“Too few of us seem to recognize that a) climate chaos is a subset of the larger threats-to-life problem, b) forests are as central to climate as emissions, and c) fixing emissions will not revitalize the bulldozed world.”
A sizable subset of threat to life dynamics exist. But they are all ancillary compared to emissions. The forest and bioregional Eco habitat systems around the globe need to be rebuilt and re-wilded, from a deep ecology perspective. Not having anything to do with climate change or weather chaos. Simply to restore the chance of complex life form of surviving.
I will say that it’s number two priority after a genuine effort to reverse our self inflicted climate catastrophe. Please don’t correlate to two. They are completely separate issues other than they both threaten existence of many lifeforms. The climate situation threatens existence of all complex multi celled organisms. Don’t get yourself. We could easily become Venus or Mars, depending on how things shake out. Most likely a larger less dense atmosphere of Venus.
Thanks for this excellent summary, Hudson. This is a triage discussion, right? Which catastrophe comes first, etc. I know that you're right that unchecked climate heating represents the greater, deeper threat to all of life, and that the threat is looming on our doorstep, but for the last two centuries and at the moment it's not what's driving the rapid acceleration of extinctions. The best work to be done, as I see it, are solutions that are intended to solve both biodiversity and climate. I did a piece a while back called A Flat Tire and a Dead Battery that addressed this. The Planetary Boundaries folks have a great perspective on all this too.
And while this isn't my forte at all, there's good work being done on the neglected side of the climate equation, re: loss of forests and other ecologies that regulate the water cycles and thus climate. Rob Lewis at The Climate According to Life is rooted in this work, so might be worth your time. Start with his writing on the life and work of climatologist Millan Millan.
I do think we should have a WW ll style “drop everything” and address both.
The overall climate strategy is fairly straightforward. In the fossil fuel extraction, sequester carbon directly from the atmosphere by at least two5 trillion tons and disperse glacial rock micro dust over as much of the planet as possible.
Habitat restoration is going to be the challenge because people who aren’t qualified whatsoever will want to have a say in it and if they have any position of power, they will obviously that’s the dynamic with all of this but especially that
I totally understand how these ridiculous and morally bankrupt practices contribute to our extreme weather patterns. I guess I’m contending all of that is somehow directly correlated to fossil fuels.
And, the imperialist planet rape crowd. Usually known as trans global corporations.
The Fortune 500, in other words.
There is socialism in America. They are the recipients of it. Every taxpayer in America is liable for $8000 per year to corporations and $37 to fellow citizens.
We’re funding the planet rape with our hard earned dollars.
The bottom line of all of this is “we the people“ are stupid, apathetic, self-centered, shallow gene pool,
Allow me to continue this point. It is the direct contribution to the environmental degradation because it would not be possible on that scale without fossil fuels and, much of that degradation is a direct result of extracting the resource.
I can’t think of a problem we face as a society that is not somehow connected to fossil fuels.
You're prolific, Hudson. I'm headed to bed, so I'll keep this short. I'll say first that yes, nearly all that confronts us in this era is related to fossil fuels directly or indirectly. Even the Planetary Boundaries concept makes this clear, whether it's fossil fuels powering and fertilizing agriculture or providing the basis for pesticides and herbicides, etc.. But just because there's a monolithic guilty party doesn't mean the cultural shift is exclusively about emissions. Fossil fuels have empowered us to make a variety of bad decisions, both physical and ethical, and we need to reverse course on those decisions at the same time we shut down the industry behind them. All of the above, as folks like to say.
Actually Jason, I am very happy to correct you on your perspective about cooperation between the faiths as that "firewall" doesn't exist on this issue of creation. I was on a Zoom meeting with Interfaith Power & Light this morning addressing local TX energy issues. We work with GreenFaith as well. ALL of our orgs. are multi-faith. LSM is open to all as long as they believe a higher power put all in motion so we have 2 members in TX who just say they are "spiritual" and do not attend any church or identify with a denomination. Our LSM TX chapter has 7 leadership positions and 2 are held by non-Catholics. Although the US Catholic church has not embraced what we call Care for Creation as aggressively as the other pro-life issue, the rest of the world Catholics have embraced it and are also working with other faiths for our "common home". You are correct, this is NOT "policy" nor "liberal"; it is a moral issue that many faiths (more so outside the US) are addressing. If you have 90 minutes to spare, watch THE LETTER (free on YouTube); the only documentary ever created at the request of the Vatican. Not one protagonist is Catholic but Hindu, Muslim, indigenous belief and agnostic and Pope Francis sat with all of them to listen to their first hand experience with the climate crisis. As an environmentalist since early childhood, I recognized long ago that to change how we treat our Mother Earth was going to require a true change in heart (not mind) for many people because altruistic behavior based on logic and reason rarely wins out in America. May this info. provide you with more hope.
And I'm very happy to be corrected. Thank you so much for all this. I'll make a note about The Letter, and another to refer back to this comment when I get around to exploring and writing about what's happening among the world's faiths in their response to this crisis for life on Earth, who Pope Francis in Laudato Si' referred to as "among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor.” A while back, I published Laudato Si' here (while I was on break) for my readers, and provided a bit of an intro (https://jasonanthony.substack.com/p/care-for-our-common-home). I'm very happy to hear from someone who is devoted to carrying on the work. I have read in passing that the encyclical has had more influence outside the U.S., and am glad to hear your reassurance of that fact.
"but we don’t want to change how we live, other than to allow the billions of impoverished people to live comfortable middle-class lives. We should be devoting our best minds, and our own quiet souls, to figuring out how to live with less." This passage echos the sentiments of Pope Francis in the encyclical, Laudato Si': Care for Our Common Home where he expresses that less is more and consumerism is not a symptom of happiness.
Indeed. And I'd love to see the sentiment spread through the Catholic world and then through evangelical populations as well. (I realize there's a firewall between the faiths, but I can hope anyway...) The world certainly needs some top-down guidance that isn't just policy, and some bottom-up activism that isn't just liberal. It's a topic I should write about sometime. Thanks for chiming in.
Just dropping in to say I finally have gotten to read this with the care it deserves. How had I never heard the term "white coal"?? It's so perfectly descriptive.
Here in my little Oregon city, our power and water company is one entity, because both our power and water come from a dam. And they're both really inexpensive. Solar and wind power are less viable here, due to climactic conditions. So hydro it is, unless we want to purchase expensive power from the big statewide entity that relies on natural gas. A predicament indeed.
“At a large scale, dams can do for civilization what nature (even the miraculous beavers) cannot, storing vast quantities of water which can be transferred as needed to cities and agricultural areas hundreds of miles away.”
It’s my understanding this assumed benefit has always had limitations: namely, surface evaporation on large reservoirs. Hotter global temperatures increase evaporation. Coloradoriverscience.org has info specific to the issue with Colorado river dams (Glen Canyon, Hoover).
Very true, Mackenzie. I've also learned that evaporation is a huge problem and getting worse in a hotter world. I do have a line about this in the essay, specifically that one estimate says that all the evaporation from reservoirs annually is about the same as the average water consumption from the world's cities. I'll have a bit more to say next week as well. Thanks for the note, and for the link, which I'll check out for the writing this week.
Well, it's just one line in 2300 words, Mackenzie. No apology necessary. In these big topic pieces, it's always hard to know how much emphasis to give each part. They all matter, and often each could sustain their own article/essay. I appreciate you pointing out an important one.
Really interesting essay, Jason. I was shocked to learn that only 3% of U.S. dams generate electricity. Was that number far higher a century ago? I viewed (perhaps incorrectly) U.S. dams as a major factor in becoming an industrial juggernaut during the 20th century.
Hi Jacob, it does seem like a small portion, but I think the vast majority of dams are small affairs controlling water flow for irrigation and floods. And as Bryant says, the early industrial era was marked by lots of dams supplying local power. Also, 3% of 90000 is still 2700 hydroelectric dams, which is significant, esp when you consider the huge dams out west.
We all argue and remonstrate finding many approaches to restoring the earth, many pathways to ecotopia. And when we take actions it's all for the good, for the health of the planet. What more can we do? we ask. We are faced with multiple symptoms of our dying earth and we apply remedies to the symptoms as we rapidly as we discern them. Yet we have a seeming blind spot. We don't want to see that it is we who are the root source of all the myriad symptoms- we and our activities. We don't want to see that directly because to do so requires us to address the problem directly. Jason, Hudson, there are just too many of us, far too many. The world would be better off without so many of us. How many? A very great number.
But we won't do that will we? We won't voluntarily reduce our population below 500 million total spread across the surface of the world. And even if we did it would be too late. Forces have been set in motion that will take hundreds of years to play themselves out. All we can do is simultaneously address as many of the symptoms as we can- rather like an attacker trying to heal the victim he savagely attacked.
That’s true. I have no problem with that. How do you think we can support 1 billion people sustainably if we restore the entire biosphere and foraged from it.
One billion is too many. Cut that in half. You answered your own question. Restore the biosphere and remove the traces of our old civil engineering as much we can. What won't do is if the new population decided they wanted to live like satraps, like potentates, each consuming the resources 100 or 1,000 of the old population did. Then we're right back where we started.
“Too few of us seem to recognize that a) climate chaos is a subset of the larger threats-to-life problem, b) forests are as central to climate as emissions, and c) fixing emissions will not revitalize the bulldozed world.”
A sizable subset of threat to life dynamics exist. But they are all ancillary compared to emissions. The forest and bioregional Eco habitat systems around the globe need to be rebuilt and re-wilded, from a deep ecology perspective. Not having anything to do with climate change or weather chaos. Simply to restore the chance of complex life form of surviving.
I will say that it’s number two priority after a genuine effort to reverse our self inflicted climate catastrophe. Please don’t correlate to two. They are completely separate issues other than they both threaten existence of many lifeforms. The climate situation threatens existence of all complex multi celled organisms. Don’t get yourself. We could easily become Venus or Mars, depending on how things shake out. Most likely a larger less dense atmosphere of Venus.
Thanks for this excellent summary, Hudson. This is a triage discussion, right? Which catastrophe comes first, etc. I know that you're right that unchecked climate heating represents the greater, deeper threat to all of life, and that the threat is looming on our doorstep, but for the last two centuries and at the moment it's not what's driving the rapid acceleration of extinctions. The best work to be done, as I see it, are solutions that are intended to solve both biodiversity and climate. I did a piece a while back called A Flat Tire and a Dead Battery that addressed this. The Planetary Boundaries folks have a great perspective on all this too.
And while this isn't my forte at all, there's good work being done on the neglected side of the climate equation, re: loss of forests and other ecologies that regulate the water cycles and thus climate. Rob Lewis at The Climate According to Life is rooted in this work, so might be worth your time. Start with his writing on the life and work of climatologist Millan Millan.
Again, thanks.
It definitely is a poly problem!!! if that’s a thing. ;)
Definitely a thing...
I was afraid of that.
I do think we should have a WW ll style “drop everything” and address both.
The overall climate strategy is fairly straightforward. In the fossil fuel extraction, sequester carbon directly from the atmosphere by at least two5 trillion tons and disperse glacial rock micro dust over as much of the planet as possible.
Habitat restoration is going to be the challenge because people who aren’t qualified whatsoever will want to have a say in it and if they have any position of power, they will obviously that’s the dynamic with all of this but especially that
End fossil fuel extraction*
I totally understand how these ridiculous and morally bankrupt practices contribute to our extreme weather patterns. I guess I’m contending all of that is somehow directly correlated to fossil fuels.
And, the imperialist planet rape crowd. Usually known as trans global corporations.
The Fortune 500, in other words.
There is socialism in America. They are the recipients of it. Every taxpayer in America is liable for $8000 per year to corporations and $37 to fellow citizens.
We’re funding the planet rape with our hard earned dollars.
The bottom line of all of this is “we the people“ are stupid, apathetic, self-centered, shallow gene pool,
Proudly ignorant choads. In general…..
Allow me to continue this point. It is the direct contribution to the environmental degradation because it would not be possible on that scale without fossil fuels and, much of that degradation is a direct result of extracting the resource.
I can’t think of a problem we face as a society that is not somehow connected to fossil fuels.
No?
You're prolific, Hudson. I'm headed to bed, so I'll keep this short. I'll say first that yes, nearly all that confronts us in this era is related to fossil fuels directly or indirectly. Even the Planetary Boundaries concept makes this clear, whether it's fossil fuels powering and fertilizing agriculture or providing the basis for pesticides and herbicides, etc.. But just because there's a monolithic guilty party doesn't mean the cultural shift is exclusively about emissions. Fossil fuels have empowered us to make a variety of bad decisions, both physical and ethical, and we need to reverse course on those decisions at the same time we shut down the industry behind them. All of the above, as folks like to say.
Thanks again for chiming in.
Thank you!
Actually Jason, I am very happy to correct you on your perspective about cooperation between the faiths as that "firewall" doesn't exist on this issue of creation. I was on a Zoom meeting with Interfaith Power & Light this morning addressing local TX energy issues. We work with GreenFaith as well. ALL of our orgs. are multi-faith. LSM is open to all as long as they believe a higher power put all in motion so we have 2 members in TX who just say they are "spiritual" and do not attend any church or identify with a denomination. Our LSM TX chapter has 7 leadership positions and 2 are held by non-Catholics. Although the US Catholic church has not embraced what we call Care for Creation as aggressively as the other pro-life issue, the rest of the world Catholics have embraced it and are also working with other faiths for our "common home". You are correct, this is NOT "policy" nor "liberal"; it is a moral issue that many faiths (more so outside the US) are addressing. If you have 90 minutes to spare, watch THE LETTER (free on YouTube); the only documentary ever created at the request of the Vatican. Not one protagonist is Catholic but Hindu, Muslim, indigenous belief and agnostic and Pope Francis sat with all of them to listen to their first hand experience with the climate crisis. As an environmentalist since early childhood, I recognized long ago that to change how we treat our Mother Earth was going to require a true change in heart (not mind) for many people because altruistic behavior based on logic and reason rarely wins out in America. May this info. provide you with more hope.
And I'm very happy to be corrected. Thank you so much for all this. I'll make a note about The Letter, and another to refer back to this comment when I get around to exploring and writing about what's happening among the world's faiths in their response to this crisis for life on Earth, who Pope Francis in Laudato Si' referred to as "among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor.” A while back, I published Laudato Si' here (while I was on break) for my readers, and provided a bit of an intro (https://jasonanthony.substack.com/p/care-for-our-common-home). I'm very happy to hear from someone who is devoted to carrying on the work. I have read in passing that the encyclical has had more influence outside the U.S., and am glad to hear your reassurance of that fact.
"but we don’t want to change how we live, other than to allow the billions of impoverished people to live comfortable middle-class lives. We should be devoting our best minds, and our own quiet souls, to figuring out how to live with less." This passage echos the sentiments of Pope Francis in the encyclical, Laudato Si': Care for Our Common Home where he expresses that less is more and consumerism is not a symptom of happiness.
Indeed. And I'd love to see the sentiment spread through the Catholic world and then through evangelical populations as well. (I realize there's a firewall between the faiths, but I can hope anyway...) The world certainly needs some top-down guidance that isn't just policy, and some bottom-up activism that isn't just liberal. It's a topic I should write about sometime. Thanks for chiming in.
Just dropping in to say I finally have gotten to read this with the care it deserves. How had I never heard the term "white coal"?? It's so perfectly descriptive.
Here in my little Oregon city, our power and water company is one entity, because both our power and water come from a dam. And they're both really inexpensive. Solar and wind power are less viable here, due to climactic conditions. So hydro it is, unless we want to purchase expensive power from the big statewide entity that relies on natural gas. A predicament indeed.
“At a large scale, dams can do for civilization what nature (even the miraculous beavers) cannot, storing vast quantities of water which can be transferred as needed to cities and agricultural areas hundreds of miles away.”
It’s my understanding this assumed benefit has always had limitations: namely, surface evaporation on large reservoirs. Hotter global temperatures increase evaporation. Coloradoriverscience.org has info specific to the issue with Colorado river dams (Glen Canyon, Hoover).
Thanks for this interesting post.
Very true, Mackenzie. I've also learned that evaporation is a huge problem and getting worse in a hotter world. I do have a line about this in the essay, specifically that one estimate says that all the evaporation from reservoirs annually is about the same as the average water consumption from the world's cities. I'll have a bit more to say next week as well. Thanks for the note, and for the link, which I'll check out for the writing this week.
I apologize for missing your line! So excited to read your post. A lesson in slowing down.
Well, it's just one line in 2300 words, Mackenzie. No apology necessary. In these big topic pieces, it's always hard to know how much emphasis to give each part. They all matter, and often each could sustain their own article/essay. I appreciate you pointing out an important one.
Really interesting essay, Jason. I was shocked to learn that only 3% of U.S. dams generate electricity. Was that number far higher a century ago? I viewed (perhaps incorrectly) U.S. dams as a major factor in becoming an industrial juggernaut during the 20th century.
Hi Jacob, it does seem like a small portion, but I think the vast majority of dams are small affairs controlling water flow for irrigation and floods. And as Bryant says, the early industrial era was marked by lots of dams supplying local power. Also, 3% of 90000 is still 2700 hydroelectric dams, which is significant, esp when you consider the huge dams out west.
We all argue and remonstrate finding many approaches to restoring the earth, many pathways to ecotopia. And when we take actions it's all for the good, for the health of the planet. What more can we do? we ask. We are faced with multiple symptoms of our dying earth and we apply remedies to the symptoms as we rapidly as we discern them. Yet we have a seeming blind spot. We don't want to see that it is we who are the root source of all the myriad symptoms- we and our activities. We don't want to see that directly because to do so requires us to address the problem directly. Jason, Hudson, there are just too many of us, far too many. The world would be better off without so many of us. How many? A very great number.
But we won't do that will we? We won't voluntarily reduce our population below 500 million total spread across the surface of the world. And even if we did it would be too late. Forces have been set in motion that will take hundreds of years to play themselves out. All we can do is simultaneously address as many of the symptoms as we can- rather like an attacker trying to heal the victim he savagely attacked.
That’s true. I have no problem with that. How do you think we can support 1 billion people sustainably if we restore the entire biosphere and foraged from it.
One billion is too many. Cut that in half. You answered your own question. Restore the biosphere and remove the traces of our old civil engineering as much we can. What won't do is if the new population decided they wanted to live like satraps, like potentates, each consuming the resources 100 or 1,000 of the old population did. Then we're right back where we started.
A given.
Concerning the latter, you have to start with the trees.