For great future Earth Days

Earth Day is Friday. Those acting locally include the Skagit Valley Food Co-op, which will give away tree saplings, and Kelly Harper, who is organizing a Snee Oosh beach cleanup. Heavens knows, more trees need to be planted and more debris removed from beaches. But local actions need to advance beyond individual acts to governmental, institutional and corporate policies that bring decisions that greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The La Conner Regional Library committing to getting 100% of its electricity from solar panels is exactly the larger scale action every organization needs to be taking.

In an April 4 report, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded the world can halve emissions by 2030. That means Skagit County and La Conner governments and corporations stepping up, as the library has.

We have no choice. Citizens must push for large, innovative changes or we will fail to get out of the tragedy facing us.

The report started, “without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, limiting global warming to 1.5°C is beyond reach.”

In La Conner’s tourist dependent economy, the carbon exhaust from visitors arriving here is perhaps the critical issue to solve. Work backwards from these visionary goals:

1. Car free Sundays downtown

2. Cars not allowed downtown.

Earth shattering in their scope? The earth will shatter otherwise.

How complex, expensive and far out in years to implement will it be before all vehicles park on the town’s periphery, somewhere between Conway and the school district’s parking lots, with visitors shuttled downtown in electric buses, horse drawn wagons and pedal cabs?

Impossible?

The responsible editorial places a marker seemingly beyond reach. Residents, elected officials and government staff can continue to take baby steps. We will then arrive at a date certain of hot, of dry, of high tides over the roads and perhaps a tourist-free future. Or we can boldly project our sustainable thriving in a town full of tourists but with hardly a gas powered vehicle in sight.

The last will happen. Gas-fueled cars are powered by dinosaurs. The question is, will we lean into a new era or will we be dragged kicking and screaming and suffering through social and economic upheavals because we failed to plan ourselves into prosperity? That planet will be very different from what our parents knew. It must be changed for the sake of children yet unborn.

The United Nations’ panel believes we can survive and thrive sustainably. What will that look like in La Conner?

Consider how many more tourists will fit into a car-free First Street. Consider the food vendors, the dancers, the musicians and clowns literally on that street.

We can make that future real. Or we choose not to.