Editorial: On trees and travel

Saturday, Oct. 1, 2005 | 8:57 a.m.

An environmental group meeting in Las Vegas plants a seed for thinking about Earth-friendly travel.

In the Mississippi Delta, in the future, 270 trees will owe their existence to a convention this past weekend in Las Vegas. The convention brought together about 100 members of the Conservation Fund. Leaders of the group calculated that the members' transportation and electricity use while here would send 360 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Scientists say carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, contributes heavily to global warming. It is also known that trees absorb carbon dioxide. So to make their trip "carbon neutral," the group calculated the number of trees that would have to be planted and arranged for another group to do the planting.

The nonprofit group Conservation Fund works with governments and private landowners all over the country to preserve open land that is habitat for endangered plants and animals. Locally, it helped Clark County acquire land for its Wetlands Park. Working with ranchers, local governments and federal agencies, it has purchased and set aside more than 700,000 acres of former grazing lands in Nevada. And at its convention, it pioneered the idea of groups planting trees to offset the emissions related to their travels.

Tree-plantings will not always be practical or possible, of course. But the group's concept is one to bear in mind now that global warming is generally accepted as fact, and its consequences -- increased intensity of hurricanes, accelerated melting in the polar regions -- are being felt.

An Associated Press story last week revealed that NASA employees have been using the agency's planes for routine business and political ceremonies when they could have saved emissions and millions of dollars by using commercial planes. This is an example of people not thinking about the environmental consequences of their travels. We believe we should all think about those trees in Mississippi, and why they were planted, the next time we travel.