Earth Day

If every day were Earth Day we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson

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This picture reminds me of the fine line we are walking…

Heavy machinery is used to clear a huge parking lot to make sure truckers can haul their loads to the oil fields on the North Slope. It goes without saying that fuel, equipment, food, and everything that goes to the Northern end of the haul road has already traveled thousands of miles, only to keep our needs for fossil fuel going. But that’s beyond the point.

Back to the huge snow piles that have accumulated at the edges of the parking lot. Comes a day when the sun melts away even the biggest pile, only to leave the most fragile, tiny structure of ice in place, for a moment. Gone next day.

A fraction of a degree around the melting point of ice makes all the difference. Once that fragile structure has melted, it’s gone.

We argue about several degrees of Fahrenheit. Whether we can afford them or not, whether we want to achieve them or not.

I believe we made our mark in this world, and it’s not pretty.

And if we had Earth Day every day, it wouldn’t make a difference.

[Happy] Earth day.

Nice

Tipping points are so dangerous because if you pass them, the climate is out of humanity's control: if an ice sheet disintegrates and starts to slide into the ocean there's nothing we can do about that.

James Hansen

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I am far away from the ocean, but the desert is also a great place to appreciate what difference a few degrees can make. On a clear day the temperature rises to a comfortable level and drops at night well below freezing. During that transition water puddles turn into fantastic ice features, only to melt away a few hours later. I can sit next to those puddles and watch and feel the transition, right in front of my eyes. It is obvious, every degree counts.

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What will you do today that makes a difference?

Where We Live

So many places, so little time. That was the mantra before Covid. Now we are cooped up in our little countries. Before Old Man Winter arrives I decided to go on a road trip to see more of the land where we live.

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Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

Carl Sagan

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What I came away with is this humble feeling that Earth is a beautiful place, mostly in areas where we leave her alone. And those places become fewer and fewer. Some of us need space, not crowds…

Maybe not all the time, but on occasion.

Be safe.

Another Day in Paradise

“The love of wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyond reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth, the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only paradise we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need, if only we had the eyes to see.”

Edward Abbey

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Ed had an uncanny ability to express fundamental truth in words that anybody could understand, if they were only willing to listen. He has written more than just “Desert Solitaire” and “The Monkey Wrench Gang”…

When am I going to find the time to read all these books?

Earth is not a Garden

Yesterday, I came across an article that touched upon technology efforts in the name of conservation: Algorithmic Wilderness: Robo-bees and drone-seeded forests: can technology mend our broken relationship with the natural world?

It was not so much the idea to develop drones doing the work of bees that puzzled me. Or the idea to plant a billion trees a year using unmanned aerial vehicles – the goals may be noble, but the approach worries me. Saving the world with technology? Nonetheless, this was not the painful part of the essay. The following sentence was more concerning:

“Wilderness no longer exists. Humans have … irrevocably altered the conditions of life for almost every species on the planet.”

That realization hurt.

It was obvious to me that national parks are just some small protected islands that give us a glimpse what nature can look like. Most parks are too small to maintain a healthy ecosystem without human interference, and the human impact cannot be denied. However, some sparsely populated places like Alaska, Siberia, and Mongolia I thought would still be largely untouched by human activity. Apparently not so. I can see how climate change is affecting regions globally and our continued and renewed expansion into formerly protected areas, like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, certainly does not help the cause. It actually supports the notion of modern conservationist that tell us to give up the romantic idea of true wilderness, untouched by humans.

I must have lived under a rock. I had not heard of Green Modernists, or New Conservationists, Post-environmentalists or Eco-pragmatists until yesterday. These schools argue that we should embrace our planetary lordship and consider Earth as a giant garden. A garden, where we decide what grows, what gets harvested, and what gets eradicated. We are the gardeners calling the shots…

There is a flaw in this thinking: A garden is small enough in scale that we can control most parameters. We can even trick the weather, to a degree, using irrigation, green houses, artificial lights etc. When it comes to our planet however, that analogy fails. We cannot control nor trick the weather, and I am very doubtful that drones are suitable gardening tools to solve global problems. They also will not  change the tide of our current thinking that we can fix everything with smarter, better, and more efficient technology.

We simply need to become better stewards of the land. So much for today.

Find more details here:

Some of the world’s most powerful conservationists are giving up on wilderness. They are making a big mistake.

 

 

Island Living

Although I am not living on an island, it sometimes feels like it.

Unless I make the three mile trek to town I hear no human voices. The only footprints around the house are from feathered or furry friends. I don’t mind the isolation, or should I call it insulation? Insulation protects from outside perils.

Without the moon nights have been pitch black. It is a joy to see the sun rise in the morning. Some days there is fog drifting down from the mountains, slowly burning off, giving way to a breath-taking scenery. Those moments make up for the long, dark nights and gray, rainy days.

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“The isolation spins its mysterious cocoon,
focusing the mind on one place, one time, one rhythm

– the turning of the light.

The island knows no other human voices, no other footprints.”

M. L. Stedman

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I have not read Stedman’s “The Light Between Oceans”, which is apparently a novel about a couple living in a remote lighthouse.

”There is something that appeals to the human psyche about lighthouses because of their isolation. Their presence offers up a marvelous set of dichotomies the human imagination likes to explore – darkness and light, safety and danger, stasis and movement, isolation and communication”, she says.

I have read Bob Kull’s “Solitude: Seeking Wisdom in Extremes”, which is a diary about living alone for one year on a remote island off the Patagonian coast. He took his doctoral dissertation very seriously. At age 55, he  traveled to Chile with enough supplies to study the effects of deep wilderness solitude on a human being, himself.

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“We experience the earth as a stranger we know we should protect for pragmatic or ethical reasons, but until we individually transform our consciousness and come to experience non-human beings as family and the earth as our home, we are unlikely to relax our demands for comfort and security and make the changes necessary for our survival, joy, and sense of belonging.

Bob Kull

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His dissertation is available online. It’s an easy and interesting read. You can also learn how much stuff you need to bring to survive for one year on an uninhabited island off Patagonia.

Ripple effect

“In nature everything is connected,
interwoven, subject to natural law.
We cannot separate ourselves from that,
no matter how hard we try.”

Jeffrey R. Anderson

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Low Tide, Chilkaat Inlet, Alaska

I strongly believe that we are part of Nature, not separate from it, not above it. What we do with and to our environment will affect us and others. Some of it is out of our hand. In some instances, we may be able to tip the balance, either way. And sometimes we are completely accountable for the plundering and destruction of our planet.

I hope we find a way to act responsibly and leave this planet in better shape than we found it for future generations. I am sure this has been said before.

Howling

It’s been bugging me for a long time.

They say if you can’t change it, don’t sweat it, or something along those lines.

I do sweat it!

A few weeks ago U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has denied recognizing protection for the Alexander Archipelago wolf.

“Our review of the best available scientific and commercial information indicates that the Alexander Archipelago wolf is not in danger of extinction (endangered) nor likely to become endangered within the foreseeable future (threatened), throughout all or a significant portion of its range. Therefore, we find that listing the Alexander Archipelago wolf as an endangered or threatened species under the Act is not warranted at this time.There is no agreement on whether these wolves represent a  subspecies that deserves protection.”

The Alexander Archipelago wolf (Canis lupus ligoni) is considered to be a distinct subspecies  that is isolated from other wolf populations by water and mountain barriers.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service suggests in a November Species Status Assessment that the Alexander Archipelago wolf population occupying Prince of Wales Island declined by 75 percent between 1994 and 2014, from 356 to 89 individuals.

The decision to not grant protection equates a death sentence to the Alexander Archipelago wolf population, which is met with approval by US Senator Lisa Murkowski (R) of Alaska: “The attempt by some environmental groups to list the wolf seemed to be an effort solely to end the last of the remaining timber industry in Southeast Alaska. Fortunately, it did not work.”

Are you still with me?

On other shores the Finnish Wildlife Agency has authorized to kill nearly 20 percent of the country’s wolf population in a controversial trial cull.

“We wish to gain experience (to see) if this could be one solution to the conflict around wolves,” Sauli Harkonen, a director tasked with hunting administration at the Finnish Wildlife Agency, told AFP.

What?

Despite a hunting ban poachers had decimated the total wolf population throughout the country’s vast and remote forests to between 120 and 135 animals in 2013, from an estimated 250 to 300 in 2007. One of the contrived arguments to have this hunt is the hope that it would reduce poaching, argh.

Since 2013, the wolf population has rebounded to around 250. Now they are ripe for the taking again.

Why?

Not for food. Too protect life stock or human life?

I doubt it.

What this tells me is that arrogance, indifference, or other motivations in federal institutions lead to decisions with irreversible effects.

To tone it down. Why not err on the side of caution? A few hundred individuals of a species: Is that enough to guarantee the survival of the species? Are you sure?

What can I do?

Make you read about it.

Let me know if you have a better answer.

Waterfall – № 4

“Here is your country.

Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children’s children.

Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance.”

Theodore Roosevelt

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I am bit puzzled by President Roosevelt, who was an avid hunter and an early supporter of the National Park System. On one of his safaris to Africa his expedition killed about 11,000 specimens, hundreds of big game, including 6 white rhinos. He must have been aware of the anachronistic nature of this hunt. He asked not to be condemned, as he collected the specimens for the Smithsonian and other museums in the name of science. I guess times have changed and we have enough dead animals in collections and dangling form walls. I hope President Roosevelt would look at big game hunting with different eyes if he were alive today.

On other news, Shell got the go ahead to drill in the Arctic with the EPA watching over every step. Right. Since they just did such a great job with the Animas river in Colorado I have full confidence, not. There are 500,000 old mines in the US, many of them environmental hazards. I guess it is fair to say that the mining companies in the past were not good stewards of the land. What about the oil companies of today?

I wish men and women in power do remember what Roosevelt had to say more than hundred years ago.

Love the Earth

Fern, Coastal Rainforest Southeast Alaska

This is what you shall do:
Love the earth and sun and the animals,
Despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks,
Stand up for the stupid and crazy,
Devote your income and labors to others,
Hate tyrants, argue not concerning God,
Have patience and indulgence toward the people,
Take off your hat to nothing known or unknown,
Or to any man or number of men,
Go freely with powerful uneducated persons,
And with the young and with the mothers of families,
Read these leaves in the open air,
Every season of every year of your life,
Reexamine all you have been told,
At school at church or in any book,
Dismiss whatever insults your own soul,
And your very flesh shall be a great poem,
And have the richest fluency not only in its words,
But in the silent lines of its lips and face,
And between the lashes of your eyes,
And in every motion and joint of your body.

Walt Whitman

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Walter “Walt” Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. His poetry received strong praise from Ralph Waldo Emerson, others described his work as “trashy, profane & obscene” and called the author “a pretentious ass”. You be the judge. I think the above poem is beautiful and worthwhile remembering every day.