Town hall meetings urge Illinoisans to speak up about climate change

PEORIA HEIGHTS Reduce, reuse . . . represent?

That was one of the key points at a town hall meeting where 50 people discussed climate change at Forest Park Nature Center on Tuesday: Of all the things which can be done to combat global warming, the most important may be contacting your legislators.

"When you go home tomorrow, pick up the phone," said Jonathan Goldman, executive director of the Illinois Environmental Council. "What we can do in the capital only takes us so far. That's why we're here in Peoria."

The Illinois Environmental Council is a co-sponsoring a series of public forums on the issue around the state. Peoria is the fourth stop. A half-dozen state and local speakers addressed everything from the background science to practical solutions to new laws.

On the one hand, alternative energy speaker Aur Beck presented information that there are more than 900 peer-reviewed studies supporting climate change and not one discounting it. On the other, Lakeview Museum planetarium director Sheldon Schafer, also a candidate for U.S. House of Representatives, said sunspots and natural astronomical cycles have contributed to climate change but human activity plays "a vastly greater role."

Beck pointed out the hottest years on record fall within the last couple of decades. He said he'd rather not use the term "global warming" because it sounds like a day on the beach. Increasingly erratic weather patterns are more like "bi-polar weather" in their extremes.

"This has never happened in recorded history," he said. "Nobody knows what it will do. There is no precedent."

Reducing individual consumption of resources is important. But several speakers also emphasized group action. Kiersten Sheets of the Central Illinois Global Warming Solutions Group said they have been working on CFL recycling programs, and getting local cities to commit to new and more energy-efficient strategies. Brian Granahan of Environment Illinois said it is also important to emphasize the significant economic gains to be made.

But Tom Wolf, executive director of the Energy Council of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce, made a point of calling the newspaper after the forum to say the laws should be changed at the national level rather than in Springfield.

"Those ideas should be done in Washington, not state-specific in a patchwork," he said. "If you're going to do this, it has to be done nationally."

Goldman had already said national laws would be preferable, "but we have an administration in Washington that's not interested. So we need to start doing what we can."