I think the Grunwald article is the first I've seen on the contribution of agriculture to eating the earth that doesn't even suggest people think about moving toward veganism-- it seems to only be focused on what corporations can do to produce the food that people want to eat in a manner less damaging to the planet. I've all but lost my hope that we will move in the direction of voluntarily making changes to our own dietary contributions to the global problems. But the article linked in there-- Afraid of High Tech Food? Get Over It" gives me some hope.
What most people don't realize is that with time, you get accustomed to a new diet and find things that you love. One of my favorite things used to be a steak. But the idea of it no longer is of interest to me. If you could eat as much steak as you want and not have a negative effect the environment, it wouldn't be of interest to me. I suppose that if I switched to eating industrial meats I would probably get used to that and find ones that I love also.
I'm sad about ocean acidification and didn't have the heart to watch the educational videos. What I would like is an essay about how you stay upbeat and positive.
How are your tree swallows doing? I had two boxes wiped out by a bear this year, chicks presumably eaten. Two boxes seem to have abandoned eggs. A third box seemed to have 3 abandoned eggs in it but they just hatched a few days ago. There are a few boxes that got swallow nests and eggs late. Two of those I think are renestings by the swallows that lost their chicks to the bear. I think I may abandon the lower field next year where the bear attacks have happened and put more boxes in the upper field. Still thinking about it.
I have an advance copy of Grunwald's book here, but haven't read it yet. I checked to see what the index has on vegetarianism and veganism, but as a raw copy it doesn't have an index. A quick glance through suggests that one of his base assumptions is that we don't/won't change our eating habits in any meaningful way.
I hope your experience is heard by readers here, who will use it as food for thought. It's the flip side of what the industry is counting on, which is that people who grow up eating meat will maintain that as their norm. People are both very conservative in their tastes and shockingly willing to adjust to new norms. Go figure.
Honestly, I'm not particularly upbeat about ocean acidification and other hard-to-address planetary disfigurements. These are processes that usually change on epochal scales, not in a single ape's generation, and they'll require a very long-term all-hands-on-deck civilizational approach, which (in case you haven't noticed) is getting harder as more governments slide toward mafia-style extractive autocracy.
I need to take a survey of my swallow colonies. Anecdotally, fewer birds showed up this year. And as you know it's been a fairly wet spring and early summer. So I'm worried about the overall numbers but don't know yet. I'm pretty hands-off with the colonies, setting them up and then checking after the season. So sorry about the bear depredation.
Fewer swallows at cooper farm too. The last couple of years there have been fewer pairs than boxes so we didn't have the knock down, drag out fights over boxes that we've had for years-- I kept growing the number of boxes because of the fights. Some years we've had swallow chicks disappear and bluebird eggs appear in one of the boxes when we had full occupancy, so I took to adding a box right when the swallow chicks were due to hatch so that any bluebirds would go there. No need to do that now. We also have two boxes with swallow eggs that were abandoned. If all goes well now we'll have 8 swallow nests and 3 or 4 bluebird nests fledge out of 14 boxes. Bluebirds have been occupying two boxes and usually do two nests or more per year. Thanks for checking Grunwald's book for me. I thought Tom Brady would influence a lot of people to be plant based but it doesn't seem to have.
Thank you for very important work, and for resources we can share. Here in Worthing, Sussex, UK, we've signed up to the Transition Town movement and we have a strong hyperlocal network building. Grassroots awareness, action, and pressure, really does make a difference.
Thank you, Caroline. I'll take a look at your links, and with any luck some of my readers here will too. I'm glad to hear about your hyperlocal work. It's not something I'm part of yet, but more and more I think it's vital. You might be interested in reading Radically Local by Margi Prideaux. In the wake of the devastating fires in her part of Australia, she and her community are rebuilding systems as they look ahead to a very different Earth in which resilience is entirely local.
The article reminded me of David Attenborough’s latest documentary on oceans - which was an eye opener for me. Noticed some intersections - how helpful these kelp forests and corals are. Everything is so intricately interconnected and we are breaking this rhythm. It’s really sad! So much work to do!
The sea butterfly is absolutely gorgeous, such beauty and elegance! Did not know that this organism even existed - thank you for throwing light on this and the deep dive! Learning a lot through your words :)
Jason, I don’t get to your work enough, but when I do I am always glad I took the time. Thank you! There are so many things I could respond to, but I will mention 2 intersections:
1. I was a science and nature studies teacher for upper elementary kids for 25 years (ending with the pandemic), was deeply committed to focusing on both personal experience and relationship with the outdoors and fostering conceptual understanding of Earth’s life and systems. I agree that the planetary boundaries concept is a powerful way to show both system capacities and human impact—I tried to practice David Sobel’s wise adage: no tragedies before the 4th grade, but the basics of this model would have been excellent for my older kids.
2. The WashPost article about the bee lab really hit home for me. I now work part time for a local nonprofit whose mission is to increase native plantings—and reduce lawns—to support native pollinators. I will share that article out to our followers!
I’m very grateful for your dedication to educating about the heartbreak and perils all earthlings face due to the existential threat of anthropogenic climate change.
I like to hope that not everybody is immune to facts and truth.
Thank you, Michelle, for both the comments and the good work you've spent your life doing. I'm glad too that you think the planetary boundaries concept could be viable at the younger grades. I wonder if the idea behind the boundaries - that there is a nuanced list of the Earth's systems to respect and care for - might be viable for the youngest. But I'm sure you're right about Sobel's wisdom. I'll write that one down.
I do think that the native pollinator message is getting out there pretty broadly, though ears at the industrial and political level may be getting deafer. To the extent that people and communities look after the bees, I'm hopeful that they'll do well by the moths and fireflies and the millions of other bugs too. They need it.
Thank you for spreading the word about the Post article.
Jason, the book that idea originally came out of is Sobel’s “Beyond Ecophobia”. It’s a short but great read. It was written in a time of awakening just before Louv’s “Last Child in the Woods”. I used both as textbooks for my Environmental and Outdoor Ed Methods class I taught for 3 years—crosslisted elective for grad/undergrad, pre- and in-service teachers. That was nearly 20 years ago.
Thank you, Leah. It's always hard to know if the clarity is there, so I'm happy to hear that. And yes, generations of work to do, even if we're on the best of paths.
I think the Grunwald article is the first I've seen on the contribution of agriculture to eating the earth that doesn't even suggest people think about moving toward veganism-- it seems to only be focused on what corporations can do to produce the food that people want to eat in a manner less damaging to the planet. I've all but lost my hope that we will move in the direction of voluntarily making changes to our own dietary contributions to the global problems. But the article linked in there-- Afraid of High Tech Food? Get Over It" gives me some hope.
What most people don't realize is that with time, you get accustomed to a new diet and find things that you love. One of my favorite things used to be a steak. But the idea of it no longer is of interest to me. If you could eat as much steak as you want and not have a negative effect the environment, it wouldn't be of interest to me. I suppose that if I switched to eating industrial meats I would probably get used to that and find ones that I love also.
I'm sad about ocean acidification and didn't have the heart to watch the educational videos. What I would like is an essay about how you stay upbeat and positive.
How are your tree swallows doing? I had two boxes wiped out by a bear this year, chicks presumably eaten. Two boxes seem to have abandoned eggs. A third box seemed to have 3 abandoned eggs in it but they just hatched a few days ago. There are a few boxes that got swallow nests and eggs late. Two of those I think are renestings by the swallows that lost their chicks to the bear. I think I may abandon the lower field next year where the bear attacks have happened and put more boxes in the upper field. Still thinking about it.
I have an advance copy of Grunwald's book here, but haven't read it yet. I checked to see what the index has on vegetarianism and veganism, but as a raw copy it doesn't have an index. A quick glance through suggests that one of his base assumptions is that we don't/won't change our eating habits in any meaningful way.
I hope your experience is heard by readers here, who will use it as food for thought. It's the flip side of what the industry is counting on, which is that people who grow up eating meat will maintain that as their norm. People are both very conservative in their tastes and shockingly willing to adjust to new norms. Go figure.
Honestly, I'm not particularly upbeat about ocean acidification and other hard-to-address planetary disfigurements. These are processes that usually change on epochal scales, not in a single ape's generation, and they'll require a very long-term all-hands-on-deck civilizational approach, which (in case you haven't noticed) is getting harder as more governments slide toward mafia-style extractive autocracy.
I need to take a survey of my swallow colonies. Anecdotally, fewer birds showed up this year. And as you know it's been a fairly wet spring and early summer. So I'm worried about the overall numbers but don't know yet. I'm pretty hands-off with the colonies, setting them up and then checking after the season. So sorry about the bear depredation.
Fewer swallows at cooper farm too. The last couple of years there have been fewer pairs than boxes so we didn't have the knock down, drag out fights over boxes that we've had for years-- I kept growing the number of boxes because of the fights. Some years we've had swallow chicks disappear and bluebird eggs appear in one of the boxes when we had full occupancy, so I took to adding a box right when the swallow chicks were due to hatch so that any bluebirds would go there. No need to do that now. We also have two boxes with swallow eggs that were abandoned. If all goes well now we'll have 8 swallow nests and 3 or 4 bluebird nests fledge out of 14 boxes. Bluebirds have been occupying two boxes and usually do two nests or more per year. Thanks for checking Grunwald's book for me. I thought Tom Brady would influence a lot of people to be plant based but it doesn't seem to have.
Oceans’ climate change.
Will we pass their acid test?
Life’s riding on it.
Thank you for very important work, and for resources we can share. Here in Worthing, Sussex, UK, we've signed up to the Transition Town movement and we have a strong hyperlocal network building. Grassroots awareness, action, and pressure, really does make a difference.
Thank you, Caroline. I'll take a look at your links, and with any luck some of my readers here will too. I'm glad to hear about your hyperlocal work. It's not something I'm part of yet, but more and more I think it's vital. You might be interested in reading Radically Local by Margi Prideaux. In the wake of the devastating fires in her part of Australia, she and her community are rebuilding systems as they look ahead to a very different Earth in which resilience is entirely local.
https://margiprideaux.substack.com/
Thank you very much! I'll take a look at that.
Climate Resilience Centre Worthing | Climate Emergency Centre in Worthing https://share.google/CHiGcivjgNGhc0LaC
Home - Transition Town Worthing https://share.google/ONRlVFrAVxh5VKb4D
Great info, Jason.
The article reminded me of David Attenborough’s latest documentary on oceans - which was an eye opener for me. Noticed some intersections - how helpful these kelp forests and corals are. Everything is so intricately interconnected and we are breaking this rhythm. It’s really sad! So much work to do!
The sea butterfly is absolutely gorgeous, such beauty and elegance! Did not know that this organism even existed - thank you for throwing light on this and the deep dive! Learning a lot through your words :)
Thank you, Ankita. I wish Attenborough could live forever. His work has been invaluable, and there's much in his character to admire.
I'm happy to spread the word about sea butterflies and their kin. They are marvelous.
And I will try to do that with my art. I bet majority of the people are unaware of these sea organisms.
Jason, I don’t get to your work enough, but when I do I am always glad I took the time. Thank you! There are so many things I could respond to, but I will mention 2 intersections:
1. I was a science and nature studies teacher for upper elementary kids for 25 years (ending with the pandemic), was deeply committed to focusing on both personal experience and relationship with the outdoors and fostering conceptual understanding of Earth’s life and systems. I agree that the planetary boundaries concept is a powerful way to show both system capacities and human impact—I tried to practice David Sobel’s wise adage: no tragedies before the 4th grade, but the basics of this model would have been excellent for my older kids.
2. The WashPost article about the bee lab really hit home for me. I now work part time for a local nonprofit whose mission is to increase native plantings—and reduce lawns—to support native pollinators. I will share that article out to our followers!
I’m very grateful for your dedication to educating about the heartbreak and perils all earthlings face due to the existential threat of anthropogenic climate change.
I like to hope that not everybody is immune to facts and truth.
Thank you, Michelle, for both the comments and the good work you've spent your life doing. I'm glad too that you think the planetary boundaries concept could be viable at the younger grades. I wonder if the idea behind the boundaries - that there is a nuanced list of the Earth's systems to respect and care for - might be viable for the youngest. But I'm sure you're right about Sobel's wisdom. I'll write that one down.
I do think that the native pollinator message is getting out there pretty broadly, though ears at the industrial and political level may be getting deafer. To the extent that people and communities look after the bees, I'm hopeful that they'll do well by the moths and fireflies and the millions of other bugs too. They need it.
Thank you for spreading the word about the Post article.
Jason, the book that idea originally came out of is Sobel’s “Beyond Ecophobia”. It’s a short but great read. It was written in a time of awakening just before Louv’s “Last Child in the Woods”. I used both as textbooks for my Environmental and Outdoor Ed Methods class I taught for 3 years—crosslisted elective for grad/undergrad, pre- and in-service teachers. That was nearly 20 years ago.
I really appreciate the clarity of your writing. Thank you. We have work to do.
Thank you, Leah. It's always hard to know if the clarity is there, so I'm happy to hear that. And yes, generations of work to do, even if we're on the best of paths.