Tag: #ActOnClimate

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Environment Kitchen Garden

Cooking in the Climate Crisis

Shaved turnip, arugula and bok choy salad.

Ideas about how to cook are ubiquitous. Everyone — family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, chefs, dish washers, dieticians and scientists — has something to say about it. Almost everyone cooks. Talk about cooking can be devilishly engaging. Are there things we can do in our kitchen to mitigate the effects of the climate crisis?

It’s not clear how climate change impacts cooking once we get in the kitchen. We should minimize the use of water, electricity and natural gas while cooking. Many are and everyone should be doing so. Maybe that’s the point. Cooking is so common it’s hard to distinguish one process from another when it come to mitigating the effects of the climate crisis.

We recently lived through a rise in manufacture and consumption of pre-cooked and processed meals and ingredients, increased the amount of food grown closer to home, and changed consumer behavior due to national health scares originating in large farm fields in California, Arizona and Florida. Our collective actions to mitigate the effects of climate change, whether in the kitchen or elsewhere, matter in a time of hegemony of fossil fuels culture. For most, spending time cooking is when we nourish ourselves and practice culture that helps us deal with the complexities of a turbulent world. Cooking helps us focus on what we can control.

Inputs

Inputs set the stage for cooking. The focus is often on where ingredients originate and their environmental cost. That remains important yet I also refer to the framing of our lives in society, including land use, construction practices, kitchen configuration, water sourcing, energy sourcing, and education. All of these are inputs to cooking as they are to how we live our lives.

I’ve written about the importance of sourcing as much food as we can locally. My advice is get to know the face of the farmer where possible, and read the ingredient and nutrition labels on anything else.

If one has space, time and the ability, grow some of your own food. Not only can it taste better, time spent in a garden is enough exercise to avoid a trip to the gym or grocery store. Over our years in Big Grove I’ve developed a kitchen garden where what we eat and cook has become synchronous with seasonally available foods.

A cook includes ingredients grown or made a long distance from home where they offer something unique. Nutmeg and black pepper are examples of spices that serve a vital purpose but are not available locally. When the choice is learn to live without them or accept them for what they are, cooks will choose them as long as they are available. I don’t question that impulse.

Assembling and preparing ingredients on a counter t0 mix, saute, fry, steam, grill or bake them into a meal is fundamental. How much water, electricity and natural gas we use is part of background noise: important but seldom the focus of attention except when we configure our kitchen. Seeking energy efficient appliances and a faucet aerator are basic. Once a kitchen is configured few additional changes seem likely. Many of us don’t have the opportunity to configure a kitchen, especially when living in an apartment.

Simple practices like selection of cookware that retains heat, avoiding long preheating of the oven, keeping the oven door mostly closed while baking, and washing vegetables in a bowl instead of under running water have impacts.

A significant aspect of climate-friendly cooking is buying ingredients in a way that avoids food waste. Have a meal plan and buy only what’s needed for it. Plan to use up what’s in the ice box before it goes rotten when planning meals. These practices should be taught in the K-12 school system.

Our household eschews meat and meat products and has since we married in 1982. I’m an omnivore (just barely) and don’t understand the aversion to going meatless. Production of meat contributes to global warming and even if it is only one “meatless Monday” per week, reduction of meat consumption is basic enough that every household can do something.

Outputs

Cooking in our household is an irregular attempt to make something from ingredients that arrive unevenly over time. Cooking is about output, mostly what we serve for meals from our efforts. It is also about how we use what’s generated from the kitchen, including food waste, food storage and cooking by-products like carrot peels and pasta water.

I am a fan of Tamar Adler’s An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace. Shortly after I read the book in 2011 I spent time generating the next meal from the previous one as she suggests. Adler presents an example of how cooking can be an efficient process that produces delicious meals. While her book is not about climate change, by being an efficient cook less resources are required and it can be better for the climate as well as our pocketbooks… and taste buds.

Our refuse company picks up weekly but we seldom put both containers at the end of the driveway. We could do better in reducing waste but in the kitchen every scrap leftover from inputs and meal production is put to use. We save leftovers for following meals. When there is excess produce we freeze or can it. Because we have a kitchen garden there is never enough compost so organic material goes into a stainless steel bucket, then out to a household waste composter near the garden. Using the results of kitchen production has become a part of a life that would seem weird if we didn’t do it.

Conclusion

The climate crisis is real, it is happening now, and the potential for global warming to harm us and our society is ever present. Cooking is ubiquitous, and determining ways to cook efficiently and with a smaller carbon footprint is as important as many things we do to mitigate the effects of climate change. It is not everything. It is something.

Categories
Environment Kitchen Garden

Gardening the Climate Crisis

Garden Soil Turned over with a Spade

Gardening is one of the most popular activities on the planet. Whether one lives in an apartment, in a single-family home, or on a farm, local food and flower production can be satisfying on multiple levels. A garden can be a source of nourishment, beauty, exercise, learning, and personal satisfaction.  Gardening helps us to be sociable because almost everyone grows something or appreciates those who do.

Gardening is also a way of mitigating the effects of the climate crisis.

The Climate Reality Project posted a list of things gardeners can do to act on climate. They are easy to incorporate into a garden’s daily work. Here’s my take on their list.

Reduce or eliminate synthetic fertilizers

A few years ago I began using composted chicken manure to supplement compost from my bins. The resulting vegetables were dramatically better. This is the kind of fertilizer my local food farmer friends use and it is acceptable for certified organic crop production.

We don’t ask a lot of questions about where the chicken manure originates, and maybe we should, but Iowa ranks first in the United States for egg production with 57.5 million laying hens according to the Iowa Poultry Association. With an 18.2:1 chicken to human ratio, chicken manure is an abundant resource.

There are plenty of reasons to be wary of synthetic fertilizers, according to the Climate Reality Project. Chemical runoff from haphazardly applied fertilizer can drain into streams and lakes, making its way to our water supplies. They can disrupt naturally occurring soil ecosystems, and are a temporary solution to a long-term solvable problem.

When it comes to the climate crisis, fertilizer manufacturing is the issue.

“Four to six tons of carbon are typically emitted into the atmosphere per ton of nitrogen manufactured,” according to Dr. David Wolfe, professor of plant and soil ecology in the School of Integrative Plant Science at Cornell University.

Gardeners should be more conservative about nitrogen use in the garden. Using composted chicken manure to improve soil nitrogen levels can produce great results and avoid the greenhouse gas emissions of synthetic fertilizers.

Plant Trees and other perennials

When we built our home in 1993 there were two volunteer trees on our lot, a mulberry which remains in the northeast corner, and another that died and was replaced with a blue spruce grown from a seven inch seedling. In all I planted 17 of 18 trees here, of which 15 remain. We also have three patches of mature lilac bushes.

Atmospheric CO2 Levels

The benefit of planting trees is they remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it. Because of their long life and size, they store more carbon than other plants. Scientific data shows the impact of trees on our atmosphere. The NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory at Mauna Loa, Hawaii measures carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. Last Saturday, the level of atmospheric CO2 rose to 415.25 parts per million, higher than it has been since humans evolved. Click on the chart of monthly CO2 levels and you can see the impact of deciduous trees. While the overall level continues to rise, as the world greens up in spring, CO2 levels predictably, consistently fall. When leaves fall from the trees, CO2 levels rise again. The thing about planting trees is do it once and the focus can turn to other things.

Trees offer cool shade in the summer and protection from winter winds, so a well-placed tree can reduce emissions and energy bills associated with heating and cooling a home. Fruit trees provide an added bonus for gardeners.

Reduce water use

Science explains that the warmer temperatures associated with the climate crisis increase the rate of water evaporation into the atmosphere, drying out some areas and then falling as excess precipitation in others. This can lead to a cycle of water misuse in ever-drier areas, and plant diseases in regions where average annual precipitation is on the rise. In Iowa we have seen all of that, with the record drought of 2012, and severe flooding that got within 100 yards of our home in 2008.

Lawn and garden watering is estimated to account for 30 percent of all residential water use in the U.S., according to the EPA, and that number “can be much higher in drier parts of the country and in more water-intensive landscapes.” And as much as 50 percent of it is lost to evaporation, wind, or runoff. Water conservation is everyone’s business. I’m not sure why anyone would water a lawn, except maybe a golf course. I don’t play golf. It is better to let a lawn survive in varying temperatures and moisture levels. Thus far in Iowa that’s been possible.

I don’t use an irrigation system or sprinkler in my garden. To ensure adequate moisture to sustain plants in seven plots, I use grass clippings as mulch. Often there are not enough clippings so I’ve been experimenting with plastic sheeting for peppers, cucumbers and broccoli. I have successfully re-used the plastic for multiple years. I use a garden hose to water at the base of the plants and do so sparingly.

“Less frequent, deep watering also encourages deeper root growth to areas where the soil stays moist longer,” according to the Cornell Cooperative Extension. “If supplemental water is determined to be necessary at a specific time and location, be sure to use no more than is needed and minimize your use of potable water.”

Focus on soil health

I have gardened non-stop since we moved into a rented duplex after our 1982 marriage. I have gotten better at gardening, but the biggest improvements came after we ceased being renters and bought our own homes, first in Lake County, Indiana, and then in Johnson County, Iowa. Owning our home enabled me to better consider soil health and long-term investing in it.

When we moved here the living layer of top soil had been removed and sold by the developer, leaving a hard, heavy surface devoid of earthworms and other visible life forms. Gardening, by its nature, must address soil health because if there is no life in the soil, fruit and vegetables won’t grow as well. This is the lesson of row crop agriculture where the best soil has eroded and what remains is supplemented with synthetic fertilizers and other inputs to create an artificial environment for plant growth and pest control.

The story of climate change’s impact on soil health is mostly about changing precipitation patterns, according to the Climate Reality Project.

Extreme downpours can lead to runoff and erosion, stripping healthy soil of key nutrients needed to sustain agriculture. On the other end of the spectrum, frequent droughts can kill off the vital living soil ecosystems necessary to grow healthy crops – and of course, plants can’t grow without water either.

What a gardener wants is soil rich in microorganisms that will sustain plant life through drought and heavy rains. After years of work composting and working our garden plots we can see plenty of earthworms. They are the most visible aspect of a rich miniature biome that sequesters carbon and stores water to make irrigation less needed. Healthy soil helps a garden survive short-term drought and heavy rains by sustaining moisture in the ground near plant roots.

Not many gardeners I know use cover crops, but that is an option to increase soil health. Like most, I add compost in the spring before tillage until the bins are empty.

Reduce tillage

Over the years my relationship with gasoline powered tillers has been inconsistent. A low- or no-till approach to gardening can plays a big role in building the soil organic matter. The reason is simple, when you rototill the ground, you break up the soil ecosystem.

“At its most basic, no-till gardening is the practice of growing produce without disturbing the soil through tillage or plowing,” according to the Climate Reality Project. “In addition to locking up more carbon in the soil, this approach dramatically cuts back on fossil-fuel use in gardening. After all, gasoline-powered garden tools are emitters of CO2.”

The best way to say it is I’m in transition regarding tillage. I have always turned over all the soil in a plot with a spade. What varied over time was whether or not I used a tiller. Sometimes a rented or borrowed a large rototiller to do everything at once, sometimes I used a smaller sized tiller inherited from our father-in-law’s estate, and now I break up the soil with a hoe and rake. I’ve been changing my way of thinking.

Last year I made a tomato plot but instead of turning the entire plot over and breaking the clods of soil down with a hoe and rake, I made two-foot lanes for the tomatoes. The production was excellent. Not tilling the entire plot leaves some of the soil structure in place and in the long term, that’s better for soil health.

This is an ongoing experiment, but the obvious conclusion is less tillage is better.

Opt for hand tools

My main garden tools are shovels, a hoe, rakes, a post driver, and a bucket of hand tools. Eliminating use of a rototiller was an important step in reducing emissions and using the spade, hoe and garden rake to break up the soil provides exercise. I also plant crops in four waves: early (kale, broccoli, peas, carrots, beets, radishes), succession planting (spinach, onions, leeks, herbs, beans and celery), tomatoes, and late (cucumbers, zucchini, squash, eggplant and peppers). Spreading planting over weeks helps make the physical labor of using hand tools more tolerable.

With a large garden and yard it proved difficult to make the battery-powered trimmer work: I kept running out of charge. When it broke, I got a new gasoline-powered trimmer. I also use my gasoline-powered mower and a chain saw. I used less than five gallons of gasoline between the lawn mower, chain saw and trimmer this year. Not perfect, but consistent with a practice to reduce the amount of garden emissions.

Part of my strategy of lawn maintenance is to avoid the use of chemicals completely and mow less often, maybe once every three or four weeks. The benefit of this practice is the lawn becomes a habitat for local flora and fauna. The downside is I don’t get enough grass clippings in a season for mulch. After years of the practice, the neighbors haven’t complained.

Conclusion

The climate crisis is real, it is now, and we have to do something about it. The lesson I learned from being a member of the Climate Reality Leadership Corps is there are many way to contribute to solutions in our daily lives. Among the things we do in a day, mitigating the effects of climate change must be one of them. We are all in this together and even a gardener can do something to help.

~ To learn more about the Climate Reality Project, visit climaterealityproject.org.

Categories
Living in Society Social Commentary Writing

Unexpected Monday

Maple Tree – Before

Monday didn’t happen as expected. There were three things involving arborists, health care and farming.

Without announcement, the arborist arrived to take down a maple tree I planted on the northwest corner of the house. Turns out I didn’t know what I was doing when planting the 12-inch, stick-sized sapling so close to the house in 1994.

Now fully grown, unusually strong winds already took out one of the main branches. We determined it would be less expensive to remove the tree than pay for a roof repair when limbs inevitably blew down on it.

It was a small way of mitigating the damage of the climate crisis.

The crew was four men with two pickup trucks to haul away brush and wood. The benefit of using an arborist instead of a tree service is the equipment is pickup trucks, ladders, and an array of Stihl brand chainsaws and old fashioned loppers. There is minimal soil compaction around the work site without heavy equipment and that’s important to a home owner.

Arborists at Work

The arborists took out the maple and trimmed the pin oak, finishing well before noon. Our next door neighbor engaged them for tree trimming and by the end of the day our corner of the neighborhood was looking good.

Monday’s main event was a trip to the local clinic to get checked out.

Last Friday someone called, saying I was overdue for a physical exam. They had an appointment the following business day, which in a small city is disconcerting. The hospital managing the clinic is already having financial difficulties. The fear is the clinic will close, making it neccessary to drive to the county seat for health care. I took the appointment.

We no longer have two physicians at our clinic as one was replaced with an ARNP or Advanced Registered Nurse Practitioner. I get that the United States is facing a physician shortage, and our ARNP fills a coverage gap. It makes sense to differentiate the skills being performed in a local clinic and find practitioners that closely match them.

I miss what I had for a very long time, a doctor with whom I established a relationship and could get to know in our community. I’m not saying it was great, or that we should go back. I miss it but am ready to move on, seeking an answer to the question how do people get treatment in a scenario in which part of every office visit is talking about how to pay for services?

Arborist at Work

I liked my ARNP. He explained something I hadn’t considered. He said I was scheduled for a physical exam and there would be a significant cost. I explained that’s what the Friday caller said I needed so I went with it. He changed the billing code and said, once a person reaches a certain age, the better course of action when seeking treatment is to come into the clinic for specific maladies, without getting a traditional physical exam. I have a history already, which when combined with age and lifestyle risks, along with my complaints, can determine a course of care without physical examinations as I’ve had previously. What their team did today was little different from what the last physician did, with the exception the prostate examination was delayed until the results of a panel of lab tests he ordered were known.

At 3:40 p.m. I drove to the farm to pick up our vegetable share of Bok Choy and Koji, Leaf Broccoli, Mixed Greens, Lettuce, Spring Garlic, and Garlic Chives. Each year I secure onion starts for our garden leftover once the farm has planted theirs. It was time. Usually I get a bundle or two of starts produced in Texas, but Monday was different. The farmers gave me two trays of locally grown starts still in soil blocks. It seemed a generous gift considering the work that produced them. I was thankful to have them.

A day that started with a headache from a 12-hour fast before my clinic appointment turned out for the better. I had a cup of coffee after the clinic and the day got progressively better. It was one more day of sustaining a life in a turbulent world.

Categories
Environment

Climate Change, Roundabouts and Retail Stores

Rural Johnson County – 140th Street NE west of Ely Road on March 23, 2019.

During a tour of my usual spots to observe flooding it doesn’t look as bad as it has.

In 2008, the flood waters came to within 100 yards of our home before receding. We are nowhere near that now.

Yesterday afternoon Governor Kim Reynolds issued a press release saying the president had approved a major disaster declaration for 56 Iowa counties. Hazard mitigation funding became available for the entire state.

What’s going on?

“Are we just rolling snake eyes over and over or is there something happening here?” Erin Murphy of Lee Enterprises asked on Iowa Press this weekend.

“We have 147 years of temperature and precipitation records for the state,” Iowa State Climatologist Justin Glison responded. “The trend shows us warming and with the warmer atmosphere, a warmer surface temperature, we’re able to hold more water vapor in the atmosphere. That gives us a higher probability of having more precipitation events. What we are seeing over the past thirty years is that the intensity of precipitation events is increasing… Yes, we are moving into a new type of precipitation regime.”

No mention of the words “climate change” and that’s okay. Glison’s message is what I have been saying the last six years, and part of what Al Gore said the two times I heard him present his slide show. The current flooding is climate change happening in plain view. It is time to do something to mitigate not only the damage caused by climate change but the changing climate itself.

What should we do about climate change? Embrace the truth about what this scientist said. Then develop the political will to change human activities that contribute to global warming in a way that makes sense and creates a resilient culture.

The rest of my day seemed anticlimactic. While crossing the Cedar River bridge on Highway One I decided to visit the Ace Hardware Store in Mount Vernon to see if they had a replacement part for the faucet handle in the bathroom.

I entered the roundabout at the intersection of U.S. Highway 30 and Route One. It is a bit confusing but I was able to decipher the signs related to which lane was correct for my trip. I like the roundabout for intellectual reasons, although most locals hate it.

Before the roundabout was completed in October 2013, the intersection was one of the five most dangerous in the state, based on frequency of accidents. In the years since the new roundabout opened, the frequency of accidents remained higher than expected. The intersection is currently exhibiting a crash frequency of 16.8 crashes per year according to a 2018 study. The expectation was there would be from six to eight crashes per year. To make a 60 percent reduction in accident frequency, the study recommends better driver education and improved signage near the roundabout. In other words, Iowa drivers are not finding navigation of the roundabout intuitive and it shows.

I arrived in Mount Vernon and parked across the street from the small hardware store. The future of small city retail was on display as I walked through the entrance. As an employee of a home, farm and auto supply store my radar was up to take in the sales process.

Two cashiers greeted me as I entered and asked if they could help. They directed me to the plumbing aisles which were easy to find in the small space. I walked past a popcorn machine that offered fresh, hot popcorn to eat while shopping. Eating and retail seem inseparable in the 21st Century. I declined to sample a bag. I quickly found a selection of faucet handles.

Using my handheld device, I had taken a photo of the old handle with a ruler held up to it from two angles. I sought an exact match. Within a couple minutes, a sales associate walked up and asked if he could help me find something. I said yes as I wasn’t finding what I wanted. He confirmed the display represented what was on hand and led me to a dual-monitor computer where he researched alternatives. The idea was if we could find the part, the associate would order it on the spot. We looked through four examples, both the Ace and manufacturer brands and couldn’t match the size.

In my experience, expanding product offerings from a retail store’s physical inventory is essential to survival in small cities and towns. It harkens back to the early days of the Sears catalogue. While there were no mobile or home computers back in the day, modern retail at its best emulates the idea there is a broad array of available products that with time can be delivered just about anywhere. The difference between my experience at Ace Hardware and a large on line retailer like Amazon.com is the personal attention I received from everyone I encountered at the store. That service is what satisfies our human need for personal interaction, and is likely to make us a repeat customer. In doing so, local retailers can learn and work toward sustainability.

What do climate change, roundabouts and retail stores have in common? I’m not sure, but that was my day in society.

Categories
Environment Home Life Writing

Starting Spring

Buckets of sand and salt near the garage door.

It felt good to be outdoors on Friday. The sky was clear and temperatures warmed enough to shed my coat. Green-up has begun.

We filed our income taxes with the Iowa Department of Revenue and the Internal Revenue Service. Earlier in the week I paid the second half of our annual county property taxes.

This morning I plan to walkabout our subdivision, inspect roads, and address concerns about water and sewer leaks. With the hard winter and significant ambient temperature swings, there is damage. Whatever needs fixing requires a plan and a budget. As a board member and trustee of our home owners association and sanitary sewer district I share responsibility for both.

We’ve done our part to support government services. Now spring can begin.

Outdoor work was sweeping up enough sand from the road in front of the house to refill sand buckets used last winter. I haven’t purchased sand in about five years. Because of the hard winter there was plenty available. A 50-pound bag of solar salt filled empty salt buckets.

I found the fan to blow air across the damp garage floor. It took about two hours for moisture to evaporate. Baby steps to start spring 2019.

Governor Kim Reynolds issued a disaster proclamation for Howard County Friday afternoon. The number of counties under disaster proclamations is now 53 (of 99), according to the press release. Current estimates of damage exceed $1.6 billion according to this morning’s Iowa City Press Citizen, although counties reported they have yet to fully assess damage within their jurisdictions. Governor Reynolds proclaimed nothing about what government would do to help mitigate the deleterious effects of climate change going forward.

My farmer friend from the home, farm and auto supply store reported the ground needs drying before getting into his fields. While the weather quickly became spring-like, the usual issues for row-crop farmers remain. My specialty crop friends also found the ground too wet to work. They are planting in their hoop houses which are traditional season-extenders.

Spring began Wednesday and is just getting started. We’re ready.

Categories
Environment Writing

No Going Back to Coal

Coal Mine Demonstrators Going Down – 1950

On Aug. 10, 2016, Donald Trump appeared at a campaign event about 50 miles from my father’s home place in southwestern Virginia. He asserted coal miners would have one “last shot” in the election, cautioning that the coal industry would be nonexistent if Hillary Clinton won the election.

“Their jobs have been taken away, and we’re going to bring them back, folks. If I get in, this is what it is,” Trump said.

How do you tell if the president is lying? Check to see if his lips are moving.

There was no last shot. The coal industry is dying and the president’s efforts haven’t and won’t change that.

It is easy to dismiss his comments as campaign bluster. However, real lives are at stake and young couples are leaving Appalachia to find work in other professions and make a life. We are all driven by the need to make a living. Despite strong personal history and traditions in a place, the economics of living there may cause us to leave as it is doing in coal country where mining jobs continue to be in decline.

U.S. coal consumption is projected to decline by nearly four percent in 2018 to the lowest level since 1979, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said on Tuesday. At year-end, appetite for coal will be a staggering 44 percent below 2007 levels according to NBC News.

The cost per kilowatt hour of electricity generated by new solar arrays is less than those generated in existing coal-fired power plants. Cheap natural gas extracted by hydraulic fracturing has taken new coal-fired power plants off the drawing board. Right or wrong, the power industry is switching to gas. India, one of the top ten global carbon dioxide emitters, has cancelled plans to build nearly 14 gigawatts of coal-fired power plants with the price for solar electricity “free falling” to levels once considered impossible, according to Ian Johnston at the Independent.

There are no easy answers for people impacted by our changing energy economy. Families that relied on coal extraction to make a life will have to revisit their choices regardless of what the president does or says.

When I was coming up the home where I spent ten formative years had recently been heated by coal. When my parents bought it the large gravity furnace in the basement had been converted to natural gas. It was an inefficient way to heat our home, but it was very reliable, and natural gas was less expensive and more convenient than coal trucks plying the alley behind our house to deliver. There is no going back to coal in home heating, or anywhere else.

The sooner we generate our electricity from renewable sources, the better we reduce greenhouse gas pollution in the atmosphere. No amount of presidential bluster can save the old energy economy, nor would we want to. Our politics isn’t there yet, but we will act on climate change. There is an existential urgency that we do.

 

Categories
Environment

Environmental Issues 2018-style

Earthrise by Bill Anders, Dec. 24, 1968

There was never any doubt that when Republicans won the 2016 election setbacks were in store for parts of the environmental movement that rely on government regulations.

Conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation were ready with swat teams to investigate every part of the executive branch and reverse anything and everything that could be to favor business interests during the president’s first term.

The funders of these operations have plenty to celebrate going into the new year. The rest of us took a step backward.

What I’ve learned in almost 50 years of being in the environmental movement is there is no parsing the actuality of environmental degradation. A person can summarize the greenhouse effect in as few as 200 words. The impacts of global warming are available to anyone who would recognize them. There is an inevitability of climate action with the main concern being we wait until it is too late to save ourselves.

The battle over the coal industry is being fought less by environmental advocates and more by market dynamics. So many electric utilities converted to natural gas because of its current low cost and availability. Why wouldn’t a utility want a thermal energy source delivered right to their door over a mineral that had to be delivered and handled by the rail car load at greater expense? Based on the home heating conversion of coal to natural gas, ongoing when I was a child, there is no going back to coal.

Natural gas is also a problem because of greenhouse gas emissions. While solar energy installations have stalled as a result of the president’s tariff policy, the market will figure it out to use the sun and wind directly. Renewable energy will prevail in the marketplace over extraction-based energy sources. Based on the science of climate change, they have to prevail if we hope to adapt to the deteriorating environment we created.

Symbolic gestures like the Green New Deal the House of Representatives is proposing are something. However, the problem of environmental degradation won’t be solved by governments alone. We need a resurgence of green habits. It is still too easy and inexpensive for someone to hop in the car and drive 20 miles to pick up groceries to expect them to change their behavior.

Progress made on environmental issues and policy during the Obama administration was no progress at all if it could be so easily reversed by the next administration. The idea a potential Democratic president in 2021 could reverse the damage done by Republicans is a shallow hope. We have to do better than this.

As 2018 draws to a close there is much to be done to reverse the deleterious effects of a changing climate. Some of it can’t be reversed yet we can’t lose hope. Despair is a form of climate denial.

“We do not have time for despair,” Al Gore said recently. “We can’t afford the luxury of feeling discouraged. Too much is at stake.”

Inside politics and out, now is the time for climate action.

Categories
Environment

COP24 and What’s Next

Image of Earth 7-6-15 from DSCOVR (Deep Space Climate Observatory)

Like others, I was skeptical the broad coalition to act on climate formed during and after the 21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Paris would last. This week at COP24 in Poland, three top oil producing states, the United States, Russia and Saudi Arabia, along with number nine, Kuwait, blocked acceptance of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report the conference commissioned.

The four oil producers objected to “welcoming” the report and preferred the vague language of “noting” the report. Because the conference proceeds only after reaching consensus, and they couldn’t, the report was not adopted.

“Opposition to climate action is one of the issues motivating Trump’s cozy relationship with the corrupt leaders in Russia and Saudi Arabia,” State Senator Rob Hogg tweeted Dec. 9. “This is not who we are as Americans, and we need to put a stop to it.”

“Under Trump, instead of leading the world to act on climate change, the United States joined with Russia and Saudi Arabia to stop the recognition of a scientific report about the increasingly urgent need for climate action,” he tweeted.

Absent U.S. leadership on climate I expect further dissent within the coalition that reached consensus Dec. 12, 2015 with the Paris Agreement. Our politics, led by moneyed interests, hinders efforts to do what makes sense regarding climate change. We can’t even agree on the facts about climate change. Accepting the IPCC report, or “welcoming” it to use the vernacular of the conference, should be a non-issue.

Although President Trump announced his intent to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, the U.S. continues to be party to it. We live in a time when the truth has become unhinged from reality and it’s hard to see what path our country will take regarding our need to act on climate going forward.

What we see in Iowa is changing weather patterns enhanced and made worse by climate change. The 2012 drought was unimaginably oppressive and reduced corn and soybean yields. After local storms on Sept. 19, 2013 knocked trees down and damaged our home I wrote, “Everywhere in the farming community, people are concerned about extreme weather. Weather is always a concern for farmers, but this is different.” New research shows change in the atmosphere is reducing the nutritional content of foods we take for granted. None of this was expected. All of it hits home.

Whether people use the words climate change is less the issue. What matters more is our lives are changing, with tangible costs, and people are worried about it. Not only for the monetary damages of a storm, or for reduced crop yields, but for what it means for the future.

The aspiration of the Paris Agreement was noble, but likely unfeasible without leadership from the United States. Regretfully President Obama did not get buy-in from Republicans in government before he signed the Paris Agreement. Once he was gone, politics took over and his efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change are rapidly being rendered null.

There’s no easy solution to climate change. Was there ever? The truth before us is we must act on climate before it’s too late. Whether society is capable of doing so remains an open question. COP24 provided another setback to action.

Categories
Environment

A Reckoning Came

Hot Peppers from the Garden, Oct. 12, 2018.

Even if we knew our ecosystem was close to the tipping point of global warming and its consequences, it is hard to be ready for the recent Washington Post headline, “The world has just over a decade to get climate change under control, U.N. scientists say.”

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its latest report a week ago. 10-14 years remain to address global warming and climate disruption to which it contributes, according to the authors. If our global society doesn’t address it, scientists find we will likely pass a tipping point toward climate breakdown from which there is no return.

Can we take adequate climate action in time?

“Even if it is technically possible, without aligning the technical, political and social aspects of feasibility, it is not going to happen,” said Glen Peters, research director of the Center for International Climate Research in Oslo. “To limit warming below 1.5 C, or 2 C for that matter, requires all countries and all sectors to act.”

I’m not hopeful society will react adequately.

Recycling programs are a case in point about society’s failures.

Driven by a desire to take volume out of waste streams, curbside recycling programs came up after the environmental awareness created by the Apollo moon flights and the widely circulated “Earthrise” and “Blue Marble” photographs. It just made sense to recycle materials like metal cans, cardboard, paper, glass and plastics that could be re-used. Along with that came a push by manufacturers to create containers that were recyclable. By any measure the programs were successful for a long time.

Time intervened and today, more and more communities are either scaling back or dropping their recycling programs. The reason? Contamination of waste, increased collection and processing costs, and lower sales prices for recycled material. Who is getting blamed? China. Here’s an explainer from a Pennsylvania television station:

The recycling markets, whether it’s paper, plastic, glass, or other items, are financially unstable now, local recycling coordinators said.

The cost of recycling, including collection and processing, is increasing, while the prices for recyclables sold is decreasing.

One reason, they said, is China. They control a huge portion of the world’s recycling markets and they now insist on taking recyclables that are not termed “contaminated,” meaning mixed with other materials. In fact, China is no longer accepting any recyclables from the United States.

Recycling is something individuals and families can get their arms around. To hear this story, Americans are no good at it. If we can’t do something as tangible as recycle plastics, cans and glass in a way to enable them to be recycled, how can we be expected to reduce vehicular fossil fuel emissions, use of lawn fertilizers, home heating oil and gas, and a host of other consumer products right in front of us? Take that to the next level and how are we to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture by changing our food choices to reduce consumption of meat, corn and soy found throughout grocery store aisles? What about the unseen manufacturing plants that use coal, oil and gas to create mundane products like cheap cat litter, toilet paper, hot dogs and home appliances?

What the IPCC is saying is time is short and we have a difficult task in front of us. It involves personal behavior which we have been no good at, and collective behavior that in the current political environment seems impossible.

An obvious precedent to these times is the extinction of Neanderthals after the rise of so-called “modern humans.” How they went extinct is not fully understood, but several theories have been advanced.

“Hypotheses on the fate of the Neanderthals include violence from encroaching anatomically modern humans, parasites and pathogens, competitive replacement, competitive exclusion, extinction by interbreeding with early modern human populations, and failure or inability to adapt to climate change,” according to Wikipedia. “It is unlikely that any one of these hypotheses is sufficient on its own; rather, multiple factors probably contributed to the demise of an already widely-dispersed population.”

Where do we go from here? The IPCC report is no surprise. It is a wake-up call for folks who haven’t engaged in mitigating the effects of global warming and climate disruption. At what point do we get enough people engaged? The day of reckoning has passed, now it’s up to us. We’ll see if we can become better at it.

Categories
Environment Work Life

Working in the Heat

Image of Earth 7-6-15 from DSCOVR (Deep Space Climate Observatory)

Independence Day at the home, farm and auto supply store was a time to catch-up with organizing the warehouse, process expired pet food, reposition tall pallets of wood shavings, and generally clean up. The usual receiving activities slowed down as delivery drivers had the day off.

The store was pretty busy and comme d’habitude, management tried to feed us lunch: fried chicken with sides from a chain restaurant headquartered in Orange City.

I resisted. I also didn’t criticize because they were trying to be nice on the holiday we all had to work. We all should be nice when we can.

A couple of projects involved being outside in the blazing heat and humidity. I persisted and got the work done.

When working outside at home I get done early in the day to avoid mid day heat. I’ll work outside all day when the heat index is up to 90 degrees, but that’s the upper limit. With the heat and humidity we’ve been having that meant days indoors even though the sky was clear. It was weird.

According to this morning’s newspaper heat records are being set all over the world. In the Northern Hemisphere we’ve had the hottest weather ever recorded during the past week as a massive and intensive “heat dome” settled over the eastern United States.

In addition, the northeastern Atlantic Ocean is cooler than normal. Partly this means there may be less hurricane-strength storms this season. My worry is it’s being caused by melting of the Greenland ice sheet. If Greenland goes completely, the historical record shows the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) will slow down significantly or stop. That could mean disruption of the growing season in Europe and of their food supply. According to Scientific American, AMOC is the weakest it’s been in 1,600 years.

“The grand northward progression of water along North America that moves heat from the tropics toward the Arctic has been sluggish,” wrote Andrea Thompson. “If that languidness continues and deepens, it could usher in drastic changes in sea level and weather around the ocean basin.”

I think of the blue marble and how all of us on earth are connected.

“No single record, in isolation, can be attributed to global warming,” wrote Jason Samenow in the Washington Post. “But collectively, these heat records are consistent with the kind of extremes we expect to see increase in a warming world.”

There are so many signals and indicators of climate disruption in the global environment that such disclaimers may serve some editorial purpose but are immediately useless. The world is warming and there are consequences.

It’s about more than working outside on a humid and hot day at the home, farm and auto supply store.