environment Politics: family values Renewable Energy Republican obstructionism Solar sustainability timescale wind power
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Year 4, Month 3, Day 8: Who Dat Who Say Who Dat When I Say Who Dat?
The Denver Post marvels at the relationship between family-oriented community life and support for sustainable energy:
What might you expect to find in communities where “family values” are the strongest? More churches? More parents helping out in classrooms? Maybe more bake sales? Yes, perhaps. But there’s one thing you would definitely find: solar panels.
Research at the University of Colorado at Boulder shows that one modern marker of communities with greater “family interdependence” — a social science term that indicates the value a person places on time spent with their family — is that more new solar energy businesses take root. Further, where state solar incentives are in place, high levels of family interdependence seem to supercharge the effectiveness of those incentives.
These aren’t just weird facts. The information is mind-blowing. It suggests that if government cares about solving climate change, or clean energy jobs, or entrepreneurship, then social norms — the unwritten rules of community conduct — might matter as much as rebates and incentives.
There’s a big difference between saying “pro-family” and being “pro-family.” Sent February 26:
It’s hardly counterintuitive to notice that vibrant, family-friendly communities are more likely to adopt renewable energy and make it work. A family is a chain of relationships extending forward and backward in time — an unambiguous argument for sustainability. It takes a village to raise a windmill or a solar panel.
For all their pro-family rhetoric, anti-environment conservatives are unlikely to believe that “family values” extend to people who aren’t just like them — and the GOP’s extreme libertarians are far more likely to adopt every-man-for-himself ideologies that discount and disrespect the crucial importance of community, inclusiveness, and long-term stability.
Equally important, the inevitable disruptions of global climate change will impact all of humanity significantly, damaging physical infrastructure and crippling agriculture. Coping with these changes will require a strengthened social infrastructure, and a recognition that America’s motto is “E Pluribus Unum,” not “what’s in it for me?”
Warren Senders
environment Politics: agriculture denialists fruit sustainability
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Year 4, Month 3, Day 6: One Piece In The Shape Of A Pair
Public Opinion, a news outlet in Chambersburg, PA, tells us about a fruit scientist and what he had to say:
Local fruit growers wanted to know about hail netting after Rob Crassweller, Penn State pomologist, finished his talk on climate change.
What color? What mesh?
Crassweller had said very little about hail during his presentation on Thursday to the Franklin County Horticulture Society at the Savoy Restaurant in Waynesboro. It’s a four-letter word fruit growers don’t like to hear or speak.
Crassweller spoke at length to the 40 growers about expected changes in pruning, pests, production and plant diseases.
“That’s something we can handle,” said Dwight Mickey, secretary of the county fruit growers. “You just have to learn to adapt. Those are things we can control, the influx of new insects and diseases.”
Hail on the other hand is unpredictable and usually devastating.
Mickey, Pennsylvania’s 2012 Grower of the Year, lost most of his 2011 apple crop to a hailstorm.
[snip]
Crassweller told growers he would not get into the causes of climate change.
“Things have changed and will continue to change,” Crassweller said. “We know enough that things are going in a different way.”
Indeed. Why ask for trouble? Sent February 24:
As global weather has gotten steadily weirder over the past year or so, the ranks of those rejecting climatology’s conclusions have thinned. But this means only that denialists have moved back to their next line of attack: even if the climate is changing, that doesn’t mean humans caused it.
And given the history of conservative denialists’ behavior, it’s easy to understand why Dr. Rob Crassweller abstained from addressing the causes of climate change when talking with Pennsylvania fruit growers. Nobody wants the obscene phone calls, hate mail, death threats, and frivolous legal actions that have disrupted the lives and careers of climate scientists whose conclusions indicate that anthropogenic global warming is a fact.
But ignoring a truth won’t make it go away. Climate change is real, it’s here, it’s dangerous — and human civilization is its primary driver. The sooner we face the facts, the sooner we’ll start making progress against a profound civilizational threat.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: agriculture denialists extreme weather sustainability
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Year 4, Month 3, Day 4: In Case Of Accident, He Always Took His Mum
More shrill alarmism from the Grey Lady:
DENVER — After enduring last summer’s destructive drought, farmers, ranchers and officials across the country’s parched heartland had hoped that plentiful winter snows would replenish the ground and refill their rivers, breaking the grip of one of the worst dry spells in American history. No such luck.
Across the West, lakes are half full and mountain snows are thin, omens of another summer of drought and wildfire. Complicating matters, many of the worst-hit states now have even less water on hand than a year ago, raising the specter of shortages and rationing that could inflict another year of losses on struggling farms.
Reservoir levels have fallen sharply in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada. The soil is drier than normal. And while a few recent snowstorms have cheered skiers, the snowpack is so thin in parts of Colorado that the government has declared an “extreme drought” around the ski havens of Vail and Aspen.
“We’re worse off than we were a year ago,” said Brian Fuchs, a climatologist at the National Drought Mitigation Center.
But Al Gore uses a private jet. February 22:
Higher temperatures increase evaporation, bringing higher humidity, leading in turn to a steadily-increasing likelihood of extreme precipitation. But this doesn’t mean all that extra rain or snow’s falling where it’s needed — a lesson farmers in the American Midwest are learning painfully as their land parches and cracks under the ravages of extreme drought. This is climate change.
Warmer winters mean that invasive insect pests like the mountain pine beetle are no longer stopped by below-freezing temperatures, which means the likely death of millions of pines. Thousands of acres of dead forest in a land hammered by drought; a superfire waiting to happen. This is climate change.
The subtle and varied edifices of human civilization are built on the foundation of a benign and stable environment — something far more fragile than anyone imagined. As the land loses its ability to support our species’ numbers, this, too, is climate change.
Warren Senders
atheism Education environment Politics: denialists economics sustainability timescale
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Year 4, Month 2, Day 28: Right Now, Over Me…
The Loveland Reporter-Herald (CO) runs a thoughtful op-ed by a smart young man named Reid Maynard. He’s in high school:
Before opening our discussion, let us leave some baggage behind. Let us release prejudices regarding media misinformation, sensationalism and hypocritical vice presidents.
With minds unhindered, let us approach the table and discuss climate change. Much passionate argument emerges in this debate with logic and demagoguery on both sides, but it presents high stakes and sacrifices for all generations: adult, youth and child. Therefore, we must carefully consider the subject without the stain of bias.
The existence of climate change is no longer a debate. Simply observe modern evidence, such as the fact that nations now dispute maritime boundaries in the Arctic as shipping routes emerge where ice once reigned. Today, politicians and pundits argue about causes. Most researchers agree that human activity exacerbates this phenomenon, accelerating change beyond natural pace. Others dispute anthropogenic change and insist that mitigation creates unacceptable costs. Throw in lobbyists, profiteers and screaming extremists and we have painful gridlock.
I could have done without the dig at Al Gore. But rahne do, he’s a good kid. We need more like him. Feb 19:
When it comes to the long-term future of our species, we ignore the voices of the young at our peril. Even as the market-driven consumer economy encourages us to adopt the short-term mindset of immediate gratification, thoughtful young people cannot ignore the damage this is doing to the planet and the environment upon which all of us depend. They see, all too clearly, that a lifestyle based on continuous consumption will end by consuming us all; as Reid Maynard demonstrates in his op-ed column, they understand that there are no easy options.
And what of us, their parents and grandparents? If we are prepared to accept the facts of global heating — no matter how uncomfortable, disquieting, or inconvenient — then we can collaborate with our children in solving the problems of survival and prosperity in a transformed world. On the other hand, if we reject the science of climate change because it conflicts with our preconceptions and ideologies, we are no longer partners, but adversaries.
It’s up to us.
Warren Senders
Education environment Politics: economics national boundaries sustainability
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Year 4, Month 2, Day 26: Trying To Make A Dovetail Joint…
Enjoy Mount Hood skiing and snowboarding while you can — your children and grandchildren may not get the same chance.
Oregon’s winter tourism industry is imperiled by climate change and diminishing snowfall patterns, according to a recent study.
It could be that within 50 years, only the upper ski areas of Mt. Hood will be available for snow sports, says Angus Duncan, chairman of the Oregon Global Warming Commission. “If you look at some of the time-series photos of the glaciers on Mount Hood in the last 50 years, you can see where the glaciers are melting away,” Duncan says.
In the past decade, 38 states have suffered a cumulative $1 billion loss and 37,000 fewer jobs as a result of diminishing snowfall, according to a Dec. 6 report by advocacy groups Protect Our Winters and the Natural Resources Defense Council. The study was conducted by University of New Hampshire researchers Elizabeth Burakowski and Matthew Magnusson. They wanted to help policy makers understand the ski and snowmobile industry’s economic importance and the potential economic impacts of climate change.
Skiing and snowboarding had a $482 million economic impact in Oregon in 2010-11— accounting for 6,772 jobs — according to a new report by the University of Oregon.
I’m refurbishing the “(insert state) isn’t alone” letter over and over; trying to build up a backlog so when I go to India later this year I can take a few weeks off and not fall behind. Feb 17:
When it comes to feeling the increased impact of global heating, Oregon’s got plenty of company. Whether it’s vanishing snowpacks, crippling droughts, unseasonal monsoons in Asia, or invasive insect infestations, the consequences of the accelerating greenhouse effect are getting harder to ignore. While a few communities and regions may see temporary benefits, the long-term struggle to cope with a radically transformed climate offers some of the greatest challenges humanity has ever faced.
If there is a positive aspect to the metastasizing climate crisis, it’s that we humans may finally be forced to recognize that what we do today in our own neighborhoods can — and will — affect the lives of others, even if they’re distant in space and time. To ensure happiness and prosperity for our descendants, we must recognize that in the face of the gathering storm, political boundaries and cultural differences are irrelevant.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: consumerism economics Storms sustainability
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Year 4, Month 2, Day 20: I Am The Eggman! I Am The Walrus
The Cumberland County Daily Journal (NJ) notes that victims of Sandy are agitating for the President to address climate change in the SOTU (which will be long past, by the time this page appears on the site):
WASHINGTON — Congressional lawmakers from New Jersey want President Barack Obama to address a variety of issues, including the deficit, the sluggish economy, immigration reform, climate change and gun violence, in his State of the Union address Tuesday night.
“Without a doubt the No. 1 issue confronting the nation is the state of the economy, and it’s not nearly as strong as any of us would like,” said GOP Rep. Leonard Lance. “I’d like to hear him focus on that.”
Democratic Rep. Frank Pallone named the economy as the top issue, but said he also wants the president to address immigration reform, gun violence and climate change.
Action on climate change is “important for the shore” and is a job-creator, he said.
Alyssa Durnien of Keansburg couldn’t agree more. She joined a group of Hurricane Sandy victims at a news conference in front of the White House on Monday to call on Obama to address climate change in his address before Congress.
“My message to Obama is, instead of flying over my community, put on a pair of boots and come see what it’s like,” she said. “I want him to see the devastation that is still there 98 days after the storm.”
We badly need to change how we think about economics, don’t we? Sent February 12:
Perhaps the single most pervasive misconception in our politics today is the notion that the interests of the environment and the economy are opposed. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Yes, the consumer economy is predicated on the desirability of infinite expansion, but an obvious impossibility on a finite planet. The true measure of economic health is not continuous growth, but long-term sustainability — which is obviously aligned with the policy initiatives necessary to respond to the threat of climate change.
Those who lost their homes to Superstorm Sandy can testify that global warming is not an abstraction. The ramifications of the accelerating greenhouse effect are destroying agriculture, infrastructure, and ecosystems all over the world — and without these resources intact, our economic longevity can be measured in months. Earth needs people to preserve environmental “capital” for our descendants, not simply turning a quick profit, heedless of the consequences.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: agriculture consumerism economics farms sustainability
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Year 4, Month 2, Day 15: You Can’t Fool Me.
USA Today let us know: the farmers are f**ked:
A comprehensive USDA study concludes rising temperatures could cost farmers millions as they battle new pests, faster weed growth and get smaller yields as climate change continues.
WASHINGTON — Climate change could have a drastic and harmful effect on U.S. agriculture, forcing farmers and ranchers to alter where they grow crops and costing them millions of dollars in additional costs to tackle weeds, pests and diseases that threaten their operations, a sweeping government report said Tuesday.
An analysis released by the Agriculture Department said that although U.S. crops and livestock have been able to adapt to changes in their surroundings for close to 150 years, the accelerating pace and intensity of global warming during the next few decades may soon be too much for the once-resilient sector to overcome.
“We’re going to end up in a situation where we have a multitude of things happening that are going to negatively impact crop production,” said Jerry Hatfield, a laboratory director and plant physiologist with USDA’s Agricultural Research Service and lead author of the study. “In fact, we saw this in 2012 with the drought.”
It’s a hoax! I saw it on FOX! Sent February 7:
As the song puts it, the farmer feeds us all. However, many Americans, raised in a consumer economy where produce sometimes travels thousands of miles to local stores, lack the experience to understand the implications of a phrase like “devastated agriculture.” Industrialized farming has created a food system capable of feeding huge numbers — but only under absolutely predictable conditions. The encroaching threat of climate change is certain to render those conditions anything but predictable. The result? A farm system that decades ago moved to monocropping — taking advantage of economies of scale at the expense of resilience and flexibility — will become enormously vulnerable to changing environmental conditions, rapidly evolving pests, and diseases which can eradicate entire harvests in an eyeblink.
In the late 19th century, Irish monocroppers facing devastating potato blight had two alternatives: die of starvation, or emigrate. What choices will Americans face in the coming decades?
Warren Senders
environment Politics: media irresponsibility scientific consensus sustainability wildfires
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Year 4, Month 1, Day 24: Busted Flat In…. Boulder?
The Coloradoan notes a new study on climate change and wildfires:
Last year, 2012, the hottest year on record in both Colorado and the United States and the state’s worst wildfire year ever, may be just a taste of what climate change has in store for the West.
Colorado’s future under the influence of climate change will be significantly warmer and drier than recent years, and the impacts will affect the regions’ water, forests, wildfires, ecosystems and ability to grow crops.
That’s the conclusion of the draft of the federal government’s National Climate Assessment, which was released for public comment on Monday by the U.S. Global Change Research Program.
The water content of Colorado’s snowpack and the timing of the spring runoff are changing, which could pose major challenges for the state’s water supplies and farmers, said Reagan Waskom, director of the Colorado Water Institute at Colorado State University and co-author of the portion of the assessment addressing Colorado and the Southwest.
Reaching a bit for the metaphor, but what the hell. Sent January 17:
The unimaginable devastation wrought by 2012’s wildfires are “just a taste,” writes Bobby Magill, “of what climate change has in store for the West.” In the aftermath of the world’s hottest year on record, Americans may finally be waking up to the dangers posed by a rapidly accelerating greenhouse effect. The earlier phrase “global warming” was misleading, offering a picture of our planet as getting a little cuddlier and more comforting; after all, who doesn’t like being warm? The true picture as predicted by climatologists for several decades is now emerging: whatever climatic factors were already dangerous are going to be even more so. Did your region already suffer from occasional drought? Get ready for two or three years of water shortages. Occasional heavy rains? Be prepared for massive flooding. Hurricanes every now and then? Batten down the hatches and keep them battened down for the foreseeable future.
If last year’s wildfires were the appetizers, we can anticipate a multi-course banquet of climatic disaster.
Warren Senders
atheism Education environment: atheism Jesus religion sustainability timescales
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Year 4, Month 1, Day 10: The Moans Of The Damned
The Whittier Daily News (CA) speaks about the question of faith and the environment:
Throughout all of California and the rest of the country, the faith community has been working for many years to preach the gospel of good stewardship of our shared environment.
Amid theological differences, we have fostered a shared sense of purpose and urgency that unites us in solidarity with our local and global communities, especially those most vulnerable to climate change.
The action that results from this shared sense of purpose goes far beyond a congregation’s four walls. People of faith bring shared principles – such as working for the common good, caring for our neighbors, and working for economic justice – into the public policy arena.
For example, the California faith community strongly supported the passage and implementation of Assembly Bill 32, California’s Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. This bill, which was fully implemented on Jan. 1, 2013, aims to cut carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, addressing both global -climate change as well as regional air pollution.
But even policy change in itself is not enough to address the crisis we are currently facing as people of faith struggle with the power to indelibly alter God’s Creation and affect the lives of many generations that come after us.
The environmental crisis is at root a spiritual crisis. To remedy this we must begin to build a new relationship with the earth. That means answering the call to be good stewards of Creation and understanding that the “environment” is not a nebulous “out-there” reality; rather it is intimately connected with our lives and our spiritual development.
This value system is not incompatible with economic growth. On the contrary, the clean technology sector is a major factor in building California’s economy. According to a recent Next 10 report, the clean tech sector grew by 53 percent from 1995-2010, while jobs in the wider economy grew by 12 percent. When we care for the environment, we are caring for the health, livelihood and economic situation of our neighbors and ourselves.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Take two aspirin and call me in the morning. Sent January 5:
Attempts to reconcile the demands of long-term sustainability with Christian theology are more complex and problematic than they seem at first blush. While many modern Christians have rejected the notion of Armageddon, a substantial number still advocate for a final apocalypse; a concluding spasm of terrifying violence yielding to a paradisical afterlife for true believers.
The sustainability so desired by environmentalists is predicated on the notion that humanity’s future is open-ended, that our species has a place in the web of Earthly life and a part to play in the long-term history of our universe. These wholly laudable concepts are on a collision course with the notion that the world is destined to end conclusively and explosively, providing an eventual reward for the faithful. For the “faith community” to credibly preach environmental stewardship, it must direct its attention to the many self-described Christians who still hew to End Times theology.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: consumerism economics sustainability
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Year 3, Month 12, Day 10: Have You Met Miss Jones?
The Virginian-Pilot has a good op-ed, titled, “Struggling to care about climate change”:
The world, with the exception of Europe, has done almost nothing to arrest global warming. Despite a treaty or two and decades of hand-wringing, the pull of prosperity has been simply too strong, especially in Asia and the Americas.
U.S. politicians have done a shameful nothing, too many pretending that settled science remains in doubt, too many grubbing money from coal and oil and electricity companies, which have it to give.
In the meantime, the Obama administration – as others have before – talks a better game than it delivers on climate change, arguing that meager progress amounts to moving mountains. It is no more persuasive from this White House than it was from its predecessors.
The problem grows worse. Developing nations are burning coal because it’s cheap and wood because it’s handy, so greenhouse gases continue to flow. With emerging nations eager for energy-hungry technologies, and wanting to replace bicycles and transit with cars – who can blame them? – the continued progress of planetary warming is no great surprise.
Still, surprises come.
According to a new study released at the largely ignored United Nations climate change talks in Qatar, the world’s seas are rising faster than projections. Temperatures are climbing, too.
All fine and good, but that phrase in the first paragraph sets my teeth on edge. Sent December 4:
Advocates for action on global warming need to avoid the misleading economic perspective setting “prosperity” and the environment at odds with one another. Americans’ reluctance to move forward with sensible policies on climate change is not just because we’re addicted to oil; it’s also because we’re addicted to shopping.
If we are to face the threats posed by the metastasizing greenhouse effect, we must transform our relationship to the things we buy, and to our notion of economic well-being. Ultimately, Earth’s resources are the foundation of all wealth; without air to breathe, water to drink, and food to eat, the gaudiest baubles of our consumer economy offer no solace. If the economy is the metabolism of our civilization, then the “prosperity” of unbridled consumerism is the equivalent of a junk-food diet — fast and habit-forming, but unhealthy and wasteful. Genuine prosperity, by contrast, is like a home-grown, home-cooked meal, eaten slowly with friends.
I know what I like. How about you?
Warren Senders