When things go awry, something must change.

Wow, what a holiday season this has been! I've run across so much distressing news I can hardly process it. I should give myself a break from this computer. But here's one I have to write about. Read these three statements, which I grabbed off a website pertaining to dairy farming in Wisconsin:

Amish dairy farmers at risk of losing their living and way of life as their buyers drop their milk.

Wisconsin loses 14 percent of Grade B dairy herds in last year.

USDA program overwhelms Quad City-area food banks with milk.

These statements suggest that we have an overabundance of dairy farms in the land, especially in Wisconsin. But as with all changes in the economic world, it's tough for people to acknowledge that they should change their way of life. It's understandable, one can sympathize, but if people are permitted to continue with programs that have to be heavily subsidized, we all bear the burdens of their choices. Sometimes it's worth it, sometimes not. In the case of dairy farming, there is the obvious financial burden of subsidizing activities that produce unwanted excess, But there's more to the story, as the following little tale illustrates: 

The body of water known as Green Bay, which juts out from Lake Michigan on its west side, is becoming overcome with algal growths that stem from excess nutrients in the water.  A story from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel describes dead zones in the waters as a result of nutrient-laden runoff from dairy farms along the western shore of the bay.

When I was a kid, we lived in Green Bay, Wisconsin. In the 1930s, my family often went to a beach on the bay, just on the edge of town. Later, when I had small kids of my own, we couldn't take them to that beach. It was closed because of pollution from the paper mills into the Fox River and thence into the bay. We went further north into Door County to find shoreline that was reasonably clean. Later the paper mills had to clean up their act, and the beach outside town could reopen. Now the more sinister pollution problem is agricultural runoff. I say "sinister" because the pollution from farmlands is spread over a large area, and it's likely to get worse as the Trump Administration rolls back environmental safeguards. The farming community seems to be totally in support of the rollbacks, in spite of their damaging effects on the environment.

There are solutions, but dairy farmers, on the whole, do not seem interested in changing their way of life, including practices with respect to the ways they use the land. We need fewer dairy cattle, which could come from the conversion of land to grow food crops using ecologically (and economically) sound regenerative agricultural practices. There is no mystery about how to do this. Regenerative agriculture is practiced very successfully in the Midwest in many situations. Watch Gabe Brown’s TEDx talk to learn more.  We can reduce greenhouse gases and thus mitigate global warming by reducing our reliance on animal-based food, and moving to ecologically sound methods of farming, such as regenerative agriculture and permaculture. We can also make a renewed commitment to the proper use of the world’s soils.  Change doesn't come easily when we're locked into traditional ways of doing things, but adapting to change is inherent in maintaining a viable social structure. 

This topic strikes close to home for me. My grandparents on both sides were farmers.  My maternal grandparents, Michael and Mary Kedinger, emigrated to the United States from Germany. They farmed for some years on 60 acres they owned in Kewaunee County, then owned a farm near Algoma not far from Green Bay.  My mother was born there.  I assume they sold that farm, but in any event, the records show them owning a farm near Cimarron, Oklahoma before returning to Wisconsin. They then bought a farm in Oconto County, which borders on Green Bay.  Eventually, Michael and Mary left farming and moved to Green Bay.  My paternal grandparents, Sam and Estelle Brown, along with my great-grandfather, also farmed.  They owned land west of Green Bay, near Mill Center. 

I don't know the details of my ancestors'  struggles to make a living,  Both couples had large families, nine children that grew to adulthood.  Eventually, they left farming, and none of their children stayed on the farms.  As a child growing up in my maternal grandparent's house in Green Bay during the depression years, I was aware of our somewhat straightened economic circumstances.  Coping with change must have been difficult then, as it is today. But they found the strength to meet it head-on. I suspect that in the process they learned something I found in a quote from  Stephen King: "The scariest moment is just when you start".

When will climate change start to matter?

Let me ask you something: Can you name an experience you’ve had, something that affected you or your family in the past year or so, that you would attribute to global warming? Maybe you recall that you couldn’t fly somewhere because of torrential rains, or that last summer was especially hot, or maybe you have a vacation home in Florida that was damaged by a hurricane. But you can’t be sure that those events were related to global warming. Such things have been going on for a long time. Chances are that if you’re concerned about global warming, it’s not a result of personal experience with it, but rather because you’ve read reports written by scientists that point to the existence of greenhouse gases and the manner in which they contribute to warming of the Earth’s surface. If you accept their reports, and the conclusions they draw from their data, that the Earth is warming as a result of human activity, you could be concerned—even a climate change activist. Or not, depending on your political and social history and present situation.

Paul Hawken

Ten years ago Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger authored an article in YaleEnvironment360, entitled Apocalypse Fatigue: Losing the Public on Climate Change. They attempted to explain survey results pointing to a significant decline in the public’s belief that global warming is occurring, or that human activities contribute to climate change. For the most part their proffered explanations for the tepid responses to Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth revolve around notions of political psychology: “many people have a psychological need to maintain a positive view of the existing social order, whatever it may be. This need manifests itself, not surprisingly, in the strong tendency to perceive existing social relations as fair, legitimate, and desirable, even in contexts in which those relations substantively disadvantage the person involved.” In other words, unless the driving forces are staring us in the face, we’re inclined to stick with the status quo, if departing from it requires sacrifices and uncomfortable changes that we’re forced to acknowledge.

As we greet the New Year we might ask whether things are different from a decade ago. The reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have definitely grown more urgent. The special report recently published is decidedly sharper in tone than those preceding it. It carries a sense of urgency and specificity that reflects the most recent results from the field: we will be experiencing the effects of global warming much earlier than previously assumed. If we don’t take substantial actions soon, things will get very bad a few decades down the line. And people still yawn and say, “more doom and gloom!”. That’s too bad, because the scientists are right.

Those involved in the effort to arouse the public to a heightened awareness of climate change find themselves struggling with how to do it. What will it take to get things moving toward mitigation? The tenor of many articles that deal with this question is surprisingly similar to Nordhaus and Shellenberger’s. For example, Laurence Tubiana, a former French ambassador to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and CEO of the European Climate Foundation, echoes their sentiments in an article in Project Syndicate. However, she goes on to emphasize the vital role that expectations play in human behavior. She writes of a convergence of expectations as an enforcement mechanism in changing human behavior. As an example, enormous progress is being made in implementing solar energy. In the state of Florida, where I live, Florida Power and Light is in the midst of one of the largest solar expansions ever in the southeastern U.S., with more than 3.5 million new solar panels added in the last two years alone and millions more on the way. Next year, solar will outpace coal and oil combined as a percentage of FPL’s energy mix. I doubt that most of the people in Florida would have predicted that shift, or that Google is close to supplying all its energy needs from renewable sources. That’s a pretty big deal; Google consumes more electricity in all its operations than San Francisco. To borrow a phrase from Tubiana, society is moving from a mindset of Impossible to Inevitable. Without question, large-scale implementations of existing technologies such as wind, solar, electric cars and vast improvements in energy storage capacity are moving from impossible to inevitable.

Social forces are very important. The idea of global warming is becoming a meme, an element of culture that spreads throughout society like something infectious. Nongovernmental agencies are peppering the developing world with devices and tools to confront climate change. People don’t always get it right, about what global warming will entail, but when they associate the occurrences of more powerful hurricanes, or forest fires in California, or flooding in Wilmington, North Carolina with global warming, they’ve moved a step closer to accepting the immediacy of climate change. That’s good, but it’s not good enough. If the developed world is to effectively counter the long-term consequences of global warming, we’ve got to stop thinking only in terms of what it might do to the resale value of a condo in Florida, or whether New York City will be a good place to live in twenty years. What happens in Bangladesh doesn’t stay there. We’ve got to think wide.

The present political climate across the globe does not look promising for fostering cooperation between nations. But we must have it if human society is to rescue the planet from global despoiling of its resources. If we’re fortunate, we’ll come to realize in time that justice and fairness, coupled with respect for nature, give us what we need. Which brings me to note that on January 7, one of my heroes, Paul Hawken, Executive Director of Project Drawdown, will receive a lifetime achievement award of the National Council for Science and the Environment, one more in a long list of recognitions for all that he’s accomplished. Let’s help celebrate by reading the book he's been instrumental in creating.

Theodore Roosevelt, we need you!

The Trump administration recently offered more than 150,000 acres of public lands for fossil-fuel extraction near some of Utah's most iconic landscapes, including Arches and Canyonlands national parks, and leased public lands for fracking near Bears Ears, Canyons of the Ancients and Hovenweep national monuments and Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.  Environmentalists were not happy. Ashley Soltysiak, director of the Utah Sierra Club, said "Utah is our home and the reckless sale of our public lands with limited public engagement is simply unacceptable and short-sighted."

Fracking in these areas would worsen air pollution problems in the Uinta Basin and use tremendous amounts of groundwater. Utah just experienced its driest year in recorded history.  With its necessary networks of fracking wells, compressor stations, pipelines and roads, fracking is detrimental to the quality of public lands and wildlife habitat.  It involves injecting toxic wastewater into the ground, thus polluting rivers and groundwater.  And how about the fact that it may trigger earthquakes that damage infrastructure and property, and pollutes the air with dangerous toxins? The federal government's own report shows that oil and gas production on public land contributes significantly to U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

Why is the Trump administration, led in this case by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, hell-bent on ramping up fossil fuel extraction on public lands, threatening wildlife, public health, and the climate? This year the BLM has offered more than 420,000 acres of public land in Utah for oil and gas extraction. The agency plans to auction another 215,000 acres in March. The Trump administration also has issued new policies, which are being challenged in court, to shorten public-comment periods and avoid substantive environmental reviews.  And the leases are going for bargain basement prices. Recently, 134,000 acres were leased in Utah for as low as the federal minimum of $2 per acre.

This is pretty stupid behavior, even by the low standards set by the Trump administration.  Why sell off so much of America’s natural heritage in this way? It seems that Donald Trump is too self-centered to be able to entertain a notion of a national legacy of natural resources. Perhaps it’s just the work of calculating Ryan Zinke, building some credits for when he leaves his job at Interior at the end of the year.  But I think there’s more, and it’s to be found in the politics of the 2020 presidential election. Beginning in the early days of the 2016 campaign, Trump has been pushing the message that the United States will be first in energy, and completely independent of other nations.  Now that he’s President, he’s fixated on making fossil fuels the linchpin of a strategy to get us there. If he should be in a position to run for a second term, you can be sure that the theme of energy independence grounded in fossil fuels, regardless of what it costs in environmental terms, and in spite of the looming threats of climate change, will be a major element of his campaign. Meanwhile, we should do what we can to stop this absurd rush to sell off the nation’s national treasure on the cheap. Support the National Resources Defense Council, Earthworks, Earthjustice and other environmental advocacy non-profits.

Maybe we can take a bit of heart from this quote from a Forbes Magazine panel discussion of energy policy under the Trump administration: “[I]t was agreed that the energy industry cannot “stand behind” the new administration, waiting on industry-favorable actions at the federal level; our industry must strengthen its capabilities to engage respectfully with local, state and federal agencies, local landowners, communities and other stakeholders.” We can’t get too excited by those sentiments, to judge by past behaviors, but there’s a ray of hope there.

Be sure to look for the documentary, “Paris to Pittsburgh”, available on TV from National Geographic. Kudos to Michael Bloomberg for sponsoring this lovely, encouraging note.

To finish this on yet another positive note (among which I count Zinke’s imminent departure), the new 2018 Farm Bill contains several provisions that directly or indirectly affect global warming. The effects on global warming are not huge, but they’re steps in the right direction, and every bit counts.  The bill maintains the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as food stamps) without new punitive work requirements.

It expands funding for the Food Insecurity Nutrition Incentives program, which helps low-income shoppers purchase more fresh fruits and vegetables from local farmers. It also increases research and support for organic farmers, new farmers, and farmers of color, and includes a new Local Agriculture Market Program, which will strengthen regional economies and better connect farmers with consumers.

On farmland conservation, the bill maintains overall funding for programs that help farmers safeguard their soil and protect air and water quality. This provision is very much in line with the aims of the Drawdown initiative I’ve mentioned previously.  So, we keep on keeping on.

  

Science you can believe in

As a progressive voter, I joined with many others in celebrating the terrific gains the Democratic party made in the US House elections.  At last, there seems to be hope of cracking through the brittle political stalemate of the past several years.  But I’m not really a party animal.  I want to see progressive actions on many fronts, but there is one above all that demands our attention and action:  We must act forcefully to put the brakes on climate change. Does that seem like more of the usual squawking of a climate-change chicken? It may seem so, but I am a scientist, not a chicken.  Like all good scientists, I am committed to the notion that by working at it, we can come to know empirical truths.  Not some Platonic notion of absolute truth, but a hard-won understanding grounded in experiment, observation, modeling—all that goes into testing and confirming hypotheses so thoroughly that we can bet our very lives on what we believe. 

Consider the recent successful landing of Curiosity Rover on the planet Mars. What can we say about the kind of empirical truth that makes it possible to send Curiosity Rover to the planet Mars and receive gorgeous videos of its surroundings?  To successfully bring off that amazing venture, the number of things that must be known, and the relationships between them is enormous.  Because all that myriad of empirical truths exists, the whole—the marvelous achievement of launching an object from planet Earth to land successfully on a precisely chosen area of Mars, 96 million miles distant—is successful, a triumph of human intelligence.

On October 8, 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a special report on limiting global warming to 1.5^o. In the panel’s judgment, limiting global warming to 1.5^o, as opposed to the presently set goal of 2.0^o, would lessen some of the environmental impacts. The panel said, “With clear benefits to people and natural ecosystems, limiting global warming to 1.5^o compared to 2.0^o could go hand in hand with ensuring a more sustainable and equitable society”. So much that is important for many of the planet’s people is bound up in those words, but how many who read them will feel their importance?  What it comes down to is that the vast majority of us who are not scientists must place our faith in what climate scientists tell us. Thousands of experts on climate-related matters from nations all over the world have contributed in ways large and small to the exceptional understanding we now have of Earth’s climate system.  They’re warning us of what lies ahead because they believe collectively in the soundness of the overall assessments produced by the IPCC’s work.  In this respect, they are like the thousands of scientists that made their individual contributions to the success of the Curiosity Rover mission. 

The fate of the planet does not hinge on whether we choose to accept the soundness of the science that has gone into making the Curiosity Rover program the marvelous success it is.  By contrast, it is simply a fact that if we don’t accept and act soon upon the advice of the IPCC, the planet will change in ways that will cause misery and eventual loss of human life on a scale never before seen.  That sounds overly dramatic, but humanity is facing a rising climate change the likes of which has not occurred on Earth during the epoch in which human beings have evolved and come to “rule” the planet.  We must keep this vital point in mind: It is true that the planet’s climate has changed immensely in past epochs, much more dramatically than we can expect that it will over the next few hundred years.  But those changes came about when there were no human beings on the planet! We have to concentrate on the changes we can see coming in the very short run of decades, not thousands of years.  

We are the causative agents of the changes that are upon us.  Detailed analysis of ice cores drawn from the Greenland and Antarctic ice show that the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere right now is far greater than it has been at any time during the past 800,000 years.  Only our most vigorous and quick actions can forestall the worst effects of this, and we’ve got to halt further additions. We’ve come to take for granted the prowess of science in almost every aspect of our lives.  Now we’re being told something we don’t especially want to hear.  The fate of society depends on whether we pay attention and act.

One last thing: Some of you may have caught videos of the Town Hall Meeting that Bernie Sanders recently organized in Washington D.C..  You can find some of the materials on YouTube, but an interview of Senator Sanders by Naomi Klein is a good introduction. There will be more of these Town Hall meetings to come.  I urge you to look for them.