"There’s a never-ending search in Grand Forks for a place to put our refuse. The response has been “Not in my backyard”; and, unfortunately, we’ve heard that a time or two in the past few years.

I certainly don’t blame people who don’t want things such as hungry birds, wind-blown refuse, a stinky smell and the unsightliness of a landfill close by.

I thought about this as I carried a big bag of garbage to the pickup site of my apartment complex. The site has a big container that fills full regularly.

So, I hang my head, and admit that I contribute to the overabundance in the landfill, too. And on top of everything else, landfills emit methane as organic waste decomposes, experts say. Methane contributes to global warming.

While searching for information on this topic, I found a New York Times story from 2007 that reported, “The world’s leading climate scientists said global warming has begun, is very likely caused by man and will be unstoppable for centuries. . . . The phrase ‘very likely’ translates to a more than 90 percent certainty that global warming is caused by man’s burning fossil fuels. That was the strongest conclusion to date, making it nearly impossible to say natural forces are to blame.”"

Get the Story:
Dorreen Yellow Bird: Let us live lightly on the Earth (The Grand Forks Herald 5/10)
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