A Brief Glance At Pope Francis' Encyclical

I’ve only had time to read about half of the Pope Francis’ Encyclical On Care For Our Common Home. Just a couple things to say from what I’ve read so far. The Encyclical is not only about climate change. It is about our entire global environmental crisis, of which global warming is only one aspect.

            I’ll have much more to say about this later, once I’ve read the whole thing and had time to digest what the Pontiff has to say. In the mean time I thought it might be good for you to take a look at what Francis says in part of the first chapter about superficial ecology, something that I run into much more than I want to. Francis says:

At the same time we can note the rise of a false or superficial ecology, which bolsters complacency and a cheerful recklessness. As often occurs in periods of deep crisis which require bold decisions, we are tempted to think that what is happening is not entirely clear. Superficially, apart from a few obvious signs of pollution and deterioration, things do not look that serious, and the planet could continue as it is for some time. Such evasiveness serves as a license to carrying on with our present lifestyles and models of production and consumption. This is the way human beings contrive to feed their self-destructive vices: trying not to see them, trying not to acknowledge them, delaying the important decisions and pretending that nothing will happen.

Pope Francis

The Depths To Which Men Will Sink Themselves For King Coal

It amazes me how shamefully some people can act, even when they are in public, even when they know that there are microphones and cameras running, even when they are in a House Subcommittee hearing room.

This video shows Representative John Fleming, a GOP representative from Louisiana, questioning Dr Michael Hendryx during a hearing of the House Energy and Minerals Resources Subcommittee today. Hendryx is  the former Director of West Virginia Rural Health Research Center and Founding Chair of the Department of Health Policy Management and Leadership in the School of Public Health at West Virginia University. Among his dozens of published scientific papers are studies of the health effects of mountaintop removal on the residents of Appalachia. In this “hearing” Fleming badgers Hendryx about one of his studies that found cancer rates among residents who live near Mountaintop mining to be twice that of their fellow Appalachians.

            This video is embarrassing. It shows you, like a drunkard lying in a trash strewn ditch, the depths to which men will sink themselves just for that next campaign contribution from King Coal.

Mountaintop Removal Affecting Bird Populations

This is just out from the U.S. Geological Survey. Mountaintop mining is not only changing the landscape, it is, unsurprisingly, changing the ecology of the Appalachians. According to a new study published in Landscape Ecology, songbirds that thrive in forested areas are in decline in areas adjacent to reclaimed mountaintop removal mines, while birds that live in shrub lands are increasing in these areas.

            The results make sense on the face of things. Even when MTR mines are reclaimed, they are mostly large grassland areas devoid of trees. And as you can surmise, it will take a while for trees to take root, grow, and reach maturity in reclaimed mines. Most optimistically the forests will grow to maturity in the mines in a matter of a few decades, but in most cases it will probably take longer.

            Here are some details from the USGS news release:

The study evaluated the bird communities in the forest that remains around the reclaimed habitats in West Virginia and Kentucky. Researchers found that even small amounts of forest lost to mineland or grassland within a landscape resulted in lower abundance for the majority of bird species in the forest that remained adjacent to the reclaimed lands.  Declines in abundance were detected for 12 species of forest interior birds and 11 species of interior edge birds including species of conservation concern such as Cerulean Warbler and Worm-eating Warbler.  But the numbers of some species did go up.

“Some shrubland species, for example the brown thrasher and song sparrow, or forest generalist species such as the brown-headed cowbird and the yellow-throated vireo, did have a positive response to the loss of forest and the gain in mineland or grassland, but most bird species did not,” said Doug Becker, professor of biology at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania and senior author of the study.  “If managers want to take actions that may benefit sensitive, forest-dependent species, they need to minimize the amount of forest lost in a landscape.”

A reclaimed mountaintop mine. No trees here. photo: ovec.org

The Cerulean Warbler, one of the bird species in decline around the mountaintop removal mines photo: nc.audubon.org

Other ecological effects have been documented, including the recent finding that the mining was threatening rare endemic crayfish. And it is needless to say that for years and decades we will be finding even more effects that mountaintop removal coal mining has had on the lives of Appalachians and the environment of their mountains.

Mountains that have not been removed for their coal, where many songbirds want to live

Only Sane Presidents, Please

No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

Believe it or not that is what the Constitution requires of the person who shall be the president of our country. You just have to be born a citizen and be 35 years old.

Although the president is commander in chief of the military, military service is not a requirement. At the time of the drafting of the Constitution, most of the new states restricted enfranchisement to property owners, yet that requirement is not imposed on the president. The holder of the highest office in the land could be indigent for all practical purposes and still reside in the White House.

            We have amended the Constitution for various reasons, but we have not added any further requirements on the presidency in over 200 years of our history. Considering the track records of some of the poorer performing presidents, this is perhaps surprising.

            So maybe it’s time to enforce some requirements on the person who is the commander in chief and leader of the free world. I suggest the following to be the 28^th Amendment:

The President must be sane.

OK, pretty simply stated. As with any other law, there will be some working out of the details in subsequent laws and court rulings, but the general gist of the amendment is that you cannot be crazy or spout off crazy ideas. This would obviously exclude folks who get winnowed out in the elective process already, such as white supremacists and guys who still live in their parents’ basements at the age of 46.

            This amendment, if it were already adopted, would disqualify all the GOP candidates running forthe 2016 election. I’ve lost track of the number of them, but apparently all of them are crazy enough or seem to be crazy enough to think that global warming is a myth or something that we shouldn’t do anything about.

 

Scott Walker, governor of Wisconsin and crazy photo from Wikipedia

You don’t think that the GOP candidates are crazy? OK, global warming is our greatest threat. The Grand Old Party candidates say it either doesn’t exist or we shouldn’t do anything about it. That’s crazy!

 

Carly Fiorina, ousted CEO of Hewlett-Packard and crazy photo from LifeNews.com

OK, they aren’t totally jump out of the boat crazy, a present threat to themselves or others. But if any one of these folks attains the highest office in the land, that person will pose a threat to millions of folks all over the world.

            Maybe we could fast track this amendment before the election. That doesn’t sound crazy, does it?

            

Rand Paul, Senator from Kentucky and crazy. He's also the one who says that mountaintop removal is "just missing a hill here or there," which is really crazy

House GOP: We Don't Like the Science, So We Will Stop the Scientists From Doing Science

Keeping this country from developing adequate climate change law and policy works on many fronts. I often blog about the global warming denial industry. This comprises mostly the “think tanks” like the American Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute who promulgate obfuscation and misinformation about climatology and the science that shows that we are warming up our world with our power stations and automobiles.

            And then there is politics and such as what just occurred in Washington. By a party line vote of 19 to 15—with all Democrats opposing and all GOP members supporting—the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology passed an authorization bill that seriously cuts NASA’s budget for studying climate change. The bill would slash NASA’s Earth Sciences budget by more than $300 million resulting in a reduction from one fifth to one third of the division’s budget.

            The only way to describe this is Big Crazy. I don’t know what else to say.

Thank God For Pope Francis

A big thumbs up for the pope

This is big. Really big. In anticipation of his upcoming encyclical on global warming, Pope Francis held a summit meeting yesterday called “Protect the Earth, Dignify Humanity: The Moral Dimensions of Climate Change and Sustainable Development,”

So often when I hear people talk about global warming, what is put forward are technological fixes, everything from switching to hybrid cars to turning the oceans into mechanisms to sequester vast amounts of the carbon that we’ve thrown up in the atmosphere. We certainly need to consider and implement some of these technology changes. Driving a Prius is better than driving a gas-guzzler.

            But technology alone will not get us out of the corner that we have painted ourselves into. For what has driven all of our tech advances since the birth of the industrial revolution is the consumption of resources. That’s what the whole paradigm is all about. Technology cannot save us from technology.

            What the pope is calling for to save us and our planet is a change in our spirit. One top Vatican official, Cardinal Peter Turkson, said during the meeting that a “full conversion” of hearts and minds is necessary to solving the problem of global warming. He is right. Turkson went on to say:

In our recklessness, we are traversing some of the planet’s most fundamental natural boundaries. And the lesson from the Garden of Eden still rings true today: pride, hubris, self-centeredness are always perilous, indeed destructive. The very technology that has brought great reward is now poised to bring great ruin.

As long as we are geared and programed to consume and have the hubris that blinds us to the effects of our actions we will continue to warm the world. And this message is not just something for Catholics or just for Christians. Jewish,Muslim, Protestant, Buddhist and Hindu leaders accompanied the pope at the meeting today.

Interactive Map Highlights the Communities Affected By the Mountaintop Removal Mines

Working with Google and SkyTruth, an environmental mapping organization, Appalachian Voices has developed an interactive map that illustrates how the mountaintop mines have encroached on the communities of Appalachia. There are hundreds of towns and communities that are affected by the mines. This map concentrates on the 50 communities thought to be the most horribly affected by the mountaintop removal coalmines. The map is here.