For Earth Day... for Earth!

“We can think of the Earth and its natural resources as a one-time inheritance that we received from nature or God… and the question is are we going to squander that inheritance like a derelict rich kid and go broke, or are we going to treat it like the fortune that it is and be good stewards?... Global society has been acting like the derelict rich kid, and experts agree that we’ve been in global overshoot for 3 decades… by mid20-30s we’ll need two Earths to support us and, of course, we only have one.”
—Emmett Duffy; Professor of Marine Science at the
College of William and Mary’s Virginia Institute of Marine Science

Every year, I think about how I'll tackle the immense topic of Earth Day. It looms huge for me because, although Earth Day is and ought to be every day, most of us think consciously about it once a year (if that!). But the once-a-year version is significant to me because 41 years ago, when it all started, I was a college student in the midst of our campus activities—which focused mostly on education, recycling, and other cosmetic efforts. Hey, we tried!

Now, though, there's a lot more meaning to Earth Day for me, even though it seems largely neglected in our world of heedless consumption. Sometimes it's hard to be hopeful in these times of global climate change and other effects of rampant human overpopulation. One thoughtful, authoritative, and articulate blogger helps bring me back to Earth every time I visit (even though he's blogging elsewhere these days), and he is Emmett Duffy, the Natural Patriot. Here are a few of my favorite samples from 2009:

• Approaching the Ultimate Limits
  
• An assessment of the Obama administration from the Ecological Society of America
  
• The End of the World As We Know It
  

Quotes in his “Food for Thought” sidebar are only one reason to visit the Natural Patriot. I love this revolving quote widget of his, or whatever it is, and today I discovered you can refresh them by clicking through with your mouse. So in lieu of further pontificating on my part, I bring you a limited selection of more memorable comments on our predicament. Quote addict that I am, this list could go on forever, but I'm trying to be discreet!

Most have gone long unheeded, but... we can't say we haven't been warned! Even a variety of American presidents have tried to sound the alarm.

You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.
—Abraham Lincoln

Saving our civilization is not a spectator sport.
—Lester Brown.

We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics.
—Franklin Delano Roosevelt

I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty, which will protect the beauty of our natural environment, which will preserve the great old American houses and squares and parks of our national past and which will build handsome and balanced cities for our future.
—John F. Kennedy

Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is a party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.
—Wendell Berry

The Creation, whether you believe it was placed on this planet by a single act of God or accept the scientific evidence that it evolved autonomously during billions of years, is the greatest heritage, other than the reasoning mind itself, ever provided to humanity.
—Edward O. Wilson

Do we not already sing our love for and obligation to the land of the free and the home of the brave? Yes, but just what and whom do we love? Surely not the soil, which we are sending helter-skelter downriver. Certainly not the waters, which we assume have no function except to turn turbines, float barges, and carry off sewage. Certainly not the plants, of which we exterminate whole communities without batting an eye. Certainly not the animals, of which we have already extirpated many of the largest and most beautiful species.
—Aldo Leopold

One for the Tea Party:

I don’t mind paying taxes. They buy me civilization.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes

Lastly, in the true spirit of Earth Day:

Do not let spacious plans for a new world divert your energies from saving what is left of the old.
—Winston Churchill

Glorious Spring!

Are you as tired of that snow scene (below) as I am? I went away for a few days last week, and in my absence Spring has clearly sprung.


Look at that green! It doesn't rival Ireland yet, but tender green is peeking out on branches, daffodils are in full bloom, and things are definitely looking hopeful.

(Look at those chickens, waiting by the gate for breakfast...)

Today is the 40th anniversary of the very first Earth Day. As I did last year, I had thoughts of making April "Earth Month" and going to town on related posts. As with last year, I didn't get very far, but after all, Earth deserves more than a day—or a month. It should be in our thoughts, and especially in our actions, every day.

None of us needs a sermon today, but if you're reaching the Age of Wisdom, the Time of Reflection, think back to what you were doing 40 years ago today. Think about the feeling of Hope we had that what we did—for the cause of Peace, for the Planet, for Something That Mattered—would make a difference.

That feeling is what Earth Day was—and IS—about, and it's exactly what Spring is about! The world is waking up; we should be too.

Happy Buy Nothing Day!

All day yesterday the MiL teased me about getting up early this morning to go shopping! The Black Friday hype even reached her, and she doesn't drive, rarely shops or spends money... and, happily, wouldn't go to the Maul with me if I did ask her.

I'm not sure she understood when I explained about
Buy Nothing Day, a bright spot in the "let's-start-Christmas-before-we-get-through-Halloween" madness that is fall in our cultural milieu.* Putting Pilgrim associations far aside, Thanksgiving is a holiday that has redeeming social value and is connected to the Earth much in the way of an old pagan harvest festival. Unfortunately, as only grocery stores get much economic boost from it, this moment to stop and consider one's blessings is in danger of being overrun by the more critical need to keep the economy humming along. I'm with the folks at Adbusters, who say:

There’s only one way to avoid the collapse of this human experiment of ours on Planet Earth: we have to consume less.

*Wikipedia will fill you in on the downside of Buy Nothing Day, a holiday for the 'haves' perhaps, but where else can we find criticism of Black Friday?

As for me, I've reached that age where I have the basic stuff I need and, the Darling Husband would say, too much of most of it. I need to develop skills in "enlightenment" instead—lightening my load on the planet by finding homes for some of the "stuff" I've managed to accumulate these last 30 years or so. (A DH quote: "You don't help the environment by turning the house into a landfill.")

It's true: A victim of early Earth Day conditioning [There is no "away"], and knowing the fate of most trash, I don't throw things away like I should. (Some of it, for example, ends up on this beach in Hawai'i; photo right.) I'm convinced there must be someone out there who needs or appreciates these trinkets as much as I do—I just haven't located them yet! ( With the possible exception of my 24-year-old niece, who is at the "I want" stage, and makes a good repository for excess crockery and glassware, as well as tidbits from my yarn collection and other unfinished projects.)

I lean toward the recognition of "useful life left," even in items that are missing pieces or otherwise in need of repair. Yes, perhaps it could be taken to the thrift stores most of it came from in the first place, but some is even beyond that stage. Hesitation, resistance to disposal, also arises from reading Wendell Berry, who once remarked:

Our great fault as a people is that we do not take care of things. Our economy is such that we say we 'cannot afford' to take care of things: Labor is expensive, time is expensive, money is expensive, but materials—the stuff of creation—are so cheap that we cannot afford to take care of them.

Berry was not, of course, the first to notice this trend. In googling to find that quote again, I ran into an interesting "transhistorical and transcultural approach to trash," which contains (scroll down) a long timeline of trashy tidbits, including this one:

Our willingness to part with something before it is completely worn out is a phenomenon noticeable in no other society in history… It is soundly based on our economy of abundance. It must be further nurtured even though it runs contrary to one of the oldest inbred laws of humanity, the law of thrift.
- J. Gordon Lippincott, industrial designer, 1947

Ah, thrift... now there's a word you don't hear every day.

So, although my car is out of gas, there's an item on ebay I covet, and we're low on chicken feed, I'll be staying home today.

Honor Thy Planet

While we are discussing (previous post, a little bit) things you can do to help “the environment,” here’s one really simple one we can all tackle. Won’t cost anything, not more than a fraction of a second of your time, and will begin to remind us that a little respect is in order.

(Image from NASA, courtesy Wikipedia.)

Just this: Capitalize the name of your home planet. It’s Earth, sometimes Terra (Sol III if you prefer), and that’s its proper name. We all learned in grade school that proper names should be capitalized, so why don’t we all just practice it? I think it would remind us on a regular basis that we aren’t just dealing with an “it” here, we’re dealing with our home planet, that collection of astronomy and geology and biology—everything that makes up the ecosphere we all depend upon but seem to forget we need while we bounce around from the shopping mall to the grocery store in air-conditioned cars.

You’d probably like a more authoritative source than your local neighborhood blogger. Don’t take my word for it, please:

• Nine Planets.org (see, all the others are capitalized too!)
• NASA Welcome to the Planets
• Earth on Wikipedia
• And, just for fun the Earth disambiguation page on Wikipedia, to see all the ways you can use the name of your planet

Not to get all sermon-y on you, but Lovelock (?, just read this, now have to find the source again) has a point when he says it’s hard to work up some fight against invisible gases that are destroying faraway ice caps most of us will never get to see. Hawken hits the mark too (albeit in lowercase*), when he remarks:

 

We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time rather than renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can't print life to bail out a planet.

So get personal with your planet. Know its proper name, use it, and learn a little bit about it. The Nature Blog Network is a great place to start exploring all the beings that make this such a miraculous place to live.

* Shouldn't really blame Hawken for this, it could have been the transcriber, or some editor.

Rainy Day Rosies

No blues around here, despite four days of rain and gray. Tough to wallow in depression when there’s company like this about. Yes, the Rose-breasted Grosbeak (Pheucticus ludovicianus) has made another appearance here at the fancy foothills home base! What a way to brighten the gloom! He showed up late Sunday afternoon, between downpours, and popped in again while Bee Lady and Flame were in attendance yesterday afternoon. Perfect timing!

Last night he shared the feeder with two pairs of Black-headed Grosbeaks, or hovered photogenically nearby in the ash tree waiting his turn. We sat out a bit this evening, but it’s downright chilly out there now, so in it is.

(Two consecutive days is a new record. Last year’s visit was a singular occasion.)

Downpours and thunder have alternated with gentle spring sprinkles since Friday night! All most welcome, not least for the weeding it affords. We  have green to rival the best of Ohio—or Ireland! After a droughty winter, it’s a wonder and joy to see the response of the plants to all this moisture. Today’s ritual photo is bright, compared to the weekend’s experience. No complaints.

Water is rising in Bear Creek, well past cafe au lait and on its way beyond dark chocolate mocha. Our Historian says the cottonwoods in Mt. Vernon Canyon, just upstream of town, are of a size to indicate flood times due, but so far, it all seems to be soaking in pretty well.

Extreme weather, they say, is what we can expect more of as nature gets even. Unusual events, too, most likely—the appearance of critters where we haven’t seen them before, and the disappearance of others as Earth seeks a new equilibrium.

As Paul Hawken, choosing to be optimistic, told a graduating class recently: “Basically, civilization needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.” Career-wise, no problem for new graduates: “The Earth is hiring!” And there’s a lot of work to do!

Dave at Osage+Orange shared a great interview with James Lovelock, who takes a different tack on optimism. He tells us that it’s already too late, but facing the challenges ahead will cause us humans to pull together like never before. “[S]o when I think of the impending crisis now, I think in those terms. A sense of purpose - that's what people want.”

Lovelock’s advice: "Enjoy life while you can. Because if you're lucky it's going to be 20 years before it hits the fan." Heckuva legacy to give to your children.

Sarcozona, who will be hosting Berry-Go-Round this week at Gravity’s Rainbow, has a great post on Advocacy (check her links), and a suggestion about kids: “have none or fewer”… I’d add, especially if you love children! We’re leaving them a tough uphill battle, and this is a conversation we need to start having. Sustainability? There are simply too many of us.

 

Meanwhile, for the time being, Earth offers wonders, daily, to each of us.  Every bird in the backyard, every flower and, yes, weed is another opportunity to share in the incredible that lies before and around us. We have only to look, and if we look, won’t we want to preserve? A parting quote from Hawken:  

Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would create new religions overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead, the stars come out every night and we watch television.

Mentor, verb

The dictionary insists it's a noun, but we often use it these days as a verb. This post is a little tribute to a mentor who made a huge difference in my life by inspiring, at a relatively early stage, an enthusiasm for field ecology: Dr. Paul D. Kilburn. I was a biology major in an upstate New York college when a friend suggested a summer field excursion to Colorado. We went, and four weeks later, though I didn't know it at the time, I was bound to become a Coloradoan.

Three of those weeks were spent learning the Colorado flora, with Paul as instructor: identification, montane ecology, and alpine ecology at one week each. In Rocky Mountain National Park! That foundation formed my career in the 1970s and '80s, and my passion in these later decades, though sometimes rarely exercised.

But this isn't a nostalgia trip, this is to tell you what Paul has accomplished now! After ten or twelve years of struggle (through the 1990s), I got busy and abandoned our joint attempt to save an important chunk of native tallgrass prairie in the northern part of our county. But the foundation was laid, and Paul persisted. Last week he made some significant headway, almost 10 million dollars worth, toward protecting and restoring what's left of an important grassland ecosystem. Here's Paul, right, with Dave Buckner, ten years ago today, in a nice chunk of prairie that was purchased by City of Boulder Open Space and is now protected. Dave's a consultant with whom we launched a 5-year grassland study—paid for by the aggregate interests—of the native warm-season grasslands at Rocky Flats.

This photo shows the Chemist, left, and Paul, right, in July 1999 with the Developer who knows his chunk of this well preserved prairie is going to be very remunerative for him, as it is situated at the intersection of two important highways, soon to be a major beltway bringing traffic to his door—if development interests prevail. (Here we bless the economic "downturn" for breathing space.)

In 2001, Paul (far right) led this field trip to the site of a proposed oil well within the boundaries of a portion of the grassland that had been placed in a "Stewardship Trust" by the State of Colorado (which owns Section 16, a state school section). One of the uses for the $10 million will be to purchase certain mineral rights in the Rocky Flats area so that other parts of this grassland won't be turned upside down in a quest for... gravel, bluestone aggregate. Happily, most of Rocky Flats, once a weapons plant, is now a wildlife refuge, so areas inside the fence are protected from pretty much everything except mineral owners and weeds.

Paul's been fighting the good fight, as well as leading groups to collect native seeds for revegetation and pull invading weeds, ever since those early days. Why does he do it? I think it's so his grand-children—and yours—can enjoy sights like this! (Tallgrass prairie in fall, looking toward the foothills.)

Fall color in "turkeyfoot," big bluestem grass (Andropogon gerardii), looking across Section 16 and Boulder's Jewell Mountain Open Space.

It's Earth Day!

Finally, Earth Day and Spring seem to be arriving simultaneously! Thirty-nine years later, it seems we don't hear enough about Earth Day, which should certainly be (along with Buy-Nothing Day, the Friday after Thanksgiving) our most significant—and transformative—holiday.

I still remember that first Earth Day, when we thought picking up garbage was a significant way to celebrate. The world, or at least this state-side portion of it, has indeed been transformed since then, so subtly we often fail to realize it. Although it seems we can never do enough, let's look at a few things that have changed for the better since 1970, signs of the times, at how full our collective glass really is.

Litter: once ubiquitous on major highways; drivers were warned of the consequences of throwing refuse out car windows. $500 fines, rarely enforceable, have been replaced by Adopt-a-Highway signs, and volunteers help keep our scenery looking more scenic and less trashed than in 1970.

Endangered species: yes, and more of them than ever, but the Bald Eagle, our national symbol, is no longer among them. Neither is the Peregrine Falcon, the American Alligator, the Gray Wolf, or the Grizzly Bear. Whooping Cranes, Desert Pupfish, California Condors, and Black-footed Ferrets have not disappeared as predicted, thanks to strenuous measures by many people. Your children don't even remember DDT or the spray trucks of summer, implicated in many of those declines.

However, 51 species have been delisted, and not all of them are charismatic megafauna. Delisting always makes me nervous; guess I'm naturally suspicious. Here's the scoop, in case you were wondering. Of those 51 species, 25 have been delisted because of recovery. Seventeen have been delisted because the "original data [were] in error." Unfortunately, the remaining nine have been delisted by reason of the fact that they've gone extinct. How many of us can name even one of them? (See Requiem, below.)

Habitat protection: although still committed to resource extraction, most land-management agencies at least acknowledge and evaluate the consequences of their actions. We have, thanks to many nongovernmental organizations as well, more protected habitat nationwide than we did in 1970, and we can't have wildlife and wild plant diversity without habitat.

Air and water quality: places where city sewage flows freely into local streams and industries spew poisons into the air unregulated are no longer a daily experience in most communities.

For all that remains to be done, we are fortunate here in the U.S. that significant progress has been made. But it is not cause to rest. For each item in the list, there is bad news somewhere, and we don't need to look far to find it.

——
Requiem (with date delisted): Guam Broadbill (2/24/04); Longjaw Cisco (9/2/83); Amistad Gambusia (12/4/87); Mariana Mallard (2/23/04); Sampson's Pearlymussel (1/9/84); Blue Pike (9/2/83); Tecopa Pupfish (1/15/82); Santa Barbara Song Sparrow (10/12/83); Dusky Seaside Sparrow (12/12/90).

The Urban Disconnect

Lovelock again: "At least 90 percent of us in the first world now live in cities or in suburban areas around them. ... Because our lives are so wholly urban, democracy ensures the election of governments almost entirely out of touch with the natural world."

Now there's a new criterion for judging candidates, unfortunately it would most likely eliminate all of them.

Here's what we've done locally with our little corner of one of the grandest views in North America: the contact between two continental scale physiographic regions, the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains. That's a car dealership in the middle foreground, and our county seat of government behind it, fondly known locally as "The Taj." A testimony to the sensitivity of governments to native ecology. As are the communications towers on the mountain behind.

Which of our candidates (at any level election) ever spent time in the woods as a child? Which of them remembers it?

(Dare I even mention that most of the trees in the foreground are Chinese elms?)

Intersections of Interest

The Husband and I are reading, each in our own separate book. We are so intrigued by these two books that we even read passages out loud to each other, a virtually unprecedented move. This morning I was struck by a sudden intersection between the diverse ideas that landed us squarely in the realm of human (and especially American) psychology.

He's reading Michael Pollan's book In Defense of Food. Pollan illuminates the fat phobia that has driven a massive experiment on the American diet in the last thirty years. In fact, we have changed our diets, and (he explains) not for the better: after adopting the claims of nutritionists, we are no more healthy today than we ever were. Across the pond, James Lovelock argues that we have a similar phobia centered on nuclear power, a phobia he considers unfounded and harmful. In The Revenge of Gaia, he demolishes the claims of "renewable" energy sources and postulates that only by adopting nuclear power can we avert imminent climate catastrophe.

So, it would seem, here we are: our environments, internal and external, are now threatened by habits and beliefs we have been persuaded to adopt only in the last three to five decades. Yes, indeed, most interesting, especially perhaps to a generation that grew up protesting having someone else's ideas shoved down its throat.

Food is our most personal and intimate interaction with our external environments, and no one would question that our food decisions can wreak havoc on the planet. But I particularly appreciated Lovelock's perspective on our fears of nuclear waste:

Wild plants and animals do not perceive radiation as dangerous, and any slight reduction it may cause in their lifespans is far less a hazard than is the presence of people and their pets. It is easy to forget that now we are so numerous, almost anything extra we do in the way of farming, forestry and home building is harmful to wildlife and to Gaia. The preference of wildlife for nuclear waste sites suggests that the best sites for its disposal are the tropical forests and other habitats in need of a reliable guardian against their destruction by hungry farmers and developers.

Now that, friends, is delightfully perverse. That is, it seems to contradict our intuitive understanding—until we somehow learn that Lovelock is right. Fear, even irrational fear, provides great protection for natural areas.

I wasn't involved in 1992 when the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, a Superfund site, became a wildlife refuge here in Colorado, so my enlightenment came later, in the struggle to prevent the commercial development of Rocky Flats. The Cold War was over, and the market for plutonium triggers was crashing. The Rocky Flats weapons plant was situated between Denver and Boulder, high on a rocky plateau. Post-war (II) wisdom suggested it be surrounded by a large "buffer zone" to protect neighboring communities, thus the plant site itself occupied less than 10% of the 6,240-acre (2,525 ha) site. Almost ten square miles of mostly undeveloped land was, and is, a rarity in this part of the Front Range. Developers were eager, to say the least.

In the 1990s, the buffer zone and adjoining properties also became the focus of local efforts to preserve a pretty significant ecosystem, the tallgrass prairie. Encroaching development on the east and mountain uplift to the west pinched this plant community into a narrow zone along the foothills, in front of what we call the "mountain backdrop." Thanks to the rocks, the area had never been plowed (it remains, however, too vulnerable to gravel mining). Chronic, sometimes vicious, winds kept it from being overly attractive to settlement or development. This land surface, the Rocky Flats Alluvium, is the oldest undisturbed surface in Colorado.

We made many field trips, most to a spot outside the official buffer zone, but sometimes we signed documents, gave up our cameras, donned dosimeter badges, and toured the inside as well. What made it a special treat was long views across the expanse of prairie, the opportunity to find new and unusual plants, and, above all, the absence of people and cows. This was grass that hadn't been grazed by domestic stock for more than 30 years! The sense of solitude, and tall waving grasses around us, gave us the illusion of traveling back in time. The guards in the towers with rifles didn't make much difference: they watched us just as closely when we were outside the fence.

By June 2004, access had become easier, and teams of scientists and volunteers conducted a 24-hour Bioblitz in the Rocky Flats area, recording almost 1,400 species of living beings in this 10-sq-mile sample of mixed grassland. Click on "All the Species" at the above-linked page for a list of the results. Don't you wonder what we'd find if we looked at other places this closely!

Soon it became clear that hundreds of acres of native tallgrass prairie, unusual plants, and healthy wildlife populations would not be enough to save this area from development—but public fears of radioactivity could help. In 2005, despite protests, the area was designated Colorado's newest National Wildlife Refuge, with the Dept of Energy retaining management of a central core to mitigate safety concerns. Although people can visit to hike and view wildlife, many of those who commented on the refuge proposal during the years of negotiation will continue to avoid the area because of health concerns. And that's just fine with 1,396 species of plants, lichens, fungi, insects, spiders, other arthropods, birds, mammals, and one fish!