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Welcome to the October 2009 Edition of the City of Fort Wayne’s Green City email newsletter
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This edition of the Green City email newsletter contains:
* October is Energy Awareness Month
* Upcoming Events
* Why is warming a problem? – by Wendy Barrott
* Local & State News
* In the Headlines
* Green Tips of the Month
* PDF version (Download)
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October is Energy Awareness Month
October has been Energy Awareness Month since a presidential proclamation in 1991. For more than 15 years, government organizations — in partnership with businesses, associations, and concerned citizens — have observed this month with activities and programs to promote public understanding of our energy needs and to reduce energy consumption in our everyday lives.
October is a great time to get started on the path toward energy savings —
Learn what you can do at work to save energy, participate in ENERGY STAR campaigns, and much more.
Take the ENERGY STAR Challenge, get active in your community, and team up with other businesses to help build a better world.
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Upcoming Events
October 24, 2009 from Noon to 4:00 p.m. at Garfield Park Arts Center in Indianapolis will be the Indiana Living Green: Day of Action Free! but please Register
November 7, 2009 starting at 10:00 a.m. Great Tree Canopy Comeback 2009 Friends of the Parks will again partner with area parks departments, volunteers, and businesses to purchase and plant new trees for our parks and public spaces. Over the last fifty years, our parks have lost close to 50% of the tree canopy due to weather and disease.
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Why is warming a problem? – by Wendy Barrott
Ok so the planet is warming, I’ve noticed and most of you have noticed over the span of our lives that its getting warmer – less snow and it melts sooner. Lilacs are blooming earlier. So? And that sooo is usually followed by “I hate cold weather.” Winter is not my favorite season either, but northern Indiana has evolved over thousands of years to become what it is; the place where we live, the place where we engage in specific recreation, grow specific food crops, raise certain live stock species and build our infrastructure (water, sewer, electric, gas, and roads) in a certain way. What changes have we seen in northern Indiana’s climate to date and what do climate forecasters see in our future. And more importantly what might that mean to the way we live.
Climate is technically defined as the meteorological conditions, including temperature, precipitation, and wind that characteristically prevail in a particular region determined by observation over a long term.
The plant hardiness graphic (below) says it all. Northeastern Indiana’s climate has gotten warmer and will get warmer if greenhouse gas emissions are reduced and even warmer if they aren’t. So, what have we seen that is due the changes in climate we have had to date? We now have the Emerald Ash Borer, a pest from Indonesia that arrived via a ship and found conditions warm enough to survive. West Nile Virus arrived and was able to spread in the US as a result of warmer temperatures. These two climatic changes are already causing us to spend for additional cost for tree removal and replacement and mosquito testing and control. The last frost is occurring about one week earlier and for the upper Midwest from 1908 and 2002 there has been a 50% increase in the frequency of days with over 4 inches of precipitation. More precipitation over shorter periods of time is causing more flash flooding and flooding.
The future for northern Indiana will likely bring changes in the seasonality of the precipitation with winter and spring precipitation increasing and decreasing precipitation in the summer; again, the frequency of severe events is expected to increase. The warmer winter temperature will allow corn pests like armyworm and earworm to expand their range further north causing increased costs for agricultural pest control. Dry, hot summers may cause failure of corn crops. The Purdue Climate Change Research Center states that “key adaptation mechanisms for farmers will be to shift planting dates and adopt crop varieties with shorter growing seasons so as to avoid the hottest parts of the growing season.” Will the technology be able to provide those crop varieties when we need them?
I hope that this column has increased your interest in understanding what the future climate of northern Indiana holds for us in terms of where we live and what we eat. Below are citations for interesting articles that are well – founded in science and discuss specifically our region of the country. More next month and if you have any questions or topics you’d like discussed just e-mail me at
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Regional Impacts of Climate Change, Four case studies in the United States, Pew Center for Global Climate Change, December 2007 http://www.pewclimate.org/docUploads/Regional-Impacts-FullReport.pdf
- Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, U.S. Climate Change Science Program, April 2009 http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/usp/clearance-draft/USP-3rd-clearance-draft.pdf (third and final draft)
- Confronting Climate Change in the U.S. Midwest – Indiana, Union of Concerned Scientists, July 2009, http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/global_warming/climate-change-indiana.pdf
- Impacts of Climate Change for the State of Indiana, Purdue Climate Change Research Center, Feb 2008, http://www.purdue.edu/climate/pdf/ClimateImpactsIndiana.pdf
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Green Tips of the Month
Your old refrigerator built prior to 1990 uses 1,500 kWh annually. That is the equivalent to 3,135 CO2 pounds of your carbon footprint or $120 in your energy bill every year. Consider downsizing to just one or consider upgrading to a new model and one that is Energy Star rated for the most energy savings.
Energy Star has great information and tips such as the Refrigerators Buyers Guide.
Need help demystifying the Energy Guide while shopping for new appliances? The Federal Trade Commission has a great explanation here: Energy Guidance: Appliance Shopping With the EnergyGuide Label.
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Local & State News
Good Air News for Allen County
The EPA has designated areas of Region 5 that fail to meet air quality standards, i.e. unhealthy air; all counties in Indiana are currently meeting the standards for fine particulate pollution. This is good news because businesses wishing to locate here do not have to take additional steps in order to protect the air. This doesn’t mean that we will not have air quality action days – there will still be times when weather conditions can cause levels of fine particulate to increase over an area. During those weather conditions citizens will be asked to avoid burning, fuel after dark, avoid mowing and watch your physical activity if you have an existing respiratory condition.
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In the Headlines
EPA Releases Report on Reducing GHG Emissions through Land and Materials Management
The report, “Opportunities to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions through Materials and Land Management Practices,” finds that 42 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions are influenced by materials management policies. This includes the impacts from extracting raw materials; food processing; and manufacturing, transporting, and disposing of products.
Read the report here.
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Thank you very much for being a subscriber to our Green City email newsletter. We hope this has been helpful and informative to you. We will contact you once per month with the email newsletter, as well as on Air Quality Action Days to alert you when air conditions indicate you need to take action. If you would like to suggest topics, events, or articles to include in monthly email newsletters, please email
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Please pass this email newsletter on to your friends and family, so that everyone can share in the knowledge and have an impact on reducing energy consumption.
Greenest,
Julia Gorrell
Energy & Environmental Services
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