Category: Environment

A new rhythm that imperils: reflections on global warming

We owe our existence to it, yet we give it little heed, since it’s always there for us.  In my science classes we called it natural law, the material rules of nature that lie behind the structure and behavior of our universe.  Our earth, for example, rotates on its axis, allowing for alternations of light and dark.  It circles the sun with a mathematical precision on which we base our calendar.  There is the partnership of sun and moon exerting a gravitational force on a rotating earth that lifts and lowers its ocean waters with cyclic surety.  Like a camera lens set on infinity, the examples have no limit in their envisioning.

In sum, there exists a rhythm to the universe, which some have argued evidences a Mind at work, bestowing design and flowing with purpose.  Others, however, contend these laws are merely interplay of cause-effect mechanisms, devoid of intent and ethical regard, as reflected in Japan’s devastating tsunami in 2011, taking 20,000 lives. What we define as tragic is more likely our not heeding their operations.  It’s not wise to build on seismic faults or close to ocean shore.

As you may surmise, I draw comfort from these cosmic rhythms despite their indifference to our human schemes.  I know that tomorrow brings the dawn and, with it, the promise of new beginning.  In our human world, such fidelity is rare.

I find a discordant note, however, in our thoughtless disregard of those laws that sustain us, providing clean air, dependable rainfall, and abundant harvest.  In doing so, we’ve acerbated climate change, a crisis largely of our own making rather than merely cyclical change.  We’ve poisoned our air and water, slashed and burned our way through virgin forest, plundered our fellow animal species and squandered our water resources. Tomorrow’s wars are more likely to be waged over water, not oil.

In ten years, the African elephant, once a million, will vanish into memory along with the rhinoceros, all for the sake of trinkets and aphrodisiacs.  Today I saw the BBC news that sharks may soon become extinct, 100 million already killed, in a fishing industry that preys upon their fins to flavor Asian soup.

In our misdeeds, we’ve set other laws into motion that now imperil rather than sustain, generating melting glaciers that are raising sea levels and a warming tundra with potential for massive release of methane, a toxin deadlier than CO2.

Meanwhile, there was the media’s startling failure in last fall’s presidential debates to question the candidates on our generation’s most perilous challenge.  Locally in  places like Kentucky where I reside, cars sport “friends of coal” license plates and “environmentalist” suggests extremism.  Nationally, and globally, corporate interests prevail to uphold waste in the guise of growth.

As for the public’s response, I see its numbing indifference perhaps most vividly at grocery store checkout.  Though I provide my own cloth bags, I’m virtually self-conscious in my singularity amidst a sea of plastic supported by custom.

We are makers of a new rhythm, but this one brings no comfort.

rj

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Reflections on Spring’s delicate weave

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.         

What is all this juice and all this joy?
   A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,
   Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
   Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

(Gerard Manley Hopkins: “Spring,” Poems and Prose [Penguin Classics, 1985])

photo_20Karen reminded me this morning that come bedtime tonight we’ll need to move our clocks one hour forward. And I’m thinking, can it be that time again?

Actually, it’s something I should welcome, a kind of herald, if you will, of spring’s approach and our soon deliverance from winter’s long night.

I do love its entrance. For one thing, there’s the pleasure of working outside again, hoeing away winter’s scattered debris. They say we’re having temperatures in the high fifties here in Kentucky this weekend and already, in excited revery, I’m planning my priorities for making the weekend count, beginning with haircuts for the shrubbery, a few dead tree limbs to trim, and mulching the rose bed into weedless blackness.

I notice the box stores and gas stations are getting ready, too, witness the potted pansies peeking over their rims that I saw at Walmart today and the high piled bags of mulch when I pulled in for gas this morning.

As a former student and teacher of myth, I can understand the archetypal reverence for this season, mirrored in story, music, and dance celebrating regeneration, or earth’s greening. And there’s that beautiful story the Greeks loved to tell of Persephone’s return from the Underworld in consort with every spring, rekindling a dormant landscape into verdant tapestry. Spring is Easter and Passover, celebrations of passage from death and bondage to new life and future hope. Universally, the egg is its symbol.

But I’m also cognizant that spring isn’t always kind and sometimes lashes its way into entrance, forsaking sweet whisperings redolent of incipient blessedness. In Kentucky, for example, it brings not only the Kentucky Derby, but tornado sirens and, on occasion, flooding, reminding us of the delicate weave of life and death, sorrow and joy that has always defined our destiny.

Alas, we ourselves have been playing havoc with that balance, unwittingly triggering with our technology, fossil fuel dependence, and ravaging of our resources, whether of mineral, plant or animal, our own demise. As in T. S. Eliot’s magnificent Wasteland poem, we have springs more often associated with too little rain, or hot summers arriving too soon, suggesting spring’s own waning in the growing menace of global warming. Our earth weeps to be delivered, but there are no saviors among us to redeem and restore.

But then there are those momentary lulls when Equinox hovers in a topography of gentle wind and earth rages with the fever of life and healing and languorous days of apple and cherry blossom, lilacs, tulips, hyacinths and daffodils and we dream not of a distant heaven, but bathe in a heaven brought down to earth in renewal of Edenic splendor.

Would that this could always be. In the meantime, pile up the nows of halcyon days that sew warmth and bloom and hope.

Be well,

rj

Letter to the American People

Those doubting the somber threat global warming poses for all of us should do a  reality check by going to the U. S. Global Research site (http://globalchange.gov).  Mind you, this is a federal government site, which may surprise you as our recent campaign debates neglected the issue of climate change entirely, so you might think it hasn’t any credence for government.  Issues like equal pay for women, while important, hardly merit sequestering the most salient challenge of our time.

Although the Climate Assessment Report, available for downloading at the site, is in draft format, it still packs a punch in its focused details, drawing on more than 240 experts.  After review by the National Academies of Sciences and the public, it will be revised, then submitted to the Federal Government for potential inclusion in the Third National Climate Assessment Report to the President and the Congress, required every four years under the Global Change Research Act of 1990.

My intent here is to focus on the report’s introductory overview highlighting its primary findings, keeping in mind we’re dealing with a draft.  Specifics are developed within the downloaded document at large and, I must emphasize, are disturbing in their implications for all life on this planet.  The bottomline is that we should be on a war-footing in regard to global warming, doing all we can to delay or marginalize its stark consequences.  How likely is this given a partisan, intransigent Congress and a constituency still largely insensitive to the implications of climate change?  Talk about a program that will put people back to work, this is it!

From Letter to the American People (Jan 11, 2013)

“Climate change, once considered an issue for a disant future, has moved firmly into the present. This report of the National Climate Assessment and Development Advisory Committee concludes that the evidence for a changing climate has strengthened considerably since the last National Climate Assessment report, written in 2009.  Many more impacts of human-caused climate change have now been observed.  Corn producers in Iowa, oyster growers in Washington State, and maple syrup producers in Vermont have observed changes in their local climate that are outside of their experience.  So, too, have coastal planners from Florida to Maine, water managers  in the arid southwest and parts of the Southeast, and Native Americans on tribal lands across the nation.

Americans are noticing changes all around them.  Summers are longer and hotter, and periods of extreme heat last longer than any living American has ever experienced.  Winters are generally shorter and warmer.  Rain comes in heavier downpours, though in many regions there are longer dry spells in between.

Other changes are even more dramatic.  Residents of some coastal cities see their streets flood more regularly during storms and high tides. Inland cities near large rivers also experience more flooding, especially in the Midwest and Northeast.  Hotter and drier weather and earlier snow melt mean that wildfires in the West start earlier in the year, last later into the fall, threaten more homes, cause more evacuations, and burn more acerage.

In Alaska, the summer sea ice that once protected the coasts has receded, and fall storms now cause more erosion and damage that is severe enough that some communities are already facing relocation.

Scientists studyng climate change confirm that these observations are consistent with Earth’s climactic trends.  Long-term, independent records from weather stations,  satellites, ocean buoys, tide gauges, and many other data sources all confirm the fact that our nation, like the rest of the world, is warming, precipitation patterns are changing, sea level is rising, and some types of extreme weather events are increasing.

These and other observed climactic changes are having wide-ranging impacts in every region of our country and most sectors of our economy.  Some of these changes can be beneficial, such as longer growing seasons in many regions and a longer shipping season on the Great Lakes.  But many more have already proven to be detrimental, largely because society and its infrastructure were designed for the climate of the past, not for the rapidly changing climate of the present or the future.

This National Climate Assessment collects, integrates, and assesses observations and research from around the country, helping to show what is actually happening and what it means for peoples’ lives, livelihoods, and future.

This report includes analyses of impacts on seven selected sectors:  human health, water, energy, transportation, agriculture, forests, and ecosystems and biodiversity.  This report additionally focuses on the interactions among several sectors at the national level. It also assesses key impacts on the regions of the U.S.: Northeast, Southeast and Caribbean, Midwest, Great Plains, Southwest, Northwest, Alaska, and the Arctic, Hawaii and the Pacific Islands; as well as coastal areas, oceans, and marine resources.

Finally, this report is the first to explicitly assess the current state of adaptation, mitigation, and decision support activities.”

And so there were no more elephants

Source: Aljazzera: Tusks seized from poachers

This past week, perhaps missed in most headlines, is news of the machine gun slaughter of a family elephant herd in Kenya’s Tsavo National Park, the worst of its kind ever seen in Kenya.  Horrendous as it is, it’s hardly an isolated incident in Africa, where wildlife are being gunned down at a record  pace, including endangered species, by poachers financed by international criminal interests.  Says Drew McVey, African elephant and rhino specialist, “This horrific crime demonstrates the lengths that poachers will go to get ivory—even killing a two-month old calf.”

What are the principal causes of the decline in Africa’s wildlife? 

Habitat loss:  Disruption of  the ecosystem through deforestation and agriculture expansion continues unabated.

Poaching:  Widespread and growing,  corrupt government seems involved as evidenced in a Uganda military helicopter assault from the air in Garamba National Park in neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo.  Twenty-two elephants died, their tusks later cut from their bodies.

Population growth:   The world’s fastest  population growth is taking place in Africa.  Today, there are 2-billion Africans, with an average of five children to a family.  At present growth rates, the population will double at mid-century.

Poverty:  It’s easy to understand the economic impetus behind poaching when a pound of ivory can glean as much as a $1000.  Even without widespread poverty, such prices would continue to fuel the market.  According to the NYT,  tusks from a single adult elephant can be worth more than ten times the average African income.  Reports abound that “in Tanzania, impoverished villagers are poisoning pumpkins and rolling them into the road for elephants to eat. In Gabon, subsistence hunters deep in the rain forest are being enlisted to kill elephants and hand over the tusks, sometimes for as little as a sack of salt.”

Terrorism and civil strife:  Armed bands like the Lord’s Resistance Army and the Shabab  have been on killing sprees to  secure funds for weapons. Escapees from the LRA report that LRA head, Joseph Krony, has ordered unlimited killing of elephants.  The LRA isn’t alone.  In January 2012, the worst massacre on record took place in Bouba Ndjida National Park in Cameroon with 300 elephants slaughtered by Darfur militia 600 miles from home.

Which animals are most vulnerable? 

Africa has a variegated animal population, much of it under duress.   Among familiar animals, elephants, lions, rhinos, hippos and gorillas face immense survival challenges due to human exploitation.

What is the rate of decline?

Elephants have declined by 99% since the 1930s from an estimated 10 million to about 400,000 currently.

Only 10,000 rhinos survive, representing an 85% reduction since 1970.  Of these, the black rhino, which once roamed throughout Africa, is down to just 2500 and confined to East Africa.

Lions have seen their numbers drop by 50% since the 1950s, when they were in the 40,000 range.   Ranchers have been the primary cause for their decline.

Where is smuggling most prominent?

Most of the illegal trade takes place in Asia, with Hong Kong its primary center, despite diligent control efforts.   In the last three months, custom officers  have seized three shipments of ivory with an estimated worth exceeding $6 million. An estimated 70% of ivory smuggling ends up in China.  There even exist popular online forums that give counsel on smuggling techniques.

What  feeds this demand?

Medicinal:  Rhino horns have been long regarded as an aphrodisiac.

Affluence:  The pro-longed economic boom in China has fueled the rise of an affluent class that sees possession of such contraband as reflecting status.   It’s the same principle behind why some people choose more house than they need or a price-prohibitive car for the general populace.  China, however, is not the only country driving demand.  Thailand and Vietnam engage in this activity as well. Last week, Thai custom officers seized a suitcase at Bangkok airport containing more than $500,000 worth of  rhino horns.  The perpetrator, who had just arrived from Ethiopia, has been arrested.

Ignorance:   A 2007 poll conducted in China by the International Fund for Animal Welfare showed that 70% percent of the Chinese did not realize an elephant had to be killed to  remove its tusks.

Can anything be done?

There are 177 current signatories to the Convention on In international Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), limiting trade in wild animals and their body parts.  Collectively,  the accord  provides some measure of pledged protection for 33,000  plant and animal species.  http://www.cites.org/  Unfortunately, this 1989 measure needs more teeth.   Domestic as well as international trade bans need to be implemented.  As is, apprehended poachers often receive just a slap on the wrist.

Obviously there needs to be greater domestic intervention, with serious penalties.  This takes resources and, frankly, the need for surveillance helicopters, rangers, night vision goggles, jeeps, etc.  Unfortunately, even an increase in resources may not be sufficient.  Garamba has about 150 rangers on a shoot first basis,  yet it experienced its  own horrid elephant massacre and the perpetrators escaped.

Ironically, the American taxpayer has been footing the bill for millions of dollars in foreign aid to countries like Dafur, Congo, and Uganda for military assistance to defeat the LRA.  So far, our State Department denies there is any connection between the militaries of these countries and the orchestrated killings such as in Garamba.  I would call it political expediency.  The bottom line is that Western governments can, and should, do more to apply pressure on such governments, including China, Thailand, and Vietnam.

A prosperous Africa would result in probable population stability, the pattern in the industrial nations.  This would help curtail the destruction of  habitat for agricultural expansion.   A prosperous African continent, however, seems unlikely anytime soon.

For some, the best trade off, radical as it may seem, is to begin a program of detusking, elephants and rhinos.  Obviously this is controversial and an alternative I need to study  more before making-up my own mind, but here is a site that opposes this option vehemently:   http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/opinion/cut-it-outhwww.

Africa, the world’s most troubled continent, defies any easy answers.  Meanwhile, the carnage continues.  It breaks the heart!

–-rj

FOR FURTHER READING:

http://www.cites.org/eng/prog/ETIS/index.php

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2013/01/2013181422525172.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/04/world/africa/africas-elephants-are-being-slaughtered-in-poaching-frenzy.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Global warming and its mockers, scoffers and deniers

Courtesy:yahoo.news: Destroyed home in Dunalley, Tasmania
Courtesy:yahoo.news: Destroyed home in Dunalley, Tasmania

I ran into a man in recent years, educated and professionally accomplished, who didn’t like a lot of my observations and beliefs. They were too liberal and sometimes he’d laugh or scoff.  It so happens that I believe in such things as  a woman’s right to sovereignty over her body, a more just system of taxation, dignity of death legislation, universal health care, gay rights, the priority of green living through simplicity, alternative energy, recycling and vegetarianism.  I voted the Green Party in the recent election.

The last time we conversed, more than a year ago, he admitted to global warming, but thought of it as cyclic rather  than human in origin. That’s ok with me, at least as far as a person’s right to a belief or opinion.  However, I’ve often found a lack of fair exchange when it comes to beliefs like my own, perhaps because I live in conservative Kentucky or no longer have daily access to a university campus where my views often enjoy majority status and poetry is still admired.  Perhaps views like mine simply make people feel uncomfortable with their resonance of gloom and doom, though I counter that acknowledging a problem begins its solution.

But let me confine myself to global warming at the moment. I find the facts are in:  It’s horribly real and its effects are happening universally and exponentially faster than many of our experts had projected.  Our hurricanes occur more frequently and grow more menacing; floods and drought devour our landscape.  In Europe, a prolonged heat wave this past year killed hundreds.  Storms of the century are now decade-ravages, with Katrina and Sandy coming to mind. Meanwhile, the accelerating polar meltdown threatens methane release, a component that exceeds carbon as a dangerous contributor to global warming. Sea tides are rising and coastal cities like New York have begun drawing-up contingency plans.

For another example of what’s going on, there is the current tragedy of bushfires in Tasmania, the result of prolonged drought, high temperatures, and persistent wind gusts.  As I write, 65-homes have been lost, hundreds displaced, and 110 squared miles of land scorched.  In its proximity to  a warming Antarctica, Australia is fast taking on the prototype of our global future, compounded by the increasing impotency of our technology to cope.

Southwest Australia, in particular, knows the scenario of diminished rainfall all too well.  Famed for its vineyards abetted by rich soil and ample rainfall, the region has experienced a 15% drop-off in rainfall since 1975.  Wheat, another regional staple, has been devastated, as seen in the current deluge of impoverished farmers.  Meanwhile, the metropolis city of Perth has seen a 50% decline in its surface water supply since 1975.  Sydney in eastern Australia, may face an even greater crisis if drought continues, despite having some of the world’s largest water reserves (Tim Flannery. The Weather Makers, pp. 127-129; 131).

Climate change does, however, have its ardent critics, so my ethics demand fair play.  In a recent Forbes article, Larry Bell, who comments frequently on climate and energy issues for the magazine, contends that “while most acknowledge that greenhouse warming may be a contributing factor, it is also true that a great many very informed scientists believe that any human contributions to that influence are negligible, undetectable and thereby grossly exaggerated by alarmists, while far more important climate drivers (both for warming and cooling) are virtually ignored.  Particularly consequential among these are long-and short-term effects of ocean cycles along with changes in solar activity” (“Global Warming Alarmism”).

Thank you, Larry, for just the right cough syrup for what ails us.  You wrote your article on May 28, 2012, and say at the very beginning that “global temperatures have been pretty flat despite rising CO2 levels since the big 1998 El Niño ….”. Are you not aware that we can track resilient CO2 particles over the centuries and it demonstrates a rise from 645 gigatons (billion tons) of CO2 prior to the Industrial Revolution, or 1800, to our approximate 869 gigatons currently?  I’m sufficiently aware that association doesn’t confer causality, but it should caution skeptics to reassess.  By the way, half of our present annual CO2 derives from burning fossil fuels.  God only knows the fate of our planet with world population continuing to rise and more coal-fire plants and more cars in the works.

Critics needn’t belly ache about alarmists.  They’ve got inertia on their side.  It’s near impossible, for example, to get rid of plastic bags in our stores, given corporate interests and the abstract nature of a threat seen more theoretical and distant, and thus problematical, by many consumers.  Besides, it’s just damn inconvenient to our comfort zone to change our ways. In a time of budget crisis, government is no help, deferring to present needs while defaulting on our children’s future, reminiscent of its widespread underfunding of pensions for future retirees.

Meanwhile, this just in from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA):

2012 was the warmest year ever recorded in the U. S., and second only to 1998 in the agency’s “extreme” weather listing.

It was also the driest year on record with an average rainfall of 26.57 inches, or 2.57 inches below normal.  Wildfires destroyed more than 9.2 million acres, the third highest number in our history.

Worldwide, it’s much the same.  According to World Meteorological Organizational Secretary-General Michel Jarraud, “The extent of Arctic sea ice reached a new record low. The alarming rate of its melt this year highlighted the far-reaching changes taking place on Earth’s oceans and biosphere. Climate change is taking place before our eyes and will continue to do so as a result of the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which have risen constantly and again reached new records.”

As I conclude my post, fire has also swept across large portions of New South Wales, where Sydney is located, destroying forests, pastures and flocks along with many homes.  It’s summer down under, and like here, temperatures are at record highs.

–rj

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,