Tag: climate crisis

Categories
Environment

How Are Things Going Before Earth Day?

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

Earth Day is Monday, so how are we doing? Is the news media helping us create a better environment?

Bill McKibben follows issues centered around the climate crisis better than almost anyone. Here’s the stark truth from his substack, The Crucial Years:

At the most fundamental level, new figures last week showed that atmospheric levels of the three main greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide—reached new all-time highs last year. Here’s how the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported the figures:

While the rise in the three heat-trapping gases recorded in the air samples collected by NOAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory (GML) in 2023 was not quite as high as the record jumps observed in recent years, they were in line with the steep increases observed during the past decade. 

The global surface concentration of CO2, averaged across all 12 months of 2023, was 419.3 parts per million (ppm), an increase of 2.8 ppm during the year. This was the 12th consecutive year CO2 increased by more than 2 ppm, extending the highest sustained rate of CO2 increases during the 65-year monitoring record. Three consecutive years of CO2  growth of 2 ppm or more had not been seen in NOAA’s monitoring records prior to 2014. Atmospheric CO2 is now more than 50% higher than pre-industrial levels.

Entirely unsurprisingly, the planet’s temperature has also continued to rise.

The Crucial Years, a substack by Bill McKibben, April 10, 2024.

Not long ago, McKibben headed an organization called 350.org, which advocated keeping average surface concentration of CO2 below 350 ppm. At 419.3 ppm, and increasing about 2 ppm per year, we are going the wrong direction.

How do news audiences perceive the climate crisis? A recent study explored this question. Why is it important? How we perceive and receive news about the climate crisis determines, in large part, whether and how we address it.

Around Earth Day, we expect to see more news stories about the climate crisis. Folks at Reuters Institute studied news use and attitudes about climate change, using data from Brazil, France, Germany, India, Japan, Pakistan, the UK, and the USA. The issues are similar to what we see in response to media on any topic: Should we trust scientists? What is misinformation and what isn’t? What news sources are trustworthy? Are direct action protests covered fairly by media? They found a lot:

  • In most of the eight countries there has been a slight increase in climate change news use, with just over half (55%) on average using climate change news in the previous week.
  • Climate news avoidance and trust in climate information from the news media have remained roughly stable, but avoidance has decreased slightly in the UK, USA, and Pakistan, as well as trust in the UK and Germany.
  • Scientists remain the most trusted sources of news and information about climate change, trusted by 73% on average, and respondents more often see them used as sources in the news media than any other source of information.
  • Over three quarters (80%) of survey respondents say they are concerned about climate change misinformation, consistent with data from 2022.
  • Once again, respondents think television and online (including social media and messaging apps) are where they see most climate-related misinformation. Politicians, political parties, and governments are frequently mentioned as sources of false and misleading information.
  • Nearly two thirds of respondents believe that news media play a significant role in influencing climate change decisions, actions by large businesses, government policies, and public attitudes, with particularly strong beliefs in Brazil, India, and Pakistan.
  • There is large variation in how soon respondents think people in their country will face the serious effects of climate change, with significant proportions in every country thinking the consequences are decades away at least. However, people who use climate change news on a weekly basis are considerably more likely to think that people are being affected by climate change now.
  • Significant disparities exist in perceptions of the impact of climate change on public health specifically, with those in Global South countries (Brazil, India, Pakistan) generally perceiving larger effects (50% or more) than those in the Global North (UK, USA, France, Germany, Japan).
  • Just over half of respondents think that climate change has a larger effect on poorer people (53%) and poorer countries (52%), but there is a considerable partisan disagreement on this in France, the UK, and the USA, with those leaning politically right less likely to agree.
  • People are more likely to think that richer countries and more polluting countries should take greater responsibility for reducing climate change, and weekly climate change news users are more likely to hold this view.
  • In the UK, USA, Germany and France opinion is roughly evenly split on whether direct action climate protests (e.g. blocking roads, disrupting sporting events) are covered fairly by the news media. But in Germany, the UK, and the USA opinion varies depending on whether people support or oppose the protests.
  • People in our survey expressed a high level of interest in various types of climate coverage, including news that discusses latest developments, positive news, and coverage presenting solutions. People did not express a clear preference for the type of solutions journalism they are most interested in.

What do these findings mean? Assessing news in media has become a critical skill in 2024. It is important to align our lives with accurate information about the climate crisis. Rich McKibben is a good source of information. So are Katharine Hayhoe and Al Gore. Knowing the truth about the climate crisis will make us better advocates. It will set us free to create a better world for our progeny.

On Earth Day 2024, we are a distance from achieving our goals. Things are not going as well as we need and it is complicated by reliance on media fraught with misinformation. We can do better.

~ The author helped organize the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970 in his home town. He served as chair of the county board of health, and has been advocating and writing on environmental issues all along his journey. He joined Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project in 2013.

Categories
Sustainability

Why Eat Less Meat?

Grass Fed Dairy Cattle

We, as a society, should be eating less meat. Why? Producing meat is an inefficient way to make food. Much of our agricultural production goes to animal feed where most calories are wasted because animals have lives to live. For example, for every 100 calories a cow eats, it produces three calories in meat. It’s not much better for sheep, dairy, pigs and chickens. Not only is meat-production inefficient, it requires a lot of land: half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture. Three quarters of that is used for livestock. (In Iowa, half the corn crop is used to manufacture ethanol). Add it all together — greenhouse gas emissions, land use, water consumption, and air and water pollution — and there is a strong case for meeting human nutritional needs other than from livestock.

R. Buckminster Fuller was the first person I read who said there is enough food produced in the world to feed everyone comfortably. He canceled the notion there wasn’t enough. What nature couldn’t provide, science would, he said, in the form of improved fertilizers, plant genetics, better land use, and distribution and packaging. Where we are each day is a beginning point for the rest of our lives. Each generation develops new insights into what makes our world work and how to improve it, including food production and distribution. Humanity is fraught with potential to feed ourselves.

“Man is a complex of patterns, or processes,” Fuller wrote in I Seem To Be A Verb. “We speak of our circulatory system, our respiratory system, our digestive system, and so it goes. Man is not weight. He isn’t the vegetables he eats, for example, because he’ll eat seven tons of vegetables in his life. He is the result of his own pattern integrity.” Understanding our “pattern integrity” and how it relates to the physical world is a key challenge of agriculture. It is also a source of planetary degradation because of how we pursue agriculture, especially through livestock culture.

Hannah Ritchie points out in her book, Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable World, “Our battle with agriculture has been centered around one thing: having enough nutrients in the soil at the right time.” During the early 20th Century, German chemists Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch developed what is called the Haber-Bosch process which converts nitrogen and hydrogen into ammonia which can be used as fertilizer. The advances in plant genetics developed by Norman Borlaug are well known. Between Haber, Bosch and Borlaug, they created the Green Revolution which enhanced food production three-fold from historical levels. This is the kind of science to which Fuller referred.

Changing how we live regarding agriculture is about more than personal choices. I have no regrets choosing a mostly ovo-lacto vegetarian diet beginning in the 1980s. In the early period, there was no strict line between meat culture and vegetarianism. I did not eat meat at home, and when I was out, especially with business clients or close family, I sometimes did. It was a non-issue. I guess you would call 1980s me a casual vegetarian.

As I age, I have less interest in eating meat: partly because it is expensive to buy, and mostly because it has no viable role in the cuisine I developed in our kitchen-garden. The issue with personal choices is they are not scalable to a level where it would make make a significant change in land-use policy. It would take a lot of people leveraging the power of the pocketbook to turn things around regarding consumption of meat and associated environmental degradation.

When addressing global environmental problems we can lose hope because of their scale. By identifying a big part of the problem has been livestock and meat production, we have something tangible to grasp, something within our control. By reducing consumption of meat we contribute to a solution to our environmental crisis. There is something good in that.

Categories
Environment

Earthrise Studio on Fossil Fuels

I met Finn Harries in Cedar Rapids at Al Gore’s 2014 Climate Reality Leadership Corps training. The diminutive Brit showed up only for the days Gore gave his Inconvenient Truth lecture. Harries and his twin brother Jack had millions of subscribers on their YouTube channel JacksGap. With a fame of his own, Finn Harries had specific intent in attending the Iowa training.

During the last ten years, the brothers developed a process to address the climate crisis. Finn is working on regenerative agriculture and Jack started Earthrise Studio. The transformation of their YouTube channel is ongoing at Earthrise Studio.

This channel is currently undergoing an exciting transformation. In 2011 we launched JacksGap, a creative storytelling project featuring short travel films by Jack and Finn Harries. Since then we’ve been on the most incredible journey covering stories all around the world and increasingly learning about the significant environmental issues we face. Today 10 years later we are re launching this channel as Earthrise, a digital media platform and creative studio dedicated to communicating the climate crisis. Earthrise tells stories for a new world. Radical stories of hope, of new possibility. Stories from the future that help us navigate the now. We’re so excited for this next chapter and hope you’ll join us!

Earthrise YouTube Channel

Their channel has grown to 3.63 million subscribers.

On Tuesday, Jan. 16, I received this email with a link to their first video about fossil fuels. Please take 11 minutes to view it. It presents a different picture of the geopolitical impact of fossil fuels and leads into the same discussion about renewables.

A year ago, we set out on a journey to investigate the origins of the global energy crisis, an issue that took the world by storm and resulted in extortionate energy bills for people everywhere.

Fast forward to today, we’re so excited to share that the first episode of POWER has just gone live on our YouTube channel. But first, a quick recap on how we got here…

February: We decided to make a series about fossil fuels.

March: We went to our audience to crowdsource questions.

April: We began writing the series.

July: We kicked off production in our new filming studio.

December: We wrapped filming.

Yesterday: We held an in-person premiere for our community.

Today: We hit upload on Episode 1, and you can now stream it on our YouTube channel using the link below.

Email from Earthrise Studio, Jan. 16, 2024.
Categories
Environment

After COP 28 Keep On The Sunny Side

Dubai, UAE site of COP 28 – Photo by Aleksandar Pasaric on Pexels.com

I met with State Senator Joe Bolkcom before he retired to discuss ways to mitigate the effects of climate change. He told me something important as we finished our conversation. “Join a group and get active,” he said. What does that mean?

With a challenge so big it involves all of the populated regions of the globe, one person’s impact is not as useful as when we work with others to solve the climate crisis. As we face its challenges, it is important for our own sanity to feel like we contribute to solutions as individuals. Actions like reducing gasoline use, reducing natural gas use, reducing electricity use, eating less meat and dairy, and growing some of our own food are all important. These actions matter, yet what matters more is what we, as a society, do collectively. That was Bolkcom’s point.

On Dec. 13, 2023, delegates to the 28th Conference of the Parties (COP 28) agreed to transition away from fossil fuels. This despite heavy lobbying from delegates representing fossil fuel interests to do nothing.

Nearly 200 countries struck a breakthrough climate agreement Wednesday, calling for a transition away from fossil fuels in an unprecedented deal that targets the greatest contributors to the planet’s warming. The deal came swiftly — with no discussion or objection — in a packed room in Dubai following two weeks of negotiations and rising contention. It is the first time a global climate deal has specifically called to curb the use of fossil fuels.

Countries clinch unprecedented deal to transition away from fossil fuels, Washington Post, Dec. 13, 2023.

Is the cup half full or half empty? Citizens engaged in solving the climate crisis should take the positive which this agreement represents even though it falls short of our aspirations.

When I activated an account on Threads, one of the first accounts I followed was climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe who is active on that platform. We had this exchange about COP 28, in which I quote-posted her report from COP 28:

As Hayhoe said in the talk referenced above (Here is a link), the challenge is to move from worried to activated. It is not only possible, it is imperative that advocates for solving the climate crisis do so.

Back to my question, is the cup half full or half empty when progress toward transitioning from fossil fuels saw such resistance at COP 28?

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) said after COP 28 closed, “A small, self-interested minority of states cannot be allowed to block the progress necessary to put our entire planet on a path to climate safety.”

2023 was a disastrous year for our climate. We experienced the hottest year on record and the extended Iowa drought impacted corn and soybean yields. Rivers and lakes began to dry up. What gets overlooked is that just as the climate crisis seems to get worse, actions to tackle the problem are ramping up. There were environmental wins out of COP 28:

  • The cost of solar power has fallen by around 90% and wind by 70% in the past decade.
  • The majority of new energy capacity being added in the U.S. and globally is solar, wind, and battery storage; these renewables already account for nearly 14% of the U.S. energy production and 12% worldwide.
  • Electric vehicles are becoming cheaper and more attractive. For the first time, more than one million EVs have been sold in the United States in a calendar year.
  • At COP28, delegates took a historic step in establishing a loss and damage fund, the latest development in a three-decades-long fight to have wealthy, high-emitting countries compensate vulnerable, developing ones for the harms of climate change.

For more positive news, read Katarina Zimmer’s complete article on Atmos.

Despite its shortcomings, COP 28 marked a major step forward for the environmental movement. For the first time ever, a COP agreement explicitly acknowledges the main culprit responsible for the climate crisis is fossil fuels. While the agreement falls short of what many of us wanted, it still reflects progress in a decades long struggle to address the climate crisis. We should keep on the sunny side and build on this progress by finding other, like-minded people and getting active.

Categories
Environment

Reducing Consumption of Animal Products

Black-eyed peas, rice, and cornbread for first meal of 2024.

An uncomfortable truth about environmentalism — that no one wants to discuss, especially in Iowa — is the amount of land used to feed and husband animals. To say it another way, the best thing we could do to mitigate the effects of ongoing climate disruption is to drastically reduce the amount of animal products consumed by humans. Not by a little, but by a lot… and immediately.

In his recent book, We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast, author Jonathan Safran Foer wrote about this. In the appendix he discusses how he came to the environmental impact animal husbandry makes. It ranges from 14.5 and 51 percent among different experts. How does one even begin to address this? Here in Iowa, someone who suggests humans stop eating animals and their dairy products wouldn’t get one minute of attention. They would be run out of the state.

The State of Iowa developed into an agricultural state and with reason. The prairie that existed after the 1832 Black Hawk War is almost gone. In its place is a grid of once fertile fields and crop land to take advantage of our temperate climate, rich soil, and adequate rainfall. It seems quite organized in 2024. It is. It is organized to extract as many crops from this ground as it can, growing corn and beans fence row to fence row. If the nutritional content of the soil isn’t what it used to be, there are fertilizers to help. While not all of the corn and soybeans is fed to animals, the contribution Iowa-style farming makes to environmental degradation is astounding.

Safran Foer would have the population take collective action to reduce or eliminate consumption of animal products. As the title of his book suggests, he asks us as to eat no animal products before the evening meal. The problem, he points out, is that people will convert to a “plant-based diet” or “go vegan” in order to check a box, assuage guilt, and feel hope, rather than taking more substantial, collective action to mitigate the causes of climate disruption related to agriculture. This is a problem wanting a solution. Because it is controversial, few appear to be working on it.

As we face the climate crisis, it is important for our own sanity to feel like we contribute to solutions as individuals. Actions like reducing gasoline use, reducing natural gas use, reducing electricity use, eating less meat and dairy, and growing some of our own food are all important. These actions matter, yet what matters more is what we, as a society, do collectively.

While I type this post people are working to expand U.S. export of liquefied natural gas. Government support for this is among the crazy things the Trump and Biden administrations have in common. The level of methane pollution of this export operation is mind-boggling and Biden could do something about it. It is just one example of how collective advocacy could make a difference in reducing methane pollution. Few people even realize what is going on and that’s a problem.

The meal shown in the photograph above has no animal products in it. It was satisfying from the standpoint of living a New Year’s Day tradition, and from a save the planet perspective. I checked off the box and feel good. However, there is much more to do to organize our neighbors and encourage our government to take more affirmative climate action. That is just as important as what we eat.

Categories
Environment

Electric Cars and Iowa

Photo by Rathaphon Nanthapreecha on Pexels.com

When we couldn’t get new parts for our 2002 Subaru in 2022, we decided to get a replacement car. First of all, it rots that basic suspension parts are unavailable from the manufacturer of a relatively new and otherwise fine car. Second, we wanted an electric vehicle, yet manufacturers couldn’t even tell us when we could get one. It was more than a year’s wait for some basic models with actual delivery date unknowable, they said. Demand was so high, they apparently didn’t mind missing a few sales. We resolved the immediate crisis by getting a used subcompact that gets 38 miles per gallon of gasoline.

The 45th President had something to say about electric cars during his Christmas message to the nation. He said he hopes supporters of “Electric Car Lunacy… ROT IN HELL.” Our Congresswoman, Mariannette Miller-Meeks is on board with the former president and wrote a column on the topic in our local newspaper, the Solon Economist. Not only does she have her lips busy kissing Trump’s behind, she is unabashedly in favor of the Iowa ethanol and biodiesel crazes. Heaven help us that the Environmental Protection Agency attempt to regulate a livable climate and infringe on our “freedom,” I wrote sarcastically.

Miller-Meeks takes the tone of a serious person, yet she is not one. While her predecessor, Democrat Dave Loebsack supported corn ethanol and biofuels, Miller-Meeks let her membership on the Energy and Commerce Committee, and Conservative Climate Caucus go to her head. She became a parrot for what the oil and gas, and corn ethanol and biofuels lobbies want from Washington. This compared to a legislator that looks out for all of the people she represents.

In her column, she wrote, “For one reason or another, the Biden administration has relentlessly pushed its fixation on electric vehicles (EVs), or vehicles that have an electric motor in place of an internal combustion engine, on everyday Americans.” We know the reason, and I suspect Miller-Meeks does as well. 2023 has been the hottest year in recorded history for our atmosphere and oceans. At this rate, global heating will soar past the recommendations of scientists who study it for a living. The scale of the problem demands bold solutions, which is what the EPA proposed. Is two-thirds of all new vehicles being electric by 2032 the right number? Given the ramp up time and obstruction from the corn ethanol, biofuels, and oil and gas industries, it may not be good enough.

Miller-Meeks took her corn ethanol/biofuels show on the road to COP 28 in Dubai. She had a story to tell which is reprinted below from her weekly newsletter.

At COP, I had the opportunity to speak at the U.S. Pavilion to discuss how our farmers across Iowa and the United States are the backbone of this country and our economy. I highlighted how Iowa is a leading producer of soybeans, corn, pork, and eggs in the United States, even while reducing fertilizer and pesticide use with adoption of sustainable regenerative Ag practices. Further, I mentioned how our farmers help fuel the world with lower carbon, cleaner emissions liquid fuels. 

I had the opportunity to discuss how we have taken advantage of the geographic composition of our state to support the entire gamut of renewables, from wind to solar to ethanol, biodiesel, biomass, manure, and compressed renewable natural gas. 

In Iowa, we can introduce innovative technologies like carbon capture and underground storage to our biofuel refineries. We’ve added hydropower at Lake Red Rock, and advanced nuclear energy is being revisited to provide capacity and dispatchable continual base load to the energy mix. We have the Ames Lab, one of the U.S. national labs, that adds to the exciting research conducted at the University of Iowa and Iowa State. 

We have a story to tell, and I was honored to represent our district and our agricultural priorities at COP28, and I am excited to continue to tell the story about how Iowa is setting the example and creating systems to support and harness clean energy to secure a cleaner, healthier planet for generations to come.

Miller-Meeks Weekly Script, Dec. 17, 2023.

By filling her time at the U.S. Pavilion with all of these things, she avoided addressing the real and increasingly dangerous challenges of a heating planet. While she is good at cramming buzz words into these paragraphs, notably, she avoided mentioning electric vehicles. It may sound like she is saying a lot, but in truth, she is saying nothing but that we should continue the status quo. That is simply not good enough to create a livable world.

Iowans should consider buying an electric vehicle when they need a replacement for an internal combustion vehicle, and vote Miller-Meeks out of office in 2024.

Categories
Environment

COP 28 and Beyond

Photo by Laura Penwell on Pexels.com

Ahead of Joe Biden and Xi Jinping’s Nov. 15 meeting at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference in San Francisco, the parties pledged to strengthen their cooperation on climate change. The U.S. State Department released a statement detailing areas of agreement. Both presidents pointed to the importance of the upcoming Conference of the Parties (COP 28) that begins Nov. 30, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

The luster has gone off the Conference of the Parties, as hundreds of fossil fuel lobbyists participate as delegates to impede progress toward conference goals of eliminating use of fossil fuels. Biden and Jinping’s mentioning COP was important to regenerate interest. Their agreement on climate change was significant, yet hardly noticed in major media.

Members of the Climate Reality Leadership Corps, part of The Climate Reality Project founded by former Vice President Al Gore to address the climate crisis, seeks three outcomes of COP 28.

During a year of record-breaking temperatures and climate disasters, we cannot afford to stay silent. We must ensure that global leaders convening in Dubai hear our demands for an agreement at COP 28 to: 

  1. Phase out fossil fuel emissions and stop funding fossil fuel projects.
  2. Increase funding for climate solutions in countries that need it most.
  3. Reform future COP processes so fossil fuel interests can’t block progress. 
Email from The Climate Reality Project, Nov. 14, 2023.

Fossil fuel interests are fighting any and every advance that leads to a true net-zero economy. My Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-IA01) has taken the fossil fuel companies’ positions and attended COP 26 and COP 27. In a newsletter earlier this year, she wrote:

Americans have suffered the consequences of reckless and misguided energy policy. From day one of his administration, President Biden has waged an all-out war on American fossil fuel production that has contributed to record inflation and weakened our national security.

Miller-Meeks Weekly Script, April 16, 2023.

Miller-Meeks couldn’t be more wrong. The Washington Post recently called out people like her regarding the so-called war on fossil fuels:

Former vice president Mike Pence framed the issue in one of the presidential debates: “On day one, Joe Biden declared a war on energy, which was no surprise, because when Joe Biden ran for president, he said he was going to end fossil fuels, and they’ve been working overtime to do that ever since.”

It sounds just awful. But I have good news for Republicans: U.S. fossil fuel exploitation is pretty much booming. Here are a few stats from this supposed war’s front lines:

  • After plummeting early in the pandemic, U.S. crude oil production has been climbing and is now back near record highs. That’s according to data released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The agency also projects that oil production will hit new all-time highs next year.
  • U.S. natural gas production has also been hovering around record highs.
  • To date, the Biden administration has approved slightly more permits for oil and gas drilling on public lands than the Trump administration had over the same periods of their respective presidencies, according to Texas A&M professor Eric Lewis. (My Post colleague Harry Stevens has previously covered this in depth.)
  • If “energy independence” means exporting more than you import, we’ve achieved it in spades. The United States has been exporting more crude oil and petroleum products than it imports for 22 straight months now, far longer than was the case under Trump.
Washington Post, A ‘war on American energy’? So why is oil production near record highs? by Catherine Rampell, Oct. 3, 2023.

When fossil fuel interests and Republicans who parrot their talking points focus on the so-called war on fossil fuels, it distracts society from pursuing solutions to the climate crisis. There are viable solutions to ridding the world of man-made greenhouse gas emissions caused by burning fossil fuels without compromising our quality of life. They distract us because distraction is a time-tested method of furthering their interests while seeking to avoid blame for causing the the climate crisis.

As society races toward exceeding the 1.5 degree Celsius limit in increasing global temperatures since the pre-industrial era, it seems increasingly evident we will wait until it is too late to take action. While Biden and Xi call our attention to COP 28, it seems doubtful the conference will accomplish what is needed. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is all we currently have to address the climate crisis as a global society. Individual countries doing so is not enough. We’ll see if delegates get serious this December. I am hopeful they will.

Categories
Environment

It Seems Very Warm

Photo by James Frid on Pexels.com

We’ve lived through the hottest 12 months since record-keeping began. It’s not just me saying this. It’s likely the hottest it’s been in 125,000 years according to scientists quoted by the Washington Post.

It is not a risky thing to say that our planet will pass the tipping point of climate change. With the increased average temperature of Earth passing 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial norms, entire ecosystems could be irreversibly damaged or destroyed by global warming. Things won’t be like we know them now. According to the Post article, “nearly 3 in 4 people experienced more than a month’s worth of heat so extreme, it would have been unusual in the past, but became at least three times more likely because of human-caused climate change.”

It seems very warm here in Big Grove. That’s because it is.

This year’s drought has been a humdinger. Crop reports indicate it hasn’t been as bad as 2012 based on corn and soybean yields, yet unless we get rain soon, farmers will be facing a dry spring again. On my daily walks along the lake shore, the culvert that drain the lake watershed still doesn’t have anything in it except cracking chunks of soil like those in the photo above.

The only thing I know is no one person will be the solution to preventing as much irreversible damage as we can. It is too late for that. We can’t get agreement that children should not be slaughtered in Israel or Gaza, for Pete’s sake. There is necessary work to be done here.

Categories
Environment

Live Blogging The End Times

With Al Gore and company in Chicago, August 2013

The climate crisis remains with us. A series of news articles reported stresses on Earth to which climate change contributed or caused: Canadian wildfires, heated ocean temperatures off the coast of Florida, the failure of a generation of Emperor Penguin fledglings to survive because of melting sea ice, Hurricane Hilary in California, Maui wildfires, and others come across our news feeds like we are live blogging the end times. Climate change made each of these disasters worse. These stories are likely the tip of the iceberg.

I don’t need a news feed to know our community is at risk due to climate change. Our subdivision is conserving water on our public well because the Silurian Aquifer is faltering with increased usage. A deep and extended drought, combined with a lack of rainfall means surface waters have not been able to recharge the aquifer to keep up with water demand. I don’t mind conserving water. There is not an endless supply. It’s worse when generational expectations are not met.

Local environmental activists continue to remind us there is a climate crisis and the time for action to mitigate its worst effects is now. It will take all of us to address the climate crisis, especially our elected officials.

Here’s the rub. People enjoy our current life in society so much we don’t want to change it, even when inconvenienced by the impact of the climate crisis. Even when the inconvenience takes the form of the current extended drought and we don’t have access to the same amount of water coming from our faucet we did a few months ago.

In his 2017 book, Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist and other Essays, Paul Kingsnorth captured this notion:

For most of my twenties, I had put a lot of my energy into environmental activism, because I thought that activism could save, or at least change the world. By 2008 I had stopped believing this. Now I felt that resistance was futile, at least on the grand, global scale on which I’d always assumed it would occur. I knew what was already up in the atmosphere and in the oceans, working its way through the mysterious connections of the living Earth, beginning to change everything. I saw that the momentum of the human machine — all its cogs and wheels, its production and consumption, the way it turned nature into money and called the process growth — was not going to be turned around now. Most people didn’t want it to be, they were enjoying it.

Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist and other Essays, Paul Kingsnorth.

Kirkpatrick Sale lays bare the connection between climate and society in a recent issue of Counterpunch, “All the talk about ‘climate change’ directs the world’s attention away from what is the real central problem: the effect of unmitigated capitalist growth ravaging the resources and systems of the earth and its atmosphere.”

They both make a point.

I can’t recall how many times I heard Al Gore mention the pollution we dump into the atmosphere. “Every day we’re continuing to pump 162 million tons of global warming pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, into the atmosphere, as if the atmosphere was an open sewer,” Gore said everywhere during the last ten years. While some of this is caused naturally, most of it is a result of humans, that is, the unmitigated capitalist growth and exploitation of resources and systems Sale mentioned.

I joined the Climate Reality Project in August 2013 in Chicago. Gore’s training came at a time I needed it. I had just retired from my big job in 2009, and had seen the film, An Inconvenient Truth. I intended to work on climate change during my retirement years. Gore explained the impact of greenhouse gases on the atmosphere and oceans in clear, concise terms. The training was more than useful. There are now 50,000 trained climate activists like me. It may not be enough.

The issue mostly omitted during discussion of climate change is how it permeates everything in society. In Iowa there is no going back to the way the land and water was before the Black Hawk War in 1832. The environment has been completely re-worked to accommodate what is now conventional farming. We take what has become known as industrial agriculture for granted.

Are we living in the end times? I don’t know, and don’t believe we can know. What is known is there are solutions to the climate crisis if only we would apply them to the problem. This can be done without major disruption to our way of life.

If you are interested in a just and sustainable future that addresses the climate crisis, visit The Climate Reality Project at this website.

Categories
Environment

Getting To True Net-Zero

It has been ten years since I first attended former vice president Al Gore’s training on the climate crisis. Since then, the organization surpassed 50,000 trained climate leaders located in 190 countries. Every one of them will be needed because there is so much to be done to solve the climate crisis.

July 2023 was the hottest month on Earth since we began keeping records in the modern era. The year 2023 is also tracking to be the hottest. We, as a civilization, must do something to mitigate the human causes of this excess heat by achieving net-zero emissions. The words “achieving true net-zero” are important and there is misinformation about what they mean.True net-zero includes reducing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions produced on Earth. Climate Reality works toward achieving true net-zero because once it can be achieved, global temperatures will begin to decline within a few years. Society can avoid the worst effects of the climate crisis by achieving this goal.

Climate Reality has a strategy to achieve true net-zero emissions by 2030 in four primary campaigns with working groups. They are:

Reducing Emissions

This campaign focuses on building a clean energy future by cutting or avoiding emissions and opposing new fossil fuel infrastructure. 

Calling Out Greenwashing

This campaign works to expose the lies fossil fuel companies tell and counter with the truth about the energy transition we need.

Financing A Just Transition

This campaign focuses on mobilizing global finance to build thriving clean energy economies.

Strengthening International Cooperation on Climate

This campaign supports climate action through the Conference of the Parties (COP) which hosts international gatherings to agree to approaches to the climate crisis. The 2015 Paris Agreement is a work-product of the COP.

There is plenty of work for individuals to do to address the climate crisis and avoid the worse effects of increasing global atmospheric and oceanic temperatures. If you would like to learn more about The Climate Reality Project, click here. Not ready to get involved? Here is an inspiring poem by Amanda Gorman suggesting why you should consider it, if not with this organization, then one near you that is working on solving the climate crisis.