NNLC Newsletter Co-Editor Ward Combines Northern Neck and Global Interests

Imagine that what we see going on all around us on the Northern Neck were happening also worldwide.

Lots of development, lots of land clearing, lots of rumored and real transfers of long-time agricultural and forestry lands to paved parking lots, sprawling housing developments, “big box” retail outlets.

In fact, it doesn’t take so much imagination after all. What we see all around us in fact is a microcosm of just what is happening nationwide…and worldwide.

But then there’s the exception, in the form of the extraordinary conservation easements highlighted by that of Bud and Gayle Hudnall elsewhere in this issue, and by profiles of similar transactions highlighted in previous issues.

It all conjures up the well-known call to “think globally, act locally.” And it helps make the point, as reinforced elsewhere in this newsletter, that what EACH OF US does really does matter. And matters a lot.

The rewarding thing about being involved with the Northern Neck Land Conservancy’s conservation easement programs is that it puts a local flavor on a global issue. In the case of global climate change – warming of the Earth’s atmosphere as a result of human activities and emissions – the issue is seen by some as being too big, too remote, too distant to be influenced by us individually.

In reality, our local activities give voice to my own interests in increasing public awareness as we collectively address the climate change challenge.

Over the past several years, for instance, I’ve had the honor of managing a nationwide series of workshops funded by the National Science Foundation to bring leading climate change scientists and researchers together with top journalists to improve coverage of climate change. That effort will soon lead to a new book on climate change and journalism.

After having conducted an unprecedented workshop of top scientists and leading newspaper executive editors at Stanford University this past fall, we are moving now toward follow-up workshops for leading regional and beat reporters and editors, including one scheduled for Virginia Tech this coming fall. The goal again is to improve public understanding of climate change.

Carrying that scientists/journalists effort forward – and from the comforts of a second-floor home office on the Northern Neck – now falls in part to a new online journal, The Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media, which I edit. 

Climate change. Land conservation. Preserving our unique historical legacy. Saving long-time farm and forestry lands for our heirs and theirs. AND … accepting and confronting the challenges of climate change and capitalizing on the ample opportunities.

All those – and, of course, add in the Northern Neck and its distinctive history – tie in together.

Living full-time on the Northern Neck is a special privilege, but with that privilege go the responsibilities of preserving this land for those who will follow us. The next time you hear someone cautioning about the perils posed by global warming, recall again the “think globally/act locally” dictum.

The lands we preserve today as farm fields or forestry will contribute long into the future both to preserving “our” distinctive Northern Neck character and to reducing the climate-changing carbon dioxide concentrations driving adverse changes in our region and “global commons” generally.

Remember the song lyrics “This land is your land, this land is my land”? Remember too that the “your” includes our grandchildren and their grandchildren yet to come.
                      -- Bud Ward

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