Island Hiatus

9/15/22 – I'm away this week

Hello everyone:

I’ve away for much of September, working on the island (and taking a few walks too). My apologies for not offering writing this week on our changing world, but maybe you could use a break too? Take a long walk if you can and remember our place in this beautiful assemblage of life drifting through space.

As always, though, I’ll leave you with a selection of curated Anthropocene stories and news, a bit longer this week.

Thanks for sticking with me.

In other Anthropocene news:

Want to know how much money you can get from the Inflation Reduction Act to help you make your home and transportation more energy-efficient and climate-friendly? Explore Rewiring America’s calculator to get a good answer. Nearly all of the benefits kick in next year, but the timing will depend on how quickly state and federal agencies write the rules. This is exciting stuff, especially for low to moderate income taxpayers who are interested in an electric vehicle, residential heat pump, heat pump water heater, solar installation, and much more. Please note there are even substantial upfront rebates for renters.

From the Guardian, another good news story about the impact of the IRA, this one about the 27 billion dollars set aside for a “green bank,” a financial institution devoted to funding efforts by communities to build infrastructure to wean us off of fossil fuel usage. Think of it as a “national clean energy accelerator.”

Want to help reduce nitrogen pollution into waterways? Eat less protein. I learned long ago that there are at least as many opinions on nutrition as there are nutritionists, but a recent study found that because Americans eat more protein than is recommended, and because the body excretes more nitrogen as a result, there’s a great opportunity to reduce the excess nitrogen in the environment by thinking about our diet.

Here’s a somewhat hopeful study regarding the scourge of toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” which have contaminated water across the planet. Chemists have discovered a fairly simple process for heating and treating PFAS-contaminated water so that the compounds break down into harmless constituent chemicals. The researchers only worked with a dozen of the 12,000 PFAS compounds, but are hopeful that many of the untested compounds will also be treatable.

From Yale e360, a report on the stark environmental consequences of Russia’s unprovoked war in Ukraine.

From Orion, a brief and lovely excerpt from a new book by Ella Frances Sanders, Everything, Beautiful: A Guide to Finding Hidden Beauty in the World, that asks why we don’t simply accept that beauty exists around us and despite of us.

From the Guardian, a surprise bestseller in Japan is a environmental/political philosophy book, Capital in the Anthropocene, about the need for economic degrowth and a hard turn away from capitalism. An English translation is coming soon.

NASA is announcing a “new era in Earth science” thanks to an ambitious program of new Earth-observing satellites meant to provide real-time data to decision-makers about the state of the planet. Here’s the trailer for the announcement:

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