Susan Feathers

Our Military is Well Ahead of Congress on Climate Change

U.S. Marines from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit unload food and supplies to Pakistanis in support of the flood relief effort in Pano Aqil, Pakistan, Sept. 11, 2010. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Jason Bushong/Released)

Tonight 350 Pensacola brought Brigadier General John Adams, Ret. to describe how the military is involved in preparation for the consequences of climate change. Among them are sea level rise, food shortages, migration of large groups of people from countries destabilized by climate change impacts, and larger and more powerful storms. See this link to The Center for Climate and Security.

General Adams reviewed changes in the Arctic that will eventually keep it open (free of ice) for global trade and military maneuvers for as much as six months out of the year. Arctic Patrolling is now another security responsibility of the U.S. Military.

Where troops train and in major ports that harbor military ships, adaptations must be made now because the infrastructure take years to develop. We are likely to see relocation of military bases–which will also impact communities that rely on the economic income from their presence. He mentioned Norfolk bases as likely impacted. Pensacola Naval Air Station (PNAS) will not be impacted because Hurricane Ivan destroyed coastal infrastructure which the Navy decided not to replace. PNAS is the home of Naval Aviation, the main activity that will not be affected by sea level. However, it is subject to stronger than normal storms as is our whole coastal area.

General Adams explained that the drought in California and other areas in the Southwest is making it impossible to conduct troop training (major fires and the risk of setting off fires from troop fire) and these conditions are likely to drive base relocation.

General Adams began by describing climate change as a global security threat. Adams is the CEO of a global security consulting firm, Guardian Six. They have an impressive team assembled to analyze security risks for clients. He speaks from experience and current projects his team is conducting around the world to assess security risks.

As General Adams focused his comments country by country, targeting regions most vulnerable to climate change impacts, it was obvious that national security will be greatly affected, if for no other reason than troops deployed for disaster relief will take the focus away from national security activities. While only 17% of the world’s land base will be subject to sea level rise world wide, 50% of the world’s population lives in those regions.

The military looks at climate change from a risk management perspective, Adams explained. We plan for the worst case scenario, expect the most likely outcomes, and then hope for a better future. This is a cautious approach, but proactive, accepting the facts – the science – to plan for any future contingency.

A participant asked the General how the military manages to act proactively when half of our congressional representatives do not even accept there is such a thing as climate change. He answered military leaders just go about the business they are charged to implement. We strive to speak truth to power, but in the end the military has to protect the nation. That is our mission.

A special concern of mine is local, national, and global food security. Hunger and poverty drive insurrection, wars, migrations. We know this. I do not believe most Americans are paying attention to the fraying food system in the U.S. General Adams explained that over the next six years, it is projected that million’s of acres of California’s farming operations will come to an end due to the long-term drought and heat.

The NOAA satellite system known as G.R.A.C.E. – gravity measurements of the world’s aquifers by changes in the mass of water in aquifers that underlay the world’s vast agricultural areas – shows the shrinking mass of available fresh water for food production. The Ogallala Aquifer is one of them. It underlies the U.S. Great Plains under 8 states. It has been in a state of overdraft. Its recharge is from rain and snow melt.Drought and overdraft could see this major source of water depleted in just a few years.

We would all do well to act as our military and start planning for the worst case scenario in order to ensure good outcomes down the road. I will continue working with my own local, state and federal representatives to move in that direction.

The Internet: A Force for Good

When Tiffany Shlain thinks of her favorite quote from naturalist John Muir, she thinks of the internet: “When you tug at a single thing in the universe, you find it’s attached to everything else.”

My Sunday “church: is OnBeing.org, moderated by Krista Tippet. The program examines the questions, What does it mean to be human, and how do we want to live, by interviewing the greatest thinkers, religious leaders, and artists of our time.

This week’s guest is Tiffany Schlain creator of the Webby Awards and prolific film maker. The program, Growing Up on the Internet, examines how the Internet is changing us. Schlain asserts:

The Internet connects us like neurons in the brain. It is in its infancy and we are its parents; how it “grows up” – its character – is up to us. (Paraphrased by me from the discussion. )

This interview and the film below left me more hopeful that humankind can beat the odds, and make the climate curve together if we shape the Internet intentionally creating a global brain that acts as a force for good.

*Purchase or rent the film here: Connected: An Autoblogography about Love, Death, and Technology Online. Film home.

Every Kid in a Park: Connecting 4th graders with National Parks

Every Kid in a Park recognizes the role of national parks as a premier provider of place-based education. U.S. Virgin Islands National Park offers a variety of natural and cultural curriculum-based educational opportunities, including field trips and park ranger visits to classrooms. The website www.nps.gov/teachers contains lesson plans and content on more than 125 subjects, ranging from archaeology to biology to Constitutional law.

“Every Kid in a Park recognizes the role of national parks as a premier provider of place-based education. U.S. Virgin Islands National Park offers a variety of natural and cultural curriculum-based educational opportunities, including field trips and park ranger visits to classrooms. The website www.nps.gov/teachers contains lesson plans and content on more than 125 subjects, ranging from archaeology to biology to Constitutional law.” ~ Department of the Interior News Release

I believe that exposing children to nature, even if its more time in the yard or local parks, and with an adult mentor who shows them a sense of wonder, is the most important education for young people in this new century.

FOR GIRLS: TRAILBLAZING WOMEN LEAVING THEIR MARK AT THE INTERIOR

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. ~ Rachel Carson in A Sense of Wonder

What the military knows about climate change…

350 Pensacola will host a talk by Brigadier General John Adams, (U.S. Army, Retired) on April 12. He will discuss how the U.S. military is making plans for climate change at home and abroad.

When I worked in the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs at the University of West Florida, I reviewed grant opportunities from the various military branches for research related to climate change. Going back to 2010 when I began serving UWF as a Senior Grant Specialist, I became aware that our own military was well “down the road” in planning for climate change. In contrast, our city and state were hard-pressed to let the words climate change leave their lips.

This disconnect is critical to American citizens working in their own communities to help plan for climate change. Check out these sites below to see what our military is doing to prepare to mitigate climate change, and be sure to mark April 12 on your calendar. Go here for time, location, and more about General Adams’ lecture and discussion.

U.S. Military Links

Department of Defense (DoD)

Center for Climate and Security

Warming Earth, Changing Climate

Everywhere there is evidence that the Earth is warming at rates not seen in recorded history. Ice ages and temperate periods like the epoch in which we live (the Holocene) have come about over thousands of years. As human populations have increased exponentially, and as we have mined and refined carbon rich ores and deposits of oil, the concentration of greenhouse gases has increased in concert with emissions.

Warming the planet, changing the dynamics of wind and ocean currents, we are beginning to see changes in our ways of life. Agricultural changes include drought, floods, insect booms, and altered growing seasons. The ranges of tree and plant populations, and the insects and birds associated with them, are moving to higher altitudes in many places–changes that go unnoticed except by scientists and Peoples of Place (farmers, naturalists, indigenous cultures).

Without significant and coordinated actions at all levels of human government, we are likely to see major disruptions in our ways of life, and social conflict from disparities in resources to respond and survive.

Find out what your community is doing. Do you have solar companies? Other alternative energy companies? What is your state doing about carbon dioxide emissions?

SOLUTIONS ABOUND: WE NEED CITIZEN PARTICIPATION TO GET THERE

Florida Solar Energy Center

Southeastern Solar Research Center

Rocky Mountain Institute

Go to NOAA’s Vital Signs of the Planet to keep track of Earth changes.

For Sale: The Future of Gulf Coast Communities

On March 23, Pensacola citizens, ranging from age 7 to 70, traveled to New Orleans to protest the sale of 45M acres of Gulf Coastal waters and land for oil and gas exploration. 350 Pensacola rallied citizens to represent our area. Forty members of the community made the trip–nearly 20% of the 200 protesters who disrupted the sale of coastal lands at the Superdome on Wednesday.

During the protest, representatives from the oil and gas industry bid on the lands. Two chilling aspects of the experience were: 1) hearing the actual bids, some very low, for our precious resources called out during the chants from protesters; 2) observing the implacable faces of the industry representatives in the face of uninterrupted chanting and singing from protesters.

Later, as we enjoyed a beautiful day in New Orleans, I kept thinking about those faces, unmoved, like masks. I wondered what happens to people to become part of a violent process that is destructive to marine waters and impacts the health and well being of the people who live in the path of oil spills or areas where petroleum is refined. Hilton Kelley, a Texas citizen and winner of a Goldman Environmental Prize, addressed the protesters and media about the struggle and successes of his community in Port Arthur, Texas to work with industry to protect people from harmful chemicals and spills from petroleum refining. Kelley is also a poet:

Escambia and Santa Rosa County face their own threats to ocean and estuary habitats. Florida – a state which has notoriously exploited its own natural resources – banned offshore drilling to protect its major industry: tourism. Now, however, the state legislature is opening up its fragile aquifers to fracking and oil exploration. Santa Rosa County has already approved applications from oil companies for exploration in the shared aquifer with Pensacola. Escambia County has an application from Breitburn Operating for one as of July 2015. In a parallel process, the Escambia Board of County Commissioners is making decisions about how to spend $10M in BP fines from the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill which devastated Pensacola’s economy and impacted the health of marine environments locally.

As I think back about my experience on Wednesday, this chant, and the little children up front chanting with their homemade signs rang in my memory:

“The people united can never be defeated.”

Forthcoming Novel: Threshold

My first novel, Threshold, will be released in 2016 by Fireship Press in Tucson, Arizona.

The setting is the Sonoran Desert. Have you been there? If not, it is truly hard to describe how a desert can be “lush” but, it is.

Here is the best link I can give you to learn more about the Sonoran desert: the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. There is no other place on the earth where this type of desert exists. GREAT MAP

KNOW THE ANSWER?

What desert mammal drinks no water?

VISIT TUCSON

Children File Suit in Court for a Safe Environment

From article on Bill Moyers & Company: http://billmoyers.com/story/should-kids-be-able-to-sue-for-a-safe-climate-this-federal-court-is-about-to-decide/

Bill Moyer’s & Company featured this article. Children and youths ages 8-19 filed a complaint in Eugene, Oregon’s U.S. District Court that their rights to a safe environment have been violated.

The nonprofit, Our Children’s Trust, filed on behalf of the children. The Justice Department filed a motion to dismiss the case; a federal court judge is considering the request.

By favoring the current generations over their generation, and not acting to reduce the impacts of climate change, the children contend the U.S. government – the President and the federal, state, and local agencies charged to protect the environment – has denied their generation the rights that emanate from a safe environment.

This is a violation of the public trust.

On the NOAA Vital Signs of the Planet website today, the current concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 402.26 parts per million (ppt). 350 ppt or lower is considered a safe concentration for earth’s ecosystems and life within the biosphere. Concomitant rise in temperature from rising CO2 atmospheric concentration (a greenhouse gas) is unevenly applied on Earth. However, to date the average rise in temperature is 1 degree Centigrade or 3.4 degrees Fahrenheit across the whole planet. Small changes in average temperatures on Earth are associated with massive changes in climate such as the beginning or end of an ice age.

Question for Readers:

Are the children within in their rights to sue our generation, our government, for violating their rights?

Please comment to spark a discussion. See 2 video interviews on the link above.

Nature’s Trust

Ecopoetics and Anne Waldman

Pensacola is blessed with many strong writers and poets. The West Florida Literary Federation leads the region in advancing the creative spirit. That includes supporting a Poet Laureate. Jamey Jones is the current Poet Laureate in Residence. He and the Federation brought my attention to Anne Waldman.

That I had never heard of Anne is both a testament to my ignorance and to the important role of the Federation in enriching individual artists’ and the public’s experiences in the arts.

From CNN - http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/08/living/manatee-endangered-species-feat/ — From CNN – http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/08/living/manatee-endangered-species-feat/

Check out Anne’s moving Manatee Humanity. Her reading introduced me to the potential of poetry to advance understanding and compassion for a fellow mammal.

Anne talks about an encounter with a manatee in an aquarium in Florida. In other interviews on her website, Waldman describes Ecopoetics, a term I had never read. While you are on Waldman’s website, click around to listen to other performances. You are in for a treat and a powerful force for good. There is nothing ambivalent about Anne.

The Eye of the Falcon

Mothers: Losing Berte Cáceres

Last night the forces of authority, greed, and misogyny assassinated one of the world’s great defenders of the Earth: Berte Cáceres. Winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize for her defense of rivers in her homeland, she was murdered for leading indigenous peoples against the construction of the Agua Zarca Dam.

I think of the great women in America who defend the land under their feet: Barbara Albrecht in defense of Pensacola’s watershed, Madeline Kiser-Bieta in defense of Tucson’s watershed and Costa Rica’s rivers; Terry Tempest Williams in her defense of wilderness in Utah, and Florida writers like Jannise Ray in her defense of the Altamaha River and the Long Leaf Pine habitat; Anne Rudloe in defense of Gulf coastal habitat, and Marjory Stoneman Douglas for defense of the Everglades.

Women relate to nature through their bodies as well as their minds, as mothers who watch over their children. That is why women must lead today. Listen to this mother of mothers speak about her homelands. Under constant threats to her life, she persisted to speak for her people and their land, for the Earth.