Writing for Survival

How to Go Green for the Holidays

2011-12-16T09:02:00.000-08:00

It's that time of year again! Eggnog, stocking stuffers, and presents...for many this is the best or worst time season. Unfortunately, the past few decades have seen a ramp up in the commercialism of the holiday and Christmastime could almost be called Consumer-time.

So here is is, a few simple tips on how to be easy on the Earth this Christmas:

1. Stop Shopping!

Okay, okay. So this isn't exactly easy, but buying has become ingrained in our society as everything from a balm for our deepest woes, to a quick fix. Of course, gift giving is part of the Christmas tradition, so I am not saying don't get your kids or parents ANY presents. I just think we tend to overdo it. Keep it to one or two gifts, and make those gifts thoughtful. Even if you cannot resist the shopping spirit, read on about how to make your shopping methods more sustainable.

2. Shop Secondhand or from Locally-Owned Stores!

Shopping secondhand supports recycling. Truth is, we are running out of resources, for just about everything, whether it be cotton for clothes, metals for electronics, and of course, the water that goes into growing and/or mining and harvesting for materials to make our stuff. Buying secondhand items eases demand on the need to keep making new items and thereby slows demand on further developing land and squandering water and other resources. It also support recycling and is a way to avoid supporting sweatshop and slave labor (which, quite honestly, is the labor that produces the bulk of the stuff we buy). Despite what some believe, shopping secondhand doesn't mean poor quality. I have found everything from rare first or second edition books of modern classics at used book stores, to an awesome pair of suede boots that everyone thought I spent a month's rent on, all for the most bargain prices.

For electronics, it is especially important to try to buy secondhand, as heavy metal mining is a major cause of armed conflict overseas and causes incredible environmental devastation. Some websites, like Amazon and DotCells, offer used electronics in very good or mint condition, many with warranties in place (or for just an extra $40, you can purchase a warranty with Square Trade on Amazon).

Many vintage or consignment shops are mom and pop operations, so you will be supporting the local economy. When you buy from more mainstream thrift stores like Goodwill or the Salvation Army, a portion of your proceeds are going to a great cause. If you do buy new, try buying from locally-owned stores. Even though upfront costs may be higher, you are putting your dollar directly into communities. Big box stores like Walmart and Target may have cheaper products, but their existence erodes local economies. Finally, for mail order, if you want a product that is organically produced and sweatshop-free, check out Green America's National Green Pages!

3. Combine trips or stay within walking distance for shopping!

A lot of traveling already goes on for the holidays, so for your shopping try to get it done all in one day or weekend. Combining trips cuts down heavily on carbon emissions, especially if you map it all out beforehand to take the most direct routes. Better yet, if you have the ability to, shop only those stores within walking distances or along your local public transportation routes. Another idea: again, if you think you might be doing a lot of driving, it might be better to shop online.

4. Go for the "experience" gift instead of the "stuff" gift, or the "need" instead of the "want"

As was explored in the "Story of Stuff" we Americans are obsessed with STUFF. Clothes, gadgets, cars...but we're less happy with other countries. A more sustainable gift idea, but still one that is rewarding, is the "experience" gift: a dinner and movie, a play, a massage, a trip to a bed and breakfast, a day skiiing. Most adults won't complain getting gifts like these, and not only does it avoid straining resources, but it creates better memories than, perhaps, the latest iPhone. On another note, when buying stuff, really honing in on something that is needed, like that really warm jacket or boots that serve a practical purpose, as well as looking good, serves twofold in both appeasing the needs and wants of the person you are giving to.

5. Forego the Gift-wrap!

Sorry, but gift-wrap is, quite plainly, is a waste...tens to hundreds of thousands of trees are cut to make wrapping paper. Not only that, most wrapping paper is generally not recyclable. This doesn't mean you can't dress your gift. There are plenty of eco-friendly alternative to wrapping. I am a big fan of using newspaper or magazine pages, often the funnies or other colorful advertisements (a + if the newspaper of magazine itself was published on recycled paper, which many are). This kind of paper is also recyclable. Another idea is to use a gift bag or box for the gift and reuse it every year. I have a gift box I have been using for the past several years, that I reclaim after my friend opens his or her gift. Saves paper, saves time, saves the environment. Easy breezy. A final idea is fabric. There are fabrics sold specifically to use in place of wrapping paper, or simple fabrics bought at a store. This adds an extra gift to the person's gift and is definitely more pleasing in texture and aesthetics and the tearing open of paper and the littered floor afterwards.

6. Get Rid of the Tree, or Source it Carefully!

We have enough deforestation without the cutting down of trees every year to put in our homes for a few weeks before throwing them out. Granted, many of the trees come from tree farms, which are regrown every year, so there is an argument that this is a carbon-neutral renewable resource. But many trees are left curbside after New Year's (a really sad sight if you ask me and one that symbolizes how we use and discard nature so frivolously at times), and left to rot in landfills. Many trees come from farms that use pesticides and herbicides that harm the soil, and your health when you bring them inside. Not to mention, these farms use up land that might better be purposed for real forests or food crops. So, think twice before you get that tree! If you do buy a tree, make sure to get it from an organic tree farm, and compost it afterwards. Or, consider buying a living tree. A fake tree is more sustainable in that it can be used every years for decades, but they also require materials and harsh chemicals to produce. I would say buying a fake tree from a second hand store or a living/potted tree might be the best option.

7. Consider Not Traveling

Sure, everyone loves to see family and old friends for the holidays. But we do sure put in a lot of carbon to get where we're going. Even if you can't see not visiting your far-away family, try to arrange traveling time when you're less likely to be stuck in gridlock (earlier or later than the bulk of when people travel), making sure to use the most direct route when it's the least crowded, or maybe suggesting you all meet in the middle somewhere for Christmas. Sometimes, too, I think there's this pressure to go home or places even when we don't want to, and if that's the case, there's nothing wrong with a Christmas in your own home!

8. Consider a Meatless or Red Meat-Free Christmas

It's true. Meat production is a major contributor to climate change, surpassing transportation as one of the main emitters. It's also a huge contributor to extinction of other animals, and pollution of our land, water and air, not to mention the premiere reason we are deforesting the Amazon. Even if you have no plans of going vegetarian in your life, try seizing this season of thinking about the wider world outside your doorstep and eat lower on the food chain. That doesn't mean you have to be stuck chewing raw celery. There are many great vegetarian and vegan dishes available, from rissoto-stuffed acorn squash, to baked lasagna, that are delicious and hardy.

9. Foster or Adopt a Companion Animal

I always feel the need to slip this in. If you are allergy-free, and have a home that admits pets, consider adding a new family member to your home. If you don't want the long-term commitment, but still have the room and love animals, there are plenty of shelters and rescue groups in any area of the U.S., always looking for foster homes. They will pay for the food and doctor visits, you offer the love and care. It's a win-win.

10. Charity!

Christmas is about giving, but not necessarily just gift giving to your own circle. Let's remember there's a lot of other people out there without homes or reliable food sources, and give to charity. If you feel like you don't need that banging new pair of boots or the latest iPad, ask others to give a gift card in your name.

Happy Holidays!

Occupy This: Why We Should Remain Stalwart in the Face of Eviction

2011-12-09T10:25:00.000-08:00

"First they ignore you, then they ridicule, then they fight you, then you win."-Gandhi

Sound familiar? Gandhi's quote can be applied to just about every movement that sought to break new ground in social evolution, from the suffragists to the civil rights movement and now to the occupy movement. I didn't really hear hardly anything about the Occupy Wall St. Movement from the mainstream media for the first few weeks it was going on. Not until it really began gaining steam and other occupy encampments started springing up across the country and even abroad. Then, the pundits chimed in, especially Fox News, which had a field day decrying the college kids that make up the majority of the movement as lazy spoiled brats and old hippie stoners who couldn't zone in on a single topic.

And then came the violence, including the fractured skull of Scott Olsen, an Iraq war vet, by a tear canister flung into the crowd by police at Occupy Oakland. And by now, we've all seen the endless streaming of footage of peaceful protesters being blasted with pepper spray and tear gas.

Last night I watched live on the news as the midnight deadline to decamp Occupy Boston approached. It came and went without incident. There were no mass arrests, no conflict. I am glad it went on peacefully and the protesters held their ground (the the camp has significantly shrunk since last night, now down to about 40 campers) that night. I think the strategy was to tire the protesters out, let them think they had their last stand and then as the numbers shrunk, I think Mayor Menino will send the cops in quietly one night when there are no camera crews to catch the incident.

When the court order came for the campers to disband, it stated that the Constitutional right to free speech doesn't not include occupation. There is a chilling irony here. Back in the beginning of 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are people and that their money is speech....So, let's get this straight, common laypeople who have suffered the brunt of the economic collapse (due greatly to the increasing corporatism of our society) do not have the right to peacefully occupy public spaces in protest of our government's wrong doings under freedom of speech, but corporations can offer unlimited campaign contributions and advertisement money to the politicians' who heed their interests under that right? Obviously, the deck has been stacked against us.

Since day one, opponents of the Occupy movement have attacked is as being incohesive and having no common goals or demands. But this isn't really true. The Occupy movement has been extremely shrewd and streamlined in their networking and communications among their individual encampments and with other encampments, and carried on the democratic process in an open, inclusive, and transparent manner that Congress could learn from. In less than two months, Occupy Boston had a functional kitchen, library, clothing barter system, and a print newspaper. They offered assistance to the homeless and the wayward and gave frustrated and downtrodden citizens a forum to vent their woes and think proactively about ways to solve our society's deepest ills.

And the demands, though there has been some deviance and versatility, show astounding uniformity, despite claims to the contrary. Throughout the movement I've seen much of the same demands: end corporate personhood and establish campaign reform, hold Wall Street legally and financially accountable for its actions that led to the 2008 economic meltdown for which the majority of us are still suffering, consider student loan forgiveness and the availability of more accessible and affordable higher education, and offer universal healthcare (or at least a form of affordable, accessible, and equitable healthcare).

There's been a lot of evidence to suggest the crackdowns and subsequent closings at the encampments were a concerted, collaborative effort among city and town governments with the aid of federal entities, which wouldn't surprise me. The reasons to force the shut down of the camps have been cited as fear for health, sanitation or safety. I wish I could see even a small percentage of this effort to end the camps put toward ending other violations in health and safety, such as the environmental hazards of mountain-top removal, hydraulic fracturing for natural gas, or the millions of people who die or are impoverished due to a lack of good health care and/or education. But alas, the people on top have different priorities.

Those college kids have a right to be angry. They have graduated saddled with enormous debt and poor (if any) job prospects. Unlike their parents and grandparents, they have to put off the assets and advantages of adulthood, such as buying a home and starting a family, and many of them have to go live back at home. They are screamed at that they should "get a job" when statistics show there are not many jobs out there to even get and those that do pay poorly and have little to no benefits.

Let's get something straight: no one gets to be successful completely by themselves. This is why people born to richer families and access to better health care, education, and other resources, are more likely to be successful, and those born into poorer circumstances tend to be less healthy, not as well educated, and therefore not able to rise above their class. Sure, there are those on each side who manage to defy whatever their circumstances were and rise above or sink below it. But for the most part, these stats hold true. Those who do rise from nothing, even if their family was poor, still had some help or luck along the way, whether they want to see it that way or not. And the rich corporations get rich by consolidating money and hoarding it. How do multi-billion dollar corporations like WalMart, McDonald's, and Exxon able to keep up and keep increasing their annual profits? Simple: pay your manual workers shit, hire more people part-time so not only can they not make ends meet with this job, but you have an excuse to deny them benefits, and make sure to evade environmental and other laws by exploiting loopholes to scrimp on expenses. And Congress helps them do it. CONGRESS IS COMPLICIT.

I used to work in the environmental non-profit sector. After receiving my Master's I wanted to jump back into this sector (with hopefully a hire level position and salary). But when I started interviewing, all of the groups said the same thing to me: that Congress members (and we're talking the ones with the better environmental records, mostly Democrats) wouldn't vote for any climate change legislation that coal and oil companies wouldn't agree to, and that we (environmental groups) then also had to compromise our values. So, the groups basically said flat out that they would sell out to get a bill passed on climate even if it didn't help the problem, even if it might make things worse (what with giveaways to industries on such red herrings as clean coal and carbon credit markets). This is when I knew the American people were losing, when the betrayal was so blatant that it was said outright and even the groups that were to fight for us, were giving up before the fight began.

Make no mistake, right now, corporations rule our country. They are the pimps and the Congressional reps are their bitches. They get the final say. And it's up to us to keep up the Occupy Movement or else things will only get worse. We don't have the money, but we have our voices and we have our bodies, and they should be used as instruments.

As Wendell Berry said at a moving speech he gave this fall in Cambridge (regarding why he has continued to protest strip mining even though it's still been going on for the 30 years he's been active on the issue): "It's not just about winning, though I do it with the hope of winning. It's about decency, and the obligation to make a stand for decency and refusing to accept indecency as the norm."

Let's not back down.

My Thanksgiving Thought: Time to Combat Hunger in Children

2011-11-22T12:11:00.000-08:00

This past August, ABC news reported that nearly 17 million children nationwide are struggling with food insecurity. These children, though not quite starving, live in a near-constant state of hunger and subsist on (sometimes much) lower amounts of daily nutrition than what the U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends. Hunger can lead to greater susceptibility to all sorts of diseases and can stunt intellectual capacity and even physical growth in growing bodies.

Considering we are one of the wealthiest countries in the world, this number is pitiful. There is no reason why even one child, much less 17 million, should suffer from persistent hunger. Despite this staggering number, Congress is currently debating whether or not to cut programs such as WIC and food stamps for families who are already having trouble making ends meet. Many of the same Republicans who favor these programs also favor extension of tax cuts for the mega-rich. Go figure.

Well, it's time to face hunger. Though most of us are struggling there is always something we can do. Most grocery stores have charity bins set up where you can place non-perishable food items for the holiday season. Please consider donating anything you can spare. Another way to help is by volunteering at a soup kitchen, or again donating food to it or a local food bank. You can even offer a seat at your own dinner table to a neighbor or lonely senior citizen you know is having a hard time. Even a dollar can make a difference, so donate what you can, whether it be money, time, or other goods and services. The only way we'll get past this hump our society is in, is when we start understanding and acting like we are all in this together.

Here is a link with some resources for ways to give this week:

http://www.divinecaroline.com/22347/60752-ten-ways-give-thanksgiving

And have a Great Thanksgiving!

New Look, New Updates, New Projects--Same Mission

2011-08-03T11:41:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since I have posted, but I am finally back! It was a hard year for me, with multiple illnesses and deaths in my immediate family and among close friends, so I needed to take some time to reflect and focus on myself, but now I am ready to start writing. As you can see, I have changed the design of my blog and plan to start fresh. I plan to post more regularly, offering environmental and political commentary, as well as personal and professional reflections. There is now an option to subscribe to my blog by e-mail and I will be sending out a newsletter to those who are interested.

On writing the front, I have been very busy with my freelancing and teaching writing workshops for kids and teens. I am currently a contributing editor on a text book on sustainability for a 10th grade curriculum. Earlier this summer, I had an article published in Earth Island Journal about wolves in Yellowstone. Also around that same time, the Union of Concerned Scientists finally launched their Climate Hot Map, which featured several articles I authored on the effects of climate change in specific geographical regions (specifically, I wrote the articles for Alaska, Canada and Siberia) as well as a dozen or so of which I completed revisions/rewrites. The map is a useful tool for helping people understand how climate change is really affecting us in certain parts of the world, and how it will continue to affect us in the future based on how much fossil fuels we still use. It puts a human face on the issue.

Just this week, I was the featured reader at a popular poetry series in Cambridge. Not only was it a great evening, but I sold about a half-dozen chapbooks and made a decent profit in donations. I also had some poems featured in the wonderful new online literary journal, Amethyst Arsenic, which was founded by a friend. I also have a poem about my grandmother forthcoming in the summer issue of the Naugatuck River Review, which is due out in the next week or so.

On the activist front, I just launched a new blog called Straw-Free Somerville, for which I intend to post actions and updates of/on my latest efforts to urge restaurants and grocers in Somerville and the surrounding areas to phase out/drastically reduce their use of plastic drinking straws and other single-use plastic items. Check it out at: www.straw-free-somerville.blogspot.com! Suggestions for actions welcome!

More to come soon!

Obama's State of the Union: What About Climate?

2011-01-29T10:30:00.001-08:00

Okay. So overall, Obama's State of the Union address impressed. I was glad to have him tackle education more honestly than I've been used to with politicians, to the point of proposing the dismantling of the troublesome No Child Left Behind Act. Likewise, I am glad he stuck to his guns on the health care bill, while also offering concessions if they were practical and didn't compromise the overall aim of the bill. On the environmental front, of course, he offered the good talk about the potential stimulating effects of renewable energy and expanded public transportation options on the economy and the potential for job growth. However, he never once mentioned the climate.

A former co-worker of mine rebutted to a point I made on that that Obama needs to switch the messaging to adapt to an anti-climate atmosphere. Republicans and their cohorts have been successful in re-branding "climate change" as a term tantamount to taxes and inconvenience and the death of jobs. Oh, and a fairy tale. And so, Obama needs to rebrand the message to make it palatable to the public and the new House of Representatives.

I understand, but this is dangerous terrain. I voted for Obama....there are a lot of things he's accomplished that I am proud of (the advancement of equal pay for the genders, health insurance), but I won't make excuses that he's fallen way short of my expectation, especially on climate change. In the words of Jon Stewart: "he [Obama] ran as a visionary, but has served as a functionary."

So, I am not an Obama basher, but I am not an apologist either. I call it like I see it. I may be wrong on some counts, but I don't think I am here.

First off, Obama mentioned clean coal and nuclear. Let's talk about clean coal. THERE IS NO SUCH THING. It's a myth and a distraction. It's the real fairy tale the industry fabricated to lull us into the notion that we can keep all of our current conveniences and still combat climate change, while they still make their billions. The technology for clean coal is decades away, if it ever even comes to fruition. We don't have that time, and we need to put our mind to real solutions.

For the most part, clean coal technology refers to CCS (Carbon Capture and Sequestration)--that is, the capturing emissions from coal plants and injecting it either terrestially (into rocks, mountains, etc.) or under the ocean floor. Again, it's a technology that might be up to a generation away. Plus, it's potential environmental implications are dire and range from the obliteration of ocean life on a micro- or macro-level (if the injected carbon escapes, it could over-acidify the ocean, causing mass die-offs of marine organisms), to eroding large amounts of our topsoil and infiltrating groundwater resources, to even the possibility of inducing earthquakes through the disruption of tectonic plates.

The implemention and execution of CCS technology would require more energy input than the process itself could possibly capture and attempt to store or neutralize. And in the end, none of it attempts to address the issue of extraction, which itself carries an enormous carbon and ecological footprint. Contrary to popular belief, recent studies by respectable scientific authorities (such as the National Academies of Sciences) indicate that we also seem to be about to enter an era of peak coal as well as oil. Though we technically may have the reserves, it is preserved so deeply in the Earth, we can't practically go about getting it without doing great damage.

Right now, we're blowing up hundreds of mountains in the Southeast to churn out coal. This phenomenon, known as mountain-top removal (or MTR), not only is causing enormous and irreversible damage to the land, water, air and wildlife, it is also the main contributor of a form of genocide of the culture and livelihood of the people of Appalachia. Whether or not it's "clean," there is no way we can get at the coal at the rate we would need to continue powering our current lifestyles and with our ever-growing population without continuing and even escalating this practice. There is no way we can rely on coal on any large-scale and avert catastrophic climate change.

And then there's nuclear, which I am a bit more ambivalent about, but also ultimately against. Unlike clean coal, nuclear is more genuinely a carbon neutral method of energy production. However, what sways me to shake my head when Obama sings its praises is this: it's merely the exchanging of one enormous environmental catastrophe for another, and it's another distraction. The safety issues of nuclear, it's health implications, and the waste disposal dilemma, are all things that have failed to be addressed and remedied to a sufficient level.

Here's the thing: even people who poll in favor of nuclear poll resoundingly against having a plant anywhere within a 100-mile radius of their house. If and when a nuclear plant gets built, it will be built in the backyards of poor people. And when the plants leaks or has a full-scale accident (which it will), it is the poor who will suffer and die. The current plants may have escaped the infamy of a meltdown, but there are still a myriad of reports on leaks and incidences of increased disease of those who reside near them. I lived in Vermont, which depended mostly on the Yankee Nuclear Power Plants for its energy, and this was the case.

And again, we can't build nuclear power plants at the rate needed to address our projected emissions scenario. If there was an opportunity for nuclear to fill that gap, we missed the boat on it awhile back.

Which leaves us with what? I am a huge proponet of renewables like wind and solar (when implemented intelligently and with concern and precaution for wildlife), increased energy efficiency (most of our technology can be upgraded to be 50-75% more efficient, a low-hanging fruit), and yes, a huge expansion of mass transit, expecially the railroads. But even these things can't do enough to bridge the gap.

Here's the truth: we need to scale way back on our consumption, in all ways. We need to not only change lightbulbs, but turn off the lights when we're not using them or don't need them. We need to not only buy hybrids, but avoid driving whenever possible. We need to not only buy organic or local meat, but eat a lot less meat (or even no meat). We may need to convert our economy to a network of local or regional ones. Some of us may need to not only consider raising our children as ethical environmentalists, but consider the concept of foregoing having biological children at all. Our economy may need to switch to one not based on growth, but a steady state.

We won't need to live like a "caveman" as climate deniers like to say we treehuggers want, but we may need to--gasp!--revert a few decades, at least in an emphasis of local economy. And you know what? I think that there would be better job stability, less debt, and more happiness, as a result.

And these things aren't politically palatable, are they? But here's what I wonder, how come it is politically palatable to bash gay marriage, to praise guns, to demonize all Muslims?

Republicans have gotten pretty good at playing the moral highground, even when ironically they are preaching prejudice, hate and violence (however veiled in hypotheticals and metaphor). Democrats have gotten good at being overintellectual, and talking policy. But the common people, including me, at the end of day, don't care about policy. They care about being safe, having their bills payed and their children fed. And I think, after that, a good many of them do care about being moral, though some may be confused as to what morality means.

Climate change is a moral issue. The poor people will suffer first and foremost the worst of its implications. They already are. Countless species will go the way of the dodo, many of which we depend on for our own livelihoods and survival. And then finally, climate change threatens us all, our ability to feed our children, and be safe.

And this is the message Obama missed. Even if he understandably steered clear of controversial hot topics like population, he should have reminded us of the moral angle of doing something about climate change, he should've dug in his heels as he did on healthcare. You know what I would've liked to see? Just as he brought in patients who benefitted the healthcare law, he should've brought in an Inuit to sit in the audience, whose homeland is melting away, a girl from Africa whose land is drying up...

As for the green-collar message, I get it, and it's good and needed, but it's not enough and by itself, it's just static. Fluff. Want to convince working class America of it's opporunity? Bring in people who actually work installing solar panels, whose lives have changed.

Otherwise, even to me, it sounds like we're pinning hope on a pipedream.

In Memoriam: Judy Bonds

2011-01-10T08:09:00.000-08:00

Again, I have not been writing lately. My grandmother, who raised me, died a few days after my birthday at the end of the year and this past week I attended her wake and funeral.

On the way home to Boston from Brooklyn after the funeral, I heard on the radio some sad and distressing news: another wise and strong grandmother by the name of Judy Bonds, also passed away.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the name, Judy Bonds was the premiere activist who worked against the atrocious mountain-top removal practices that are ravaging the Appalachian region and its people.

Mountain-top removal, also known as MTR, is an insidious method of coal mining which works exactly as the name suggests. Quite literally, the tops of mountains are blown off with high-powered dynamite. This not only leaves the once-lovely landscape a scarred and pockmarked ghost of its former self, but causes boulders to fly (one even went through a home a few years back, killing a young boy), and sludge and silt to fill up the neighboring valleys and streams, and coal dust to hang in the air like a haze. Obviously, this kills much of the resident wildlife.

Judy Bonds, a humble working-class woman from West Virginia and daughter of a coal miner, rose into the spotlight of a well-revered environmental activist due to her vigilant love and devotion as a grandmother.

Time and again, she referred to an incident involving her grandson as the catalyzing moment that sparked her personal revolution. In particular, she witnessed her grandson standing ankle-deep in the river by their house that was blackened with the sludge of MTR debris. He held a hadful of dead fish up to her and asked what happened to them. Bonds proclaimed that in that moment she had to fight for the land for the sake of her grandchildren and other generations who she felt were entitled to clean water and air.

Judy Bonds died of 58 of cancer. It should not be lost on us what disease she died of--cancer is rampant in Appalachia, as is Crohn's disease, ephysema, bronchitis and other ailments triggered by the ubiquity of smog and overexposure to methylmercury (inherent in coal).

Bonds went from being an unknown volunteer for the anti-MTR non-profit, Coal River Mountain Watch (CRMW), to its eventual executive director. In 2003, she was awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize. After paying for some basic healthcare for her family, she donated the bulk of the prize's winning to CRMW. Essentially, Bonds is largely responsible from catapulting the issue of MTR onto the register of the national public.

I met Bonds in 2007, when I was in graduate school at the University of Vermont. We were planning our Focus the Nation event, a national event that colleges around the country partake in that focuses on environmental issues, particularly climate change. When our original plan for a keynote speaker fell through, I contacted Coal River Mountain Watch to inquire about Bonds. Without hesitation Bonds herself got back to me, showing her interest. I had to fight the planning committee to convince them that she was the best speaker, and that MTR/coal mining has direct relevance to climate change (after all, we can't avert catastrophio climate change while still dependent on coal).

Bonds was a great success as a speaker. The large hall was packed with students and the citizens of Burlington, to the point where people were standing in the aisles. Bonds pulled no punches; she wasn't delicate and made no excuses for the industry. She let us know how bad it is in Appalachia, and what we needed to do. She did something that also is very rare: she apologized to us, to the younger generations, on behalf of hers, for the problem of climate change that we are inheriting.

After the speech and the Q & A session, she hugged me when we met for the first time in person. Later on, I authored an article on the event and Bonds for E Magazine. Since then, I kept in touch with Bonds for some time, as we continued to correspond by e-mail about the issue of coal mining/MTR. She was always quick to respond to my e-mails, and put me in touch with other people. As a journalist and activist, I will tell you it is also quite rare to have someone of such prestige be so responsive and eager as Bonds was.

I am sad to say that in the past year or so, my correspondence with Bonds waned, especially after I completed graduate school. I am especially sad to say, I didn't know she was sick. If she was while I was in touch with her, she never let on.

Bonds was a strong woman. I am a bit aprehensive as to if someone will be able to carry her torch on this front. I will tell you, though, that the issue of MTR has never faded in my mind as one on the forefront of societal wrongs we need to correct.

MTR continues today. Please, in memory of Judy, put your voice into this fight, protest against Massey and other coal companies that practice MTR, and consider donating to Coal River Mountain Watch.

As Bonds herself liked to quote of an old Hopi tribe saying: “You are the one that you’ve been waiting for.”

For both Bonds and her memory, and for our own futures, let's carry her torch.

For more on Judy Bonds and her death:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/04/AR2011010406697_2.html?hpid=moreheadlines

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-novack/judy-bonds-mtr-activist-a_b_805489.html

Throwing Rocks at Birds a Sign of Sexism?

2010-11-19T08:57:00.000-08:00

In addition to freelancing, I work half-time as a teacher at an after-school program for middle school students. Yesterday, I overheard a cluster of the boys talk about how "cool" it was to throw rocks at birds, and how funny it was to watch one stumble and fan out its wing when you've hit your mark. I grimaced but didn't say anything at the moment.

They moved on to talk about guns, and one boy said it was more fun to shoot a bird with a gun than a rock on a sling-shot. I still sat still, listening. I wanted to know more about their inner-lives.

The talk stopped and I watched a flirtatious play (this was all outside) between these same boys and some girls like some dance they didn't quite know the moves to, but were trying all the same. One of the girls came up to me conspiratorially and let me know which girl had a crush on which boy, and I watched, with some whimsical nostalgia, as she tried to become endearing to him, even tossing the football at his request.

The girls then scattered away and the boys went over to the playground section. A few minutes later, I overheard their conversation again, referring to these same girls (mind you, only about 13) as "bitches" and "sluts."

I called them over without any attempt to conceal my anger. They shuffled to me with their eyes on their shoes the whole time.

"Did you just say what I thought I heard you saying?" I asked, my voice low with contained rage.

They stammered sheepish, "yes's" followed immediately by "sorry's."

"Sorry is not enough!" I replied. "I will not tolerate those words against girls, do you understand me?"

They again apologized. I went on to say that as a woman, I take personal offense to such terms and that using them is a sheer form of sexism.

"And while we're at it," I added, "I also have no tolerance for animal abuse. You think it's cool to talk about throwing rocks at birds? It's not. It's pathetic. And I don't like talk of guns, either."

At this point, one boy became defiant.

"Well," he began, while jutting out his chin and glaring at me brazenly, "I am a shooting champion. I've won awards. I should be able to be proud of my accomplishments."

"Okay, that's fine. You shoot birds for medals?" I asked. He looked away and shrugged.

"How about rock throwing? Is there a medal for throwing rocks at birds?"

There was silence for a few seconds, before he muttered a "no." I finished up by reminding them I never want to here those words about girls or birds again, and they better not think of commiting actions to go with those words.

After that, I recommended them for further punishment and a talk with their parents by my supervisor, but who knows if that will happen? And who knows if the parents will even take any recourse if they are informed?

I wish I could say this was my first experience of its kind when dealing with adolescents, but it's not.

About two years ago, as a graduate student in Burlington, Vermont, I and a friend of mine were watching and admiring a flock of visiting waxwings at the fountain in the town center square.

Suddenly, some rocks and twigs flew by us and made the birds scatter. I thought maybe it was a mistake. But it happened a few times more, and at one point a small pebble grazed the outstretched wing of a bird.

It was a group of pimply and slouchy high school boys about 30 feet away, branding their rocks like small weapons against the world. I stalked over and stood there and said simply, "Stop it."

Again, they all avoided eye contact. But one of the more brazen boys dared to glance at me a couple of quick times, before protesting that it was a fun thing to do.

I changed tact, asking what towns and schools they are from. Funnily enough, the brazen boy said he was from Brooklyn.

"Oh yeah? Me too! What part?" He looked away and didn't answer.

"I am from Sunset Park," I continued looking toward the birds. "And I think you are lying. A boy like you would be beat up in my neighborhood, immediately. And boys from Brooklyn usually have better things to do than take swipes at birds."

He then lashed out with a diatribe about being bored in Vermont, and that I was right, there was nothing better to do than beat up on birds.

I don't remember my exact reply, but it was along the lines of only boring people are bored, and that he must be one spoiled rotten kid without any appreciation for life if this was how he gets his kicks in a town as beautiful and safe as Burlington. He got angry, and said I was the only one in the square with a problem with what he was doing, and for me to go away. When I wouldn't, HE THREATENED TO PUNCH ME IN THE FACE.

This was when something interesting happened: the boys he was with, who up to this time, snickered at everything he said, got stiff. Several of the started saying, "Shut the fuck up, Jeremy."

And then one of them said, "If you hit her, we'll all hit you," while the posse nodded in agreement. The boy who came to my defense then turned to me and apologized for what his friend said, saying he wouldn't let him hurt me. None of them would.

This seemed to disarm the leader, with his friends now against him, as he took his need to show violence and dominance just one step too far for their liking. At that point they started to leave, and I walked away.

You might think it's weird that such experiences struck me twice, but no, there was a third time.

My first experience with violence toward birds was on the ferry to Martha's Vineyard. Just as we reached the Island, I saw seagull fly by only a few feet above me. I watched it duck to miss a mid-flight rock clearly aimed at it. I then heard an audience of laughter. I turned around and saw a group of all boys, probably only about ten years-old. Behind them a group of adult men to which they clearly belonged, either as fathers or coaches. They also stood by, laughing.

"Who threw that rock?" I asked loudly.

The laughter of both the boys and their adult companions immediately died down.

"Me!" One small blond boy in a baseball cap smiled.

"Well, it's not funny. How would you like it if somebody bigger than you came along and chucked a rock at your head? Hmm, would you like that?"

"No..." he said and again, with the same stammering as the middle schoolers I scolded yesterday.

There are studies that show that many people who abuse their wives and children started at a young age on animals, and I cannot help but think of that and make the connection here when the I hear boys bragging about abusing birds and then branding women "bitches" in the same breath, or when I get threatened with a punch from a boy abusing birds I am attempting to defend. On a smaller scale, even if these boy don't grow up to be wife or child beaters, I still think they are going to be prone to a proclivity toward a need for dominance that will materialize in subtler yet still potent forms of sexism, racism, and speciesism.

I should also say we as a society who may have problems with this behavior in our boys need to start clearing our throats and speaking out. Why was I the only one in the square to speak up against those high school boys, all bigger than me? There I stood, at a towering 5'4 and a mere 105 lbs, against a group of boys in defense of birds in a crowded square full of adult men and women just as capable of voicing their annoyance.

Why did I have to snap at the ten year-old in front of fathers who should know better and have taught these children respect for other life? Why did they not only not scold this boy but laugh along with him? Even at my school, I wonder how often the other staff may have also heard such things from our students, and let it go altogether or with just a wrist slap.

The term, "boys will be boys," though not spoken verbatim out loud as often as it was 20 or 30 years ago, is a phrase that still embodies a mentality that pervades our society.

It is used to excuse everything from sexual harassment to abuse against animals. When I was an adolescent, I was often a victim of the same terms used above, though at that age, I had not even kissed a boy yet and dressed conservatively. I was even touched inappropriately a few times. The teachers let these taunts endure under the guise of "boys will be boys," until I took justice literally into my own hands by slapping and punching the boys in defense of my body and mind. Guess who got into trouble?

To be silent on these matters is to condone them. As I said, I am a small statured woman. What I lack in muscles, I make up for with words. I have a voice, and if I don't use it to right societal wrongs and protect others, what good is it?

From the responses I receive from these boys when I called them out for their wrong-doing--the lack of eye contact, the stammering--it is obvious they are uncomfortable with having themselves questioned. Even the adults on the ferry looked down in shame when I scolded the boy. This proves the worth of speaking out against injustice. When you shine a light on it, it shrivels down to a tiny size. The actors inflicting the damage feel small.

It's important to call out injustice at every opportunity, and especially when we see small prejudices sprouting limbs in our young. These young people are our future, and we can't cultivate narrow minds by saying nothing or chalking it up to their age or gender. Age and gender are not excuses. These boys are still young enough to feel shame when caught in an act of abuse or prejudice. And you know, I think even adults can be shamed too, when stripped of their mobs and stared at in the eye.

So, please, when you see injustice or hear words of prejudice, SPEAK UP!
Stand tall and say something! This is no small feat, and you may be saving lives (however small, or winged) in the process....

And now, I leave you with a few quotes to ponder:

"Your silence will not protect you." -Audre Lorde

"He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it."-Martin Luther King, Jr.

And Now I Take on the Tea Party

2010-10-24T19:26:00.000-07:00

"...and I want you all to remember--that you must not dream yourself back to the times before the war, but the dream for you all, young and old, must be to create an ideal of human decency, and not a narrow-minded and prejudiced one."
-Kim Malthe-Bruun, Danish Resistance leader against the Nazis, in a letter written to his parents the night before his execution.

I have mostly kept silent on the Tea Party. I was hoping we could ignore them and they would go away. But the recent rash of elections in the past year (starting with Scott Brown's in my current home state of Massachusetts) shows that this is not a mere marginal group that will exhaust itself any time soon. The media and public have done a good job of propping up and inflating the movement and it has grown into its own and gained steam. And now I find myself increasingly disturbed with the rhetoric coming from the Right, and the swelling of prejudice among the Tea Partiers.

The quote above is from a man who was executed for smuggling Jews across the sea to Sweden (which remained immune to the expansion of German imperialism during the second World War) during the occupation in Denmark.

We all learn in school that the Holocaust was horrible. But I think we forget how it began. So I want to remind any readers that happen across this page that have either forgotten their history or never learned.

Due to their loss in the first world war, Germany was experiencing a lot of financial hardship. The public were frustrated with their nation's sliding on the totem pole of world power and their own struggles to make ends meet. Frustration gave rise to a need for an outlet, a scapegoat.

When Hitler rose to power, he tapped into that frustration and channeled it toward an easy scapegoat: the Jews. Many Jewish people were shopkeepers and business people, and didn't seem quite as scathed by the economic situation as their non-Jewish German counterparts. And so, the anti-Semitic sentiment rose. It started at first with milder cues, a general debunking to second class citizenship. It started with just some words, a branding. But despite the mantra of sticks and stones, these words eventually evolved into the worst violence of our modern history. The scapegoating also expanded to include homosexuals, the handicapped or disabled and Catholics, among others.

But we shouldn't forget how it started. As with almost all things, it started with something small. The seeds of frustration and prejudice, which bloomed into full blown fear and hatred that then begot genocide.

Now, if we fast forward ahead, I see the same seeds being planted or organically taking root in the minds of many Americans. We have here in the U.S. a failed economy and a shrinking (or I should say, a disappearing) middle-class. People see manufacturing jobs shipped overseas, and they are struggling. So it seems it's time again for some scapegoats.

I have read and listened a lot on the radio to the Tea Party rhetoric. I've seen pictures of a lot of the signs being waved at their rallies. And though I am sure there really are some salt of the Earth type of people who are just exasperated at the economy and government spending, in the end, the loudest and most virulent voices in the movement confirm my suspicions and fears. At its core, the Tea Party is a movement of collective xenophobia and prejudice of the dreaded "other."

The Tea Party is a backlash against a president who is dark-skinned and has a funny name, who was born out of wedlock and raised by a single mother for a time, and then--gasp!--spent a part of his childhood overseas mingling with other children (who also happened to have brown skin). It probably doesn't help that his wife is a successful and brilliant lawyer who has made more money than him.

I am trying not to simplify, but encompassed in the Tea Party movement--a movement of which the demographic is notably (highly) disproportionately skewed toward white and middle-aged individuals--is the faction known as the birther movement. Though not always outwardly embraced, the tolerance of this faction within the movement by the higher ups in the Tea Party confirms its root sentiment of prejudice.

For the record, I will say I am not a hardcore Democrat or Obama apologist/fan. In states I've resided where I am allowed to be registered as an Independent and still partake in primaries, I have been. In more local elections, I have voted for third parties. In the larger elections, I've tended to vote Democrat by default--not so much proudly, but because I feel like they are slightly less indebted to large corporations and are generally more socially and racially tolerant, as well as more dedicated to environmental protection. If you look through the roll call of Congress, the Democratic party has more women and minorities among their representatives. The idealogy of racial and gender inclusion that is more inherent to the Democratic party resounds with me.

In the 2008 election, I voted for Obama. I had reservations about him based on his voting records. My feelings since the election can most accurately be described as ambivalent. I think he's done some great things that I am proud of, but I also am vastly disappointed in some of his choices and in places where he has more or less (whether formally or not) continued on with Bush era policies.

But getting back to the Tea Party: I just don't buy their bullshit about their true concern being government takeover and spending.

Because is that really is their angle, then where were they when we spent a half-trillion dollars and sent several thousand young men and women to their deaths over in Iraq based on an utter lie? When we were wiretapped and our credit card and library records scoured under (and even outside of the legal limits authorized by) the Patriot Act? When our rights under freedom of speech and press became much more limited than any time in recent history? When the Bush Administration loosened trade regulations and offered tax cuts for millionares and corporations that are largely responsible for creating the huge debt and deficit that contributed to our economic collapse? And have we forgotten that it was indeed the Bush Administration that began the bank bailouts? Do these things not reek of wasteful spending and of a federal government overstepping it boundaries and taking over?

Of course they do, but Bush didn't fit the profile for an easy scapegoat because he is a white Christian male of an affluent background and with a fairly passive homemaker of a wife.

Let's get down to brass tacks. The Tea Partiers, in their bones, are afraid of becoming a minority demographic in this country. They are afraid of what is different and they are afraid of change, completely regardless of whether that "change" will save more lives, or the economy, or create a better health or educational system for the greater good of their nation. They have latched onto demagogues to scapegoat easy targets and divert our attention from the truth, and have tapped into our pathetically transparent fears.

And now, we have our scapegoats: immigrants, Muslims, and homosexuals.

We need to start speaking the truth and that is this: many of the jobs that formed the backbone of the middle-class are gone. They are gone not because of immigrants and Muslims, but because our government and corporations created an incestuous affair with each other and now the government has offered to look the other way as corporations looked for cheap and even sweatshop labor elsewhere. Both parties have been funded by the industry and have had their votes bought (though I will say the Republicans on the whole are more susceptible to this). Our economy will continue to remain in a rut as long as we rely on a system that has been tinkered with to concentrate and maintain wealth at the top 2-5% of the population. To continue concentrating wealth means we need to continue taking it from the bottom 95%, and so the rest of us will continue to suffer.

Until we are bold enough to adjust our tax code to a fair prorportion where corporations and wealthy individuals foot a larger share of the bill needed to support our national budget, we will continue to flounder.

In the meantime, the politicians know this, and so they have diverted our attention elsewhere. It's hard for our minds to grasp economics and the larger issue of the caste system, but so much easier to blame a party because their skin color, or gods, or accent, is different from ours.

I work as part-time as an educator. The other day, an 11 year-old student of mine told me she is a Muslim. Or rather, she confessed she was, while adding sheepishly, and APOLOGETICALLY, that she doesn't like to mention it as she knows people "don't like" that and could "hate" her for it.

Shame on you Tea Partiers, for making a young girl feel like she needs to keep her religion and ethnicity a secret for fear of becoming a victim of hatred and persecution in the country she and her parents were born in. This country was founded on the principals of religious and cultural freedom and tolerance.

Like Mr. Malthe-Brunn, our Founding Fathers aimed to create an ideal of human decency, that we should working to advance instead of systematically destroy. It is a distraction from the real problems we need to face.

When Writing Really Is The Only Way to Survive...

2010-10-15T10:19:00.000-07:00

I haven't written on the blog for a few weeks. Last month, my mother died. It was an expected surprise. My mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer in January 2005 after a relapse from a five year remission from her first bout of cervical cancer. She was told she'd probably only have a year to live. Since then there were a half-dozen close calls, where the phone rang and my brother told me "this is it," only for her to pull through and go another year or more before her next close call.

I stopped believing it was ever going to happen, even as she lost the ability to digest solid food, and needed a wheelchair. My mother was only 52 when she died. As mentioned the other day, her passing coincided with the second week of a new job and the crunch time of a deadline. I couldn't focus on my freelance work, so took a brief hiatus from it to attend to logistics and her funeral. At my other job, with the exception of my boss (who I told only to excuse my sense of preoccupation and to take a day off), I did not inform the other co-workers.

I didn't tell a lot of people to avoid the usual condolences, the displays of sympathy that are inevitable with such news, but don't really fit this situation. My mother was not a nice person. She was abusive and manipulative. She was an addict, and has been one since I was seven.

I grew up surrounded by drugs and addiction, where any and all of my dreams or desires for a better life (starting with going away to college) were not only openly dismissed and mocked by my mother, but were under constant attack. My mother seemed determined to destroy any future for or will I had to achieve something. I've tried to desperately to make sense of this...to understand how a mother could so willingly and violently try to take the light from her own child, to want to mold her own child into herself, while knowing herself to be diseased and despicable.

The only conclusion I can come to, and have come to again and again, is that my mother needed to validate her addiction by proving it was an inevitable outcome in the family, due to genetics or our class, or whatever other excuses she came up to justify herself to us. By doing this, she could avoid the responsibility of changing or seeking true rehabilitation. Also, of course, misery loves company. She was a sinking ship and wanted us on board all the way till the water was above our own heads.

When I was a child, I loved my mother, despite the almost constant onslaught of cruel abuse. When I became a young teenager, and the abuse became too much to bear, I almost lost it all. I started thinking about ending it all, while still desperately wanting to live. (I think about the recent rash of bullying-induced suicide. I was also bullied, both at school AND by my mother when I came home from school. It was everywhere for me. There was no escape).

I wanted to live, just not with her. But I was stuck. The thing that had to happen, is that I had to hate my mother to survive. When I loved her, her words and fists hurt. But I started to see her as someone who wasn't the woman who gave birth to me, but a stranger who was, for whatever reason, trying to destroy me. And something stony crept under my skin, and gave me some kind of strength to survive. For the next four years, until I went to college, our small apartment was a battle zone...when she spit at me, I spit back. When she hit me, I hit back. I grew taller than her (if only by an inch), and stronger. She even became a little scared of me. At the same time, I took my new attitude to school. The other students' words bounced off me, as I locked them into long menacing glares and a few cutting rebuttals that made them look away first. I stopped caring what they thought. And they knew it. They became powerless.

I lived in a neighborhood where it wasn't that exactly safe to go wandering around at night, so I didn't have the luxury of going out for walks when things got rough at home (often after dusk). I didn't have a car (couldn't afford one of course, and the age for driving in NYC was 17 anyway). I didn't have my own room, or even a door. In fact, my mother slept only about five feet from me. Of course, it was not a necessarily a 24/7 situation. When you live in quarters that close, it can be exhausting to be enemies the entire time. But bad things happened on fairly regular basis. To go longer than a week or so, without a large fight full of screaming, cursing, broken glass and at least an attempted swing or two, was a miracle.

I did what I could to survive. When I was a bit younger (10-12), I took up music. I played the flute and the keyboard. My mother sold my $400 flute that my grandmother saved up a year to buy me for my birthday for $50 worth of crack.

I then took up writing.

Paper and pens are cheap and have no resale value. I had loved words and reading and had also been dabbling in poetry for a couple of years prior, so I then turned to it full-steam. I joined drama club at school, which not only allowed me another artistic outlet that couldn't be stolen and sold without my knowledge, but kept me out of the apartment longer and often till later at night, but somewhere safe and off the streets.

When I was home, I slept a lot. When I was awake, I kept my face constantly hidden behind a book or journal and kept headphones on. I even slept with them on, so that I dreamt in musical refrains that took me somewhere far from there. My living and dreaming worlds were all about the words on the page, on the stage or being crooned to me on the radio. In bed, I often kept my journal under my pillow, with a flashlight, in case I woke up and needed to write something in the middle of the night.

My passion evolved to a career goal. I wasn't going to become another welfare mom with a bad habit living in a tenament in Brooklyn. I wasn't going to just become some regular Jane either. I was going to be a writer. Just like I my feelings toward my mother had to no longer be love but not anything lukewarm to survive my home situation, my dream had to be big enough to wrap a large rope of hope around me and pull me toward the dawn of a different day.

I had to be something that mattered in a way that mattered the most to me. Words had saved me, both the ones I wrote down and the ones I read from other writers. And now I wanted to use words again and again to save others, whether those in sad scenarios like the one I grew up in, or the wildlife we victimize with stigmas that have the same grounding in the prejudice we show to people, or in the larger world. I want to use words as both weapons to destroy hate and helplessness, and as medicine to offer hope, comfort and strength.

When I say I am writing for survival, I mean it down to my bones. It saved me and gave me meaning and sense when nothing else could have. It still does today. And even when things seem dire, as the thermostats continue to rise, as wars and genocides ravage on, as we turn up the violence on ourselves and on the animals we share this world with, I will continue to write to make sense of it, to shine a light on the injustices, and to extend it as a lifesaver to those who need it as much as I did and still do.

Won't you join me and support me in my efforts?

Apologies and Explanation for the Hiatus

2010-10-11T18:14:00.000-07:00

I apologize to my readers if you are out there. I've been absent, I know. My mother died a month ago, and it messed with my head. Her passing coincided with my second week into a new job, and during the crunch time of a major contract deadline for a freelance assignment, so I had to deal with the aftermath while also pressured to keep a polite face on and try to do work.

I will be back this upcoming week though. There's a lot to write about. The West seems to be declaring an all-out war on wolves (again), and this weekend there was the 10/10/10 Global Work Party to raise awareness and increase political pressure about addressing climate change. What I'd really like to do, though, is hear from you all, what do you want to see covered here? What problems am I not addressing in the realms of the environment, social justice, and struggling as a scribe? Please let me know!

Lessons from Literature

2010-09-16T22:17:00.000-07:00

Okay, so in response to a post on my blog's Facebook page about 350.org's 10/10/10 day of climate action someone posted an article about a Nobel Laureate who, though he agrees that we are ruining the planet, our efforts like renewable energy and eating local are useless. So we should just have fun while we can.

Okay, I have written a couple of blog posts on this space myself bemoaning our distraction with buying green and quick fix-its. This problem will not be solved without anything short of a complete makeover of our society. Or else it's game over. Furthermore, I know we've already inevitably bought a fair amount of climate change, and mass extinctions. But I won't accept that that gives us some go ahead, as in "since we already fucked up, let's make sure it's as royally as possible."

And I certainly take issue with the "since we're screwed, let's just have fun and put all the recycling in the trash and let's just let our SUV's idle overnight."

Here's the thing: we're all going to die one day. You, me, your dog, your kid. But does that mean we should jump off cliffs, smoke three packs a day, and shoot some people while we're at it, because we know the inevitability of our demise? If you are diagnosed with cancer, and your chances of recovery are slim, but possible, are you going to say "screw it all," and just do nothing, or are you going to fight like hell for that recovery, to extend your life--whether it be 2, 20 or 50 years?

We should try as a species to survive as long as possible, and to fight like hell for the extension of our fellow species. Whereas recycling and living a lower waste life as one person can address the larger issue isn't the point. It is one less person contributing to a problem.

Maybe my actions, such as abstaining from using plastic straws, won't save all marine life or even come close, but that's one less straw (and hundreds or even thousands over the course of my lifestime) spared from the sea. And that is certainly one, or even a dozen, less seabirds and mammals who will NOT choke to death on my personal waste. I owe it to myself and to other human beings and creatures to be the best person I can be, and not look to the mob for a cue or a pass on how to behave based on convenience or laziness.

Here's a favorite quote of mine to further illustrate this point:

Strolling along the edge of the sea, a man catches sight of a young woman who appears to be engaged in a ritual dance. She stoops down, then straightens to her full height, casting her arm out in an arc. Drawing closer, he sees that the beach around her is littered with starfish, and she is throwing them one by one into the sea. He lightly mocks her: "There are stranded starfish as far as the eye can see, for miles up the beach. What difference can saving a few of them possibly make?” Smiling, she bends down and once more tosses a starfish out over the water, saying serenely "It certainly makes a difference to this one."
-- From The Art of Possibility

As individuals, we must choose to not be part of a larger destructive force. We must stop excusing or justifying our destructive habits because it's part of some larger whole. This is how civilizations become undone.

Here's an old post of mine from a different blogspace a few years back, which I use samples of literature to show how dangerous such excuses and justifications are:

Today, as I sat in the sauna of my gym, I closed my eyes and tried to imagine this as the norm, a perpetual state of existence. What if, I thought, I was always encased in this heat, and could not open the door to coolness? Taking a sauna or a sweat lodge in and of itself can be a cathartic experience, but it is the baptism of cool air or a cool shower in the end that makes it complete. It makes it complete just as winter would not be worth it without the redemption of spring, or autumn without its bursts and blushes of blinding color followed by pristine, crystalline snow that makes one know the blessedness of utter silence, save for the low whistling of the wind. What, I thought again, if the seasons disappeared and I never again saw a snowflake or crimson leaf fall from a tree? What if we, (the collective ‘we’ as in humanity), knowingly or not, usurped from our children and our children’s children these things?

In August 2007, I relocated from Washington D.C. to Burlington, Vermont to begin graduate school at the Rubenstein School for the Environment and Natural Resources of the University of Vermont and a research assistantship with the Vermont State Climate Office as an assistant to the state climatologist. I was often asked by my friends why a poet, a former English major, would pursue a science degree as her age chafes 30. It is literature and poetry that delivered me to this path and I want to explain.

Only a few months before my departure from D.C., the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change—which is comprised of 2,500 of the world’s top scientists, climatologists, and meteorologists—issued a dire report and plea to our planet’s governments for a massive reduction of greenhouse gas emissions effective immediately. The report warned that over the course of the century, including now, millions of people will die as a result of droughts, floods and dwindling resources incurred by global climate change. It is the poorest even in our most prosperous nations who will suffer most. An extinction rate of at least 30-50 percent of our world’s species is likely to occur. This will include even the loss of many of our most gorgeous and charismatic creatures, such as polar bears, tigers, wolves, and whales. The collapse of our ocean’s fisheries is imminent, and the ocean is where life began.

I am not a stupid person and I am rarely spontaneous. I do not latch onto fads as the seasons change, nor do I cling to platforms without rigorously questioning each belief. My belief system is compiled of a fierce marriage between controlled emotion and stringent logic, complemented by the lofty love a poet usually possesses for the raw art of nature. In the end, I changed my career course, not in a 180-degree turn, but shifted gears slowly as I read and became aware through my studies of what the world is going through and how humanity is culpable. In the end, I put my writing (which to me was life itself all encompassed in cups of coffee and my keyboard) on the backburner, because what I earnestly think we are dealing with might be the death of poetry, the death of books, the end of species. And literature taught me to take action.

The most profound concept I correlate to climate change as seen in literature is Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery.” Most people read the story in junior high. The story presents a dystopian town that has managed its peace by picking a person for the lottery. Initially, you are led to believe she (the person picked for the lottery) has won something, but all she wins is a death sentence. To supposedly maintain peace and equilibrium in this fictional society, a person is picked at random and stoned to death. To me, the poignant part is the implicit rationality of this crime: everyone is stoning her, and yet everyone probably believes themselves as less guilty because s/he is merely a facet of the larger whole. “My rock isn’t the one that killed her” one of these characters is implied to think. Another might justify the action in that that “…if I put my rock down, she’ll still die.” Underlying this subconscious dialogue I imagine and ascribe to these mostly anonymous characters, is the theme of never questioning the rule of the society, a rule that offers up murder and destruction to keep it going.

Another literary work I often think of is Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. In both the book and the movie there is a scene where a woman is hung. The most striking point is this “traitor” woman is hung by all the handmaids as the rope of the gallows is long and intricately woven throughout a stadium through hundreds of rungs. Each woman must pull at the rope in order for her to hang. I imagine a dozen inner-dialogues much like the ones above, where the women attempt to acquit themselves of the larger crime and dismiss her own part in the destruction of life.
How spontaneously small and large all of our actions are…sometimes I subconsciously wipe my hands on the legs of my pants, attempting to rid them of the blood of future generations, but the sour salty-taste of it sometimes stays in my mouth, and provokes dreams of red hot landscapes void of anything lush or soft. When I wake up, I go to work and school as if nothing is happening. When I come home again at night, when the whir of society has slowed down and the humming in my head softens to a lull, I think of the stone in my hand or the rope I am pulling. I want the strength to drop them both and say no. I want others to join me and to hear a million stones drop to the ground. I want our parts in this play to stop before the climax brings about the blood I fear, rising with the sea levels as the Arctic ice melts.

With climate change and the vast components of destruction that will accompany it in the coming decades, I see us all as co-conspirators with these same inner-dialogues as implied in literature. That is, for those of us who pause to think about it at all. If we continue to propagate and consume at our current rate, there may be children born to this Earth who will know very little or nothing of rain and there will be many others who will drown; the states of existence in between will begin to blur. There may be no leaves that burst like fireworks of color, no snow, no striped or furry animals to gush over. It can happen sooner than we think, and it will happen especially if we do not think. Both Jackson and Atwood were aware that society can wire itself the wrong way, and that for better or worse we all can get caught up in that wiring. They also both knew that such wiring can only be undone by the first brave ones to refuse the rocks or ropes they have been handed; just a few brave ones are needed in each town to start the ripple effect…

Everyday, there are a dozen different ways in which we can change. The greatest thing we can learn is to live in harmony with, instead of against, the nature of our planet. This means nothing less than completely reconstructing our entire society and perception of the world and our relationship with it. From the things we put into our mouths to how we process and dispose of all the various wastes we create, WE MUST CHANGE.
This means consuming much, much less and boycotting Black Fridays, buying things out of necessity instead of desire, and purchasing things that are either recycled, second-hand, made of sustainable materials and/or that will endure. It means canvas bags instead of “paper or plastic.” It means not driving whenever possible. It means replacing light bulbs. It means eating as locally as possible and eating low on the food chain more often since meat production is responsible for a large part of our greenhouse gases and the oceans are being overfished to the point where it will soon fail to recover. It means keeping small, sustainable families or drowning one’s self in the gene pool, as I am very seriously considering. Finally, it means speaking to family, friends, church congregations, gyms, elementary schools and universities. It means writing not only your Senator, but your local and state officials, and our President. It means partaking in public comment periods. What can you say? That you want the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gas emissions as the Supreme Court ruled it had the authority to do back in 2007. That you support mandatory caps on our emissions. That you want the government to eliminate oil subsidies and to switch those subsidies to promote and perpetuate renewable energy sources. That you would like a far-reaching public transportation initiative that is accessible and affordable to the general public. Though personal feats are integral to addressing this issue, governmental involvement and mandates need to be enacted to ensure that the industrial sector will be on board. And most of all, we need a paradigm shift in our society. We the people must begin to think and act within our planet’s means.

My intention is not to be alarmist, but what we are dealing with is alarming. This essay is an appeal for my future and that of the following generation. When one gets upset one is often told as comfort “It’s not the end of the world.”

In this case, though, do we really know?

DUMPED! How Not to Be an A-hole When Moving On...

2010-09-06T09:35:00.000-07:00

Most of my adult life, I have lived either in college towns (New Paltz, New York; Amerhst, MA) or in the sections of cities that harbor large populations of college students (right now I live right near Tufts University in Somerville).

This is both a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing because it allows for progressive politics, a community that embraces the arts, and a generally youthful and vibrant atmosphere that can help keep us non-college students youthful and vibrant as well. It's a curse because you also get to deal with the sometimes drunken and often discourteous antics of late teens and early 20-something experiencing their first taste of freedom. For all practical purposes, they are adults, but their minds are more or less still adolescent. Yes, they pay rent and bills, drive cars, etc., but in many of those cases, it's not really them footing those bills, it's their parents. So, many of them get the freedom of adulthood while still being coddled like children.

Which is why, I suppose, they have no problem cluttering the sidewalk curbs with their shit at the beginning and end of every school semester. September 1st is an exciting day for my junk-raiding friends, who often find fairly newish stuff to take home for free. But no matter how much they raid, most of that stuff still winds up being picked up by the trash collector.

Here's the deal, college kids: I get that mommy and daddy bought you this stuff, and they'll probably just buy you new stuff again to replace it all. I get that you were too busy getting lit and catching up with the summer syndications of the Biggest Loser or whatever other trash is on television these days. Or maybe, since the Boston/Cambridge area is home to such uber-competitive schools such as MIT and Harvard, you were really just too busy studying, to be sustainable. I get that you have had most things handed to you, so you never think about things like the work it took to get something into your hand or mouth. But I say bullshit. It's high time you learned where your stuff comes from, and where it goes after you've barely used it.

The vast majority of your STUFF (i.e. your furniture, houseware, clothing, electronics/gadgets, books) that your parents purchased for you was created by resources like virgin wood, rare minerals, and cotton that was most likely harvested/yielded under not-so-nice circumstances, and then fashioned into the end product you used for such a brief period by the sweat of shop (and maybe even, slave) laborers (many of whom are children much younger than yourselves) for pittance wages overseas.

Then, when you leave it for the trash man, he takes it to the landfill, which is most likely situated near an impoverished community. Not only do the poor people then have to deal with the brimming lanfill down the block, and breathe in its stench, but they even will develop cancers from the stuff like your used electronics as the metals in them like mercury and lead leech into the air, ground and water and deal with the adverse effects on the resident ecosystem.

Let's take cell phones for instance: cell phones require a mineral called Coltan to make them work. This mineral is largely found in the Congo. Consumer pressures to come up with more Coltan to fuel the Western world's insatiable appetite to have a hip new phone every season is helping fuel a bloody civil war over there, and driving the Mountain Gorilla to extinction.

But hey, at least you get to text Tammy about the latest joke that made you LOL or your latest hot lay at any time of the day or night. What's a few dead bodies, raped teenaged girls and an extinct species in some hot continent overseas--as well as an increased risk of developing a brain tumor--in comparison for the satisfying returns of our constantly plugged-in culture?

I don't care if you have a "Save the Seals" bumper sticker on your SUV, and I don't care that you buy the fair trade latte at the Atomic Bean, if you are not walking the talk in your life in terms of your consumer choices, you are part of the problem. And I don't buy that you are too busy, that your intentions are good...blah blah blah. I bet if you clock in half the time into trying to be a more conscientious consumer, that you do texting and fooling around on Facebook, this world would be a much different place. A much better place.

So, if you actually care to make a difference, here's how not to be an a-hole come moving day:

1.) Consider storage.

Are you coming back next semester? Are you leaving only for a semester or year for an internship? If you are, please consider storing your stuff while you are away, instead of just throwing out to buy again. Check with friends and family first, to see if you can unload some of your stuff with them, in their basements/garages, or for them to use. If not, consider renting a storage space. Depending on how long you plan to be gone, and what service you use, the price might even be cheaper than refurnishing new when you return.

2.) Sell your stuff...

Most of the time, the stuff you are trashing is in good, if not excellent, condition. We're in a shitty economy, and chances are, unless your parents are Wall St. tycoons, even they are feeling the crunch. You may think that Harvard B.A. in anthropology promises you job security after graduation. You're wrong. So start thinking practically. If you really can't take your stuff with you, sell it at a discount. There are trendy consignment clothes shops that would salivate at the chance to resell your hipster wardrobe. I can tick off five off the top of my head here in Somerville & Cambridge. You can trade them in for some cash or store credit. Most stores that sell used books or CDS will also buy said items from you if gently used. For your college textbooks, virtually all college bookstores will buy back your books, even if you were liberal with your yellow highlighter with them.

Granted, all of these places will offer you a pittance of what you paid; the college bookstore in particular might offer you something like $5 for a $50 textbook even if it's mint condition...but it's something. Store credit is a better deal over cash. As for the college bookstore and its audacity at robbing you blind, at least take solace in that you are helping some poor sap of a kid whose parents can't foot his bills who can now buy your book at discount (this was usually me).

If you want a better deal for your goods without even the effort of stepping outside of your house, use the Internet. There's Ebay, Amazon, and of course, Craig's list.

You get to set your price, and people will not only pay it, but they'll come to you, and you'll get rid of that stuff pronto. Don't think so? I've sold things on CL like old tupperware and throw pillows (yes, throw pillows!). Everytime I've posted things on CL, thinking no one will want it, I get 20 emails in my Inbox an hour later. Usually, I am rid of everything with a day or less of posting.

3.) Give it away...

Unless you live in the bumblefuck boonies, you have either a Salvation Army in your town or a Goodwill. Most likely, you have both. As long as it's in decent condition, they'll take your crap, and pretty much anything you got, from furniture to books to a blender. Shit, Salvation Army will even come to you (arrange a pick-up) in many instances if you don't have a car.

Besides Goodwill and Sal's, most towns have their own local, independent thrift stores. When I lived in Burlington, Vermont, it was RecycleNorth (now known as reSOURCE). In Silver Spring, Maryland, it was the Unique Thrift Store (there is also a separate Unique Thrift Store chain in the midwest).

It just takes a few minutes to flip through a yellow pages to find these stores, or do a Google search. Easy-peasy.

And again, there's Craig's list. It has a FREE section. Just post and watch the people reply! You can even post what's called a "CURB ALERT," or "PORCH ALERT" for those last-minute giveaways. Just let the masses know you moved or are moving, and left items XYZ on the curb or your porch and it's first come/first served. When my neighbors move and leave their stuff on the curb, I always post a courtesy CURB ALERT on CL. And the stuff always gets snatched up before the trash man comes. Not only does this keep perfectly usable goods out of the landfill, this helps out low income people get stuff without wallaping their wallets.

I do have a reservation about curb alerts, though. Our cities are seeing an explosion in bedbugs. By leaving your stuff outside, it can become infested with bedbugs and then it gets passed on to the poor, probably low income, person taking it home. This especially goes for furniture with cushions, but even hardwood and electronics can get bedbugs. Which is why you should try to get rid of your stuff before it's moving day, or at the least post an alert right away, to reduce chances of infestation. On this same note, if you have things like a cat, or are a smoker, please be honest in your posting. People have allergies, and it's good to be honest. Don't worry, there are plenty of people who will still snatch up your stuff.

In addition to Craig's list, there's also Freecycle, which is an online forum for giving away and finding stuff in your community. You need to sign up for a membership account, but it's free and only takes a couple of minutes.

You may also be able to find an online forum for your town with a free classified section you can also post in. Seriously, this takes such a short amount of time...

4.) Recycle what you can't sell or give away...

Are your books too ratty or old to resell or donate? Do you have a a bunch of Playboy magazines you're too embarassed to sell and Sal's won't except them as a donation (I am sure there are some 14 year-old boys who would buy them off you)? A little known fact is that most cities and states now accept magazines and books in their paper recycling. So, when it comes time to get rid of these things, simply opt to put them in the blue bin with your paper waste, instead of the trash can (you can easily cover up those naughty PB's with newspaper and other paper waste). Check your state or city website first to make sure this is the case.

Is the problem that your printer or computer or stereo don't work anymore?
All BestBuy outlets now accept used/non-working electronics for recycling, regardless of where you bought them from. Additionally, most major cities, and even many towns have both municipal places that specialize in the recycling and refurbishing of electronics, as well as private companies or NGOs. Some of them will even arrange a pick up. For instance, here in the Boston area, there's a place that specializes in electronics recycling called Earthworm Recycling. There are even some national places you can mail your used electronics to...this is especially easy with cell phones. To find a place near you, check out this link by the EPA: http://www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/materials/ecycling/donate.htm.

Some of these places may charge a fee, but many are also free. Shop around, but whatever you do, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, try to find these places and use them. Landfilling electronics is an awful thing. They are chock-full of carcinogenic metals and plastics that leak when they become wet, wreaking havoc on local ecosystems and endangering the long-term health of people living nearby.

5.) Buy second-hand or refurbished...or consider not buying at all.

We are obsessed with consumption. We always think we need another car, another phone, another item. At the same time, we're working more and harder, getting sicker, have shorter attention spans, and are less happy as a people than we were a few decades back. The truth is, we're exhausting our resources, we're exploiting other people, and even allowing people and species to die off to ensure the endurance of minor conveniences in our life. Recycling your stuff is a good start but you need to also support recycling from the other end, and reduce your consumption.

This doesn't go for just college kids, it goes for all of us. It goes for me. The truth is, I am targeting the college kids, because I feel their consciences are more active than us more mature adults. In Vermont, there were plenty of 18 year-olds who SCHOOLED ME about sustainability...about what it really means.

So, next time you feel the need to head to the mall, or buy yourself a new pair of shoes, ask yourself not only do you really need it (which of course you probably don't), but 1.) if it's worth all the suffering that went into it, if that kind of suffering is something you are willing to perpetuate with your purchasing power; 2.) if it will make you happier or your life better (and I am not just talking about that drugged kind of rush you get seeing your credit card swiped or using said item the first time or two, I am talking about a lasting sense of happiness and satisfaction), and 3.) If this is something you'll have awhile and invest in maintaining.

For those things you do need or want, please try to source them second-hand first. I made a pact with myself to do this. With the obvious exception of underwear, socks (which I buy from sweatshop-free American Apparel) and occasionally shoes (I have special orthopedic needs for my formerly clubbed foot), I buy all my clothes from thrift or consignment shops. I borrow books from the library and barter with friends, or buy at my local used bookstore and either resell or donate them when I am done. I now only use used cell phones (purchased from DotCells) and I recycle my old ones. When my at-home freelance writing business required a printer, I bought a refurbished one (whenever you search for an electronic product on Amazon, most brands will have used and refurbished models of what you are looking for).

I am not perfect. I still need to improve. I am mentioning these things not to be on a high horse, but just to show that it's more than possible to live a life prioritizing an heirloom (creating products that last a loong time, and reusing their parts) mentality, without being stuck in the stone age.

So, let's do it, let's stop dumping on other countries and communities in our relentless desire for STUFF.

Want to know more about the environmental and labor issues connected to the creation and waste of our electronic products? Please visit the website of the Basal Action Network (BAN) at: http://www.ban.org/

Katrina Poem

2010-08-29T20:24:00.000-07:00

This week is the 5 years anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, one of the deadliest hurricane's in our country's histoy. Over 1,800 people lost their lives, and tens of thousands more lost their homes and livelihoods. While the hurricane itself was a natural disaster, the devastation was a manmade disaster. If we insist on placing people in a hurricane-prone place below sea level and yet refuse to build up the levees to the safety standards required--especially as global warming threatens to make these storms stronger--we have no right rebuilding.

I was living in the Washington D.C. area when the events of Hurricane Katrina unfolded. Our workplace watched the coverage on the television. Only a few months later, Congress passed a budget bill that deeply cut into services offered to our impoverished citizens--including the victims of Hurricane Katrina. This occurred off the radar. I wrote about it on my blogspace on Etalkinghead, and it was subsequently picked up for publication by Z Magazine...

Anyway, this past June, I wrote a poem about Katrina, and I thought it would be appropriate to post it here, as a more powerful way to honor those who suffered through (and/or succumbed to) the storm, rather than summon up an op-ed style soapbox. So, here it is:

Katrina, my mind still stops at the sight of your dilapidated doorways, the mold you have enmeshed between scores of floor boards & wall boards, speckled onto ceilings
And encrusted between the bone and marrow of America...
Mementos left in the wake of your wrath.

For what caused you to rain down such rage during the dog-eared days of August's end, there are many theories that range
From Climate change,
To conflicted ocean currents,
To God's reckoning against a town too much taken with
Beads, bare breasts and bourbon.

But I offer it was an invitation misinterpreted as irony:
Lean levees stacked together like playing cards, no stronger than starched sheets, beyond which lay poor black folk you could pummel,
while budget-cutting politicians strummed air-guitar elsewhere, and fat-cat casino owners flew to higher ground.

Or was it the wasted wetlands that caught your eye,
that you knew would fail to suck up the vast volume of your venom,
so dessicated were they from our willing degradation?

And I remeber the pictures, pictures of people:
sun-baked, sweat-streaked people...
parched children clinging to the the tendrils of their mothers' tattered tank tops--no food or formula to calm their collective colic...
near-catatonic elderly to week to speak or blink...
sharing the street corners with dead bodies draped in makeshift sheets, while on another road dead bloated bodies floated facedown in rising waters.

A few weeks later I learned that most of the animal shelters in the area planned ahead and transported their non-human charges safely out of state before the storm set down...while we stuffed our own citizens into a stadium like sardines into a can, or cattled being penned for slaughter...

The buses came only after the casualties, as did our own regret.
But still, we call them refugees, as though this country never knew them.

And five years later, I still can't make sense of you,
and wonder what sadistic, cosmic kin you must keep
that would now allow oil to seep up on the same shores,
swallowing up life like some horror movie blob,
ravaging resurrecting towns till
they're deemed nothing more than living rot.

New Format Proposal and Why We Need to Start Getting Personal

2010-08-20T07:38:00.000-07:00

I was thinking it's time to actually adapt a format for the blog. Right now, I am mostly picking a topic every week or so I care about. I still think it would be good to offer a long-form essay on specific issues I care to wax polemic about, but I think what I also would like is to offer a fly-by commentary on the week in the news. This blog is about sustainability, social justice and scraping by as a scribe. So I think offering a bit about each piece every week would work well.

One of the most harrowing pieces of news that came through the pipeline this week, was that old-style coal plants are expanding. That's right, the sooty smoke-stack, cancer-causing coal plants that huff black smoke. Coal is the dirtiest of all the types of energy we use, it is the worst for our health. In addition to packing the biggest climate change punch due to it containing the highest level of carbon dioxide as compared to oil or natural gas, coal is also chock-full of toxic heavy metals like mercury. Oh yeah, and the way we get most of that is by blowing the head off mountains, not only raping ancient and beautiful lanscapes, massacring fish and birds, but even destroying communities. The people in the small towns scattered across the Appalachian region (where mountain-removal, also known as "MTR," is occuring) experience increased risk of diseases like cancer, bronchitis and Crohn's disease--as do their children. Or, sometimes a child is crushed to death in his bed by a stray boulder--in this case his name was Jeremy Davidson. This seems to make us all mad, doesn't it? Maybe our eyes even well up with tears, or we tremble...but what do we do then? Where is that sense of empatheic injustice that runs so deep we can actually make the effort to stand up and walk over to our local town hall meeting?

Seriously, if the Tea Party movement folks can be prompted by paranoid fears of Obama being a non-native Muslim to shuffle over to town halls and picket outside the politician's office and upset elections--what in God's name is wrong with those of us on the other side who supposedly care about things like MTR and climate change that we simply sit still and spit out some sad words? Seriously, what is wrong with us? Words are useless without an audience--and not just of your close-knit sympathizers. We so-called socially concerned environmentalists should take a lesson from the Tea Party. And I am putting out a challenge to my fellow people in Massachusetts: if you haven't at least called Tea Party darling Scott Brown's office to complain about his horrid positions on clean energy, climate change, poverty relief, and even gay rights--you're part of the blame for his policies going national. Maybe a small part, but an important part nonetheless...and one that is on equal ground with those who propelled him to his position of power.

Other news this week was that climate refugees
are becoming more and more of a reality as record floods hit Pakistan and Moscow suffers from unprecedented heat waves and related fores fires. Also, of course, there were continuing reports of BP covering up how much oil is still saturating the Gulf.

It's easy to tune these things out. I understand it because I do it myself sometimes. Unfortunately, these things don't go away. Not only that, they will find their way to us one day, and wreak havoc in our own small worlds in ways we can only imagine. Which is why we need to start understanding the importance of the personal--no amount of my blogging here, or tweeting, or posting on Facebook, is going to supplant the need for people calling their Congress people or visiting their offices if they want change. Otherwise, we are just as much a part of the problem as those who elect backwards-looking politicians who spread prejudice and preach with money. And when the worst of our inaction comes to claim us, AND our children, make no mistake that we are just as much to blame.

Wake Up!

2010-08-12T07:49:00.000-07:00

So, anyone who has been keeping up with my blog knows how I felt about the cap-and-trade bill that was being considered by Congress. I thought it was a sell-out bill, gorged on massive subsidies for the industries that helped mess up our climate in the first place.

The bill, like so many when they are first introduced into Congress, began with good intentions and had teeth to it. But living in the boderline corporatocracy that we do, the industry eventually got their claws into it and compromised the bill till it was nothing but a faint shadow of its former self. And yet, even with all of that compromising and pandering, even with all the watering down, Congress still couldn't even muster the balls to pass it.

If that sounds crude, then so be it. I am 31 years-old and I am furious that my future and that of younger generations is being decided by a bunch of impotent older men with dollar signs for eyes. That whether or not I will live in a world with a hospitable climate for my species, is being ruled by corporate whim and a kowtowing Congress. Most of all, I am angry at some of the mainstream environmental groups, for cheerleading this tepid bill in the first place, despite its contradiction of the basic science of climate change, despite it being against everything they themselves stand for.

Instructing environmental studies classes as a graduate student, the underclassmen I taught would come up to me after class, or email me. They would tell me how scared they are for their own future, how angry they are at older people for making this mess, how heavy weight on their backs. The sad part was, these were good kids making sound choices. Most of them didn't drive, many were vegetarians, a lot of them lived very low-waste lives.

There is a problem here, and both sides of the issue are to blame. The naysayers like to say that we who care about the world want to go back to the cave, clothed in animal hides. The other side acts as though we can hocus pocus the gloom away through some fuzzy promise of a green-collar workforce, and that we can keep up our current consumption, as long as we buy "green." Neither is true. If we want to truly rise to this challenge, we will have to make huge changes to our society, we have to stop growing and become a steady state. We have to rethink everything even down to what we eat. But no, we don't have to live in caves, unless we really want to catalyze catastrophic climate change. Then we might have to whether we want to or not.

Bill McKibben wrote a great op-ed in the Huffington Post last week. He said it's time to get angry and raise our voices about climate change. We've tried to play politely, but look: any major issue that has ever been addressed in history--civil rights, women's rights, the first environmental movements--was done so because of the sweat, tears, and even blood of those willing to put themselves out there to provoke the paradigm shift needed to host the change. Perhaps our computers have made us complacent, and we think we can Tweet or Facebook our way to a new tomorrow. These may be useful tools, but they can't replace live voices and hands demanding change. So, PLEASE, if you care about this issue (meaning, if you care about surviving or maintaining a planet for those who come after us, both human and animal)--DO SOMETHING SOLID. Write your Congress people, visit their office, write a handwritten letter, boycott certain corporations that are counterproductive to the effort, speak to others even if you worry you'll alienate them.

As a writer, I hate saying this, but words are not enough--unless there are voices attached to them, and bodies, and unless there are more than one. People who care about this issue are scared of coming across as fear-mongering, or angry, but I argue we need to be afraid and we need to be angry. Our futures are being usurped by us--if past generations had our attitude, we'd still have slaves, women would still be confined to the kitchen, and many, many species would have left this world long ago.

Mr. McKibben ended on this note: "We’re not going to get the Senate to act next week, or maybe even next year. It took a decade after the Montgomery bus boycott to get the Voting Rights Act. But if there hadn’t been a movement, then the Voting Rights Act would have passed in… never. We may need to get arrested. We definitely need art, and music, and disciplined, nonviolent, but very real anger".

So, again, I challenge my fellow artists to come out of the woodworks, to make music and compose poetry that resonates with this issue. Otherwise, we may in fact be bringing on a bleak future deprived of the very things we live for...do it as much to fight for the survival of art, as for the survival of our own living, breathing bodies. Do it so that art, as well as wildlife and humanity itself, can endure!

Alaska Kills Wolves! (And Some Basic Wildlife Biology Lessons)

2010-07-27T13:26:00.000-07:00

I once had a single bumper stick that emblazoned my first car, a beat-up smurf-blue Chevy, that simply stated, "Little Red Riding Hood LIED."

I grew up in an inner-city area. The only wild animals I ever saw were squirrels, pigeons and the occasional rat, and their wildness was in question. I never saw a deer or raccoon other than behind bars until I went away to college in a more rural and mountainous setting. My eyes opened up...

Before that, at my first university, I took a class in environmental and bio-medical ethics. I was assigned a project about wolves, which was the beginning of me embarking on some path I still haven't quite finished traveling on. At the end of the semester, the professor, an animal biologist with a compassionate streak for his subjects, bought me a book on wolves as a gift to foster my new passion. As he put it in my hands, he said, "When you understand the wolves, the rest kind of all comes together...it's like coming home to yourself."

Wolves are not the only subject of my fascination with nature, but they definitely marked the beginning and the pinnacle of it. Because of them, I put aside my poetry and my dreams of writing to pursue a path as a wildlife biologist and natural resource scientist. I couldn't underscore the significance of this enough even if I spent a whole book writing on it. I do not possess a naturally scientific mind; numbers scare me, and though I love nature, I still have a city girl's stubborn fear at being in it alone or for too long. Yet despite this, I went down this path, bringing with me a poet's perspective of our endangered wild world and marrying it to the science I learned over the course of the next several years...

ABRUPT BUT RELEVANT SUBJECT CHANGE:

Sometimes, I have to say, I find myself a bit putoff by the plague of ecological illiteracy that pervades our society.

The other day at an open reading, someone read a poem she wrote. At one point, she speaks of a family of ducks, describing the father duck and its role in the group. Something in me cringed because I know ducks by nature to be a promiscuous species. That is, the daddy duck doesn't stick around much after he's planted his seed, and he definitely doesn't invest in his children.

Geese, on the other hand, are monogamous and both genders work together to raise their young. I know this from my schooling. I also know a general rule of thumb for figuring out the sexual proclivities of many species: among animals, the species in which it's hard to differentiate gender because the two look nearly identical are usually monogamous and raise young together. However, when the colors differentiate wildly among an animal of the same species, this indicates the males are generally gigolos.

This is particularly true of the majority of bird species: consider the emerald green of a mallard's neck as compared to the dull, drab brown of the female, or the multi-eyed tail of a male peacock next to his intended. Now, think of the little brown sparrows that are everywhere, or the geese, and how you can never tell one from another, think of the lack of bright crisp colors among them all.

BUT GETTING BACK TO WOLVES....

Wolves, whose physical differences as accorded by are slight (some males tend to be slightly bigger than the females), usually mate for life.

Okay, so some of you may be finding my depiction of wolves as over-romantic, a case of the goggle-eyes for some specimen of charismatic megafauna.

I'll admit, yes, maybe I am romanticizing a bit. But when I lived in Alaska I never feared a wolf attack while walking through the woods (ask me about bears, and get a different answer). In all of our recorded North American history, there has only been ONE case of a healthy wolf killing a human being. I have often had to correct a zoogoer as she instructs her child of a wolf's man-eating nature. So, perhaps my romanticism is a backlash against the severe and overindulgent (and undeserved) hatred, fear and persecution we have subjected them to, as often begun in the cradle when our toddler ears first hear the words, "the Big Bad Wolf."

Our ignorance about wolves, runs deep and brings with it bloody consequences. Even in our supposedly civilized modern world, wolves are still shot from planes and helicopters and the mothers wolves followed home to the den of pups who are then gassed. In Alaska, this is known as an aerial hunting and predator program, and it claims the lives of hundreds of wolves every year.

In Alaska, and other places out West where similar programs are being considered, the politicians prey on people's basic ignorance of wildlife population dynamics. We are told the wolves overpopulate, that they are eating all of our livestock and wild prey, that they are a danger. That, even though it may sound sad, killing them off is an tragic necessity to ensure our race's own well-being and survival.

Here's a quick ecology lesson: in natural conditions (like Alaska), top-food chain predators such as wolves self-regulate their populations. It hits a threshold and levels off. Through some sheer miracle of biological intuition the wolves themselves are not conscious of, their breeding and birthing cycles are dependent upon availability of food, the amount of territory they have, and the harshness of the season, among other factors. A female wolf's body will literally self-abort fertilized eggs under strained conditions. Also, with wolves, it is usually only the alpha pair in a given pack that has puppies, further restricting population growth. Prey species on the other hand, do not self-regulate, and in the absence of top-chain predators will grow unrestrained, overbrowsing their territory and eventually committing a collective suicide.

Now, here's what happens in Alaska: wolves are blamed for killing off moose populations--nevermind that most studies on the subject show that wolves actually have a relatively low success rate in killing an adult moose (Have you ever seen a moose up close? They are mighty big MF'ers; one quick kick of their hind legs to a wolf's head will crack its skull open).

Now, we are told that the people of Alaska need to hunt moose for subsistence, especially indigenous people, and that the wolves are competing too much with people for basic food(again, a moose stands a much better chance with a wolf pack than a single well-aimed hunting rifle). What politicians like ex-governors Frank Murkowski and Palin won't tell you is this: out-of-state hunting tourists bring in a nice revenue, and the state wants to keep them coming. Essentially, Alaska is harvesting more moose by instituting mass culls on their predators in select areas (often areas that get a lot of out-of-state tourists looking to bag the biggest bull moose they can find) to keep to money flowing (though I don't think it's all money, some deap-seated stereotypes and hatred is also playing a part).

Here's what happens with the wolf culls: they kill a bunch of them willy-nilly, shooting them from the air like it's a video game target. In the absence of the wolves, moose populations EXPLODE. Then either one of two things happen, which is that the sportshunters have a field day picking off the vast abundance of moose, or the moose now overbrowse their territories and so eat themselves out of their own food supply. Their populations then crash. This usually happens right around the time wolf populations are recovering. Then we get to blame the wolves again, and authorize more killings, and so the cycle goes on. And on. And on.

When I lived in Alaska, I worked with the Alaska Wildlife Alliance (AWA), on this issue. I collected signatures for a ballot to overturn the program (the state's people voted twice to get rid of it by ballot, though by an admittedly small majority). First observation: individuals of inidigenous origin were resoundingly against the program (perhaps because, like biologists, their rich heritage gives them a deeper understanding of the predator-prey relationship than the rest of us).

Second observation: People in favor of the program liked to pin on the opposition hyperbolic assumptions--that we are crazy, PETA-loving vegans. This was ironic because even though they called us the zealots, they were the ones often pelting rocks at our table and screaming things like, "The only good wolf is a dead wolf." Now, almost everyone in Alaska, even in the cities, either hunt, fish, or has someone in the family who does it. The people of the AWA are no different. They have buck hides drying in their garages, too. But there's a difference, in both biology and ethics, between hunting an ungulate (often shot at close range in a clean kill) for the purpose of food, and killing a predator by gunning it down in a plane because it threatens our sense of the heirarchy. A lot of the predator control proponent will say the science is on their side. It's not, as my basic biology lesson up above illustrates, as well as the fact that the state of AK never bothered really to take many censuses of wolf and moose populations to back up their claims.

Don't believe me? Well, then I defer to the findings of the National Academies of Science NRC, the foremost scientific authority in the country (and one of the biggest in the world), which also concluded in an extensive study that such programs can rarely be justified scientifically, and in fact, may inflict longer-term damage on both the predator and prey species and the larger ecosystem.

If you want to put an end to Alaska's egregious predator control program, please call the Governor's office to express your dismay. Also, consider becoming a member and contributing to the Alaska Wildlife Alliance.

Why Straws Suck (And Not in the Literal Sense)

2010-07-14T15:08:00.000-07:00

Even though I consider myself fairly low impact in most of my everyday practices, giving up the plastic straw was an oversight I didn't finally address until fairly recently. I had been on the way to weaning myself slowly off of excess waste: bringing my own tupperware to restaurants to pack leftovers (and simply not eating out as much), refusing paper and plastic bags in favor of my own canvas ones, and bringing my own reusable mugs and cutlery in my bag as part of a permanent carry-along item, along with my wallet, keys, and the ever-present pen & paper that always is on a self-identified writer's person.

But as for straws...well, when did my vendetta against them begin in earnest? I had, these past few years, intermittenly refused them at restaurants, though it didn't bother me so much if I forgot to or not (which I often did). If they still adorned my glass, I took it in stride and shrugged it off. I don't eat meat, rarely drive and hang-dry my clothes, so I have done my part...there are so much bigger things to worry about, right?

Last year, I attended the annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists in Madison, Wisconsin. During the evenings, there were small informal dinner meet-ups. You could choose what meet-up to attend by a general "theme" for discussion--my meet-up group was to discuss something generic like "creating a collective mindset for sustainability." As such informal talks do, our discussion weaved and bobbed between the very serious (our potential imminent extinction) to the mundane, to abstract esoteric thought and even gender arguments (are women more environmental than men?). And then, very simply, one of my colleagues picked up a straw out of his glass to prove a point of how prolifigately wasteful we humans can be.

"Do we really need these?" he asked, the offending straw pinched between his thumb and forefinger. Indeed, we don't, and we all nodded and stared at the offenders that took up residence in all of our own drink glasses, shaking our heads in shame...

I wish I could say from then on, I ardently objected to the straw, but it wasn't a strong enough motivator to make me kick the habit for good. Like most people, I sometimes need a visual cue, often something strongly visceral, before I can really change a bad behavior (or even come to really understand the consequences of a societal behavior), and this was no exception.

That visual cue came only a month or so later, while I was perusing an article in either Discover or National Geographic on the phenomenon of plastic waste in our ocean, which tends to aggregate into large patches that come to resemble evil science fiction creatures. I turned a page and then--BAM!--a picture of a biopsied duck, its belly gorged with remnants of our plastic waste, mostly drinking straws. It hit my own stomach like a sucker punch, crept into my cranium and stuck there. It gave me a bad dream.

I once wrote a short story about a woman who can't stop dreaming about being forced to eat glass. The dream disturbs her to the point where she can't stand the sight of glass, and looking at it nauseates her. The same thing happened to me: the sight of straws now sickens me, and I can't separate it from the split-open gut of some poor duck who never did a thing to hurt me.

Ducks don't eat straws because they are dumb. Bits of plastic straws, especially glimmering in the obscuring underwater view, resemble the iridiscent fish and aquatic vegetation that comprise many a seabird's savory meals. And are the ducks really so dumb to think that there would be fish and vegetation in the water as opposed to our garbage?

A similar thing happens with our plastic bags, that we so often see dancing on the streets in the wind (as so poetically portrayed in the movie "American Beauty") that almost always eventually drift into our oceans, lakes and rivers: sea mammals like seals and whales mistake them for jellyfish (also the same fate of most of the balloons we find romantic as we set them "free" into the sky at the peak of their buoyancy, seemingly forgetting or denying that they are inevitably destined to deflate and litter elsewhere out of our sight).

Imagine swallowing a plastic bag, it's not a pretty way to go. Most of these animals won't immediately choke to death, but rather the bag will take up residence in their GI tract, where it will strangle their disgestive organs. Just because you are good about throwing away your trash, well, in the trash, does not mean it stays out of the ocean, either: storms and winds cause a lot of trash to migrate, the smaller the plastic item (straws), the more likely it will end up elsewhere, usually someplace wet.

If I seem to be making too much of a big deal about one little straw, consider this: in the United States we discard of HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF STRAWS EVERY YEAR! Think of that number. Think of how many straws you might have even blown through this week. Most likely, in your lifetime, the amount of straws you threw out could build several makeshift homes in developing countries. The drinking straws I am decrying are also made of PLASTIC, and are a direct product of the petrochemical (translation: oil and oil refinery) industry, an enormous market, one large outlet of which exists on the Gulf Coast.

By supporting plastic, we are also supporting continued oil production and dependence. Not to mention, as a product made of petrochemicals, straws and other plastics are chock-full of known carcinogens like Bisphenol A (BPA), that leech both into our drinks through straws and into the ocean when they wind up there as waste. This is something those with young parents might especially want to consider when offering their children another sippy straw-equipped drink box.

And now ask yourself, as I did: what are they good for?

I mean, straws were something that didn't really come into vogue until a few decades ago. Before that, we lived well without them. For the bigger things like driving, we can argue that we sometimes NEED to do it--that because of the way our society is structured, we sometimes simply can't get from point A to point B without getting into a car--and if point B is a hospital or a job, what choice do we have? Even the most adamant of the ecologically-conscious occasionally drive. They do it because never driving requires a change that extends way beyond personal choice, and many of us simply can't afford the more efficient or sustainable alternatives such hybrids, or running them on biodiesel.

But none of this can be said about the straw. In almost every situation but a couple (say, you have a handicap that prevents you from having mobile use of your hands and arms), they are nothing but frivolous and contrived conveniences, so small by itself, but so much a part of a larger desctructive whole--how much smaller (or even non-existent) would these ocean plastic patches be if we went sans straws and other superfluous plastic items (cutlery, cups, etc.)?

Unlike car culture, our plastic culture is subject to a paradigm shift that can be instigated more from the bottom up than the top down: personal choice trumps political will here. That is why straws are in fact the ultimate symbol of both our profound tendency towards being needlessly wasteful, as well as our extreme potential towards achieving a more sustainable society through our smaller personal choices. This is one way we can change which won't hurt us at all.

Finally, for those rare situations that actually warrant the need of a straw (or if, simply put, like me, once in awhile you'd like to use one without the thought of inflicting bodily damage on a duck), there are numerous alternatives that are both affordable AND more sustainable.

As if fate understood the direction I was heading, the same conference that first gave birth to my straw-consciousness also had a pitch slam where free magazines were distrubuted by the attending editors to us journalists. One magazine, SIERRA (the official magazine of the Sierra Club), did indeed have a small news blurb about the environmental destructiveness of straws, but also a list of alternative straws and places to buy them. This includes stainless steel straws and glass-blown straws, that are reusable and are dishwasher safe.

The notorious klutz that I am, I opted for the steel straws as I knew the glass ones would shatter probably within a month of purchase (for proof of this, you can ask my partner about the state of our wine glass collection, but it's a sore subject between us). If neither steel nor glass catches your fancy, a quick web search also yields straws made out of bamboo and paper (I suspect the former to be more sustainable). For those who can't be bothered with more washing, there are also disposable straws that are made of biodegradable material, and can be composted.

You can look through the choices available on Amazon, as shown on the advertisements preceding this article, and order some for yourself!

Currently, I always carry a couple of stainless steel straws in a pouch, along with a lightweight titanium spork and a butter knife (I hope to add reusable chopsticks to this little array). I still get discouraged, however, when I order a drink and make sure to verbally stress "no straw, please," only for it to arrive a few seconds later with one insidiously gleaming inside my intended glass. I'll even admit, that it can sometimes ruin my mood for a few minutes, as that dead duck rears into my mind. I then wonder if maybe I should just abstain from society more, hole up alone in my apartment and be my own permanent bartender and barista.

But then I remind myself of all the times in recent months my fellow beverage drinkers and even waiters and bartenders have inquired about my reasons for requesting "no straw," the dialogue my actions have solicited, and then understand I am being an active participant in creating some of the change we need to secure a healthier, greener future. It's not an Earth-shattering change, but I'll take it.

For more on the the ills of straws, please see the following links:

http://www.greenerpackage.com/experts/scott_dyvig/blog/straw_man
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/green-living-tip-avoid-drinking-straws.html
http://www.plasticsindustry.com/plastics-environment.asp

FB groups raising awareness on the environmental degradation caused by straws:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=65358216643&ref=ts
http://www.facebook.com/search/?post_form_id=80467e7fcf63cd3c50b2d619838615ac&q=straws&init=quick&sid=0.020001567571680312#!/pages/STOP-USING-DRINKING-STRAWS/127911987227062?ref=ts

Other things you can do:

Consider petitioning your local bars and restaurants to go straw-free, only offer straws if patrons specifically ask (like they do in many countries overseas), or to make the switch to reusable and/or biodegradable straws!

Short Hiatus, but WIll Be Back After the 10th!

2010-07-01T13:44:00.000-07:00

Happy July!

I am taking my second and last MTEL (Massachusetts Test for Educational Licensure) in the subject of English, so that I can become a licensed Middle School and High School English teacher in the great Commonwealth. The test is scheduled for Saturday, July 10th. So, it's crunch time! As such, my blogging is going on a teeny hiatus till after the test.

Actually, I can't promise that. Sometimes studying makes me procrastinate, and blogging is a great form of proscrastination. So, when my mind becomes to crammed with Jeopardy-like quizzing on world literature, I may just stop by to blog why straws suck (the theme of my next planned post!)....so, maybe check in mid- to late week next week, but if there's nothing here, please don't panic. I will definitely be back the week after...in the meantime, have a happy 4th!

Post-Poetry Reading Ponderings: Trying to Write About the Bigger Picture

2010-06-25T10:00:00.000-07:00

Last night, I had my first poetry reading in the area since moving to Boston nearly a year ago. Though it still might have been premature, as I just really started getting out there in the poetry scene and making myself known, I think it was a good thing to do. I needed to remind myself of my passion and put myself among people who share my interests. I also needed the discipline of a show to write a couple of new poems.

For me to persist as a poet, I need to be surrounded by good poets and poetry, as well as a bit of affirmation from people I respect that I am not wasting my time. I also have to say I was really touched that people I only recently met came out to support my work. It gives me hope both as a human and an artist.

Right now, I am embarking on a new chapter of my life as a poet, one that makes me both excited and nervous. In the past, most of my poems have been about my family, my love affairs and the boys who broke my heart, and about the craft of writing itself. All good in their own right, but marked by a stubborn self-absorption that really no longer defines my character. Since working in Washington D.C. and going to graduate school, and being confronted on a daily basis with the enormity of havoc we've created in this world, I can no longer dwell too long on the supposed profundity of my small life. I wrote something a few months ago, and tacked it on the wall above my bed. It stated, "Inject more journalism into your poetry, and more poetry into your journalism." What I want for my poetry is for it to function as part art, part commentary, and a great part reporting on the sorry state of the world.

And we need that! Considering climate change: we are dealing with an unprecedented environmental calamity that threatens the long-term survival of not only more than half of the species we share this planet with, but our own species with extinction...possibly by the end of this century! Where are the paintings, the poetry, the rock 'n roll rantings to remind of this...to protest this? In the 60s and 70s of the last century, the social change that ignited progress on the fronts of feminism, civil rights, and the first environmental movement were fueled, and perhaps even incited, by the music and art scene of that generation. I am not the only one to wonder where the art is now opining our warming world and the wars abroad. Journalist and deep ecologist (and arguably our largest environmental icon), Bill McKibben, wondered the same thing...five years ago.

Unfortunately, not a lot has changed, and actually public opinion has turned so that most people do not believe climate change is happening at all, or that if it is, we humans are not responsible. I would like to do my part to address this, because the lack of public knowledge leads to a lack of political will, which dooms our children to a hot, crowded planet short on water, clean air, and food and saturated with oil spills.

I have come to realize that the best thing I can do is work through the medium of my strengths and talents, which is writing. I tried to turn to science and become somewhat of a scientist to save the world. But I am simply not a scientist, and the world has enough of those concentrating on this problem. What it needs now, is the artists to come out of the woodworks and address this issue with the powers of their pens and paintbrushes.

I know that part of the problem is that art is primarily self-reflection. And until we begin to see ourselves as part of the issue, or develop an empathy for it, it's hard to be motivated to the point of setting aside the time to paint or type. I'll admit even for my own poetry, it's hard too place words on what I feel or think about something as abstract in my mind as climate change. Even as I sit sweltering in my apartment, it's hard to believe we could just blink out. Species loss and exploding mountains are a bit easier as they are more tangible, so I am beginning with that. And even so, I admit I am still a character in these poems, that my perception pervades: the words "I" and "my" still rearing up, often. But it's a start, and still, we do need a human voice on these things, so I think it works.

Getting to the other half of my self-command, I think journalism sometimes is too dry and soulless in its interpretation of our global crisis. What happened to the old-fashioned narrative journalism that wasn't afraid to tell a compelling story and even relied on tricks of language, visual imagery, or even emotional appeal to paint the picture? We need more descriptive, poetic journalism. We need to prick the hearts of readers. Journalism has become so prudish, that we are afraid of truly translating the pathos and heartbreak of loss and death and degradation. Even the pictures are more censored...this needs to change. We need naked reporting, reminding our Internet-addled audience not only of the humanity of our subjects but our humanity as reporters/writers. Basically, we need more features stories that have the freedom to accomplish this...

I would love to collaborate with any writers/artists who are interested....let's get together and make a chapbook or zine on climate change, have an open mic for Haiti or Darfur...let's write lyrics and sing songs about the impending water wars so that the tunes get stuck in the heads of teenagers who will use them as ringtones on their cell phones and protest their parents prolific squandering. Let's mold the minds of this new generation. Let's invade this warming world with the passion of our poetry....letting the politicians and apathetic know we really do care too much for its beauty to just let it go without a fight.

Reflections on Juggling Survival, Saving the World and Star Gazing

2010-06-16T13:33:00.000-07:00

I wonder often what I should prioritize and what I should be. Yesterday, I went to a happy hour networking event for people involved in sustainability and social justice causes. I did it in the hopes I could maybe make some fruitful professional connections, and maybe some friends. I did actually meet one woman who had a potential opportunity for me.

I could say "fingers crossed," but they are blistered with so much crossing. In the past few months, I have been tentatively offered two exiciting writing positions that would bulk up my resume and help pay the bills. Both times, these fell through, for reasons not entirely clear to me, though usually due to budgeting constraints. Journalism is a dying business and I must be a masochist to continue treading its waters. Last month, a veteran journalist told me at a NWU (National Writers Union) networking event that she felt sorry for me as I was "just jumping in the pool as it was drying out." But I feel more sorry for society, that good journalism is seen as something we can sacrifice. It sure is not obsolete. And yet, watchdogging our government and the industrial sector is not at the forefront of our wants, even as the oil spill in the Gulf continues to obliterate the ocean ecosystems, our wildlife and the livelihoods of our Southern neighbors. Or, rather, we do want journalism, but we don't want it at a price. Like everything else on the internet, we want it free, just like we want our gasoline cheap and always readily available. We want people to work for free to do some very hard work, or at least that's what the market and my own experiences suggest.

In theory, I want to get a decent paying part-time job with benefits to support my writing as though it's some sick, stay-at-home child I am nursing back to health. I know that if I work full-time, at least in the doldrums of a traditional 9-5 office job, my writing will wither into obscurity. I know because it's happened before. It's hard to come home and eat and shower and know that at 10pm you must choose between writing or sleeping, even as your eyelids are already heavy and your head is pounding from eight straight hours of staring at the computer screen under the glare of flourescent ceiling lights. Sleep usually always insinuated itself before a conscious choice could ever really be made. Then weeks of no writing became months, until I felt like part of me was dying. If that sounds melodramatic, then so be it. My fingers became twitchy, and I would grind my teeth, like some junkie dopesick for a fix that only pen put to paper could provide. After awhile, something weird happened to my mental state. I had no more libido and food lost its taste. Even music couldn't move me. I guess you could call it depression, but it was something more primal, less clinical, than that.

And then there's this other passion I have in trying to save the world. This actually often ties in quite well with writing, but when I then think of 'work' on top of that, it crowds the room of my mind. Why can't writing be my work? I am good at it and trained for it, and don't we as a world need it? Teaching or grassroots organizing/advocacy are perhaps the only other jobs (other than something in the communications field) that I think I could work on a full-time basis that I don't think would work against my writing. If I can't write, I need to have a job where I can speak freely and often about important things.

While living in D.C., I worked a half-time position as a communications assistant at a highly respectable environmental non-profit, and also taught adult ESL at a community college two evenings a week. I enjoyed these jobs and I had enough money to pay the bills and enough time to write and even to live. I was happy. But then I moved to Burlington, Vermont to go to graduate school and pursue a Master's in Environmental Policy. I went because I thought the opportunity would afford me more professional and financial security, but it seems that it might have actually robbed me of more time to work on my writing, changed my way of thinking to something antithetical to creativity, while also placing me in some more debt.

So, here I sit wondering if there's a way I can make money, write, and still do my small part to save the world. Can I wrap them all up in one package, or will it always be a struggle...some juggling routine that leaves me tired till again, sleep wins and nothing gets accomplished?

I sometimes wish I could be an insomniac again.

Why Animals Matter--Both in the Wild and At Home

2010-05-28T14:18:00.000-07:00

I have been meaning to post, but it's just been so busy lately. And not in a good way. My cat, Cokey, got very sick a few days ago, and the continuing complications have mounted to the point where his life is threatened and he needs surgery to survive.

I try to exercise some restraint when blogging here, because this is a news commentary blog. But in keeping with the double meaning of the blog's intent (trying to write as a way to survive), I think it deserves a place here. There are literal levels of survival: needing water, air, food, medical treatment when necessary, etc.. Then there is figurative survival: being able to pay the bills to keep you clothed and sheltered, to salvage some sanity and kindness in an often chaotic and cruel world.

Cokey now needs surgery to survive, literally, and I need him in my life to salvage a bit of solace in a world and a life situation that has not been too kind to me. I admit my selfishness. There are far worse off things in this world than a fatally ill cat. But in my small universe, his love keeps me sane and his very existence is one thing that keeps pushing me to create a more humane and sustainable world.

Animals matter. Their collective presence forms a complex web of life, a natural system of checks and balances that we humans, even if in our persistent hubris deny, allow us to survive as a species. We often extract ourselves from nature. We acknowledge the aesthetic value of an animal: the gracious flight of a heron, a cute kitten getting its belly scratched on youtube, a puppy we cross paths with on the sidewalk. But we often fail to take that to the next level, to see the ways in which animals lay out an evolutionary path from us to them. We also fail to understand and truly live as though, WE NEED THEM.

But we do. In some cases for food, in others for companionship. We need them to continue their roles in the food chain we depend on. And yes, we need them for their companionship, and even for their beauty. Animals are a living art form, but they're also so much more than that. Without them, we are left with only oil spills and the computers that give us carpal tunnel. We are left only with the cars we drive and leave in their wake the casualties of our greedy need to move fast through our lives to places we don't even need to go or see places we don't even really need to see. I am guilty of this, too, and I am sorry.

After receiving my B.A. in Literature and Journalism, I went back to school to study Wildlife Conservation. This was prompted by reading a volume of books on wolves, and my horror at the things we've done to these animals whom have close-knit family units that so closely resemble our own. I couldn't keep reading the stories of shooting them from helicopters, or gassing dens of wolf pups, without doing something. Anything.

In school, I studied animal behavior. Earlier last century, experiments were conducted where Rhesus monkey babies were removed from their mother and placed with mechanical monkeys and no other form of contact with the living for weeks at a time. The babies weren't stupid. They knew the robot was not alive, nor their mother, though they still clung to them desperately, the way an abandoned child would grip a stuffed animal while still knowing it's not alive. These monkey matured to become hostile, even cruel. Much like humans in similar situations will. But to me, this outcome would seem apparent, and the irony implicit in the cruelty of its being conducted haunts me. The poet Anne Sexton has a line in one of her poems, "Watch out for intellect, because it knows so much, it knows nothing." These words seem applicable here.

And this line can also be applied to the situation in the Gulf. The recent news reports now figure we have well over 300 birds and 200 sea turtles (which are highly endangered) dead as a result of the spill in the Gulf. These numbers will continue to grow. And yet, government and industry continues to assert that we can continue offshore drilling...as though these deaths, though sad, don't rock the depth of our delicate chains.
Wildlife conservation has often been depicted at being put at odds with the human causes of industry and employment. And, in a way, this is true. But this is because our enterprises and economy are built on foundations that are inherently unsustainable. We have become so entrenched in these systems, we feel they are our only option as a species or society, even as they degrade and destroy the fabric of our natural world. Even as it threatens us all with extinction.

Just as we had to rip down the institution of slavery (which our country actually heavily relied on economically) to recreated a new paradigm, so we need to do this now. This isn't just about the sadness of seeing dead bird slick with black oil and floating face-down in murky waters.

They deserve the dignity of being able to spread their wings and fly, just as the sea turtles deserve our respect as our elders, to deposit their eggs in the sand and live out their lifetime.

And I guess this is the main idea of this post. Animals deserve to be treated with dignity by us. This is a strong sentiment of mine. It is why I do not eat meat (due to the ubiquity of factory farms), use personal products that conduct experiments or testing on animals, and why I try to work against the mass culls of companion animals (between 6 and 12 MILLION perfectly adoptable animals are euthanized every year because they are often surrendered by their owners for frivolous reasons).

My cat Cokey also deserves a life of dignity and one relatively free from pain. That is why I balk when I am asked if want to put him to sleep instead of getting him the surgery he needs to live a long and healthy life. I told the hospital I will get the money somehow (again, this blog is about trying to scrape by as a scribe, and being a writer means I don't have the funds to pay thousands of dollars on demand out of pocket). I told them I would sell my car, though it's a 13 year-old beater, so I doubt its sale would put a dent in the expenses of Cokey's surgery.

I will always choose my cat over my car. Come to think of it, giving up my car would be me choosing the wildlife in the Gulf over oil. So again, I think the choice is clear. The pragmatists like to argue that if we can't drill offshore, we can't drive our cars.

You know what I say? Good. Let all the oil wells and refineries shut down. Then we'd actually have to really change our grid and how we live. Then we wouldn't have to choose between oil and wildlife....

The American Power Act Comes to Congress

2010-05-14T09:38:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I am going to make this post relatively brief. This past Wednesday, Senator Kerry of Massachusetts unveiled his new climate bill, the American Power Act, which he collaborated on with Senators Lieberman and Graham. The bill is somewhat more progressive than I thought it would be, and it derives some of the dividend model of the Cantwell-Collins CLEAR Act that I have been supporting. You can view Kerry's own description of the bill on Grist here.

Though it is too soon to make a complete judgement of the bill, based on what I've read so far, and based on a teleconference I partook in with environmental leaders in D.C. yesterday spearheaded by 1Sky, I am not convinced this bill will effectively address climate change.

Though Kerry claims that the EPA will still be able to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from some of the oldest and dirtiest coal-powered plants, the bill would still essentially strip it of a great amount of its Supreme-Court mandated authority over carbon. If I am understanding it correctly, the bill would also dismantle regional and state regulations, such as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI, here in the Northeast. Again, if I am understanding it correctly, the Clean Air Act sets certain baseline national limits for criteria pollutants that are regulated under its National Ambient Air Quality Standards. All states must adhere to the minimum standards of the federal law; however, states have autonomy under the CAA to pass more stringent laws than the national mandates. I believe as it is currently written, this bill might be undermining state autonomy to pass tougher climate laws than those proposed in the Kerry bill.

The Kerry bill also still heavily relies on offsets to achieve many of its emission targets. Offsets programs are not a valid source of emission cuts--there is no way to monitor them, and the emission decreases they are intended to achieve could take decades to a half-century to reach. We do not have that time. Also, quite frankly, a vast majority of offset programs are usually proven to be scams. Furthermore, APA would designate authority of overseeing offset distribution to the U.S. Department of Agriculture as opposed to the EPA, setting up a fox-guarding-the-henhouse scenario.

On the issue of adaptation for poor communities both here and overseas, the Kerry bill offers a pittance of an amount, esimated to be lower than that promised by Secretary Clinton during the Copenhagan talks. Additionally, this adaptation assistance would not kick in until 2019. Though the Oxfam representative who spoke about the funding, denounced it as a "day late and a dollar short," she still declared that Oxfam ultimately supports the bill.

The Kerry bill makes the mistep of still allowing expansion of offshore drilling (though states will have the option of getting an exemption), and offers obscene giveaways to the industry, particularly for coal and nuclear. Imagine what is happening right now in the Gulf. Now imagine that was a nuclear blast instead of an oil rig explosion. We should not be enabling the perpetuation of dirty and dangerous energy sources. If we wouldn't want to live near such facilities for fear of our safety, then we should not force others to, to satiate our gluttonous demands for energy (coal and nuclear plants will inevitably be zoned in proximity to poor communities).

And here is where I am reaching an unprecedented point of frustration with the environmental movement. I understand that compromise is an intrinsic part of politics. I worked as an intern in D.C. for the environmental coalition, where I worked on campaigns through lobbying and grassroots outreach. However, the level of compromise the coalition has submitted to has become so large as to completely undermine (or even counteract) their efforts. When dealing with the issue of endangered land or species, sometimes it makes sense to allow the sacrifice of some parcels of land, or X amount of species in a certain region to save it from overall extinction. This logic does not apply to climate change. We have a very short timeframe with which to make the cuts necessary to avert catasrophic climate change. We cannot compromise with the hard laws of the physical universe, but we think we can. I have been called naive for pushing for a harder bill...I have been told that I do not understand the "reality" of this. Because we have reached a point where our politics and our money is somehow more real to us that the planet and its tipping points. We do not understand that we cannot bribe or blackmail it, or meet it half-way. We do not seem to understand that it was around for billions of years before us, and will be here long after we are gone.

This isn't about saving the planet. This is about saving us. But we're too stupid to see that.

The other day I was informed by a member of the environmental lobby that though they have deep reservations with the Kerry bill, and believe that the Cantwell-Collins bill is superior in terms of achieving more realistic progress on addressing climate change, that they will still support the Kerry bill. The reasoning for this support is this: the fossil fuel and agribusiness industries (the sectors largely accountable for anthropogenic climate change), do not support the CLEAR Act because they don't have influence in it. The politicians do not want to offend the corporations, and most amazingly, the environmental movement does not want to pressure the politicians to thumb their noses at the corporations. The environmental coalition that we have entrusted with protecting and advocating us is basically abandoning its (our) ideals to compromise with corporations. This movement has forgotten its roots. No important paradigm shift in our civilization has occurred if not from the bottom up. But the movement now works from the top down, allowing industries to decide our future instead of putting them in their places.

I see this move as a direct result of January's Supreme Court ruling that audaciously declared that corporations should be afforded the rights of individuals and their money equated with speech. The American people have been outspent because they don't speak in dollar signs.

Surely, surely, we must see the problem here?

We cannot let corporations write our climate bills. By doing so, they are writing our death certificate as a species. The same day Kerry released his bill, the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) released a report that declared that unless the world takes quick, "radical and creative action" to conserve our planet's biodiversity, that the ecosystems that support human populations are at risk of a complete, collective collapse. The Kerry bill distracts us from such action with the same old tired politics.

So, where is the hope here? My time working with the environmental lobby overlapped with one of the most rabidly anti-environmental administrations and Congresses in recent history (2005-2006: During the heydays of the Bush Administration and when the Republicans controlled both the House and the Senate). During that time, we had a number of large environmental victories even when mainstream environmental reporters smugly stated our efforts were in vain. This shows that the environmental coalition, if and when it decides to stick to its guns and dig in its heels, is capable of performing political miracles.

Yet, ironically, with Democratic control of both Congressional Houses and a Democratic President who is relatively amendable to environmental progress, we find our political and environmental leaders rendered almost impotent. They can't get it up to meet the challenge of climate change.

I would argue that it's because we feel we need to play nice with the Dems. And, of course, the Democrats have always been soft-spined. Well, I don't think this is the time for that.

We need to remind the environmental coalition that it is responsible for protecting our interests, not that of the politicians', and certainly not that of the corporate sector. They need to be holding Congress' feet to the fire on this, instead of giving them ego strokes. We cannot broker deals with the bad guys in this case--what would today's nation be like if we let our politicians sit down with segregationalists and broker a deal on civil rights? Too much is at stake here.

If they cannot come around, those of us consumed with concern about our warming world will need to part ways with our environmental coalition, which may simply be too entrenched in the political atmosphere to understand whose side they are on.

For more on the American Power Act, please check out:

http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2010/05/12/12climatewire-kerry-lieberman-to-end-the-suspense-with-cli-19936.html
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/05/13-5
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2010/2010-05-12-01.html

OF OIL SPILLS AND MINE BLASTS

2010-05-07T11:21:00.000-07:00

During his State of the Union Address at the end of this past February, President Barack Obama stated that, "...to create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. That means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country. It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development. It means continued investment in advanced biofuels and clean coal technologies. And yes, it means passing a comprehensive energy and climate bill with incentives that will finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy in America." That night I posted as my Facebook status update something along the lines of, "Mr. Obama, you could have had me at 'climate bill,' but don't you know that there is no such thing as 'clean' coal, 'safe' nuclear or responsible offshore drilling'?" I posted similar tweets and grumbled for several more weeks about his claims, especially as he gave the green light for licensing one of the first new nuclear plants to be built in approximately three decades (basically, in my lifetime), and reversed bans on offshore drilling in most of the coastal waters of the U.S. this past March.

It seems cruelly ironic that less then two months after reversing this ban, that the fossil fuel industry was beset by two tragic explosions that occurred within weeks of each other, the latter incident of which we are still experiencing the repercussions of, and may for several decades. I am of course, first referring to an underground mine blast that occured in early April in the greater Charleston area of West Virginia that claimed the lives of 29 miners.

The mine in question is owned and operated by Massey Energy, a company partly (and in fact, largely) culpable for destroying vast swaths Appalachian moutain ranges through a practice of coal extraction known as Mountain-Top Removal (MTR), as well as devastating local towns and communities. In the wake of the tragedy, which is now considered the worst underground mine accident in nearly 40 years, news of multiple safety violations and fines incurred by the hundreds on the part of Massey were reported in the national news. This included reports of dangerous methane build-up, which can catalyze explosions, and which is currently thought to have occurred with this particular incident.

But hey, when you are a multi-billion dollar industry, what is a few fines here and there of a few thousand dollars? And what is a few lives? Of course, Massey CEO Doug Blakenship was quoted as saying in the Christian Science Monitor (see last hyperlink), that their company cares more about its workers than "black rock." But actions do speak louder than words, and just a few days later, Massey refused to let other miners on their employee roll have a day off of work to attend the funeral of their dead co-workers, refused to let workers or residents hang wreaths or put candles at the site of the accident, and threatened several workers with termination if they spoke to the press. I often complain about our dirty energy and the risks we have to take to get it, as an argument to start banning or quickly phasing it out. On a smaller scale, though, knowing that my energy is tied to this type of company, which treats human lives like fodder or simply eggs to be broken to make their million dollar omelets, bothers me in a deeply more personal way. It makes me feel like everytime I turn on a light switch, I am staining my hands with blood only I can see.
I think it's important to hold Massey's feet to the fire on this one--contact the company and let them know you don't agree with their blatant disregard for human life and our fragile ecosystems.

At this point, news of the mine blast investigations has all but drifted in obscurity, as an oil rig in the Gulf region, known as the Deepwater Horizon rig, exploded a few weeks later on April 20th. The explosion has presumably claimed the lives of 11 workers who have yet to be found since the incident, and was immediately followed by what is reportedly shaping up to be the worst oil spill in our nation's history, potentially even eclipsing the infamous Exxon Valdez spill of 1989. In terms of the quantity of the spill, the figures being reported keep changing. What began as modest estimates of barely a 1,000 barrels a day by British Petroleum quickly escalated as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) contended that the spill may be leaking up to 5,000 barrels a day. Another independent group called SkyTruth, which makes estimates based on access to satellite imagery data, has gone on record to report that the spill is more likely leaking in the 20-25,000 per day range, as estimate also relayed recently by the Wall Street Journal.

As with the Massey mine blast, it took a tragedy to spotlight that safety precautions and provisions were overlooked and the danger was vastly underestimated by government officials and the industry. Specifically, the Mineral Management Service (MMS), switched methods to adopt a hands-off approach to monitoring offshore oil rigs under the preceding presidential administration . For instance, in 2003, the MMS reversed an ealier rule which required that offshore oil rigs be equipped with something called an "acoustic switch," which is essentially a remote-controlled back up system that would automatically shut off underwater wells during an emergency. More recently, the MMS filed its Environmental Impact Statement of the site in 2007, declaring that an oil spill was highly "unlikely," and just last year declared that BP was well-equipped to deal effectively and efficiently with a worst-case scenario spill. These are just a few of the shortcomings that led to this disaster, as reported this week in a scathing article by Mother Jones.

Luckily, so far, there have been no reports of mass mortalities of ocean-dependent wildlife species, though it is still too early to tell. Even if we do manage to escape an oil-slicked mass cull of our wildlife along the Gulf Coast, effects on species will be felt for years to come in ways not visible to us yet. The region is already host to one of the hemisphere's largest "dead zones," which stretches about 7,000 square miles, and the recent spill most likely will increase it. Also, the oil spill threatens to contribute to excerbating the acidification of the ocean, a phenomenon instigated by climate change that is guilty of threatening our shell fish and coral reefs, both key species of the ocean ecosystem, with extinction.

Though the incident did spur the Obama Administration to temporarily suspend its plans to expand offshore drilling, it is currently only until supposed safety provisions are reviewed and rectified. Unfortunately, the nature of the system makes it probably that such an incident will occur again. Dealing with innately volatile and incendiary substances such as oil, coal and nuclear waste, deems that it will always be vulnerable (and what if this had been a nuclear explosion?) to such disasters. And yes, though better MMS monitoring and stricter guidelines could have prevented this case, the nature of the business, which bows to financial interests, has proven time and again that safety, human and animal lives and the environment are just some of the casualities that come with making money. This is even in the case of ventures such as offshore drilling, which would only serve to meet our energy need by less than 1%.

But there is good news. As with the first Earth Day, that coincided with the creation the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the implementation of the Clean Water and Air Acts, visible calamities often inspire much-needed paradigm shifts. This past Wednesday, National Public Radio's OnPoint welcomed Steve Chu, the Administration's Secretary of Energy. who defended the Administration's position on keeping offshore drilling on the table for a long-term energy plan. The heartening aspect, is that not one caller, or e-mailer into the show agreed with him, and all responders called for a new energy plan and climate bill that was truly radical by emphasizing conservation and renewable energy.

Getting personal here: as the daughter of a drug addict, I understand the language of addicts. I have heard the spiel from an addict who insists s/he can "manage," the addition, using just enough to feed a basic need, and looking for alternatives elsewhere. It never works...and the language used by Chu and Obama smack of old-fashioned addict-denial rhetoric that distracts from seeking genuine rehabilitation.

I think the American people are ready for real change, with real answers. And so, I offer options to engage in that change, instead of just reading the computer screen helplessly. There is work to be done here! First, 350.org has a petition on its website to the Obama Administration to permanently ban offshore drilling. The organization has also created a Facebook page to support a ban on offshore oil drilling expansion, which you can join here if you have an account. If you live near the Gulf Coast, you can register to volunteer with the blockade and clean-up efforts by going to this link. You can also donate to Tri-State Bird Rescue, which will be overseeing bird rescues from the spill, or donate to other wildlife rescuse crews or groups that are part of the effort. Interestingly, human hair and pet fur are used to clean up oil spills, as they are absorbent and gentle on the environment, so if you or your doggy friend are due for a trim, consider packaging up the trimmings and mailing it out. For more information about this, check out this link.

On a larger scale, though, the most important thing you can do, is write, call or visit your Congressional Representatives and State Senators and let them know you support a ban to dirty and dangerous energy ike new coal-fired power plants and offshore oil rigs, and instead support a progressive climate bill that will help propel clean energy into the mainstream, like the cap-and-dividend bill I described in my last post. Go to Congress.org to find the contact info for your elected representatives.

Stay tuned next week when I cover the goings on here in Massachusetts regarding Cape Wind. To stay up to date with the latest postings, please consider joining Writing for Survival's Facebook page and/or follow me on Twitter.

Cap-and-Trade v. Cap-and-Dividend: Why We Can’t Afford to Pass a Bill that Could Make Matters Worse

2010-04-19T08:35:00.000-07:00

Now that the Obama administration has passed its monumental health bill, it is now turning its sights on our energy future. Most people by now have at least heard of cap-and-trade, a system where carbon emissions are capped and those industries that want to emit beyond the cap must have a permit, at which point they can trade with other companies with excess permits that have not yet reached the cap. Last year, the U.S. House of Representative finally passed a climate change bill, one that supports the cap-and-trade system. The bill, known as the American Clean Energy and Security Act, or ACESA (also known as the Waxman-Markey bill), has suffered much resistance by most rank-and-file Republicans in Congress, as well as free-market think tanks and even many average Americans. But here is a little known fact: the bill is also abhorred by several environmental and progressive political groups, including Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace. Here are the main reasons why: the House bill sets caps too low and permit prices too cheap (and actually, would give a bunch of those permits away, leaving the pundits to call it, more correctly: “cap-and-giveaway”) Basically, the emissions cuts the bill strives for would not even put a dent in those we would really need to achieve to avert catastrophic climate change. In fact, the free permits threaten to incite an emitting scenario where we could even experience an increase in our carbon output.

If climate change could be compared cancer, then the House bill could be considered a placebo used in place of the aggressive chemotherapy needed to truly combat the disease. Or worse yet, it might even be compared to ignoring the disease altogether in favor of smoking, drinking and intentionally ingesting carcinogenic chemicals. This is because the bill is also gorged with subsidies and other incentives for research and implementation of dubious “clean” energy methods, most notably something called “clean coal.” To clarify, clean coal currently does not exist and its future existence is an uncertainty. Also, “clean coal” does not mean clean in the sense that the name suggests. It doesn’t mean we get to scrub the soot and its implicit carbon out to wind up with lumps of coal as white as cotton balls, that when burned simply exhale some kind of benign steam. No, “clean coal,” usually refers to something known as “carbon capture and sequestration,” or “CCS.” This means we plan to take all that bad stuff and bury it, or inject it somewhere else. Usually this will be underground, in the mountains, and under our ocean floor, where it is then left to mess with our tectonic plates, soil, and aquatic life in ways that only our geologists, agronomists, and marine biologists can (and already have) made guesses about. Those guesses are scary, such as the extinction of all of our shellfish and more earthquakes.

Clean coal is simply a pipe dream that has yet to be proven to be realistic, and for which such proof is decades away. Too bad we only have a few years to figure out this climate change thing, and too bad that most respectable climatologists have determined that any feasible climate action plan would need to include an immediate phase-out of commercial-scale coal plants to be effective. If you had Stage 3 cancer, would you spend your money on investing in research for theoretical treatment for your disease, one that science suggests could even accelerate the disease, or would you use what you know has been proven to work while your time is short? Clean coal is a multi-billion dollar placebo treatment intended to let industries believe they are combating climate change, while still blowing the heads off mountains to get at the stuff. There is no clean way to blow up the belly of a mountain. Just ask the residents of the Appalachian towns that have been destroyed by it, or the scientists who have studied the practice and concluded that its effects on public health and the surrounding environment are so severe that they recommended an immediate cessation of all mountain-top removal activities.

Finally, and most importantly, the House bill actually includes language that seeks to deprive the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency of its authority to regulate carbon and other greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act as the Supreme Court ordered it could do all the way back in spring of 2007. Furthermore, under these same provisions, the House bill would deny states the right to consider the effects of their emissions on other countries, and to address such effects in their state climate laws. So, if the language concerning the Clean Air Act and the U.S. EPA in the House bill somehow makes it into a conference bill and passes, we the people would have no legislative means of ensuring that we have another avenue to appeal to for properly addressing climate change if cap-and-trade measures fail to protect us here in the States, as well as others abroad (which for the reasons already mentioned here, seem quite likely). Since state and federal laws are made by men and women who are susceptible to the influence of money and election seasons, we need the ability to have as many alternatives open to seek protection as possible. Recently, Senator John Kerry (D-MA) has been working on a Senate companion to ACESA with Senators Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman, which seems slightly more progressive. However, as it is worded now, the bill still falls back on a lot fake alternatives to real emission cuts and will likely evolve to greatly resemble its House counterpart.

But is there any bill that can afford us hope? Yes, and it is called cap-and-dividend. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s no surprise since it’s been drowned out by all the banter about cap-and-trade. One reason is that many high-profile environmental groups, such as Sierra Club and the National Wildlife Federation, support the House bill despite their deep-seated reservations with questionable rules it seeks to enact that are innately counterintuitive to counteracting climate change. However, the real reason you haven’t heard much about cap-and-dividend is this: it benefits the people and not the industries, and we have become a society where corporate interests rule Congress and most of our media. You see, cap-and-dividend is almost purely populist in its core agenda. It offers no giveaways to industries and instead auctions off every permit. And then, amazingly, it does a simply glorious thing with most of the revenue from that auction: it gives it straight back to the American people. That’s right, come tax season the vast majority of U.S. citizens would receive a dividend check, with middle-class and poor people coming out way ahead of those in the upper income. bracket The more energy you save, the bigger the check, which would offset increases in prices at the pump. Specifically, about three quarters of auction revenue would go straight back into the back-pockets of our country’s populace, with only the largest energy hogs (our affluent) losing out a little, and the other quarter would go straight into investments in real renewable energy technologies: wind, solar, and geothermal. Even though the cap as it is currently set in the Senate cap-and-dividend bill is also pitifully low, the auction and dividend process would help to tighten the cap at a quicker pace than its cap-and-trade predecessor and impostor offsets would not be used in place of real emission cuts.

If you want to know more about the current cap-and-dividend bill being considered in the Senate, known as the CLEAR (Carbon Limits and Energy for America’s Renewal) Act, go to and http://cantwell.senate.gov/issues/CLEARAct.cfm. There, you can even download the bill, which, at under 40 pages and containing fairly straightforward language, is easy to digest. Devised and introduced by Senators Susan Collins (R) of Maine and Maria Cantwell (D) of Washington, the bill offers a post-partisan solution that addresses the financial needs of our suffering citizens, and offers us a genuine shot at survival in a warming world. For more about the pitfalls of cap-and-trade, please take a gander at Annie Leonard's "Story of Cap and Trade," an informative 20-minute short.

Coming Soon...a blog about sustainability, social justice, and scraping by as a scribe

2010-04-16T12:50:00.000-07:00

The title of this blog is a double entendre. First, it's about trying to make a living as a scribe and fledgling member of the fourth estate at a time when both a severe recession and the ubiquitous presence of the internet have seriously undermined and undercut the market for good journalism. So, I will at times be writing about trying to make a living out of my writing and reporting.

But the second theme, which will probably pervade the blog, will be about surviving as both a society and a species at a time when several environmental issues threaten our continued existence on the planet (as well as that of countless other creatures)....Climate change. Overpopulation. Excessive pollution. Chemical exposure. Mass extinction. Resource shortages. Whether we are too busy to take the time to understand or ponder how these issues affect us in our personal lives, they almost certainly do. This blog will be part news reporting, and part commentary. It will also offer practical advice for applying sustainable techniques in our busy, workaday lives without packing a huge punch to the pocketbook. I intend to pull no punches, because when it comes to survival, I think it best to be straightforward.

You will see that I have Google and Amazon ads on my site. I am doing this in an attempt to turn a (probably very) meager income from the venture, but I don't harbor any grandiose illusions of huge profits. I feel ambivalent about this, as I have strong reservations about any union between the fourth estate with corporate interests. But we writers do need to eat (hence the first meaning of the title), and in the absence of alternatives, this is my method of sustenance for now. So if you want to show your support, check out the ads on the site, even if just for amusement.