Grand Junction Free Press, CO, April 25, 2007

Ignore the End Of The World Glee Club. When it comes to doing the right thing for our environment, we’re the good guys. Yeah, we, too, hear the constant Climate Change Chorus, sung loudly by Al Gore and the Global Warmers. And we hope it didn’t devour too many of our world’s precious natural resources manufacturing his Academy Award, although we’re pretty sure that particular carbon footprint would have been offset by him carpooling carpooling too the ceremony in a hybrid with Michael Moore, instead of taking a private jet.

So, in the name of Public’s Right to Know and to help you celebrate a belated Earth Day, strap on your white Good Guy hat, slide Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” into the CD player and get a load of these positive environmental developments, brought to you by our buddies at the American Enterprise Institute and the Pacific Research Institute and its Index of Leading Environmental Indicators.

Each one is followed by a smart-aleck comment from Uncle Randy:

• The 2005 Global Forests Resources Assessment found that the annual net loss of forests has fallen from about 8.9 million hectares per year over the period 1990-2000, to 7.3 million hectares per year over the last five years.

Uncle Randy: And just think how many trees we could save if we started making paper from hemp. Hey, if it was good enough for the sails and ropes on the Revolutionary War ship the U.S.S. Constitution, it should be good enough for the Free Press and the New York Times.

• Between 1982 and 2003, estimated soil-erosion rates decreased by 43 percent.

Uncle Randy: Soil erosion is caused more by agriculture than anything else. Development and sprawl do more to stop agriculture than anything that’s not the government subsidizing farmers not to plant anything. If you love your environment, hug a land developer today!

• The U.S. has enjoyed substantial success in lowering methane emissions — by 12.8 percent-from the 1990 baseline year used in the Kyoto Protocol. This is significant because methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 — 23 times more potent, according to most estimates.

Uncle Randy: I can explain this. One of the biggest producers of methane gas is cow flatulence. With the cattle industry in the proverbial dumper, methane production is sinking.

• The U.S. continues to make progress on reducing ozone levels. In the greater Los Angeles basin, the worst location recorded 69 exceedences of the eight-hour ozone standard of .085 parts per million (ppm) in 2005 (with an average July temperature of 68.6 degrees F), but only 59 in 2006 (with an average July temperature of 74.3 degrees F). To put this in perspective, in 1988 Los Angeles recorded nearly 175 exceedences.

Uncle Randy: Those exceedences must have been caused by show bidness types who flew to El Lay in private jets. They were gathering to celebrate all the wonderful things they were doing in cleaning up the environment.

• The EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) shows a 45 percent decline in the last seven years. The latest TRI reveals a decline in toxic releases in 2004 of 180 million tons, or about 4 percent.

Uncle Randy: Among the most toxic releases were “An Inconvenient Truth” and “Fahrenheit 9/11.”

• The number of bald eagle nests in Wisconsin has grown from 108 in 1973 to 1,020 in 2005.

Uncle Randy: We’ve seen bald eagle nests; we love bald eagle nests. In Wisconsin bald eagles are apparently supplanting the dairy industry, which Al Gore might tell you is a good thing. But it’s awfully tough to milk enough eagles to make a chocolate bar.

• In the early 1970s, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game reports there were as few as 2,654 red salmon counted running up the Russian River in Kenai Peninsula to spawn. In recent years the count has exceeded 60,000, surpassing the number biologists thought was possible in the best of conditions.

Uncle Randy: This is a good thing, especially since smoked salmon goes so well with a good cigar.

Randy Wyrick celebrated Earth Day at the top of Vail Mountain on the closing day of the ski season. From there he could see a bunch of the Earth. Contact him at editor@vailtrail.com, or call (970) 748-2983.