Watch a video from Democracy Now about Data Center development on Tribal Lands. Many governing bodies like Tribal Councils or City Councils sign nondisclosure agreements (NDA) with developers of data centers that prevent citizens from knowing what kinds of deals their governing body makes. Link below to segment.
Krystal Two Bulls, Executive Director of Honor the Earth is interviewed by Amy Goodman about tribal nations pushing back on data centers on their lands, many in water stressed regions such as Utah.
Nature teaches more than she preaches. There are no sermons in stones. ~ John Burroughs
In 2024 my daughter gifted me a small book, John Burroughs, The Gospel of Nature published by Applewood Books. The book is part of the American Roots series of books published by Applewood. It is a treasure that can be carried in your pocket as you take your walk in the woods.
Nature writing is an American tradition and we have many great writers who have each been inspired by this wonderful land we call America.
At present, however, we have leaders who look upon our most iconic landscapes only for the minerals or forests to be exploited for industry and profit. Many of our public lands are vulnerable today due to legislation signed into law by our current president and Republican party. The president has devoted most of his business career to exploitation of people and places. Now in this 250th year anniversary of our nation, we are understanding the full impact on the values we have enshrined as fitting – for our Republic. We as yet know whether the American psyche and will can withstand the forces of anarchy that currently pillage our natural and economic treasure. My own belief is that liberty and truth will win out. I just hope I live to see it.
To salve my broken heart I turn to nature. Below is a first draft of A Long Walk in the Woods, a memoir I am crafting which is almost entirely based on the principle that the land where we live forms much of our character.
Introduction
It began in Tennessee.
As an infant “the woods” encompassed a living room, and my bare feet searched for purchase only months after my arrival. From there to the front yard, and much later to the street on a Schwinn bike. My paternal grandparent’s farm in nearby Watauga served as a touchstone. All the while my body stayed close to the soil, the trees and the miraculous creatures of ground, water, forest and air that delight youngsters who are awake to the Creation.
The Watauga House, still unfinished in 1906, was purchased for $600 when my grandparents were married. My grandfather and uncle finished the interior. Here it is today still maintained in its classic beauty:
My grandparents’ farm house in Watauga, TN.
I was born into a military family so my adventures were destined to encompass “the woods” of a continent. For eight decades I’ve been in discovery of “woods” and curious about the humans who call them home. These stories are a memoir of hope and conviction that we can restore “the woods” when we realize we are a part of them.
Awareness of “woods” is present in the body as we grow up and all through our lives. Each infant comes equipped with knowledge of Earth begun in their Mother’s body, listening to the sound of her voice and the beating of her heart. All through gestation, a newly developing life gains greater awareness of interconnectedness, i.e. association, as life-sustaining and that awareness persists in us to our death. It may dull over a life in which a child is not afforded access to the greater scope of nature, and it can also be deaf or blind to the life-giving natural world by living in unnatural conditions. Parents must cultivate that essential knowing though wonderment and exposure. Every little person should touch Earth soon after birth. Feet in the warm soil, face in the sunlight and breezes, a garden of scents and color, or a puppy are delightful means to the know the “woods”.
Though I currently live in an urban environment, I consciously seek out little havens of nature and there are plenty: a simple window box of flowers, the deep grass in an unmown lawn into which we may roll in its cool embrace breathing in the scents of plant and earth. Other “woods” may be:
A bench on a trail in a botanical garden under shading trees;
A walk in an urban forest animated by birdsong or cicada choruses;
The wonder of farm, field and stream; a vibrant farmers’ market among neighbors;
The fragrance of upturned soil basking in the noonday sun in your garden;
The joy with friends on a golf course edged by trees; the feel of spikes penetrating the closely mowed green and the scent of rich earth underneath;
A long walk on the beach where white sails fly and skimmers dip and dine;
The lovely song of a Carolina warbler that cheers the heart;
Fishing along a stream, lake or ocean; plop of frog and buzz of dragonfly wings;
Light playing through water or rainbows sparkling across the mist from a sprinkler;
Rain on a hot day with the window open and the curtains afloat;
A teacup tidepool of hermit crabs and keyhole limpets on a rocky beach.
The fact is every living being is born of nature. We “recognize” its features, scents, and touch in myriad ways because we all belong to the same Mother. We are all made of the same “stuff”. Wherever I have resided for a time, there are perceptible Earth energies, no matter how much concrete may lay over it. That lovely little plant will find its way through a crack in the surface, or a tree root lift that sidewalk. I cheer my kin on!
“A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.” ~ Aldo Leopold
We see this phenomenon in the seven states who have been drawing down the Colorado River Basin water resources to the point of an emergency, and now in the proliferation of data centers in support of AI. In both cases large scale industrial projects drive decisions rather than prudent decision making with a land ethic (meaning the best decision making by a thinking community).
Citizens are finding themselves in a water crisis across seven states who utilize Colorado River Water, or in the fact that citizens in U.S. states are in a quandary as data center developers pressure them to either sell their homes or face the whine, pollution, grid and water overuse of mega data centers built in their backyards.
These kinds of abuses and overuses of the planet’s generosity occur without an ethic that all agree upon. Aldo Leopold made the greatest contribution to this discussion in his landmark essay, The Land Ethic. Leopold considered a land ethic as a dynamic outcome of a thinking community working together for the best outcomes for both the biotic health of the land and for people. The quote above sums up the concept.
When the Colorado River Compact, which includes seven states that utilize its waters, discussed how they could work together to share this great river’s resources, they did so in spite of a basic fact: the river experiences periodic one-hundred year droughts as shown in fossil records and tree rings.
Americans living in these states have witnessed a long-term drought that has all but emptied the two giant reservoirs, Lake Mead (lower basin states) and Lake Powell (upper basin states).
Desert states like Arizona and California, have sucked the regions dry to support enormous growth in cities and agriculture. Before building the Hoover Dam to create Lake Mead, Congressmen in 1878 sent John Wesley Powell to assess the southwest region for its potential for development of the western states. He returned after 18 months to deliver a sobering conclusion: the arid region is unsuitable for large scale development based on available water supply and geological aspects of the west. Read a summary of his report here.
Today, nearly a century later, mega-wealthy oligarchs who developed artificial intelligence (AI) want to build huge (thousands of acres) data centers to power AI. The horses are ahead of the cart again as the public isn’t sure they want AI to be developed without careful discussion and oversight. Virginia, a drought-stressed state, has hundreds of data centers clustered in the northern part of the state and are salivating for land in rural area. They bully landowners, promise huge tax income while drawing large amounts of fresh water from aquifers. The trend is to push out home owners, farmers, and even small townships, by offering as much as $12M an acre. Some owners are pressured when neighbors sell and leave other land owners whose homes, farms and enterprises are their treasures. Emissions from gas-powered turbines, noise pollution, and hidden impacts such as the water required to produce the power to run the data center are unsustainable and undemocratic. Read this recent executive summary of data centers pros and cons from CERES, a nonprofit that supports sustainable business solutions.
What is missing is the values-discussion that Aldo Leopold described that is a dynamic process within a thinking community. It is an ongoing discussion that considers the health of the land when making decisions that could decrease its well-functioning. Read The Land Ethic Below. **This is one of the most downloaded files on my blog. People from all over the world read it. My own view is that no one from the scientific community has analyzed “how to live on a piece of land without ruining it” better than Aldo Leopold. See the Aldo Leopold Foundation located in Baraboo, Wisconsin for more about his legacy.
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
Copyright Credit: W.B. Yeats, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” from The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems. (London: Kagan Paul, Trench and Co., 1889.) Public domain.
Source: The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems (Kagan Paul, Trench and Co., 1889)
When I was a teenager, I would ride my horse deep into the Northern California wilderness. I came of age living in big nature. Given California’s growth and development, that ride would now be impossible. Yet phylogenetically, big nature is deep in all of our psyches. So I began to wonder why we were so rapidly destroying it. Years later at my first job at the University of Houston, I was studying children and parents’ environmental views and values. I found the children knew what air pollution was; but when we asked them if Houston had a problem with air pollution, they said, “No, we don’t have pollution here.” At the time, Houston was the most polluted city in the United States. – Peter Kahn, Environmental Psychologist
Environmental Generational Amnesia (EGA) was identified by Peter Kahn when I was working as an environmental educator. It began to answer my puzzlement about why people could not see the degradation of nature over time.
Kahn explained this phenomenon occurs as each generation takes the environment in their time as the norm.
Now, in America, I am wondering if this phenomenon works with memory of a democracy. We take what is before us as what it has always been.
In Kahn’s recommendations to counter environmental generational amnesia he worked with urban planners, for example, to build in features that allow local residents to experience more robust nature in a built environment.
Could we do the same for each generation to remember and know the origins of our Republic by experiencing aspects of a democratic society through out our lives as The People. Our form of governance is dependent on robust citizen and representative action and participation.
We could start by considering how to identify fairness, developing respectful listening; teaching check and balance by designing situations where kids can participate in situations demonstrate how it works to protect representation, free speech, and other key characteristics of a democratic society.
I recall a teacher in high school who designed his homeroom to function in this manner. He did something else: he taught us the Latin and Greek derivation of many words in our language so that we could derive meaning from root words
Do you agree that a type of democratic generational amnesia may be a force that works to undermine democratic governance which is dependent on individuals possessing more than rudimentary knowledge (i.e. memorizing definitions).
For too long, the dominant culture has cleaved humans from the web of life, insisting upon human separation from and superiority to the larger living world. That assumption has been translated into law, governance, and other realms of practice, justifying the treatment of nonhumans and nature as treasure troves for endless exploitation. However, the grip of this mode of thinking is beginning to ease, leaving space for new ideas and actions to sprout through. MOTH – More Than Human Life Program, https://mothrights.org/about/
Among thoughtful people across disciplines, the understanding that human beings are woven into the fabric of Nature – animal, plant, river, ocean – all is part of a whole that is interconnected beyond the human imagination. Recent research on trees, for example, demonstrate how certain trees “mother” others and pass on their knowledge to new generations. We’ve learned how fungi are a living glue and generative structure that is ubiquitous in nature and microbes in human beings are a living brain in the gut lining. The more we learn, the more we are humbled before the whole of life on earth.
Now, as great harm is evident through the combined activities of human beings which weakens and disappears species, robs whole forests or rivers of its life sustaining powers, we are called to reconsider whether the Earth is for human taking. What of the rights of all beings who make human life possible?
Emergence Magazine Podcast my readers will note is a well I return to frequently to gain new perspectives on the nature of our relationship to the whole of life. Western philosophy separates humans from nature, thereby providing rationale for extraction and overharvesting for economic gain and for power over others. Ironically for America, present at the time of exploration were millions of Americans with intricate knowledge of how to live on a piece of land without ruining it (Aldo Leopold) and a conceptual understanding of the web of life and its spiritual nature. To me this is one of our nation’s greatest sins. Yes, I consider it a sin because a thinking person through observation alone can observe how life is wildly interconnected and sacred.
In Song of the Cedars listeners experience the oneness of life with an exceptional group of humans interwoven in the panoply of a healthy rain forest.
Consider whether the exploitation of a mineral from the earth should come with a cost paid back to that mountain based on the legal rights of nature. While listening to this podcast, I thought, “Wow. to think there are people who are engaged in integration in the web of life. I thought these are our most important people, guides and wisdom keepers.”
Let me know what you think about this movement. What is your experience with the rights of nature if any.
At present Lake Mead and Lake Powell on the Colorado River distribution system are at record lows (Lake Mead 34% and Lake Powell 27%).
From 1990 to 2008 I called Arizona home. I lived first in Yuma where the Colorado River channels into myriad canals to water America’s vegetables and grains in the Imperial Valley of California.
It was in this vast valley that I first encountered the Colorado, unrecognizable to me as it was sprayed at high velocity from circulating sprinklers. Precious water evaporated in the dry hot atmosphere before falling to the ground. Row upon row of lettuce, broccoli, and cabbages lapped up what water fell to ground. As far as the eye could see, this preposterous apparition filled my windshield as I drove through to Yuma at the confluence of Arizona, California and Mexico borders.
In its natural state, the Colorado River ran down through the Rockies, gathering size and speed, carving deep canyons in the red sandstone of northern Arizona. The river ran red where it dropped suddenly down toward the Sonoran Desert, flooding its banks in the spring as it flowed down into Mexico and emptied into the Sea of Cortez (Gulf of California). Where it slowed and spread from its banks, marshlands formed that were places of high biodiversity. Plenty of fish and game were found by Indigenous peoples and later explorers. All along the river near Yuma, forests of mesquite trees released bushels of nutritious bean pods. Later, university scientists discovered the pods, when ground and made into flour, provide local people with immunity to diabetes. Mesquite bread is naturally sweet and easily digested. River peoples grew crops in rich deposits of mud left by the receding waters. Legends of fish so large and numerous the people could walk across the river.
In our Anthropocene era, the river is most recognizable in its highest elevations where it continues to cut the stone of Colorado and Northern Arizona and carry it tumbling south. Hoover Dam at Lake Mead collects the lion’s share of water, but starting at Parker in Arizona, water is pumped 700 ft into the air where it drops into an open canal system (Central Arizona Project or CAP) and travels by gravity toward Phoenix, shimmies through and on to Tucson and then drips into Mexico. Over decades after the canals grew with a burgeoning population and larger farms, the river never made it to the mouth of the Sea of Cortez. It petered out above the marshlands of northeast Mexico which slowly dried up. Recent efforts by environmentalists and indigenous communities managed to restore the flow enough to fill key areas of marshes again. The once rich biodiversity is returning.
At this date, two dams and their respective reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, are at historically low levels. Hoover dam was built in the ’30s of the 20th century on assumptions made during an unusually high snowpack in the Rockies that was not the norm. The dam at Lake Powell was later built to collect water and generate electricity for business, farming and cities. Desert lands where the canals distribute water are biomes with limited water. Turns out that the Colorado River flows are normally lower than the projected. Long-term tree ring studies show regular drought periods of up to 100 years. The area is in one now.
Warming from climate change is causing snowpack changes – faster melting rates and new evaporation of ice crystals directly into a gaseous state.
As American food security, economy, science and culture face a potential crisis, how will 40 million people live in a hot, dry desert? From LA to Phoenix to Tucson and points between, much will be unsustainable without reliable Colorado River water. Cities have mostly drained their ground water. Some like Tucson are replenishing it with CAP water but that, too, is a scenario with a short horizon.
Now the powers that made the Law of the River (Upper and Lower Colorado coalition of states, municipalities and tribal nations) are talking about draining Lake Powell and sending water to Lake Mead. All partners will see reduced acre feet per year, and some will no longer receive any water from the river. Ongoing talks and mediation have reached no agreement yet. Arizona’s tribal nations are adamant that they must be part of that negotiation.
Lake Powell in southern Colorado was constructed under a huge outcry by residents and tribal governments who ultimately suffered the sacrifice of their homes and property and traditional homelands to fill the huge reservoir. Traditional lands of Indigenous nations must be returned. What about all the people who lost their homes and farms?
Will humanity learn anything from this tragic miscalculation? I’m skeptical given history.
When Congress commissioned John Wesley Powell to survey the West and determine its potential for farming and building cities, he traveled extensively in the West and was one of the first expeditions to make the wild trip down the Colorado River from the headwaters to Yuma. Result? He reported to Congress that the area held limited water for most of the land mass and that if the government should sell lands to enterprising ranchers, farmers and speculators, they should bear the financial burden of providing what water supply they could find. Imagine if they had followed Powell’s advice. Many fewer people would reside in the Western deserts; the food supply would be regionally grown, and the international food markets would be in places where rain naturally falls. The River would run free, nourishing human and natural communities to the sea.
I once wrote a speculative fiction novel in which, due to changes in climate, local communities formed enterprises that fit the bioregions where they lived. Later, they became small nations with a shared ethic that recognized the ecology of place and innovated within natural limits.
The American Southwest is a 2025 award-winning documentary with updated information and spectacular photography. It shows the biodiversity and the role of many animals, plants and insects adapted to the river, and how their lifeways provide sustainable strategies for human life in arid lands.
It traces the original agreements (The Law of the River) on how the Colorado River water would be allocated, the construction of Lake Mead, and subsequent construction of Lake Powell. I recommend the film for citizens and students of ecology and bioregionalism as we enter a defining period when we will all need to work together to mitigate and adapt to a changing climate. If we consider the land and water in that partnership, I believe we can live within the limits of the Earth while innovating in our communities.
… every day, 2,000 acres of farmland are lost to non-agricultural uses, many farms continue to lose topsoil at alarming rates; and one-third of America’s farmland may change hands in the next 15 years as aging landowners sell their properties. These trends jeopardize the future of agriculture and our environment. Farmland is essential for food production—the demand for which is expected to increase by 60% by 2050. But farmland is also essential for a wide array of ecosystem services on which our future depends.~ American Farmland Trust
The American Farmland Trust is where I first learned about the importance of land trusts as a means of conserving land for farming, forestry, and soil improvement. I was living in Bowling Green, Kentucky when I was learning about the organization and its goals. This was during the Pandemic years from 2019 – 2022. I was an avid supporter of Community Supported Farmers (CSF).
Land Trusts Help Young Farmers
My farm family was a young couple with a growing family. They supplied me and their subscribers with a beautiful box of fresh farm produce with occasional surprises like local jam or sauces. And during the Pandemic, this enterprising family delivered the produce to our door.
A land trust conserves farmland and leases it to farmers in long-term leases as long as they fulfill the terms of the lease. Some leases can be as long as 99 years and inheritable. With some, farmers can gain equity for buildings and equipment they invested in farming the land leased. This can be passed on to relatives. Land trust have formed to specifically address inequities such as farmable land being bought by industrial farming operations that drive up the cost of land. Young farmers wanting to do the right thing by the soil, water, and air often cannot find land they can afford to buy. A lease with a Land Trust makes it possible. Black Soil KY is an innovative agribusiness model.
No-Till Growers: the Innovators
Young farmers and entrepreneurs put together podcasts about regenerative, no-till farming. I helped them with a start up grant from the government to provide educational videos for farmers to learn the art and practice of regenerating their farmland or market gardens. Today, this is a nationally recognized nonprofit business: No-Till Growers.
The Farmer
During these heavy, Pandemic years, I found hope in Kentucky farmers, especially the young farmers. Most could not afford to buy land and thus joining a Land Trust allowed them to lease land long term and even gain equity on it should they wish to pass it on to relatives.
My mind was on fire with stories I could write about a quiet revolution happening on farms with dreamers regenerating the soil. The outcome? A novel! The Last Farm on Lovers Lane is complete and I am now looking for a publisher. Below is an excerpt, protected by copyright law. Read it here.
CHAPTER 1
Belle Patterson
I parked the truck in the shade of a sprawling sugar maple. The redolence of warm soil and spice of wild grasses filled the cab as I rolled down the window. On this day I would continue an experiment on a worn out field on my grandfather’s property. Two centuries of extractive farming had depleted our farmland of its natural soil diversity. Teaming up with my friend Janelle, we were conducting a 2-year capstone project to restore the soil.
Stowing the instruments of my trade in a tool belt – spade, sample bags, soil test kit, thermometer, syringe, and Draeger tube – I headed for the field with anticipation. Kneeling in the spongy soil near the first metal cylinder, I inserted a needle into the aperture on the lid to draw a sample of air and pump it into a Draeger tube to measure the gas concentrations, recording them in a field notebook. Knowing the relative amounts of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and oxygen, we could determine the health of the soil’s ecosystem. Next, I drove my spade into the dark loam for a sample. An earthworm oozed out.
“There you are earth-queen,” I whispered to the soil denizen. A drop of my sweat splashed onto its glistening skin causing the worm to contract and plunge out of sight. Small insects worried their bodies through the soil while a sow bug rumbled along my glove like an invertebrate Humvee. Under a hand lens, springtails were busy at life and ants went about their well-ordered societies. The soil community was reawakening.
Hours passed happily as I continued this process at each of the cylinders placed at intervals across the field. A flock of sparrows in the old maple chattered amicably. Engrossed in the process, I jumped when my flip phone vibrated in my pocket. It was Pops.
I walk daily on the campus of Tidewater Community College campus. I value the trees there and for the first three years of my new identity as a Virginian, I spent time learning about tree species and even collected seeds to see whether I might grow out an offspring. I have a lovely red maple (Acer rubrum) thriving on my porch and hope to give it away for replanting to a homeowner or the city or the college.
A couple days ago, I realized that one of the Shumard oak (Quercus shumardii) acorns planted two years ago, is growing with the shell broken open and a primary root emerging. This is a hardy, beautiful oak with rust red leaves in the fall. The acorns are abundant and have subtle blue stripe coloration. So, I hope to grow another native tree on my porch for giveaway where it can grow to maturity.
On the backside of the campus, on a triangular slice of urban forestland, I found a mature, towering Water Oak (Quercus nigra) is another native tree of the coastal lands especially in the Southeast coastal areas. You can spot it by its bell shaped leaf below. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quercus_nigra#/media/File:Quercus_nigra_USDA.jpg]
In the same area, Black Walnut and Shagbark Hickory trees, and three species of pine trees flourished without traffic or grooming by tree trimming operations with limited knowledge of trees and the ecology of forest communities. I write this to lead up to my shock and sobbing at the sudden realization that in the winter and my walking that did not extend to this small wild wood, out of sight and out of mind, it was razed to the ground (thank God the water oak was left I am sure due to its size). Nothing was left of the wild wood and understory of plants and vines; rabbits and squirrels gone, and a host of birds who graced the canopies — all absent.
It was bare of life. I went to the water oak which has become a friend. I sobbed in front of it and let my deep sorrow be felt and my lament heard. Rage welled up in me at the senseless and unnecessary war we humans rage on nature, even when our city is heating up and trees provide shade. Species like the water oak help prevent flooding as our area is experiencing sea level rise from expansion of water due to an ocean hotter than at anytime in recorded history.
More than at anytime in our nation’s history, we must educate our children and youth about the basic ecology of their homeland so that they know it, value it, and will work to preserve what keeps us alive while we humans tinker with the environment to meet our needs.
A study using data from Sweden’s 23.5 million hectare forests from 1961 to 2018 shows declining nitrogen availability due to rising atmospheric CO2 concentration.
This process results in a decline in nitrogen deposition, slowing growth. This may decrease the “carbon sink” function of forests. Read the study below.
Susan Feathers 