FRESH AIR
It started out as a crystal clear morning in the Central Valley of California -- one of those mornings when if you look east down Turlock's Tuolumne Rd you see right up to Half Dome in Yosemite Valley. However, by noon a brown smoky haze will cover our valley. It's pruning time in the orchards and all those cuttings have got to go somewhere. So they will go up in smoke. At times the air-quality in the Valley is worse than LA. Of course, the locals will tell you that it's all automobile pollution blown over the mountain from the San Francisco Bay Area. And some of it may be. However, we generate the bulk of it ourselves and we can do something about a lot of it.

The orchardists have been burning here for over 100 years. But the fact is that a lot of what we've been doing for 100 years is unhealthy. We no longer spray with lead and DDT -- both of which were at one time seen as absolutely essential. "We'll be driven out of business if we have to give it up..." Change in the agri-business is slow and painful. But there are already reasonable alternatives -- most notably mulching. I'm not saying that this is the perfect answer to the burn problem but at some point we've got to be willing to pay a little more for food so that it can be produced cleanly.

Nor am I suggesting that all the pollution in the Valley is agriculturally related. The fact is that there are a lot more people living here (They've all got to live somewhere!). And people by nature pollute. So some pollution is unavoidable. But we can do better. And as God-ordained stewards of the planet we must do better -- not just for our children but as a fulfillment of our call.

"Then God said, 'Let us make people in our image, to be like ourselves. They will be masters over all life — the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the livestock, wild animals, and small animals.' So God created people in his own image; God patterned them after himself; male and female he created them. God blessed them and told them, 'Multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. Be masters over the fish and birds and all the animals.'" Genesis 1:26-28 (NLT)