Listening to My Tomatoes and Turnips

I have a garden in back of our house and I love it. It’s just a small 10x20 plot, but I still get a lot out of it. Right now I’m harvesting radishes, beets, and lettuce. Latter this spring I’ll plant corn, squash, peppers and, the pride of every gardener, tomatoes.

            Gardening is a hobby I picked up from my father, who was probably the most enthusiastic gardener you’d want to meet. We lived on what had been 76 acres of a farm that had at one time been the home of chickens, hogs, and at least a half dozen head of cattle. My father tilled a large plot behind the cattle barn that his father had built. Choosing among several varieties, he planted at least 40 tomato plants every year. Forty plants. And that was just the tomatoes. We also planted several rows of early corn, sweet corn, and late corn. My mother would be busy for days pickling the cucumbers from our garden, and I remember the dozens of quart jars of the preserves being stored away in our basement.

            I helped my father with the planting, hoeing, and harvesting of the garden’s fruits and vegetables. Besides the smell of manure and pounding tomato stakes into the ground, one thing I remember was how attuned my father was to the time of the season and the weather. Week by week he knew when the chance of frost had abated and when to harvest the potatoes. He was also mindful of the variations each year presented, whether the growing season was cooler, warmer, or wetter than average. He also noticed if pests were growing more or less abundant.

            This gardener’s mojo isn’t unique to my father. Most gardeners get some sense of it; serious gardeners live by it. Gardeners understand the weather trends and have an understanding of what it means for their beans, strawberries, and potatoes. That’s why the map below, the Plant Hardiness Zone Map, the map planters use to determine the best times to plant their vegetables, is no surprise to folks like my father.

 The map has changed since the USDA published the last version of this map in 1990, and it shows a great warming trend across the U.S. What is a bit surprising is the extent of the warming indicated by this map. Divided into 13 zones by their lowest average annual temperature, each region, on average, advanced about half a zone since 1990. This is equal to a five-degree increase in the average minimum temperature. Some regions have changed to show a ten-degree increase. The USDA cautions that some of the changes in the map are because of better data collection, but it is still indisputable that spring thaws are earlier and those first frosts are happening later and later in the fall.

            The Farmer’s Almanac, which has been published since 1792, also confirms this trend. Janice Stillman, the almanac’s editor, says, “A lot of folks who garden have noticed over several years that certain plants are blooming earlier in the season. People are noticing there’s a change in the weather.”

            So what do people think of this? Can folks read about temperature increases of five to ten degrees all across the country and dismiss global warming? And for those who acknowledge that the world is warming but it’s not enough to worry about, five to ten degrees is a big shift on a thermostat. Now that global warming has gone from the work of researchers measuring CO2 on Hawaiian mountaintops to something that I and thousands of other gardeners who try to time when to plant the lettuce and rutabagas, it’s time to stop the discussions and start doing something.

ref: Jason Koebler Gardening Map Changes For Global Warming US News and World Report 1/26/2012 http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2012/01/26/gardening-map-changes-for-global-warming

Big Business, They Know Better Now

Speaking at a charity event in London, Sir David Attenborough said that there is no way to stop our ever-increasing population from ever increasing. The world has lots and lots of people and will have lots and lots more, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

            Because there are going to be more and more people, more of the world will be paved over. And so Attenborough urged action to preserve great expanses of nature—bogs, tropical forests mangrove swamps, and great mountains—that are at risk unless something is done to protect them soon.

            Attenborough appealed to big business to take the lead in securing and protecting these lands. He said, “It’s not a mystery. Wealth empowers. And businesses have by no means been slow in helping.” He went on to say that he and other conservationists have appealed to multinational corporations for help many times before.

Now I have a lot of respect for Attenborough, and I don’t think he is entirely wrong. There are people in business who are working to improve the world. Bill Gates might be the best example of a man of big business doing good with his riches.

It is curious that Attenborough did not call on governments, at least in part, to work on large-scale environmental preservation. Is it that governments, even when they do the right thing, are slow to act? Does he see the example set by the U.S., one in which an entrenched two-party system gives us a government so frozen that an ocean of WD-40 could not loosen the cogs of the legislative and administrative wheels of this country?

Attenborough seems to indicate that the bad environmental track record of big business is in the past and exonerates large companies of their bad environmental track record when he said that these companies usually committed environmentally degrading practices out of ignorance. “They didn’t know any better,” he said.

Has David Attenborough seen a mountaintop removal mine? The people who run those mines know about the destruction they cause. They know better but continue to flatten Kentucky and West Virginia. Did Attenborough have the radio or television on while an underwater cam showed the world millions of gallons of oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico? This spill may not have happened had BP and Halliburton not cut corners to try to save money. They knew better but risked men’s lives and the health of the waters in the gulf anyway.

Mountaintop removal in Appalachia, something that David Attenborough should see. Photo by Vivian Stockman. From the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition http://www.ohvec.org/

Big business also performs industrial harvesting of the world’s fisheries, depleting resources and scouring the ocean bottom until it is practically as lifeless as Death Valley. We know how harmful this kind of fishing is, but it continues. Big business hires PR firms and funds organizations like the Heritage Foundation to give the lie that the science of global warming is inconclusive. Big oil and big coal know the science, they know better, but they still fund the global warming denial industry.

As I said before, Attenborough is not entirely wrong. Conservationists need to work with big business, and I hope that I’m wonderfully surprised with the environmental successes sponsored by multinational corporations. He might also be right in saying that it was ignorance that led to some environmental problems that were caused by large companies. But just as there are more and more people, there is less and less ignorance about the harm large companies continue to inflict on our earth. And Attenborough should acknowledge this fact.

ref: David Attenborough urges business to protect nature from population boom Lewis Smith, The Guardian 1/18/2012  http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jan/18/david-attenborough-big-business-population?intcmp=122

Big Crazy

I’ve been trying to remain uninformed as to the goings on of the relentless GOP debates that have been sucking up time on the TV and radio and consuming space on websites and newspapers. It is noteworthy, however, that this weekend John Huntsman dropped out of the race.

            The candidates are not stupid individuals. Ron Paul was a physician before entering politics and Newt Gingrich has a Ph.D. Yet it has been only Huntsman to be the sole GOP candidate who is not denying the science, the reality, of global warming. Gingrich, in the past, has talked about global warming and acknowledging not only the reality of the phenomenon but the need to address the crisis. He even famously made this commercial with Nancy Pelosi about global warming.

Paul’s website equivocates on the issue but suggests that the best way to solve this “nonproblem” is to reduce regulation.

            I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Huntsman was the only candidate to acknowledge that global warming is happening and that he is one of the first GOP candidates to drop out of the race.

I have a term “big crazy.” It’s when a lot of people who should know better or could be better informed choose to believe things that are obviously loony. Belief in UFOs is big crazy. Big crazy also describes conspiracy theories. Big crazy has been around for a long time in politics. Legal segregation was big crazy. McCarthyism and the Red scare were big crazy, too.

There was a time, perhaps as little as15 or 20 years ago, when a reasonable person could have some reasonable doubts about man-made climate change. But that is no longer. With Huntsman dropping out, we now have the guarantee that the Grand Old Party’s nominee for 2012 will deny the existence of global warming. Despite the thinning ice sheets and all the science, that is the way it’s going to be. This is big crazy, and the GOP is guaranteed to give us a big crazy candidate.

The Next Climate Change Battle

For decades now, because of their interpretation of the bible, Protestant fundamentalist have tried to stop the teaching of evolution, or they have tried to distract from it being taught in schools by having “creation science” taught along with evolution.

            In response the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) was created in the early 1980s to keep the teaching of biology and evolution free of these influences. Checking their website, it’s a little surprising how busy they are. From California, through the Midwest, into New England there always seems to be news of a school board watering down their science curricula or a state legislature passing a law that requires biology teachers to teach “both sides” of evolution and creation science.

            The NCSE or possibly another organization may wind up getting busy defending the teaching of science, this time the teachers who teach about climate change. The National Earth Science Teachers Association has released an executive summary of the findings of its online survey of K through 12 educators who teach about climate change. Over one third of the respondents said that they had been “influenced in some way” to teach “both sides” of climate change. About 25 to 30 percent said that parents, administrators, and members of their communities have disputed with them over whether or not climate change is happening or whether or not it is a phenomenon caused by humans.

            A similar survey conducted last year by the National Science Teachers Association found similar results. Teachers said that students expressed a great deal of skepticism about climate change and that 26 percent of science teachers said that their administrators had expressed skepticism about climate change. Both of these surveys were informal. Though their results are not conclusive, they are nonetheless troubling.

            The anti-evolution crusaders have churches and other organizations to push for their cause. My question is, right now, are there organizations that are trying to keep climate science out of the classroom? Are there Koch funded folks like the Heritage Foundation working to ensure that the next generation is as ignorant and destructive as we are?

Ref: National Center for Science Education ncse.com

Enjoying the Natural World in Luxury

My wife and I spent a few days out in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. As we hiked through canyons and along the alluvial fans, we marveled at the majestic vistas and appreciated the verdins, black-throated sparrows and other birds and wildlife that make their homes among the cholla and cactus. As with our visits to Yosemite, Olympic National Park, and other places that have been set aside for folks to enjoy the outdoors, my wife and I wanted a nature experience and we got it.

            The one odd thing about visiting desert parks is the conspicuousness of human intrusion with RVs. Here is an RV park outside Anza-Borrego:

I guess as long as you have RVs, and as long as you have parks, there are going to be people to drive their RVs to parks. That is what they are meant for. It seems ironic, however, that the most incongruous thing you’re going to find in a park that celebrates the wonders of nature is an RV. Some of these vehicles weigh in excess of 12 tons. To me, it is absurd that people need to move that much of anything in order to enjoy the outdoors. These RVs are small houses on wheels, with beds, sofas, and kitchen sinks.

It is always a paradox that we use industrial products like our cars and consume resources like gasoline to enjoy open spaces. It is a conundrum that I recognize, but for my wife, and me we do make an effort to keep the driving to a minimum and use our more fuel-efficient car when we can. Driving an RV, though, is taking this conundrum to a whole ‘nother level. It takes a lot of fuel to move them about, increasing the amount of greenhouse gasses being pumped into the atmosphere. I know some people like them, but are they necessary?

            

Have You Read the News?

Newspapers have always had sections. There’s always been the business section, a local section, and of course, the sports section. Before the Internet, when papers were the way to get the news, sections were a precursor to the hyperlink. You could find the section that interested you and read about how your stocks were doing, see who was getting married, or just read the comics without having to leaf through a lot of other news that may have been of lesser interest to you. Transitioning to the Internet, papers still have sections. Instead of being a separate bundle of paper, the sections are links displayed below the paper’s banner on their home page.

            Now here is something to ponder: Of the ten largest circulating U.S. papers in the U.S.[1] none of them have an environment section, a place devoted to covering advances in green technology, the impact of rising sea levels on coastal areas and islands, the listing of plants and animals as endangered or threatened, and other such stories.

            Looking elsewhere at newspapers in other English speaking countries, their papers devote sections to the environment. The Guardian and The Independent in England have sections on the environment. The Sydney Morning Herald has an environment section. Even the Irish Times devotes a section of its online paper to environmental matters.

Recent polls indicate that Europeans consider the problems of global warming to be of utmost importance, second only to the problem of poverty,[i] while Americans’ concern about global warming is waning.[ii] A majority of Americans think that the protecting the environment should take a back seat when doing so is at odds with extracting coal, oil, and natural gas.[iii]

I believe that the difference of priorities that Americans and Europeans place on the environment is, at least in part, due to the way they are covered in the news. American papers may argue that they are merely giving their readership what they want. They provide a travel section because they know that there are people who want to read about snorkeling in Belize and train travel in Canada, and it’s the same with the financial section and sports section.

This is true, but news sources also influence the way their readers perceive the news and the importance of the news. An easy example is warfare in Central America. During the eighties Americans were acutely aware of the Sandinistas and Contras in Nicaragua as their conflict raged and engulfed Oliver North and Ronald Reagan in an Iran-Contra scandal. There was also a bloody war in Guatemala at the same time, one in which the United States played a role, yet Americans were largely ignorant of the fighting in Guatemala.

Using the New York Times as an indicator of the general press coverage, the number of stories concerning Nicaragua jumped from 1,663 during the seventies to 11,477 during the eighties, while the number of stories about Guatemala went from 1,821 to 3,590 for the same time period. The number of stories about Guatemala did increase, but not to near to the extent that it did for Guatemala.[2]

Americans knew about Daniel Ortega and his baseball caps because the press told them, again and again, about the war in Nicaragua. It’s the same for the environment. Americans would know a great deal about mountaintop removal, and probably care about the plight of the land and people of Appalachia, if it received as much press as Newt Gingrich.

For an adequate democracy, a populace needs to be informed. Without the U.S. press responsibly reporting on the environment, we are left with inadequate knowledge to make the tough decisions we need to make while the planet warms, wetlands are stressed, water grows scarce, and the rest of the natural world is placed at risk.

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[1] The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Times, San Jose Mercury News, Washington Post, New York Daly News, New York Post, Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune – Source: Audit Bureau of Circulation

[2] I used Proquest to obtain these figures.

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[i] Europeans fear climate change more than financial turmoil, poll shows The Guardian 10/7/11 http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/07/europeans-climate-change-poll

[ii] In U.S., Concerns About Global Warming Stable at Lower Levels Gallup 3/14/11 http://www.gallup.com/poll/146606/concerns-global-warming-stable-lower-levels.aspx

[iii] In U.S., Expanding Energy Output Still Trumps Green Concerns Gallup 3/16/11 http://www.gallup.com/poll/146651/expanding-energy-output-trumps-green-concerns.aspx

I Thought This Was Supposed To Be a Debate

This is what Newt Gingrich had to say about the Keystone pipeline in last night’s GOP debate. In this quote he is referring to the GOP affixing to a payroll tax cut wording that would expedite the construction of the Keystone pipeline. Referring to president Obama’s objection to inclusion of this language, Gingrich said, “It is utterly irrational to say ‘I’m now going to veto a middle class tax cut to protect left-wing environmental extremists in San Francisco so that we’re going to kill American jobs, weaken American energy, make us more vulnerable to the Iranians, and do so in a way that makes no sense to any normal rational American’”

            I’ve written in this blog before about the rhetoric now used by politicians and others who want to roll back or do away with environmental protections or environmental regulation that may impede construction projects or energy projects such as the Keystone pipeline. But this performance in the video is a rhetorical neutron bomb, even for a rhetor such as Gingrich. He included the familiar term “left-wing environmental extremists,” as well as the geographic liberal Mecca that the GOP hates more than Mecca “San Francisco.” He also tied opposition the Keystone pipeline to the economy, American prosperity, and a supposed overseas threat from Iran.

            That Gingrich could so deftly demonize the people of South Dakota, Nebraska, and other central states who have legitimate concerns about contamination of their groundwater, that he could so harshly excoriate the environmentalists who point out that the pipeline has environmental costs greater than other energy sources, that he could so easily defend the inclusion of legislation to expedite the construction of the pipeline (a poison pill rider) in a bill providing a tax cut to most workers in this country is astonishing.

            Rhetorically astonishing, yes. But to say this is a debate is laughable. It’s highfalutin name calling, and reduces the formation of policy to the level of street brawling. No wonder the crowd cheered.