Words have been eluding me lately, at least when it comes to environmental writing.  So many hopes, since this blog was established in December 2006--so little comfort about the future of our planet today.   Better activists than I am are toiling without letup, for tiny bits of progress.  At the same time, exploitation of resources, of the natural world, and of human beings seems to be gathering momentum. 

I can remember, back around 2006, thinking that the nations of the world had only a short while remaining of the degree of prosperity prevalent then, and that they needed to invest in reducing carbon emissions while they could.  Waiting until the Third World rose out of poverty wasn't going to work.  It had to rise out of poverty via a different path than fossil fuels, or at least by a variety of paths, or doom us all.   Furthermore, once the world economy falls apart, it's a different game entirely...  People will focus on survival, and so will I.   

Back then I had visions of a rich elite living in artificially cooled clean air bubbles, while the masses of humanity tried to survive extreme climate conditions as their slaves.  In a sense, that elite, that kind of social/economic stratification, exists today.  It's ready to solidify as climate change progresses.  It will be the eventual, inevitable future unless something changes that hasn't changed yet.

The Orwellian horrors of "1984" seem more applicable today than during the cold war, in a twisted and almost humorous sort of way.  I grew up fearing bombs, then terrorists, but now that we are well into the Great Recession (or Lesser Depression, if you prefer), a new suite of fears has appeared to fester in my more mature and experienced brain.  Are we going to repeat some variation of the disasters of 1930s and 40s?  Perhaps the better question is not if but how many. Over just the span of a few years, it's not so hard to understand those times, thanks to the economics and politics of today, and the poison they bring forth in people. 

Having been born during the Second World War, I grew up watching war and Holocaust films and hearing my elders speak in vague terms of life "during depression."  I marveled that most of my parents' many siblings had only one child.  What had caused that?  I did not feel free to ask such a thing.  I was a rare second child.  Obviously, there was a lot my elders were not telling me.  Whatever their deprivations or fears during the Depression or the war, they never shared that with us kids. 

It was never supposed to happen again, after all. 

The new year is about to dawn, and no doubt it will teach us many things.

 

 

As you know, Greengranny lives in Ames, a small university city in central Iowa. You may have heard about our recent flood in the news--my California relatives reported that they did.  I'm writing today to say my home and those of family members here were all ok. 

Even our basements stayed dry.  Other family members kept watch all night as water rose around their houses and threatened to top the basement window wells, but stopped just short.  We do not have finished living space in our basement as do our relatives here, but we did have lots of bags filled with children's clothing and toys for a garage sale, and would have hated to throw it all away.  More important, like most midwesterners, our basement contains the wash machine, furnace, and hot water heater.  Dry basements are the norm here--or used to be.

Most areas that flooded in Ames have done so previously due to their location relative to the Squaw Creek and South Skunk River flood plains.  The first "big one" came in 1993.  Then 2008 saw a smaller version of that.  This year, the flood was about equal to the one in 1993. 

So much for "500 year" floods.   People tired of flooded homes, apartments, and businesses are leaving those areas, often with no compensation for property that used to be worth something.  However, some businesses have gotten building permits for new construction in that same area.  One of these is a Super-Walmart.  In 2008, some customers had their vehicles flooded in the WalMart parking lot, which was lower than the store proper.  In 2010, there was reported to be two feet of water in the store itself.  It remains closed for the time being.

Do a web search on "Ames flooding" and you'll find lots of photos of the flood zone.  Remember, most of the city remained dry, and basement seepage from saturated soil was the main concern.  Since the electricity remained on in most areas, sump pumps did their job.

The immediate result of the flood for most Ames residents was not being able to get from one part of town to another, as flood waters rose higher than bridges over streams and the river.  By the second day, water began to recede from the roads.

What effected everyone in town was the loss of drinkable water.  The flooding caused six separate breaks in water mains, including a 24 inch main and a 12 inch main.  Two of the town's three water towers emptied out quickly.  The third one, near my home, had to be shared by everyone for days and thus, we were all asked not to do laundry, bathe often, or do any outdoor water tasks like car washing.  And it wasn't safe to drink because of the several ruptures. 

Bottled water was distributed for drinking, and most people with access to home kitchens were able to boil water for drinking, washing dishes, brushing teeth, and washing hands.   The fire department had to arrange for use of water tank trucks in case of a fire, due to the lack of water pressure.  Some factories had to stop production due to the lack of water.

The weather was quite hot and humid, and we had to boil large pots of water on the stove.  We realized how lucky were were to have homes intact and working kitchens at our disposal, along with air conditioning.  Green-minded citizens may have kept their home thermostats set fairly high, but I doubt anyone who had air conditioning available was doing completely without it that week. 

It was a particularly challenging week to manage our household for my husband and me, but that's a story for another day. 

The Ames Flood of 2010 underscored several general points. 

First, the most economically marginal people tend to suffer the worst in floods.  The older parts of towns with aging housing stock and many elderly residents are nearest to rivers.  Trailer parks are built on cheap land vulnerable to floods.  Young people and college students rent the most vulnerable apartments (often  unknowingly, coming from out of town). 

Second, one problem can quickly cause others until the situation becomes ever-more difficult to cope with.  Stress builds up in people's lives and some are pushed to the breaking point.  We see in the news photos from the Haitian earthquake, Pakistani floods, and Russian wildfires--people by the millions, in despair, who have lost everything.  It seems beyond comprehension by those of us who have only been temporarily inconvenienced.  And yet for an unlucky few here in Ames, the flood caused a cascade of personal disasters to happen to them.  At least they had more fortunate people right here, around them, to render aid. 

Third, existing city and social services can quickly be stretched to their limits.  The Senior Variety Show to be held last weekend at the Ames City Auditorium was canceled so that everyone serving the elderly could focus on getting meals-on-wheels out to elderly around the county, and to maintain transportation to health services for them.   With many flooded roads, routes to get help to people were often convoluted, if there was a way at all.  I hope the show will be rescheduled, because the cast of people age 60 and above put on a great show. 

The flooding and water situation caused some children's day care centers to close, I'm sure making new complications for the parents affected.  And most Ames restaurants had to shut down also, for a few days.  Neither Iowa State University nor K-12 schools were in session when the flood occurred, or the disruption would have been more extreme.

The social safety net, normally so effective here in Ames, was initially stretched thin by fairly modest physical events (when compared to major disasters like Hurricane Katrina).  But there is good emergency response planning here in Iowa and Story County, and it made a real difference as the flood event played out.

A Permanent Change in Flood Likelihood

While this single flood event cannot be linked directly to global warming (floods happened here long ago), it is certainly the predicted weather pattern that Iowa is expected to experience as warming progresses--storms with much heavier rainfall.   As development and farming practices have drained wetlands and built up flood plains, there are many contributing factors for the recent floods our state has experienced.  I see no reason to expect fewer floods in the future.  All the variables are moving in the same direction--to having more high-rainfall storms and having more extreme floods as the land's response to excessive rainfall amounts.

   

A couple of days ago I received email notification from an activist group that Target  had become the first corporation to use the new Supreme Court ruling to influence elections, with a $150,000 contribution to one candidate for governor of the state of Minnesota. 

I immediately said I was ready to visit my local Target store to protest, and "signed" an on-line pledge not to shop at Target.  Today, Friday August 6, 2010 at noon was the time all protesters were to visit their stores and lodge a complaint with the manager. 

This morning's newspaper had an item  "Target CEO apologizes for political donation."  I looked at it with curiosity.   Apparently a gay rights group was the swiftest to make its displeasure known, for the candidate receiving the cash was strongly opposed to gay rights initiatives.  Minnesota is known as a politically progressive state.  An action such as Target took wouldn't sit well with a great many people there, gay or straight, I'm pretty sure.  However, this is not the reason I am boycotting Target.

It's not WHO they gave the money to, it was that they made a corporate donation--not from the CEO's personal wealth, not from an employee collection, but from the corporate treasury.  And there is enough money in corporate treasuries right now to overwhelm funds contributed by individuals and small organizations, enabling corporations as "entities" to buy almost any election if allowed.  Paid-for mass media would determine election outcomes, even more than it does today.  Our nation's experiment in democracy would be finished.

In the article about the apology, the CEO was reported to have said the decision for the political campaign contribution had to do with the candidate's business policies and not his social policies.  He admitted the donation affected people in ways he did not anticipate.  He said Target would set up a review process for political donations.

This example shows exactly why the dissenting justices on the Supreme Court opposed this ruling.   A corporation is not a person, not a voter, not an entity that must live with ALL the consequences of putting a certain individual into public office.  A corporation cannot evaluate the pros and cons of a given candidate, business policies versus social policies and such.   There is no conscience to tell the corporation that doing right trumps making money.  The corporation is not a moral creature.  A corporation is not entitled to human rights.   

The Target CEO should be honest.  He is going to make decisions that will make money for the shareholders.  Like the externalized costs to the environment, human misery costs are not part of the corporate balance sheet.  However, I'm sure next time he donates to a politician, he will have his public relations office prepare the proper message to the public. 

Now that unlimited financial influence has been released to corporations by the Supreme Court decision, they are going to use it.  It's been said that corporations already have so many ways to control Congress and buy elections, this added perk won't matter much.   Possibly.  Or, it may just be the last straw, the thing that causes public opinion to turn against it.

Our culture has created a monster and given it dominion over people.  This is analogous to the science fiction story theme of robots or androids who take charge and enslave us.  And we can all say together,

  "We are BORG." 

That, by the way, comes from a Star Trek script in which a machine-run spaceship colony incorporates any life forms it finds in the universe into itself, with sentient beings losing their identity--becoming a slave brain connected to the machine. 

Our fiction has experimented with various ways humans might be enslaved, from computers that would turn tables on us and take over, to invaders from outer space like BORG,  to Orwellian "Big Brother" totalitarian rule.  But corporations, with a little help from our Supreme Court,  have nearly finished that job. 

I'd like to thank Keith Farnish, environmental activist and blogger, for being the first person to enlighten me about the nature of corporations and of our failure to understand what we have enabled them to do.

Now that it's the second half of July, I wanted to share my progress with all of you senior gardeners out there.  If you are growing even a little of your food, you are a green senior in an important respect.

 
In earlier posts I reported on my backyard urban vegetable garden and on our clash with Japanese beetles--this being only the second year we've ever had them.  The photo above shows about a third of the garden, raspberries to the left and green beans beginning at the right.  Most of the middle is tomatoes.  As hoped, the marigold seeds I planted in front of the tomatoes are now plants able to peek through the chicken wire and get enough sun to bloom.  The taller zinnias are happy in the back row.

There are benefits to having a climate with more rain.  (Climate models predict more rainfall for my area in the next decades, followed by...lets not go there today. )  I read today that Iowa farmers are worried about the amount of rain this year, which floods areas of the fields, killing the corn.  It is a more serious problem than the potential damage from wind and hail that comes along with more thundershowers.  But so far, my garden is flourishing.  Our neighbor's lovely linden tree did not make it through the last storm, with wind gusts over 70 mph.  See below.

I've been saved from the labor of watering the garden from the garden hose, which gives me time to keep picking what's ready.  I think frequent harvesting keeps the plants producing longer, maximizes yield, and minimizes damage from insects or mold.   The newspaper mulch keeps mud from splattering on ripening fruit and is nice to walk on. 

The edible pea pod plants and green beans are still blooming!  The peas are especially surprising given the heat we've been having--high 80's and some days in the 90's.  That's tomato weather, not pea weather.  My daughter's broccoli, another cool season plant, is going great as well.

We've grown bush green beans many times before at different places we've lived, but I never noticed how they regulate their environment by turning their leaves.  Mornings and evenings the leaves are facing the sun.  In the heat of mid-day, the leaves are held vertically.  That's when it is easiest to see the beans!

Our red raspberry plants produce two harvests--the first one is done, from the second year canes.  The first year canes are setting fruit now.   However, due to a few canes not keeping time with their age-mates, we've had berries to eat every day during the gap.  I'm happy to see a few extra bumble bees and wasps helping out with the pollination of the second crop.

We continue to learn more about the habits of Japanese beetles.  Our garden is largely unscathed, with just a few spotty areas of heavy damage.  However, our neighbors have complained mightily.  Most of them have ornamental plants that they don't watch each day and don't even know what insect has eaten their plant into skeletons.   They are not doing anything to control them, and I'm just as glad they aren't using massive amounts of pesticides.  I show them my jar of beetles.  About once a week we dump out the dead beetles and put fresh rubbing alcohol in the bottom.

Several times a day we make the rounds with the jar, looking for Japanese beetles.  We may find a couple, or half a dozen or more.   It's not so much a chore because we like being outside and it's just steps out the back door.

However, looking over our back fence, we can see dozens of  beetles swarming above the ornamental fruit trees in the neighbor's back yard.  The upper leaves of those trees must be riddled, but probably trees of that size can survive that sort of attack. 

We regret we did not check our own new fruit trees until recently.  The plum tree has had significant damage. 

So here's the scoop on Japanese beetles:  if you regularly pick them off of plants, you  can prevent a horde from showing up the next day.  This seems true even for plants close by, even in the same yard.  Get them off before they ring the dinner bell for their brethren, and that plant is likely to be spared major damage.  Even though they prefer the raspberries, they will substitute another plant that they don't keep getting removed from.  Such was the plight of the plum tree and a few of the zinnias.

The beetles have two escape maneuvers when they are disturbed.  One is to fly off quickly in a sideways direction.  The other is to let go and fall to the ground, where they disappear in a second.  Those are the only defenses they have, other than there being nothing that wants to eat them here.

With the jar, it is best to hold the jar underneath the vegetation they are sitting on, and come down from above with the lid.  In the heat of mid-day they are more likely to use the flight strategy, so I just grab them fast, firmly hang onto them, open the jar with the other hand and plop them in.  Often one gets several at a time.

So, fellow urban gardeners, do not despair that catching Japanese beetles will get you nowhere.  It will protect the plants from which you remove them while they ravage other things nearby...  Fortunately most plants like trees can withstand this periodic leaf damage, and many other plants are just too far down on their preference list to be bothered.  I've never seen them alight on the vast majority of plants in my yard, although they COULD eat them if need be.

It's time for me to make salad...good eating to all of you! 

For weeks I have watched the white clover in our lawn bloom,  just as it did when I was a child at a different home long ago and far away.  I was pleased that our refusal to use broad leaf weed killers in our yard had paid off.  White clover adds nitrogen to the soil that helps the grass.  But where were the bees?  White clover flowers always had honey bees on them.

It had been a very cold, severe winter that probably was hard on wild pollinating insects, although they have been getting scarcer for many years.  We have a variety of flowers in bloom, and until today, the only bee I'd seen in our yard this year was an occasional solitary bumblebee.  That's okay, I thought.  New generations will be raised and I'll see lots of bumblebees by late summer.

Yet I longed to see honey bees. 

Today I looked closely at the deep purple flower spikes on a row of hosta, newly blooming.  Two bees!

Excited by that discovery, I ran to the front of the house to check out the Russian sage bush.  It always is a favorite of bees, but so far this year, its blooming only brought forth another solitary bumblebee.  But not today.  Today, it was keeping  a small swarm of honey bees busy!  And the bumblebee was hard at work there too.

That sage bush is so large, there's room for many more bees and I hope they show up.

As for the white clover, it is still blooming and still bee-less.  I have no idea why.

Well it IS happening, by people like you and me and many others who understand the twin threats of climate change and peak oil, and who are doing all they can to prepare, for the sake of their children and grandchildren.

What I'm talking about in this post title is the "government/corporate establishment." 

As I peruse the news both on-line and in my local newspapers, I keep seeing these expressions:

"excess production capacity"  

"corporations are holding cash"  

"millionaires are increasing savings"

These items are matters of fact that can be verified--they are not political viewpoints.

During the recession and continuing to the present, our economy has huge excess capacity, but since so much industry has left, I'm not sure just what kind of excess capacity it is.  In our global society, the US-based corporations can't keep their US workforce at full employment if its overseas factories can't sell the stuff that they make.  So it can't put people to work either here as accountants and sales reps or abroad on the factory floor.   Eventually falling tax receipts puts teachers, police, and other public servants out of work, no matter how much their services are needed in communities.

In light of that complex global relationship, perhaps it is correct to state that the US and world's excess capacity includes video games, designer handbags, wide screen TVs, and all the other stuff  that goes under the heading "consumer goods."  Then the downward spiral affects vacations, hotel and resort occupancy, and other leisure spending.  As jobs are lost, the cycle gains momentum  until the entire economy is down the drain.

People with an income rather save a little more of  it than buy stuff they don't really need or take a vacation they could postpone.  They've come to see that the world and their position in it is less secure than they once thought.  And for the 10 percent who are unemployed, most spending on consumer goods evaporates, along with prodding their better-off relatives who are sustaining them (if they are lucky) into a truly austere spending pattern.

Isn't this a turning point we environmental activists had hoped for? 

Let's see, there is a huge supply of money saved which needs to be invested, but not in producing the same stuff as before.   

There is a huge unemployed and underemployed workforce which needs to be utilized, but not by doing the same work as before. 

And, there is a gargantuan task ahead in building a sustainable society, one that needs capital and a workforce that is used in new ways.

It's time to stop living in the 20th Century and get on with creating the 21st.

We have what we need to save our economy, our middle class, our once egalitarian democratic society, our world standing as a nation, and the habitability of our planet.  We could build  that sustainable society.

Or not.