Page 14 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • July 25, 2012 in orange jumpsuits join the church members in planting saplings nurtured by the millions. “Eveyone knows how the condition of our region is changing, about global warming,” said Tanzanian District Commissioner Moses Samizi. “It is now too hot in this region. It wasn’t like this before.” Every resident of the district around Mount Kilimanjaro has been asked to take responsibility for 80 trees. The trees supplied to the farmers, incidentally, are orange trees, mango trees, and avocado trees -- a practical incentive to keep them alive and flourishing since the trees are economically useful and environmentally vital. England’s Prince Charles recently planted a mango tree in Tanzania. All visitors are urged to do the same. The bishop pulls out all the stops. He recently performed a wedding complete with a handsome groom and beautiful bride in 21st century wedding clothes and tribal dancers wearing wildebeest headdresses and blowing wildebeest horn trumpets. The bride and groom ended the ceremony by planting a tree. This was the bishop’s fee for performing the wedding. “If the snow on top of Kilimanjaro goes away then it’s going to be a really big blow, not only to the people living around here, but also to humanity, I would say, because this is one of the world’s wonders,” Bishop Shoo commented. “If there is no snow there, you can imagine what it would mean.” For those who lack imagination, what it would mean would be the end of farming in one of the most fertile regions of Africa, not to mention the end of eco-tourism as the parklands dry out and the elephants and giraffes go elsewhere -- or go extinct. The problem is not limited to Africa. The Roof of the World around Mount Everest has the same problem, and the rivers that flow down from these particular mountains, the tallest in the world, help feed a quarter of the world’s population. Coupled with potential rising levels of the ocean, large parts of Japan and China are also at risk. The problem is not limited to neighbors of Everest, Fujiyama, or Kilimanjaro. New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection reports indicate that Ridgewood lost 20 percent of its water capacity in 2011, and 514,000,000 gallons of water were lost due to leaky delivery systems, broken mains, and other mechanical problems. Without leaping to the defense of a utility company, the fact that capacity dropped to 55 percent in Ridgewood a few weeks ago and caused Stage II odd-even rationing in Ridgewood, Glen Rock, Midland Park, and Wyckoff is not due entirely to leaky pipes. Ho-Ho-Kus reportedly lost 33 percent, and United Water lost 26 percent. The capacity drop is due to the fact that people still feel some primitive obligation to grow, mow, and water lawns instead of covering the ground not used for sports with shrubbery or the type of trees that are not likely to fall on power lines and give us all another Halloween weekend blackout like the one we had in 2011. Allendale, which joined in the spate of watering bans in mid-July, has an independent borough-owned water company, but Allendale was also impacted by reflexive lawn watering. Mayor Vince Barra noted what any landscaper will tell residents: You don’t need to water established lawns and shrubs every day. You don’t need to water most shrubs at all, except in real drought situations. Once the root systems are set in place, and if the shade from the trees does any good at all, you can soak the roots down with clean waste water from the kitchen and you’ll never need a sprinkler or a hose. Eventually, you may even create a sort of rain forest effect where the tree cover and shrubs help generate their own dew. Some experts say that humanity had its origins in Tanzania, though one of my tutorial students who is now an MD, examined some of the fossil fragments and called the case “suppositional.” I pretty much taught the kid how to speak English, so I was really proud of that. The fact that homo sapiens originated in Africa and that the earliest European humans were Neanderthals is now an established fact. Contrary to the myth of menace, the homo sapiens did not exterminate the Neanderthals; they interbred with them. Most people of European ancestry are of four to eight percent Neanderthal ancestry. My own Neanderthal heritage shows up in my computer skills. More recent Tanzanians were also among the first people to render iron into steel with a technology they invented on their own. The Tanzanian people today are only about 50 percent literate, and only have a life expectancy of 52 years, but they also have the intelligence to know that global warming is a fact, not a theory, and they have the imagination and character to do something about it. If they saw Northwest Bergen -- all those lawns just wasting space for trees -- they might surmise that the Neanderthal factor is higher than most of us would like to imagine. I must have been about eight years old the first time I saw “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” with Gregory Peck as the Ernest Hemingway clone and the narrator of the story. In the movie -- as in the story by Hemingway -- the dying writer laments his lost loves and blames himself for marrying rich women so he could avoid everyday work and concentrate on his writing. I had some problems following the plot when I was a boy, but I was always fascinated by Africa so I enjoyed those parts of the movie that featured the tribal Africans and the African wildlife. There should have been more of those scenes in that particular movie. “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” was made into a new, French version last year which I have not seen, but the snows themselves are in the news again in a way that is ominous, but not at all enjoyable. The snows of Kilimanjaro are melting. “It does not (take) a Ph.D. to see that people are already experiencing the effect of global warming. A simple farmer in the village can tell you that something is wrong with the climate,” said Bishop Frederick Shoo. Shoo is a native-born Tanzanian and a bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, a remarkably durable institution from the days when Tanzania was part of German East Africa. Interviewed recently by Lucky Severson for the PBS show “Religion and Ethics,” Bishop Shoo showed Severson around the region where he oversees 164 parishes and 500,000 Tanzanian Lutherans. The PBS show offered comparative satellite photographs of Mount Kilimanjaro, at 19,700 feet the tallest mountain in Africa. The photographs showed an even more startling picture than the time-lapse photographs shown elsewhere of receding glaciers in Alaska and Greenland. Hemingway wrote “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” in 1936. Peck played in the Hollywood version in 1952. The scenes where characters pointedly disowned the Spanish Civil War were tucked in as an afterthought following some House UnAmerican Activities Committee hearings where a lot of guys took the Fifth, and I don’t mean bourbon. The snows in those Hemingway- Peck days reached more than a third of the way down the slope. The satellite surveillance began in 1993. The comparative photos taken in 2010 confirm visual observations that 93 percent of the Kilimanjaro snows have vanished in the past 100 years, starting about the time that Hemingway wrote his story -- and about the time that petroleum began to replace coal as the primary fuel of land and sea transportation. Bishop Shoo offered his own solution to the warming: People should plant trees Trees are an important part of the ecosystem because they trap the moisture that helps create the glaciers. When there are no trees and no ambient moisture on the lands around Kilimanjaro, the winds blow dry and the glaciers are not replenished. The Tanzanians -- about half of whom are now literate, and most of whom are farmers -- have enrolled in Bishop Shoo’s cause. One single parish has already planted 46,083 trees. Once thought an eccentric, Bishop Shoo how has full the support of the Tanzanian government. Even convicts Snows of Kilimanjaro need some trees to help Letters to the Editor Dear Editor: I think a costly referendum on a police merger would only reveal what common sense already tells us: Bergen County citizens want every government agency to cut spending, increase efficiency, and eliminate redundancies. Having been immersed in the details of county policing for the last year and a half, and as a member of the Creamer Taskforce, the most important county law enforcement question is whether a reduction and shift of the county police department to the sheriff’s office will impact the safety and security of Bergen’s citizens. That critical, and not so simple answer, is something that a referendum will not provide. When I became a member of the Creamer Taskforce, I took on the mission of analyzing county law enforcement with an open mind. Maintaining security for our citizens while examining cost saving opportunities in the county law enforcement agencies of the prosecutor’s office, the sheriff’s office, and the county police department was our priority. The Guidepost Solutions study was similarly positioned. The resulting report provided recommendations for savings and options for remodeling county law enforcement. We agreed on a great deal. Of the 15 cost-saving recommendations made by Guidepost, the Creamer Taskforce supported 13. We determined that two would not be feasible: the elimination of the water, search, and recovery unit, which would put the onus on firefighter volunteers and challenge the chain of custody of evidence; and privatizing the medical examiner’s office, which would not provide noteworthy savings. The taskforce suggested looking at shared services opportunities with medical examiners in other counties. To date, as Guidepost recommended, the prosecutor’s office, the sheriff’s department, and a reduced overtime rate for county police have produced hundreds of thou- Freeholder discusses police merger sands of dollars in taxpayer savings. The sheriff’s office reduced its budget by $1.7 million, including $600,000 in overtime. The county police department disbanded its motorcycle and mounted units to allow for cost avoidance in insurance, injury, and expensive liability. Cost reductions outside of those proposed by Guidepost have also been implemented. The elimination of the patronage position of director of law and public safety and the head of Division of Consumer Affairs has saved taxpayers over $200,000. Those responsibilities are now handled by the Bergen County Police Chief and the head of the Division of Highway Safety. An agreement with local hospitals has reduced emergency medical costs by $1.2 million. A renegotiated county police contract saves $55,000 annually. Expanded coordination for IT purchases have yielded over $100,000 in savings. There is no question that more can, and should, be done. The 2012 budgets of the sheriff’s office, the prosecutor’s office, and the county police department remain $59 million, $28 million, and $19 million, respectively. The Guidepost study did not examine or offer recommendations for all areas of county law enforcement, including the jail, office of emergency management, county dispatch, and highway safety. The Creamer Taskforce does make additional proposals for privatizing functions such as process-serving and reducing the investigative duplication discovered within the prosecutor’s office and the sheriff’s office, and advocates placing a freeze on new hires and promotions in all agencies until staffing levels, compensations, and benefits are aligned with recommendations. As we examined Guidepost’s three options for reducing the county police and shifting law enforcement personnel to the sheriff’s office, questions began to emerge regarding projections for savings. Realistic numbers for calculating transitioning costs seemed lacking, including more than $500,000 a year in Social Security payments to police (continued on page 15)