The Great Hoax

I believe that almost everyone who runs a large organization is taking steps to cope with the threats posed to that organization by climate change. I believe that the leaders of countries from China to the U.S. to Europe, the governors of most states and the mayors of large cities, and the CEOs of major corporations are drawing up contingency plans – just in case the beliefs of 97 percent of the scientific community and the ever-more-sophisticated climatology models turn out to be true. I believe this includes ExxonMobil and other energy conglomerates, despite what their lobbyists are peddling. They would be fools not to. The exceptions are governors of energy-dependent states, Millennialists of all persuasions who can’t wait to get to paradise – and the Republicans who control both houses of Congress and who have made denial a litmus test of political orthodoxy, like the tax pledge, intelligent design and abortion. But members of Congress don’t run anything, and they are responsible for the future of no organization other than their reelection campaigns.

Although most Republicans actually believe climate change is real, the number of their Congressional representatives who publicly say so is shrinking. This is not based on new evidence, of which there is none, but on politics. “I think it's part of the phenomenon of the polarization of the Congress,” said former GOP Congressman Jim Greenwood.

And so while responsible people make plans, just in case, those responsible for our “general welfare” stick their heads in the sands.

Correction: A typo in Friday’s post listed Charlie Hebdo’s normal circulation as 6,000 copies. It is 60,000.

Sacred Places

Martin Litton, who died last week at 97, spent much of his life defending wild places – in particular, the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River. He and David Brower led the Sierra Club’s quixotic fight against plans in the 1960s to build “bookend” dams on either end of the Grand Canyon, orchestrating a nationwide campaign to defeat the powerful alliance of the federal government and private developers. Perhaps he died too soon. The newest plan to despoil that area is the Grand Canyon Escalade, a $1-billion tourist complex proposed for 420 acres of Navajo lands just above the confluence of the Colorado and little Colorado rivers. The developers talk about the need for “a balance”. They offer instead Hobson’s choice “between having a job and a decent place to live or saving the environment and stopping development.”

The belief in any place as sacred has become a romantic relic for affluent hippies and premodern primitives, where the environment must be sacrificed to the economy and beauty must give way to utility.

But sacred places sustain our bodies as well as our spirits. For years, photographer John Trotter has documented the destruction of the Colorado – the river and the people it sustains. His series is called simply No agua, no vida. No water, no life.

When it comes to sacred places, Martin Litton said, “what you give away will never come back – ever. When it comes to saving wilderness, we can’t be extreme enough. To compromise is to lose.”

B*gg*r Thy Neighbor

Here’s how the free market works in Ohio: Large utility companies get together with Republican lawmakers to write legislation rolling back the state’s environmental standards. The industry lobby then shepherds Senate Bill 310 through both houses, and Governor Kasich, once a strong proponent of renewable energy and fracking regulations, signs it into law. Almost immediately, FirstEnergy, the huge utility company, announces it is ending its efficiency programs – even as it simultaneously lobbies the Public Utility Commission to require distribution companies to buy energy from its two old and uncompetitive power plants.

No, no, folks, this isn’t blatant politics. It’s “the free enterprise system.”

The law’s supporters have the gall to say they are motivated to help the poor and that Ohio no longer needs alternative energy because huge new natural gas discoveries have driven down energy prices.

Gutting clean air standards doesn't just affect Ohio. For years, the prevailing southwest winds have blown the state’s industrial waste over its neighbors to the northeast, causing those states to sue the Environmental Protection Agency in 1984 over acid rain and again in 2003 over air pollution.

I can never remember. Is it “beggar thy neighbor” or “bugger thy neighbor”?

Meanwhile, UN negotiators are currently meeting in Peru to draft a global accord on greenhouse gas pollution; the presidents of China and the United States have agreed to significant cuts in carbon emissions; and the EPA has proposed strong new regulations for coal-fired power plants.

And the next Congress can’t wait to eviscerate all three.

One More Nail

There is a small organization in southeastern Pennsylvania that has devoted its entire 47-year existence to studying fresh water, becoming perhaps the most respected scientific institution in a field critical to us all. Recently, the Environmental Protection Agency asked the Stroud Water Research Center’s scientists to help clarify the Clean Water Act’s “Definition of the Waters of the United States” to ensure their continued protection. Here is the clarification: “The scientific literature clearly demonstrates that streams, regardless of their size or how frequently they flow, strongly influence how downstream waters function. Streams supply most of the water in rivers, transport sediment and organic matter, provide habitat for many species, and take up or change nutrients that could otherwise impair downstream waters.”

This sentence is enormously important and little understood. It says that small, and even intermittent, streams are the source of most clean water and their protection is critical to the entire system. Small streams supply larger rivers with up to 70% of their flow, provide food and habitat for humans and other species, and filter pollutants out of the water itself. The economic benefit of these services is almost incalculable.

So what’s the problem? Well, these are the streams that coal companies blow off mountaintops, that loggers dry up when they clear cut, that frackers contaminate in pursuit of gas, that developers fill in. These are powerful forces, for whom science is just another gun to hire and this careful, comprehensive study just one more nail in EPA’s coffin.

The Hubris of Humans

We are living, I keep reading, on the edge of the Anthropocene, the sixth massive extinction in the earth's long history, and the first since the age of the dinosaurs. As the name implies, the cause is us. So naturally we have taken it upon ourselves to fix the problem, and in “Building an Ark for the Anthropocene,” Jim Robbins discusses several projects to save endangered species and protect habitat – an effort, however exciting and encouraging, that inevitably involves choices about which species get saved. Even Noah didn’t try to play god at that level. He loaded the ark with his family and two of every other species, figuring, I guess, that he could repeople the earth but needed all the others to survive.

That’s worth remembering. So many of our efforts to save the polar bear or the rainforest or the earth itself pretend that we are doing so for their sake, instead of for our own. But the earth doesn’t care whether we survive or not. As Alan Weisman noted in “Earth Without People,” it would do just fine without us – and if you are open to the Gaia principle that the earth is a single organism, it’s pretty obvious who the cancer cells are.

My daughter, Gayley, got married on Saturday, and it is their future and their children’s that I truly care about, and that’s why it is critical to protect the wondrous diversity on which their lives will depend.

Continuing the Conversation

This week’s posts on water and watersheds brought interesting responses that made me want to continue the conversation this morning: • Oil is irreplaceable, water is replaceable when it rains. That doesn’t change your conclusion on better water management.

This is a good point, but it’s not true. Water is renewable in the sense that it moves through the water cycle (precipitation, infiltration and runoff to oceans, evaporation, precipitation), but there is not one drop more water now than there was when the earth was formed 4.5 billion years ago (or 8,000 years ago for my creationist friends). Moreover, other forms of energy (solar, hydro, gas, coal, nuclear, wind) can replace oil, but without clean fresh water, we all die.

• I'm concerned about "diverse coalitions to protect them” – “diverse” and “coalitions" are two words fraught with well-meaning intentions that don't go unpunished by corruption/incompetence. We are a republic. We elect fools.

I wasn’t thinking so much in political terms as about all the varied users of rivers – from fishermen to boaters to consumers to farmers to artists – who too often see themselves in conflict instead of as having a common interest in protecting the river and its water.

• And when population continues to expand? Perhaps mandatory limits to child bearing? Ebola, Isis, Assad, Putin?

Yes, well, there’s the frightening rub. For while the amount of water hasn’t increased in 4.5 billion (8,000) years, the seven billion people who depend on it have more than doubled since 1960.

It’s all connected.

Reclaiming the Commons

One little-noted thread running through many current issues – from the slaughters in the Middle East to the ethnic wars in Africa and Asia to the drought in the American west – is the growing irrelevance of national and state borders for either understanding modern problems or providing a framework for their solution. When European powers began conquering and settling the rest of the world, they divided it up according to their needs and rivalries, ignoring the realities they encountered. One of the most striking examples occurred in the states west of the Mississippi, where the national government imposed a two-dimensional grid on a three-dimensional landscape, without regard for the land’s physical features or native inhabitants.

Over 100 years ago, John Wesley Powell, who made the first recorded passage through the Grand Canyon despite having lost his arm at the Battle of Shiloh, argued that the only effective planning unit for western settlement was the watershed: "that area of land . . . within which all living things are inextricably linked by their common water course and where, as humans settled, simple logic demanded that they become part of a community."

Two months ago, Thomas Friedman wrote of environmentalists’ vision for the eastern Mediterranean as a “region without borders because only by managing it as an integrated river system and water basin . . . can you sustainably manage its resources for the good of all. “

We can no longer afford to carve up the only world we have. We must learn now to share it.

Nor Any Drop to Drink

Water, water, everywhere, And all the boards did shrink;

Water, water, everywhere,

Nor any drop to drink.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

This morning I read a story about the New York Triathlon, which starts with 4,000 swimmers jumping into the Hudson River. “It’s strange to do a swim where you’re wearing goggles and you still can’t see your hand in front of you,” said one competitor of a river that has signs warning about the hazards of the untreated sewage.

It’s amazing how many articles are directly or indirectly about water, from the front pages to the sports pages, most of which are not good news. At least three-quarters of the area of Arizona, Kansas, New Mexico and Nevada are suffering from severe drought. In California the figure is 100%, and 10 of its cities are in fast running out of water. In Detroit, the city cut water supplies to thousands of people struggling to pay their bills, while Toledo is under a tap-water ban because of algae blooms in Lake Erie. ISIS is moving to take control of the Mosul dam, “the most dangerous dam in the world,” whose failure could send a 65-foot tidal wave across northern Iraq.

The earth is made up primarily of water – about 332,500,000 cubic miles of it, in fact – but as the ancient mariner lamented, almost none of it is fit to drink. Yet, as we continue to fret about oil, we continue to waste and pollute the source of life.

The Scalia Rule

Question: To which have humans, in our finite wisdom, granted more protection: nature or corporations? To answer I must invoke the Scalia Rule, which posits that a nation with a Justice named Scalia protects the rights of corporations far more vigorously than the rights of nature.

In Scalia countries, corporations are persons with rights of speech and religion. They even have special privileges – such as the right to buy entire politicians – unavailable to ordinary people. As for nature, the Book of Genesis, which some believe the foundation of our Constitution, gives people “dominion . . . over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”

This is increasingly not true in other countries – and even some U.S. communities – where the idea of “ecosystem rights” is taking root. The first was Ecuador, which incorporated the rights of nature – including its “right to be restored” – in its 2008 constitution. Lest you think this is some mystical-preindustrial-voodoo-noble savage hocus pocus, the section was written by Thomas Linzey, a central Pennsylvania lawyer.

And listen to William O. Douglas’ stirring dissent in Sierra Club v. Morton (1972): “The voice of the inanimate object, therefore, should not be stilled . . . [and] before these priceless bits of Americana (such as a valley, an alpine meadow, a river, or a lake) are forever lost or are so transformed as to be reduced to the eventual rubble of our urban environment, the voice of the existing beneficiaries of these environmental wonders should be heard.”

Stick Your Head in the (Tar) Sand

As it promised to do in exchange for the withdrawal of a shareholder proposal on “stranded assets”, ExxonMobil has issued a report on its plans for managing the risks in the event that market and regulatory responses to climate change reduce the value of its oil and gas reserves. “The report, 'Managing the Risks'” according to Natasha Lamb of Arjuna Capital, which filed the original proposal, “forgot to address one thing: the risks.” Instead of offering a plan for dealing with a lower-carbon future, Exxon blithely dismissed its possibility. It’s too expensive, said the company, overstating the costs; the public won’t tolerate it, disregarding the growing concerns. Unlike members of Congress, Exxon doesn't deny the threat of climate change; it simply ignores it. And so, as T. Boone Pickens asserts, America continues its march into the future without any energy plan at all. Is Exxon simply deceitful, promising an honest report on a matter of importance to its owners (i.e., its shareholders) and delivering a whitewash, marked by bland generalities and forecasting a future consonant with its corporate fairytale? Or is it a dinosaur, unable to adjust its lumbering 20^th-century body to 21^st-century realities? Or is it just arrogant?

When members of the Harvard community demanded the university divest its Exxon stock, President Drew Faust responded that Harvard’s $32-billion endowment “is not an instrument to impel social or political change.” There may be a compelling reason to divest: under its current management, Exxon seems a lousy long-term investment.

Five Feet High and Rising

Forty years ago I went to visit an old man on Prince Edward Island who had built an ark in his back yard. He had started it after Jesus had appeared to him one night on top of an apple tree. Crazy stuff, I know, and yet the old man wove a captivating tale of his visions, his beliefs, his carpentry and craftsmanship. He didn’t know when the flood was coming. He just knew it was coming. The day the news of the irreversible melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet made headlines, the Dow Jones average closed up 112 points. So, should we believe the rising markets or the rising oceans? Have stock prices already discounted the effects of climate change? Are only climate skeptics with snorkels left on Wall Street? More likely, though, as Andrew Revkin noted, the shrugging off of climate change has to do with basic differences in our use of language and our understanding of time. The language of science does not translate well into news headlines (and appears to be completely beyond the grasp of Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma); and geologic time isn’t much use for quarterly forecasts. We don't know when the flood is coming. But the science is clear: climate change is real and it is accelerating, and the real lunacy in this story is the refusal of Congress to confront it.

One of these days I might take a ride back to Prince Edward Island and see if that ark is still there.

Gas Man Fights "Unbearable" Erection in North Texas Town

Rex Tillerson and his wife, Renda, of Bartonville joined suit with neighbors to demand the demolition of a 160-foot water tower near their North Texas ranch. The plaintiffs claim the tower is illegal and unsightly, and they oppose Cross Timbers Water Supply Corp’s plan to sell “water to oil and gas explorers for fracking,” arguing the tower compromises their right to live in an “upscale community free of . . . structures that might . . . adversely impact the rural lifestyle they sought to enjoy.” Rex and Renda have joined a growing movement of families, across all walks of life, who are fighting back against corporate intrusions into their back-to-the-land dreams. Indeed, their concerns about “big water” echo those expressed last month by Dune Lankard on the 25th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez fiasco: “It was more than just an oil spill,” Lankard, a member of the Eyak Alaska Eagle clan, told NPR. “We had an Alaskan dream, and that dream was intact for several thousands of years. And our relationship was with that land and sea and all of those animals . . . And so when that was disrupted, that fabric of our way of life and our Alaskan dream was also stolen from us.”

In other news:

• FoxBusiness reported last week that Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson’s 2013 compensation fell to $28.1 million.

• The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Tillersons have dropped out of the lawsuit.

• Exxon has pledged to report in September on the environmental impact of fracking.

• Tomorrow is Earth Day.

Note: I have a memory of a variation on the headline from 50 years ago, but extensive research (i.e. googling) produced no source to credit.

Janzen on Diversity

Dan Janzen, MacArthur Fellow and Kyoto Prize winner, divides his time between the University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches biology, and Costa Rica, where he and his wife, Winnie Hallwachs, devote their lives to protecting  Guanacaste Conservation Area, one of the most diverse places on earth. Janzen is a blunt and colorful speaker on the importance of diversity, as shown in this excerpt from an article by Richard Coniff in takepart: [I asked Janzen] about ‘keystone species’ – the ones on which whole ecosystems depend – and the ripple effects when such a species goes extinct. “You tell me what species on the planet is not an important part of the life cycle,” he demanded. “As for so-called keystone species, that simply means a species whose removal happens to create a set of ripples big enough for a two-meter-tall, diurnal, nearly deaf, nearly dumb, nearly odor-incompetent, nearly taste-incompetent, urban invasive species to see, or bother to see, the ripple."

We manage not to care, or we pretend not to notice, that the “extinction of any species will impact the lives of a number of other species.” Humans have been doing that with “the attendant shrug of the shoulders,” since the Pleistocene. “We specialize in the elimination of species to make space for us and our domesticates, and we are now busily polishing off the entire field to zero competition, with very few of ‘them,’ leaving ourselves as the last competitor standing. Kind of obvious how that is going to end.”

Mud

Unlike many of my friends, I thrived this winter on the invigorating air and blinding beauty of bright blue skies and white snow (before plowing). But I am ready for the suggestion of spring now in the air, with its lengthening days and the stirring of life anxious to be born. And then there is the mud, ubiquitous, oozing under foot, forming deep tire ruts in the lane. Mud, the curse of early spring, the stuff sleazy politicians dig up on one another. But mud is but the mixture of soil and water, the two critical ingredients in growing our food – the same ingredients that modern agriculture seems bent on destroying: half the earth’s topsoil has disappeared in the last 150 years and water scarcity is endemic in many parts of the world. So I was interested to read that the new farm bill reflects changing American priorities. It provides unprecedented support to small farmers, organic farming and healthy food, all three of which have received the back of the hand in previous bills written by big agriculture. Passed with bipartisan support (although no Republicans showed up for the signing), the bill reflects changing attitudes in the country more than in Congress, where some are still slinging mud at Michelle Obama’s campaign for healthy eating. But childhood obesity is down by 43%, and small local and organic movements are spreading across the landscape, spurred on by dedicated young farmers and demanding consumers. It is the season of mud -- and of hope.

The End of the Road

The trouble with kicking the can down the road is that someday the road will come to an end. The biggest can now on the political highway is the Keystone XL Pipeline, and the State Department’s final environmental analysis that construction will not significantly affect overall carbon emissions (primarily because Canada will develop the Tar Sands anyway) makes it hard to evade much longer. The pipeline is the defining issue of the Obama presidency. It lays bare the conflicting philosophies of the two major wings of the Democratic Party: economic growth and environmental protection. And when your (and your opponent’s) entire 2012 election campaign can be reduced to a single word – jobs – you’ve kind of painted yourself into a corner. Bridging this divide – which dwarfs the Republicans’ Wall Street/Tea Party split that obsesses the media – is the most important issue of our time. The pressure to accept the pro-growth arguments is enormous – it will create jobs, produce North American energy, spur the economy; and “if we don’t do it, someone else will.”

Politically, this is a lose-lose issue for Obama: the party’s progressive wing has a long tradition of defining economic growth as the pathway to social justice (and also to campaign contributions); while environmentalists, who insist that such a position is obsolete and ultimately ruinous, have dug in their heels on Keystone. But I also believe it is the president’s greatest opportunity, a chance to lead a national conversation on how we will live together on this earth without destroying the things that make life possible.

Note: This post did not go out yesterday because an amazing sleet storm took down limbs, trees and my power line. I’m not suggesting it was manmade. I’m just saying it was some storm.

So Much Heat. So Little Light

There is an important discussion to be had about global warming. But we aren’t having it. A friend’s response to my last blog got me thinking about why the debate over climate change is so overheated and so unenlightening. The reason, I think, is simple: We have confused two different conversations – one scientific, the other political; one over, the other barely begun.

The scientific debate is over. There is no longer any doubt that global warming is real and that humans play a significant role in exacerbating it. Contrary assertions by corporate interests and right-wing zealots are self-serving hot air that diverts attention from the discussion we should be having, which is what to do about climate change. This is a question of politics, and everyone’s voice should be heard – even those who say we should do nothing. For there is a difference between doing nothing after debating the consequences and just sticking our heads in the sand. Perhaps, like the dinosaurs, our dominion over the earth is a transitory niche rather than evidence of our immortality, and there isn’t much we can do. Certainly, environmentalists’ admonitions that we live for the seventh generation must sound callous to those whose children are starving. Perhaps new technology will save us, or creative entrepreneurs. Perhaps we will change our lifestyles or our values. Perhaps we will simply adjust.

Just because the Flat Earth Society still exists doesn’t mean it should be part of the geography curriculum. We need to get real about climate change.

January Morning

Like many other places across America, the coast of Maine has had some freaky weather of late. Last week’s frigid temperatures, which turned waterfalls here into ice sculptures, made global warming doubters positively giddy (although I was heartened to read that the Obama administration is, however quietly, pushing climate initiatives behind the scenes). Then came the pouring rains and yesterday morning’s welcome sunrise, which brought with it a soft blue sky and warmed my aging body as only sunshine can. A southwest breeze carried the resonant sound of waves breaking on the rocks, and the few birds still here woke up singing. It was a day to be outside. The water that had been pent up in ice was suddenly released into mountain streams, and its exuberance brought the mountain itself to life. Even for simpletons like me (are those prints of a deer heading north or a rabbit going south?), there is so much to learn here, things that the computer-simulated models  favored in science classes cannot teach. None is more important than that we are part of something astounding, a world we seek to manipulate but do not fully understand.

I remember at times like these the words of my friend Charity, who has lived most of her life in Detroit’s ravaged neighborhoods, and who was asked why she cared about saving Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which she would probably never see. “My work,” she said, “is in the city, but my heart is in the wild.”

“Why Should Dreaming Be a Privilege?”

While Ted Cruz makes headlines trying to bring down the government, I turn to people who are building things. This week in Louisville, Kentucky, nine entrepreneurs, some of them very young, presented their ideas to a group of investors. Both entrepreneurs and investors are part of a growing movement called “impact investing”, in which profitability is one criterion in a business that also addresses social and environmental issues – the so-called “triple bottom line”. The focus of the three-day event, presented by Village Capital, is the intersection of energy and agriculture, and its goal is to encourage entrepreneurs who address major societal problems.

The ideas have been imaginative, grounded and exciting for me: an insect-monitoring device that reduces pesticide use; a precision irrigation system; a plan to repurpose “gray water” for urban hydroponic growers; platforms to determine shellfish size before harvesting, streamline solar panel installations and lower costs for electricity consumers in East Africa; a battery that will double the energy and life of current batteries at half the cost.

My two favorites are a patent-pending technology to measure crop-water use over an entire field and a plan to turn old electric car batteries into low-cost power packs for schools in rural India, where electricity is both expensive and unreliable. “Why,” asked company founder Shiv Rajendran, “should dreaming be a privilege?”

I believe in a positive government, but I am certain that America’s future has more to do with nine idealists in Louisville than Ted Cruz’s claptrap on Capitol Hill.

Domination, Stewardship, Communion

On June 30, 1864, in the midst of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant, which protected the beautiful California valley from development, the first such use of federal power in history. In 1984 Yosemite National Park was designated a World Heritage Site. Today, even with 95% of the park protected as wilderness, the National Park Service has proposed changes to soften the human footprint on the vulnerable landscape. The debate about how accessible and commercial our parks should be is not new, and it affects every park in the country. It is part of the broader question of humans’ relationship with the natural world, and over the last millennium three distinct attitudes have evolved. The most powerful is domination, which sees nature as existing for human use. It has its origins in monotheistic religions whose God exists outside the world, most famously in the Book of Genesis, where God tells Adam to subdue the earth. Because humans have proved pretty good at that, there arose a movement to mitigate it. Accepting man’s dominion, it emphasized the need for stewardship to protect Earth’s resources for future generations. Finally, the belief that we are an integral part of the natural world asks us to hold it, not as a collection of resources, but as the source of all life, including our own. It is an attitude “realists” condemn as naïve and mystical, and yet it may ultimately be the only way to protect the earth from our power to destroy it.

Beauty and the Pest

No, not another article on Michelle Bachmann, but on the wild geese, whose behavior this year seems connected to overpopulation and diminishing habitat. Canada geese no longer bother to migrate past the Mid-Atlantic states, where they find mild winters and plenty to eat. And so a bird of great beauty, once hunted almost to extinction, threatens to overrun its food, its housing and its welcome. Our two small ponds have traditionally drawn two breeding pairs, as geese are both monogamous and territorial. Some of our neighbors, tired of the excrement, have put wire mesh across their ponds, and so this year we have three families plus a number of bachelors (or bachelorettes) who have no communal role and nowhere else to go. Although the monogamous geese have always fiercely protected both mate and brood, the cramped quarters have produced a new level of bickering and bullying, particularly against the single members, who are gratuitously attacked and put to flight. One flew hissing for me yesterday. I ducked, and we have kept our distance since.

The parents are now teaching the first batch to fly, and it is wonderful to watch the goslings tentatively flap their feathering wings. It’s also time for them to go. To paraphrase the proverb, “Don’t set foot too frequently in thy neighbor’s [yard], lest he become weary of you.” And indeed it is harder to love your neighbor when he craps all over your lawn than it is when he is flying north, in a majestic V, at 4,000 feet.