Tag: environment

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
Living in Society

After the Storm

Green up in the state park, April 16, 2024.

During the first two minutes I had my Merlin bird identification software listening, it found: White-breasted Nuthatch, Northern Cardinal, American Robin, House Finch, House Sparrow, Red-winged Blackbird, Blue Jay, Chipping Sparrow, and Canada Goose. The usual suspects were awake and came out to greet me a few days after the storm.

The storm gathered all the ash tree seed pods from the roof and collected them in the gutter downspout. That caused rainwater to overflow into the window well, and then leak into the house. It was a mess to clean up. There was no real damage, although the gutter design needs a remake to position the downspout elsewhere. Adding that to the long to-do list. It will go high on the list.

Clean up after the flooding will take some effort. Luckily we have the needed tools: buckets, rags, wet/dry vacuum, mops and brooms. Now to get those cleaned up, dried and put away.

Despite recent rainfall, and refilling of the lake, the newspaper reported this morning we continue to be in drought conditions in Big Grove Township. It continues to be too cold to plant much in the garden, with last frost as much as a month away. However, it is time to shift gears to doing more garden prep beginning now.

Where to start? Probably at pushing the post button and getting on with it. Make it a great day readers!

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Early Spring Chills

Black bean and kale taco filling.

With ambient temperatures in the twenties and thirties it has been a chilly early spring, of a kind that has me lingering indoors to find things to do. It is what it is. I hope to plant potatoes on Friday, yet if it’s too cold, I will delay. In the life cycle of Midwestern gardening, the growing season is extended by a warming climate and a few days doesn’t matter that much.

I plant potatoes in containers so the soil is less accessible to rodents. I move them each year, using the soil dug to bury them plus some soil mix and compost all blended with a cup or so of fertilizer in each tub. So far no critters dug their way into the tubs to eat the tubers.

A company in Monticello sells composted chicken manure, which is used by a lot of organic growers. I need to get over there and buy this year’s supply which is 150 pounds. There will likely be the annual discussion of which sales person gets credit for my sale. A few years ago we established that mine is a “house account” which means no sales person gets credit as I just walk into the office to buy it. Since beginning to use fertilizer, garden yields have improved.

Based on last year’s experience, I delayed planting peppers last weekend. Timing of seeding to planting time is more important for peppers and tomatoes. Any more, I don’t see an advantage of germinating early. I am cutting back on peppers and tomatoes this year with fewer varieties. For peppers to be successful in this climate, I need to install drip irrigation. I have been unwilling to do so, and there is an abundance of peppers when they come in around the county. I do plan to plant the varieties that grow well with my sparing watering.

I inspected the garlic and it is looking quite good. Taking time to loosen the straw mulch compacted over winter facilitated growth. It looks to be another great harvest.

When the weather finally breaks, there will be a lot of outdoors work to do. I am ready for it, even if there is plenty of indoors work to keep me busy.

Categories
Environment

Drought Continues

All of the foreground should be covered in water. Photo by the author on March 18, 2024.

A few snowflakes fell on my forehead while rolling the recycling cart to the road. The forecast did not indicate much snow, yet we’ll take any we can get.

Yesterday we went to the new Department of Transportation facility across the lakes for an appointment to renew my spouse’s driver’s license. We took a thick envelope of documents to meet the new Real ID requirements. We were able to get what we needed beforehand and a new driver’s license was efficiently issued. Appointments like this can consume a whole morning in the life of a septuagenarian.

While there, we stopped at the wholesale club to get two cases of organic soy milk from the least expensive place in the county to do so. The trip was uneventful and met our needs.

It was a punk afternoon after that: too chilly to spend much time outdoors and too sunny to stay indoors. We ate late lunches after which I retired to my writing table to work on weekend posts. Our child was streaming, so that was on in the background.

I was feeling a headache so decided not to attend the political event near the county seat. One of the county supervisors was having a kickoff event. In our active local politics, there is always another event.

A note about fasting labs had me skip dinner so I wouldn’t forget. It was another day in a time of appointments, shopping, and living in the ongoing drought.

Categories
Environment

Naming Things

On the state park trail on March 18, 2024.

Naming things found in nature reflects an urge to own, control, or possess them. I have no interest in that. I seek to be outdoors and observe everything natural with all my senses. I don’t object to knowing the formal taxonomic classification of a plant, insect, animal or other living thing. With increased experience in nature, some knowledge of genus and species comes naturally. For example, when I see a Blue Jay, I know the name. What I don’t want is worry about naming everything in my environment.

I began using the Merlin Bird App last week to interpret which songbirds are nearby. Identifying bird sounds is a subset of ornithology. On Tuesday, the American Robin, Northern Cardinal, and American Crow showed up on a windy morning. The app helps me understand nature. While I’m working outdoors all kinds of sounds become a background noise for my activity: birds, vehicle traffic, weather, local human and animal activity, and more. I want to recognize when something different stands out from the background. What new bird might I see? What new world will be unveiled?

As a gardener, I care a lot about insect and plant life. Which insects are beneficial, which are predators in this specific vegetable garden? Which plants are weeds? Which are edible or poisonous? I’ve been gardening since 1983, and am getting better at identification each year. I see behavior of white butterflies that lay eggs on my cruciferous vegetable leaves yet have no idea what they are called. I’m not that interested in learning the name, just in identifying their behavior as a pest.

When I move indoors, my view toward naming is not much different.

I’ve been writing about my early life before the seventh grade. I’m lucky I didn’t obsess over the naming of things. My classroom focus was on the mysticism of the Catholic Church and stories told by my teachers and classmates. Charlotte’s Web in fourth grade was pivotal. I sang, learned to play music, and played games with classmates in the playground. We knew the game was called “Four Square” yet what mattered was getting a chance to play after waiting patiently for our turn in queue near the court painted on the asphalt. These activities didn’t require a name.

When I go to the pantry, I sometimes can’t recall what things are. I know we have almond and barley flour, yet to identify them takes tasting a pinch. Some in the household says I should label things. Maybe, yet I resist. I don’t know if my reasons are good, but I don’t want to be limited by the confines of having to know things by name. In the kitchen, imagination and improvisation are the key dynamics, even when it comes to the “science” of baking. Not once have I mistaken salt for sugar.

What is the story of nature? It is more complex than I can understand. I’d call mine a Cartesian outlook and that means I live in my senses most of the time. What may be “out there” beyond senses, we have no way of knowing. We are taught nature is out there. Equally so, there is no way to own, control, or possess things we sense with any permanence. Living this way is a matter of faith, not requiring any naming. We are better off by not naming things we experience.

As long as I’m getting along in society, I’m not going to spend undue amounts of time with this. I’ll be the better for that.

Categories
Environment

Into Spring

Lake Macbride on March 12, 2024.

In one minute, my newly downloaded app, Merlin from Cornell University, identified the sounds of four birds: American Robin, Blue Jay, American Crow and Northern Cardinal. They are common birds in Big Grove Township yet the app is training me in how to listen for and identify bird life with which I’ve lived since we moved here. I stood on the front steps and turned it on. Briefly, it is fun.

Judging from my email traffic, yesterday was busy. I published the letter to the editor I wrote yesterday, worked on my class reunion, planned for the county convention, cleaned, and cooked. I made chili and cornbread for dinner.

My chili recipe is toned down for milder palates. Six ingredients: a diced large onion, three 15-ounce cans of organic kidney beans, three pints of tomato sauce (home canned or store bought), chili powder, cumin, and a bag of Morningstar Farm Recipe Crumbles. I usually make vegan cornbread to go with it. It isn’t like the cornbread Mother used to make but it is uniquely ours and tasty.

Overall it was a punk day, with a walk on the state park trail being the only outdoors activity. When I moved the mulch over the garlic earlier in the week, there was still frost on the ground underneath. We had a couple of days in a row where temperatures got up to 70 degrees. A few more and I will be able to dig in the garden.

We got much-needed rain this morning. Hope to get outdoors in between showers. Lots to do this cloudy day before we get into Spring.

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
Kitchen Garden Living in Society

Exiting the Deep Freeze

Tools to make the first tray of garden seedlings. Kale went in on Feb. 3.

I’ve been chatting it up with some neighbors on social media. There was consensus we hunkered down inside our homes for most of January because of snow and freezing ambient temperatures. There is hope for a break in winter and we’d just as soon move into spring. Personal productivity lags in winter. It’s time to step up the pace.

The idea of a “week” still resonates. Monday means start of the week, Friday is for closing down activities, Saturday is to perform a number of small household tasks, plus help our child with their small business. Sunday remains a day of rest, sort of. It’s not the same as when I worked full time. Then I knew that Friday usually meant casual clothes, voluntary trips to the office, and time to pursue my writing and family life.

I walked about the garden. The green I saw from the kitchen was collards that had been eaten more than I could tell from a distance. I had no interest in picking through the leaves, especially with a freezer full already available. I suppose the cruciferous vegetable-eating insects that survive the cold don’t have a lot to choose from in winter.

On Saturday I planted the first seeds for the garden and put the tray on a heating pad under a grow lamp. They are mostly last year’s seeds and that should not be a problem for kale. Kale is one of the vegetables I have mastered growing. It was something to see the tools lined up and ready to start. I worked with the garage door open for the fresh air and because we seem to be exiting the Iowa deep freeze.

Kale seeds planted Feb. 3, 2024.
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.