Eco Expo at Paul Bunyan Mall

By Tab, The Calgary Sun

If you missed the Earth Day events on Wednesday, there is still time to take part in celebrating the earth.

The Eco Expo, organized by the Headwaters Earth Day Committee will be held Saturday 10-4 at the Paul Bunyan Mall. Guest speakers will begin at 11 AM and include Mayor Richard Lehmann, BSU Sustainability Coordiantor, Erika Bailey Johnson, Rural Renewable Energy Alliance’s Sarah Hayden, Representative John Persell, and HED Project Coordinator: Karen Kimbrough.

The press release for the event cites several city programs that are earth friendly: Project Pride, Bemidji in Bloom, Park Partners and Bemidji Green-UP. (Green-UP, a plan to plant 10,000 trees a year for 10 years is a Bemidji Leads project.) These are great programs, but at least one person thought we could do better. Former city councilmember, Onen Markeson wanted to form a sustainability committee for the city. His idea did not generate much excitement among the rest of the Council at the time and we still have not seriously considered sustainability.

It seems to make sense that we should, because the Mayor signed the U. S. Mayors' Climate Protection Agreement three (?) years ago at a clean water forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters. The agreement has specific strategies to meet or exceed Kyoto Protocol targets for reducing global warming pollution. A sustainability committee would be a step in the right direction to begin work on the strategies outlined. AND, we wouldn't have trouble answering the question I posed in this post about bike lanes.