Tag: global warming

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Environment Living in Society

Freezing Rain and a Green New Deal

Earthrise by Bill Anders, Dec. 24, 1968

Ice turned to mush as rain fell Thursday morning. The surfaces of Lake Macbride and the Coralville Lake appeared to remain frozen as I drove on Mehaffey Bridge Road.

When I arrived at the home, farm and auto supply store it continued to rain. By the end of my shift a layer of ice had formed on my windshield and morning slush had frozen.

I started the engine and chipped at the ice. It took half an hour to gain enough visibility to drive. I decided to skip a monthly political meeting, emailed the secretary of my absence, and headed home.

Iowa is a red state now. Voters had an opportunity to return balance to state government in 2018. Instead they chose Republican control of the governor’s office and state legislature. Taking advantage of their mandate, Republicans plan to take more control of the appointment of judges by changing the composition of a commission that selects nominees for Iowa courts. We’re a red state now, and we don’t like it.

We’re not leaving the state. To even consider it would be an anomaly in lives we’ve come to accept. In the end, politics is something, but not everything. It is definitely not important enough to get stuck in the county seat as the world freezes.

I’m interested in what the Congress does to mitigate the impacts of climate change. Yesterday New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced a resolution recognizing the federal government has a duty to create a Green New Deal. A draft of the resolution indicates the following goals for a Green New Deal during a ten-year national mobilization period:

  1. to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers;
  2. to create millions of good, high-wage jobs and ensure prosperity and economic security for all people of the United States;
  3. to invest in the infrastructure and industry of the United States to sustainably meet the challenges of the 21st century;
  4. to secure for all people of the United States for generations to come—
    (i) clean air and water;
    (ii) climate and community resiliency;
    (iii) healthy food;
    (iv) access to nature; and
    (v) a sustainable environment; and
  5. to promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression of indigenous communities, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth (referred to in this resolution as ‘‘frontline and vulnerable communities’’).

Who wouldn’t like these goals? Senator Edward Markey introduced the same resolution in the U.S. Senate.

It doesn’t take an advanced degree to understand a Green New Deal is dead on arrival in Mitch McConnell’s senate. While such goals need to be met to slow global warming, politics has ceased to be an endeavor of doing what needs to be done to ensure our mutual survival. Success of any legislation designed to advance a Green New Deal depends on recognizing the threat the climate crisis poses to society. Today, more people recognize there is a climate crisis. Our politicians, not so much.

Al Gore remained positive in his press release supporting the resolution:

The Green New Deal resolution marks the beginning of a crucial dialogue on climate legislation in the U.S. Mother Nature has awakened so many Americans to the urgent threat of the climate crisis, and this proposal responds to the growing concern and demand for action. The goals are ambitious and comprehensive – now the work begins to decide the best ways to achieve them, with specific policy solutions tied to timelines. It is critical that this process unfolds in close dialogue with the frontline communities that bear the disproportionate impacts today, as this resolution acknowledges. Policymakers and Presidential candidates would be wise to embrace a Green New Deal and commit to the hard work of seeing it through.

Failure to act on climate is the same as denial. I’ll support a Green New Deal while recognizing we can’t place all our hopes on a single, political solution. As we discovered during negotiations leading up to the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, political solutions are far from perfect. They may be inadequate. Yet they are something and have value if they can be achieved.

Categories
Environment

Out of the Polar Vortex

Snow Melted First over the Septic Tank

The ambient temperature is 45 degrees, a 73 degree swing since early Thursday morning. Warming is part of the polar vortex, just as the cold was. Temperatures are forecast to return closer to normal after tomorrow.

I had planned to prune trees today but am concerned about rapidly changing temperatures. If the sap starts flowing the purpose of waiting until winter to prune would be defeated. Maybe next week will be better once temperatures stabilize below freezing for a week or so.

Feb. 5 is the Iowa Environmental Council’s lobby day in Des Moines, followed by the Sierra Club’s lobby day the 6th. I noticed IEC scheduled 30 minutes for discussions with legislators. That’s about right because very little gets decided in one-on-one lobbying sessions, regardless of whether one’s legislators are supportive of climate action. What’s needed for change is a broad coalition and a dominant issue.

With the polar vortex we are living in a changed climate. Mitigating its effects is beyond the scope of the Iowa legislature. What can be done?

“In my view, the actions we take over the next 2-3 years are critical,” State Senator Rob Hogg wrote in an email. “The need for climate action has never been more urgent. Please take action personally and in public. Invite more people to get more informed, more involved, and do more.”

Hogg was trained by Al Gore as a Climate Reality Leader in 2008. He enumerated ideas with which to approach legislators for climate action, including “energy efficiency, renewable energy, electric vehicles, forests, prairies, soil conservation, and pre-disaster hazard mitigation to safeguard our people and our property.” Each of these items has its own constituency and many of the groups supporting them will be at Tuesday’s lobby day. What will get done?

There is a stability of operations among IEC members that works against substantial change. Some organizations, including some to which I belong, seem caught in a rut around a specific solution to the climate crisis. These formal, recurring events seem ineffective to me. I wrote about a 2015 trip I made to a similar lobby day in the Iowa City Press Citizen here. I’m not sure what, if anything was accomplished.

Some advocates believe climate denial among members of the legislature and elsewhere stands in the way of changing human behavior regarding climate change. I believe it is something different.

“I’m convinced that the greatest threat we face isn’t climate change denial,” climatologist and geophysicist Michael Mann wrote. “It is the weaponization of ignorance and apathy that is at its core…”

The weaponization of ignorance and apathy is something better to work on than any pet project. How does one do that when calcified lobbyists and citizen advocates petition the legislature for such issues? We need a more diverse group of stake holders than are in the IEC. Something bigger needs to happen to bring people together. I don’t know if the polar vortex is big enough even if it should be. What I know is if we wait to address climate change until it is too late the question will be moot.

This polar vortex is drawing to a close but it’s easy to predict there will be others. Many will have forgotten the polar vortex as they get absorbed in the big football game this afternoon. It is up to us to remind people of our common interest in sustaining our lives in a turbulent world. If we don’t, who will?

Categories
Environment

Dispatch from the Polar Vortex

Winter in Iowa

Editor’s Note: This email was sent to members of our home owners association at the beginning of the polar vortex of 2019. As I write this note, the outdoors ambient temperature is 26 degrees below zero and one person in the county seat has died from exposure.

Member,

As you likely know, ambient temperatures are forecast to get down to -25 degrees by 8 a.m. tomorrow morning and to -30 degrees overnight tomorrow. After that temperatures are expected to warm through Saturday and Sunday when it is forecast to be in the 40s.

That’s a seventy degree swing in a couple of days, which can be hard on things like water and sewer lines.

19th century British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli said, “Be prepared for the worst and hope for the best.”

We will do everything reasonable to get service back up as soon as possible if it is interrupted. Asking a contractor to work in wind chills like we haven’t seen since we moved here is not reasonable. I plan to contact our main contractor Wednesday and discuss the situation so we know our options in the event of a breakage.

What you can do to prepare for a potential outage is keep a temporary water supply if you don’t already.

In our household we keep a large Rubbermaid beverage container filled with water to use for washing hands and cooking in case we lose water.

We used to buy bottled water to have on hand but quit doing that over the years. It is an option.

If we know there will be an outage ahead of time, we fill up our two stock pots and keep them on the stove to be boiled and used to wash up in lieu of a shower, or as otherwise needed. We have also filled up coolers in the bathtub to use to flush the toilet.

Fingers crossed we will make it through the cold spell without a line breakage.

If something does happen, the procedures for reporting a water problem are below.

I hope this is helpful.

Paul Deaton
President

Categories
Environment

A Winter Sort

Garden Seeds

A majority of the garden seeds wait in a corner on the lower level of our home.

I cleared a sorting table and next month will plant celery and kale at the first greenhouse shift. There is no immediate need to plan more.

The seven garden plots have stands of seed-spent foxtail and last year’s fencing. Clearing the plots will begin after a long period of subzero temperatures, assuming we have one. The first traditional planting is Belgian lettuce on March 2, although last year there was no early lettuce because of frozen ground during a spell of weird weather. The weird weather was related to global warming. A gardener, like a farmer, must adapt.

The 2018 vegetable growing season was challenging for farmers I know. However, to a person they responded to the challenges of late start, crop failures, uneven moisture, and other farm-related issues to produce an abundant harvest. They meet 2019 with renewed optimism and energy as the new cycle begins with the annual Practical Farmers of Iowa conference Thursday through Saturday in Ames.

Experience tells me not to worry about what might be during the upcoming gardening season. To deal with its actuality is sufficient. So much of what may happen this year is beyond our control. It’s best to deal with it as we go.

This approach is part of sustaining a life in a turbulent world.

Categories
Environment Living in Society Sustainability

Day to Day Politics

2018 Top Instagram Photos

Last June I broke publicly from our state representative Bobby Kaufmann and endorsed Democratic candidate Jodi Clemens for House District 73 in a letter to the editor of the Solon Economist.

With a circulation of less than 1,000 weekly copies, I’m not sure my endorsement was widely read.

I went on to post three additional pieces critical of Kaufmann before the midterm elections. I am confident he saw the ones in the local newspaper. He won the election without breaking a sweat.

Today’s question is whether I should drive to town to attend his town hall meeting. The 88th Iowa General Assembly convenes tomorrow.

Yesterday I emailed Kaufmann my priorities for the session, mentioning three things:

  • The legislature should support ways farmers can produce more revenue per acre.
  • I questioned the need for more tax relief and encouraged him to find a permanent solution to the back fill problem Republicans created in 2013 when they altered property taxes for farmers and corporations.
  • I reminded him of our local issue of keeping the restriction on larger horsepower boat motors on Lake Macbride during boating season.

Of everything on my political wish list, these three things seem possible yet also insufficient. The better way to impact the legislature would have been for Clemens to have won the election. We came up short. It’s time to accept the results and move on.

In a Sept. 24, 2016 opinion piece in the Cedar Rapids Gazette I articulated what is most important in society: follow the golden rule, nuclear abolition, and mitigate the impacts of climate change. Under President Trump, none of these is going well in our government. My work continues regardless of who my elected officials might be. Politics by its nature will almost always disappoint and party affiliation of our leaders does nothing to change the primacy of these focal points for action.

I’m left wondering why I would attend today’s town hall meeting when there is other, more important work to do.

The legislative agenda is being set by Republicans. If Democrats were in charge, it would be much different. I don’t accept the mental construct that the opposition party should resist the party in power as an end goal for the Iowa legislature. Likewise the idea we are “holding elected officials accountable” by constantly calling and emailing them is off the mark. I’ve been in Senator Chuck Grassley’s D.C. office when such calls came in and the impact was a tick mark in a pro or con column on a tally sheet to be read by staff. Grassley gets his legislative feedback directly from Iowans in his annual tour around the state, and from the Washington, D.C. community of which he has long been a part. So it is with with local representatives. That’s a case for showing up today, although not a strong one.

When I wake each day I don’t think about politics until I read the newspapers. As humans we are attracted to conflict and there’s plenty of it recounted in news media. Republicans have been a long time coming to power. Now that they have it, they are remaking the state in their eyes, changing long-standing policy. That’s the nature of political power. The longer conservative Republicans maintain control of government the harder it becomes for Democrats to undo policy changes. With two more years under Republican hegemony it seems unlikely there is any going back to what used to be.

 

Snow stopped falling overnight. The driveway needs clearing then there’s community organizing work for the coming year. Our infrastructure needs maintenance and if we don’t do it, no one will. Isn’t that always the case?

It reduces to a simple maxim that guides me through life: there is no other, just the one of which we are all a part. That perspective gets lost in today’s political culture. Working to improve our culture is as important as anything else we do. Such work starts at home where I expect I will spend the day.

Categories
Environment Writing

No Going Back to Coal

Coal Mine Demonstrators Going Down – 1950

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Categories
Environment

Environmental Issues 2018-style

Earthrise by Bill Anders, Dec. 24, 1968

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Categories
Environment

Protect Our Planet, Protect Ourselves – 24 Hours of Reality

It’s a fact: Fossil fuels are driving a climate crisis and threatening our health. On Dec. 3 – 4, Climate Reality and former Vice President Al Gore will be joined by an all-star line-up of artists, thought leaders, and scientists for 24 Hours of Reality: Protect Our Planet, Protect Ourselves. Tune in and learn how we can make a healthy future a reality: https://www.24HoursofReality.org.

Categories
Environment

Act On Climate

Earthrise by Bill Anders, Dec. 24, 1968

Every few years, interest in climate change spikes, according to internet search frequency reported by Google Trends. When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released their special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5º C above pre-industrial levels on Oct. 8, searches spiked again. Searches are already trending downward.

Newspapers in our area ran stories about climate change, about one a day in recent weeks. Is there a new window of opportunity to act on climate? I doubt it. There is no window because the walls of the house we used to live in have been blown out.

It is time to act on climate.

Every environmental activist has a to-do list. Mine has four parts.

Reduce, reuse and recycle personally. I don’t seek to create a livable environment for me only as the late George Carlin derisively asserted about environmentalists. It is better to buy only food the household can use rather than let it go to waste. We live a life of making do with old clothing, old cars, and recycling single use bread and celery bags for our garden crops. It remains important to have a discussion with Waste Management about why they won’t recycle plastic. If enough people do it, maybe they will find a better way than baling and shipping it overseas or discarding it in landfills. This is a starting point for almost everyone.

Band together with like-minded people. We walk a tightrope in life in which the risks are many. On one side, we avoid the insularity of confirmation bias in which like minded people often find themselves. On the other, we are stronger together. A recent Stanford University study of 30 years of data about street protests found “citizen activism, which has been shown to impact state and firm policy decisions, also impacts electoral outcomes.” A single voice can be amplified if it joins a chorus of hundreds or thousands.

Advocate with elected officials to mitigate the effects of climate change. There is an art to political advocacy. Where groups have been successful, we found common ground with people of divergent backgrounds to unify around a single action. This is partly how we stopped two new coal-fired power plants from being built in Iowa. It is also how we changed the minds of legislators regarding new nuclear power plants in the state. Two tactics serve little purpose: contacting a legislator every time we disagree with any action they take, and group think of people who advocate for a carbon tax as their primary method to combat climate change. We must understand the diversity of solutions to the climate crisis, keep our powder dry for when it matters most, then act in unison.

Help educate people on the threat of unaddressed climate change. It goes without saying there is uneven understanding about the impacts of climate change in society. My popular post, Climate Change in 200 Words explains the basic science, about which there is little disagreement from even the most strident climate deniers. Where society gets hit hardest is in the impacts of warmer atmosphere and oceans. The news is full of examples. Few people have missed the fires in California, hurricanes in Florida, Texas and New Jersey, or the severe 2012 drought in Iowa. All of these events were made worse by global warming. Much of the intensification of our weather events is predictable and likely avoidable with societal action. Education is a valid and essential part of creating collective action to mitigate the effects of climate change.

Perhaps the important lesson about climate change derived from Google Trends is there are clear news hooks which can make climate action more likely. The problem hasn’t gone away and we can’t rely upon news events to precipitate our actions.

Whether we will act on climate before it is too late is unknown. What we do know is the human condition includes hope for survival and a better world. It is unrealistic to believe global societies will unite around a single course of action. Part of the brilliance of the 2015 Paris Agreement was it enabled every nation to participate in their own way toward a common goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Whatever deficiencies existed in the agreement, it was a positive sign of what humanity is capable.

The IPCC special report is another scientific explanation we must act on climate before it is too late. This is my to-do list. What is yours?

Categories
Environment Living in Society Sustainability

Politics in Desperate Times

Atherton Wetland. Ely, Iowa.

“January 20th, 2017 will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again.”~ President Donald Trump inaugural address

It would be one thing if we had entered a new era of Jacksonian Democracy where the common man raised into prominence. Plain folk like me would apply common sense to problems with a focus on results.

When elites and moneyed interests control almost everything in our government, the way the aristocracy did in Andrew Jackson’s time, to invoke Jackson now as something positive is a cruel joke. Like Jackson, Trump exaggerated the size of the crowd at his inauguration and motivated mob scenes.

Under Republican hegemony I have less say than ever in government.

That said, there is a lot we can do. The perils of our times are obvious and beg solutions, beginning with electing people who more closely represent our values. During the next 14 days I’ll continue to contribute my part to electing such people. If anything, one effect of the Trump administration and Republican hegemony in Iowa has been to recognize and bolster my Democratic roots.

14 days will come and go quickly. What then? As I suggested in my recent letter to the editor, climate change and proliferation of nuclear weapons pose existential threats to society as we know it. We must embrace change and adapt as we can. We must also work to mitigate these threats for ourselves and future generations. There is a life’s work in that, especially as my personal bandwidth decreases with advancing age. The challenge is to make every effort meaningful, thoughtful and aimed at impactful targets.

I hope to elect more Democrats to the Iowa legislature and the U.S. Congress and in doing so gain a voice where what we’ve been saying has been muted in recent years. Even if we fail in this effort we must re-assert our voices. I’m optimistic things can get done.

Climate change is already negatively impacting agriculture, the mainstay of our state. If we seek to grow nutritious food in the corn belt there needs be a focus on soil health and water management. Today the focus is on yield and market prices and that tail is wagging the dog. Something has to give over the near term. Farmers’ attitudes toward cover crops, buffers, and soil and water management must be encouraged by government to change. Sending our topsoil to Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico at a rate exceeding the land’s ability to regenerate it is unsustainable and farmers know it. It is made worse by precipitation patterns that combine heavy rainfalls, long periods of drought, and warmer, more humid nights. The impact of climate change on agriculture is significant and can no longer be denied.

A primary role of our federal government is national defense. With or without nuclear weapons, the United States remains the most powerful nation on Earth. It is a simple question begging an answer: why impose the risks of nuclear weapons on society if they are no longer needed for national defense?

The nuclear non-proliferation movement has ebbed and flowed during my lifetime. Whenever there is a broadly organized plan of action to do something about the Trump administration’s change to nuclear proliferation policy, I’m ready to join. Right now, there’s too few of us in Iowa and no fulcrum for action. I continue to follow groups like the Arms Control Association, Council for a Livable World, Friends Committee on National Legislation and Physicians for Social Responsibility in Washington, D.C. to stay informed.

While I am hopeful of positive advances mitigating these two threats, my optimism is tempered with realism gained through a few successes and many failed attempts to move the needle on them since the 1970s. Today is no time to give up.