When Scientists and Policymakers Work Together

Some days, the best I can do to fight climate change is to read.

It's really easy to get wrapped up on all the political brouhaha in the other Washington and think that the Constitutional crisis needs more of my attention than science does. But when you consider the fall of a nation compared to the fall of humanity, perspective straightens itself out. Doesn't it?

I'm still stuck in the zone of what I could do that would make any difference. But I've decided that my tiny voice is still a voice. I can still make calls, write letters, and protest. I can still make my tiny little difference. So, today I read in order to make a difference. Yes, I said that I read.

Not only that, I read the National Geographic.

Now, I don't exactly trust National Geographic as much as I did before Rupert Murdock bought it and started printing Jesus covers with the National Geographic brand on them. But, I read their article about oxygen levels in our oceans. Did some tenured National Geographic writer sneak this one under the wire? Thank you Craig Welch.

It's worth reading. The story is that tuna, marlin, sailfish and other diving ocean predators are having to hold their breath or hunt closer to the surface because of huge areas in which oceans no longer hold enough oxygen to support life because of rising temperatures.

Rising temperatures.

Loss of oxygen in many huge areas of the ocean, millions of square miles. Changing habitat, squeezing predator and prey into smaller areas. Dead zones. Stress on the fish. A sixty-three percent loss of  the small deep-sea fishes that feed the ocean. And indirectly, us.

63%

This is what we're up against if we don't start making changes regarding climate change. It's a motivator, right? It got your attention, right? I hope so.

Polar ice melting, species extinction, coral reefs bleaching, oxygen levels dropping making huge swaths of our oceans uninhabitable, seas rising, extreme hurricanes crashing onto our shores, wildfires burning out of control.

We're not looking at our future. This is our present situation. We are beginning to drown in it, burn in it, lose our homes to its fury. Next, we face starvation in the name of climate change. This is going to be bigger than the AIDS epidemic, the pandemic flu of 1918, the cost of human lives in WWII, bigger than malaria, ebola, zika, and all other diseases combined. The only thing that might be as disastrous would be if that big asteroid hits. But that big asteroid is a phantom menace. We can see climate change happening around us if we admit it to ourselves. I spent days this summer looking out the window at a strangely purple sky and trying not to breathe too deeply because of the wildfires burning nearby. And I was one of the lucky ones.

Scientists, you have work to do. Policymakers, you need to fund them. How can we keep ignoring what has hurricanes slapping us in our faces?

And yet I hold hope in what we can accomplish given the drive to do so. Today, I also read that the hole in the ozone layer has healed more quickly that scientists thought possible. It's expected to be completely normal within fifty or sixty years. Scientists and policymakers worked together. Imagine that?

Thank you for listening, jules

Mostly Excuses

Here's what I want to do to live more sustainably:

1. Plant a little garden - if I plant a little garden, there's half a chance that it would succeed. A big garden would be a definite fail. I'm not a gardener. I like knowing what the plants are and how they grow, but I've got a yellow thumb and I forget to take care of the plants. Just now, I realized that Seth has eaten the second to last leaf of my shamrock. How unlucky is that?
2. Buy locally - I used to belong to a CSA, Jubilee Farms. They were wonderful, farming as organically as they could, growing unusual produce for me to experiment with, stretching my palate, and generally teaching me and Nick more about farming. I learned that I don't particularly want to farm. See the first on the list. But as a child, Nick picked strawberries, peas, green beans. I allowed him to play with a collard leaf one afternoon if he promised to eat it. I had to look it up to see if he could eat it raw since he said he didn't want me to cook it. Raw was good. The reasons I stopped being a member of the CSA were that I ran out of time to pick my produce in the summer even though picking peas always reminded me of my grandma. I stopped because I didn't get to pick what I wanted and there were lots of foods I couldn't eat. I stopped because it got to a point that I was the only one eating the produce because Mike couldn't and Nick didn't want to and it clogged the refrigerator and spoiled. I reasoned that being a member of a CSA was not helpful if the food was going into the garbage too often. Plus, I got really sick on the same day I ate burdock root and even the sound of the word makes me a little sick to my stomach even though it is years later. My revised and reduced plan is to visit more farmer's markets. I could find time to do that, buying more locally, buying more sustainably-grown foods. Plus, I think it would be fun to see what people were growing and making out there. But most of the farmer's markets start in May. What are we supposed to eat until then?
3. Tell you more of my ideas - I admit that the idea of getting all those gym people to put energy back onto the grid was a strange one, but you should hear my idea for wind-farm house paneling to capture breezes. There is always a breeze. When the air is completely still, it's weird. Still, I have no idea if harnessing the breezes would bring in enough power to make the whole idea worth it. But I'm certain it would be pretty.
4. Donate - When I get money, if I get money of my own, I will donate to endeavors that are working to educate us, to change our hearts, to implement their own ideas for living sustainably. Right now, I don't earn enough to make any percentage of a donation worth anything. So far, I've given $6.00 to the Indivisibles group that was my donation from my Angry Housewife Fights Tyranny book royalties. Six damned dollars. Pathetic, right? But at least I had the idea to benefit the Indivisibles groups with my royalties. A bonus is that if we get Trump out of the Oval Office, we might get on with our fight against climate change. With royalties from a climate change book, I'd support the Sierra Club or the Environmental and Energy Study Institute or - do you have any good ideas? I might even buy carbon offsets, but I have a little problem with the idea that every single person in the world could make enough carbon offset donations to actually fight climate change. See what I mean? Someone has to lean the other direction to make it balance.
5. Compost - The hard part about composting is that it attracts rodents. Living out here in the forest, we have rodents. We even have a bear. Do they make a bear-proof compost bin? I could see a heavy-duty plastic bin that's been clawed and rolled around until the contents had no need to be turned. Leaves and yard debris would be fine. I could start with that, but we already do that by leaving our yard alone so much of the time. Debris just goes back into the earth without being dug up. See? I'm good. All I have to do is eliminate all yard work and let my yard go fallow. Perfect, right? In a hundred years, I'll have a good inch of useful topsoil. When you ask me to add food scraps into the mix, I start thinking of the rats that plague Mike's power tools in the garage. We lost a drill press to a nest. This was a drill press that could drill a hole into your tailgate. It was a serious piece of equipment. It would still be working if mice or rats hadn't nested inside it, if they hadn't chewed the heck out of the wiring inside it. So, whenever I mention composting, Mike goes all gray in the face and clenches his teeth. He has a war going with the rodents in the garage. He won't even buy grass seed and put it into a hard plastic bucket. Those beasts chewed right through that thing. But I might be able to quietly put some leaves and sticks into an old plastic tub and make my own dirt so I can stop buying that crap they sell at the garden center. Yes, I could make my own dirt, eventually.
6. Sleep more and do less - just kidding.

I'll have to go to one of those big lists and see if there are any other things I can do to fight climate change. What I've got here are a bunch of excuses. I'm feeling rather ineffective right now. But at least I'm still thinking about how I can have an effect, how I can maximize my impact.

Thank you for listening, jules

Failing

"It's not often that poets and writers get a chance to save the world," wrote Paul Hunter. "But here we are, on the verge of environmental disater..."

I went to a writing workshop run by Paul Hunter last Saturday at the Book Tree. I wrote about a tree that I loved. I wanted to write about maidenhair fern, broccoflower, tree branching, river braiding, Fibonacci, and fractals in space and time. When I signed up for the workshop, the description referred to Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist by Paul Kingsnorth. I was reminded of my New Year's resolution to do something tangible about living sustainably. Could driving thirty one minutes to an almost local bookstore for a workshop run by an environmentalist poet qualify as a concerted effort?

I know, I know. I've been absent for how many days? You wanted someone who would perfectly portray what a New Year's resolution is supposed to be? Instead, I've been absent. A zero. Negligent. Plus, I haven't kicked my salads in a plastic tub habit. I'm not very good at this. Admitting the truth might be the first real step. But I've been avoiding the whole thing.

Honestly, some part of me had thoughts of that resolution whenever I drove my errands. 'Can't right now,' I thought. 'Can't write and drive safely.' I know. I've tried it. 

Sometimes my New Year's resolution to do something about climate change was pressed into my thoughts by a radio show, Living on Earth. You may not be a religious science geek like I am, but I get the best nudges from the Universe when I'm supposed to do something and have been shirking my duties. Living on Earth has been a big part of those nudges. Thank you, Living on Earth for that. Then on CBC, I heard about how the managing director of a company, Richard Walker of Icelandic Foods in Canada, has vowed to make his company plastic-free by 2023. He was so awesome that I broke my 'no writing while driving rule' and wrote down his name and #toocoolforplastic.  If all I did during those missing days was to listen, then I'm at least not completely off the rails. I was actually a little jealous of Richard Walker while I listened to his great idea to eliminate plastic from his company because he'd taken a big step while all I'd done was listen to the radio and think about what I should have done last week but didn't.

See, when I was safely at home, free to write, I got distracted. I procrastinated my New Year's resolution to live more sustainably, to make concrete steps toward a world in which I could do that without leaving my husband, son, and home to go native or learn farming in the middle of nowhere. I'm not a survivalist.

It really is going to be hard to make changes that we need to make if I'm having this much trouble all by myself.

Someone at Paul Hunter's workshop said that we're all afraid to use the word 'population' when discussing climate change. It's true. Can we really save the world without addressing our burgeoning population?

But at least I'm here, not a complete zero, trying to continue with my resolution. I'm still trying, but sometime, I'm going to have to write about futility and recycling plastic grocery bags. I'm going to have to write about existential angst and the big battery in my Prius. I'm going to have talk about what I've been doing and what I still need to do.

I'm going to have to fail before I can imagine succeeding. Okay, I'm here today to tell you that I've failed for at least two weeks now. Listening to the radio is not a success. It's not.

Thank you for listening, jules

How to Be a Stowaway

I usually come here to whine.

No whining today! I'm taking a break from whining. Are you with me?

Nick is home sick from school today. This morning, he worried about what he'd miss. This is high school, chemistry, trig, American literature. Serious stuff. Picture a kid who's dizzy from not being able to breathe properly who sits at the computer trying to catch up on work he's too sick to comprehend. He's on all the steroids except prednisone. By the strength and duration of the virus Mike had last week, I imagine prednisone is coming, but later in the week when we hear bubbling in Nick's lungs.

I get nostalgic when Nick stays home from school. He's more independent that he used to be, even when he's sick. I miss the days when we read him to sleep, a chapter each night from a book we'd chosen together. Some of the books he wanted me to read were hard to get through, but when he picked Roald Dahl, C.S. Lewis, or finally Tolkien, it was a joy. Nick would fall asleep and his chapter would end and I always wanted to read on ahead. Often, I kept reading, my voice quieter and droning its sleep-sleep message. I might have to repeat those pages the next night when Nick said he didn't remember them, but so what?

Did you do that? Do you still?

I wish I could go back in time with a book in hand, Destiny's Gambit by RJ Wood. I'd sit at Nick's bedside to read it to him, chapter by chapter, adventure after adventure. Now that we're past that time, I don't tell my friends that I still read kid's books without being required to, but now you know. When I'm reading a book like this, I almost remember what it was like to be a kid.

I loved Jake this awkward boy in the story who surprised himself with magic he didn't know he possessed. Does it always seem like having a rough time of it leads a kid that way or am I just wishing it were so because I was an awkward girl? This awkward girl still loves characters like Jake.

And now the next book in the series is coming, Beyond the Moon!

Here's where the story is headed:

Beyond the Moon picks up after the battle above the ice planet Nystal, where Earth-kid Jake Flynn and crew have recently escaped from the Crimson Cabal. Their voyages continue on the other side of the galaxy where magic has displaced technology and monsters are real. Jake continues to grow in his new abilities to channel energy and fly tall wooden ships in space, but struggles with having been named the Justicar, a prophesied champion of the light. Pushing forward, he sets course for new planets in search of allies who will stand with him and help stop the cabal from resurrecting a long dead queen. To succeed, Jake must learn more about channeling and how to balance his new and unwelcome responsibilities with the continued search for his missing parents and a way home to Earth.

Aided and mentored by the young Life Magian, Starla Silvertree, her aged protector, Ottomeyer Riversend, and assisted by veteran sailors Jehnna Marik and Captain Billy Goldbar, Jake must make heavyweight decisions with deadly consequences.

Unicorns, ghost ships, pirates, space battles, magi wielding lightning and fire, dinosaurs, and a Valkyrie – Jake must face them all in this epic sword and space adventure. By the end, Jake will take another step toward adulthood, discover truths about his parents’ fate, suffer the death of a comrade, and muster the courage to charge into a final showdown with the terrifying snake-woman, Celia Sable.

I can't wait. You'll find me on the couch, Beyond the Moon in hand, stopping now and then to read something aloud to the consternation of Mike who will probably be in the middle of watching a the mess of politics in the news. He might give me a look. I'll get the hint and curl up with the cat to read quietly.

I'm getting the better deal in this scenario. My imagination will soar through asteroid fields. I'll hear battle commands. And in the end, I'll stow away on the Voyages of Jake Flynn.

Thank you for listening, jules