My sister Heather Hale is a printer and an artist. She loves poetry. Every month, she prints a calendar to send to the people she cares about. My heart leaps when I see an envelope from Vermont in my mailbox.

This month was no exception. April, come she will — and so did Heather’s calendar. I ripped open the manila envelope. In a soft springtime green, the title of a poem was imprinted: “There Will Come Soft Rains.”

Yes, I thought, the drought of March will be pierced to the root. We’ll end our days of cold and isolation. Spring renewal will envelop us with joy.

The poet Sara Teasdale’s first three couplets did not disappoint. She wrote of the smell of the ground, the circling swallows, the frogs singing at night, the whistling robins, and the wild plum trees in tremulous white.

The rhymes were reassuring, the spirit was uplifting. But then came these lines:
 

And not one will know of the war, not one

Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree

If mankind perished utterly.

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn

Would scarcely know that we were gone.
 

Teasdale’s poem was published in Harper’s Monthly just after the start of the German Spring Offensive in World War I and during the 1918 flu pandemic, Heather had printed at the bottom of her April calendar.

I had to lie down after I read it.

We find ourselves now, with a war in Europe and with a pandemic, in a similar time — but worse. The war on the other side of the world could easily explode into nuclear global destruction. That is a threat, unlike in Teasdale’s time, that would harm or even obliterate the natural world that she reveres and sees as a constant.

Science fiction writer Ray Bradbury used Sara Teasdale’s title, “There Comes a Soft Rain,” for his story, written during our country’s Cold War with Russia, about a nuclear bomb that obliterates a California city, leaving just one house standing. 

Even if the current war doesn’t turn nuclear, we human beings around the globe are destroying the natural world that sustains us. The frogs, the swallows, the robins, the plum trees that Teasdale wrote about are all in danger.

It’s not just that mankind could perish utterly — so could much of the natural world.

Since Heather’s April calendar arrived in my mailbox, the United Nations most recent report on climate change came out.

“It’s now or never, if we want to limit global warming to 1.5°C (2.7°F); without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, it will be impossible,” said Jim Skea, who co-chairs the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group III, which released the report.

We’ve already written on this page about the mass extinction of species, about the threats of glaciers melting and sea levels rising, about the fires and droughts, the hurricanes and storms caused by climate change.

So, we looked for hope.

The latest United Nations report shows increasing evidence of climate action. From 2010 to 2019, average annual global greenhouse gas emissions were at their highest levels in human history, but the rate of growth has slowed. An increasing range of policies and laws, the report says, have enhanced energy efficiency, reduced rates of deforestation, and accelerated use of renewable energy.

On this page over the last three decades, we’ve urged local governments to adopt climate-friendly measures and, failing that, prodded individuals to adopt practices from composting their waste to weatherizing their homes.

Both Sara Teasdale and Ray Bradbury were recognized by the Pulitzer Prize Board, the highest of accolades, for their writing — even so the dilemmas they so brilliantly captured persist.

Still, we could lie down for only so long. Heather’s calendar is propped beside me as I write now about the latest local initiative that should serve as a model for all of our towns.

Last Wednesday, Dan Rain led a tour of Bethlehem’s composting facility. Rain is the guiding visionary for the town’s recycling and composting department.

He pointed to a great pile of yard waste — Christmas trees, bags of leaves, stacked brush. Town highway workers collect the refuse from 300 miles of roadways; it totals about 2 million cubic feet, the town supervisor said.

At the facility, the ground refuse is piled into windrows 300 feet long, 20 feet wide, and 12 or 14 feet tall. Those piles used to have to be turned at regular intervals while the microbes did their work to make the refuse into compost. Rain said that process would take nine to 12 months.

Now the town has installed a new system, designed by a pioneering engineer in Washington State, Peter Moon, that uses perforated pipes at the base of the pile to put in the right amount of oxygen. So turning the refuse into compost now takes nine to 12 weeks instead of nine to 12 months — and uses a lot less labor and energy.

At the same time, Bethlehem has launched the only municipal food-scrap composting facility in the Capital Region. “It is a resource that should be not thrown away but rather recycled into nutrient-rich soil,” said Diana Wright, owner of Food Scraps 360, which is working with the town and school district in Bethlehem.

Rain lauded — as we have on this page — the state’s Food Donation and Food Recycling Law, which went into effect in January. The law requires large venues — like supermarkets, restaurants, sports arenas, college cafeteria, and event centers — that produce on average two tons of food scraps or more each week to donate the edible food and recycle the rest as compost.

There is no reason food should be thrown out, clogging landfills, when it could feed hungry people or, failing that, enrich our soil and improve our climate.

We strongly urge our other local municipalities — and school districts — to follow Bethlehem’s lead. It is essential to educate the next generation to do better in preserving our Earth.

While Teasdale opined that Spring herself would scarcely know mankind had gone, Rachel Carson used the metaphorical spring in a different way in her iconic 1960s book, “Silent Spring.” She made us understand the powerful effect, and often deeply harmful effect, that humans have on the natural world.

She awakened our nation to the dangers of pesticides and spawned the modern environmental movement. Laws were made, banning pesticides, such as DDT, that have once again allowed the eagle, our national bird, to rebound from near extinction — and soar.

This gives us hope that government and individuals can yet limit our harm to this Earth, making it safe for future generations. As Jim Skea said, “It’s now or never ….” Heather’s calendar reminds me we must act now before our time runs out — our days are numbered.

— Melissa Hale-Spencer