We have lamented loud and long on this page about global warming and the need for reversing the trend before it is too late.
Today, for a change, we feel hope.

We don’t know if the Inflation Reduction Act will reduce inflation but we do know that the $370 billion it will provide to incentivise Americans to use renewable energy will make a difference in our nation’s future and the future of the planet.

The United States now has a chance to make good on its pledge in rejoining the nations of the world to reduce climate change. We have emitted more greenhouse gasses than any country in the history of the world.

We have a responsibility to lead in its solution. After Donald Trump withdrew from the Paris agreement, the Biden administration joined again and promised to cut our nation’s emissions to half of the 2005 levels by 2030.

A New York Times analysis shows that, with the bill Biden signed into law last week, emissions can be decreased by 42 percent.

At the same time, a week after Biden took office, he signed an executive order with the goal of conserving at least 30 percent of our lands and water by 2030. That, too, is a tough goal but an essential one.

Without conserving both land and water, the species that make up the many ecosystems of our world will continue to decline or, worse, become extinct.

As we’ve written here many times over the years, it will take commitment at every level to reach these worthy goals — from the individual on up through local and state government.

Therein lies our sense of hope this week.

The town of Guilderland is proposing a local law that would create a Tree Preservation Committee to protect and preserve native trees.

“We have a lot of tree species that are threatened right now and a lot being destroyed,” said Guilderland Supervisor Peter Barber at last Tuesday’s meeting as the town board scheduled a Sept. 20 public hearing on the proposed local law.

Barber stressed that the law is not regulatory. It wouldn’t, for example, forbid someone from cutting down trees in their yard to put in a swimming pool.

Rather, the committee would come up with a forestry plan for the town, outlining best practices, and making recommendations for improvements in the town’s parks.

Colin J. Gallup, the town’s director of Parks and Recreation, would like to create a town nursery to raise native trees, urging people to learn about them and perhaps plant them. There might be a system, Barber said, where a resident buys a tree and the town then helps in planting it.

The highway superintendent is to administer the forestry plan, once developed, along town highways while the parks director is to administer it in public places.

Before a construction project is started, the developer is to submit a site plan, identifying trees by size,  species, and condition, tagging trees that are more than 12 inches in diameter, and also submit an aerial view with an overlay of the area to be developed.

The point, said Barber, is to work with an applicant to preserve as many native trees as possible.

He also said, “Eighty percent of all trees cut down in suburbia are in people’s back and front yards. It’s not development,” he said of what causes tree destruction in suburbia.

We urge passage of this law. And we liked the proposal made by councilwoman Amanda Beedle to have an index of native trees on the town’s website.

This would inform residents choosing trees for their yards on which trees are native to the area and would help preserve the ecology and attract native pollinators.

Guilderland is on the cusp of naming a committee to update its 20-year-old comprehensive land-use plan and now is the perfect time to have a Tree Preservation Committee work hand in hand with those planning for Guilderland’s future.

Long-time Guilderland resident Chuck Klaer spoke at the town board meeting, lamenting, “Out where I am, I’ve probably got a thousand or more dead ash.”

Ash is one of the largest genera of trees in North America, making up about 60 percent of total tree diameter in forests of the northeastern United States. White Ash is a keystone species, providing food and habitat for numerous organisms from birds and mammals to insects and microorganisms. 

Ash trees, though, are threatened worldwide — in Europe from a fungal disease and in America from a beetle that burrows into their bark, the emerald ash borer. “Mortality is nearly 100 percent and all North American Ash species are likely susceptible to EAB infestation and death,” says the New York Botanical Garden in its “Field Guide to Ash Trees of Northeastern United States.”

Klaer said he’d like to see what “is now brown green again.”

A well-informed committee could guide residents like Klaer to plant species that would benefit not just the property owner and the town but the world.

“Plant now for future generations,” we wrote in this space 14 years ago. The McKownville Neighborhood Improvement Association had started a tree-planting program and we urged other neighborhoods to do the same.

“I know the economy is crashing and we are probably headed for a depression,” Don Reeb of the McKownville group said at the time, “but faith in the future is important and what better way to tell yourself and your family that you have faith and hope and nothing can get you down than to order and plant a tree  something that will not mature for many, many years?”

That sentiment is still true today. But the urgency is greater. We can now see the heat waves and drought, the floods and fires, not just in our own country but in China and Africa and Europe.

We now also grasp the need for pollinators and native plants that keep ecosystems intact. As we reported earlier this month, more than a third up to over half of New York State’s native pollinator species are at risk of local extinction, according to the state’s first-ever pollinator survey report. We need to act now to protect those native pollinators that are left.

Just four years ago in this space, we wrote, “Save the trees, save ourselves” after the village of Altamont had cut a number of trees that some residents thought could have been saved.

“All of the towns and villages we cover would benefit by having as part of their policies a plan to replace cut trees, maintain current trees, and plant new trees,” we wrote then. “Such a policy should remain in place, from one elected administration to the next.

“In this era of global warming, trees are essential. Trees absorb the excess carbon dioxide we have spewed into our atmosphere by the use of fossil fuels. Trees store the carbon while releasing oxygen back into the air. Trees absorb odors and other polluting gasses, too, like ammonia, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, and ozone. They filter particulates from the air, trapping them on their bark and leaves.”

We listed 22 benefits of planting trees and included a link to an online calculator that figured, in dollars, the annual the worth of a single tree, based on type, size, and location, including savings in electricity, improvements in air quality, use in stormwater management, and of course worth in property value.

Last month, in our editorial, “In wildness is the preservation of the world,” we urged the town of New Scotland not to limit lawns to 10 inches or make it illegal to leave grass clippings. The board tabled the bill.

We cited ecologist Douglas W. Tallamy’s vision for an upcoming “Age of Ecological Enlightenment,” which he calls the only option left for humans to remain viable. If each American landowner converted half of his or her lawn to productive native plant communities, he posits that ecosystem function would be restored to the current 20 million acres of wasteland — lawns. 

Tallamy has a website to encourage people to regenerate biodiversity one person at a time. The site features a map so that people can report on native plantings. For Albany County, just 36 acres are reported by 22 users out of over 340,000 acres county-wide.

We are thrilled that the town of Guilderland is poised to become part of the solution.

The town’s proposed law says it best. It notes that, by sustainable planting and protection of trees in town, shade will be provided, noise reduced, air quality improved, stormwater managed, erosion and flooding prevented, and wildlife protected.

“The planting of native trees …,” the law says, “helps promote the health and welfare of a community and contributes to the environment’s biodiversity.”