Mother is Pissed

The Planet Strikes Back

In his 2010 book, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, environmental scholar and activist Bill McKibben writes of a planet so devastated by global warming that it's no longer recognizable as the Earth we once inhabited. This is a planet, he predicts, of "melting poles and dying forests and a heaving, corrosive sea, raked by winds, strafed by storms, scorched by heat." Altered as it is from the world in which human civilization was born and thrived, it needs a new name—so he gave it that extra "a" in "Eaarth."


The Eaarth that McKibben describes is a victim, a casualty of humankind's unrestrained consumption of resources and its heedless emissions of climate-altering greenhouse gases. True, this Eaarth will cause pain and suffering to humans as sea levels rise and croplands wither, but as he portrays it, it is essentially a victim of human rapaciousness.


With all due respect to McKibben's vision, let me offer another perspective on his (and our) Eaarth: as a powerful actor in its own right and as an avenger, rather than simply victim.


Eaarth is now responding to humanity's depredations in a similar way: by warming the atmosphere, taking carbon from the air and depositing it in the ocean, increasing rainfall in some areas and decreasing it elsewhere, and in other ways compensating for the massive atmospheric infusion of harmful human emissions.


But what Eaarth does to protect itself from human intervention is unlikely to prove beneficial for human societies. As the planet warms and glaciers melt, sea levels will rise, inundating coastal areas, destroying cities, and flooding low-lying croplands. Drought will become endemic in many once-productive farming areas, reducing food supplies for hundreds of millions of people. Many plant and animal species that are key to human livelihoods, including various species of trees, food crops, and fish, will prove incapable of adjusting to these climate changes and so cease to exist. Humans may—and again I emphasize that may—prove more successful at adapting to the crisis of global warming than such species, but in the process, multitudes are likely to die of starvation, disease, and attendant warfare.


Bill McKibben is right: we no longer live on the "cozy, taken-for-granted" planet formerly known as Earth. We inhabit a new place, already changed dramatically by the intervention of humankind. But we are not acting upon a passive, impotent entity unable to defend itself against human transgression. Sad to say, we will learn to our dismay of the immense powers available to Eaarth, the Avenger.

Mother Earth/Gaia is truly not a passive victim. Reminds me of...

I would be pissed at what we do to the planet. I would also be pissed if someone served me Chiffon margarine (it was a staple in mt parent's fridge - sorry to say).

Great Interview JHK

James Howard Kunstler: The old American dream is a nightmare

Kunstler has long warned of the horrendous hangover we're going to wake up with after our "cheap oil fiesta," but he's not gloating as global instability and climate destabilization become the new not-so-normal. Unlike some dystopians, he's motivated less by the desire to say "I told you so" than by the hope that we might still manage to reinvent the American dream on a scale that better suits our current circumstances.


"...we are mounting a foolish campaign to sustain the unsustainable, to defend our previous investments in things like suburban living, instead of making new arrangements. That's what we do when we invest half a trillion dollars of "stimulus" capital in building new circumferential highways around our hypertrophied metroplex cities instead of repairing the railroad system.


There is, sadly, much truth in the old saying that people get what they deserve, not what they expect. We are an extremely demoralized nation, unable to construct a coherent consensus about what is happening and what we might do about it, and floundering as a result."

Read the entire article.
I  think the "disaster" that will make us change (or completely destroy us) is here.  Peak oil, $200 barrel prices, unrest, floundering economy...that should move us to action.  But then again...

Listen up John

Image by DonkeyHotey via FlickrIs China Planning a Massive Environmental About Face?

China's Environmental Minister penned an unusually frank op-ed that took the issue of climate change head-on. He acknowledged that some of the nation's development policies have been destructive and dangerous, and emphasized the need to move towards greener policies. Could this be the first sign of a huge about-face from one of the world's most notorious polluters?

This is occurring when at the same time our Congress, led by crying John, is shredding the EPA, bringing back styrofoam...
And I always thought that John wanted our nation to lead the way for other nations.

Who will protect us?

Republicans Are Using the Budget to Wage a Massive Assault on the Environment and Roll Back Crucial Protections

Water is our single most critical resource. Yet Republicans are using the latest budget bill as a weapon to strip away basic protections that help preserve the water resources we all depend on for survival, and they're also attacking our air, food, wildlands and health.

Read the entire article and see what our elected officials are up to. Clearly they are not interested in us, just their lobbyist buddies.

Koch is the joke

Koch Industries Sues Prankster For Saying It Cares About Environment

Last month, an anonymous group pulled a prank on Koch Industries, the company that's notorious for opposing environmental regulations. The group produced a fake press release and website claiming that the company's days of environmental neglect were over, and that Koch was prepared to adopt policies to address climate change. So how did Koch Industries take to being called environmentally friendly? Not well, it turns out -- the company is suing the anonymous pranksters, because their stunt served to "disrupt and harm Plaintiff's business and reputation." I guess the reputation of Koch Industries rests on being perceived as being harmful to the environment ...


The press release that stoked Koch's ire began with the following statement: "Koch Industries remains committed to environmental responsibility and stewardship, announcing today that it will restructure its support for organizations that undertake climate change research and advocacy." Pretty inflammatory stuff.


Of course, everyone immediately recognized that the release was a joke,...

But not the brothers who are suing. Spend your money in court boys, so you'll have less to pay off Congress.

Sustainable Living

Do We Have to Live Like Peasants to Be Truly Sustainable?

Sustainability, at its core, means living in a way that can continue into perpetuity, without exhausting natural resources like air, water, soil, and biodiversity. And it seems inevitable that living a truly sustainable life is not possible without giving up some conveniences, as the Dervaes family has done. And, if we had to, most of us probably would not mind expending some extra effort to go about our days -- putting on a sweater instead of flipping on the heat, or buying secondhand clothes instead of new. A friend who bikes several miles to work instead of driving tells me his bike rides are actually the highlights of his day!


But in the long term, we might also find we have to give up things we do not want to live without. What seems clear is that we need a societal effort to work toward sustainability together, via more available public transportation and bike trails, stricter regulation of the numerous toxic substances we interact with daily (pesticides, flame retardants, phthalates, and more), and policies to move us toward renewable sources of energy like solar and wind. We can also encourage companies to make products that are intended to be upgraded instead of discarded when newer technology is available. These efforts will make sustainable living easier for all of us.

Why not strive for what Jules and his family has done and is doing?  Sure - work together as a "society" but strive for the most sustainable existence possible at the same time - lead by example.

One of the most famous examples of modern sustainable living is the Dervaes family and their urban homestead in Pasadena, CA. The family of four, Jules and his three grown children, Anais, Jordanne and Justin, grow over 6,000 pounds of produce annually in their tenth of an acre garden (enough to provide for their own needs and sell to local consumers and restaurants). They make their own cleaning products, bath products, candles, and biodiesel, and they conserve energy and water using a number of methods, from line-drying clothes to using a pedal-powered grain mill. And while they use many "old" skills (like sewing and gardening), they don't give up their connection to 21st-century technology (like solar panels and the Internet).


While the list of hand-powered devices on the Dervaes' family Web site looks daunting, Jules feels it is worth it. He calls for a change in perspective, saying, "Doing things manually almost always is slower than employing machines. However, there are many factors to consider, including the hidden and long-term costs, quality and durability."

Bravo Andrew

Cuomo Picks ‘Open Space’ Advocate for Environment Chief

Gov. Andrew Cuomo is receiving plaudits from environmental groups for nominating Joseph Martens as the new commissioner of New York State’s Department of Environmental Conservation.


Since 1998, Mr. Martens has served as president of the Open Space Institute, a nonprofit that works largely in the northeastern United States to acquire lands for conservation and sustainable development and farming. Mr. Martens also served as deputy state secretary of energy and the environment from 1992-94, during the gubernatorial administration of Mr. Cuomo’s father, Mario.


The Gannett Web site Pressconnects.com, which focuses on news of interest to the greater Binghamton, N.Y., area, has posted what it describes as a transcript of a speech that Mr. Martens delivered last year at Union College in Schenectady in which he urges the Department of Environmental Conservation to “go slow” on fracking until the E.P.A.’s conclusions are clear.


Mr. Martens is quoted as adding: “If nothing else, it seems to me, the Department should go slow. The tragedy of the Deepwater Horizon operation in the gulf clearly demonstrated that the unexpected can and will happen. It is also clear that the gas industry has not been as candid as it should have been with regards to the potential for problems.”

With this appointment and the low-keyed inauguration - Andy is looking good.

We're leading the way

EIA projects climate catastrophe

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) has projected that the United States will lead the world into catastrophic global warming over the next twenty five years. In its 2011 Annual Energy Outlook, the EIA predicts that energy-related CO2 emissions will "grow by 16 percent [PDF] from 2009 to 2035," reaching 6.3 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (or 1.7 GtC)...


Suffice it to say our prospects for avoiding catastrophic loss caused by our damaged atmosphere are not improved by a political system in thrall to fossil fuel polluters. Hope for a sustainable future lies in our nation's ability to overcome the fear of changing our disastrous status quo and conquer the great challenges ahead.

We're leading the way - oops, in this case this is not a good thing.

If it walks like a...

Minefields or Coalfields: Should Big Coal Change Name For Mountaintop Removal/Strip Mining?

In a new episode of Big Coal Gone Wild last week, coal lobbyists announced their intentions to rebrand mountaintop removal mining as "mountaintop development."


For besieged residents living near mountaintop removal sites in Appalachia -- and in the 20-odd states that allow strip-mining -- this announcement has triggered another name suggestion:


Given that millions of pounds of ammonium nitrate/fuel oil explosives are detonated daily near historic American communities, should Big Coal-controlled areas be renamed as "minefields," and not coalfields.

Call it whatever you want - it still is devastation!

Water, Water, Not Everywhere

Climate Change Could Cause Half the World to Lose Access to Clean Water

Almost half of humanity could lose clean water access due to climate change, according to a British report to be released tomorrow ahead of an international climate change conference in Mexico.


"The main message is that the closer we get to a four-degree rise, the harder it will be to deal with the consequences," Dr. Mark New, a climate expert at Oxford University, told The Observer.


Scientists told reporters recently that we can expect more rain, more drought and fiercer storms in the future if the world continues on its fossil-fuel gobbling track.

Water wars and Food wars. That will keep some companies very happy and rolling in money making those arms.

Ooops!

Stimulus Allows Big Polluters to Bypass Environmental Regulations

In its haste to jump-start "shovel-ready" stimulus projects, the Obama administration allowed many of the biggest polluters in the nation to sidestep key environmental regulations. The federal government made a stunning 179,000 "categorical exclusions" that allowed corporations -- many with disastrous environmental records -- to use stimulus funding to sponsor projects without submitting them to review under the nation's "most basic form of environmental oversight", a new report from the Center for Public Integrity found.


Making matters worse, many of these projects were approved under the auspices of being 'green' or clean energy projects (many more are transportation-related) -- thus helping to comprise the billions of dollars in funding for green projects that sent progressives' hearts aflutter two years ago. This all serves to raise questions about the efficacy of these 'green' stimulus projects, and whether many are in the end actually increasing environmental welfare.

Kidding? Wish it was a big joke. Trying to solve one issue they destroy another.

Wasted food

U.S. Wastes 2 Percent of Its Energy on Uneaten Food

For the folks who won't buy an electric car, put solar panels on their roof, or turn off the lights when they leave the room, there's a painless solution that can help even them reduce their carbon footprint -- stop wasting all that food! According to the latest research, the United States could save the equivalent of 350 million barrels of oil every year by not producing those tons of food which get tossed out every day.
In a recent study, researchers discovered that food production in the U.S. requires some 1.4 billion barrels of oil each year, from growing, packaging, preserving, and transporting the stuff that ends up on your plate. And Americans really like food; It's estimated that between 8 and 16 percent of total US energy consumption gets poured into producing the food we consume -- or planned on consuming, that is.
For all this energy spent of food, Americans are throwing a shockingly high amount of it away. According to estimates from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Americans toss out around 27 percent of the food they buy -- and that's after the dog gets its share....
Considering the skyrocketing obesity rates, reducing the amount of food dished out could be beneficial to the nation's health as well. Smaller portions and eating locally grown food are both ways Americans could cut down on their carbon footprints -- while slimming down their waistlines, too.

Remember mom's saying - eat all your food - think about all those starving folks. The new rule - put less on your plate , save energy, lose weight and then help out those who don't have enough good food to eat.

Look who's teaching our children

BP Helped Write Environmental Curriculum for California's Public Schools

BP, the energy giant responsible for the largest offshore oil spill in history, helped develop the state's framework for teaching more than 6 million students about the environment.
Despite a mixed environmental record even before the Gulf of Mexico disaster, state officials included BP on the technical team for its soon-to-be-completed environmental education curriculum, which will be used in kindergarten through 12th-grade classes in more than 1,000 school districts statewide.

I could see it now:

1. Don't worry - there is an endless supply of fossil fuel
2. There is no such thing as global warming
3. Plastics are good
4. Chemicals are good
5. ...

The Zen of Green

Image via WikipediaLet Go of The 'Need' to Save the Planet: Thich Nhat Hahn

"Without collective awakening the [environmental] catastrophe will come," he warns. "Civilizations have been destroyed many times and this civilization is no different. It can be destroyed. We can think of time in terms of millions of years and life will resume little by little. The cosmos operates for us very urgently, but geological time is different.
"If you meditate on that, you will not go crazy. You accept that this civilization could be abolished and life will begin later on after a few thousand years because that is something that has happened in the history of this planet. When you have peace in yourself and accept, then you are calm enough to do something, but if you are carried by despair there is no hope.
"It's like the person who is struck with cancer or Aids and they learn they have been given one year or six months to live. They suffer very much and fight. But if they come to accept that they will die and they prepare to live every day peacefully and they enjoy every moment, the situation may change and the illness may go away. That has happened to many people."

And from The Guardian:

"The situation the Earth is in today has been created by unmindful production and unmindful consumption. We consume to forget our worries and our anxieties. Tranquilising ourselves with over-consumption is not the way."

Thay says that the communities his Order of Interbeing is building around the world are intended to show that it is possible to "live simply and happily, having the time to love and help other people. That is why we believe that if there are communities of people like that in the world, we will demonstrate to the people and bring about an awakening so that people will abandon their course of comforts. If we can produce a collective awakening we can solve the problem of global warming. Together we have to provoke that type of awakening."

Redesigned urinal

Pee And Wash In The Same Fixture!

The theoretical sequence is that you use the urinal, then wash your hands and the washwater rinses the urinal, saving water. Since of course, everybody washes their hands after peeing, right?
To save water, Eco Urinal is designed to use the water that was used for washing hands to flush the urine. By this process, we don't have to use water twice after using the urinal.
Moreover, it reduces the establishment expenses by optimizing the materials. Upper space of this urinal is made with glass, and it helps to secure a clear view for users. It also promotes people to keep their sanitation because people need to wash their hands to flush the urine after use.

What a great idea and design.  I want a new bathroom now - just to install one of these.

Overdraft notice

Image via WikipediaEarth's Overdraft Notice

The Global Footprint Network has announced that Earth Overshoot Day is fast approaching:

This Saturday, we will reach Earth Overshoot Day: the day when human demand on nature surpasses what nature can renewably supply...as of August 21st, humanity will have demanded an amount of ecological resources equivalent to what it takes nature 12 months to produce. From now until the end of the year, we will meet our needs by liquidating stocks and accumulating greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.

According to the Global Footprint Network humanity crossed a threshold three decades ago when we stopped being able to live off of nature's interest -- "consuming resources and producing carbon dioxide at a rate lower than what the planet was able to regenerate and reabsorb each year" -- and started living beyond nature's capacity. They call this gap between human demand and nature's supply "ecological overshoot" (a concept that was devised by the UK-based new economics foundation).

Problem with this overdraft? No returned checks or bank fees - the penalty for overdawing is much more "expensive."

Carnivalesque Rebellion

Tactical Briefing #1 from ADBUSTERS:

Between November 22-28 the whole world will light up with seven days of Carnivalesque Rebellion!

Think of it as an adventure, as therapy, as Buy Nothing Day times a hundred … think of it as the World Cup of global activism – a week of postering and pranks, of talking back at your profs and speaking truth to power. Some of us will poster our schools and neighborhoods and just break our daily routines for a week. Others will chant, cut up their credit cards in big box stores and pull off theatrical stunts that provoke mass cognitive dissonance. Others still will drop stink bombs in strategic locations and engage in the most visceral kind of civil disobedience.

In all, millions of people around the world will walk out of their schools, offices and factories for a week and live!

To pull this off, we need to learn from the failures of the recent G8/G20 protests. A few sensational and spectacular acts of violence (police cars on fire, window smashing) will not provoke the kind of global mindshift that our world so desperately needs. And neither will sitting at home yelling at our screens. If our Seven Days of Carnivalesque Rebellion are to succeed we’ll need a plethora of actions that cannot be dismissed as petty acts of vandalism, that genuinely challenge the power of megacorporations, that make people think about the climate tipping points now descending upon us and that highlight the perversity of a system that has brought us to the zero point of systemic collapse.

What would you do if you could mobilize thousands of connected protesters in cities all over the world? Send your best ideas for coordinated acts of civil disobedience to memewarriors@adbusters.org and we’ll share the most compelling ones in subsequent briefs.

To get the ball rolling here’s a personal plunge you may want to take right away: Vow never to walk into a Starbucks ever again. Instead, search out the most interesting indie coffee shop around where you live and work … get to know the people who own and run the place and get your friends and co-workers to join you there. Individually this may feel like a drop in the bucket, but if all the 86,000 of us in this network do it collectively, then we can begin to shift power from megacorporations to our friends and neighbors.

This little shift in our lives is a good way to get in the mood … and during the week of rebellion in November, these indie coffee houses will become our meeting places and bases.

Step 1 - are you willing? Down where I was vacationing, not a Starbucks in sight. A Dunkin Donuts but also enough places to "keep it local."

Crazy train passenger

Rand Paul:

He sticks up for the man-made disaster known as MTR, the technique that blows the tops off of mountains to get to the coal inside. Paul has been vocal about MTR in the past, and now he's saying that MTR has many benefits, including the creation of "enhanced" land.
"I think they should name it something better," he says. "The top ends up flatter, but we're not talking about Mount Everest. We're talking about these little knobby hills that are everywhere out here. And I've seen the reclaimed lands. One of them is 800 acres, with a sports complex on it, elk roaming, covered in grass." Most people, he continues, "would say the land is of enhanced value, because now you can build on it."

Wonder why he has this opinion? That's right - money.

"Coal companies are offering to spend millions of dollars to defeat Mr. Paul's opponent this fall. With stories today showing he'll support their practices, he's sent them an unmistakable response: I'm your guy.

Gardening Lessons

Sowing Traditional Knowledge

Indigenous people and peasants have detailed knowledge of nature. Their religion is a spiritual form of farming - pleading to the gods to bring them a good harvest. Their celebrations, their fiestas, are prayers of enjoyment to their gods for their ancestors, animals, crops, harvest, the dead and the living.

Indigenous people in the Philippines consider the land a gift of the gods.

Land in the savannah grasslands of the Upper East region of Ghana is a sanctuary for the gods.

The Dai people of southwest China protect and preserve sacred groves where they worship their gods - exactly like the ancient Greeks.

The Dayak Pasir Adang people live in East Borneo, Indonesia, and practice sacred farming. If their reading of nature is auspicious, they use fire for clearing the land in order to plan their crops. They don't destroy or burn fruit-bearing trees or ground that has the graves of their ancestors. They sow seeds of spinach, bitter brassica, corn, and cucumber.

The ethno botanical knowledge of several indigenous people is remarkable. The Tzeltals and the Purepechas of Mexico recognize more than 1,200 and 900 plants respectively.

It was from that careful study and understanding of the workings of nature that traditional farming came into being.

Crop mixtures with animals, crops grown with trees near or within a forest, make up a traditional farming system. Mixing plants and animals is good farming because, together, they fertilize the land and keep pests under control. Crop mixtures attract insect predators and parasites that keep hostile insects and weeds in check.

In addition, the traditional seeds of the peasant have a greater resistance to disease. Farm animals (hogs, chicken, cattle) give the peasant milk, meat, and draft power while they eat weeds and crop residues recycling them into protein and manure for the land.

Moreover, traditional family farmers and peasants practice sustainable agriculture; that is, they practice not merely good husbandry, but, just as importantly, they and their agriculture are expressions of agricultural, ecological, and biodiversity principles, social justice, democracy, and very small-scale farming on the land.

In contrast to the unsustainable agricultural practices of industrialized farmers, peasants and small family farmers raise food in ways that enrich the land and create strong rural society; that is, they employ sustainable farming as a way of life.

There is so much to be learned from other cultures. So much to be learned from our forefathers as well. A different way of living, a different way of respecting nature, a different way of eating...

Be the change

We All Have Oil on Our Hands

At first I resisted commenting on the oil spill in the Gulf. What more could I add to what has already been said. But then I realized that as disturbing as it is, this disaster provides us with an opportunity for something good, perhaps even a turning point that invokes sustainable change in our lives and for the environment.

I know that I will be seen as a radical when I say that this isn't the fault of BP or Transocean. It's not the fault of the government or bi-partisan politics. It is not the fault of oil executives and big corporations.

It is my fault.
It is your fault.
It is our fault.

This is the universe's way of waking us up, of letting us know that it is time that we take personal responsibility for the havoc that our collective greed has had on our planet. It is known that thoughts and actions create energy. Whether or not you believe in Karma you can at least accept what physicists say that consciousness determines reality. If this is our reality what is our consciousness saying?

This disaster is the most recent effect, in a long line of effects -- from Madoff to the War in Iraq -- that stem from putting our heads in the sand and refusing to face the reality that our consciousness, our desires, our thoughts, our actions and even our solutions are based on short term and selfish thinking.

Our dependence on the pollutants of this earth have always, and will continue to have far-reaching consequences to our eco-systems, biosystems, geosystems and our race's natural evolution.

Change is inevitable. Things absolutely cannot stay the same. The type of change we invoke is up to each and every one of us. If we each take responsibility in shifting our own behavior, we can trigger the type of change that is necessary to achieve sustainability for our race or this planet.

We change our planet, our environment, our humanity every day, every year, every decade, and every millennia.

It is critical that we believe that you and me can actually make a difference. If we neglect our power and let things just happen, then we are merely contributing to future oil spills and other impending disasters.

As with every revolution or movement of change, a critical mass must be achieved. A tipping point where one person, one event, one incident galvanizes society into action. This disaster could be it. The power of one is key to our success. The power that you, me, our family, our friends, our spheres of influence, and our full extensions, can invoke positive changes that alters the course of human history. We have reached a critical juncture in our existence on this planet. All of us can do one thing differently towards change. All of us can alter one aspect of our behavior. For each of us, it is a different change in our routine. For some, it might be walking or biking to the market instead of driving. For others, it might be car-pooling or even drinking from re-usable bottles instead of discarding plastic bottles. For others it can be not slamming the car door that will cause a tornado on the other side of the world - Google butterfly effect and read about the power of a single action.

Trends are made up of individuals wishing to make a change. How incredible would it be if you would be the actual person to bring on the tipping point. How awesome would it be if you and me, our friends, our family, our society, were responsible for the changes that can positively impact our environment and our planet. Personal responsibility is not only recognizing the errors of our ways. Personal responsibility lies in our willingness and ability to correct those errors individually and collectively.

It all starts with you and me!