Books I am reading

“When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young.” — Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou

Still in my mind after six months: Ministry of the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. A prescient book, a wide sweeping story of our near future. I read this when it was first published and am rereading it. Many people across the world believe Robinson’s account is a likely forecast of where the world is heading as we grapple with Climate Change. P.S. Its not a dystopia. There is hope.

Antelope Woman by Louise Erdrich, (I recommend the audio version read by the author), is the most recent version of Antelope Woman originally published in 2016. Louise is the author with whom I most strongly relate as a writer. Her stories arise from a particular place. The Sentence and The Night Watchman are two others I’ve read in the last few years both twice. Check out her books at her bookstore in Minneapolis, Birchbark Books. Below is an interview with Louise on her novel, The Sentence. I recommend any of Erdrich’s books.

The Children’s Fire by Mat Mcartney. Inspiring memoir and challenge to all of us to ask whether we are keepers of the children’s fire in this world changing time on Planet Earth.

Horse by Geraldine Brooks who is another of my favorite writers. Geraldine began writing as a journalist, which I observe is the genesis for many of our best fiction writers. Horse demonstrates the power of a trained researcher who can weave a story around historical facts and mysteries. Year of Wonders, a novel about the Great Plague is a powerful example of how Brooks builds narrative around historical events. I have read all of Brook’s fiction and nonfiction. Each is a gem, a solid work of research and careful thought. Caleb’s Crossing is one that resonated powerfully with me.

The Haunting of Hajji Hotak by Jamil Jan Kochai, a finalist for the National Book Award in 2022, a book of interrelated short stories from which I am learning how to write. Jamil’s works illustrate how important we hear from writers whose direct experience reflect to us how our national policies impact people in other nations. Jamil Jan Kochai was born in a refugee camp in Pakistan, to Afghani parents, who later immigrated to America when he was a young boy. I had the rare privilege to participate in a writers’ group with Jamil during the Tucson Festival of Books Masters Review. His refrain for reviewing each of our works – Where’s the fire? – still rings in my mind. There is plenty of fire in this book. And, wonderful humor.

Finally, I am listening to Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead. A reimagined version of Dicken’s David Copperfield, this is an ambitious novel. I was born in the foothills of the Appalachians and I can testify that Barbara’s main character is so authentic that I both laugh and cry (with memories loosed in my mind of my grandparents and aunts and uncles and the people in and around Watauga and Johnson City, Tennessee.) I recall the mash up of local culture and mystical realism and poverty. It is the beginning of the Opioid Pandemic. Barbara, whose book plots are usually complex and nuanced, is a powerful writer whose books are some of the most powerful works of American literature in my lifetime.

Caretta caretta…no, it’s not a song

Caretta caretta…no, it’s not a song. It’s a symphony.

It’s a fair-weather day.

A battalion of brown pelicans coast overhead on dark arched wings. Children build sand castles and bob in the surf, and shorebirds rest in warm dunes—a feast of beauty and abundance.

Santa Rosa Island was named in homage to Isabel Flores de Oliva – the “Rose of Lima.” She was canonized by the Catholic Church in 1671 as Saint Rose.

Pensacola is rich in stories.

Take the story of Caretta caretta for example. She doesn’t even know we’ve tagged her with a dichotomous name to set her species apart from others. Her only inclination is to find a darkened shoreline and lay her burden down.

Buoyed by thick ocean waves she paddles with strong legs through the currents.

Through heavy lid, she looks toward shore and vaguely remembers its smell and warm, gritty touch. The moonlit shore is quiet as she takes purchase on the shifting sand below her.

She looks from just under the water along the beach head where bright lights in hotels and restaurants, homes and gas stations could make her decide to turn away. She looks for a darkened beach, lit only by the silver moonlight. It’s instinctual.

Every May through September along the Gulf shores, female loggerhead turtles (Caretta caretta) return to lay leathery eggs in the dunes of their birth.

Kemp’s Ridley, Atlantic green turtles and sometimes leatherbacks also use these crystal white beaches as a nursery. It’s been so for thousands of years.

Caretta caretta has spent her youth in the Sargasso Sea, a body of water created from currents in the North Atlantic and where Sargassum seaweed covers over its surface. It is believed the loggerhead turtle feeds and grows in this protective cover.

When she comes of age, dozens of eggs grow within her as she heads back to the same beach where as a hatchling she was just the size of a quarter and prize catch of shorebirds, crabs, and other beachside predators. She is one of the few lucky infant turtles that managed to survive to adulthood.

Now she returns to lay down the next generation. And, should she come ashore, will she struggle to navigate beach chairs, plastic inner tubes, or sandcastles?

What will happen to her offspring? Baby sea turtles are attracted to bright lights, an instinct that should turn them toward a moonlit sea. Will they head toward the hotel lights instead? Rangers report scores of tiny turtles destroyed by cars or desiccated in the hot sun among buildings.

In today’s world, with the human built environment, it takes countless volunteers to tend turtle nests, redirecting the young toward the ocean. Because of this, can we say that these species are self-sustaining?

There are seven species of sea turtles in the world today. Four of them lay their eggs on Santa Rosa Island, Gulf Shores National Seashore. That constitutes a biological treasure for this region, a remaining strand of a once diverse web of life just off these shores.

What if Caretta caretta disappears due to human interference in this annual ritual that replenishes her kind? Should we really care?

Reach back 100 years in Pensacola history to an ocean teeming with life. Fish would be larger and more plentiful and you could scoop up shrimp in Escambia Bay with your hands. There would be hundreds more dunes with waving sea oats, both habitat and nursery to many species.

The loggerhead turtle is part of an ocean web that supports our fishing industry. The biodiversity of our beautiful islands is the basis of tourism, a principal industry. Somehow we have to learn to maintain this natural treasure while going about our business.

We are working that out now. There has got to be a way. Pensacoleans have never been short on ingenuity.

For Caretta caretta we can turn down the lights, sit out on our decks and listen to the oncoming waves. We’ll save money by reducing energy consumption and get a better view of the heavens. Let’s face it: life would be dismal without the beauty of nature.

When we see a dolphin breach the waves, white terns dive and soar, or listen to ocean breezes, we are renewed and encouraged that all is right on this exquisite planet we are so fortunate to share as kin.

Caretta caretta…no, it’s not a song. It’s a symphony.

This is the Time to Stand for Democracy

Joe Biden is the leader we need at this critical period of Defending Democracy Everywhere.

Heather Cox Richardson, American Historian, wrote in A Letter to Americans about Biden’s Announcement, reminding us of how Biden came to the decision to run and to lead the country, and what he has accomplished with the most diverse cabinet in American history, bipartisan major investments in infrastructure and climate adaptation. Another significant achievement is the Justice 40 policy that 40% of investments in the Inflation Reduction Act be in communities which have been left out of the planning and implementation and whose understanding is not in our toolbox but should be. In order to have the strongest strategy for deploying a whole new basis for how we live and what we do with our energy, everyone should be “in on” design and implementation. He has also led the nation to join with other nations in the 30 X 30 initiative to conserve 30% of our land and water by 2030.

Volts Podcast for April 26th. This relates to our present time of transition to the New Grid and all its renewable inputs. The Inflation Reduction Act is front and center. Highly recommended to readers, Volts is moderated by David Roberts who deftly interviews leaders and doers about The Great Energy Transition.

Project Drawdown Discover

Project Drawdown is a leader in climate action with breakouts by sector, action steps in each, and the potential carbon drawdown from the atmosphere. Now the organization has developed a new resource for people to find their own way forward in preparing for climate resilence.

Most of us wake up daily to a “firehose” of information about climate change –enough to make us dive under the covers. But Project Drawdown has prepared a special feature, Discover, which helps you learn more, organize people, find a career, and a number of actions within your community’s life.

Just one example I found for a search for My Community and Electricity sector:

Impact

“Retrofitting buildings with insulation is a cost-effective way to reduce energy required for heating and cooling. If annually, 1.6–2 percent of existing residential and commercial buildings in temperate and tropical countries install insulation with low-carbon materials, we could avoid 15.38–18.54 gigatons of emissions at an implementation cost of US$710.37–791.29 billion. Over the lifetime of the building, heating and cooling savings could be US$19.57–22.92 trillion.”

Filter by I’d like to and Filter by Sector

Check It Out!

Gambling with Generations’ Fate

An article published in the journal Nature delivers a sober but clear message about the myth of carbon dioxide removal as a current strategy to meet net zero carbon emissions that will stabilize warming at 1.5 to 2 degrees warming.

As the industrialized world continues with fossil fuel development claiming they will reach net zero emissions on time through carbon removal, the article by David T. Ho, oceanographer at the University of Hawai’i soberly outlines why that strategy will lead to catastrophic warming.

As we inch toward the 2024 Presidential election, each of us voting age Americans must challenge candidates who are not soberly addressing the issue of climate warming. We have only about 15-20 years to get this right. That is an eye blink.

In America, we have mostly made decisions by our economic bottom line. This has led to the crisis we are experiencing now. That economic practice requires continued growth. We need to develop circular systems of human enterprise that are steady state systems, looping back to conserve and reuse everything as we observe in nature.

This is a time for sober action and innovation — we have to innovate the sh– out of everything we do. I believe this can be a great age of learning and collective action in which we declare what we hold as too precious to destroy.

Replenishing the Earth – Wangari Maathai

Winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2004

Wangari Maathai grew up in her homeland in Kenya, living close to the earth and learning traditional Kikuyu values and practices. Her memoir, Unbound, describes her daily activities as a child, her mother’s teachings, and how her people regarded the streams and forests in a land where the balance of nature is delicate, not to be abused without serious consequences for its inhabitants.

In Replenishing the Earth: Spiritual Values for Healing Ourselves and the World, Maathai’s wisdom is distilled onto each page, every sentence the next drop in the flow. Wangari describes herself as working practically to solve problems she learned about in discussions with communities and among women’s groups. Their need for clean water, and for access to earn a living, were her daily concerns. Eventually, Wangari and the women she served established the Greenbelt Movement that planted over 30 million trees in Kenya.

In Replenishing, Wangari’s concerns about the destruction of the environment in Kenya are examined in light of the world’s sacred traditions. Always a practical perspective, her observations and reflections give readers much to consider often through humor. For example she writes that God in his wisdom created Adam on Friday. If he’d created him on Monday he’d have perished for lack of food!

Wangari Maathai’s clarity of thought is invaluable in this age where massive destruction of oceans, rivers, wildlands, and forests have imperiled life the world over. She and the women of Kenya remind us of the earth-shaking power of people to replenish the earth, if we choose to do so.

Listen to an interview with Wangari Maathai on OnBeing.org.

 

 

Where do we go from here?

Photo by Susan Feathers

The previous post provided a downloadable copy of the latest IPCC report on climate change science and forecast for policymakers. It is condensed for quick reading. If nothing else, skim to the highlighted summaries.

All Bets Are Off

We are on track for massive warming. And because the Earth’s systems are complex with many hidden tipping points, we are unlikely to predict much of what might happen except that life as we know it will be greatly destabilized. What might happen then will become harder to predict.

The imperative is to halt burning fossil fuels as fast as possible. Most people don’t believe it is possible. But, the IPCC report tells us that is exactly what we must do NOW. Take heart: a plan already exists and is working we just need to do it faster. See Project Drawdown.

We are required to reinvent the way we live. Much of what we Americans refer to as modern life is fraught with stress and uncertainty. Except for the few wealthy among us, we experience everyday that we are working harder and enjoying life less. We are less healthy. We witness the beauty of the world fading before our eyes. Our democratic institutions are under attack from a vocal minority but at least in that area of our common life I think most of us are reasonable and see a way forward together. The last election proved that.

Many forces try to divide us on issues that are polarizing. We love our children and families and believe in the Golden Rule. So, we can come together. See here a short video of John Hume, the great Irish leader who made peace when no one thought it possible.

So to this majority of citizens I appeal. Gather your families and neighbors and have a good chat about how you can help move our nation to a more sustaining way of life and avert a certain catastrophe for our children. What are the elements of life that you recall you love the most? How can we simplify but also enjoy greater abundance together?

Listen to this insightful discussion about smart design based on nature on OnBeing.org with Janine Benyus who wrote about biomimicry.

Attend your local city council meeting to express your concerns. Just go. Contact your senators and express your views and ask what you can do to help. A phone call, an email, a letter to the editor. We can ALL do these simple things.

We must look for and cultivate leaders who are of this mind set. President Biden has initiated legislation in the right direction but much more needs to be done and certainly approving drilling rights in the Alaskan waters with its great biodiversity and intact ecosystem is NOT that direction.

We have to be more vocal together. We must look together at candidates that believe in the democratic principles set forth in our Constitution. Who are they? What have they done? Elect them no matter their political party. Stay off the major news channels. Read. Discuss. Think for yourself.

Try Independent News.

Until the people of Who-ville (the “silent majority”) come together to confront the GRINCH (our way of life), we will not survive, or we will live very degraded lives in the near future. Many across the world — people who have contributed the least to climate change– are already suffering. But, it is coming home for all of us soon. We must rise to it, be responsible, and act together. And, whatever you do, support our children and youth who are fighting for a future and looking to us to help make that possible.

You know what to do.

Visionaries of the future

What story are trees telling?

The Treeline by Ben Rawlence is a roving discovery and discussion of the trees that ring the northern hemisphere in the Boreal Forest. The Boreal system contains one third of all the trees on Earth; controlling rain patterns more than the tropical forests, these trees modulate world climate.

This is a very detailed and fascinating travel and scientific discussion of the trees that are our last hope for sustaining the world weather and climate and modulating the concentration of carbon dioxide.

Rawlence considers the ethical issues. What do we regard as sacred? What does it mean to be human are questions at the basis of the ecological crises that his travel journal and book are illuminating

Ben Rawlence has founded the Black Mountains College which is focused on education about the ecological crises and to adapt and find new ways of working and living. The courses are free. A Bachelor’s degree is offered, Arts, Ecology and Systems Change.

Rawlence interviews the peoples, scientists, and activists who are witnessing the changing forests and the bell ringers (birch and larch) of massive change. His travel journal, meeting people who live in and around the Boreal zone, and their lives demonstrate how people live in concert with the natural cycles of this biological zone. Varying world views depend on the country where they live, an insight into the immensity of our world and the massive changes we are seeing among these forests. For example, in some taiga areas of the Boreal in Russia, people doubt there is climate change because they do not see the same changes that other peoples are seeing in their geographic area. However, due to temperature and geographic variations, changes in the Russian taiga are less visible, happening in underlying ice.

I am listening on Audible which I suggest because the information is dense. Also, as I have done, you can do concurrent research online into areas that are explored while listening to Rawlence’s discussion and insights.

This is a great interview with Rawlence about the book and his experiences.