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==

The Glories of Wilderness

"It's a spiritual experience to hike through the cathedral of wilderness, whether alone or with a family member or friend; the mountains and rivers generate a quasi-religious awe and put us humans in our place. I understand Spinoza best not in the library but in the mountains."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/26/opinion/hiking-wilderness-urban-america.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
Hungry Mosquitoes, Irritable Bears and the Glories of Wilderness

The Clean Energy Future Is Arriving Faster Than You Think

Delivery vans in Pittsburgh. Buses in Milwaukee. Cranes loading freight at the Port of Los Angeles. Every municipal building in Houston. All are powered by electricity derived from the sun, wind or other sources of clean energy.

Across the country, a profound shift is taking place that is nearly invisible to most Americans. The nation that burned coal, oil and gas for more than a century to become the richest economy on the planet, as well as historically the most polluting, is rapidly shifting away from fossil fuels.

A similar energy transition is already well underway in Europe and elsewhere. But the United States is catching up, and globally, change is happening at a pace that is surprising even the experts who track it closely.

Wind and solar power are breaking records, and renewables are now expected to overtake coal by 2025 as the world's largest source of electricity. Automakers have made electric vehicles central to their business strategies and are openly talking about an expiration date on the internal combustion engine. Heating, cooling, cooking and some manufacturing are going electric.

As the planet registers the highest temperatures on record, rising in some places to levels incompatible with human life, governments around the world are pouring trillions of dollars into clean energy to cut the carbon pollution that is broiling the planet...

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/12/climate/clean-energy-us-fossil-fuels.html

Heat Waves and the Sweep of History

This burning summer is taking us out of human time.

...Jim Hansen, a nasa physicist, said earlier this month that it’s possible that we’re now headed into climate territory not seen in a million years. While I was standing atop the castle, my phone pinged with an alert about widespread fires on the Greek island of Rhodes—which forced the hurried and chaotic evacuation of some nineteen thousand people. Rhodes has a long history of its own, dating back well before the Christian era, when its prosperity allowed its residents to erect the Colossus, a bronze statue of the sun god Helios, which was the size of the Statue of Liberty and collapsed decades later in an earthquake. But even the remnants were so mighty that ancient tourists came to stare at them, as I was staring at this wrecked castle. That’s history again. But here’s what History looks like: “According to the data, we will probably go through 16-17 days of a heatwave, which has never happened before in our country,” Kostas Lagouvardos, a director of research at Greece’s National Observatory, explained. The temperature is off the charts that track history; like the temperatures in so many other places, they’re increasingly on the charts which track History.

This doesn’t mean that our history is over yet. From the summit of the hill on which Hrad Devín sits, the view toward Austria encompasses dozens of windmills turning steadily in the summer breeze; they, and the solar panels that are our current tribute to the god Helios, give us a chance. Slovakia’s President at the moment is a woman named Zuzana Čaputová, who came to prominence leading a decade-long fight against a toxic landfill. Greenpeace rates Bratislava’s public-transit system as the fifth best in Europe, trailing only those of Tallinn, Luxembourg, Valletta, and Prague. But that’s not going to be enough. It’s going to take action on an entirely different scale to deal with what we’re facing at the moment, which is why campaigners in the U.S. are urging President Biden to declare a climate emergency, allowing him to restrict some trade in fossil fuels and make funds available so that states can build out renewable energy faster—maybe even fast enough to start catching up with the escalating velocity of global heating. Some kind of climate emergency declaration is a key demand of activists organizing a New York City march on September 17th, which seems to be gathering momentum.

But, of course, Republicans from Texas and West Virginia, two of the key historical hydrocarbon producers, are even now leading a push for legislation that would prevent Biden from taking such a step. (The two lead sponsors, unsurprisingly, have received campaign contributions from the fossil-fuel industry.) “Our legislation insures that President Biden does not abuse the power of his office to pursue his anti-American energy agenda against the will of the American people,” Representative August Pfluger explained. He went to high school in the West Texas town of San Angelo, right on the edge of the Permian Basin, one of the largest oil deposits in the world. That oil is the result of History; its power is driving our history, which now seems to be driving History again. Unless we intervene, the certain result is ruins.

Bill McKibben

Re-wilding in West Sussex

https://www.threads.net/t/CvCtCt8JjWf/?igshid=MTc4MmM1YmI2Ng==

Up to us

"If we are not graced with an instinctive knowledge of how to make our technologized world a safe and balanced ecosystem, we must figure out how to do it. We need more scientific research and more technological restraint. It is probably too much to hope that some great Ecosystem Keeper in the sky will reach down and put right our environmental abuses. It is up to us…" Carl Sagan

https://www.threads.net/t/Cu9rfghLeVn/?igshid=MTc4MmM1YmI2Ng==

Conservation

"It's hard to understand how "conservatives" could oppose safeguarding the environment—that all of us including conservatives and their children—depend on for our very lives. What exactly is it conservatives are conserving?"

- Carl Sagan, Billions and Billions

https://www.threads.net/t/Cu9rGoPrb8M/?igshid=MTc4MmM1YmI2Ng==

Top 10 eco-friendly dwellings that make for the ultimate sustainable homes

https://www.yankodesign.com/2023/07/21/top-10-eco-friendly-dwellings-that-make-for-the-ultimate-sustainable-homes/

As Climate Shocks Multiply, Designers Seek Holy Grail: Disaster-Proof Homes

…As weather grows more extreme, geodesic domes and other resilient home designs are gaining new attention from more climate-conscious home buyers, and the architects and builders who cater to them.

The trend could begin to dislodge the inertia that underlies America's struggle to adapt to climate change: Technologies exist to protect homes against severe weather — but those innovations have been slow to seep into mainstream homebuilding, leaving most Americans increasingly exposed to climate shocks, experts say...

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/16/climate/climate-geodesic-dome-house.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
As Climate Shocks Multiply, Designers Seek Holy Grail: Disaster-Proof Homes

The south is becoming (climatically) unbearable

https://www.instagram.com/p/CuVLCB3J5RE/?igshid=ZmZhNmZiZDJmOA==