Category: Environment

Reflections on living the simple life

Simplicity is about
subtracting the obvious
and adding the meaningful.
–John Meeks

There is a movement afoot known as minimalism, and by this I mean a lifestyle characterized by simplicity.  The movement deserves a better name, something like simple living, since minimalism nearly always denotes a movement within the Fine Arts, e. g., music and painting.

You can view a growing number of websites and blogs dedicated to simple living.  One of the more prominent ones, and my favorite, is Rowdy Kittens with its 100,000 readers, a quite lovely site filled with wholesome counseling for uncluttering our lives,

The simple living movement traces back to ancient history.  Samson in the Old Testament was a Nazarite, or follower of an ascetic mode of living.  The early Christian community was also noted for its communistic regimen, with goods shared in common.   In Grecian times, there is Epicurus who cautioned moderation in all things and the danger of accumulating goods.

The East is even more famous for its preachments of the simple life.  I think of Buddha, Lao-zi, and Confucious.

In America, there’s my favorite, Henry David Thoreau, with his remarkably quotable Walden.  I have read this work several times over and you can see my enthusiasm for it abundantly evidenced in my omnivorous underlining and scribbled notations.

In fact, America, a country of abundant wealth, has a surprisingly vibrant tradition of simple living advocacy: the Shakers, now extinct, and the Plain People, or Amish, for examples.

Abroad, I think of another favorite author of mine, Leo Tolstoy, whose asceticism following his religious conversion, got him into considerable domestic difficulty as he sought to give up his wealth. “The Death of Ivan Ilyitch,” somber, intense, and profound, has always resonated well with me in its cautions again excess, and I have it almost by heart, as I taught it for nearly three decades as a college prof.

The greatest exemplar of this way of life in more recent times is Mohandas Gandhi.  I remember seeing the possessions of this man I have always loved: a mat, cup, sandals, a pair of wire glasses.

A nation where simplicity has been a traditional staple is Japan.  I will always remember the simple life I lived in the mountains surrounding the Nikko temples as a young serviceman on R&R: an unadorned kimono, raw fish and seaweed veggies, a hot bath, followed by a bed on the floor with a hard pillow, and sunset and sunrise setting the parameters of sleep.

Will this rediscovery of simple living take hold?  I think not, though to our great loss, for it has much to teach us, if we will listen.  We live with economies that preach growth, not sustainability, which may be the death of us.

Simple living is good not only for ourselves, but for our wounded planet that can only right itself if the majority of us, worldwide, heed the wisdom of simple living.

I wish I could be more hopeful.  It’s just that there exist two primary lifestyles: of possession and of being, with the former having the upper hand by a large margin.

Possession, or accumulation, leads to inequality, founds classes or social hierarchy, fosters envy, social strife, and spills over into war.

Being, on the contrary, begets concern for life’s essentials, our needs and not our wants.  There is no rancor when people live by their needs and do not exceed their fellows in goods.  Being means to prize people and not possess them; to see nature for its own sake and not as a quarry.  Being means an ability to let go.

Replacing anxiety born of compulsion, we find blessedness.

Do well and be well,

rj

Why winter sucks!

chicago-lakeshore-21111-350x300

Sometimes I think about moving out of Kentucky, maybe to some place like dry Arizona or milder Oregon or Washington. Had we the bucks, maybe a compromise like Ft. Meyers, FL in the winter.  Hey, that would be a real plus, since it’d mean we’d see our beloved Bosox in their new digs.

You see, I think winter sucks!

Aw, can’t be that bad living winters in Kentucky.  What about real winter hells like the upper Midwest.  You haven’t seen anything till you’ve seen a blizzard sweep its way through South Dakota or January temps plummet to 30 below in Minnesota.  How about a New England snowdrop of 20 inches?

Yeah, man, I know what you’re saying.  In fact, I spent my boyhood in New England and lived in South Dakota and Minnesota, too.  I should add Wyoming.  Damn, that’s a place makes hell’s heat look easy!

Ok, guess it’s an age thing then.  I still don’t like it right down to my sniffles and shivers.  Let me count the reasons why:

1.  Because winter keeps me indoors:

Me, I’m an outdoor guy who lives for his garden.  Dawn means rising to eager endeavors of trimming roses, cutting the lawn, a bit of weeding here and there, off to Lowe’s for plants and fertilizer.  Winter’s like wearing a monitor bracelet.  I can look out, but I can’t really leave.  TV sucks for the most part.   Why I can’t even wash the car.

2.  Because winter makes me feel blah

Think of it this way.  Beginning with spring, nature turns technicolor, with daffodils, tulips and hyacinths bursting through winter’s cold, denuded earth, followed by summer’s contagion of color gone wild in sharp contrast to winter’s monochrome back and white.  Is there a tie-in between weather and how you feel.  You bet there is!  I know summer buoys me and winter drags.

3.  Because winter wars against my taste buds:

Winter means hothouse foods with their dull taste and often decimated nutrition. Warm weather means fresh food, farmer markets, and roadside stands; your own garden veggies just picked, free of sprays.  While frozen veggies and berries help preserve nutrition in our stores during winter, nothing goes down better than just harvested strawberries or home grown tomatoes.

4.  Because winter means shoveling snow:

When  I was a kid, it was a different matter.  Now it’s a damn nuisance that just won’t go away.  It insists on getting done right away and, like housework, often comes right back.  Used to be the kids did it.  They have their own nests now.  Suddenly I ‘m aware I’m up there with the big ones, the import nations like my own.  Food, mail, other victuals–they have to find a way in and that means I’ve got to find a way out.  Shoveling doesn’t get easier when you’re packing on years.  Snow blower?  Would have to dig a path to the shed just to retrieve it, plus more money to buy and “feed” it.

5.  Because winter busts the budget:

Higher energy costs are now a salient feature of modern life and are destined to go still higher, maybe even skyrocket, given diminishing resources concurrent with increasing demand and environmental mandates.  As is, we’re on the budget leveling formula to equalize monthly payments.  Even that plan taxes the budget as winter weighs upon  the summer months in shaping monthly outlay.  Geothermal’s the way to go–that is, if you’re young, don’t plan to move, and have $30,000 handy.

6.  Because winter menaces my health:

Case in point:  my wife and I just had this conversation last night about taking-in Spielberg’s new Lincoln movie, only to decide we didn’t want to put up with the coughing, sneezing, throat-clearing cacophony of the movie audience.  Germs like crowded contexts, multiplying sputum contact and dirty surfaces.  Bad enough in the box stores, made worse by hacking coughers who don’t seem to mind sharing their misery in friendly fire in a crowded aisle.  I can’t even say I feel safe visiting my doctor and enduring the waiting room of obviously people feeling quite miserable,  T’is the season to be jolly?  No, t’is the season to catch the flu!

7.  Because winter inconveniences:

It’s no fun having to chip your windshield free of ice or dealing with handles refusing to budge; or irritating others in holding up traffic while you wait for the defroster to kick-in; or slipping on black ice along with other assorted evils.  Winter driving can even get you to the hereafter sooner than expected or end in serious maiming or an expensive bumper encounter.  It’s a risk you can lessen by escaping to a warmer sanctuary.  Then there are those power outages, falling limbs, and advanced supermarket raids leaving shelves empty just when you need foodstuffs most.  Last, very least, but still annoying–that dry skin that defies all lotion.

8.  Because winter interferes with my wanting to go almost naked:

I like jumping out of the car and into the store unencumbered by a coat.  Much better to enter in near runner’s garb, move to the goal line quickly, hop back in and return home.  No hat or gloves to fuss over or accidentally leave behind in a restaurant.  No coat buttons to deal with.

Now don’t tell me you like winter.  Only in places like Minnesota do people say crazy things like that.  Here, you can take my shovel.  I’ll not be needing it in Arizona.

Jane Holtz Kay: a Voice in the Wilderness

The sun rises and sets each day, and every morning we wake anew to life’s daily rhythms. Busy with ourselves, we often miss what happens beyond our sphere, confirming Auden’s poignant observation concerning the personal nature of human suffering in his poem, “Musée des Beaux Arts”.

Take the death of Jane Holtz Kay, for example, from complications of Alzheimer’s Disease on November 5. Apart from a NYT piece (November 20, 2012) calling her “a prophet of global warming,” her death has been largely missed by media. It’s probable most of us have never heard of her. That’s been true of me.

Out of curiosity, I researched Wikipedia and came up with nothing. A google search reported her death and provided a link to a Guest Book, presently with eleven entries, written by those who knew her personally.  I checked the archives of  The Nation magazine as well, since I had learned she was its architecture critic for 30-years.  No mention of her death.

Perhaps what really matters in the context of our mortality is not who we were, but what we did.  We touched lives, bringing healing, insight, and acceptance. We left behind an ongoing legacy of wisdom and wise counsel, making the world better.

In 1997, Kay wrote a landmark book on automobiles: Asphalt Nation: How the automobile Took Over America and How We Can Take It Back.  A classic, it demonstrates not only the cost to our environment (carbon dioxide emissions speeding up global warming), but the destructive social aspect of cars themselves: the loss of historical sites, decline in public transit, suburban sprawl and, not least, the automobile’s weakening of social ties. Interestingly, she points out the Amish repudiation of cars is not because somehow the combustion engine is inherently evil, but because it dilutes proximity and, hence, community.

She had written three other books on monitoring our natural resources and managing our urban space, but Asphalt Nation, timely and passionate, may be her most memorable. She left unfinished a follow-up called Last Chance Landscape, dealing with the fallout of global warming in our immediate future.

I think she’d be pleased that coal, at least, seems on the decline in the U. S. But then there are those  troubling developments in China and India, where auto manufacturing is increasingly viewed as a linchpin to economic prosperity.  According to the World Resources Institute, 1200 coal powered plants are at least in the planning stage globally, with three-quarters of them slated for China and India (rpt. in Time, November 21, 2012). Since coal is the single, most contributing factor in accelerating global warming, we may just all be doomed if these coal plants come on-line.

Such environmental callousness chagrined Kay enormously, and sometimes she lamented that she felt like a voice in the wilderness with nobody listening. That’s what makes global warming so insidious: it seems distant, vague, not immediate, despite the increasingly savage storms, drought, flooding and record temperatures. It didn’t even emerge as an issue in the four recent election debates. It’s also an inconvenient issue when governments can’t manage their budgets

Though the earth still spins and life seems to go on, the truth is each day is lessened in its quality by our crimes against Nature’s delicate fabric.  While the world may little note Jane Holtz Kay, we ignore her legacy at our own peril.

rj

Gov. Jerry Brown confronts global warming skeptics

The election may have ended two weeks ago, but it’s back to business as usual as politicians weigh-in on those crucial bread and butter issues like the environment.

Earlier in the week, our President, usually more astute on global warming and its serious implications, said he’d not prioritize environment over job generation in a down economy.  Two days later, a bipartisan delegation met with the President, urging he approve the Keystone pipeline, a project currently in delay mode pending rerouting to protect sensitive habitat such as Nebraska’s Sandhill Crane Sanctuary.

In all of this, I have to pinch myself to see if I’m awake.  I had thought Romney lost the election!

I can’t speak for you, but I created Brimmings to speak out candidly, come hell or high water, on the salient issues affecting the quality of life for all of us.  As for politics, I can’t say I’m overwhelmed with surprise at these Capitol happenings, given the inveterate chicanery of that sector.  It’s just that I desperately want to find a window I can open to escape the foul air of political expediency bent on kicking the can down the road when it comes to the insidious challenge of climate change, a quandary that isn’t going to vanish simply by ignoring it.  The debates themselves, four of them, yet not one question on the implications of global warming on public policy!  I think the media just plain fell asleep at the wheel.

Occasionally I do find a leader such as California  governor Jerry Brown, willing to open a window on a new vista.  This isn’t a new thing for the governor who has spoken boldly and consistently in cadenced rhetoric on the cruciality of facing-up to this Gorgon that  ultimately threatens to swallow up both Man and Beast.

In August, the Brown administration launched a web site (see under Blogroll/Climate Change), replete with data to refute those denying global warming or our contribution to it.  Find me another governor who’s done something like this.  Find me one Senator or Rep who’s spoken out so boldly, apart from Al Gore, our should-have-been president, now vaporized from the political scene.

Buoyed by the California election results of November 6, which daringly called for a tax increase to reduce the state’s bruising deficit, Brown acknowledged to attendees at last week’s Greenbuild Expo in San Francisco that while “dealing with the environment seems more a luxury than a necessity, my message is the two go hand-in-hand.”

Brown might have equivocated on green issues such as California’s cap and trade legislation, now under legal challenge by business interests in the state, but he did not, again setting him apart from the political herd.

When it comes down to the bottom line, authentic leaders excel in what Vergil called Pietas, or virtue based on self-discipline. I would add ethos, or integrity, a sensibility for total commitment.  I just happen to think Jerry Brown defines these leadership virtues, not just by words, but through example.  This is the governor who, after all, declined residing in the governor’s mansion.

And now, Mr. President, back to you, since the ball’s in your court.  You’ve won a second term, which means you can focus on your place in history, joining a handful of great presidents who chose to lead and hence transform this great nation.

Open a window for us, Mr. President.  Stand fast.  Stand tall!

rj

The food revolution is all around you!

Have you noticed the food chain stores are increasingly offering alternative foods these days, replete with burgeoning natural food isles, stacks of organic fruits, and freshly washed veggies, hermetically sealed?  Why I even saw locally produced corn for sale this past summer at my local Krogers.

Now don’t think for a minute the box store groceries, a $32 billion enterprise, give a hoot about keeping you healthy.  You can believe that when they stop promoting their sugar drenched sodas, sodium laced dinners, fatty organ meats, and, and….

What they do care about is market share, better known as making a buck. They can read the tea leaves.  A food revolution is underway and they’re wanting their cut.

Some, though not perfect, do a better job at marketing healthy foodstuffs.  Think Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, and Good Foods.  The long dominating chains have taken notice, except for Walmart, surprisingly, which remains tethered to largely traditional fare, despite its widely hyped transitioning to a green energy infrastructure.

Restaurants remain a problem and constitute virtual feed lots for human slaughter with their huge portions of “ain’t good for you foods”.  What a shocker when you scrutinize the online menus of some of these chains for their nutrition content to learn an average entree like Applebee’s bourbon street steak nets you 1067 calories along with 71.6g in fats.  By the way, you should always study the fat to total calorie ratio of any food you buy at the store or consume in a restaurant, remembering that fat grams are converted to calories by multiplying each gram by 9, unlike carbohydrates which follow a  1g x 4 formula.  The rule-of-thumb is that you should try to minimize your fat calorie ideally to no more than 10% of total calories and at max no more than 20%.   With Applebee’s entree, that comes to around 107-214 calories.  Converting in your head those 71.6 fat grams using the simple conversion formula I gave you gives you more than 630 calories of fat intake, far exceeding the parameters.  Hey, death trap!

Many of us have had enough of the food industry’s manipulating our health by prioritizing profit.  Even their efforts to repackage items under the aegis of “natural”should ruffle your feathers.  Have you taken a look at your Quorn chicken nuggets box lately for its serving content?  Believe me, it’s typical.

You can say no to all this and trade your knife for a fork.  Millions have and the more who do help make that decision easier for the rest of us.  Think Whole Foods, organic, local produce via farmer markets, growing your own veggies.  Healthy alternatives are sprouting like spring grass everywhere.

By the way, the neatest eating tip I ever got comes from just maybe the best book on nutrition out there, Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto (2008):  “Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly Plants.”

The food revolution’s begun.  Don’t miss it!

Be well,

When Elephants Weep

I have always had this love affair with elephants, these gray, wrinkled, lumbering mastodons, survivors of a primordial past, trunks swaying, gentle creatures, yet fearsome when provoked.

Among animals, they’re probably the most attached to one another. What surprises many is the social sophistication of their matriarchal society characterized by close relationships with all herd members, many of them related. Herds, sometimes numbering up to a hundred, are headed by the oldest female and calves are raised and protected by the entire matriarchal herd. (Males generally leave the herd at about 15 years and live apart.)

Elephants are found in Africa and Asia and it’s easy to tell them apart, as the Asian species is smaller. When I see the large ears, I know at once it’s an African elephant.

Both male and female African elephants have tusks, to their own undoing. In contrast, only the Asian male has them.

Highly intelligent, elephants can communicate messages over long distances with their feet.

They are also endowed with prodigious memory, as I think most of us know.

Elephants have the longest noses of any animal, for that’s what their trunks really are. Some sport trunks up to seven feet in length, yet they never get in the way, as they’re used to grasp as well as feed. With this tool, they’ve been known to assist calves to stand or pull them up over an embankment.

Their ivory tusks are actually teeth that never stop growing.

Lesser known is the elephant’s capacity to mourn their dead.

Population growth has reduced its habitat inexorably, resulting in elephants invading villages in search for food, in turn, leading to hunting parties. Immense poverty has triggered poachers to seek quick Asian money for ivory. Even reserves, dedicated to wildlife safety, are violated and any elephant, mother or calf, is gunned down for its tusks. African governments lack the financial resources needed to upgrade security. Reserves themselves are a last ditch effort to provide sanctuary but, unfortunately, often conspire against elephant interests, blocking off migration routes when they need to mate or find new food resources.

Just over a century ago, several million elephants roamed Western and Central Africa’s savannahs and dense jungles; today, about 300,000 remain. In Asia, their numbers have dwindled from 100,000 to 35,000, all of them domesticated.

Often weighing up to seven tons, their sole predator is Man. In Cameroon, 300 elephants were recently slaughtered, their bodies left to rot. Such slaughters are likely to define their future, given the nature of Man’s capacity for ruthlessness for the sake of coin.

To fully appreciate elephants, I highly recommend Jeffrey Moussaleff Masson’s moving book, When Elephants Weep, an exploration of their capacity, along with other animals, for emotion.

Conrad had it right about the ignominy of Man, his ruthless capacity, hidden behind his civilized veneer, for retrogression to a latent savagery taking many hues.

When elephants weep, I weep with them. I weep for a vanishing legacy that our grandchildren may never know: the cry of elephants, the thunder of their feet, the mystery of their dark eyes.

I weep most for a declining vestige of a once garden world distanced from Man’s malevolence, a fall from grace into the heart of darkness.

I find it horrendous….

Mountaintop Removal

I find it horrendous that we continue to rely upon coal as a primary energy resource. Here in Kentucky, a major coal producing state, those who protest dirty power plants and the state’s reliance on coal are treated as alarmists, if not environmental extremists, who will take away jobs and inflate energy prices for consumers. As such, they constitute “an attack on Kentucky’s way of life” (D-Keith Hall). Kentucky, by the way, subsidizes coal to the tune of $115 million annually.

In Kentucky, coal is king and a driving political force as shown in the $40,000 contribution the industry has made to Andy Barr’s renewed efforts to unseat 6th District Congressman, Ben Chandler. Lexington, the heart of the district, just happens to be the home of the Kentucky Coal Association and several mining companies.

One of coal’s biggest friends in the state is the University of Kentucky, which recently accepted $20 million from coal interests to build a lodge facility for its basketball players. Money, in short, has defined the issue for the University, not public health or global warming. The University even has a Society for Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration. The University might learn a thing or two from many of its students who have called for transitioning its power plant to a more efficient energy source.

One Kentuckian, noted author Wendell Berry, stood tall in all of this, resigning his teaching position at the University and taking his papers with him, which he has donated this week to the Kentucky Historical Association. I wish there were more like him.

All of this reminds me of the days in Kentucky when tobacco was also a power broker, with government and higher education aligned with its interests. Despite evidence slapping one in the face, for years they denied tobacco’s heavy toll on the public’s health.

Coal won’t be losing its clout anytime soon, at least in Kentucky, given the just announced $7 billion deal made with India for 9 million tons of Kentucky and West Virginia coal, a deal principally involving a Kentucky lawmaker from Pike County, D-Rep Keith Hall. Like many developers, coal advocates often seek elective office to further their business interests. Hall sits on the board of FJCS Energy, the New Jersey company that signed the agreement.

While the U. S. as a whole is making its slow transition to cleaner fuels, the coal company again resembles the tobacco industry in its emphasis on exports to shore up its sagging profits at home. The hell with what happens to the health of those in developing nations.

Worse, is the industry’s blatant indifference to global warming and its consequences to all life. What matters is profit. How many more mountains will be leveled and how many streams contaminated? How many toxins belched into the atmosphere?

As they have it, coal is very much a part of our future. Land reclamation has brought benefits such as creation of new forests, recreational areas, housing development, and facilities such as hospitals, nursing homes, and even airports. It’s cheaper to store coal than alternative fuels such as wind or solar, geothermal or nuclear. New technology has improved the efficiency of coal fired power plants in reducing carbon emissions. Alternative sources, moreover, can’t keep pace with projections of a future doubling of worldwide energy needs. As is, coal is one of the most regulated industries, providing the public with ample protection.

The real story is that we’ve seen 300 mountaintops leveled, 600,000 acres of hardwood forests permanently decimated. As for reclamation, only 4% of any post-mining productivity has been confirmed (EcoWatch). Mining violations and watershed violations are in the thousands, with little state enforcement. Instead of the promise of diversification to remedy Appalachia’s enmeshed poverty, the region faces a future of moving to the forefront in black lung disease and no appreciable amelioration in chronic unemployment, where 60% of mining jobs have been lost to mechanization, not EPA regulation.

Meanwhile, the National Resources Defense Council recently designated Kentucky as the most polluted state in the nation from coal field fuel plants, largely because of the state government’s failure to clean-up the industry. As with Keith Hall, Kentucky government continues to be dominated by coal interests. Hall, by the way, is co- chair of the National Resources and Environment Committee. He has said, “I ‘m not just a friend of coal, I’m coal’s best friend.”

As Hall puts it, “I believe in states’ rights.” Me thinks we’ve heard all this before and that the Confederacy is alive and well. As with slavery, tobacco, and now coal, Kentucky needs to disengage from an economy that exacts profits from human misery.

Instead of the ubiquitous Friends of Coal bumper stickers, Kentucky would do better with say, Friends of People replacements, and in green, not black, the color of death.

rj

Holding the President’s feet to the fire

If you go to the Obama campaign site Obama, you’ll read its boast of the EPA initiating restrictions on mercury and other pollutants from coal and oil fired power plants during the President’s tenure.

Just recently, the Obama administration announced its reaching agreement with the nation’s auto manufacturers to increase vehicle fuel efficiency to 54.5 mpg by 2025,

Perhaps the best news for environmentalists is the State Department’s recent announcement that it would delay construction of the Keystone XL pipeline to review its previously approved routing, ultimately deciding its verdict after the 2012 elections.

These seeming environmental breakthroughs, while making good copy, masquerade sobering truths.

Take the Keystone delay, for example. While this change from approval to delay has apparently rekindled environmentalist enthusiasm for Obama, Greens should be forewarned it probably reflects politics rather than sincere commitment.

You may remember that just last August hundreds of protestors against the pipeline, which would transport carbon-heavy tar sands from Canada to the Gulf, were arrested outside the White House, leading many environmentalists to think seriously about not supporting the President’s reelection.

This caution has apparently been tossed to the winds by the Keystone delay. I think this is a mistake. (See Rekindle.) Obama is simply just another politician governed by pragmatics, hence quite willing to pander rather than stick to principle in order to keep power. The Keystone Project delay is about re-routing only, not abnegation, and environmentalists are foolish not to note the difference as well as its ominous time-line.

Underscoring my suspicion is Obama’s earlier September decision to shelve new EPA proposals on smog. The President justified his decision on the basis of not wanting to jeopardize the economy by imposing new pressures on industry and business. Republican House speaker Boehner had argued that one of the EPA’s proposals would have cost $90b. Never mind, however, the consequences for those millions with respiratory problems. Clean Air Watch called Obama’s turnaround “political cowardice.” I agree.

As for the original Keystone plan that routed the pipeline incredulously through the sensitive Oragulla Aquifer, it was the Obama administration that signed on.

Won’t anything ever change in Washington? If we hold our ground and not conflate rhetoric with meaningful change, it will.

The bottom line is that we must hold the President’s feet to the fire.

Evolution’s triumph: the Sandhill Crane

You can’t mistake Sandhill cranes, resplendent with red crowns, wide wing spans, and long legs.

Every fall, they come to Kentucky by the thousands, transients pursuing a rest stop as they wing their way to winter feeding grounds in the Mississippi delta, Florida, Mexico and Cuba. They draw their name from their principal migratory feeding ground along the Platte in Nebraska, with its 75-mile stretch of grass secured sand dunes.

They’re enchanting birds to watch and listen to. You can hear them coming a long ways off in what sounds like a thunderous French r made deep within the throat. These are creatures who sing and dance. Couples, who mate for life and live up to 20 years, actually sing in mutual cadence, sometimes leaping up and down.

They’re among our most ancient birds, stretching back several million years and preceding humans. By the early part of the Twentieth Century they had been hunted virtually to extinction. Through careful conservation, they’ve rebounded, though still threatened principally by habitat loss in Mississippi and Cuba.

Lately, they’ve been in my thoughts. Last spring I had been reading Carl Safina’s impassioned lament for nature’s vanishing wildlife, The View from Lazy Point, and several times he alluded to and quoted Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac, a collection of Thoreau-like observations on nature and man’s troubling despoilment of it. I was not disappointed.

In the course of this beautifully written book, Leopold comes upon the Sandhill crane:

A glint of sun reveals the approach of a great echelon of birds. On motionless wing they emerge from the lifting mists, sweep a final arc of sky, and settle in clangorous descending spiral to their feeding grounds. A new day has begun on the crane marsh.

When we hear his call we hear no mere bird. We hear the trumpet in the chorus of evolution. He is the symbol of our untamable past, of that incredible sweep of millennia which underlies and conditions the daily affairs of birds and men.

The sadness discernible in some marshes arises, perhaps, from their once having harbored cranes. Now they stand humbled, adrift in history.

—

Upshot:

This week here in Kentucky, the Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources announced it will take applications for permits from Nov. 15 through Nov. 30 and hold a drawing Dec. 5 to select up to 400 hunters, the first state to do so East of the Mississippi. Hunters may take up to two sandhill crane then, or until hunters take 400 birds. The season will begin December 17.

Water: managing a precious resource

In North America, we take water availability for granted. This may not be our future.

One of our greatest challenges over the next several decades will be meeting our water needs, whether globally or in the USA. We can live with less oil or coal, find alternative fuels, or develop new technologies. Not so with water, an element vital to sustaining food production and keeping ourselves alive. Though as humans we can be a narcissistic lot, the truth is we’re composed of up to 90% water.

I was reminded of this fact several weeks ago after a three day bout with the stomach flu, with all its unpleasant symptoms. One of the first things you learn is to replace lost fluids quickly and amply. If you don’t, you risk dehydrating and its ultimate consequences, kidney damage and even shutdown.

When Americans think of drought, they probably think of Africa, certainly in the news lately and in past decades with its devastating water shortages. The reality is that what Africa is experiencing is becoming increasingly apropos for earth’s more prosperous regions as well. Take Australia, for example. Sydney draws its water primarily from capacious water storage facilities, drawn from rainfall and held in check by dams. In fact, Sydney’s reservoirs exceed New York’s storage capacity 4:1. Even so, the water flow into Sydney’s nine dams fell 45% between 1996 and 2003. The situation, even now, remains critical. It hasn’t rained plentifully in New South Wales for a very long time.

In the U. S, particularly California and the Southwest, water sufficiency, always a problem for essentially desert regions, has become a gnawing challenge. Southern California depends for much of its water on Northern California, to the latter’s consternation, since it’s also become plagued with serious water shortages. Normally dependent on melting snowpacks from the mountains, this source is proving unreliable, with snow melting earlier before it can consolidate in yet another link with rising global temperatures. Elsewhere, while Los Angeles is certainly under threat, one of America’s fastest growing cities, Las Vegas, may well run out of water, and very soon.

Consider the Midwest. Beneath America’s agricultural heartland lies the Ogallah aquifer, stretching through eight states, South Dakota to Texas. Used as a primary irrigation source, it’s now seriously depleted through over pumping. We are producing agricultural bounties drawing on tomorrow’s water.

If I had time, I could explore with you the causes for increasing drought and, ironically, for some areas like my native New England, unprecedented rain and snow with ensuing floods such as Vermont recently encountered. I wish I also had time to explore proposed solutions such as building more dams, which actually create other dilemmas. My focus here is on conservation, the wise use of water to make it go round and last longer.

1. Get rid of your lawn, or, reduce it sharply.

A 2008 NASA study concluded that grass lawns in the U. S. exceed the entire land area of New York state. In fact, one third of our water use is spent on our lawns or, shockingly, 200 gallons of water per person, per day. Lawns can be replaced or reduced with native, drought-resistant grasses of short height, needing little water. Attractive ground covers such as Irish moss or creeping thyme can help do the job. You’ll save on your water bill while reducing gas mower pollution and insecticide run off as well.  If you’re a garden keeper, plant varieties of flowers and vegetable with lesser water needs.

2.  Install water barrels.

Think about this: an inch of rain falling on a 1000 square foot roof generates 600 gallons of water, which can then be used for your flowers and vegetables. I installed one last summer with a eighty gallon capacity and found it filled up after a brief shower. More and more communities are imposing restrictions on water usage and water rates have been rising as new treatment plants become needed. I’m hoping to plant several raised garden beds accessed to this barrel through a hose.

3.  Be conservative in using water in the house.

In buying water products such as shower heads, faucets and toilets, look for the EPA’s WaterSense label. You can find such products online at
http://www.epa.gov/watersense/product_search.html

If you’re planning to build a new home, a family of four can save up to 50,000 gallons of water annually in a certified WaterSense installation. That’s sufficient to do 2000 laundry loads a year and a savings up to $600 on water bills. Savings can also be had by confining washer/dryer purchases to Energy Star products. (Tankless water heaters, by the way, can save up to 20% in energy costs per year and don’t require periodic flushing.)

Repair dripping faucets promptly.

4.  If a city dweller, opt for a green roof.

All of the applications I’ve mentioned have business and industrial applications as well. In Chicago, green roof gardens are catching on, with some 200 now in existence, including City Hall. Green roofs provide not only space for growing vegetables, but capture storm water while simultaneously cooling the urban landscape.

5.  Stop eating meat.

This recommendation may surprise you, sounds crazy, and is least likely to be adopted, given our cultural biases. But I mention it anyway, just for the record. A recent study by the Agricultural Water Management indicated that cutting animal product use by just half would result in a national reduction of dietary water requirements of 261 billion cubic meters annually by 2025. To put this in perspective, this is the equivalent of 14 times the annual flow of the Colorado River.e ample

The point in all of this is that you and I can take steps now to assure we have ample water at minimal costs in a world where this will be a decreasing reality.

Related articles