• Category Archives Sierra Club

  • The Everyday Wonderful

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa                                                                    Honey Moon

    The environmental community has a new addition, Arthur Levi Neilsen, born today.  8.5 pounds, 21.5 inches to Greg Neilsen and Margaret Levin.  Margaret is the executive director of the Northstar Chapter of the Sierra Club.  Congratulations to Greg and Margaret!

    Grocery shopping today for the first time in a long time.  Kate’s been handling that for a while, seeking deals quite successfully and saving us money.

    It’s been a domestic week for team Olson-Ellis with the honey extracted and partially bottled, excess books taken to Half-Price books and sold and multiple cans of paint and other hazardous waste accumulated over many years taken to the Anoka County hazardous waste pickup.

    Now kicking back and enjoying the slow ride toward misplaced heat.  The heat has, however, made rendering the wax from our cappings a breeze.  We have a tupperware container full of bright yellow, clear, wonderful smelling wax.  A treat.

     


    Bees Friends Great Work Sierra Club

  • Mining

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa                                                               Honey Moon

    On a similar track to the post below, though in a different direction, all those mining proposals have begun to gnaw at me. (They’ve concerned me at a deep level for a long time, but they’re emerging again in my heart.) Managing the Sierra Club’s legislative program taxed me even though it was satisfying work.  I’m beginning to wonder, just wonder at this point, if a more targeted engagement, say around the sulfide mining proposals might be a way to continue to make a contribution without the administrative load of a committee chair.

    Politics is largely a matter of the heart for me and these proposals trouble me both for what they are and what they portend.  They are a dangerous technology proposed for siting in a fragile ecosphere.  More.  They predict a future hungry for natural resources stored in the commons and willing to override natural catastrophe for temporary gain.


    Politics Sierra Club

  • How Can We Let This Happen?

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    8/13/2013  Lughnasa                                                                       Honey Moon

    To the EPA meeting in Chicago to discuss sulfide mining in the BWCA:

    mining_exploration_map

    You may not have been to the Boundary Waters, a magical part of America the Beautiful, filled with lakes and rocks and fish and silence.  If not, I hope you get the chance to go sometime in the future.  There you will find rest as well as a place to celebrate the wonder that is our planet.

    Would you locate a landfill so that it drains its waters into the baptismal fount of a Catholic cathedral?  Would you site a noisy factory with its emissions of smoke and toxins next to a spot dedicated to meditation?  Of course not.

    The argument from Polymet and other would be miners of copper and nickel and magnesium locked in sulfides near the Boundary Waters is that their technology will not pollute the three watersheds that send water from its site to Hudson’s Bay, the Pacific and the Atlantic.  The trouble is that there has never, NEVER, been a technology that prevented sulfuric acid runoff from these kinds of mines.  Never.

    Can we trust them when the EPA says this claim is suspect?


    Great Work Politics Sierra Club

  • No country or corporation has the right to pollute the air at the expense of Singaporeans’ health and wellbeing.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                                                     Solstice Moon

    Linking the story from Singapore to this article in the New York Review of Books,  Collapse and Crash, JUNE 20, 2013, Bill McKibben, gives me a chance to promote your reading of Bill McKibben’s fine review of a book by engineer Henry Petroski, To Forgive Design: Understanding Failure.

    (our very own engineering failure)

    Though the book sounds interesting in its own right, it preaches failure as the great teacher, it’s McKibben’s context for his review that made me really pay attention.  In it he observes that many failures, perhaps most engineering failures, result in serious questioning of existing standards and often their revision.

    And that’s just the rub now.  Mother Earth no longer acts according to the rules of the Holocene, the period since the end of the last Ice Age.  Temperature has risen on average about 1 degree around the globe.  And will rise more.  One thing this does, McKibben points out, is add energy to meteorological phenomenon, producing more tornadoes, more severe thunderstorms and, take just these two, increases stress on buildings, dams, sewer systems, stresses that were previously adjudged to be 50 year or 100 year or 500 year events, now occurring much more frequently.

    How do engineers design structures safely and, a critical point, economically in such a plastic environment?  Then, as McKibben also points out, those who travel with the engineers, bond agencies and insurance companies, face an uncertain and novel setting for their work, too.

    My sense is that McKibben, a well known environmentalist, has begun to point out the real time effects of global warming, not just the overall, omg the ice is melting, but it will also cost us money and lives and create a unique, unknown future.


    Great Work Sierra Club

  • Pruning

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter                                                                Moon of the Winter Solstice

    Tomorrow the legislature goes into session and for the first time in three years I’m on the sideline.  A bit wistful.  A bit chagrined at getting out just when the getting might get good.  Yes. Yes.  Doubtful about the decision?  No.

    It’s midwinter, the time for pruning in the orchard.  Fruit trees need space for air to circulate, fewer branches so they can focus their growth on less fruit with more vigor, and space, too, in which a harvester can reach.  Plus, if possible they need to be kept shorter.  Easier to harvest and less prone to damage during wind storms and heavy wet snow.

    Just so my life of a year ago.  I’d allowed branches to grow every which way.  Too many branches.  The fruit might be greater in quantity but not as good a quality.  There was little space to reach inside the tree, watch an idea blossom, nurture it, then pluck it.  My tree had become overgrown and needed pruning.

    It wasn’t easy.  The people at the Sierra Club are fellow travelers.  Folks who see a world and want it better.  Folks willing to do what it takes.  I admire that stance and have made it my own for much of my life.  I miss that sense of agency and I miss the camaraderie.

    Yet.  The hours of driving, of having attention pulled away time and time again.  And the writing.  Peaking now, for some reason.  At this late stage of life.  It was the tree I had not nourished.  So I made the decision and pulled away.

    I’ve pulled back from everything but Latin, art and writing now.  The art temporarily, till July 1st, but all else, at least for now, permanently.

    And so the gavel will go down, the great sausage grinder start up its rusty gears and I will sit at home and think of Odin.


    Art and Culture Politics Sierra Club Writing

  • Another Beautiful Day. Bah.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                                Woodpecker Moon

    Another beautiful day. Yes.  But.  What dark forces work to push the boundaries of weather around like so many children’s blocks, a lego castle on wheels rolling north, careening over everything in its wake?  As I hope I’ve said here before, efforts to control global warming are NOT about saving the planet.  The planet will keep on whirling around the sun as long as gravity and spacetime remain.  Well, not quite, there is that whole red giant business, but it’s a really long time from now.

    No, good ol’ h. sapiens will catch the fever.*  Of course, those with an eye to irony or just desserts might not see this a totally uncalled for solution; but, hell, I love our funny two-legged species, roaming around making babies, art, war, sport, roombas, nailguns and rainbow ponies.  What will the universe do for a laugh when we’re gone?

    Fans of schadenfreude will rejoice.  Though whether one can be very schadenfreudie when you’re baking along with the ones responsible for delaying action, I don’t really know.

    So, as a paid up member of the northern European gene pool, I’m tellin’ you it’s no wonder I’m melancholy.  The world is going to hell in a Hummer, not a handbasket.

     

    *Scientific American

    LONDON (Reuters) – Global greenhouse gas emissions could rise 50 percent by 2050 without more ambitious climate policies, as fossil fuels continue to dominate the energy mix, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said on Thursday.

    “Unless the global energy mix changes, fossil fuels will supply about 85 percent of energy demand in 2050, implying a 50 percent increase in greenhouse gas emissions and worsening urban air pollution,” the OECD said in its environment outlook to 2050.

    The global economy in 2050 will be four times larger than today and the world will use around 80 percent more energy.

    But the global energy mix is not predicted to be very different from that of today, the report said


    Aging Great Work Sierra Club Weather +Climate 📎and tagged

  • A Year of No Winter, Now With No Spring?

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                         Woodpecker Moon

    OK.  So, there was this place that used to have winter but had it replaced by a season of cloudy skies and what passes for cold in the southern states.  Then, that season ended and summer began.  Minnesota 2011-2012

    Not kidding.  It’s 60 degrees here today, March 11th.  And this doesn’t seem to be an aberration, the temps go like this for highs:  59, 65, 70, 67, 68.  And that gets us through Friday.  It may throw the bee season into a conundrum since my package bees don’t arrive until mid-April and the bloom cycle could be accelerated by as much as a month.

    This is also a year when I didn’t start any vegetables.  Not a one.  We moved the hydroponics into the garage for storage so we could consolidate the dog crates in one place. I imagine the places I buy plants will have used the same calendar as usual and we could waste a month or so of available warmer weather.  In other words we could have a growing season up to 6 weeks longer than normal.  But we’re not ready for it and won’t be.

    The Great Wheel continues to turn, but the holidays may usher in different weather than usual.  Climate change is well under way.  I hope the climate change deniers have a ringside seat in hell to the catastrophe they’ve created.  I know, that sounds extreme, but I mean it.

    The deniers will not and never could change the basic science behind global warming, all they could ever do was slow down humanity’s response to it, a slowing down that amounts to a criminal act, a felony against generations yet to be born.  They need to be held responsible for their greedy, stupid, infantile actions.

    But they probably won’t be.  They’ll die off before the worst of it hits.  That’s why I hope hell has a special viewing room for these shrunken souls.

    Would you like me to tell you what I really believe?


    Bees Faith and Spirituality Garden Politics Sierra Club Weather +Climate 📎and tagged

  • How the New Year Might Look

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter                                           First Moon of the New Year

    At an inflection point with the Latin.  Either I keep the pace I currently follow, maybe 6 hours a week; or, I ramp up, say to 10 or 12, maybe a couple of hours each day.  Some analysis of other texts–maybe Caesar or Suetonius or Julian, I have all of these in Loeb Library volumes–plus more translating of the Metamorphoses.  My inclination is to ramp up, do more, focus on Latin and the novel.  That’s what my heart tells me.

    That other project, too.  The one I’ve got slotted for 5,000 word essays each month next year.  Where I’m going to give voice to my whirling ideas about the earth, about ge-ology, about what would help us help our home planet.  That one, too.

    When you add these things together, they constitute real work and I feel good about that, not trapped or bummed.  Now all I need is a way of allocating my time so I can work them all in and still manage the art, the garden, the bees and family.

    That may be my new year’s work.  Pruning activities and creating a new schedule.

     

     


    Aging Art and Culture Commentary on Religion Faith and Spirituality Garden Great Wheel Great Work Humanities Myth and Story Politics Sierra Club Writing 📎and tagged

  • Wolf Travels Alone

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter?                                  First Moon of the New Year

    Lone wolf crosses into California from Oregon

    This head line, reassuring and hopeful as it is, still seems sad.  An animal, an apex predator, that used to roam freely throughout the West now receives newspaper attention for returning, on its own, to the old habitat.

    May these kind of experiences become common and unworthy of public attention by the time Gabe and Ruth grow up.  Make it so, Mr. Sulu.

    (read full story in the LA Times here)

    The young animal is the first wolf known to be at large in California since 1924. Wildlife authorities in both states have been monitoring the wolf since it set out from the Crater Lake area in September.

     


    Great Work Politics Sierra Club 📎and tagged

  • Not With A Bang, But A Fever

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samain                                 Moon of the Winter Solstice

    Durban.  On the somewhat binding, sort of advanced, might be effective at some point result of this latest climate summit.

    On this point a very interesting column by a philosopher wondering how to make his discipline matter.  On climate science he suggested analyzing the thought and logic of so-called climate skeptics.  Given the weight and quantity of high quality data documenting climate change, climate skepticism is not skepticism, rather it’s the height of credulity.  That is, true skeptics, given the science, would doubt the doubters who somehow swallow, accept as credulous, the patent propaganda of those whose self-interest (as they short-sightedly see it) turns them against facts.

    “The last-minute successful agreement at Durban puts pressure on what has been the world’s biggest obstacle to a climate agreement – the US Republican party.

    For ten years or more, they have walked out of hearings on renewable energy or climate policy with “We won’t act on climate because China won’t!” – a petulant mirror image of the parental favorite: “Would you jump off a bridge, just cause your friend does?””

    But now – China will. 

    In terms of sheer global impact, there is nothing else within human control that matters more than reducing carbon emissions.  We insist on running our present in a way that commits our grandchildren to a difficult, if not downright dangerous, world.

    Because this is global politics and because the big emitters, China #1 and US #2, have internal political problems on this issue, as does India, and because the world is in the midst of a very unsettled global economic mess, the odds of something substantive happening seems faraway, distant.

    It may be that this is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a fever.  But, maybe not.*

    “So does the outcome in Durban truly represent a “remarkable new phase,”  as U.N. Climate Chief Christina Figueres put it? Does the Durban Platform really “set a new course for the global fight against climate change”  (the phrase from an Associated Press wire story that many media outlets have picked up)? Maybe, but it will require a whole lot of work by the likes of the United States and China to keep the world on that course. At the very least, perhaps one could say, in that regard, that in the Durban Platform two of the world’s biggest emitters have agreed to stop squabbling and have shaken hands.”


    Great Work Politics Sierra Club US History World History 📎and tagged