“This is a picture of what kind of world we could live in if we only willed it.”

The beautiful image you see is not photoshopped. It is a photo of the heirloom “Glass Gem” maize variety recently rescued by seedsperson Greg Schoen and carefully stewarded by the Seeds Trust. When I saw this photo, I was overwhelmed. This, I thought, is a glimpse into the world we have denied ourselves because of how we choose to live. This is a picture of what kind of world we could live in if we only willed it.

Disclaimer: I am not a scientist, farmer or agriculture worker (although I do have a backyard garden). I’m not going to talk about food security, permaculture or sustainable agriculture. There are loads of great journalists and bloggers who can tell you all you need to know about those things. I study culture and society and the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. And for me, this incredible, breathtaking cob of corn tells us a story.

Crop Diversity or Monoculture?

National Geographic ran a story a few months back about crop diversity. It included an arresting graphic, which detailed the number of vegetable and fruit seeds commercially available in 1903 — and the number available now. A few examples: you could buy 497 varieties of lettuce in 1903; you can find 36 now. Tomatoes? Find all 79 varieties now and you’re lucky. There were 408 a century ago. If you’re looking for corn you’re limited to a dozen varieties nowadays; go back a hundred years and that number swells to an astonishing 307.

Three hundred types of corn! And those are only the ones commercially available. If you ever need proof of the wonder, the beauty the Earth offers us, you only need look at this survey of heirloom potatoes for the awkward, colourful and palatable diversities available. The paucity of russet vs. Yukon gold (both nevertheless delicious!) is striking.

It doesn’t take a PhD in agricultural science to realize why this is happening. Monocultures suit the capitalist mode of production which wants to produce the most food possible with the least quantities of financial cost and human labour. You can read all about crop giants like Monsanto and the attendant health problems, environmental risks and social costs elsewhere. I promised I wouldn’t get into that (OK, I lied a little); but the truth is that this flattening of diversity endemic to capitalism manifests itself in places other than our crops: it flattens our dreams too.

“Choice” is Not Diversity

Capitalism is supposed to offer us unlimited choice: I can have whatever I want when I want it. What Schoen’s gorgeous corn kernals show us, however, is that “choice” is not diversity. Why would I want to “choose” to have tepid, shrinkwrapped corn in December when I can have 300 or more kinds of corn in August? We see this dynamic play out in virtually every sphere of society: I may be able to choose which film to see on Friday night from a stock of dozens, with new movies opening every week — but when I start to realize that Chernobyl Diaries is just a watered-down Paranormal Activity 2, at what point do I need to wonder how many Batman (or Twilight or Harry Potter) sequels will be enough?

“There are few, if any, repositories of diversity so breathless, so awesome, as can be found in the natural world.”

There are few, if any, repositories of diversity so breathless, so awesome, as can be found in the natural world. So even when we’ve convinced ourselves that corn comes exclusively in yellow and light-yellow, the Earth has the capacity to shock us out of our complacency with such force as Schoen’s corn impressed on me. It’s moments like this – yes, something as simple as seeing a new seed varietal – when the utopian possibilities of our world confront us with dazzling urgency.

There Is an Alternative

Margaret Thatcher left us with the legacy of TINA: There Is No Alternative. But Schoen’s “Glass Gem” shows us that it simply isn’t so. The choices we make as a society actively deprive us of access to these alternate ways of being. If we can see such marvels in a single ear of corn or a misshapen tuber, what awaits us if we re-imagine the way we structure economic, judicial, parliamentary and cultural policies?

Perhaps this seems naïve — it may seem like a far leap from vegetables to social practices, ethics and mores — but what if we thought of naïvité in terms of its etymological roots: un naïf, the newly born, unencumbered. Such a perspective would surely look upon the capitalist system in which we live, which limits diversity, flattens our capacity for utopia and sets inexorable limits on the human and say: no, not that. Surely, it would choose instead to embrace the possibilities of a wondrous world as complex, multicoloured and beautiful as this photo; and as simple as an ancient seed.

Michael Stewart is a rabble staff member and a doctoral candidate in English at the University of British Columbia. His blog, BMWAP, is about culture and capitalism. Follow him on twitter: @blindmanspistol

Originally published by rabble.ca

The views expressed in ecoView are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Ecology Global Network. EGN does not verify the accuracy or science of these articles.

“The sedge is wither’d from the lake, and no birds sing.” – John Keats, 1819, La belle dame sans merci

In 1962 I was only eight years old, but I listened with fascination as my mother read segments of Rachel Carson’s seminal book, Silent Spring, to the family after dinner. My parents were naturalists and early environmentalists and I gravitated to nature even as a preschooler. Like so many people of the Silent Spring generation, we read (or in my case, listened to) Carson’s book with growing alarm. The natural world that we loved was being poisoned and degraded by indiscriminate pesticide use, particularly uncontrolled and escalating use of the pesticide, DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane). The birds that my family spent every weekend observing in marshes, forests, parks and reserves were being poisoned. Raptors such as Bald Eagles, Ospreys, and Peregrine Falcons were vanishing, their ever-thinning eggshells crushed as soon as the parents attempted to incubate them.

Carson’s book galvanized not only me and my family, but a whole generation. Environmentalism was born and by 1970 agricultural use DDT had been banned in Canada, followed shortly thereafter in 1973 in the United States. Other countries followed suite and by 1984 DDT and most other organochlorine insecticides (the chemical family that DDT belongs to) were banned throughout the word (limited so-called “vector application” of DDT for the control of fleas, for example, continues to be permitted in many jurisdictions). Populations of eagles, ospreys, and falcons began to rebound. The environment was seemingly on the mend. Or was it?

A recent study by a team of 10 Canadian scientists from Trent University, the University of Ottawa, Queens University and Thompson River University, spearheaded by Joseph Nocera, casts light on what transpired and its continuing repercussions on the natural world.

The Plight of the Chimney Swift

Chimney Swifts are delightful birds that superficially resemble swallows. They breed across eastern and central North America, migrating south through central America and the Caribbean to winter in northwestern South America. They are so-called aerial insectivores, meaning they feed by catching flying insects ‘on the wing.’ They are also fast disappearing. Since 1968 when the North American Breeding Bird Surveys began to monitor populations of birds on the continent, chimney swift numbers have decreased by 96 percent. This dramatic decline has lead the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) to categorize them as a federally threatened species. And Chimney Swifts are not alone. Many other small insect foraging birds have exhibited sizable decreases in populations — and these declines continue.

What’s going on? Nocera and his colleagues believe they have uncovered a piece of the puzzle.

Once upon a time, Chimney Swifts used to roost and nest primarily in hollow trees, but since logging practices removed many such sites, Chimney Swifts found the best possible alternative — chimneys. Nocera’s colleague, Christopher Grooms, discovered a disused chimney on the campus of Queens University that, between 1928 and 1992 (when it was capped), served a major home for thousands of swifts that roosted in it each night. What they left behind was guano, and that heap of excrement turns out to be a scientific goldmine.

Historical Record

Photo Courtesy Kent McFarland

Why? The layers of guano are a historical record of what the swifts had been eating — and more. Measuring isotopes of carbon and nitrogen in the guano provides information about the source of the food and on what is called its “trophic level,” in other words, how high up the food chain the insects the swifts were consuming were. Importantly, the investigators were able to measure levels of DDE (dichloro-diphenyl-dichloroethane) in the guano, a stable compound formed by the decay of DDT. Examining this data the scientists discovered something of considerable significance.

The insecticidal properties of DDT were only discovered in 1939 and by 1945 it was in widespread use in North America for a large number of agricultural and other applications. As pesticide use increased, the diet of Chimney Swifts in Kingston changed markedly from approximately 75 per cent beetles (Coleoptera) and 20 per cent true bugs (Hemiptera) to approximately 30 per cent beetles and 60 per cent true bugs.

So what, you might think: an insect is an insect is it not? But not so. Beetles can provide a greater caloric food value for swifts whereas true bugs, being on average higher up in the food chain, bio-accumulate more pesticides such as DDT or DDE. So, swifts were getting less food value for the insects they were eating and being exposed to higher levels of insecticides. And this was also reflected in the levels of DDE in the swift guano. In later years, as DDT use declined, the ratios began to return to normal but even when DDT was banned in 1973, the beetle/true bug ratios did not return to pre-insecticide levels, nor, indeed, did DDE disappear from the insects swifts were consuming.

What does all this mean?

Nocera and his colleagues are careful to point out that more than just pesticide use and its impact on insect populations has affected Chimney Swifts; climate change and habitat loss have both been identified as contributing factors to their disappearance. However, this study provides some compelling evidence that pesticide use has affected populations of insect-feeding species such as swifts (and there are many other birds, such as wood warblers, that have shown similar patterns of decline). Such pesticide-induced dietary changes and their nutritional consequences may have significant impacts on bird populations, and such impacts can continue long after the chemicals in question have been banned. DDE continues to persist in the food chains and Chimney Swift populations have not recovered.

“The problem has become increasingly compounded by the recent reductions in availability of an insect prey as a result of climate-induced changes in the phenology of insect emergence.”

Here’s the stinger: this issue isn’t just a sad historical footnote, another illustration of how prescient Rachel Carson was a half century ago when she despaired of a silent spring, with no birds left to sing in the vernal field and forests. While pesticides and their byproducts such as DDE continue to persist in the environment, new dangers now face insect-feeding birds, in the form of climate change.

Photo ourtesy Jim McCulloch

Nocera and his colleagues note that “The problem has become increasingly compounded by the recent reductions in availability of an insect prey as a result of climate-induced changes in the phenology of insect emergence.” What does this mean? Simply that continuing climate change is altering the times when many insects hatch or emerge from hibernation. The breeding biology of birds has evolved in lockstep with the phenology (i.e., the seasonal timing) of their environment, such as the availability of food to bring them into breeding condition, feed their young and provide them with energy reserves for migration. Many recent studies are showing that climate change is upsetting this precise coordination of timing, to the detriment of species that are unable to adapt to these changes.

What was the response to the publication of Silent Spring? Carson was subjected to a massive attack by the chemical industry, lead by giants such as Monsanto, American Cyanamid and Velsicol, who subjected her to derision, questioned her scientific credentials, called her a hysterical woman and threatened her with lawsuits. Compliant media and the U.S. Department of Agriculture followed suit. However, United States President John F. Kennedy directed his Science Advisory Committee to investigate. Their investigation vindicated Carson’s claims and lead to the establishment of the Environmental Defense Fund that launched court challenges to ban the use of DDT. In 1971 the courts ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to deregister DDT.

Now, with the shadow of DDT still hanging over their well-being, the future health and survival of many populations of birds is threatened by the specter of climate change. Will there be politicians of the caliber of John F. Kennedy ready to stand up against commercial and industrial interests in their defense? Recognizing the threat, will Canada’s Environment Minister, Peter Kent, step up to the plate and increase funding for research, monitoring, and remediation programs to address the impacts of climate change? Will Prime Minister Stephen Harper champion the cause of vanishing songbirds? It seems unlikely.

Budget Cuts Cause for Concern

Many sectors of Canadian society are still in shock, reeling from the recent budget cutbacks. One department hit hard is Environment Canada, particularly its programs to monitor climate and environmental change. The National Round Table on the Environment is being eliminated. The Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory (PEARL), perhaps the single-most important research facility in the world in monitoring climate and environmental change in the high arctic is permanently closing as a result of funding cuts. And these cuts come on top of earlier cuts announced in August 2011 that slashed $222.2 million in spending and eliminated 1,211 jobs, resulting in the elimination of the Clean Air Agenda, Air Quality Health Index and Species at Risk programs. The number of researchers in the areas of climate change and clean air were cut in half and the current round of funding cuts will reduce them even further.

So should we resign ourselves to a quiet spring, every one quieter than the last? Thus far, the track record of the Harper Conservatives does not auger well for a melodious future. Swifts require the help of some political friends to get by, but so far the federal government does not appear to be singing their tune.

Christopher Majka is a biologist, environmentalist, policy analyst, and arts advocate. He conducts research on the ecology, biodiversity and biosystematics in invertebrates, particularly beetle. He is a member of the Project Democracy team.

Originally published by rabble.ca

The views expressed in ecoView are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Ecology Global Network. EGN does not verify the accuracy or science of these articles.

Dolphin Apocalypse in Peru

An apocalyptic die-off of dolphins is occurring along the coastline of northern Peru. The reasons for the die-off are as yet unknown, though several culprits have emerged.

During February of this year, reports appeared in a few newspapers that as many as 260 dolphins had washed ashore along the coast of northern Peru. On March 23rd I received an email from Dr. Carlos Yaipen Llanos, Lima-based director of the marine mammal rescue organization, ORCA Peru, stating he knew of thousands of dead dolphins in the same area.

The area of the Unusual Mortality Event (UME), as scientists refer to such mass mortalities, is along a bleak, desert coast, location of one of the most abundant fisheries in the world and the mating and feeding habitat for huge numbers of dolphins, sea lions and birds. If the mortality numbers reported were even close to accurate, this would be among the greatest UMEs ever recorded. In the United States, declaration of an UME triggers funding for interdisciplinary teams of experts to investigate the situation. There is currently a UME in the Gulf of Mexico, likely resulting from the Deep Water Horizon oil spill.

Area of the Unusual Mortality Event (UME)

I decided to throw the resources of BlueVoice behind an investigation into the cause of the die-off, but in order to justify that I needed to see the situation on the ground. I flew to Peru. When I arrived in Lima Carlos met me at the airport. We grabbed an overnight bus to Chiclayo, the closest city to the epicenter of the UME. Once there Carlos and I, along with three female assistants, packed into a four-wheel drive pickup and drove through the coastal town of San Jose to the beach. We headed north at low tide on a beach that was mostly firm. Our goal was to find the one thousand beached dolphins reported. We’d been told the greatest concentration of corpses was three hours drive north.

Within a few hundred yards we began to see dead common dolphins in ones and twos. Then Carlos saw a freshly stranded Burmeister’s porpoise calf. Some of the stranded animals were highly decomposed but this one was in such good condition we stopped to do a necropsy.

I thought of the years of life that had been denied this beautiful creature and what its death said about the state of our oceans.

As we progressed along the beach Carlos and his team performed necropsies on a couple more freshly stranded dolphins. The sight of a newborn common dolphin, umbilicus still attached, tongue grotesquely swollen, was wrenching. I thought of the years of life that had been denied this beautiful creature and what its death said about the state of our oceans.

We observed two species stranded. About 95 percent were long-beaked common dolphins (Delphinus capensis), which are drawn to the area to feed on the abundant fish of the nutrient-rich Humboldt Current that runs along Peru’s coast. The remainder are Burmeister’s porpoises (Phocoena spinipinnis), a species that feeds in deep water.

As we raced along the hard sand at the edge of the surfline, we cried out when we saw a dead dolphin. At first they came every couple minutes. But then we’d hit intervals when the cries would come nearly on top of one another. “Dolphin!” “Delphin!” ”Otro!” “Dos mas!” “There’s another one up by the dune.”

We tallied over 200 dolphins in just 45 minutes. Then we hit a length of beach no more than 100 yards long in which we found ten dolphins in varying levels of decomposition, indicating they had come ashore at different times.

Mounting Numbers

The numbers continued to mount. By the time the rising tide forced us off the beach the count had reached 615, over a distance of 135 kilometers. We never did find the dense concentrations of stranded dolphins, just an endless succession of bodies over a long stretch of beach.

Carlos and I are conducting a study of Peruvian fishermen who eat dolphin meat. While illegal, this is commonly done and the authorities do not have the resources or will to prevent it. But Carlos had discovered something important. The fishermen who ate dolphin meat regularly have a disproportionately elevated incidence of diabetes. There is an established link between high levels of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) such as PCBs and endocrine irregularities. These include changes in the way the body uses sugar.

As the day wore on, the tide moved up the beach pushing us closer and closer to the dunes. By 3 p.m. we were driving through breaking surf. I felt we’d accomplished our mission. We had counted 615 dead dolphins and had evidence of the tragedy as well as necropsy samples that might shed light on what had produced this catastrophe.

Back in Lima, Carlos began doing histopathology analysis. That will be followed by immunohistochemistry tests for morbillivirus followed by tests for immunoglobulin antigen reaction with samples from fresh carcasses. We will also run a test on brucella if possible.

The possible cause of the UME are, as of this writing, absolutely unknown.

The possible cause of the UME are, as of this writing, absolutely unknown. Some have suggested seismic testing by oil companies, but many experts disagree. Carlos has performed tests for damage to the periotic bones (inner ear) of the dolphins he has necropsied and found some evidence of damage. But it is extremely difficult to perform such tests in the field. Often damage occurs to the fragile bones in the necropsy process. Further there is no indication of damage to the skin of the dolphins, something that would occur with sufficient blast to cause damage to the periotic bones.

Since there was no visible damage to the stranded dolphins, fisheries interactions, which have caused the deaths of millions of dolphins in the eastern tropical Pacific tuna fishery, can probably be ruled out.

Compromised Immune Systems

Another candidate for the UME would be morbilla or other virus. Dolphins all over the world are suffering from compromised immune systems due to accumulation of POPs. These chemicals bioaccumulate up the ocean food web and are especially concentrated in apex predators such as dolphins. Some of the best-known POPs are PCBs, DDT, and dioxins.

Dolphins with compromised immune systems are susceptible to diseases such as leptospirosis, brucellosis and distemper, according to Dr. Peter Ross of Canada’s Institute of Ocean Sciences and a world recognized expert on the impact of toxic chemicals on marine mammals.

Peru’s response has been slow and scattered. Deputy Environment Minister Gabriel Quijandria told The Associated Press that studies are incomplete but officials hope to complete their research on the likely causes soon. I should point out that no definitive finding was ever made on the UME along the east coast of the United States during the late 1980s.

Quijandria said that the carcasses of 877 dolphins and porpoises had been found between February and mid-April on the beaches of northern Peru. “The most probable hypothesis is the possibility of an infection with a virus,” he said. “There are scientific articles about the incidence of morbillivirus, a type of distemper, in cetaceans in Peru, and that can be ruled out or proven next week.”

He said officials don’t believe the dolphins’ deaths are related to seismic oil exploration work that has been carried out off northern Peru by an American energy company.

Another official in the ministry of production, which includes fisheries, said that Peru really doesn’t care about dolphins. It cares about fish. And dolphins eat a lot of fish.

Another official in the ministry of production, which includes fisheries, said that Peru really doesn’t care about dolphins. It cares about fish. And dolphins eat a lot of fish. But he’s missing the point. The death of so many dolphins is telling us something dreadful about the oceans and possibly abouut the fish that the dolphins prey upon.

UME Not Unique

While the UME in Peru appears to be one of the worst ever for dolphins, it is not unique. In my book, The Voice of the Dolphins, I describe the die-off of hundreds of bottlenose dolphins along the East Coast of the United States in the late 1980s. No definitive conclusion was reached on what caused that tragic event but the multidisciplinary study group was brought together to issue findings concluded, “The results for the beach-cast specimens (dead dolphins) obviously reflect the levels of contaminants in the nearshore environment where the dolphins accumulate these substances.”

Another major UME involving morbillivirus killed several thousand striped dolphins along the Spanish Mediterranean coast from 1990 to 1992, followed by another in 2007. And significant die-offs of bottlenose dolphins have occurred along the coasts of Texas and Florida in the Gulf of Mexico, though nothing of the magnitude of the 1987-1988 UME along the East Coast. Another catastrophic event occurred in the North Sea during the late 1980s. Some twenty thousand seals, perhaps half of all Europe’s population of these animals, died from Phocine distemper.

Given the paltry resources available to investigate the die-off of dolphins along the Peruvian coast there is a strong possibility that the cause of the event may never be known. What is known is that catastrophic die-offs of dolphins and other marine mammals are occurring with greater frequency and virulence around the world. They are an indication that the oceans are in deep, deep trouble; perhaps greater trouble than we have imagined.

The Peruvian dolphin UME must be investigated thoroughly by independent international experts.

Hardy Jones is executive director of BlueVoice.org, author of The Voice of the Dolphins and producer of more than 70 films on the oceans, including Ocean Acrobats: The Spinner Dolphins. BlueVoice.org is an ocean conservation organization founded in 2000 by Hardy Jones and Ted Danson. Its mission is to protect dolphins, save the whales, and other marine mammals and to raise popular awareness about toxic chemicals in the oceans. BlueVoice has fought to end the slaughter of dolphins in Japan and to expose the harmful levels of toxins in the marine environment, including mercury, PCBs, and persistent organic pollutants, and their impact on both marine mammals and humans.

The views expressed in ecoView are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Ecology Global Network. EGN does not verify the accuracy or science of these articles.

Global sea level rise as measured by satellites including Jason-2 and its predecessors. Like the heartbeat of the planet, the yearly ups and downs are caused by the transfer of water to and from the continents in the form of rain and river runoff. The two inch rise over the past 20 years is a potent reminder of human-kind’s impact on the climate. Every inch we add to global sea level is likely to remain for generations to come. (Data courtesy of University of Colorado, Blue Marble Image credit: NASA’s Earth Observatory)

Last week, U.S. residents were reminded that rising sea levels are not just a distant problem faced by remote Pacific Islands. In work published March 13, Ben Strauss and colleagues of Climate Central reported that by 2030 nearly 5 million U.S. residents could be at risk from flooding as storm surges and high tides are reinforced by the ongoing rise of the seas. States like Florida, Louisiana, California, New York and New Jersey are especially vulnerable because of their densely populated coastlines.

Scientists still struggle to predict global sea level rise in the decades to come. Our best guess for the 21^st Century lies somewhere between 1 foot (30 cm) and 7 feet (2 meters). However, no one is predicting global sea level will fall during the next 100 years. Covering more than two-thirds of our planet’s surface, the oceans expand as they absorb heat trapped by human-emitted greenhouse gases and collect melt-water from glaciers and ice sheets—processes that are almost impossible to reverse. We won’t see ice sheets grow or see the oceans cool for many generations. In fact, sea level is expected to rise for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years even if carbon dioxide levels could be stabilized immediately. This makes sea level rise a profound indicator of human-kind’s irreversible footprint on Earth’s climate.

But let’s go back to the beach. Each individual coastline contends with a unique blend of local issues, and not every ebb and flow can be blamed on global warming. The land itself rises along some coastlines, and falls along others. What’s more, there are natural changes in the ocean like the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, which involves a decades-long reorganization of warm water across the Pacific. In California for example, this natural cycle has masked out 2 inches (5 cm) of global sea level rise since the early 1990s.

So how do we know whether changes are here to stay or are just part of a natural cycle? One of the most important tools we currently have for measuring sea level rise is the Jason-2 satellite and its predecessors. These satellites give us a global view of our changing oceans with such exquisite accuracy that even the yearly rise and fall of global sea level is visible, caused by the transfer of water to and from the continents in the form of rain and river runoff. If water is the lifeblood of our planet, then these satellites measure its pulse. But they also measure its fever. The 2 inch rise in global sea level since the early 1990s is one of the most poignant indicators we have of human interference in the climate. Two inches may sound small, but it equals more than 4000 cubic miles of extra ocean. For generations to come changes of this magnitude are irreversible.

But these satellites do more than hearken back to a bygone climate. If sea level rise accelerates as expected, satellites like Jason-2 will be the first to detect it. Given the uncertainty in predicting future rise, charting the changes in present day rates is even more essential. In effect, the Jason satellites function as our early warning system for sea level rise.

Despite its importance, we struggle to maintain the satellite record of global sea level rise. Designed to last five years Jason-2 is nearly four, and its successor Jason-3 has suffered delays. Although much of the satellite has already been built, budgetary constraints have delayed selection of the rocket and the launch date has slipped to the spring of 2014 at the earliest. Setting budget priorities in difficult economic times is always a challenge, but it would be a shame to break the satellite record of global sea level rise. As society faces a new human-made climate, records like these will guide us into the future. The oceans have an important story to tell us, assuming we are willing to listen.

Photo courtesy of NASA/JPL/Dan Goods

Josh Willis, PhD, is a climate scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory where he studies global warming and sea level rise using data from NASA’s many Earth observing satellites. He also likes the beach.

The views expressed in ecoView are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Ecology Global Network. EGN does not verify the accuracy or science of these articles.

Wikipedia says, “The book is commonly recognized as a fable concerning industrialized society and the danger it poses to nature…” While I doubt anyone would argue that industrialized society, such as ours, has caused damage to society, the discussion livens when we attempt to quantify/qualify this and even more when we back up to our personal ethics. These ethics are rooted in our upbringing and even our religious belief system.  While these are valid discussions, this is not the forum so let’s just take a look at what “The Lorax” teaches.

The story line is centered on the clearing of a special forest for the purposes of creating a product folks have been convinced they need. Taking this story line very simply can lead some to thinking it wrong to cut trees and certainly wrong to cut down a whole forest. When I ask 4^th graders if it’s bad to cut down a tree, most hands raise without hesitation.

What’s wrong with this picture? Every society, industrialized or not, depends on natural resources. Some of these resources are from non-renewable reserves such as oil, mineral and rock. Other natural resources originate from renewable sources such as animals (bone, ivory, fur), and wild plants such as blackberry bushes and trees. The debate should not center on industrialization…. the Native Americans who once controlled the Eastern United States modified the landscape considerably. Fire was used to clear, and keep clear, vast acreages of forests. Most logging today, unless it is pre-development clearing, is simply a harvesting of a resource from land that will once again grow large trees. As for renewable or not, this is a debate worth having.

When the Once-ler cut the first truffula tree and the Lorax appeared from the stump to “speak for the trees” Mr. Once-ler argued “I chopped just one tree.” A better response would have been to present a plan to replace that tree and to know the ecological impact of different harvesting methods. Let’s take the Brown Brown Bar-ba-loots (bears?) who we know use Truffula trees for their shade and fruit. Perhaps these fantastical species could benefit from a sustainable harvesting of Truffula trees in a way that regenerates new trees and at the same time realizes an economic value. I’ve never known a forest that could not be managed for multiple goods AND services, from the look of a Truffula forest, I would expect no different.

After all, there is a seed! The last page of my copy of the Lorax, given to me by my parents when I was 6 or 7, expresses the hope intrinsic to the renewability of forests. As the Once-ler lets something fall…. “It’s a Truffula Seed. It’s the last one of all! You’re in charge of the last of the Truffula Seeds. And Truffula Trees are what everyone needs. Plant a new Truffula. Treat it with care. Give it clean water. And feed it fresh air. Grow a forest. Protect it from axes that hack. Then the Lorax and all of his friends may come back.”

Yes, we do all need trees like these, but for more than the Lorax gives defense.

Truffula’s truths

We need land to grow trees,

for the critters and bees.

Trees give us lots of good,

Clean air, water and even wood.

We can each be satisfied,

Its renewability is gratified.

Enjoy the movie, consider what’s true.

Adam Downing is a faculty member of Virginia Tech, who has worked as the Natural Resources Extension Agent serving Virginia Cooperative Extension’s Northern District, a 19 county area generally described as the Northern Piedmont of Virginia. His professional expertise is in providing informal education regarding forestry and natural resources to address current issues in rural, urban, and rural/urban interface areas to home & landowners, professionals, decision-makers, and the general public. His mission is to enable people to make best decisions regarding the forest & natural resources, within their realm of influence, resulting in environmentally sustainable management, growth, and quality of life for that person and that community.

The views expressed in ecoView are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Ecology Global Network. EGN does not verify the accuracy or science of these articles.

By Dr. Kristine Kevorkian

"The Crying Indian" 1971 anti-littering PSA from Keep America Beautiful and the Ad Council

I ask myself this question all the time. When there’s an environmental disaster such as the BP oil spill in the Gulf, or deforestation in the Amazon, who gets to make these decisions to destroy or save? Obviously it’s the person or persons with the most money. But don’t these people owe us any sense of responsibility? After all, the resources may be bought, but they are required by all of us living on this planet.

Have you ever driven by your neighbor’s house only to see him/her or the gardener watering the sidewalk or driveway? Shouldn’t that homeowner be held responsible to conserve water for all of us? In a perfect world, perhaps that would be the norm. I live in Los Angeles, and that is far from the norm here. Don’t get me wrong, I am not a saint, but I am becoming more and more conscious of the lack of resources available to us, and wonder what others think when they literally waste water and other resources. Will our world consist of only wealthy people in the coming generations, those who can afford precious water and oil?

“I grieve the loss of ecosystems and our natural environment.. what I refer to as environmental grief”

And why haven’t we stopped using oil? For goodness sake! We’ve been dealing with the oil issue forever now, but continue to play into the hands of the rich and powerful who seek to keep us forever at the bottle of oil. Grow up people and stop sucking from that bottle and move on to alternatives!

When we continue to support these destructive behaviors, we are basically signing our own death certificates. If our world is unhealthy, so will we be, and are already. Rather than grieving the loss of our lives, I grieve the loss of ecosystems and our natural environment. I react to this environmental destruction with what I refer to as environmental grief. This is the grief reaction stemming from the environmental loss of ecosystems caused by natural or man-made events.

When the BP oil spill destroyed, and continues to destroy the Gulf region, BP is asked only to pay for damages. How can one put a price on these damages when we have NO idea how long the damage will continue since it has not remained in one place. We’ve learned enough about the human body to know that when one organ or bone is injured or damaged, the rest of the body is also harmed, trying to find a way to compensate which may cause more damage in the long term. And yet we allow the wealthy to lose a small portion of their interests when ALL our interests and health are at stake.

Animals and ecosystems were damaged and some destroyed and yet there’s no one really taking responsibility. When will we learn that money won’t make it all better? All the money in the world isn’t going to create healthy drinking water for an entire planet. Nor will money create animals, and plants that we’ve destroyed. We can live without money in some areas, but no one can live without water.

Environmental grief puts a name to a vague feeling most of us have had for far too long. Sadly, more of us may come to react this way to the news telling us about more environmental destruction, more habitats and ecosystems being lost due to natural disasters, mostly due to humans ever expanding and growing into areas once left for the wild.

What can we do? For those of us dealing with environmental grief, we can speak with others and share our grief to find support and understanding, similar to what we look for when we’ve lost any other loved one. And we can harness that grief to make changes in our lives to help our fragile planet. We can’t change others, but we can change ourselves.

Remember when everyone used to smoke? How often do you see people smoking these days? It’s getting less and less because people are becoming more aware of the damages that smoking does to the body. Perhaps with more and more of us talking about environmental grief, we may get to the point where people become conscious of their own actions and make changes themselves.

Imagine that our atmosphere is our own lungs. If we did that, wouldn’t people pay more attention to the cars they drive, and the pollution in the city in which they live? What if the oceans were similar to our own bloodstream? Wouldn’t we want our oceans and rivers clear of debris, no blockage to stop a healthy flow of blood? Let’s clean our oceans, and gather more people each day/week/month to do so.

A call to action is the prescription for those of us afflicted with environmental grief. If we band together, occupy if you will, we would make a HUGE difference in our communities and for our planet.

Who owns nature? We all do! And we must therefore make sure that our voices are heard in order to speak for those who aren’t able to speak for themselves. We must carry on where others cannot and educate those who have money and power since they are afflicted with shortsightedness and greed. We can heal all through education and compassion.

Let us not forget that:

“Only after the last tree has been cut down, only after the last river has been poisoned, only after the last fish has been caught, only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.”

~Cree Indian Prophecy

Dr. Kristine Kevorkian holds a doctoral degree in thanatology, and is the leading authority on environmental grief® and ecological grief®. She is an adjunct professor at Antioch University in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. Kristine has presented her research in the United States and abroad. She lectures and teaches classes on end-of-life care, death, bereavement, grief and loss to medical and mental health professionals and students. Kristine lives in Southern California with her dog ZORRO! www.drkkevorkian.com

The views expressed in ecoView are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Ecology Global Network. EGN does not verify the accuracy or science of these articles.

Environmentalism is generally viewed as the movement designed to help protect and preserve the natural world around us, distinct from the artificial world of homes, neighborhoods and cities. This is an overly narrow view. Environmentalism needs to be extended to our inner space, our psyches, as well as the external world, if we are to be effective in tackling pressing environmental problems.

We don’t want other worlds, we want mirrors.

- Solaris, a 2002 Soderbergh film

Our global environmental crisis continues, but it is a slow-moving crisis and, therefore, not capable of triggering the appropriate reactions. Problems like biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, deforestation, climate change, etc., all take place on the scale of decades, even centuries, which is far too slow for most of us to really care about these issues. And this is why those who self-identify as environmentalists or, more importantly, work actively to improve any of these problems, are generally a small minority of the population.

Complicating matters in recent years is the worst global recession in decades and justified concerns about jobs and our economy, an ongoing “war on terrorism” that distracts from other issues, and the ascendancy of right-wing media in the U.S. and increasingly in other parts of the world, that actively campaign against many environmental causes.

What are we to do, then, in order to tackle these slow-moving environmental crises? There are numerous policy and practical recommendations available for all of these problems. I have written fairly extensively, for example, on renewable energy as a major part of the cure for climate change (and peak oil), and many others have offered sensible solutions to all of the environmental challenges we’re facing. And yet none of these major problems is being solved at the pace required – and many are not being solved at all.

What’s missing? It seems to me that we need to change ourselves as much or more than we need to change the world. This essay focuses on a few ideas for the cultural/psychological/spiritual shift that seems necessary for us to solve the environmental challenges we face.

Deep Science

“World” used to mean the “universe” in addition to referring to our little blue-green planet. It was the totality, everything. The German philosopher Schopenhauer mused in the 19^th Century about “unsnarling the world-knot” – that is, figuring out what the heck all of this is around us. But as our knowledge of the world/universe grew, our vocabulary grew. “Universe” was used throughout the 20^th Century to refer to the sum total of planets, stars, nebulas, etc., revealed by our modern telescopes. Nowadays, some use the term “multiverse” rather than universe to refer to the totality, which may include other universes or other dimensions beyond our detection. Brian Greene’s Hidden Reality offers a great overview of this history.

This shift in vocabulary and philosophy is a direct result of the ongoing scientific and mathematical exploration of the reality outside of us. As our knowledge of our surroundings – our environment – has increased, our vocabulary and concepts have evolved. We have grown our worlds by growing ourselves, and vice versa.

The last few centuries have witnessed unprecedented advancements in the study of nature, yielding supercomputers that fit in our palms, space flight, and weapons that can simulate Armageddon if unleashed. But the study of inner space, the human psyche, is an even richer tradition and has been ongoing for millennia. This inner science, or “deep science,” has been most pronounced in the traditions of the East, with Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism. The West has many of its own similar traditions, but it is fair to state that the Eastern traditions have a much longer history and more depth.

Alan Wallace (Choosing Reality; Hidden Dimensions, and many other books) has written extensively about this deep science, as has Ken Wilber (The Marriage of Sense and Soul; Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, and many others). Both are generally Buddhist in orientation, but you don’t have to be a Buddhist to appreciate their writings and wisdom. Wallace’s point, convincingly made, is that while the West has been successful in terms of growing GDP and in developing technology over the last few centuries, the Eastern traditions have a many thousand-year tradition of turning inward and studying the human psyche. We have much to learn from these traditions, with meditation as our primary tool for inquiry. The deep science that Wilber and Wallace write about offers a scientific exploration of one’s own mind, conducted through extensive practice and testing.

The western world has in fact sacrificed inner growth in many ways in order to be so successful at building material wealth. When more than one in ten people in the U.S. is on anti-depressant medication, perhaps as many take anti-anxiety medication, and more than one in a hundred people are incarcerated, it is clear that we, in the iconic civilization of the western world, have major issues.

There is a growing awareness also that this set of problems stems at least in part from our alienation from nature. E. O. Wilson coined the term “biophilia” to give a name to the human love for nature, for life. We do indeed have an affinity for life itself, in all its grandeur and diversity, even though this affinity is so often sublimated in our highly technological modern culture. Wilson argues, and I strongly agree, that by re-acquainting ourselves with the natural world – hiking, camping, studying life, etc. – we may mitigate many of the inner problems we face, individually and collectively.

My fear, however, is that our increasing “technologization” may only exacerbate our separation from nature. Technology is ubiquitous now, particularly personal electronics, and this trend seems very likely to continue rapidly in coming years. I’m no Luddite, to be sure. I love my gadgets (sometimes a little too much, especially my lovely iPhone 4…) But I actively seek time in nature free from technology, and see this as a major component of my peace of mind. The marvels of modern technology are exciting, but are rivaled by nature’s marvels when we dig a little and start to understand life on our planet.

Mind and Spirit

The inner work we need to complete starts with a recognition that we are indeed special. We are the bleeding edge of consciousness in our corner of the universe. We are, as far as we know, the only game in town in terms of higher consciousness. We have, as human beings, achieved what amounts to a quantum leap in intelligence and technology when compared to all other species. We are gods unto ourselves. Unfortunately, we are the kind of Greek gods who often do very unwise things and re-enact all manner of petty human dramas.

The quantum leap of human achievement has been most pronounced in the modern era, which has its roots in the scientific revolution of the 17^th Century. The advent of the modern era is generally characterized by increasing specialization. With specialization comes separation. Most people can’t possibly understand even a small portion of the totality of human knowledge today. The age of Renaissance men has long been over – there is simply far too much knowledge for any one person to gain even partial mastery. With this specialization, we have realized the fruits of technology in all their glory. But the downside has been increasing alienation – from each other, from much of human knowledge, and perhaps most importantly from nature herself.

A post-modern worldview is needed, but not the deconstructive nihilistic post-modernism that has found favor in some quarters. Rather, we need a post-modernism that recognizes our active kinship with all of nature by integrating our humanity seamlessly with the rest of nature. We are indeed special in the degree to which we have evolved great intelligence and the technological fruits of that intelligence, but we are not different in kind from the rest of nature. There is throughout nature a continuum of consciousness, complexity and of technology.

Many species use tools, technology, language – though in almost all cases these are much simpler than our human examples. Beavers are master dam builders, termites master mound builders, birds master nest builders. And in a very real sense, the sum of species on our planet created the very livable environment we humans enjoy – with bacteria leading the way in producing oxygen and many other components of our biosphere during the course of planetary evolution.

With respect to language, the more we learn about animal, plant and microbial communication, the more we realize that there is a cacophony of language all around us – we have not heard because we couldn’t understand. We are beginning to understand, however, and this increased awareness of the depth of complexity in non-human species will help create the post-modern worldview we need.

There is a growing awareness that the philosophical positions of the modern worldview are inadequate. The modern worldview evolved in part from Descartes’ dualist view of mind and matter, and later into today’s prevailing materialist worldview, which has generally lopped off the mind/spirit aspect of Descartes’ dualism and left behind only dead matter. Today’s materialists, who dominate the cultural elite in science and philosophy, believe that all things can be explained, at least in principle, by explaining the relationships between fundamentally mindless particles that are thought to comprise everything in the universe.

An increasingly popular alternative, however, is the view that mind is very much part of nature from the top to the bottom. It’s all a continuum. In this view, known as panpsychism, all of nature includes mind and matter as complementary aspects in each unit of nature. Alfred North Whitehead, Henri Bergson, William James, David Ray Griffin, and David Chalmers are just a few of the philosophers in this long tradition.

Panpsychism is just one of many possible routes to a healthy post-modernism, but it is in my view a particularly promising one because it is logically coherent, can explain the available data in many areas of science and also leads to many interesting new avenues for science and philosophy.

Ultimately, science is a process of self-discovery, whether it is inward- or outward-directed. The deep environmentalist, the deep scientist, realizes that the entire universe is our extended body and our extended mind. Wilson’s biophilia hypothesis becomes simply an expanded version of self-reflection. As we seek to understand our world and seek other worlds or even other dimensions, we will with this understanding always end up staring at ourselves in the mirror. This is not a bad thing: self-reflection is to be encouraged. It is also inevitable because even if we are not consciously self-reflective, we can’t avoid interpreting literally everything about the world around us in terms of its importance to each of us. This is what it means to be a conscious being – we are necessarily self-centered.

This necessary self-centeredness doesn’t, however, have to contain the negative implications this term normally conveys if we expand our sense of self. Through learning, exploration, immersion in life and nature, we expand our sense of self. There are no real limits on this process.

This process of self-expansion and self-reflection could be a powerful cure for the numerous and pressing environmental problems we face on the only habitable part of the universe we currently know: our planet Earth. Let’s get to it.

Tam Hunt wears a few hats: He’s a renewable energy policy expert and lawyer living in Santa Barbara; also a Visiting Scholar in the Psych. Dept. at UCSB; and a Lecturer at the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, also at UCSB. His avocation is thinking. And writing. Between thinking and writing, there’s reading. 

The views expressed in ecoView are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Ecology Global Network. EGN does not verify the accuracy or science of these articles.

Jesus is My Gardener

By Wade Graham

Introduction

Author Wade Graham

I have often wondered what it is that I’m doing—what we are doing—when we make gardens. I wrote a book, American Eden, to explore that question and its flipside, what our gardens say about us. By us, I tended to mean the designers and owners of gardens. The book says too little about the third party at the garden party—the people who work in our gardens, who frequently build them and more often than not maintain them. It is remarkable how little we think about these others, our partners in the garden transaction. Because the business of gardens is a transaction, with economic, political, psychological, and ethical dimensions.

Who are these people? Where do they come from? They have always been there: Jefferson’s slave labor force at Monticello, the Irish and Italian laborers in the gardens of the Vanderbilts and Goulds, the Japanese who built the great California estates, and now, the Mexicans with their powertool-burdened pickup trucks. How do they experience their side of the garden transaction?

To get at the mechanics of this murky transaction we’re all parties to, I wanted to write about it from the third party’s point of view, as well as I could grasp it. I’ve spent time with the gardeners, as they call themselves, in my own garden and in those of my clients. We are all good people, well-intentioned; all of us have our own unresolved contradictions, even if not always as gaping as those who leave two Priuses in the (well-manicured) driveway while taking a private jet to Aspen for the weekend. And I’ve spent time with the gardeners, in their homes, at their celebrations: riding horses in a dry river bed, and barbequing chicken and chivos in a huge, dome-shaped wood-fired oven made from cinder blocks, chicken wire, and horse manure-reinforced adobe. We should all be invited to one another’s tables.

I don’t claim to have found the solution, or a template for perfect communication, much less trouble-free garden maintenance. But in telling some of the stories, I see a real possibility for a better transaction, for all parties, in the garden and out of it, and the possibility of knowing, at least some of the time, what it is that we are doing when we make and keep gardens.

See excerpt below:

Monticello vegetable garden taken from ruin of slave outbuildings.

Excerpt from Jesus is My Gardener

People pay me to design paradise for them, however small: a private Eden with trees, flowers, maybe a small fountain with just enough water noise to “wash” off the city as the owner returns home, and some vista, no matter how small the allotted space, to beckon one inside. A garden need be little more than this to salve the soul. Here in Los Angeles, even just a few doors away from the lurid billboards and crawling traffic of the Sunset Strip, where some of my most successful clients live, one can step through a garden gate as if through a kind of navel into another world of miraculous tranquility, where one can almost imagine that the roar of the city is drowned out by birdsong and the breeze moving through the leaves.

But this calm is maintained by a storm, once a week: men dressed in green chinos and battered boots pile out of a dinged pickup, fire up machines, and fan out like soldiers, trimming hedges, mowing grass, sending clouds of smoke and green confetti flying. Mostly silent amid the racket, occasionally barking something in clipped Spanish, they move determinedly, sure in their well-practiced choreography, yet also swiftly, as though they know their time will soon be cut short. This is the agony in the garden. When the cutting is done, one man will strap onto his shoulders a leafblower, la sopladora, its one- cylinder motor whining like an angry, fifty-pound mosquito, gas sloshing in a dirty plastic tank on his back, and, by expertly swinging the plastic air tube in circular motions, will herd a rising column of clippings, leaves, trash, dust, and acrid blue exhaust ahead of him in a stutter-step waltz, as if he were backing an unruly animal into a corral.

In the eye of this cyclone stands Jesus, my gardener. Jesus comes from a small city in Zacatecas, where the state motto is “Labor vincit omnia,” work conquers all. He and his men, who he calls muchachos, many of them cousins or nephews, are—or once were—horsemen, having grown up on family ranchos. They still wear cowboy hats and put stickers of bucking broncos and horseshoes on their American pickup trucks, the metal steeds of an immigrant cavalry now earning its frijoles by keeping the yards of Los Angeles orderly, green, and clean.

Just as “everyone” now has a gardener, everyone has a nanny, a housecleaner, and a handyman—and almost all of them speak Spanish; most are Mexican. Each morning, they infiltrate entire districts of the city, and each evening they withdraw to their own—a rhythm as regular as the tide. As with the bees and birds that pollinate flowers, there can be no gardens without gardeners. After many years of experience, I know this with scientific certainty. Once upon a time, the districts where the garden owners and the gardeners lived were thought to be well removed from one another. They were never as distinct as some believed, and now they bleed into one another, mix and meld, as the demographic fabric of the region continues to change. Of California’s 36,961,664 people, as of 2010, 37 percent are Latino. Of Los Angeles County’s nearly 10 million (9,848,011), 48 percent are Latino.

“They still wear cowboy hats and put stickers of bucking broncos and horseshoes on their American pickup trucks, the metal steeds of an immigrant cavalry now earning its frijoles by keeping the yards of Los Angeles orderly, green, and clean.”

Somebody has to do the dirty work. If we don’t do it ourselves, then we have to be careful not to treat those who do as mere machines, leafblowers, because, along with the dead leaves, la sopladora blows away life, all in the service of a perfect, unchanging, Arcadian image. That image—the American landscape as we know it—was, as it happens, invented in a cemetery, Mt. Auburn in Massachusetts, in 1831, where horticultural entrepreneurs mated the aristocratic British estate garden of endless, laboriously tended lawns with the labor-saving lawnmower, invented that same year by Edward Budding in England, to be pushed more often than not by an Irish immigrant laborer—Pat O’Shovelem. The peaceful, green repose of Mt. Auburn may have seemed like the afterlife, the ultimate balsam, but it sent us toward the loss of connection to vitality—ours and the land’s.

I must confess that I’ve made bad gardens: though lush, expansive, and expensive, thoughtlessly destructive, requiring too much water, gasoline, chemicals, and labor, all for the illusion of fecundity, but giving nothing back. I resolved, not for the first time, to make better, more-conscious gardens, to relearn and rethink the vocabulary and purpose of the garden. Is it a series of symbols, of lawn and flowers, signifying productivity? Or is it a place of real productivity? A place where dead leaves aren’t a cause for mechanized war but might be tolerated, or even, like the Zen gardens of Japan, exalted, as are gingko leaves falling on gravel? Is there a way to reconcile our American ethics with our aesthetics, our convictions with our desires? I’m not sure, but I’ll make the effort to return some small amount of natural process, and agriculture when it fits, to our backyards and front yards, without them ceasing to be gardens and turning into vacant lots or, worse, in some people’s estimation, into farms. I start with a big advantage: We can grow the same things in this climate as in the garden of Gethsemane: olives, figs, and grapes, plus some new additions, in the same spirit—kumquats, limequats, loquats, guavas, persimmons, pomellos, Buddha’s hand citrons, kiwis, pineapples, artichokes, and always the indispensable, ever fruiting Mexican cocktail limes. In Spanish, the verb “to enjoy” is disfrutar, literally to pick the fruit, and eat it. And why not? ¿Porque no?

Photo of El Pilar Courtesy of Macduff Everton

I was as far away as I could be from the Maya forest, and my research at El Pilar. I was in Kandy, Sri Lanka, when archaeologist Sudharshan Seneviratne posed the question: what does 2012 mean for the Maya? Honestly, I can answer very briefly that it meant nothing. The Maya long count calendar works on an entirely distinct system reckoned in base 20, written in our short hand as numbers of baktun . katun . tun . uinal . kin that have elapsed since the Maya origin day. The 1st of January 2012 would be written 12.19.19.0.5 with the calendar round of 13 Kankin 13 Chicchan. Nothing about 2012.

Lakin Glyph

The multiples of 20s ripple through the whole calendar:  20 kin makes a unial with a total days of 20, 18 unial makes a tun with a total days of 360, 20 tun makes a katun with a total days of 7,200, 20 katun makes a baktun with a total days of 144,000 days. Their calendar does not end with baktun, it goes on where 20 baktun makes a pictun or 7,885 years.  Their calendar system is said to continue by 20s to calabtun, kinchiltun , and even alautun that would envelope more than 63 million years! It hardly stops at 13 baktuns.

 “…..there is a lot of hype going on about the Maya calendar. Is it the need for the end of something?”

The Maya long count calendar closing of the 12th Baktun, or 13.0.0.0.0, is converted to our Gregorian calendar  (via the Julian calendar based on ethnohistorical records and astronomical references) using the GMT correlation (not Greenwich Mean Time but Goodman-Martinez-Thompson).  So while the opening of the 13th Baktun was something that the ancient Maya knew about, nothing was ever referenced in our calendar system of 2012.

But there is a lot of hype going on about the Maya calendar. Is it the need for the end of something?  We had Y2K and now 21 December 2012.  Why is this news?  There are many other calendars. In fact, in Sri Lanka there is one called the Litha, an astrological almanac where the year ends on 13 April in 2012.  Might we start some celebrations based on that one?

“The real point is that the calendar we use, like that of the Maya or the Romans, was for the governing elite and their control of the system.”

Katun Glyph

The real point is that the calendar we use, like that of the Maya or the Romans, was for the governing elite and their control of the system. The Maya calendar expropriated and embedded the themes of the everyday farming – the Maya milpa-forest garden cycle – into the institutional calendar since that was well-known and practiced. They built their institutional ideology on that which was already accepted.

We might think of the calendar as a convenience; we can set up dates and times for meetings, lunch, and travel. But in reality, the calendar we use is for the convenience of those that govern, and we accept that.  In the US we have April 15^th as the day of reckoning of income tax. And like the Sri Lanka Litha, our calendar names dates of celebration—4^th of July, Thanksgiving Day—and we can predict what people are doing at that time. They are watching fireworks or eating turkey. These are the real powers of a calendar. That the Maya can inadvertently control us now is astronomical!

Anabel Ford is the Director of the Mesoamerican Research Center at the University of California at Santa Barbara, as well as President of the nonprofit organization Exploring Solutions Past (ESP~Maya). She is a distinguished Maya archaeologist who has decoded the ancient Maya landscape. Her discovery of the ancient Maya city ceter of El Pilar on the contemporary border of Belize and Guatemala promises to be the first binational cultural and natural park of the world. Her passion for the common people of the ancient Maya together with contemporary international politics, conservation and development, and interdisciplinary research has inspired the vision of Archaeology Under the Canopy. With over thirty years of field experience and her broadly inquisitive mind, she sees the Maya forest as a garden created by the ingenious Maya. Her work, now internationally acclaimed, brings to the fore the importance of exploring solutions past. 

Anabel Ford - Reviving Traditional Maya Agriculture

Anabel Ford in the News – Published Articles 

The views expressed in ecoView are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Ecology Global Network. EGN does not verify the accuracy or science of these articles.

I raise this point because there is an increasing backlash to the idea of climate change as a serious threat. Concern about climate change has been diminishing rapidly in the U.S. over the last few years, for a variety of reasons, including the poor economy (and the wrong perception that mitigating climate change will harm the economy), the “climate-gate” affair resulting from hacked emails from climate scientists, and a very aggressive campaign by corporate and conservative interests that just don’t want to believe that humans can impact global climate.

A Yale 2010 survey found that those who believe human activities are primarily responsible for climate change dropped from 57 percent in 2008 to 47 percent in 2010. And it’s probably dropped further since. US News & World Report mused about this trend in a recent article, asking rhetorically whether Americans care about climate change anymore.

The Good News

Now for the good news. I believe that declining public belief in climate change as an important issue doesn’t matter because there are many very positive trends with respect to energy that are here today and will only increase in the future. These trends will mitigate climate change, but will also greatly enhance energy independence, reduce traditional air pollution, create millions of new jobs, and will actually save us all a lot of money through lowered electricity costs.

“We now have about 200 gigawatts of global wind capacity, enough for the equivalent of about 60 million California homes and about 300 million Chinese homes.”

These very encouraging trends are: 1) an ongoing improvement in global energy intensity, leading to far fewer emissions per dollar of GDP in coming decades; 2) price-induced conservation; 3) a dramatic increase in global wind power over the last decade; 4) and, perhaps most importantly, the growth in global solar power may lead to an incredibly rapid transformation in how we produce energy.

Energy intensity is a relative measure. It is defined as units of energy required for each unit of GDP. The Energy Information Administration projects that global energy intensity will improve by almost 100 percent by 2035. This means that we will be able to produce goods and services with half as much energy by 2035.

Figure 1. Projected global energy intensity (source: EIA Int’l Energy Outlook 2010).

The U.S.  has been a great example in recent years of how improved energy intensity can make a real difference in emissions. U.S.  greenhouse gas emissions actually fell 7.5 percent from 2008 to 2009 due in part to improved energy intensity. The recession was also a substantial factor, but only accounted for about 1/3 of the improvements, according to the EIA (Fig. 2 and 3). The other 2/3 came from improvements in energy intensity and carbon intensity (more renewables and natural gas, less coal).

Figure 2. U.S. greenhouse gas emissions (source: EIA).

Figure 3. Sources of U.S.  greenhouse gas emissions reductions in 2009 (source: EIA).

But energy intensity is a relative measure, not an absolute measure. So even if we improve energy intensity dramatically, current global economic growth projections result in greenhouse gas emissions growing substantially by 2035, all else being equal.

This is where the next three trends can help a great deal. “Price-induced conservation” refers to the fact that as energy prices go up we often see remarkable changes in how much energy is used because people and businesses change their behavior to adjust to the high prices (conservation refers to behavior change, whereas efficiency refers to technology improvements).

A good example of price-induced conservation is U.S.  reduction in gasoline consumption as prices approach or exceed $4/gallon. Since 2007, U.S.  net gasoline consumption has declined, due to both the recession and price-induced conservation (which are closely related trends, of course). A 2004 meta-analysis of studies on gasoline consumption elasticity found that a sustained 10 percent increase in gas prices leads to a 2.5-6 percent decline in consumption. Price does matter.

U.S.  gas prices have increased far more than ten percent in recent years and exceeded the seasonal record this spring. Prices remain very high, though below the records reached in 2008. It is very likely that prices will continue to rise in coming years due to the ongoing structural imbalance between supply and demand, which is partly masked by the ongoing global economic problems. As the global economy continues to recover, prices will rise further, and conservation will increase.

Figure 4. Gasoline consumption vs. prices in the U.S.  (source: EIA data).

The third key trend is the remarkable growth in global wind power over the last decade. Average annual growth has been about 25 percent. A 25 percent rate of growth leads to a doubling every 3.1 years. 2010 was a relatively bad year for U.S. wind power, but a very good year globally. We now have about 200 gigawatts of global wind capacity, enough for the equivalent of about 60 million California homes and about 300 million Chinese homes. Wind power growth rates are projected to diminish but even at an annual growth rate of 20 percent, the installed capacity doubles every 3.8 years. At this growth rate 200 gigawatts becomes about 1,600 gigawatts (1.6 terawatts) by about 2030 or so. That’s almost enough to power the entire U.S. under today’s demand for electricity.

Figure 5. Global wind power growth (source: Global Wind Energy Council).

The last trend is perhaps the most exciting. Where global wind power has grown about 25 percent per year in the last decade, global solar power has grown an average of 68 percent each year over the last five years (including Bloomberg New Energy Finance projections of 28 gigawatts of new solar in 2011). This is a doubling literally every 1.3 years. So today’s 40 gigawatts of capacity becomes, under the same growth rate, an astronomical 1.3 million gigawatts by 2030. Obviously, the recent rate of growth won’t continue because, among other reasons, this is far more power than we need for the entire globe! But even if solar power’s rate of growth drops in half to 35 percent over the next two decades, this produces a doubling every 2.3 years and we get 16,000 gigawatts (16 terawatts) by 2030 – almost as much as the entire world will need by then.

Balancing variable renewables like wind and solar – the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine – becomes an important issue as high penetrations of these technologies are achieved. It won’t be that difficult to deal with, however, as numerous reports in the U.S. and elsewhere have found on average that balancing renewables adds about 10 percent to the cost of power even when penetration exceeds 20 percent. I’ll address this issue in more detail in a future essay.

Figure 6. Global solar growth (source: REN21 annual report; Bloomberg New Energy Finance for 2011).

Under solar’s recent rate of growth (68 percent), it would surpass global wind power capacity before 2020 even if wind continues to grow at an average of 30 percent per year. But more realistically, solar power surpasses wind power by about 2024 if solar grows at an average 35 percent rate and wind at a 20 percent annual average growth rate. At that time, both wind and solar will be about 2,500 gigawatts – up from 40 for solar in 2010 and 200 for wind. 5,000 gigawatts of wind and solar is enough to provide more than 1/6 of the entire world’s electricity demand, just 13 years from now!

Figure 7. Comparing wind and solar growth projections.

At the same rates of growth (35 percent for solar and 20 percent for wind), these power sources could provide the entire global demand by 2030. Will this actually happen, even at half the rates of growth that we’ve seen for wind and solar over the last 5-10 years? There is in fact a real limit to how fast electricity infrastructure can turn over due to sunk costs in existing power plants like coal, nuclear and hydro – so even if solar and wind become highly cost-effective in coming years, they won’t displace all other forms of power by 2030.

As for the real rate of growth we can expect, I don’t know and no one does because, as Yogi Berra stated, forecasts are difficult – especially about the future. But solar power growth, in particular, seems likely to continue to grow rapidly because the backlash against rapid growth in solar power will generally be far less than that for wind.

For wind power to scale beyond the approximately one percent of global power it represents today (but as high as 25 percent in Denmark, approaching 20 percent in Spain and almost 10 percent in Germany), it will probably have to go offshore in a big way. And offshore wind, particularly deepwater wind, poses a set of very difficult problems that are solvable but not yet solved.

For solar power to scale to a significant portion of our power base, however, there is no need to go offshore (which isn’t feasible for solar anyway) and no necessary public backlash because solar power is more modular than wind power. Solar power doesn’t have to be mega-scale at each installation to make a big impact (and nor does wind, but solar is more suited to smaller installations in many ways than wind).

Due to the growing backlash against mega-scale projects, the medium-scale market for solar power is particularly promising – what is referred to as “community-scale” solar or “wholesale distributed generation,” generally between one and twenty megawatts. This type of project requires between five and 160 acres, generally not large enough to provoke major opposition. One study of California’s potential in this size range found enough existing transmission capacity and readily available land to interconnect about 28 gigawatts – though the actual potential is far higher.

Today’s wind turbines are getting bigger and bigger because of economies of scale – and this is a good thing in many ways because bigger means more power at lower prices. But because the turbines are so big (up to 500 feet high now), and because the wind resource is not as widespread as solar power, as well as the rapidly falling cost of solar power, I predict that we’ll see solar power increasingly out-compete other renewables – as well as fossil fuels and nuclear, of course. This is already happening in California, with the large majority of new renewable energy contracts signed by the big utilities coming from solar power instead of the previously far more popular wind power.

Cost is obviously very important when it comes to renewables and mitigating climate change more generally. But cost is increasingly becoming a non-issue as technology costs continue to fall. I recently wrote about the cost trends for renewables in California and elsewhere, demonstrating that these renewables can often be cost-effective today. Wind power has been cheaper than fossil fuels for some time in the U.S. and other places around the world. Solar has historically been quite expensive but is fast approaching grid parity. The United Nations recently issued a major report recognizing these very encouraging cost trends, finding that many renewables can now compete with fossil fuels on cost alone.

Figure 8. UN findings with respect to renewable energy costs (Source: UN Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation).

The future looks increasingly bright – despite my ongoing concerns about peak oil and climate change – what I call the “twin crises.” While the looming threat of peak oil is very real, it seems we may be on a path to mitigation of both climate change and peak oil in time to avoid major economic disruptions – at least insofar as electricity is concerned. The far larger problem with peak oil occurs in the transportation sector, however, because there are fewer scalable options when it comes to replacing petroleum. The improved energy intensity and price-induced conservation trends I’ve discussed apply as much to transportation as to electricity, but the wind power and solar power trends only apply if we can rapidly electrify the transportation sector though electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids – and that is far more difficult than switching from fossil fuels to renewables in the electricity sector. I’ll address this additional set of issues in a future essay.

To wrap up, we seem to be on a path toward a far more sustainable future because of the momentum finally pushing wind and solar, as well as increased efficiency and conservation, to ever greater heights. So while climate change itself is obviously an important issue, it is increasingly unimportant with respect to the policy debate surrounding our energy sector’s transformation. And that’s a good thing given the public’s refusal to take the threat seriously.

Tam Hunt wears a few hats. He is a renewable energy law and policy consultant, developer of community-scale wind and solar power projects, and a Lecturer in Climate Change Law and Policy at UC Santa Barbara’s Bren School of Environmental Science & Management. He is also a Visiting Scholar in psychology at UCSB. In recent years, Tam has been writing about the philosophy of mind and philosophy of science. He received his law degree from the UCLA School of Law and biology (ecology, behavior, evolution) degree from UC San Diego. Hunt is a regular columnist at Renewable Energy World, EnergyPulse, Noozhawk and other websites.

The views expressed in ecoView are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Ecology Global Network. EGN does not verify the accuracy or science of these articles.