BEREA, Ky. (CNS) -- The continuing need to consume fossil fuels is changing the environment, not only on a global scale but also in the heart of one of the United States' leading fossil-fuel-producing regions, according to a University of Kentucky professor.
"I have been by homes in Lexington with five-car garages," said Tom Barnes, a forestry professor at the University of Kentucky. "I have driven past houses with six or seven cars in the driveway."
There are now 233 million cars on the nation's roads to serve a total population of barely more than 300 million, he added, but "Mom and Dad work, (and) the kids need to go to school."
Another example of overconsumption in central Kentucky can be seen in water usage. It is up 127 percent since 1956, according to Barnes. A water utility serving the area, he added, may have to raise rates 25 percent so it can finish construction on a new pumping station to pull water into communities from a considerably farther distance.
Barnes made his remarks Nov. 9 during an Appalachian study tour co-sponsored by the Catholic Press Association and the Catholic Committee on Appalachia.
As the U.S. population grows and other nations become more prosperous, "everybody wants to live like Americans," Barnes said, resulting in even greater fossil-fuel consumption.
Plant life will be adversely affected by the rising temperatures resulting from the increased burning of fossil fuels. Barnes estimated that should this warming trend continue unabated there will be an 8 percent decrease in plant species and a 60 percent increase in ragweed pollen, while poison ivy will be stronger and more vigorous and potent.
Coal mining, a central part of the Appalachian economy for the past century, has contributed to the environmental ills.
When coal is mined -- and an increasing amount of it is now extracted through a surface-mining method critics call "mountaintop removal" -- traces of mercury get dislodged. "Mercury is toxic in terms of parts per billion. Parts per billion," Barnes said, yet "mercury is not regulated" by the federal government.
Mercury, he added, has been found in 175 songbirds in the U.S. that were previously determined to be free of mercury, and it can be found in polar bears, minks and otters. It also is having negative effects on bald-eagle reproduction.
Moreover, the federal Environmental Protection Agency estimates that between 60,000 and 300,000 babies are born each year with unsafe levels of mercury in their systems.
In Kentucky this mercury pollution has spread to the state's waterways, as miles of streams are now under fish advisories. Residents are advised to eat only one fish a week caught from those streams so as to avoid a buildup of mercury in their own bodies, according to Barnes.
The mountaintop removal regulations stipulate that mining firms must restore the natural contours to the scaled-down mountains, but it is much harder to replace the ecosystem that was atop the mountain prior to mining.
Nonnative grasses are used for such "reclaimed" land because they grow fast and disguise what happened to the mountain, Barnes said, but "trees won't grow on it," which has consequences in terms of absorbing carbon in the air -- another byproduct of coal burning and other fossil-fuel use.
Climate change is affecting Kentucky as well as its Appalachian neighbor states and the rest of the nation even in aesthetic terms, changing nature's cycle.
"Before, I could always count on the peak (fall) color being around the 20th of October," Barnes said. "Now it's during the first week of November, almost two weeks later."
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