TROUT LILLIES AND COAL FIRED ELECTRIC PLANTS

COLONY OF TROUT LILIES...

...NODDING YELLOW FLOWERS AND MOTTLED LEAVES

Tuesday,  9:00 AM.  61 degrees F, wind WNW, very gusty.  The sky is partly cloudy, the humidity 74% and the barometer is on the rise, now at 29.81".  It is a very, very fine day.
   Joan said she saw a wolf lope across Hwy. 13 yesterday as she was returning from Ashland. She described it as a very large canine, tawny in color with a long tail, held upright.
   The pretty yellow flowered trout lilies, Erythonium americanum, in the Lily family, are in bloom in our northern deciduous and mixed deciduous-coniferous woods.  Also known as dog-tooth violet, this interesting little woodland ground cover plant is as welcome a sign of spring as any.  Native to eastern Canada and the US west to the Mississipi River, it grows south to Florida in the mountains and other suitable locations. It is a plant of woods and woods openings and prefers moist, rich, acidic soils, such as are found in mixed oak and coniferous forests.  Its yellow flowers are nodding, and one must hold the flower up to see it best.  It has mottled leaves reminiscent of the spots on brown trout, thus its most common name.  The trout lily is colonial, and can form large,  dense mats that can be hundreds of years old.
   Coal fired electrical plants have nothing in particular to do with trout lilies, but I can't help but comment on the Obama Administration's "war on coal," which I consider not only unwarranted but also dictatorial, as it is now being carried out by executive fiat.  Virtually everyone in America, myself of course included, wants "clean air."  But to destroy a significant part of the US economy to obtain lesser and lesser degrees of "cleanliness" borders on insanity.  I remember when air was actually dirty; you could see it, smell it, choke on it, wake up in the morning with soft coal soot on the sheets and in your nose.  Now we have to rely on the most sensitive of monitoring equipment to determine if the air is "dirty."
   All good progress, but especially when it comes to carbon dioxide, which is absolutely essential to plant growth and life on earth, it seems to me we have taken the fight a tad too far. The coal, oil and natural gas that we use for fuel was deposited by plants that lived millions of years ago when the air was much richer in carbon dioxide.  I have always thought calling carbon dioxide itself a pollutant to be a most egregious misuse of language, as it is only toxic to life in amounts far, far greater than that currently found in the atmosphere.  That is akin to calling water a pollutant because one can drown in it. And as far as "global warming" is concerned, I rest my case.
   Carried to the extremes that other environmental policies of the current administration have been enforced, I can envision a future when carbon dioxide, so fundamentally essential to life on earth, becomes a scarce, life-limiting commodity.     Would it then be necessary to burn coal in open pit mines to replenish the atmosphere with carbon dioxide?
   Even if we stop using carboniferous fuels, other countries will still use them. Carbon fuels from Canada, Mexico and Central and South America will continue to be exported to other regions anxious to buy them.  If we use our own resources responsibly we can continue to lead the world in the development of clean air technology.  If we kill our coal industry through unreasonable legislation that won't happen.  
   ln this matter as in so many others, extremist ecological ideology has become the enemy of common sense and economic sustainability.