September 2026 – Susan Feathers

What’s the Polar Ice Telling Us?

PBS has a new 7-part documentary, The Ages of Ice, exploring what we are learning about polar ice temperature, structure and melting. Prime Video is carrying the series.

The first episode is The Frozen Heart which you can rent for $2.99. This episode gives us an overview of what we are learning about rivers cutting through glaciers; changes in the shape and structure of snow flakes and how it affects albedo (a measure of the reflective capacity of snow and ice at the poles). If you watch only this one episode, you will come away with a basic knowledge of measures scientists are making and what their measures mean.

Anyone living near a coastal region, especially in the northern hemisphere, will want to know the predictions in sea level rise by the end of the century. It is motivating to do all we can now to limit warming.

A surprise for me is the increased heating by absorption of sunlight by small fossil fuel particles from combustion. Yes, they circulate around the planet and fall out over the poles, too. Where these small dark particles fall on snow and ice, melting rates increase disproportionately.

It is better to be informed than to ignore what we are learning in multiple ways by scientists and research groups across the planet.

Other sources of data about polar ice measures and predictions:

Current extent of sea ice cover – Earth-NASA

What If We Get It Right? “Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is a marine biologist, policy expert, writer, and teacher working to help create the best possible climate future. She is co-founder of Urban Ocean Lab, a think tank for the future of coastal cities, and is the Roux Distinguished Scholar at Bowdoin College. Ayana authored The New York Times bestseller What If We Get it Right?: Visions of Climate Futures, work that is carried on with her newsletter and podcast of the same name.”

FAR AFIELD

A Land Ethic®. expands the definition of “community” to include not only humans, but all of the other parts of the Earth, as well: soils, waters, plants, and animals – “the land”. In a Land Ethic®, the relationships between people and land are intertwined; care for people cannot be separated from care for the land. Thus, a Land Ethic® is a moral code of conduct that stems from these interconnected caring relationships. from The Land Ethic by Aldo Leopold.

Reports of failed grain crops and rising costs are more common in this time of climate change. Further, war has destabilized transport of grain for export by as much as half as seen in Ukraine’s struggle to transport wheat to worldwide markets due to destruction of ports and ships.

Virginia Governor Declares Emergency to Help Farmers.

The Virginia Mercury published an article on 9/16/2006 about Governor Spanberger declaring a state of emergency as drought has reduced the ability of farmers to access enough hay for their cattle.

Although drought conditions have improved in some parts of the state since earlier this year, some regions have experienced losses of up to 70% losses in hay yields. Southern Virginia along the North Carolina border remains under emergency drought conditions, according to the Department of Environmental Quality. ~ Shannon Heckt, VA Mercury reporter.

US Wheat Farmers Struggle in Drought

The Guardian recently published an article about the rising costs for wheat farmers in the U.S. and the worldwide challenges to provide sufficient grains of all kinds to meet the nutritional needs of the global community. See the link below to a comprehensive view into a growing food security problem.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/sep/18/wheat-farmers-drought-geopolitics?CMP=share_btn_url

The article cites rising cost of diesel fuel and fertilizer as two factors that diminish farmers profits from sale of wheat. Farmers may reduce the amount of wheat they plant at a time when the world need for grain production has never been higher. U.S. farmers raise more soy and corn on average because profit is higher. But after the recent tariffs of the Trump administration, the largest purchaser of U.S. soy – China – found other market sources for soy.

The Guardian article also describes the interference of exports of grain from Ukraine after a recent attack on key ports, forecasted to reduce the amount of grain available for markets by as much as half. Further, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization reported the food price index showed a 2.5% increase. The impacts of drought and political conflicts, the Guardian article reports will have far greater impacts worldwide. The need for all grains worldwide will continue to grow.

The values that Aldo Leopold described in his now widely read essay, The Land Ethic, resonate loudly as all countries and leaders must determine how to feed the world adequately under new and worsening climate and market conditions. What values will underlie our decisions? Leopold provides a roadmap.

The Land Ethic_A Sand County Almanac Download

Discerning the Truth Is A Challenge When Trusted Sources Get It Wrong

Today on Substack, specifically The Contrarians, Jennifer Rubin published this statement about the legacy press obfuscating fascist realities as politics:

The sanewashing of Republicans’ despotic orgy provides insight into how far astray billionaire-owned media has gone in its political coverage. Outrageous, frightful assaults on constitutional law and democratic values are treated as clever tactics. Treating a party that is no longer bound by fidelity to truth, rational discourse, or nonviolent political competition as indistinguishable from a party that adheres to democratic (small “d”) norms casts legacy media as enablers, not independent guardians of democracy and free discourse. ~ The Contrarians, by Jennifer Rubin

This statement was directed at the New York Times reporting on the recent Republican pre-midterm election “convention” over the weekend. I herald Rubin’s eagle eye in a time when discernment is an absolute necessity for citizens to navigate this particular “moment” in American history in the making: we could lose our democratic way of life with this one election.

Further, another person who is clear-eyed and well spoken, Judge Michael Luttig describes what is likely to happen after the Midterm election in January when newly elected representatives are seated (or not) in Congress:

January 3, 2027 – The Final Battle for America’s Democracy

His post was originally published in The New Republic. You can read or listen at this link. I am very grateful to The New Republic for making it possible for everyone to understand the insightful warning from such a respected conservative judge.

A Republic, if you can keep it. ~ Benjamin Franklin

UN Environment Report

Humanity is on track to reach and surpass the 1.5° C planetary heating.

The latest UN Climate Report from the UN Environmental Program reports that the world may exceed the 1.5° C global heating limit on degrees of heating and goal of the UN Climate countries which had projected that that temperature could occur by 2100. It’s likely we will exceed the 1.5° C in the next few years. The UN is declaring an emergency.

Cooling Down Will Not Happen on a Timescale Meaningful to Humans

Global heating will not lessen but continue to rise as long as the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide [CO2] continues to rise. Once the ocean begins to heat up it does not release the heat in any time period meaningful to human beings. What that means is that the world is heating and will not cool down even after we have stopped contributing more CO2 to the atmosphere.

The largest contributors of [CO2] historically are the early industrializing countries with the U.S.A. leading. While today we have reduced our [CO2] contributions according to commitments made as part of the various international agreements, we must continue to dramatically reduce our current contributions to greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). Efforts around the world to increase the production of clean energy sources are showing outstanding success. China has so much clean energy production they have a problem with how to store the excess. Africa is building out grids with clean energy. Australia has enough clean energy generation that anyone can use energy from the grid at noon for a couple of hours of FREE energy. Even in the USA where the current administration has stopped the momentum for clean energy production while declaring there is no such thing as climate change and increased fossil fuel development, the U.S.A. has continued to build out clean energy infrastructure. The momentum cannot be totally blocked because clean energy is cheaper keeping economic advantages that drive ongoing development. The U.S. public has also continued pressure for cleaner, cheaper power and infrastructure.

Resources for Readers

On Substack

What If We Get It Right? Ayana Elizabeth Johnson – Ayana read the UN Report on Limiting Overshoot of the 1.5° C
The Crucial Years – Bill McKibben updates on election and climate (September 7)
The Weekly Anthropocene – Sam Matey-Coste Interview with Professor Jeremy Ney: Professor Ney and Sam discuss many of America’s climate related challenges with positive gains on development of clean energy updates by Sam
I recommend all three Substack accounts for reliable updates, with Sam keeping track of positive energy developments across the world. I read Sam as I would a hope serum.

Trump national policy on climate change.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

The Peace of Wild Things

Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. ~ The Poetry Foundation

My spiritual center, i.e. the physical and psychological tether of my soul on this planet is the ancestral home of my grandparents in Watauga, Tennessee. The Hilltop Farm they inhabited and farmed, and welcomed their children and grandchildren is the place where I felt Mother Earth’s presence as a child. I have written that I’m tethered there, grounded there psychologically and spiritually. For my entire life it hovers in my imagination and pulls me toward it.

America was first an agrarian nation with millions of family farms by the time I was born in 1945. But during my life up to now (81 years and counting) we have lost millions of small family farmers and their lands to industrial scale one crop operations owned by corporations with no human face. With that theft the soil of our geographical home has been robbed of its biological wealth and resilience. Young farmers today – our pioneering youth – face insurmountable barriers to small farm, biodiverse farming. The American Farmland Trust reports that we lose 2,000 acres of farmland every year. Most of these are farms where the farmer ages out. Sons and daughters do not carry on the farming business because its almost impossible to make a living growing wholesome food for Americans in their local communities. The farm is sold. American is sold out for some corporatized replacement that drains the community of its wealth.

Wendell Berry, whose poem has always resonated with me as a fellow guardian of the sacred nature of the Earth. If we cannot learn to live on Earth without ruining it, we are doomed. This is everywhere apparent across the planet.

Why have corporations come to rule over us? Why is capitalism a no-win system? Get a tea or coffee, or a clear glass of that sacred beverage – agua pura – and listen to Wendell Berry discuss America’s un-settling by greed.

I promise you this interview with the late great Kentucky farmer-poet, writer and philosopher – at a Sustainable Agriculture conference – will settle you with his eagle vision of a way forward in an uncertain time.