Combating invasive species in Rochester, NY during Climate Change

 

While we continue to battle the Emerald Ash Borer (EAB) that is devastating our ash trees, we should ponder the issue of invasive species as our Rochester, NY region warms. This is alarming because ash trees are almost 8% of all trees in NY State. Back in 2008 the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) put out a public comment on trying to stop this bug that was making its way north, but by 2011 we had our first sighting. We have since enacted laws prohibiting the transporting of firewood and many learned how to save some favorite ash trees (a chemical inoculation), but this is a battle we are going to lose. By the time you notice infestations like the EAB, it’s probably too late to do anything but control the rate of tree loss. On top of that, Climate Change will allow the EAB to spread faster.

Also, looming over our Great Lake’s water is the probable infestation of the Asian Carp that could potentially transform the lakes’ ecology. A species like the Asian Carp is able to do this by stripping the food web of plankton, the lakes’ fundamental resource (from National Wildlife’s The Asian Carp Threat to the Great Lakes.) We’ve known for years that the carp has been making its way up the Mississippi River towards our precious waters. And we’ve tried many ways to stop it from entering the Great Lakes, but the inconsistent funding to thwart its infestation means we’re probably going to get them any day now. (Some, who are checking Great Lakes’ water for carp DNA, think they’re already here.)

And it all makes you wonder: When is a good time to start planning for invasive species? For example, when should we have started searching for the Zebra Mussel, an invader from the Baltic Sea that made its way to the Great Lakes and Finger Lakes via ships’ ballast tanks coming through the St. Lawrence Seaway? Should we have considered all possible hitchhikers that might make it to the Great Lakes, from all parts of the world, then try and figure out which ones would be the most likely threats? Seems impossibly daunting.

Compound all this with Climate Change. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines invasive species as “…an alien species whose introduction does or is likely to cause economic or environmental harm or harm to human health.” (Invasive Species, EPA). [Note that not all non-native species are ‘invasive’: the honey bee is not currently considered ‘invasive’.] But others think invasive species have always infiltrated ecologies by air and water--and humans. Invasive species are just part of the evolutionary process that makes everything more robust. According to this view, we’ve just become too comfortable with our cushy surroundings and should learn to see the big picture:

“The good news from all this is that nature emerges as resilient and adaptable, able to bounce back from the worst we can throw at it.” (True Nature: Revising Ideas On What is Pristine and Wild, 5/16/2013 Environment 360)

The trouble with this ecological laissez-faire attitude is that even if this view is true (and arm-chair environmentalists just don’t understand the science of the matter) is that Climate Change renders a lot of historical adaptation scenarios null and void. While it is critical in Climate Change planning to revisit just what invasive species are and what a pristine environment is, it is a fantastic leap of faith in nature’s resilience to think nature can handle anything thrown at it. The speed at which the planet is warming is unprecedented, requiring both native and nonnative plants and animals to adapt far quicker and with more variables than they have had to before. Think about thousands of manmade chemicals that have entered our environment since the Second Industrial Revolution. There are no precedents to the kind of Climate Change we are going to experience. Our best bet for combating invasive species during Climate Change is to get our heads around the comprehensiveness of the Climate Change issue, and then act accordingly.

Hopeless trying to adapt to Climate Change without saying it

 

While many of us were pleased with the nod to our environment in the 2013 State of the City Address by Rochester’s Mayor Richards, there was no mention of Climate Change. Devoting a paragraph to park, trail, and water system improvements is not enough in a time of warming. Mayor Richards’ heroic efforts (unheralded in his address) in improving Rochester’s active transportation system, which really will lower greenhouse gases, still need to be directed towards connecting the dots regarding the greatest peril to our city--and all cities in the world.

Syracuse has no such reservations about the critical need to plan appropriately: City of Syracuse Sustainability Plan. They get it:

While it is important for the City to minimize the impacts of climate change through ag­gressive climate action and sustainability initiatives, scientists conclude that communi­ties will inevitably be impacted by climate changes that are already occurring. Impacts such as variations in the frequency and intensity of storm and drought events, which ef­fect aging water, transportation and energy infrastructure, increased demand for public health services due to heat stress, and the introduction of foreign and invasive species to natural systems, agriculture, and forest ecosystems, are likely to affect the Central New York region as a result of climate change. (Page 22, Syracuse Sustainability Plan)

Some may say that the political and economic climate is not ripe for taking action on Climate Change, so don’t kill the good in the pursuit of the perfect. It is true that these are hard times for addressing something as wildly controversial (controversial in the US, that is) as Climate Change. President Obama cannot even get his nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency (his own cabinet post) installed: Gina McCarthy's nomination in doubt, angering Democrats. Thus, a political party is willing to threaten our environment for their gains. I’m beginning to think that the GOP in the last decade has been just as wrongheaded on Climate Change as the Democrats were on slavery in the 1850’s.

But without connecting present environmental issues with Climate Change, we will continue to suggest ad hoc solutions to a world that no longer exists. Doing some good will not be good enough on a planet that is warming quickly. Note this week, SCHUMER LAUNCHES PLAN FOR FIRST-EVER RAPID RESPONSE GRANT PROGRAM TO COMBAT AQUATIC INVASIVE SPECIES BEFORE THEY SPREAD. First of all, many aquatic invasive species have already spread so completely that extracting them may do more harm than good. Trust me, we are not going to ratchet back the Zebra Mussel’s pervasive effect on our lakes. Even more so in a time of warming, the term invasive species will become blurred as endemic and invasive species both struggle to gain a foothold on a planet dramatically shifting:

Higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels can potentially increase growth of many plants, particularly those with the C3 photosynthetic pathway growing under optimum conditions. The magnitude of the carbon dioxide effect varies widely among species and, even without climate change, could alter species composition in some ecosystems by favoring some species over others. Many fast-growing species, including many invasive plants and aggressive weed species, tend to show greater growth stimulation than slow-growing species and can gain a competitive advantage at high carbon dioxide concentrations (Ziska, 2003). (Page 125, Report 11-18 Response to Climate Change in New York State (ClimAID)

We keep trying to solve environmental problems in the same old way we always have by eliminating the symptoms instead the cause. (For example, we dump more pesticides on crops instead of finding out if there are more insects migrating to a warmer climate and living longer because it’s not as cold here in NYS as it used to be.) Climate Change will force us (hopefully, sooner rather than later) to solve environmental problems realistically and sustainably instead of our fruitless attempts to have our way of life and force the environment to comply with it.

Not going to happen: Breaking news: Humanity’s ‘wait and see’ approach to Climate Change is not working: Carbon Dioxide Level Passes Long-Feared Milestone The level of the most important heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide, has passed a long-feared milestone, scientists reported on Friday, reaching a concentration not seen on the earth for millions of years. (May 10, 2013) New York Times

Zero Wasting events in Rochester, NY

 

Rochester, NY has a lot of outdoor events, especially in the summer. It’s one thing to make these events recycling events, where your guests feel good about their environmental footprint. It’s a step beyond to make your event Zero Waste. That means hundreds, maybe thousands, of folks come to your event and leave with little impact on our environment. Food, plates, silverware, packaging, wrappers, drinking cups, and all those tasty ingestibles and their accouterments we bring to bear on special occasions get sorted, recycled, or composted.

Properly speaking, zero waste is where you design products so that the end-of-pipe diversion gets transformed; it is a system designed with environmental health in mind from the very start-- "cradle to cradle." But until we reach that sustainable Holy Grail, we can design our consumption-intensive events as environmentally friendly as possible.

It takes a little more planning than the business-as-usual way of creating events, where you call up all sorts of vendors who bring stuff to your event and then hire a single trash hauler to take it away to who-knows-where. A Zero Waste event requires that you get everyone, especially the event planners and coordinators, on board with thinking environmentally. Without this vision thing, it won’t work. If the key players come to the table kicking and screaming about all the extra trouble this will make, it’ll be a dud. (In the future, if we’re lucky enough to have one after a couple of centuries of seriously trashing and warming* our planet, environmentally friendly events will be the norm.)

First off, to even approach zero waste, you’ll need to start planning early. You’ll need a recycling company, a waste company, a composing company, vendors with recyclable containers, lots of bins, lots of signs (to direct and educate the public), and lots of volunteers to help instruct your guests where to place waste properly. It sounds a bit much, but check out this guide from the great state of Connecticut: “An inside guide to event recycling.” Each region will be different depending on how dedicated businesses, government, and the public are to maintaining a healthy environment--and what the recycling market is like.

Some events in our Rochester region that have gone nearly Zero Waste are the annual Greentopia and Ganondagan Festivals. There are probably more. Presently, our Rochester Sierra Club’s Zero Waste Committee and a local enterprise dedicated to sustainability called Epiphergy are helping to make the Rochester Tour De Cure event on June 2^nd a zero waste event. Zero Waste always looks good on your event.

I’m not going to rhapsodize much on the value of making your event as environmentally friendly as possible—except to say that much of our trash is toxic to our children, and improperly dealing with trash will make adapting and mitigating Climate Change more problematic. Not to mention, landfills are really, really bad for our environment:

“Landfills are the largest source of anthropogenic methane emissions in the U.S., and the impact of landfill emissions in the short term is grossly underestimated — methane is 72 times more potent than CO2 over a 20-year time frame.” (Page 7, Stop Trashing the Climate)

Key to a healthy climate of zero waste events is a political and business environment that has the incentive and desire to help make our region’s events trash free. Without easy access to recycling services (i.e., hauling and sorting), it will be more difficult to orchestrate all the elements needed to make our events zero waste.

It’s also crucial that the local media keep a keen eye on how recycling is actually being accomplished. For example, The Investigative Post in the Buffalo region holds its leaders and institutions accountable for increasing the recycling rate: Housing authority ignores recycling mandate.

It’s easy at this point in time, where environmental concerns are thought to be external to our existence, to create events that throw all trash into a single stream and create the illusion that everything is being taken care of properly. More difficult is steering this great wasteful system of ours towards a more sustainable path, where environmental knowledge rules over political, business, and social convenience.

* As of this writing, the Carbon Dioxide on our atmosphere is passing 400 parts per million. “The speed at which Earth’s atmosphere has reached that density of carbon dioxide, a known greenhouse gas, has scientists alarmed.”(Earth's greenhouse gas levels approach 400-ppm milestone   (May 1, 2013) LA Times)

No magical agreement on Climate Change possible | temperatures rise

 

Those of us who have hoped for a magical, Big Bang, or global agreement on Climate Change, may feel disappointed at Christiana Figueres’s (Executive Secretary, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) conclusion that we cannot have one. Certainly, the past attempts at Climate Change negotiations among the world powers have been dismal. So much so that we’re happy countries are still talking to each other about Climate Change at all—regardless of what they say. Progress on Climate Change, according to Figueres, will be ‘incremental.’ (From Global Meltdown: Christiana Figueres, Climate One.)

Incremental progress, a rate comfortable to nations around the world, sounds comforting, until you realize the intractability of this issue. That once-in-a-thousand-year heat wave that hit France in 2003 and killed 15,000 people is predicted by climate models to occur every other year by the 2040’s. (Read “The Weather of the Future: Heat Waves, Extreme Storms, and Other Scenes from a Climate-Changed Planet” by Heidi Cullen.) Our planet is also reaching a historic baseline soon, an ominous number that must come down. As of this writing (4/26/2013), CO2 concentration is a whopping 398.36 ppm. In 1850’s (and thousands of years before that) it was 280ppm. “So the hard reality is that we could be looking at 530 ppm by 2050 and a lot more ...” (Six degrees of separation for the planet). You can watch this figure rise on The Keeling Curve, a daily record of atmospheric carbon dioxide from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

It doesn’t sound like our environment is going to wait until we find some magical way of turning down our carbon-induced thermostat. Climate modeling, which is getting pretty accurate, is instead revealing a world predicted to get very warm. Those bottom-up strategies, where we do things only locally to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a business-as usual-kind-of-way aren’t really going to work. Yet, we keep thinking they will.

I’ll admit that many of our attempts to clean up our air and make our transportation more environmentally and even pedestrian-friendly have come a long way. But they will not solve the problem at hand. They are not going to help us adapt to a very warm future (because of the lag time, where much of the heat we are generating now is getting absorbed by the oceans—for awhile anyway) or stop greenhouse gases from increasing.

There are things we should be doing locally, even incrementally, to prepare for Climate Change, but they’ll remain ad hoc and delusionary unless they are tied strongly to world-wide Climate negotiations.

One of the things we should be doing in New York State to prepare and adapt to Climate Change is cleanup those Brownfields, which will help make our environment more resilient and robust in a time of extreme stress. But we have a long way to go, as we won’t even do that without getting nagged by the NYS Comptroller: DiNapoli: State's Brownfield Cleanup Program Needs To Reach More Sites; Be More Cost-Effective

The just-released Genesee Transportation Council (GTC) DRAFT 2014-2017 Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) Update Project List mentions a lot about road maintenance but not in the context of Climate Change, even though we know Transportation plays a critical role in how we will adapt to and mitigate Climate Change. Neither does the City of Rochester’s Complete Streets Policy—though both measures are well-intentioned and bottom up. And, the New York State Department of Environment Conservation just launched the Watchable Wildlife Program, where you can go places and see our vanishing wildlife, but nary a word about how all those wonderful creatures that designed and maintained our environment for thousands of years are going to be protected from Climate Change.

Incremental means doing things in increments towards a goal. If you don’t mention the goal, adapting and mitigating Climate Change, you aren’t being incremental, you’re dissembling.

Though Climate Change seems very fuzzy to many, it’s not so phantasmagoric to the experts. The IPCC - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a collection of climate scientist from around the world, is coming out with the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) on Climate Change this year and next. My guess is the reports won’t show that we have magically solved Climate Change by the lack of international cooperation, local solutions that avoid connecting the dots to Climate Change, or simply denying it altogether. If this all seems complicated and depressing to you, remember once we allow our carbon dioxide parts-per-million in our atmosphere to get to 530ppm, all our worldly problems will dissolve into just one. Nothing else will matter.

Air quality in Rochester, NY as we head into Climate Change

According to the American Lung Association’s report “State of the Air 2012”, Monroe County received a grade of ‘C’ for ground-level ozone. That means Monroe County had four orange-alert days.  That’s up from the 2011 report when we had got an ‘F’. Back in 2004, Rochester was ranked 43^rd worst metropolitan area for air quality. (Dirty Air, Dirty Power.) And, the last time the EPA measured Monroe County for ground-level ozone in 1997, we received a ‘marginal’ grade, up from the previous ‘nonattainment’ grade.

This progress seems to be good news until you consider the complexity of air quality. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) measures carbon monoxide, ground-level ozone, lead, nitrogen dioxide, particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, and mercury.  But even the EPA only measures a fraction of the air pollutants that assault our lungs. There are at least 188 hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) that the Clean Air Act does not establish air quality standards for.  You can find out a variety of toxins (called a toxic release inventory (TRI)) being released in our Rochester area by checking the Right To Know Network. Or, go to Scorecard and punch in your zip code to find out who’s polluting near your home.

However, these air quality figures don’t explain their full impact on the flora and fauna in our region; and, none of them measure how all this will factor in determining the effects of Climate Change on our public health and our environment. Insects that feed on our agriculture, digest organic waste and provide nourishment for other creatures are affected by air pollution. Fish are affected by acid rain pouring down from nearby power plants. Birds, amphibians, our pets are affected by poor air quality.  All this gets magnified by Climate Change, but how?  It’s not that folks haven’t been trying to figure out the impacts of Climate Change on air quality, or even the impacts of air quality on wildlife, it’s that we know too little about how so many air pollutants that we don’t monitor or measure will react to each other as our atmosphere warms—a scenario our species has never experienced.

Sorry to be so dreary.  It’s nice when we can boil down figures like air quality into easy-to-comprehend grades of concern, but it’s also delusionary. If you only measure a relative few of the air pollutants in only a relatively few places (much of the world is not monitoring all air pollutants), on only a relatively few species (humans and some trophy animal species) and don’t factor in all this into your Climate Change studies, you are making plans for a planet that only exists in your mind.  In the real world this ocean of air that extends about seven miles up has been filling up with everything we’ve been throwing into it.  If you can picture how a fish might feel when a factory dumps PCB’s into its breathing apparatus, then you can imagine the contaminants our lungs have been sucking in besides fresh clean air.

In the real world our environment that doesn’t play politics, doesn’t heed economic rules, couldn’t care less about our ability to absorb and deal with bad news; it operates with what it has.  What it has, what our planet has been breathing in since the Industrial Revolution, is too many greenhouse gases mixed with too many manmade toxins. What does progress on improving our air quality mean if we cherry-pick air pollution issues according to our desire to monitor, measure, and police them?  What does sustainability mean if we will only consider endless growth fueled by greenhouse gases, which are mixed with god knows what?

The case against litter

 

Aliens from outer space could be excused for believing that our species is inordinately fond of littering. We litter a lot. We litter on the land; we litter on the beaches; we litter in the hills, on the seas and oceans; we litter on just about anything and anywhere. To get an idea of the extent of this crazy propensity of ours to litter see “Trashed |No Place for Waste,”coming to a theatre near you. Given all the activities about the universe a sentient being might engage in—eating, building, procreating, thinking, and fighting—creating and tossing waste products improperly, with complete abandonment, without consent, and in inappropriate locations must be the strangest of all.

Litter provides few nutrients, except to those creatures indiscriminate in their eating habits, like rats and some insects we rather not attract. Litter poisons animals and plants and befouls water and soil. Litter isn’t especially attractive, unless you’re a Dadaist hell bent on making a point about the absurdity of litter. Litter doesn’t provide jobs. As a matter of fact volunteers from around the world must give their time to pick up those cigarette butts, diapers, plastic wrappers, straws, instant trash (use once, then throw away) drinking cups, and the unimaginable remains from innumerable things we use and then discard.

Just this weekend, Monroe County brought over five-hundred folks together to PickUpTheParks. Soon the City of Rochester will begin its yearly Clean Sweep program to pick up other people’s litter. People in the thousands will pick up the litter of those in the tens of thousands. They will pick up litter along our walking/biking trails, litter in our gutters, which can get into our storm water systems and into our drinking water. Litter on our sidewalks, our lawns, our parking lots, our streets, our playgrounds, and those ubiquitous plastic bags in our trees that will remain blowing in the wind until someone else disposes of them properly.

If you are concerned about the state of litter, on Tuesday, April 23, 2013 from 4:30pm – 6:00pm @ Rochester Greenovation,1199 E. Main St, Rochester, NY 14609, our Zero Waste Committee Meeting will include the filming of “Bag It The Movie: Is Your Life Too Plastic?” We’ll have a discussion on local attempts to ban the plastic bag in our region.

Though litter seems to be everywhere and has always existed, this isn’t so. Plastic shopping bags, for example, didn’t exist before 1960. (Read Plastic Ocean by Captain Charles Moore.) . Litter is a relatively new human phenomenon with no worldly value, an externality of our economic system. There is no litter in Nature as there is no waste; everything gets assimilated, reused, or becomes part of a dispersal system for seeds and soil enrichment.

So why litter at all? Littering isn’t especially fun, as most litter simply flutters down to the ground in a lackluster way and doesn’t have a nice bounce to it like a ball. It doesn’t enhance our attractiveness. It doesn’t increase our chances of survival. It doesn’t convey information, except that we are a strange species who can oftentimes be seen as a bipedal creature with a hazardous trail of stuff soiling our existence.

I recommend that we don’t litter. Just saying…

Earth Day 2013, stepping up to the plate in Rochester, NY

Earth Day events have expanded beyond just a single day.  April 22^nd has morphed since the original Earth Day in 1970 into a quasi Earth Month. Eventually, I predict, this special day will transform completely into an Earth ForeverAfter Epoch. The time of a willful denial of our life-support system will be but a dismal parenthesis in our otherwise stellar existence.  We’ll practice Earth Day every day.  Or, we’ll perish.

In and around the Rochester, NY region (I’ve included our friends in Buffalo and Syracuse) we are noticing more and more environmental events coalescing around early spring.  This means many individuals, groups, schools, businesses, and governmental institutions are stepping up to the plate on taking responsibility for our planet by educating their communities and spearheading environmental actions.  

Find out about our Energy future at the Ninth Annual SYMPOSIUM ON ENERGY in the 21st CENTURY; find out about Water Quality issues at the Sierra Club’s 15th Annual Environmental Forum “Great Lakes Need Great Friends: Protecting the Great Lakes Forever; find out about Wildlife at The Butterflies of the Genesee Land Trust; find out about Recycling at Buffalo’s Enviro-Fair; or learn about local Transportation solutions at the biannual Genesee-Finger Lakes Active Transportation Summit (G-FLATS) 2013. 

Actions you can take include joining a letter-writing party (free pizza) to stop Fracking near Rochester’s drinking water. You can help remove litter from our Monroe County parks at the 4th annual Pick Up the Parks event; host a local screening of Rochester’s very own Climate Change film documentary Comfort Zone by sending a request to producers@comfortzoneproject.com; or comment by April 12^th on this federal Climate Change report: Federal Advisory Committee Draft Climate Assessment Report.  (This last action is local in the sense that our climate on planet Earth is local.)   

Also, celebrate Earth Day at Greenovation’s Earth Week Celebration. Or see how Tim DeChristopher’s Release from Prison Inspires Earth Day Theatrical Release of Bidder 70 , a Rochester experience of this nationwide Earth Day event.  I’ve just been whetting your appetite; there are many more events, actions, and celebrations in our region.  Find out about them here.

While we celebrate progress on focusing humanity’s attention on our environment, we must realize that ad hoc progress on environmental health isn’t enough. We know more about our planet’s workings and plight than we did in the 1970’s. If the Climate Change crisis has done us any good at all, it has motivated scientists all over the planet to gather information about planetary temperatures and to learn in the process how Earth’s ecosystems work as a whole unit. We know that extreme weather events around the world are related to overall temperature rising.  We are starting to think about and see our planet as a single entity of which humans are only one component.  For example, in this NASA animation we can watch the Earth breathe.  Industries and communities that are starved for water have learned how to conserve, measure, and analyze water use in ways inconceivable years ago (read The Big Thirst: the Secret and Turbulent Future of Water). With new information and technology we are starting to realize that we must act as one to solve this single problem. 

This year’s Earth Day should also be a revelation that lines have to be drawn on environmental abuse.  Earth Day isn’t just about celebrating past successes and navel gazing about how wonderful things would be if we could just stop being our self-absorbed selves. It’s about setting benchmarks, reaching milestones, and creating lines that cannot be crossed if we are to survive. We must stop increasing greenhouse gases that are warming our planet too quickly for too many to adapt.  In the past, we have stopped our rivers from burning, our lakes from dying, and pollution from being sent untreated into our drinking waters.  Now, we must stop Fracking and increase renewable energy.  We must stop the XL Keystone Pipeline, a fossil fuel resource conduit so dirty and polluting it may spell game over for all of us. We must become aware, all of us, not just a few of us. Take someone who has never been to an Earth Day event to one this Earth Day and increase the odds of our kid’s having an Earth Day of their own.   

You go into Climate Change with the environment you have

 

In 2004 Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld infamously said, “You go to war with the army you have---not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.” He said this in response to a soldier’s question about the lack of sufficient armor for our troops in Iraq. The statement was infamous not so much because it was factually untrue, but because Rumsfeld failed to mention that the Iraq War was a war of choice—something Bush II cooked up in a moment of hubris. Rumsfeld should have said something like, “In a war of our own choosing, we should have waited until we were better prepared.” But that’s not what you say when you think you’re top dog and you want what you want when you want it.

In much the same way we are going to battle against Climate Change with the environment we have today, an environment not as robust and resilient as we would wish it to be. Five-hundred years ago, a blink in geological time, our rivers were teeming with fish, our air clean, wildlife plentiful, birds in numbers that darkened the skies, and our soil free of manmade chemicals. Today, just staying in place, keeping our environment healthy, is a challenge. We must stock our streams to have enough fish to fish.

Here’s a wonderful way to express the incredible challenge of wildlife adapting to Climate Change in one pithy sentence: “Some migratory species yo-yo from the Southern Hemisphere to the Arctic and back, countering the planet’s seasonal tilt, to remain in more or less continuous summer all year.” NY Review of Books. You can view seasonal bird migrations as their strategy for staying in the same climate they are adapted to. (Which, is great if you have tens of thousands of years to adapt.) But we are warming the planet far faster than birds, or most plants and animal species for that matter, can evolve their way to survival. There is going to be a lot of collateral damage—and our present environment doesn’t have much cargo we can spare to throw overboard.

The Environmental Protection Agency released a report this week on our streams and rivers that revealed they are in seriously degraded condition. They are in very poor health, not in the kind of health needed to withstand a rapid warming.

Most streams, rivers in poor health for water life: EPA Fifty-five percent of U.S. river and stream lengths were in poor condition for aquatic life, largely under threat from runoff contaminated by fertilizers, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on Tuesday. High levels of phosphorus and nitrogen, runoff from urban areas, shrinking ground cover and pollution from mercury and bacteria were putting the 1.2 million miles (1.9 million km) of streams and rivers surveyed under stress, the EPA said. "This new science shows that America's streams and rivers are under significant pressure," Nancy Stone, acting administrator of the EPA's Office of Water, said in a statement. Twenty-one percent of the United States' river and stream length was in good biological condition, down from 27 percent in 2004, according to the survey, carried out in 2008 and 2009 at almost 2,000 sites. (3/26/2013) Reuters

If you don’t have the time to read the whole report, you can read the two-page fact sheet here: The National Rivers and Streams Assessment 2008-2009: A Collaborative Survey

Another report released by the US Department of the Interior describes how our fish, wildlife, and plant resources are going to be challenged during Climate Change: National Strategy Will Help Safeguard Fish, Wildlife and Plants in a Changing Climate. It says just about everything that constitutes our environment—fish, wildlife, plants, deserts, forest, shrublands, aquatic tundra, inland waters, grasslands, marine, Western pines, waterfowl, salmon, oysters, butterflies, commercial fisheries, polar bears--are in trouble. Again, you can read the short version if you don’t have time for the long version.

The report says “The problem is serious and urgent. The nation must prepare for and adapt to a changing climate.” But the report also says, “The Climate Adaptation Strategy … provides specific voluntary steps …. The strategy does not prescribe any mandatory activities for government or nongovernmental entities, nor suggest any regulatory actions.” The key words here are ‘voluntary” and ‘does not prescribe any mandatory activities…’ and they are sure to please libertarians and Climate Change contrarians.

A sort of bring-it-on attitude suffuses our government in that our leaders are aware of the dire consequences of Climate Change, aware of the poor state of health our environment is in, yet fail to lead with any mandatory activities. That’s like asking a multi-national oil company that has just trashed a large part of your marine life to pretty please clean that up. Please. Stiff fines and jail sentences are the only thing polluters understand.

The environment we are taking into Climate Change (and it is our treatment of our environment that has put it in this poor state) is certainly not the one we would want or wish for at a later time. At a later time, our grand children will probably be trying to figure out why we created the circumstances that brought on Climate Change if we were not willing to properly prepare for it.

If we were willing to properly prepare for Climate Change, we’d have long ago addressed this craven absurdity:

IMF: Want to fight climate change? Get rid of $1.9 trillion in energy subsidies. What’s the simplest way to tackle global warming? Make sure that fossil fuels are priced properly and not subsidized. That’s the core idea behind a large new report (pdf) from the International Monetary Fund, which argues that the world “misprices” fossil fuels to the tune of some $1.9 trillion per year. Eliminating these subsidies, the IMF argues, and replacing them with appropriate carbon taxes could cut global greenhouse-gas emissions by 13 percent, curtail air pollution, and shore up the finances of many poorer countries now in debt trouble. (March 27, 2013) Washington Post

Plant-Based Nutrition Course at the JCC

 

Taught by Ted D. Barnett, MD

This is the third time this course has been given. Over 115 students have already taken the course including MD’s, RN’s and RD’s.

All profits are donated to charity.

When: Every Tuesday evening for 6 weeks, April 2^nd through May 7^th, 2013

Time: 7 PM to 9 PM

Where: At the Rochester Jewish Community Center

Cost: $100 for JCC members, $125 for nonmembers 

To register, call the Rochester Jewish Community Center at: (585) 461-2000

Why?  Many people have become interested in learning how to live on a diet that does not include animal products. Their curiosity may have been aroused because of an interest in health, the environment, sustainability, factory farming, animal abuse, social justice, or all of the above. This course was created to meet their needs.

Goal: Participants will learn the rationale behind eating a low-fat, whole-foods plant-based diet. By the end of the course, participants will be comfortable feeding themselves and their families a healthy diet that contains no animal products. They will have learned how to eat out at restaurants and at the homes of friends and family. They will be able to explain how eating this diet benefits their health, the future of the planet, the welfare of animals, and our nation’s prosperity and security.

Course Instructors: Ted D. Barnett, M.D. (primary instructor) with Carol H. Barnett, Ph.D., J.D. assisting. Dr. and Mrs. Barnett are Co-Coordinators of the Rochester Area Vegetarian Society (RAVS). They and their three children (ages 25, 23, & 20) have been vegan for over 21 years. Dr. Barnett graduated from Yale College in 1976 and Tufts University School of Medicine in 1980. He received his board certifications in Diagnostic Imaging in 1984 and Vascular & Interventional Radiology in 1995. He has practiced in the Rochester area since 1986.

Details about the course: This is a 6-week course, with each session lasting 2 hours. The cost is $100 for JCC members and $125 for nonmembers. Attendees will receive printed materials and other handouts; they will also have access to a wealth of websites, resource lists, and recipe files to complement their learning. Attendees will benefit from taking any one of the classes, as the main concepts will be repeated at each class.

There will be two lectures per class with a break in the middle for food sampling. There will be plenty of opportunity for question-and-answer both during the break and at the end of class. During the break, students will be able to sample dishes prepared by Carol Barnett according to recipes included with the handouts for that class. This is not a cooking demo but students can see and sample the dishes as prepared, and Carol will be happy to answer questions about ingredients, techniques, and variations on the recipes.

For more information go to rochesterveg.org and click on “Course Resources” or contact drveggie@aol.com,

New York State faces critical lack of environmental data

 

As Governor Cuomo gets pummeled by gun control and Fracking issues, the media downplays a recent major accomplishment. It is "open.ny.gov,” a state-sponsored web site that provides all kinds of raw data pertaining to New York State for free, in various formats, including apps. It may not sound like much to you, but that’s due to our media’s bizarre ability to place emphasis on news in the reverse order of its importance. Considering the present media crisis, you’d think they’d make a bid deal of it. Think of it, the media has just been given a goose-laying pile of golden information that means they can spend even less time and money on investigative reporting.

I know, if it doesn’t bleed, it doesn’t lead. So we’ll go straight to the primary source, the governor’s press release:

Governor Cuomo Launches Open.NY.Gov Providing Public Unprecedented User-Friendly Access to Federal, State and Local Data Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today launched "open.ny.gov," a new and comprehensive state data transparency website that provides - for the first time - user-friendly, one-stop access to data from New York State agencies, localities, and the federal government. The website, featuring economic development, health, recreation, and public services information, was unveiled today during Sunshine Week, a nationwide initiative designed to raise awareness about the importance of open government. "Open.ny.gov creates unprecedented transparency across all levels of government and gives the people user-friendly access to vast quantities of information on our State," Governor Cuomo said. "This new website will dramatically increase public access to one of our most valuable assets - data. As it expands and evolves over time, Open.ny.gov will spark innovation, improve efficiency, promote accountability, and bring the people back into government." Albany, NY (March 11, 2013) Governor Andrew M. Cuomo

However, Rochester and most communities around the state and the country have a critical shortage of environmental information (raw data) available to the public. In order to adapt to and mitigate the challenges we face by Climate Change, we need to know as much as we can about what’s actually going on in our environment--not what the press, government, industry, or private groups want us to think. Grant writers, both private and public, need data to buttress their efforts to address environmental health degradation, like lead poisoning. Planners for our water infrastructure need to know if our extreme rainfall events have increased, threatening overflows in our present combined sewer systems. Our health agencies need to know if our summer temperatures are increasing so they can properly protect the public from overheating and dangerous warmth-related diseases like malaria, Lyme disease, and West Nile Virus.

To properly plan for our warming future, we need to know the exact state of our environment, including all the niggling little details. We also need to know Climate Change indicators. Here are samples of the information the governor’s new data collection might contain: By how many days has the growing season in our region lengthened in the last century? How much has ice cover diminished (think evaporation and lower water levels) on the Great Lakes in the last thirty years? What manmade chemicals and heavy metals are in our lakes, rivers, and streams? How often are our beaches closed and why? How many of what kind of fish are being restocked in what bodies of water and how often? How many coyotes are there in New York or around Rochester? How many (domestic and feral) cats are roaming around killing how many of what kind of birds? How many wind turbines, cars, glass buildings, and property disruptions are killing birds? What birds do we see earlier each spring? What are our bird wintering ranges? How many wells fail? How many Climate Change studies pertain to our area—including the one Cuomo yanked? What percent of the land around public bodies of water are privately owned? What businesses are reporting toxins and what are the toxins they are reporting? How many cars, bikes, and pedestrians accidents are there in our area? How many commute by bike? How many folks opt for green alternatives to pesticides and herbicides—like Integrated Pest Management Control? How many rabies incidents are there in our region, carried by what animals? Where are all the old dumps in our region and what are in them? Are these old dumps leaching heavy metals into our water and soils and if so what metals and in what concentrations? What kind of litter is blowing around in our environment and in what amounts? What manmade chemicals are in our land, water, air, and in our bodies, and in what amounts? How many high ozone days do we have each summer? How many unused phone books are lying on folk’s porches? Heat-related deaths? Streamflow? What is our air quality? What is our county’s recycling rate? Is that going up or down and how does it compare with state figures? How many days over 90 degrees are there in our region and how many nights over 85 degrees? What is the plastics concentration in Lake Ontario? How many private and public facilities use solar power, wind power, or geothermal? What are all the pharmaceuticals in Lake Ontario and which ones get filtered out by our wastewater treatment plants? How often does local news connect the dots on climate change? How many teachers teach climate change in local high schools? How many Brownfields are there in our region and how many need to be cleaned up? What are our flora’s leaf and bloom rates? How many businesses build on cleaned-up Brownfields? How much of our dirt (soil) is covered by pavement, highways, buildings, parking lots, and driveways? I could go on.

Some of this information already resides on open.ny.gov, like the rise of farmers markets in New York State in the past decade, wind energy project numbers and locations, and data on NYS population shifts. But it’s not enough; not even close. Our environment is a pretty complex place and we’ve already challenged it a lot from pollution and industrialization over the last couple of centuries. Climate Change is coming on quickly. We need to know all we can to plan for Climate Change because, like a hospital expecting a deluge of patients from a massive car pile-up, everything must be stocked up and ready as possible for what’s coming.

Raw data about what’s going in all aspects of our environment is invaluable because our environment no longer runs on its own. We’ve seriously mucked with the biological machinery. We are the top predators, the main water users, the largest land disturbers, the biggest greenhouse gas emitters, the biggest energy and food gobblers, and the most numerous of all the animal species larger than a rat.

Some will whine that the state, private industries or our universities don’t have money or the bandwidth to gather this info. I’d drop that suicidal line of reasoning and ditch a lot of other projects and gather this environmental information. Train and pay citizen scientists. Offer students to volunteer to gather and compile this data and then write them up a great recommendation. Make this data collection a tax subsidy, like the billions we give away to the fossil fuel industry each year. You can help. Go to "open.ny.gov” and suggest some datasets. Then, suggest that your communities use this information and get going on adapting to Climate Change.

Rochester, NY solutions to Climate Change

 

A long time ago and far away, I remember a nun at my church admonishing me, “You don’t love candy. You love God.” Though it seemed to me that I very much did love candy (especially chocolates), I now understand what she was saying after a half-century—even though to her probable horror I’ve ended up as an atheist. There are things more important than the mere existential pleasures our culture has to offer. Like Justice, Liberty, Equality, and Sustainability (Life).

I mention this personal anecdote to bring up our present fixation on things that don’t matter much, forgetting the things we should love. However much we might ‘love’ our dogs, our favorite team, and our car, if we don’t make it through the wormhole of Climate Change those other things won’t matter much because just trying to survive will take up the whole of our existence .

I know, oftentimes it is hard to believe (like a kid trying to appreciate the concept of God) in things you cannot personally perceive. Though local warming has increased our growing season by a week or so since the 1800’s, this phenomenon is mostly invisible to us who only live for an average of 70 years. We cannot see species die off, the seas rise, or poor folks across the planet run out of drinking water. We have to trust science and history to give us the proper perspective on Climate Change. To that end, it’s worthwhile to Zen for a moment this sentence in the conclusion of Something New Under the Sun, An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World, by J. R. McNeill.

“Modern history written as if the life-support systems of the planet were stable, present only in the background of human affairs, is not only incomplete but is misleading.” (Page 362)

It’s misleading to think that because we have survived and thrived to this point in history that we shall continue do so in the future, given past environmental damage and the rapid warming of our planet. And it is ‘incomplete’ to think we can solve Climate Change in Rochester, NY (or anywhere else for that matter) by continuing to do the same things that got us in this predicament.

We can change that. We have solutions to Climate Change at the Rochester, NY level that will radiate to the planetary level; we just have to get going on them.

Probably the biggest bang for the buck in solving Climate Change in Rochester is increasing active transportation and decreasing present vehicular transportation. That’s going to be difficult as our new cars have more distractions than ever—a lot of which probably belong in our living rooms not in those metal capsules we use to barrel through our city streets. You can find out more about local efforts on active transportation by attending the Genesee-Finger Lakes Active Transportation Summit on Tuesday, April 30, 2013 from 8am-5pm at the Rochester Riverside Radisson Hotel on 120 East Main St, Rochester, NY. Also, coming up on Tuesday, March 19, 2013 at 6:30 pm Brighton Memorial Library, 2300 Elmwood Avenue, Brighton, NY  is a program by Color Brighton Green:  Good to Go “The project is designed to encourage healthy lifestyles and promote the use of alternative transportation instead of driving alone.”

Then we should focus on increasing energy efficiency and renewable energy. New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) has a lot of ways for businesses and homeowners to conserve energy and increase energy efficiency. That means unnecessary GHG’s going into our atmosphere—from leaky homes. As for renewable energy, just this week a major report out of Cornell University says that New York could drop fossil fuels altogether and have lots of energy by 2030: New York's fossil fuel: Gone with the wind ... water and sun  This means we can drop the insanity of Fracking in New York State altogether; the issue that is now splattered all over mainstream media, an issue that shouldn’t have been about Fracking in the first place. It should have been about energy use and production in a time of Climate Change.

We should have more public meetings on Climate Change like we had last Sunday—In the Hot Seat: Global Climate Change and its effect on us—where every community has a chance to learn and discuss how this crisis will affect our region. We should encourage more of our leaders to speak out on addressing Climate Change in Congress.  More leaders like Senator Sheldon Whitehouse must stand up against deniers and the fossil fuel lobby in our government if we are to implement government plans to adapt to and mitigate Climate Change: Sheldon Sets the Record Straight on Climate Change "I speak out on climate change each week because the cost of Congress' inaction is too high for our communities, our kids, and our futures."

We should have more public comment on environmental concerns as they relate to Climate Change when changes occur in our community like the City of Rochester’s Center City Master Plan Survey. Or, comment (you have until April 15^th) when our state’s predominant environmental agency leaves out language that prohibits Fracking in one of our city’s drinking water regions: The Hemlock-Canadice Unit Management Plan (UMP) We should increase investigative reporting on Rochester’s environment, like the state of the Genesee River’s health, and we should increase environmental data so we can make informed choices with accurate information about recycling rates, air quality, water quality and much more. Go to ACT Rochester and do a great big ask for them to be the source for environmental data in our region. Like them at http://www.facebook.com/ACTRochester.

We should, in short, get engaged in the most complex and urgent crisis of our time by acting locally in such a way that these actions get stovepiped to a planetary level. Don’t just use a transportation option that will be a solution for Climate Change for you; make sure everyone does. The solutions for Climate Change will never be found in our insatiable desire for things and sugary substances. It will be found when we straighten out our priorities, get those greenhouse gas levels in our atmosphere down, and do so in a way that makes of us a better, more compassionate species.

As a standard for Climate Change risk, ‘Unlikely’ is unacceptable

 

By some accounts, US folks accept that Climate Change is happening “with 61% saying the effects of climate change are already affecting them personally or will in their lifetime.” (Recent Polling on Climate Change, 2/ 12/ 2013 — League of Conservation Voters) I like to think this translates into a sense of urgency permeating our culture, but I suspect it does not in any meaningful way. There are still too many excuses why we, the predominate life form on this planet, are avoiding our responsibility. For it is not enough to know that our springs will arrive earlier (Spring May Arrive Five Weeks Earlier by 2100, Study Finds) giving us a longer growing season, then conveniently forgetting that everything—plants, insect pests, birds, butterflies, everything really—will be out of sync. And remember, radical though the warming may be, it’s the speed of the change that is truly frightening.

Not too long ago most Americans thought Climate Change was unproven or just a liberal hoax. Now, while many understand, they don’t understand the comprehensive disruption this will cause—and seek to avoid it. Some reason that that the costs of adapting to and mitigating Climate Change are too expensive. This reasoning isn’t really reasoning at all. It’s insane. It’s like refusing to don your space suit when walking in outer space because you find it too uncomfortable. Or some think their government, or somebody else’s, will address this world-wide crisis without it costing themselves much of anything at all. Sorry, it doesn’t work that way.

The latest dodge in Climate Change responsibility comes from a new line of argument—the improbability scenarios, or ‘unlikely’ events we need not worry about. (It’s an acknowledgement that Climate Change is happening, but everything will be Ok.) This ‘unlikely’ argument was just used as a reason not to bother commercial ships about bringing in the invasive Asian Carp into the Great Lakes: Study: Asian carp unlikely to stow away in barges. (2/28/2013 Wall Street Journal)

Locally, concerns about Fracking in what was previously a City of Rochester owned forest and drinking water source, but is now a state owned area, is dismissed as unlikely.

But the DEC statement said the nature of Hemlock and Candice — surrounded by steep slopes, used as drinking water supplies and ringed by protected wetlands — would make the agency unlikely to grant a drilling permit there. (N.Y. has 'no intention' of OK'ing drilling near Hemlock, Canadice, 3/5/2013 Democrat and Chronicle)

Of course few are buying that unlikely argument and instead are intent on letting the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation know it at the The Hemlock-Canadice Unit Management Plan (UMP), a public informational session on March 14, 2013, starting at 6:30PM at the Springwater Fire Hall, 8145 S. Main St. Springwater, NY.

But the most interesting ‘unlikely’ argument comes from an abstract of a new Climate Study: Global tipping point not backed by science (from E! Science News on 2/28/2013, but really you can find this report all over the Internet)

A group of international ecological scientists led by the University of Adelaide have rejected a doomsday-like scenario of sudden, irreversible change to Earth's ecology. In a paper published February 28 in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, the scientists from Australia, US and UK argue that global-scale ecological tipping points are unlikely and that ecological change over large areas seem to follow a more gradual, smooth pattern.

Sweet: a scientific study that proves a nice and slow and no-interconnected-world-wide crisis.

But I have to say, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. This story about the report seems delusional at best and reckless at worse (we haven’t been able to read the actual report yet). The story concludes: “Recognising [sic] this reality and seeking appropriate conservation efforts at local and regional levels might be a more fruitful way forward for ecology and global change science."

The problem in ‘proving’ that Climate Change tipping points won’t occur is that it is unlikely to be true. We know that biodiversity loss increases invasive species’ ability to gain control across continents. Certainly the Zebra mussel from a ship’s ballast from Europe has achieve a tipping point in billions of dollars lost in the Great Lakes and the Finger Lakes. The reasoning that “the responses of ecosystems to human pressures like climate change or land-use change depend on local circumstances and will therefore differ between localities” reminds me of a famous Zeno’s paradox on infinite regression. This is where a local arrow can never hit it a world-impacting target because it will only be able to go an infinite regression of half-way distances before it ever gets to its target, i.e., local circumstances will differ in their response to disturbances and thus the whole planet will not be affected. Please.

That planetary tipping points are unlikely to occur because local changes are different and unlikely to affect a planetary change is ludicrous—as warming up and cooling down of our planet has always radiated around the world, changing every locality and every locality’s animal and plant life. Cyanobacteria, Earth’s first life forms, emitted oxygen that eventually hit a tipping point so only oxygen breathing animals could survive afterwards. Wildfires in Australia, the American West, and Russia caused by Climate Change have recently caused massive damage from a world-wide warming that is influencing continent after continent—irrespective of boundaries natural and manmade. The conclusion of this report is reductio ad absurdum, kid logic, where a cherry-picking of data comes to the wrong conclusion.

The only logic behind this study is that we must not disturb an economic system that serves us so well – if you’re one of the 1%, not the logic of a very complex and interrelated biological system where we have precious little data, especially in light of the monumental changes humankind has wrought upon the planet in the last five hundred years. [Read: Something New Under the Sun |An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World By J. R. McNEILL]

It is unlikely that you, however often you play the New York State Lottery, will ever win. Yes, it is possible you will win, but depending on a lottery win to support your retirement is foolhardy. It would be equally (though factors of multitudes worse) as foolhardy for all of us to depend on ‘science’ studies that ‘prove’ environmental accidents or tipping points are ‘unlikely’ to occur.

Instead of trying to rationalize our way out of Climate Change with ‘unlikely’ studies, we ought to gather all environmental information about environmental issues, fill in knowledge gaps, and make changes on a planetary scale in order to affect something as incredibly vast as our environment. I’d be leery about any study that told me not to worry my pretty little head about Climate Change and not do anything to disrupt business as usual. We cannot solve Climate Change by continuing to do the same things that caused it.

Changes in attitudes towards Climate Change are not fast enough

 

Though many are still jazzed from the amazing turnout at the “Forward on Climate Rally” on February 17^th, there’s a long way to go. Somehow we have to get the GHG-related .8C temperature increase since 1850 back down to the levels where we thrived—the Holocene epoch. If Fracking proceeds in NYS, it could release as much GHG’s as coal while continually exposing us to ‘fraccidents’. Even if Fracking is blocked, there won’t be much time to celebrate.

Indications are that the US is waking from its Climate Silence slumber and starting to stir. President Obama and governors around the country are beating the drum. Indeed, it was gratifying at the rally to see thousands of bright young folks who ‘get it’ on Climate Change. After all, it’s their generation that is going to get nailed by the consequences and limited choices of a warmer world.

Our local mainstream media is beginning to mention Climate Change because even if they don’t buy the science behind the crisis, they do notice things like ending moose-hunting season: Warmer winters bedevil moose in Minnesota (February 28, 2013) Democrat and Chronicle. People who love guns don’t like their lifestyle upset and they’ll make news if thwarted. That mainstream media still doesn’t connect the dots between Great Lakes water levels and Climate Change, as mentioned in many Northeast Climate studies, indicates that our comprehension of the problem is decades behind schedule.

Actually, the solution to Climate Change is maddeningly simple, one of quickly decreasing GHG’s that will brook no other remedy. We’ll either get our economics and politics in line with sustainability in a warming world, or we won’t. Our politicians need to know you have their back as they maneuver a sea change in how we treat our environment.

As for our economics, you’d think that implementing a Carbon Tax would be the best and easiest way to combat Climate Change.  But even this modest attempt, the Sanders-Boxer bill, to right our economics after centuries of environmental neglect (externalities) throws free market fundamentalists into fits of fiery frenzy.  Those hell bent on preserving an economic system that helped them, but trashed our environment, continue to say it’s their way or no way. When presented with a cap-and-trade scheme based on business-as-usual with emission thrown in, they carp about that and find ways to game it.

Here’s the thing about the Carbon Tax: It may be the last chance for Capitalism to squeeze environmental issues into its relentlessly mindless algorithm before the radical anti-capitalists (see: Occupy movement) start to look pretty darned sensible. Just listen to Janis: “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.” I know, bucking the system seems unimaginable, but so is trying to survive a 6C temperature rise by 2100. Something’s going to give.

You’d think that after the environmental challenges our species has wrought just in the last century—pollution, microbial contamination, wetlands destruction, and a seven billion population increase—we’d just hold on a moment and let our environment catch its breath. Find out what we’ve done before we move forward. Most probably think to slow down, look around, and think about our situation would be like pausing to smell the roses while racing across a busy four-lane highway. But it’s not our Nature that is compelling us to dash ourselves against reality—it’s an unreasonable economic system.

There are more indications that attitudes are changing on Climate Change. Nearby, there’s a conference on Climate Change that should be going on in every community: Climate Smart & Climate Ready . Meanwhile, Earth Day is coming up, the one day we turn our attention towards the system that created us and keeps us alive. One of the largest and longest running Earth Day events in Rochester, NY is returning for its 15^th season:

Sierra Club - Rochester Regional Group to Host International Great Lakes Champion The Rochester Regional Group of the Sierra Club is bringing internationally renowned speaker Maude Barlow to Rochester for 15th Annual Environmental Forum. –.  The focus of the Forum is the growing movement advocated by Maude Barlow to protect the Great Lakes forever by establishing them as a Public Trust.  At last year’s forum, we began a conversation with Jim Olson of FLOW about protecting our water as a “common good” for future generations, through the legal and political structure of the Public Trust Doctrine.  This year, we'll continue that conversation in a bigger venue to accommodate the large audience that Maude is sure to bring, and we'll dive deeper with workshops the day after her keynote address.   The Forum will highlight the growing threats to our precious Great Lakes and begin building community networks to protect and manage them. Already we have seen increased threats to our water including: hydrofracking, invasive species, algal blooms, global climate change and lower lake levels. (March 1, 2013) Rochester Sierra Club

All this recent attention on Climate Change is welcome. But it is still far short of seven billion human inhabitants immediately shifting to a sustainable way of life.

What would Massasoit decide on Climate Change?

 

While on a (full) bus out of Rochester, NY to attend the "Forward on Climate" rally in Washington, DC last Sunday, I got to wondering about this incredible time of ours. We sit on the shores of history on the precipice of world-transforming change. It’s time to reflect about what guides our thinking. I’m thinking it’s not mainstream media.

The rally in Washington included a stop at the National World War II Memorial where several hundred of us from New York State rallied against Fracking (drilling for fossil fuels) in New York that got almost no media coverage. Thursday’s anti-Fracking in downtown Rochester, as Governor Cuomo visited , got almost no media coverage either except for a short mention in an article in the Democrat and Chronicle (last three paragraphs) and a more robust article in the non-mainstream Rochester IndyMedia: Protesters Greet Governor With Message About Fracking

The "Forward on Climate" rally brought 50,000 concerned folks to the streets of our capitol on Climate Change. I could not find a vantage point from which to see all 50,000 the crowd was so large. Relatively few mainstream media covered this event, though many new media outlets like EcoWatch and Democracy Now! did. And a couple of weeks ago at the world premiere screening of COMFORT ZONE, a local film about Climate Change, the seats were full, yet there was no media coverage after the screening to get the reaction of local folks to this world-wide crisis.

Many folks are getting alarmed but still not enough to make a real difference in how much greenhouse gases we release into our atmosphere. (Good intentions by only a few won’t do; it’s a problem of physics.) What’s going on? Shouldn’t the warming of our planet merit more interest than a relative few who the mainstream media repeatedly ignores? What’s to tell seven billion people what to do?

The media tells us that only the next thing that moves is worthy of our attention. Philosophy tells us that neo-Darwinism (reductionism) may not fully explain reality and consciousness. Psychology tells us whether we are acting and thinking like everyone else. History tells us change happens. Economics tells us that only money matters. Politicians tell us only what we want to hear. Astronomy tells us that a lot of very intelligent folks are focused on something that won’t matter much if we don’t address Climate Change. Religion tells us to have faith. Our own senses tell us that here in Rochester, New York it’s cold outside. Science tells us the world is warming due to manmade emissions of greenhouse gases at a rate faster than ever in recorded history.

How do we (in the collective sense) filter what’s important from all the noise around us? Do we continue to wait and see if Climate Change cooks us? Or do we act now? If we are ever to get visited by aliens, as Dr. Sagan (of SETI Institute) suggested, now would be a good time. Their mere existence on our planet would prove intelligent beings can make it through rapid development without extincting themselves.

Massasoit of the Wampanoags watched the pilgrims in the early 1600’s perish in large numbers, as they struggled to survive during their first harsh winter in the New World. Far outnumbering these new people from afar, the Wampanoag chief wondered whether he should help them or just exterminate the invaders to his lands.

It would be interesting to know what his thoughts were as he sat upon the shores and looked into the rising sun. He was the leader of his people at a very important juncture of history. His people were being devastated by diseases and threatened by nearby Indians. If he helped these new people, a people with guns and many more to come across the sea, they might help him against his enemies. Or these new people, with their strange ways, might overwhelm his people. It must have crossed Massasoit’s mind that incredible changes, whatever he decided, were coming. What guided his actions at such a point in his history when there was nothing like it before to guide him?

After much thought Massasoit chose to help the pilgrims to survive their wintry ordeal.

Environmentalists will Occupy Our Capitol on Climate Change this Sunday

 

The #ForwardOnClimate Rally this Sunday has been billed as “The largest climate rally in U.S. history.” Environmentalists (those aware that we actually occupy our environment) are coming from around the country to demonstrate their commitment to adapting to and mitigating Climate Change. We have to adapt to Climate Change because even if we stop all greenhouse gas emission right now and get our carbon diet from our present 395 parts per million (ppm) to a sensible 350ppm, there is probably 50 to 100 years of warming coming anyway because we didn’t fix this sooner. Mitigation is stopping accelerated anthropogenic Climate Change in its tracks. And, as long as I’m defining things, an anti-environmentalist is a creature that does not occupy this or any other planet.

On Valentine’s Day 48 leaders got themselves arrested as a prelude to the rally to emphasize that the fossil fuel burning era must end. One of the 48 was “Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune, who was arrested in the first act of civil disobedience in the organization’s 120-year history.” (2/14/2013 Democracy Now!). We are wicked proud of Brune; listen to this news video after his arrest. (Complete disclosure: I am a proud card-carrying Sierra Club member, former chair of the Rochester, NY group, present webmaster, and present chair of transportation and Zero Waste committees.)

The specific goal of the rally is to push President Obama to stop the XL Keystone Pipeline from snaking its way through the US from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. To help you get your head around the urgency behind stopping this dirty pipeline, you have to watch this hour-long video, White Water, Black Gold, as explained by the great folks at EcoWatch. Putting all that dirty, costly tar into the world commons (our atmosphere to which every creature and every country has an indelible right) would be game over.

This massive rally, an absolute need nowadays if you’re going to grab our present dysfunctional media’s attention, allows us to hold a mirror up to ourselves and demonstrate that we are willing to move out of our comfort zone to change how we get and use energy. I’m sure the Climate Change deniers will be on the sidelines (though they will still experience a planet warming up and all that comes with that) carping about the hypocrisy of those who used fossil fuels to get to an anti-fossil fuel rally.

They have a point, I guess, if you think thousands of folks concerned about the fate of all of us should have started out on foot to get to the rally—a month ago. Truth is we are all complicit in our use of fossil fuel. We cannot escape it. Even those living a low-impact lifestyle have to have their homes heated, their electric grid fueled by something, usually fossil fuel, and even the bikes we ride had to have the metals forged by something burning. This truth should not obscure the larger truth that we have to move this system that we are all a part of to a system that uses renewable energy.

The problem of complicity on burning fossil fuels is that the fossil fuel industry, which takes billions in subsides (your tax dollars) each year and Congress, which panders to the fossil fuel industry like a hungry little lap dog, makes it difficult to get renewable fuel options. Unless you can live in a cave in the cold, at this point you have no choice but to live with burning fossil fuels. But don’t be crippled by this forced complicity. Not lifting your hand to stop the proliferation of greenhouse gas emissions because you had no other choice is like a freed prisoner keeping his chains on because he always had to wear them in the crowbar hotel.

Don’t fall into the guilty consumer conundrum. There’s really only one thing you need to know about Climate Change: We get our carbon addiction under control or we cook. Big changes to our present carbon-burning system happening right now are the only thing that matters.

Lincoln said at the beginning of his presidency, which coincided with the start of our Civil War:

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union.. . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettysburg_Address

The point is that Climate Change is the immediate threat to our future existence, just as winning the civil war was the immediate concern to Lincoln. For Lincoln, his first priority was about saving the union. He cared about the plight of the slaves, about hunger, about peace, about many, many things, but until he preserved the union he could solve none of these other problems. That was the point of the Gettysburg address:

…that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettysburg_Address

At this point in time, two-thousand and thirteen, we do not want to perish from the earth because Climate Change seems intractable. You can do things about Climate Change in a big way. If you cannot come to the rally and absolutely stun the media into recognition of the public’s concern on Climate Change by a turnout of thousands upon thousands, then read this: “Federal Advisory Committee Draft Climate Assessment Report Released for Public Review” and browbeat your media into connecting the dots with what you find in the study and what you experience locally. You paid good money for this federally-funded study that is backed by hundreds of climate experts and includes the climate concerns of 13 branches of the federal government. Don’t read about the study; read the study.

Also, help back this Boxer/Sanders bill to fill that gaping hole in our economics (externalities) that turns a blind eye to environmental destruction by loony corporations who believe money, not biology and physics, rules.

BREAKING: Senators Boxer and Sanders Introduce Climate Legislation On the heels of President Obama’s call to action in his State of the Union address and the arrest of 48 environmental, civil rights and community leaders at a protest of the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) have introduced the first serious climate legislation since cap and trade failed to pass the Senate in 2009. The bill would put a $20/ton fee on the dangerous carbon pollution driving climate impacts like Hurricane Sandy, raising trillions of dollars to offset any impact on consumers and create new investment in renewable energysources. “The leading scientists in the world who study climate change now tell us that their projections in the past were wrong; that, in fact, the crisis facing our planet is much more serious than they had previously believed,” Sanders told a news conference in the Senate environment committee hearing room. The proposal was drafted as two measures, the Climate Protection Act and the Sustainable Energy Act. For a summary, click here.  (February 14, 2013) EcoWatch

Talk to you after the rally…