PAO's Story

Plant Ahead Ohio's origin story

2019, Dr. Lauren Schroeder wrote a letter to the Editor of the Youngstown Vindicator

Dr. Lauren Schroeder, Professor Emeritus of Biological Sciences at YSU addressed a

letter to editor, June 30, 2019, Vindicator Printing Company, Youngstown, Ohio https://vindyarchives.com/news/2019/jun/30/mill-creek-land-grab-for-bike-trail-oppo/

Panel on climate change needs to form in Valley

We are in the midst of the most severe environmental crisis since the Yucatan asteroid killed the dinosaurs, and 75 percent of the then-living plants and animals, 66 million years ago. This crisis, unlike the asteroid from outer space, is of our own doing – it is climate warming.

For more than 70 years scientists have sounded a warning that emission of greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide, is warming the earth’s atmosphere. Since the late 1980s, the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change periodically has issued a scientific consensus report on the status of our changing climate and its consequences to life on Earth.

With each report the global temperatures are greater and the consequences more severe: glacial melt, arctic and Antarctic ice cap reduction, ocean rise, increased frequency and severity of storms, greater fluctuations of rainfall, increased wild fires, extinction of thousands of species of plants and animals, insect outbreaks previously controlled by cold temperature and the list goes on.

The consequences of global warming are so severe that it is now imperative that we at all levels of society and government develop rules and behaviors that reduce atmospheric carbon. It is time for business/government and universities to take a leadership role in combating climate warming.

A start would be to form a joint Mahoning Valley committee on climate warming, consisting of business/government/university leaders. The committee would be charged with (1) public education on cause, effects and remedies to global warming (2) identify and promote changes in local societal behavior that reduce atmospheric carbon loading and (3) develop local rules that reduce regional carbon loading and require carbon neutral development.

Universities, business and government must become part of the solution to global warming, not part of the problem.

Lauren Schroeder, Poland

Organizational and public meetings followed - read more here.

Early public meeting of Mahoning Valley Panel on Climate Warming (MVPCW)