garbage’ is actually recyclable and to reach our Palo Alto community goals of Zero Waste by 2021 and 15% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 we need to do everything we can to help.

Planting trees is, in my opinion, a very positive, powerful statement in support of our survival. This is supported by the efforts of Wangari Maathai, a woman who put her life on the line to plant trees in Kenya.

Shanti,

Barbara

Ed. Note: Please check into our partner’s activities, “Canopy”, a non-profit center for street, park, and garden trees in Palo Alto, California.