Ernie's Tips & Topics

Environmental Concerns Committee

Car Idling, Part 1

It’s wintertime, and that means it can get pretty cold outside. When it’s cold and we’re in our cars, we seek to stay warm. We do this by running the engine. But when you idle your engine for more than 10 seconds, there are 5 major negative effects associated with it. First, it uses up valuable resources, Second, it puts unnecessary wear and tear on your engine, Third, it costs you money. Fourth, it hurts air quality and that’s detrimental to people with respiratory illnesses, such as asthma, especially children. Fifth, well, I’ll get to that one next time. Stay warm this winter, but please try to limit your engine idling. Maybe keeping blankets in the car can help keep you and your family warm. Remember: you do make a difference, please make if a positive one. Thanks.

                        Environmental Ernie

Car Idling, Part 2

Idling your car engine has 5 major drawbacks, I’ve already looked at the first 4. The fifth? It hurts the environment. Idling your car for more than 10 seconds uses more fuel and produces more emissions (that contribute to climate change) than stopping and restarting your engine. Every gallon of gas burned produces more than 20 pounds of greenhouse gases. A car engine can use as much as half of a gallon of fuel per hour while idling. Annually, approxi-  mately 60 Billion pounds of carbon pollution are added to the air from idling cars. WOW! The carbon, as well as methane, produced by idling trap heat from the sun, leading to global temperature increases. It’s important to stay warm, but please try to limit your engine idling, for both the sake of the environment and our children’s future.

Remember: you do make a difference, please make if a positive one. Thanks.

                        Environmental Ernie

“And the winner is….”

It’s Academy Awards night. This got me thinking about the movie Titanic. I’ve never seen the movie, but I am familiar with its story: passengers aboard an “unsinkable” ship, dining, drinking, dancing – totally unaware of the perils lurking around them. The current conditions on earth are not unlike those of the Titanic: we keep on dining, drinking, dancing on an “unsinkable” planet, seemingly unaware of the perils lurking around us. We need to awaken to the dangers we face with the environment. The earth, as big as it is, is NOT “unsinkable.” We need to begin and continue to look for dangers around us, and do all we can to avoid them NOW! Maybe the movie Titanic can actually teach us something, and if it does, well that may just add a little more meaning to the Academy Award it won for best picture in 1997.

Remember: you do make a difference, please make it a positive one. Thanks.

- Environmental Ernie

“We don’t inherit the environment form our parents, we borrow it from our children.”

Th authorship of the quote may be in doubt, but its message is loud and clear: the environment is a gift that God has bestowed upon the earth for all living creatures, from the beginning until the final day of judgement. It is not exclusively ours, it belongs to those who come after us as well. As Jesus said, “What father would hand his son a stone when he asked for bread?” What generation would give its descendants a polluted and devastated environment when it asks for a clean and fruitful one? We need to “return” this borrowed environment to our children in a better condition than we received it. Remember: you do make a difference, please make if a positive one. Thanks.

                        Environmental Ernie

Question: What’s the one single, most important thing that you can do to help the environment?

Answer: REDUCE! We’ve all seen the iconic slogan. “Reduce, reuse, recycle.” There’s a reason why REDUCE is listed first. It’s the most important of the 3 when it comes to helping our environment. Yet, it’s also perhaps the most difficult. In this age of mass advertising and marketing strategists, we are compelled to want, to buy, to have, and to get more and more and more. It’s so tempting. But to help the earth, there is one ‘more” more that we need: we need to be more prudent in our purchases and posses- sions. Remember: you do make a difference, please make if a positive one. Thanks.

                        Environmental Ernie

Earth Day – April 22nd

Earth Day 2024 is quickly approaching. This year’s global theme is “Planet vs. Plastics.” We’ll look at the impact plastic is having on our environment in the future. For now, it’s crucial to remember the earth every day, not just once a year. The earth is truly one of the utmost gifts from God to humanity. If you doubt that, try living without it. It’s impossible. And remember, there is no backup for the earth. As Pope Francis said in Laudato Si’, “creation can only be understood as a gift from the outstretched hand of the Father of all.” So I hope everyone will make each day “Earth Day,” do all you can to protect and preserve the earth, and thank the good Lord each day for this most precious gift. Thank you for that. Remember: you do make a difference, please make it a positive one. Thanks!

                                                  Environmental Ernie

Season of Creation

The Season of Creation (September 1st to October 4th) is celebrated annually by Christians around the world. It is a time to renew our relationship with our Creator and all His creation. It is a time for prayer, for reflection, for hope, and for action. Those values are embedded in this year’s theme,

“To Hope and Act with Creation.” It is our hope that you will act. Please take time during this season to not only think about the wonders of God’s creation, but to do something positive to help preserve and protect them. And, of course, please remember to pray. The Lord has blessed us greatly through his creation, let us take time to show Him our appreciation. Remember: you do make a difference, please make it a positive one. Thanks!

                                                  Environmental Ernie

Flowers are fantastic and beautiful! I have learnt some few lessons from nurturing flowers. As flowers grow, they branch out and become more productive. Similarly, as human beings when we branch out by growing our networks in business and in life generally, we become more productive. While nurturing flowers we prune them so that they can grow to their top level.  This also applies in life. Sometimes we need to ‘prune’ by cutting off links with a toxic environment in order to grow and draw closer to God.

Human beings have a symbiotic relationship with flowers.  The plant uses its beauty to attract humans while humans find flowers attractive, they nurture and water them. In return, flowers provide humans with great aroma and the beauty of flowers brings positive emotions to humans and enables humans to explore senses like sight and smell. 

However, mass produced flowers which some flower growers use are hazardous and toxic to birds and animals thus degrade the environment. To counter the environmental degradation, flower growers are encouraged to grow flowers organically for mutual benefit of the flora and fauna. By nurturing flowers in an environmental conscious way, humans are able to skillfully interact with the environment.

Genesis 2: 15 "The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take are of it.

The upcoming week (September 30 - October 4) marks the end of this year’s Season of Creation celebration. To mark this special week, the students at St. Albert will be participating in daily activities focused on creation, the environment, and their role in both. Pope Francis’s guide book, “Our Common Home” will be the foundation for each day’s theme and activities. Please talk to your children daily about what they are learning and their role in protecting our environment. And please make a commitment yourself to help the environment. Example is one of the greatest teaching methods we have available. If we wish to ensure a safe and healthy environment for our children, there’s no better time to start than now.  Remember: you do make a difference, please make it a positive one. Thanks!

                                                  Environmental Ernie

Recently the Courier Journal printed an article about recycling in Metro Louisville. Yes, they do actually recycle items. You can take a tour of the Westrock facilities if you like. The article said that the city and other waste companies divert about 340,000 tons of materials each year from landfills. That’s good. But what caught my eye was that the article said we place 970,000 tons of items in our landfill each year. Wow! Now doing some math, at 2,000 pounds per ton, that’s 1,940,000,000 pounds of garbage put in Metro Louisville’s landfill during the past year alone! Ouch! When you consider all the cities and towns, large and small, around the world and the amount of garbage they produce, well it doesn’t take a mathematical genius to realize we are filling up the earth with garbage at an unsustainable rate. We have got to find ways to reduce our waste, for if we don’t, mathematically our chances of maintaining a healthy environment for the future are quickly approaching zero! Remember, you do make a difference, please make it a positive one! Thanks.

                                      Environmental Ernie

Charles Kettering once said, “We should all be concerned about the future because we will have to spend the rest of our lives there.” True. We should all also be concerned about the environment because we will have to live the rest of our lives in it. Climate change, extreme weather, pollution are all real and will have a major impact on our lives in the future. But they are not the only environmental problems we face. Excessive waste (i.e. garbage) is another. Not only does it fill up our landfills, but it takes valuable resources our of the environmental equation. The most important thing we can do to help the environment is to reduce our impact: buy less, use less, waste less. That’s something to keep in mind as we approach the holiday season. Remember, you do make a difference, please make it a positive one! Thanks.

                                      Environmental Ernie

Christmas is almost here. Santa will soon be coming down the chimney (if you’ve been good), bringing lots of new things. Maybe you’ll get some new electronic devices this year. Wonderful! But what do you do with the old ones? That’s where are friends at Greenway Shredding and Recycling come in. You can take all your old electronics (and batteries too) to them at 2318 Watterson Trail in J-town and they will gladly recycle those devices for free. It’s a win-win, both for you and the environment. Of course, you can recycle electronics there any time of the year. I’m sure you will enjoy your new electronics even more knowing you’ve disposed of your old ones responsibly. Remember, you do make a difference, please make it a positive one! Thanks.

                                      Environmental Ernie

Earth Day – How it all began

The first Earth Day was held on April 22, 1970. It was the brainchild of Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson. Nelson, a former 2-term governor of Wisconsin, had become concerned about environmental issues. In 1962, Rachael Carson published Silent Spring, a book outlining the harmful effects of pesticides on the environment. This began a growing concern among Americans about the possible dangers from things in the environment, such as DDT, leaded gasoline, phosphates in detergents, industrial waste, smog, air and water pollution. In 1969, a massive oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara and a massive fire on the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, caused by the dumping of industrial waste straight into the river, further alarmed the public.

Nelson wanted to capitalize on the activist movement happening in America, especially on college campuses, against the Vietnam War and for Civil Rights. He proposed a “teach-in” day across college campuses to educate students about the environment. He enlisted the help of graduate student and activist Denis Hayes to not only organize the teach-ins, but to also bring the topic to a wider public. Hayes assembled a team of 85 people to promote events across the nation. Their effort quickly spread to a wide-ranging number of organizations, faith-based groups, schools, and others interested in the environment. They considered several names for the event, but chose Earth Day, which got national media attention.

Earth Day 1970 inspired 20 million Americans (10% of the country’s population) to get out and demonstrate for the planet. They protested against the impact of 150 years of unchecked industrial growth, which had left a growing legacy of harm to the environment and caused serious health issues for many Americans. It was a rare moment in U.S. history, as people from both sides of the aisle, Democrats and Republicans, rich and poor, urban and rural dwellers, business and labor leaders, and many others came together for the same cause. It marked the largest secular day of protest in the world.

Why April 22nd?

Earth Day initially was an event focused on college students. April 22 fell nicely between spring break and final exams, thus allowing more college students to participate. In addition, April 22, 1970 was a week day, which meant it didn’t interfere with any religious holidays. On top of this, it was late enough in the spring to anticipate good weather for outdoor activities.

What did the first Earth Day accomplish?

By the end of 1970, the first Earth Day had led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the passage of several important pieces of legislation, including the National Environmental Education Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA), and the Clean Air Act. In 1972, the Clean Water Act was passed by Congress. Since then, many additional laws and regulations have been implemented that aim directly at protecting and preserving the environment.

In 1990 Earth Day went global. Today it is celebrated in over 190 countries and by over 1 billion people. It remains the largest secular day of protest in the world.

And now you know! Remember: you do make a difference, please make it a positive one. Thanks!

                                             Environmental Ernie

 March 22nd is World Water Day! How important is water? Just try living without it. This year’s theme is “Glacier Preservation.” Glaciers are absolutely vital to life on earth. Today, due to our warming planet, glaciers are melting faster than ever. Nearly 2 billion people rely on water from glaciers for drinking, agriculture, and energy production. As they melt, sea levels rise, threatening coastal commun-ities. The leading cause of glacial melting is carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels. You can help by reducing your carbon footprint: don’t idle your car, eat less meat and dairy, buy less and buy local, don’t waste food. You can check out your own carbon footprint by using the carbon footprint calculator found on my web site under “What Can You Do?” Remember, you do make a difference, please make it a positive one, Thanks!

                                          Environmental Ernie

          Environmental Ernie