Tag: environment

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Environment Home Life Kitchen Garden

New Saturday Night

Audio Cassettes
Audio Cassettes

Music filled the Saturday afternoon gap left by Garrison Keillor’s retirement.

Not radio, but music recorded on audio cassette tapes.

It is amazing there is even a player in the house. (There are two that work). The sound quality of this outdated technology was surprisingly good.

While processing vegetables into meals and storage items, I listened to Shaka Zulu and Journey of Dreams by Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and Graceland and The Rhythm of the Saints by Paul Simon. I hit the pause button when I left the room so the tape wouldn’t run out without hearing it.

When Jacque returned home from work we had our first sweet corn meal of the season: steamed green beans and corn on the cob. As they ripen, tomatoes will replace green beans. There is nothing like seasonal Iowa sweet corn. I made a cucumber-tomato salad as accompaniment using a recipe found by googling on-hand ingredients.

The Saturday kitchen produced a gallon of vegetable soup, refried bean dip, daikon radish refrigerator pickles and sweet pickles made with turmeric. Outside was hot and humid although nowhere near as oppressive as the summer of 2012 when we had record drought.

On Friday Donnelle Eller posted an article about corn sweat at the Des Moines Register. Corn and soybean plants, which cover Iowa farmland, transpire moisture. During pollination and ear formation as much as 4,000 gallons of water per acre of corn is released into the atmosphere daily, making it feel humid. There were a number of articles about corn sweat in the media last week.

What makes this year different is not corn sweat. The first half of 2016 was Earth’s hottest year on record. This impacts the hydrology cycle, change in which is a primary manifestation of climate change. With global warming the atmosphere can hold more moisture until a precipitating event makes a rainstorm. It is more often a gully-washer.

The high winds and heavy, short-duration rain have become more frequent in recent years. This week a storm caused significant damage to the garden. In addition to losing the Golden Delicious apple tree, the cucumber towers blew over uprooting about half of the pickling cucumber plants. The Serrano pepper plants blew over, breaking the stalk of one near the ground. The high deer fence blew down and deer got into the kale and pepper patch by jumping the low fence. The cherry tomato plants blew over, however I was able to upright and re-stake them without damage.

Climate change is real, it is happening now. It is time to act to mitigate the effects of global warming.

Political Event with Tim Kaine at Bob and Sue Dvorsky's home in Coralville, Iowa on Aug. 17, 2010
Tim Kaine at Bob and Sue Dvorsky’s home in Coralville, Iowa on Aug. 17, 2010

Hillary Clinton announced Senator Tim Kaine would be her running mate this weekend. Friends were posting photos all weekend from the August 2010 event he attended in Coralville. If he wasn’t the center of attention then, as the photo suggests, he will be now.

I’m torn about viewing the Democratic National Convention this week. Hopefully key speeches will be available for viewing afterward and I can avoid social media enough to think clearly about what Hillary Clinton says.

As Sunday begins, I’m not sure listening to recorded music will adequately replace Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion. It’s here. It’s what I can do to sustain our lives in a turbulent world.

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Environment Reviews

Book Review – A Sugar Creek Chronicle

A Sugar Creek ChronicleIn A Sugar Creek Chronicle: Observing Climate Change from a Midwestern Woodland Connie Mutel produced an engaging narrative of her efforts to cope with change while living on a parcel of Oak – Hickory forest in Northern Johnson County, Iowa.

The narrative is about climate change as the title suggests. It is also rich with descriptions of the flora and fauna of the region and how her life as a Midwestern ecologist, wife, mother, and cancer survivor has changed and is changing because of our warming planet.

It was hard to put the book down once I started reading.

The narrative is a combination of autobiography, new journalism, scientific research and advocacy for the political will to take action to mitigate the causes of anthropogenic global warming and its impact on our climate before it’s too late.

What makes the book important is less the scientific discussions about climate change, and more how Mutel copes with a life she believed held stability and predictability as key components. In telling her story Mutel articulates a personal perspective of current scientific research about climate change in a way that should provide easy to grab handles on a complex topic.

The idea that carbon dioxide causes global warming is not new. Around 1850, physicist John Tyndall discovered that carbon dioxide traps heat in our atmosphere, producing the greenhouse effect, which enables all of creation as we know it to live on Earth. That story has been told time and again.

The benefit of reading Mutel’s observations is one finds a lot in common with her life, on many levels. Her inquiry into global warming and climate change provides us a window not only to her world, but to ours.

~ Posted on Amazon.com.

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Living in Society

Politics Takes A Holiday

Political Sign at a Business
Political Sign at a Business

The Bernie Sanders campaign is laying off hundreds of staff members, indicating either he is planning to throw in the towel after California, or that he won’t be placing people currently on his staff in local political organizations for the fall campaign. Maybe both.

The presidential nominating party may not be over, but most of the guests have left and the hosts have begun cleaning up the mess, getting ready for a return to normalcy, which in Iowa means organizing for the June 7 primary elections where there are contested races, and the fall campaign beginning after the Labor Day weekend.

Political campaigns will work through the summer, and there is a filing period in August, but each year, regular people engage in the election cycle later and closer to the election. For folks like me, politics takes a holiday after the primary elections until the fall campaign. We have lives to live.

I’ve written about the county supervisors race which has been reduced to a series of special interest forums in Iowa City and Coralville, along with fund raisers and whatever else each campaign sees fit to do.

I missed the first forum last night. Bottom line was I couldn’t afford the $5 in gasoline and an hour of driving on a work night. Stephen Gruber-Miller covered the forum for the Iowa City Press Citizen and here’s a link to his article. They say people in the county seat can access video of the event on their local cable television channel, but the service does not include Big Grove Township.

My trouble with picking three candidates for supervisor is besides the incumbents, I don’t share a view of the county with any of them. My relationship with the county seat is tenuous at best, although I likely benefit from the economic engine that is the University of Iowa. I’ll pick one of the two business people for my third vote and see what decision the urban centers make for me. No need to decide until late in the race, early June most likely.

The other primary election that matters is for U.S. Senate and I support State Senator Rob Hogg over three other candidates.

Politicization of our lives has become a detriment to living, so the compulsion I felt toward campaigns during the George W. Bush years is in remission. I work on issues, but like with the climate crisis, they represent human values and shame on those who politicize them or frame them in the false paradigm that is conservative vs. progressive. People like billionaire Tom Steyer is who I have in mind, but it applies equally to all of the billionaire class members.

Steyer Quote

My summer will be eking out a living on the margins of society, hopefully making enough money to live on, reducing debt, and finding joy in simple pleasures. We don’t need politics for that.

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Environment Kitchen Garden

Warp and Weft of a Garden

Spring Lettuce
Spring Lettuce

Farming is more than putting plow to furrow. It is a multitude of experiences, evaluations and decisions made over time.

The same is true for gardeners. Each garden, each plot, has its own micro environment and climate. Not only sun and rain, but wind, topography and history play a role.

This year a friend changed rented land for her community supported agriculture project and stories about her struggles are going around the local food community. The new soil hasn’t been worked for organic vegetables, and is recovering from row cropping. I believe — everyone is confident — she will persevere through the change. Yet it will be a setback in a business that operates on thin margins and more physical labor than mechanization. It’s when the going gets tough that farmers get going.

Over the last 23 years my Big Grove garden expanded from a single plot to six, and I’m looking at adding more. That doesn’t count the five fruit trees which have been a source of produce for a number of years. Yesterday the pear tree burst out in full bloom.

I mistakenly planted a locust tree in one of the garden plots. It has grow to maturity, providing shade for two plots at the same time the frequency and severity of drought has increased. Shade serves to protect cucumbers, herbs and greens from constant, intense sunlight in the absence of precipitation. It took me a while to realize what’s going on and leverage it. Now I couldn’t imaging growing without it.

There are a hundred small things like the benefits of a locust tree that converge in the plots of my garden. When I think of retirement — more often now than previously — I can’t imaging life far from a garden and the diverse intricacies of what sustains me and enables vegetables to grow.

My garden and I are the same warp and weft of life that sustains us all.

Categories
Environment

Earth Day 2016

Earthrise Dec. 24, 1968
Earthrise Dec. 24, 1968

My participation in the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970 evolved in a convergence of social vectors. Among them was this Apollo 8 photograph of Earth above a lunar landscape by astronaut William Anders.

After viewing the photograph I felt conflicts and maladies in society were insignificant compared with what we have in common within our tiny, shared ecosystem suspended in the dark vastness of space. The photograph and its wide publication were a call to action to work for a common good. I still feel that way. It makes sense.

By spring 1970 we had witnessed the Tet Offensive, the My Lai Massacre, and renewed bombing of North Vietnam. We watched the violence of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. We saw bits of Woodstock and Altamont in the media. We also landed men on the moon and returned them safely to Earth. At this convergence I didn’t know what to do, so joined with some high school classmates who were organizing Earth Day events. Earth Day was a common denominator.

What has Earth Day become?

Last week the Johnson County Board of Supervisors proclaimed April 17 through 23 Earth Week and announced two related events: an energy fair, and a local foods panel.

The focus on energy, CO2 emissions particularly, is well placed. We continue to use the atmosphere as an open sewer, discharging millions of tons of the greenhouse gases into it daily. Any reduction in electricity usage benefits the environment, even if the changes needed to solve the problem are trickier to accomplish than changing light bulbs.

Our food system is an obvious pick for Earth Day. Nine percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It is a commonplace people need food to live, and the merging of Earth Day with the local food movement is an expected assimilation within normal spring activities. There are few better ways of appreciating Earth than getting one’s hands dirty in the ground, and spring in the Northern hemisphere is a great time to do it. It’s tough to see how planting a few trees, flowers or vegetables will rescue the environment, but as with electricity usage, every bit helps.

There is an entire menu of Earth Day related activities in our county.

Quoting Albert Camus in a recent opinion piece in the Washington Post, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar described why the 2016 election is important,

“This is no longer a prayer but a demand to be made by all peoples to their governments — a demand to choose definitively between hell and reason.” That is what the stakes of this election are: We are choosing between hell and reason.

In 1970 I thought we were already living a form of hell and the Earthrise photograph gave us hope. I would not have believed that in 2016 the Age of Reason itself would be on the brink of dissolution.

The good news is solutions to the climate crisis are working, particularly in the development of alternatives to fossil fuels to generate electricity and industrial power. The challenge is everything on our blue-green sphere is connected in a single ecosystem. What I do in my back yard has implications for living creatures around the planet.

Individuals in the U.S. are willing to do their part and what’s lacking is no secret: the political will to do straightforward things like ratify the Paris Agreement. Negotiated by 195 states within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the agreement addresses greenhouse gases emissions mitigation, adaptation and finance starting in the year 2020. Some 120 nations are expected to sign when the agreement opens for signature this Earth Day.

Will the United States be among them? It’s an open question. Many politicians have indicated the United States should not participate in the agreement at all. Their rational doesn’t make sense, and that’s what Abdul-Jabbar was getting at. Reason the way most understand it is not in vogue in parts of our government.

Politics aside, Earth Day is a chance to revisit this iconic photograph. When we consider the big picture, as the photograph encourages us to do, little has changed since it was taken. Our troubles seem petty compared to the overriding fact we live on our only home and it’s much smaller than we often see.

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Environment

Palm Oil is Bad for Iowa

Palm Oil Extraction Photo Credit Wikimedia Commons
Palm Oil Extraction Photo Credit Wikimedia Commons

On Friday, Feb. 5, the benchmark crude palm-oil future contract traded on the Bursa Malaysia Derivatives exchange reached its highest level since May 2014, according to NASDAQ.

Traders were feeling bullish as warm, dry weather caused by El Niño in the region receded from the prime palm plantations in Sumatra, Borneo and other parts of Indonesia.

These palm oil producing regions are half a world away, yet they matter to Iowa more than one knows.

The use of palm oil for cooking is in direct competition with soybean oil, including Iowa-grown soybeans traded on international markets. In a recent interview, Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey said one out of four rows of Iowa soybeans are bound for international sales.

“India, the world’s largest importer of cooking oils, will buy more soybean and sunflower oil this year (2015) than ever before as a global glut weakens prices and prompts buyers to switch from palm oil,” according to Bloomberg News.

Because of the decline in farm commodity prices, current trends may favor soybeans over palm, but at the expense of soybean farmers. There is a clear case to be made to avoid products like chocolate, ice cream, detergent, soap and cosmetics that contain palm oil and its derivatives as a way to support Iowa farmers.

What matters more is deforestation to expand the cultivation of palm trees. Using a slash and burn methodology to clear equatorial rain forest for palm plantations, the haze covering Indonesia was visible from space.  While haze may be viewed as a temporary inconvenience, deforestation has a direct impact on the planet’s capacity to process atmospheric carbon dioxide. That’s not to mention the loss of habitat and biodiversity, as well as release of carbon stored in trees into the atmosphere.

From logging, agricultural production and other economic activities, deforestation adds more atmospheric CO2 than the sum total of cars and trucks on the world’s roads, according to Scientific American.

“The reason that logging is so bad for the climate is that when trees are felled they release the carbon they are storing into the atmosphere, where it mingles with greenhouse gases from other sources and contributes to global warming accordingly,” the article said. “The upshot is that we should be doing as much to prevent deforestation as we are to increase fuel efficiency and reduce automobile usage.”

Most corporate food conglomerates use or have used palm oil and its derivatives as an ingredient. What’s a person to do?

The first recourse in Iowa is the power of the purse. Avoid purchasing products with palm oil because it competes with Iowa-grown soybeans, and is a contributor to climate disruption. There is no such thing as sustainably grown palm oil.

Palm oil and its derivatives go under many names. A list of alternate names for palm oil can be found here along with a handy wallet sized printout.

Here is a list that discusses use of palm oil in various consumer products.

Explore the Rainforest Action Network web site, beginning with this link. There is a lot of information about the issue and actions you can take to address the most pressing aspects of deforestation.

While Indonesia may seem distant, what goes on there and in other equatorial palm plantations matters here in Iowa.

Categories
Environment

Post Paris

Paris COP 21Yesterday the 21st Conference of the Parties, including 195 nations, adopted an agreement to curtail greenhouse gas emissions.

A few people I know attended, but mostly the names and faces of the negotiators and players were reduced to certain heads of state and prominent activists.

Short version: now that the agreement is made, governments must adopt it.

A widely circulated article in The Hill quoted U.S. Senator James Inhoff.

“Senate leadership has already been outspoken in its positions that the United States is not legally bound to any agreement setting emissions targets or any financial commitment to it without approval by Congress,” he said.

Managing greenhouse gas emissions will be a challenge without U.S. leadership. The Republican-controlled Congress is unlikely to consider or adopt the agreement. The Heritage Foundation asserted the administration is planning to make an end-run around Senate scrutiny. That is ridiculous given the public nature of the negotiations that produced it and the long, lead-up to the accord.

Suffice it that the Environmental Protection Agency Clean Power Plan is the primary mechanism for compliance with the terms of the Paris agreement, and the Congress has been trying to kill it. Debate on the Clean Power Plan began long before it was published Oct. 23 in the Federal Register. On Nov. 18 the Senate passed a resolution to kill the plan. On Dec. 1 the U.S. House of Representatives did likewise.

The United States is not the leader we could be on mitigating the causes of global warming. Nothing about COP21 changed that.

What has changed is the world is coming together to address the greatest threats to human survival. Not only regarding greenhouse gas emissions, but in other areas. Whether the United States will lead or follow is to be determined. The direction has been set, and while there will be tenacious resistance to changes in the fossil fuel paradigm, new leadership is emerging. Life as we know it hangs in the balance.

Let’s hope our government steps up to the challenge. We have the capacity. Whether we have the political will is an open question as the world passes us by.

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Living in Society Social Commentary

It is the Season

Deer in the Park - Photo Credit Heidi Jo Smith
Deer in the Park – Photo Credit Heidi Smith

The deer population is abundant because of a lack of predators, including the mostly male deer hunters currently in the field.

People freak at the idea of wolves or large cats being near, so culling the herds has become a human activity. There is little danger of taking too many.

Almost three months into the Iowa deer hunt, the second shotgun season begins Saturday. The other day, I found a deer hoof in a parking lot, picked it up, and tossed it into a trash bin. There are no intuitive rules for disposal of deer hooves. Meanwhile, deer hides have been piling up at the home, farm and auto supply store as hunters bring them in.

Deer licenses are issued mainly to male hunters for a personal, annual ritual. They gear up with ammunition, waterproof clothing, meat grinders, jerky seasoning, hats, and undergarments designed to wick perspiration away from the skin. Male comradery—the kind deer hunters share—is both common and rare.

My experience of the hunt is minimal. Closest I got to hunter’s comradery was hanging out with Dad’s golfing partners at the public course club house. I took everything in as they threw dice, played cards, smoked cigars and cigarettes, and waited to secure early tee times. My memory is like the stories I hear when asking hunters what they do when they hunt. Male bonding never became important for me.

I recently overheard a conversation between two teenagers that went something like this:

She: Everyone knows women are smarter than men.
He: Yeah, but you menstruate.
She: Only one day a month.
He: But still, you bleed.

I was taken aback. Maybe I haven’t spent much time with teens since ours left home. Maybe it was the inherent competitiveness. What also got to me is my concurrent reading of Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn. In some of the countries depicted in the book, he would have raped her to settle the question of domination.

What line does our culture draw between commonplace banter and the realities of oppression? If there is one, it is difficult to discern. Suffice it that American cultural restraint keeps most young men from sexually assaulting women with whom they compete. At the same time, something elemental is lurking with unstated intent.

Deer hunting is acceptable social behavior with formal rules and regulations coupled with diverse, personal traditions. In some ways the annual hunt is grease on the skids of normalcy — a form of culture that can lead to civilization. I suspect the teen boy will ultimately become a deer hunter if he isn’t already.

I use fencing to protect plants I like more than deer need in an effort to coexist. Today I put out a bushel of apples for them. I am beginning to understand how to get along.

There is something appealing about the way deer hunting creates long-term relationships between hunters, and with their respective spouses. This season I’ve come to understand the blood sport more than I did — as much as I may be able.

Categories
Environment

Eve of Paris 2015

Heads of State Photo Credit www.cop21.gouv.fr
Heads of State Photo Credit http://www.cop21.gouv.fr

President Obama is scheduled to depart Washington for Paris later today to attend the 21st Convention of the Parties (COP21 or Paris 2015). Paris 2015 offers our best hope to curb greenhouse gas emissions through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

As of yesterday 150 heads of state had accepted the invitation to participate, with representatives of 196 nations planning to join. Each head of state will make a speech, with the order set by UN rules. President Obama’s speech will follow His Majesty Mohammed VI, the King of Morocco around noon local time.

In the wake of the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks, Paris is on lock down. Ed Fallon described the scene.

With public demonstrations banned, would-be participants lined up pairs of shoes in one of the rally locations that would have been. As I type, a human chain is lining up between Place de la Nation and Place de la Republic.

Even though people with means have traveled to Paris to demonstrate, contrary to what people like Naomi Klein and other prominent climate change advocates have said, accompanying demonstrations don’t seem so relevant to the bigger picture. With or without them, the heads of state and dignitaries will accomplish something with regard to mitigating the causes of climate change. Let’s hope it is enough.

That’s not to say there isn’t hope, just that all of the speeches could be reminiscent of the scene from Star Wars where Queen Amidala addressed the Galactic Senate.

Queen Amidala Addresses Galactic Senat Photo Credit StarWars.com
Queen Amidala Addresses Galactic Senate Photo Credit StarWars.com

Even though the U.S. political system, the legislative branch of government particularly, is unprepared to act on climate today, I believe, and with good reason, the effects of anthropocentric climate change will become so pronounced that even the most virulent climate skeptic will recognize the need to take action to mitigate its causes.

The time for which we have long waited is upon us. Here’s hoping our leaders take action.

Categories
Environment Reviews

Reading Naomi Klein

This Changes EverythingUnlike the climate crisis story spoon fed to us in decreasing numbers of corporate media stories, in social media memes, and in fleeting conversations at community gatherings, in This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate, author Naomi Klein said there is a nascent, global movement preparing to take climate action.

“The climate movement has yet to find its full moral voice on the world stage,” Klein wrote. “But it is most certainly clearing its throat—beginning to put the very real thefts and torments that ineluctably flow from the decision to mock international climate commitments alongside history’s most damned crimes.”

If you haven’t read Klein’s 2014 book, you should. Not because of a desire to take sides in the public discussion of global warming and the need to keep global temperature increase to two degrees or less. But because a). reading a paper book can be good for us, and b). with Klein you can hear her broader story and learn new things. Here’s more on why you should pick up a copy at your library or bookstore if you haven’t already.

In Iowa, as home to the first in the nation caucuses, we are inundated with stories about politics. Elections matter, and we have seen how in the Republican awakening after Barack Obama’s 2008 election. Progressives hardly understood that Republicans, though in the minority in the Congress, would exercise such power that much of Obama’s agenda was sidelined from the beginning. Republican comebacks in 2010 and 2014 have turned the congress from Democratic to Republican, and right-wing hardliners have more input to the legislative process than their numbers warrant. Taking climate action in Congress has, for the most part, been a non-starter.

“It’s not just the people we vote into office and then complain about—it’s us,” Klein wrote. “For most of us living in post-industrial societies, when we see the crackling black-and-white footage of general strikes in the 1930s, victory gardens in the 1940s, and Freedom Rides in the 1960s, we simply cannot imagine being part of any mobilization of that depth and scale.”

“Where would we organize?” Klein asked. “Who would we trust enough to lead us? Who, moreover, is ‘we?'”

Klein’s book frames answers to those questions: People are organizing everywhere, resisting unbridled extraction of natural resources by corporations. “We” includes almost everyone.

This Changes Everything reviews the recent history of the climate movement. It covers extreme extraction of natural resources that leave behind waste heaps, fouled water and polluted air, then are burned and produce atmospheric gases that warm the planet. Everyone from fossil fuel companies to environmental groups have been involved in what Klein calls “extractivism.” There is a growing resistance, including environmental groups divesting from investments in the fossil fuel industry, indigenous people mounting court battles, and community groups violating international trade agreements to move to renewable energy sources. The book is a snapshot of where the climate movement currently stands.

While Klein has her point of view, she depicts the complexity of a global network of fossil fuel companies seeking to extract hydrocarbons scientists tells us must be left in the ground. While the resistance may not have found its full moral voice, Klein’s book makes the case it won’t be long and recounts the significant inroads indigenous people and communities near extraction sites are making.

When we talk about taking climate action, Naomi Klein’s work should be part of our conversation.

~ Written for Blog for Iowa