Sycamore Gap tree at Hadrian's Wall cut down by 'vandals' - BBC News

Sadly symbolic of the Anthropocene

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-tyne-66947040

A Global Warming Book for the Streaming Age

In “The Parrot and the Igloo,” the novelist and journalist David Lipsky spins top-flight climate literature into cliffhanger entertainment.

In the preface to “The Parrot and the Igloo,” the journalist David Lipsky’s new book on global warming, he admits he thought about opening it with a threatening line: “This story put a hole through my life. Now it’s your turn.” You can see why. Reading it is like watching a car crash in slow motion. You know where this is headed.

Lipsky’s book is a project of maximum ambition. He retells the entire climate story, from the dawn of electricity to the dire straits of our present day. It’s well-trod ground, but Lipsky, a newcomer to the climate field (he is best known for “Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself,” a memoir set on a road trip with David Foster Wallace), makes it page turning and appropriately infuriating. He says it up front: He wants this to be like a Netflix series, bingeable.

We usually think of global warming as a modern malady, Lipsky writes, one that began in our lifetimes. Even as a climate reporter, I admit some part of me thought that too. Yet he reminds us that a Swedish chemist first realized that burning coal would warm the planet in the 1890s, and it’s chilling to learn that people were reading headlines about unprecedented heat in American newspapers as early as the 1930s. Of course, all the modern climate graphs show that the red line had crept up by then. For them it was unprecedented. Imagine if they could see a summer now.

The book takes its title from two moments in time. In 1956, The New York Times published a story imagining the Arctic of the future, thawed and tropical, complete with “gaudy parrots squawking in the trees.” Earlier that year, the oceanographer Roger Revelle had looked at the previous century’s worth of CO2 released from burning fossil fuels and suggested, according to Time magazine, that it “may have a violent effect” on the earth’s climate. We could be headed to a runaway “greenhouse” effect...

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/10/books/review/the-parrot-and-the-igloo-david-lipsky.html?smid=em-share

Continuing Our Journey - Environmental Ethics Independent Study Week 4

      Continuing our reading of Climate Change: A Very Short Introduction, Maslin discusses the global politics surrounding climate change in chapter seven. As someone from the United States, I found this chapter disheartening and embarrassing because our country is so often the reason that global treaties to address the climate crisis have failed. I have to wonder what the rest of the world and future generations will feel about our inaction, knowing that so much of it was caused by the lobbying of fossil fuel companies. I can only hope that the tide will turn and our leaders will act in the interest of the planet and our own health, instead of acting in the interest of the 'all-mighty' dollar. As the old Native American proverb states: "Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money." 

     Maslin explains: 

The UNFCCC [United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change] was created at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 to negotiate a worldwide agreement for reducing GHGs [greenhouse gases] and limit the impact of climate change...Since the UNFCCC was set up, the nations of the world, 'the parties', have been meeting annually at the Conference of the Parties (COP) to move negotiations forward. (p.106-107)

There have been three major agreements since the establishment of the COP: Kyoto 1997, Copenhagen 2009, and Paris 2015, and the United States has been directly involved in the failure of all three to reach their goals. However, as of 2021, the U.S., along with many other member nations, has "pledged to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050." (p.115) 

     Though, as Maslin points out, the UNFCCC seems to have several major flaws.  The first is that all of the past and current pledges and agreements fall short of where we need to be. "[T]he current Paris Agreement, if all the pledges are honored, still causes global warming of at least 3℃ and the associated impacts..." (p.115) The second major flaw is that there is no enforcement of any of these agreements of pledges; they are all voluntary. "This is why policies and laws are required at a regional...and...national level...The only way to translate international treaties into a reality is through regional and national laws." (p.115) The third major issue is 'green colonialism', Maslin explains that many have "raised philosophical and ethical doubts about climate negotiations as a whole...[because] they reflect a version of colonialism, since rich developed countries are seen to be dictating to poorer countries how and when they should develop." (p.116) The last flaw could best be described as a conflict between global markets and national governments. Maslin gives the example, "if the USA through the Paris Agreement wanted to reduce carbon emissions from heavy industry, it could impose a carbon tax on steel and concrete production. [However,] if other countries in the world do not have this restriction, their products become cheaper, even including the cost of transportation...to the USA, all of which would lead to the emission of more CO2 overall." (p.116)

     In chapter eight, Maslin discusses the "three types of solutions to climate change:" adaptation, mitigation, and geoengineering. (p.122) Adaptation "is providing protection for the population from the impacts of climate change." (p.122) Maslin states: 

The IPCC gives six clear reasons why we must adapt to climate change: (1) climate change impacts cannot be avoided even if emissions are cut rapidly to zero...; (2) anticipatory and precautionary adaptation is more effective and less costly than forced last-minute emergency fixes; (3) climate change may be more rapid and more pronounced than current estimates suggest, and unexpected and extreme events are likely to occur; (4) immediate benefits can be gained from better adaptation to climate variability and extreme atmospheric events...(5) immediate benefits can also be gained by removing maladaptive policies and practices...; and (6) climate change brings opportunities as well as threats. (p.123)

Mitigation "in its simplest terms is reducing our carbon footprint and thus reversing the trend of ever-increasing GHG emissions." (p.122) This can be achieved by rethinking many of our actions from lessening fossil fuel consumption by switching to renewable or cleaner energy sources to moderating deforestation for urbanization and agriculture to buying more locally produced foods and goods. Lastly, geoengineering "which involves large-scale extraction of CO2 from the atmosphere or modification of the global climate." (p.122) As Maslin writes: "Ideas considered under geoengineering range from the very sensible to the completely mad." (p.141) And, there are no geoengineering solutions currently available that would eliminate the need for us to implement major mitigation techniques now.

     This week in A Sand County Almanac, we will examine Part II, Sketches Here and There. In this section, Leopold describes various moments in his younger life that led him to believe in the importance of conservation. The section is divided into several states and territories in which Leopold lived or spent his time. While in Wisconsin, he describes the feeling of seeing cranes "on the great marsh." (p.89) Leopold states:

Our ability to percieve quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language. The quality of cranes lies, I think, in this higher gamut, as yet beyond the reach of words. (p.90)

Part of what gives Leopold this feeling about the crane is its place in history: "He is the symbol of our untamable past, of that incredible sweep of millennia which underlies and conditions the daily affairs of birds and men." (p.90)

     Throughout his journeys, Leopold seems to recognize the importance of preserving the plants and animals in nature as he witnesses their diminishment or extinction. He writes of a monument to the end of pigeons in Wisconson, learning a lesson about overhunting in Illinois and Iowa, watching the light go out of a wolf's eyes after shooting it and the slaughter of the last grizzly bear in Arizona, and the clearing of the last jaguar in the Delta of the Colorado, along with the disappearance of many different 'wild' areas. It seems that he definitely mourns what he knew. He writes: 

It is a century now since Darwin gave us the first glimpse of the origin of species. We know now what was unknown to all the preceding caravan of generations: that men are only fellow-voyagers with other creatures in the odyssey of evolution. This new knowledge should have given us, by this time, a sense of kinship with fellow-creatures; a wish to live and let live; a sense of wonder over the magnitude and duration of the biotic enterprise. Above all we should, in the century since Darwin, have come to know that man, while now captain of the adventuring ship, is hardly the sole object of its quest, and that his prior assumptions to this effect arose from the simple necessity of whistling in the dark. (p.102)

     It is sad to say, but as we sit here in the midst of the sixth mass extinction and climate change, both caused in large part by human actions, I do not think this message was taken to heart by enough of us. Hopefully, we can still learn from Leopold's message and try to turn things around. 

Next week we will finish these first two books.  

Silent Spring

Rachel Carson's groundbreaking book Silent Spring was published on this date in 1962 (books by this author). Carson was a marine biologist, but she was also a crafter of lyrical prose who contributed to magazines like The New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly, and who had already published three popular lyrical books about the sea. One of these — The Sea Around Us (1951) — had won the National Book Award. In the course of her work, Carson became aware of the ways that chemical pesticides were harming plants and wildlife. She felt it was important to make the public aware of this, but she was not an investigative journalist and didn't feel confident enough to write what she called the "poison book." She began trying to interest magazines in the subject as early as 1945. In 1958, Carson's friend mentioned that she was finding a lot of dead birds in her Massachusetts bird sanctuary. Carson, in turn, wrote to E.B. White, who was an editor at The New Yorker. She suggested that White write an article about pesticides. He said the magazine would be keen to publish such an article, but he encouraged her to write it herself. The article became a multiyear project that Carson pursued through personal tragedies like the death of her mother, and her own diagnosis with breast cancer in 1960.

By 1962, many scientists had published work that questioned whether the widespread and indiscriminate use of pesticides like DDT was safe. Carson gathered these reports in one place, and then used her literary talents to bring the issue to vivid life. The New Yorker serialized Silent Springin the summer of 1962, and it was published in book form in September. The title comes from one of the book's chapters, in which Carson paints a picture of a future spring morning without birdsong. "No witchcraft," Carson writes, "no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in this stricken world. The people had done it themselves."

The book was a huge best-seller, and although she was dreadfully ill from her cancer treatments, Carson appeared on many television shows to defend her research. Eric Sevareid, who interviewed Carson for CBS Reports, later said he was afraid she wouldn't live long enough to see the broadcast of their interview. In June 1963, she appeared before a Senate subcommittee and gave policy recommendations that she had worked on for five years. She didn't advocate a ban on all pesticides, but recommended that they be used more judiciously. Aerial spraying was the worst culprit, because it could end up on people's private land without their knowledge or consent. "If the Bill of Rights contains no guarantee that a citizen shall be secure against lethal poisons distributed either by private individuals or by public officials, it is surely only because our forefathers, despite their considerable wisdom and foresight, could conceive of no such problem," Carson said.

Chemical companies, backed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, were not fans of the book. They tried to sue Carson, her publisher, and The New Yorker. They spent $250,000 on a smear campaign, calling her a "hysterical woman" and a communist, and casting doubt on her scientific bona fides. A former secretary of agriculture wondered publicly why a spinster with no children cared so much about genetics. But all the scandal only helped the book become a household name. President Kennedy read it with interest, and instructed his science advisors to look into Carson's allegations against DDT. They determined that her claims held up, but it was still 10 years before the widespread use of DDT was banned in the United States. Carson still has her detractors today who say that the banning of DDT killed more people — due to malaria-carrying mosquitos — than Hitler.

Carson died of breast cancer in April 1964. She lived to see the book's commercial success. She didn't live to see the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, or the Environmental Protection Agency — all of which came about due, in large part, to Silent Spring.

https://www.writersalmanac.org/index.html%3Fp=10727.html

Fwd: [SAAPLIST] VALUE, BEAUTY, AND NATURE The Philosophy of Organism and the Metaphysical Foundations of Environmental Ethics Brian G. Henning

VALUE, BEAUTY, AND NATURE

The Philosophy of Organism and the Metaphysical Foundations of Environmental Ethics

Brian G. Henning

Argues that, to make progress within environmental ethics, philosophers must explicitly engage in environmental metaphysics.

Much of early environmental ethics was born out of the belief that the ecological crisis can only truly be solved by overcoming a pernicious worldview that limits all intrinsic value to human beings. Returning to this originating impulse, Value, Beauty, and Nature contends that, to make progress within environmental ethics, philosophers must explicitly engage in environmental metaphysics. Grounded in an organicist process worldview, Henning shows that it is possible to make progress in key debates within environmental philosophy, including those concerning the nature of intrinsic value; anthropocentrism; hierarchy; the moral significance of beauty; the nature of individuality; teleology and the naturalistic fallacy; and worldview reconstruction. A Whiteheadian fallibilistic, naturalistic, event ontology allows for the recovery of systematic, speculative metaphysical thought without a revanchist movement toward a necessitarian philosophia perennis. Thus, in contrast to the claims of environmental pragmatists, Value, Beauty, and Nature demonstrates that environmental ethics would greatly benefit from an adequate metaphysical foundation and, of the candidate metaphysical systems, Alfred North Whitehead's philosophy of organism is the most adequate.

"Value, Beauty, and Nature provides in one volume a clear and concise introduction to both process metaphysics and process environmental ethics and the connection between the two. Henning makes a strong case for the need to bring metaphysical concepts to bear on issues in environmental philosophy in that ecoholism and related positions are already implicitly metaphysical.  He shows the problems involved if metaphysical generality is either ignored altogether or left implicit in environmental ethics, and also makes a strong case for process metaphysics, in particular.  In many ways, process thinkers, as Henning shows, led the way in the early days of environmental ethics, yet their views have not yet received the attention they deserve."—Daniel Dombrowski, author of Process Mysticism, also by SUNY Press

Brian G. Henning is Professor of Philosophy and of Environmental Studies and Founding Director of the Center for Climate, Society, and the Environment at Gonzaga University.  He is the author of The Ethics of Creativity: Beauty, Morality, and Nature in a Processive Cosmos, among many books.

A volume in the SUNY series in Environmental Philosophy and Ethics

J. Baird Callicott and John van Buren, editors

State University of New York

www.sunypress.edu 

December 2023 / 288 pages

Continuing Our Journey - Environmental Ethics Independent Study Week 3

     Moving forward to chapter five in Climate Change: A Very Short Introduction, Maslin discusses the potential impacts of climate change and how these impacts worsen as the warming increases. He explains that having "a realistic target concerning the degree of climate change with which we can cope" is a crucial factor in convincing the world to cut GHG emissions. (p.64) And, our world at 1.5℃ warmer looks very different from one that is 3-4℃ warmer. To emphasize the difference in these impacts, Maslin focuses on seven major areas of concern: extreme heat, drought, and wildfires; storms and floods; coasts; agriculture; ocean acidification; biodiversity; and human health. He describes how these areas have already experienced changes that have adversely affected human lives with the warming that our planet has already experienced, and how increased warming will only lead to more drastic changes and greater adversity for humans. 

     However, I would like to highlight one of these areas myself because I feel it is an area where we, as individuals, have great power over the impacts - biodiversity. When it comes to most of the other areas of concern, individuals often have limited control over the impacts of climate change. We can and should implement mitigation and adaptation techniques to avoid devastating outcomes, of course. And, moving away from fossil fuels and toward cleaner energy is a must. But, when it comes to biodiversity, we are the primary driver of the worst impacts, and changing our behaviors could have a great influence. 

     Maslin states: "The current loss of biodiversity around the world is due to human activity, including deforestation, agriculture, urbanization, and mineral exploitation. Extinction rates are currently 100-1,000 times higher than the background natural rate and climate change will exacerbate this decline." (p.81) Therefore, we have the ability to rectify this issue by correcting our own actions. The exciting part of working to correct biodiversity loss is that it can also positively affect several of these other areas of concern. For example, better city planning, which includes green spaces and less concrete, will cool those areas, increase tree populations which absorb CO2, and produce less urban heat. Another example would be the potential slowing of climate change impacts by protecting forests, oceans, and other carbon sinks, which are also teaming with biodiversity. This is a 'domino' issue - working to solve it, helps solve many others. 

     Towards the end of this chapter, Maslin provides a table that lists some of the major impacts that humanity will face under certain temperature increases. When introducing this table he explains: 

The impacts of climate change will increase significantly as the temperature of the planet rises...Water and food security as well as public health will become the most important problems facing all countries...Though many of my collegues are planning on how to deal with a 4°C world, my simple advice is, let us not go there. (p.87) 

I agree with Maslin. My hope is that we never get to 2℃ above pre-industrial global temperatures. 

     In chapter six, Maslin discusses thresholds and tipping points. He states: 

You can think of a threshold as a point at which there is change in a system that can be reversed. But a tipping point is a threshold that, when crossed, means the system moves into a new state and this transition is irreversible...The term 'tipping points' is used a lot in climate research and discussions. However, care must be taken as there are two usages of this word. First, there are references to climate tipping points, which are the large-scale, irreversible shifts in the climate system, such as from melting of ice sheets or the release of huge stores of CH4 from below the oceans. The other usage concerns societal tipping points, which occur when climate change has a major effect on a region or a particular country. (p.93-94)

The four possible climate tipping points that Maslin describes in detail are melting ice sheets, deep-ocean circulation, gas hydrates, and Amazon dieback. He explains that we can help "greatly reduce the likelihood of climate surprise[s by] keep[ing] climate change as small as possible." In other words, the closer we can stay to 1.5℃ above pre-industrial global temperatures, the less likely we are to trigger a climate tipping point. 

     In Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac, we finished out the almanac section. The months of September, October, November, and December celebrate fall and the start of winter on the farm. In October, Leopold discusses his proclivity for waking up early to survey the goings-on on his farm. He states: 

Getting up too early is a vice habitual in horned owls, stars, geese, and freight trains...Early risers feel at ease with each other, perhaps because, unlike those who sleep late, they are given to understatement of their own achievements...Like many another treaty of restraint, the pre-dawn pact lasts only as long as darkness humbles the arrogant. (p.55-56)

And, having, on occasion, had the privilege of witnessing the world just before it wakens en masse, I too can attest to the quiet superiority of this time of the day. 

     In November, while describing the "month of the axe," Leopold gives us a glimpse of his opinions on philosophy: 

We classify ourselves into vocations, each of which either weilds some particular tool, or sells it, or repairs it, or sharpens it, or dispenses advice on how to do so; by such division of labors we avoid responsiblity for the misuse of any tool save our own. But there is one vocation - philosophy - which knows that all men, by what they think about and wish for, in effect weild all tools. It knows that men thus determine, by their manner of thinking and wishing, whether it is worth while to weild any. (p.63-64)

We decide by our thinking and wishing whether we should use the shovel or the axe.

     Another poignant discussion that takes place in November is about his farm woodland, which he calls "a mighty fortress." Leopold writes: "Every farm woodland...should provide its owner with a liberal education. This crop of wisdom never fails, but it is not always harvested." (p.68) He explains that not long after he acquired his land, he realized that his trees were infested with many different diseases and pests. But, when he looked harder, he realized that those 'diseases' and 'pests' allowed for all manner of other life to flourish on his farm. He states:

Many other kinds of wildlife depend on tree diseases. My pileated woodpeckers chisel living pines, to extract fat grubs from the diseased heartwood. My barred owls find surcease from crows and jays in the hollow heart of an old basswood; but for this diseased tree their sundown serenade would probably be silenced. My wood ducks nest in hollow trees; every June brings its brood of downy ducklings to my woodland slough. All squirrels depend, for permanent dens, on a delicate balanced equilibrium between a rotting cavity and the scar tissue with which the tree attempts to close the wound...But for diseases and insect pests, there would likely be no food in these trees. (p.72)

What a lovely example of learning about the necessity for balance and biodiversity!

     Lastly, I will leave you with a quote from December that I hope inspires you as much as it does me to do what we can with what we have to help. Leopold writes:

Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets, but humbler folk may circumvent this restriction if they know how. To plant a pine, for example, one need be neither god nor poet; one need only own a shovel. By virtue of this curious loophole in the rules, any clodhopper may say: Let there be a tree - and there will be one. (p.76)

Next week we will continue where we leave it today. 

 

March to End Fossil Fuels

"I'm sleepy after a long day of marching, and so this report will be mostly pictorial—I just wanted to share with those who couldn't make it to Manhattan a sense of the March to End Fossil Fuels, which had the climate movement out in force in one place for one of the first times since the pandemic.

I knew it was going to be a good day when I rolled out of bed—the sky was bright blue, the sun was coming up, and the air was dry, almost brisk. It was New York at its most splendid, the kind of day that could fool you into living there. As I walked uptown (past the Mexican Independence Day parade), I could see a trickle of people with signs and banners—which turned into a cascade as I reached Broadway in the 50s. A small stage at 52nd St. boasted luminaries at a kickoff rally—Dr. Cornel West, and then Congressman Jamaal Bowman and the great Ugandan activist Vanessa Nakate…"

Bill McKibben  

https://open.substack.com/pub/billmckibben/p/back-on-the-march?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

Harmony at Radnor Lake (and in Sand County)

No mow

https://www.instagram.com/p/CxO1kpNSEVp/?igshid=MTc4MmM1YmI2Ng==

Continuing Our Journey - Independent Study Week 2 Summary

     As we progress to chapter three of Climate Change: A Very Short Introduction, the author, Mark Maslin, discusses the evidence behind our understanding of climate change. He begins with a very powerful statement about science itself:

Science is not a belief system. It is a rational, logical methodology that moves forward by using detailed observation and experiments to constantly test and retest ideas and theories. It is the very foundation of our global society. So you cannot pick and choose which bits of scientific evidence you want to believe in and which bits you want to reject. (p.26)

This seems especially important to remember in these times and this political environment. 

     Maslin then goes on to describe the 'weight of evidence' principle - which, put simply, is the extent to which scientific evidence from multiple sources supports a given hypothesis, such as anthropogenic climate change. He then presents evidence that the scientific community has gathered in relation to climate change in four main areas: "global temperature, precipitation, sea level rise, and extreme weather events." (p.27) Maslin explains that scientists have observed an increase in all of these areas, which is consistent with the effects of greater levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Additionally, he addresses the climate change deniers, who present 'alternative causes' for the increases in these areas, by showing that science has proven that none of these 'alternative causes' can be the dominant cause of climate change. Science shows that only the modern exponential increase in greenhouse gases caused by human actions can fully explain our current climate changes. We are the dominant cause. 

     In chapter four, Maslin discusses the use of scientific modeling to predict future climate scenarios. He explains that "[t]he biggest unknown in the models is not the physics or the chemistry or the biology: it is the estimation of future global GHG emissions over the next 80 years." This makes sense because humans are hard to predict, sometimes even to themselves. Maslin states that the Earth's carbon cycle is central to the climate models. He explains: "The Earth's carbon cycle is complicated, with both large sources and sinks of CO2. Currently half of all our carbon emissions are absorbed by the natural carbon cycle and do not end up in the atmosphere but rather in the oceans and the terrestrial biosphere." (p.47) However, as we discussed before, these sinks will begin to take on less carbon as we warm the planet and continue to degrade the land. Maslin also describes how climate models account for both warming effects, such as greenhouse gas emissions, and cooling effects, such as aerosols and clouds. 

     After explaining how the climate models work, he then presents the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) that the IPCC uses while modeling for the future. There are five pathways: 

SSP1: Sustainability -- taking the green road...In this scenario the world shifts gradually but continually towards a more sustainable path, with inclusive and environmentally aware economic development. (p.51)

SSP2: Middle of the road...In this scenario the world follows a path in which social, economic, and technological trends do not shift markedly from historical patterns. (p.52)

SSP3: Regional rivalry -- a rocky road...In this scenario there is a resurgence of nationalism. concerns about competitiveness and security, and regional conflicts that push countries to increasingly focus on domestic or, at best, regional issues. (p.52)

SSP4: Inequality -- a road divided...In this scenario there are highly unequal investments in human capital, combined with increasing disparities in economic opportunity and political power, lead to increasing inequalities and stratification both across and within countries. (p.53)

SSP5: Fossil-fuelled development -- taking the highway...In this scenario the world places increasing faith in competitive markets, innovation, and participatory societies to produce rapid technological progress and development of human capital as the path to sustainable development. (p.53)

These five shared socioeconomic pathways are then combined with five potential representative concentration pathways (RCP) -- future greenhouse gas concentration assumptions and the radiative forcing they may cause -- to provide the most likely scenarios: SSP1-1.9, SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, SSP3-7.0, and SSP5-8.5, which the IPCC focus on. (p.54) Understanding this information can make it easier for us to read IPCC reports ourselves and understand what these scenarios mean. Suffice it to say, every scenario leads to a warmer planet, but the scenarios where humans take climate change seriously and work together globally to limit GHG emissions and land degradation are much less disastrous than those where we proceed with business as usual. 

     In A Sand County Almanac, we continue with April floods on the farm and the peace they can bring. Leopold states: "I know of no solitude so secure as one guarded by a spring flood...I see our road dipping gently into the waters, and I conclude (with inner glee but exterior detachment) that the question of traffic, in or out, is for this day at least, debatable only among carp." (p.24) Our narrator then describes the first spring 'flower' -- Draba -- of it he writes that "it subsist on the leavings of unwanted time and space" because it grows so small and in inhospitable conditions. (p.24) Leopold's words have the ability to evoke emotions for even the most minuscule things. All of nature seems to come to life through him. Next, he discusses the changing of the prairie lands through the story of the bur oak. He explains that before settlers came to the prairies and started farming the land, every April fires would run across the land leaving only "scattered veterans, known to the pioneers as 'oak openings,' consisting of bur oaks." (p.25) But, after the settlers plowed the land and stopped the fires, the forest began to grow without hindrance. He quotes John Muir, a native of Wisconsin, as stating: "As soon as the oak openings were settled, and the farmers had prevented running grass-fires, the grubs [roots] grew up into trees and formed tall thickets so dense that it was difficult to walk through them, and every trace of the sunny [oak] 'openings' vanished." (p.28) And, the Wisconsin prairie was changed forever. Leopold concludes his April writings by describing the "sky dance" of the woodcock which he considers great nightly entertainment. 

     Throughout the summer months of May, June, July, and August, Leopold continues to regail us with tails of the sights and sounds of his farm, along with the thoughts that they evoke. While fishing on one June afternoon, he recounts:

I sit in happy meditation on my rock, pondering, while my line dries again, upon the ways of trout and men. How like fish we are: ready, nay eager, to seize upon whatever new thing some wind of circumstance shakes down upon the river of time! And how we rue our haste, finding the gilded morsel to contain a hook. (p.37)

And, though Leopold continues by stating that he thinks eagerness to be a good thing, perhaps it would serve us better to think through our actions a bit more before seizing the world around us. One example of these hasty decisions that might "contain a hook" is discussed in July. The author describes the "prairie birthday" of a small triangle of Silphium plants left behind from the native prairie lands in the corner of a graveyard near his farm. He explains that these sunflower-like plants used to cover the prairie, but now these in the graveyard are "the sole remnant" perhaps in the whole "western half of the country." Evoking a vivid and heart-wrenching scene, Leopold writes: "What a thousand acres of Silphuims looked like when they tickled the bellies of the buffalo is a question never again to be answered, and perhaps not even asked...When I passed the graveyard again on 3 August, the fence had been removed by a road crew, and the Silphuim cut." (p.43) He goes on to explain that most passers by will never notice the end of the Silphuim, as they have not noticed the disappearance of so many other flowers and plants because "[w]e greive only for what we know." (p.46) And, most of us are too busy "seiz[ing] upon whatever new thing" to notice the abundance of life at our feet. 

     In August, we are treated to a beautiful description of what can happen when we slow down and take in the scenery. Leopold recounts "a painting so evanescent that it is seldom seen at all, except by some wandering deer." (p.48) Painted by the river, this painting disappears almost immediately after being 'painted.' He writes: 

To view the painting...visit the bar on some bright morning just after the sun has melted the daybreak fog...The Eleocharis sod, greener than ever, is now spangled with blue mimulus, pink dragon-head, and the milk-white blooms of Sagittaria. Here and there a cardinal flower thrust a red spear skyward. At the head of the bar, purple ironweeds and pale pink joe-pyes stand tall against the wall of willows. And if you have come quietly and humbly, as you should to any spot that can be beautiful only once, you may surprise a fox-red deer, standing knee-high in the garden of his delight. (p.49)

     Next week we will pick up where we've left off in both of these books again.      

 

 

 

 

 

 

     

A Viable Alternative to Conventional Lawn? Cornell May Have Found One.

"Converting turf-grass lawns to something more sustainable is an action every homeowner can take to collectively address the climate crisis and give nature a helping hand."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/13/realestate/native-grass-lawn.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
A Viable Alternative to Conventional Lawn? Cornell May Have Found One.

American Earth

 American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau (LOA #182)

Bill McKibben
Library of America, Apr 17, 2008 - Nature - 900 pages
As America and the world grapple with the consequences of global environmental change, writer and activist Bill McKibben offers this unprecedented, provocative, and timely anthology, gathering the best and most significant American environmental writing from the last two centuries.


Classics of the environmental imagination, the essays of Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and John Burroughs; Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac; Rachel Carson's Silent Spring - are set against the inspiring story of an emerging activist movement, as revealed by newly uncovered reports of pioneering campaigns for conservation, passages from landmark legal opinions and legislation, and searing protest speeches. Here are some of America's greatest and most impassioned writers, taking a turn toward nature and recognizing the fragility of our situation on earth and the urgency of the search for a sustainable way of life. Thought-provoking essays on overpopulation, consumerism, energy policy, and the nature of nature, join ecologists - memoirs and intimate sketches of the habitats of endangered species. The anthology includes a detailed chronology of the environmental movement and American environmental history, as well as an 80-page color portfolio of illustrations. situation on earth and the urgency of the search for a sustainable way of life. Thought-provoking essays on overpopulation, consumerism, energy policy, and the nature of nature, join ecologists - memoirs and intimate sketches of the habitats of endangered species. The anthology includes a detailed chronology of the environmental movement and American environmental history, as well as an 80-page color portfolio of illustrations.

A few seconds of video

that sum up the climate fight right now...

This is going to be short (and sour), an atypical edition of this newsletter. I just wanted to share with you this video that was shot this week in the ongoing epic Greek floods, in a strip of tourist restaurants not far from the Acropolis—one of the birthplaces of what we sometimes call western civilization. I hope it works when you click on it; if not, this link to journalist Daphne Tolis' twitter feed should do the trick...

Bill McKibben

Getting Started - Environmental Ethics Independent Study 2023

     Throughout this semester, I will be reading and discussing 5 books: Climate Change: A Very Short Introduction by Mark Maslin, A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here And There (A Sand County Almanac) by Aldo Leopold, Environmental Ethics: A Very Short Introduction by Robin Attfield, The Ecology of Wisdom: Writings By Arne Naess - selected essays (The Ecology of Wisdom), and Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation (Regeneration) by Paul Hawken. This week and the following four, we will focus on Climate Change: A Very Short Introduction and A Sand County Almanac. 

     Climate Change: A Very Short Introduction is a crash course on the scientific, economic, and political challenges around climate change. In the preface, Maslin explains that "[c]limate change is one of the four defining challenges of the 21st century, along with environmental degradation, global inequality, and global insecurity." (p.xix) However, upon examination, we can see how all of these challenges affect and/or compound each other. He also points out that failure on the part of the world's leaders has led to a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over the last 30 years, which runs opposite of the change they knew was needed to mitigate the worst effects of climate change. We needed to be cutting carbon emissions during this crucial time. As for our own country, "the USA [is] the second largest emitter with around 15% of global emissions." (p.xx)

     In chapter one, Maslin describes the science behind the Earth's natural greenhouse effect. He explains that our primary greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrous oxide (N2O), methane (CH4), water vapor, and ozone are necessary in order to keep our planet warm enough to sustain life. However, increasing these gases traps more heat in our atmosphere; and, if we continue this process, we could warm the planet to levels that are not as compatible with the life that currently exists on this planet. There is a natural balance, and, as we add more greenhouse gases, we are tipping the scales. Maslin goes on to explain that one of the primary differences between human-induced climate change and natural climate changes of the past is the rate of change. This rate of change, how fast the warming happens, has the ability to outpace many species' ability to adapt and can cause extreme weather events as the planet tries to regain equilibrium. 

     The author expounds on how humans have been increasing greenhouse gases since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution by adding ancient energy from the sun to the current energy balance. We do this by releasing ancient sun energy that is trapped in trees when we cut and burn them and ancient algae, bacteria, and plants when we dig up fossil fuels and burn them. Maslin states that "[a]ccording the IPCC, the primary source of CO2 is the burning of fossil fuels: over 85% of the global CO2 emissions comes from energy production, industrial processes, and transport." (p.7) Furthermore, "North America, Europe, and Asia emit over 90% of [this] global, industrially produced CO2." (p.7) And, "[t]he second major source, accounting for 10-15% of global CO2 emissions, is land-use changes. These emissions come primarily from cutting down forests for the purposes of agriculture, urbanization, or building roads." (p.9)

     One of the most harrowing statements in this chapter is as follows:

We have put nearly half a trillion tons of carbon into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution, but this is only half of our emissions. The other half has been absorbed by the Earth -- with 25% going into the oceans and 25% going into the land biosphere. Scientists are concerned that this uptake of our pollution is unlikely to continue at the same level in the future. This is because as global temperatures rise the oceans will warm and will be able to hold less dissolved CO2. As we continue to deforest and convert land for farming and urbanization, there will be less vegetation to absorb CO2, again reducing the uptake of our carbon pollution. (p.10)

     In chapter two, the author discusses the history of climate change. He begins by explaining the early science behind our understanding of how greenhouse gases (GHGs) affect the Earth's surface air temperature. It is absurd to know that as early as 1896, "Swedish physical chemist Svante Arrhenius calculated how much the Earth's temperature would change given variations in GHGs...He concluded that anthropogenic CO2 emissions resulting from the burning of fossil fuels would be great enough to cause global warming." (p.13) However, as Maslin explains, it was not until the late 1980s when global temperatures began to steeply rise that the science of global warming became prominent. Alongside the rise in global temperatures, the 1980s also saw the rise of environmental awareness and large-scale environmental movements. Maslin also discusses the role that economists and the media have played in facilitating the debates around climate change since the early 2000s. However, though we can debate the ways to address the climate crisis, the science behind climate change is settled. 

     A Sand County Almanac is a collection of writings by Aldo Leopold. Aldo Leopold (1887-1948), is said to be 'the father of wildlife ecology' in the United States and is credited with the creation of 'land ethics.' In the introduction by Barbara Kingsolver, she discusses how Leopold's down-to-earth style of writing and talking, his respect for hard work, "love for life in all its forms," and his enduring humility could provide us with "a pathway to detente, [or m]aybe even progress." (p.xiii) Kingsolver states: " A Sand County Almanac charts the path he [Leopold] walked from woodsman to environmentalist, and at every turn we can still hear the kid with a fishing pole over his shoulder." (p.xx)

     From the very beginning, in the forward of the book, Leopold is a man after our hearts. He writes: "There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot." (p.xxi) He explains that the book is divided into three parts: part one focuses on his and his family's lived experiences at 'the shack,' part two focuses on events in his life that helped him realize that there were environmental issues that must be addressed through conservation, and part three is where he introduces his 'land ethic.' Leopold states: 

Conservation is getting nowhere because it is incompatable with our Abrahamic concept of land. We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. (p.xxii)

     In part one, the almanac, there is a section for each month of the year, beginning with January. In each section, Leopold writes with such vivid imagery that one can almost see what he sees in the mind's eye and feel the emotions that he means to convey. In January, he follows the tracks of a skunk and describes the interplay between a field mouse and a rough-legged hawk. He explains how the mouse is saddened by the thaw because his carefully designed tunnels from one food source to another have been exposed. He writes: "The mouse is a sober citizen who knows that grass grows in order that mice may store it as underground haystacks, and that snow falls in order that mice may build subways from stack to stack: supply, demand, and transport all neatly organized. To the mouse, snow means freedom from want and fear." (p.4) But, the hawk who swoops down and grabs the little mouse is delighted by the thaw. "The rough-leg has no opinion why grass grows, but he is well aware that snow melts in order that hawks may again catch mice. He came down out of the Arctic in the hope of thaws, for to him a thaw means freedom from want and fear." (p.4) He never does figure out quite what the skunk was up to, but the walk was not wasted. 

     In February, Leopold discusses an old oak that died from a lightning strike and will be used as firewood. There are several impactful moments in this section. First, Leopold opens by writing: "There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace." (p.6) Many of us may suffer from modern conveniences in this way. Second, is a more poetic look at the ancient sunlight that we mentioned earlier in a much more scientific way. Leopold states about his old oak that it "lived to garner eighty years of June sun. [And,] it is this sunlight that is now being released, through the intervention of my axe and saw, to warm my shack and my spirit through eighty gusts of blizzard." (p.7) Third, and last, is how he recounts the years that the old oak has seen as he cuts through its growth rings. This discussion reminded me of the novel Overstory in wonderful and terrible ways. It is very emotional to think of the long periods of time that an individual tree can silently witness.

     In March, Leopold explains how the geese returning to his farm were a sure-fire way of knowing that spring had arrived. He writes: 

A cardinal, whistling spring to a thaw but later finding himself mistaken, can retrieve his error by resuming his winter silence...But a migrating goose, staking two hundred miles of black night on the chance of finding a hole in the lake, has no easy chance for retreat. His arrival carries the conviction of a prophet who has burned his bridges. (p.17) 

His words have a way of making the reader want to be in nature and see it as he does; they can make us fall in love with skunks and mice and hawks and geese. Maybe if everyone could fall in love with nature in this way, it would not be such a fight to protect it. 

     Next week we will pick up with both books where we left off this week.  

“growing effort to vilify and dehumanize climate activists”

"Over the next two days, some of the world's most powerful nations will meet for the G20 summit, which is widely seen as vital for making progress on international climate goals.

The host of this year's summit, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has pledged to place climate change front and center—but has maintained that the focus should not be on his country.

"India has not caused any problems to the environment," Modi said during a visit to the U.S. this summer.

Disha Ravi, a 24-year-old Indian climate activist, would likely beg to differ. If India did not cause any problems to the environment, she wouldn't have co-founded Fridays for Future India—and she wouldn't have participated in the 2021 protests that eventually led to her arrest, imprisonment, and indefinite wait for trial.

So in light of the G20 summit kicking off this week in India, today we'll be telling Ravi's story, and looking at the growing effort to vilify and dehumanize climate activists—both in India, and around the world..."

https://open.substack.com/pub/heated/p/what-you-wont-hear-at-indias-g20?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

Bottleneck to Breakthrough

"I hope you'll watch and share this conservation conversation with two veteran sustainability scientists, focused on Bottleneck to Breakthrough, a provocative paper and emerging non-calamitous model for a human journey in which the imperiled biological bounty around us actually ends up with room to bloom in the centuries ahead. The paper was published in 2018 and we explored how the idea has faring amid the portentous discourse around climate and ecosystem collapse these days..."

Andy Revkn

https://open.substack.com/pub/revkin/p/a-new-frame-for-this-moment-on-earth?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

Fossil Fuel Kills, Asians in particular

When we talk about "humanity," we are, statistically, mostly talking about Asia—just under 60% of our sisters and brothers live there. But they don't live anywhere near as long as they should.

New data last week from University of Chicago researchers showed that across South Asia, air pollution—mostly from burning fossil fuels—is robbing people of five years of life on average. Five years! If you live in Delhi, the most polluted big city on the planet, that number is an unimaginable 11.9 years. If you would have lived to 70, you died at 58. Thank about that. Across the region, "particulate pollution levels are currently more than 50 percent higher than at the start of the century and now overshadow" other health risks. Every breath that people take is killing them, every hour of every day... Bill McKibben

Al Gore's latest TED Talk, Jy '23

https://youtu.be/xgZC6da4mco?si=UcsRIhKk2VeEb5xI

Bernie on “the biggest issue of our time”

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cvo8Hlyg5SA/?igshid=MTc4MmM1YmI2Ng==