Emerging from the Dark

12/21/23 – A brief post as I emerge from a long power outage

Muscongus Bay the day after the storm

Muscongus Bay during the storm

Hello everyone:

Happy Solstice! I hope this finds you all well and warm at this true cusp of the new year.

Much of Maine lost power on Monday, when New England was hit with the powerful storm that raked and flooded the east coast from Florida northward. The forecast called for a significant storm, but nothing like what actually hit us. Winds reached hurricane levels, with gusts up to 90 mph recorded on the downeast coast. Waves surged over coastal roads and properties. 5 to 7 inches of rain fell in parts of western Maine. River flooding has been particularly dramatic and damaging. Over 400,000 Mainers were without power initially, and three days later, as I publish this piece, there were still 50,000 coping with a lack of public electricity.

In our part of the coast, we had gusts up to 70 mph. The swells crashing into the southern end of the peninsula were impressive. It was wild and beautiful – you can see from my picture above how wild Muscongus Bay was even the day after – but the downed trees, flooded roads, wet basements, damaged homes, crippled electrical grid, and closed schools across the state have been difficult for everybody.

flooding in Newry, Maine / contributed photo to WGME News

Heather and I didn’t get plugged back into the grid until this evening. We’ve had a generator burning gas and droning noisily along, and have had internet (the phone lines have been working even though the power lines were down) when the generator was on, so we’ve been fine. But there’s been too much to do (dealing with a finicky furnace, in particular) to put together a full bit of writing for you.

I’m sorry not to have my week’s homework in on schedule… but you can consider it a gift of your time: One less hefty reading in your inbox as you enter the holiday season.

Before the storm, I had started writing an exploration of what was accomplished – or promised, really – at COP28, but that effort lost power when the house did. I’ll leave you, then, with a relevant thought or two.

I wrote last week that a solstice is always a good reminder that the spin, tilt, and orbit of the spheres exist beyond our meddling. I’m tempted to say that a storm which upends daily life is another good reminder of our smallness amid the maelstrom of existence… but being walloped by a warm tempest of tropical storm strength, in December in Maine, feels instead like a sign of the spin and tilt we’ve applied to the atmosphere. It feels, in short, like a human counterpoint to the eternal solstice.

I love a good storm. I don’t love looking into the clouds, wave-breached seawalls, and fallen trees for the fossil-fueled fingerprints of industrial culture. Though I suppose I don’t really need to look much farther than the gas-guzzling generator in our backyard, or in all my neighbors’ backyards. I’ve thought often during the last few days that this noisy, inefficient, overpowered machine – charging a furnace fan, some lights, a toaster oven – is not an aberration but a microcosm of how we powered the Great Acceleration of human impacts, and a symbol of the dark shadow we’re still trying to shake off.

What a storm like this makes clear, as each of us generates our own toxic electricity, is what’s been behind the curtain of our grid all along. The power lines running down the streets of civilization are quiet, but the coal- and gas-burning power plants that charge them are not.

That these machines are absolutely necessary for our survival in this moment is not so much a testament to their usefulness as it is a sign of how little empathy for life on Earth has accompanied our industrial rise to power. Our energy infrastructure, like the loud, habitat-splitting, killing zones we call roads and highways, has been designed as if it didn’t exist amid the lush, sensitive, beautiful array of life.

Identifying this new era as the we-broke-it-we-bought-it Anthropocene means recognizing that everything we do here matters. What we’ve done, in the last few centuries, is upend all of life. We’re the surge, the flood, the maelstrom. The question, just to mix my metaphors, is whether we’ll become the unchecked asteroid.

But we’re not only the storm, of course. We’re also the neighbors checking on neighbors, the helpers amid the crisis, figuring out what comes next and how we can become more resilient in the years ahead. The sooner we all realize that the neighbors of field, forest, stream, ocean, and desert are just as worthy of our care, the sooner we’ll be safer from the storms we’re making. As Wallace Stegner wrote,

We are the most dangerous species of life on the planet, and every other species, even the earth itself, has cause to fear our power to exterminate. But we are also the only species which, when it chooses to do so, will go to great effort to save what it might destroy.

The work at COP28, for all its awful sluggishness, bureaucratic incrementalism, and corporate sabotage, is part of that evolution of empathy we need so desperately. It’s a slow evolution, but it’s evolution nonetheless. It’s a sign of us emerging, too slowly, from the dark. There are many, many good signs of that evolution happening, not least the rapid transition to renewable energy systems that’s finally beginning to take place.

In lieu of a proper essay and explanation on COP28’s accomplishments, and what they mean to you, let me point you to a few good sources:

For an incredibly detailed accounting of what was decided and promised at COP28, check out Carbon Brief’s “key outcomes” analysis of the Global Stocktake and other pledges (on methane, deforestation, food systems, etc). The Global Stocktake is the first official assessment (taking stock) of how well the world is doing to live up the Paris Accords and its 1.5°C warming limit. You can read the entire (bureaucratic and fairly unreadable) 21-page draft Stocktake document here.

For a quicker summary of the COP 28 outcome, particularly how we got to a last-minute call to maybe/kinda/sorta transition away from fossil fuels, check out these articles at the Guardian and at NPR.

For a deep but quick view on what progress toward nature-based solutions to the climate crisis was made at COP28, check out Mike Shanahan’s recent Nature Beat newsletter. I like his one-liner summary: “weak text and ambitious alliances.” I’ve just begun reading Mike’s Substack, but am already finding it invaluable as a source for the news connecting biodiversity and climate work. He is incredibly comprehensive in his resources.

That’s all I have for you this week, folks, other than the usual list of fascinating articles to read in my curated Anthropocene news below.

Merry Christmas for those of you celebrating it. I’ll see you again next week in the days before the calendar flips to 2024.

Here’s a final bit of relevant holiday wisdom for you:

from Aaron Stine, Air Bear Entertainment, 12/2/2018

Thanks for sticking with me.

In other Anthropocene news:

From Mother Jones, “Endangered,” an important series of articles on the Endangered Species Act, now 50 years old. The ESA is the most powerful tool in the U.S. for conserving species, but it doesn’t do much to keep species from getting to the brink. And it has long been under attack from conservative business-aligned forces trying to eliminate or weaken it. If you’re interested in the future of U.S. conservation, I recommend you read these pieces. They’re titled The Alligator and the Handbag, The Pronghorn and the GOP, The Venus Flytrap and the Golf Course, The Toad and the Geothermal Plant, The Wolverine and the Waitlist, The Elephant and the Gilded Cage, The Mussels and the Border Buoys, and Five Big Ideas for Improving the Endangered Species Act.

On the same topic, from Benji Jones at Vox, an important examination from Hawai’i, “the extinction capital of the world,” on whether the 50-year-old Endangered Species Act, our most robust tool for protecting wildlife, is sufficient for dealing with the 21^st century acceleration of the biodiversity crisis. The ESA has been vital for protecting species, but the threats to wildlife are increasingly complex, particularly from climate change, habitat loss, invasives, and plastics. We need to expand our efforts to heal ecosystems rather than isolated species.

From the New Yorker, “What Would It Mean to Treat Animals Fairly?,” an essay exploring recent writing by animal rights philosophers Peter Singer and Martha Nussbaum. Singer first wrote Animal Liberation in the 1970s, and his new edition, Animal Liberation Now, reports on how little progress we’ve made amid the suffering and slaughter of billions and billions of animals for food and research. Singer is focused on reducing that suffering, where Nussbaum wants us to consider how best to help other species live their fullest lives. (Her work goes awry when she suggests protecting prey from predators.) There’s another layer to this question of animal rights: the impact we’re having on the millions of wild species shoved aside by our burgeoning population and resource-hungry civilization.

From PBS NewsHour and the AP, a new study finds that the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is inevitable, even if we manage to keep further global heating to just a few additional tenths of a degree. It may take centuries, but up to six feet of sea level rise is coming. For more background on this, you can read my series on what the WAIS means to you.

Also from PBS NewsHour, an excellent and comprehensive assessment from a wide variety of experts on how the U.S. can (and should) drastically reduce emissions across the entire economy. Well worth your time if you’re looking to understand what needs to happen on the emissions side of things.

From Yale e360, your vehicle’s tires are increasingly bad for the environment. They spew toxic particles into the air, and they’re grown on rubber tree plantations that are replacing millions of acres of tropical forest, esp. in southeast Asia. But we’re not dealing with it like we’re trying to deal with palm oil and other harmful forest-killing agricultural practices. There are no big “sustainable rubber” campaigns. This is all getting worse because SUVs are too damn big, and because EVs are heavier than their gas-powered equivalent. The heavier the vehicle, the faster they wear out rubber tires. We need better regulation, more public transit, and more recycling of tires.

From Wired, the scientist behind a study that triggered the ill-conceived Trillion Trees Program made a presentation at COP28 to ask countries to please stop planting trees. Or rather, to stop funding mindless tree-planting programs, which do not capture significant carbon and which are a disaster for biodiversity. His emphasis now is on protecting existing forests and allowing them to reach a ripe old carbon-storing age. This is a topic I will definitely write more about someday: We need to plant forests, not trees.