Weekly Spotlight on Climate & Eco-diaries (3/24/24). Check these recent DK environmental posts
The spotlight is a weekly, categorized compilation of links and excerpts from environmentally related posts at Daily Kos. Any posts included in the collection do not necessarily indicate my agreement with or endorsement of them. Because of the... The Weekly Spotlight on Climate & Eco-diaries is a compilation of links and excerpts from environmentally related posts at Daily Kos. The focus is on climate and environmental issues, with some of these posts placed in multiple categories due to the interconnectedness of the subject matter. The first day of bedding plants for spring was March 21 at the Kansas City Community Gardens, which opened its doors to the public for bedding plant sales. The gardens, which also provide free educational workshops and support 230 school gardens and 62 school orchards, now supports more than 20,000 students. In return, gardeners harvest an estimated $2.1 million of veggies and $1.8 million of organic fruit in return. The Saturday Morning Garden Blog vol.12: Spring's Morning Yawn, with each enrollment based on income, provides free access to pelletized composted chicken manure for free.
Published : 2 months ago by in Environment
The spotlight is a weekly, categorized compilation of links and excerpts from environmentally related posts at Daily Kos. Any posts included in the collection do not necessarily indicate my agreement with or endorsement of them. Because of the interconnectedness of the subject matter, some of these posts can be placed in more than one category.
Community gardens in Kanas City MO by nailkeg. On March 21, the Kansas City community gardens had their first day for bedding plants on sale. I spent $5 for a variety of lettuce, chard, and other early season plants. I had already paid my membership fee of $2. In their greenhouses, a staff of 18 had cultivated 162,000 vegetable and herb seedlings and prepared 51,800 seed packets. For those who are learning to garden, they also delivered 57 free educational workshops. A few years back I took a university course so that I could teach fifth graders in the Kansas City school district how to grow a garden in a raised bed. The KC Community Gardens now supports 230 school gardens and 62 school orchards, reaching more than 20,000 students. In 2023, more than 45,000 households harvested directly from a garden or orchard site and thousands more received garden-grown food from local pantries. In addition to the items for sale, with each enrollment based on income, they give you a sack of pelletized composted chicken manure for free. In addition, they have straw bales and organic soil for sale. They have fruit trees for sale and potatoes and strawberry plants. KCCG invested a budget of $1.4 million in its programming. In return, gardeners harvested an estimated $2.1 million of veggies and $1.8 million of organic fruit. That’s a nearly 3-fold return on dollars alone—and doesn’t even begin to count the value of improved health and community cohesion.
Saturday Morning Garden Blog vol. 20.12: Spring's Morning Yawn by ninkasi23. This month has been about slowly getting winter’s mess cleaned out of the plants to let the new growth breathe, and trimming back the dead and diseased bits. Taking note of what has not come back as well. It is still a bit early for some of my perennials like the columbines, which I am not seeing at all;( but my daffodils are actually about a month ahead of last year. I got the corner where the exterior of the building meets the fence on the north side all cleaned out. Lots of leaves fall down behind and underneath stuff so there was quite a mess I swept out into the gravel area. In what I consider to be perfect serendipity I had finished up and taken a photo of my work, gone back inside, and was just sitting down to finish the last of my coffee when I heard the telltale roar of a leafblower. Sure enough the yard maintenance crew had arrived and was just starting to come through! I could not have timed my clean up better! (They clear out that gravel area once a week.)
City Agriculture - March 20, 2024 by gmoke. Dickson Despommier Wants Our Cities to Be Like Forests. Hat tip to G. S. Murphy from Boston Food System.
• Babak Babakinejad Ph.D., the MIT whistleblower who brought attention to public safety concerns and the lack of scientific integrity in MIT Media Lab’s Open Agriculture Initiative and its Food Computer Project.
• A longitudinal field study across five years (2018–2022) to understand how insect communities responded to newly established habitat on solar energy facilities in agricultural landscapes
"Our observations highlight the relatively rapid (<4 year) insect community responses to grassland restoration activities and provide support for solar-pollinator habitat as a feasible conservation practice to safeguard biodiversity and increase food security in agricultural landscapes."
Hat tip cleantechnica.com.
• Agroecology in Barcelona and other cities around the world.
• Vertical Farm Daily. Comparing the carbon footprints of urban and conventional agriculture.
• Urban ag is 6x more carbon intensive than conventional but some crops and 25% of individually managed gardens outperform conventional ag. City University of NY [CUNY] Urban Food Policy Institute.
Yurok Tribe and Park Partners Sign Historic Agreement to Return Tribe's Land by Dan Bacher. On March 19, the Yurok Tribe, Save the Redwoods League, National Park Service and California State Parks signed a landmark memorandum of understanding, a historic first step toward transferring ‘O Rew, a 125-acre ecologically and culturally important property, from Save the Redwoods League back to its original steward, the Yurok Tribe. In addition, the agreement describes the four partners’ shared vision for long-term co-management of the site as a gateway for the visiting public to the adjacent Redwood National and State Parks (RNSP). This would be a first-ever cooperative arrangement for the National Park Service and California State Parks on tribe-owned land. The partners envision building a new visitor and cultural center and trails at ‘O Rew that will highlight the distinct histories and cultures of local tribes. “On behalf of the Yurok people, I want to sincerely thank Save the Redwoods League for committing to repatriate this critical part of our homeland. We are also appreciative of Redwood National and State Parks’ participation in this truly one-of-a-kind partnership. Together, we are creating a new conservation model that recognizes the value of tribal land management,” said Joseph L. James, the Chairman of the Yurok Tribe.
City limits: Proper management, land use, sustainability key by Alan Kandel. Face it. From the get-go, we’ve been in expansion mode — both in the context of urban development and growth rurally speaking. There’s just no denying that fact. Being that this is the nature of our being, how well the rural and urban environments will interrelate or mesh with one another will, in large measure, determine how well we as collective, larger communities will fare going forward. By mid-21st century, the projection is that cities will house anywhere between 65 and 80 percent of the total population. And, the population could — and maybe is likely to surpass — 400 million people by that time. That’s considerable. How will we manage? That’s the $64 million question. One of the first things that needs to be looked closely at is what lies beyond city borders. The land in question; is it principally forest, open range or space, or farmed?
A Little Bit of Heaven by Desert Scientist. My first trip to the Gray Ranch was with a group of other researchers and we were given access to an outlying camp building for our headquarters. We set up various insect traps and I also collected insects that came to the lights and took beating and sweep samples from the vegetation.. We lived in the camp at Upshaw for several days and journeyed out to the Animas Mountains and over San Luis Pass to the east and Clanton Draw to the west. The area was beautiful grasslands, with creek bed and riparian forest along the water flow. To the east the area included an ancient Pleistocene lakebed, fossil sand dunes, juniper-oak woodland, merging into forest-covered canyons of the Animas range. A very rough ranch road took us to Black Bill Canyon, possibly named after Curly Bill Brocius, the mysterious gunfighter and associate of the Clanton Gang, who may have died by the gun of Wyatt Earp (at least if we believe Wyatt’s account!) Curly Bill also sold part of the ranch to the Grays, possibly after having killed the previous squatter. He and his associated band of cutthroat rustlers apparently spent some time in Cloverdale (when they were not in Galeyville, their robber’s roost in Arizona) , which now consists of one building. The land was steeped in Old West lore as the Clantons, Johnny Ringo, and other outlaws held sway during the 1880s, along with Geronimo and other tribal leaders of the Chiricahua Apaches.
Cars, cars, everywhere cars. So much for everything in moderation by Alan Kandel. A team from Swansea University and the University of the West of England in the United Kingdom issued a paper titled: Motonormativity: How social norms hide a major public health hazard. The research team in reporting their findings, said, in effect, that the environment in which we live not only does it push driving but at the same time plays down “the negative consequences” of that. “These environments range from pelican crossings that make pedestrians wait for permission to cross the road while drivers automatically get a green light, to advertising and media that normalise and excuse antisocial and dangerous driving,” the research team expressed in the report. A particular reason this matters, say the team, is that it’s not just the general public who have unconscious biases around motoring – it’s also politicians and members of the medical profession who influence public health. When a policymaker automatically assumes that traveling from one place to another is going to involve driving, they might harm public health by trying to make driving easier. In this case, their blind spot might create policies that increase air pollution and make travel more difficult and dangerous for all the people who move by other means – or who might like to. Any and all of which could explain why active transportation methods like walking and biking and alternative means of automated travel as would be the case with public transit, often take a back seat or are perceived as being inferior mode selections.
Chevron will pay record fines for oil spills in California by Janet Wilson at The Desert Sun and ProPublica. Oil giant Chevron has agreed to pay a record-setting $13 million to two California agencies for past oil spills, but some of the company’s spills are ongoing. The fines, announced Wednesday, come more than three years after an investigation by The Desert Sun and ProPublica found that oil companies are profiting from illegal spills and that oversight of the industry by California’s oil and gas division was lax. At least one of Chevron’s spills is still running 21 years after it began in a Kern County oilfield, although a state spokesperson said it has been reduced by 98% “from its peak.” The amount spilled from the site, dubbed GS-5, is larger than the Exxon Valdez disaster. The crude collected from GS-5 generated an estimated $11.6 million in just three years, The Desert Sun and ProPublica found. In fact, rather than stopping potentially deadly inland spills, known as surface expressions, oil companies have routinely tried to contain them with netting or pieces of metal and used more than 100 of them as unpermitted oil production sites in Kern and Santa Barbara counties.
3/19 Renewable Tuesday: Same New Same New by Mokurai. Many components of renewable energy have settled into a rhythm of exponential growth, brushing aside Fossil Foolishness on the part of denialists and lack of imagination on the part of many governments. Have some more. Wind, solar, geothermal, mining, batteries, EVs, even real carbon capture. Texas is a fascinating case study in these conflicting trends. Ideologues and some CEOs battle fiercely against renewables there, while Real MoneyTM frequently carries the day in wind, solar, and battery storage.
• In 2023, the U.S. added more solar capacity that ever before, at 32.4 gigawatts.
• This added capacity surpassed any other energy source in 2023, marking the first time a renewable energy source outpaced fossil fuels since World War II, when the U.S. .
• The Inflation Reduction Act, along with the Biden Administration’s push for U.S. solar manufacturing, means these record-breaking years will hopefully be the year-after-year norm.
20+ Groups In California Call Out Oil Refiners Profits, Seek Penalty By Summer by Dan Bacher. A coalition of over twenty public interest groups exposed new state data showing that California oil refiners averaged more than $1 per gallon in gross profits during 2023 and called on the California Energy Commission to adopt a price gouging penalty by summer. The data on excess profits was revealed after a year when Big Oil spent more money on lobbying in California than any other year on record besides 2017. Big Oil spent $25,445,606 on lobbying in California in 2023 and $25,445,606 in 2017. Today, the CEC will hold a Pre-Rulemaking Workshop on a price gouging penalty as directed by SBX1 2, according to a press statement from Consumer Watchdog. “California’s oil refiners reported to the Energy Commission that their average gross refining margin from selling gasoline in the California gallon in 2023 was $1.01 per gallon,” the groups wrote to the commissioners and Governor Newsom. “A buck per gallon is too much for oil refiners to take for profit and overhead when working people have to choose between paying for food and filling up.
CalPERS board members voice concerns about investing in Exxon after testimony from beneficiaries by Dan Bacher. After testimony from CalPERS’ beneficiaries and a large rally and press conference with unions, community and environmental groups outside CalPERS’ Downtown Sacramento headquarters on Monday, March 18, members of the CalPERS Board of Directors voiced serious concerns about continuing to invest in Exxon after the oil company sued shareholders who brought forward a climate resolution. The day's actions also included a 30-minute occupation by activists of the lobby of the Sacramento headquarters of the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA, the largest and most powerful corporate lobbying group in Sacramento, after the rally and press conference. “I don't think engaging with [Exxon] will work,” said Theresa Taylor, CalPERS President. “ I think we need a plan...To say that we are very disappointed [is not enough]...Our members were just in here talking about how important this is to them. We have to be more adamant about this…We agree with our 2 million members, those types of comments are what we need to hear [from CalPERS staff].
Kitchen Table Kibitzing ~ 3/23/24: The Age of Obscenity by Dartagnan. Earlier this month a panel of geologists voted down a proposal that would have “officially” recognized the time frame in which we now live as an entirely distinct interval of geologic time, called the “Anthropocene.” The vote against changing the designation from its current “Holocene” moniker was 12-4 against, with two abstentions. Three committee members did not vote, perhaps because they were too busy on social media to worry about such things. As reported by Raymond Zhong, writing for the New York Times, the decision implicated more than just scientific semantics: The declaration would shape terminology in textbooks, research articles and museums worldwide. It would guide scientists in their understanding of our still-unfolding present for generations, perhaps even millenniums, to come. The dispute over whether to designate our current era in updated terminology arose mostly because of disagreements as to when such an “Anthropocene” period actually began.
Kitchen Table Kibitzing: Having Kids in a Climate Changed World by boatsie. I’ve been participating in a Women’s Climate Group since January where most of the women are of child bearing age and wrestling with whether or not they will have have kids. Being my age, and the mother of a daughter who is not having children because of the state of the world, the issue is fraught with sadness. Not only does my daughter miss out on the joys of having children, I also miss out on the opportunity of being a grandmother. Back in 2022, NYT reporter Ezra Klein noted the most frequent question he is asked in his podcast is whether or not people should have children given the climate crisis. Klein, noting that folks dedicating their life to fighting climate change continue to have children, referenced two polls: A 2020 Morning Consult poll found that a quarter of adults without children say climate change is part of the reason they didn’t have children. A Morgan Stanley analysis found that the decision “to not have children owing to fears over climate change is growing and impacting fertility rates quicker than any preceding trend in the field of fertility decline.” A recent Lancet poll determined “36% of teens and young adults were hesitant to have children due to climate change,” as reported in an article in Tuesday’s Detroit News Some young people planning fewer or no kids because of climate change.
Economics for Our Earth by populationmediacenter. Let’s take a look at no growth, post-growth economics and a steady state economy. For many of you, these terms are seared into your memory. For others, I am hoping they will inspire action to do things differently and show that we aren’t the only ones interested in these changes. We are a community who goes against the grain, we advocate for changing “normalized” behavior, and we take action to show the world there is a better way. In purely material terms, the planet on which and off which we live has put up several hard ecological boundaries. Crossing those boundaries, it has become increasingly clear, has extremely destructive consequences. WHAT IS DEGROWTH? As the name implies, it’s a critique of capitalism. It’s an economic belief that growth isn’t the ultimate goal. It goes against economic beliefs espoused by bulwarks like Adam Smith, and his omnipotent invisible hand of the free market. André Gorz, a French social scientist, coined the term “degrowth” in 1972. At an academic forum, he posed a revolutionary question: “Is the earth’s balance, for which no-growth—or even degrowth—of material production is a necessary condition, compatible with the survival of the capitalist system?” Back then, the idea of prioritizing human and environmental welfare over economic growth was so radical that Gorz was laughed out of the political sphere. While some would still laugh at him, Gorz was ahead of his time. Gorz, and all others who prioritize degrowth, aren’t laughing at the state of our environment. Instead, we are trying to do something about a very real crisis.
North Carolina Open Thread: Confederate monument, Wastewater concerns, Mo Green, Minority business by randallt. Troubled waters: DEQ proposes adding 400+ miles of streams, rivers to impaired list. By all appearances, the Bogue Sound, a serene, 25-mile stretch of water between the barrier islands and North Carolina’s mainland, is pristine, its emerald glint earning its reputation as a gem of the Crystal Coast. But in reality, the sound, a major shellfish growing area, teems with bacteria: enterococcus,found in the intestinal tract and feces of warm-blooded animals, like people. Among the sources: the sewer systems and septic tanks at RV parks, beach homes and tourist attractions along the Crystal Coast.
Iceland's Current Eruption now a Potential Threat to Northern Hemisphere's High Latitude Ozone Layer by Irontortoise. Last week I provided an update on the volcanic fissure eruption in Iceland, the 4th such eruption in the past 3 months, and the first time in ~800 years that this particular volcanic system has come back to life — not that Iceland hasn’t experienced plenty of other eruptions over the centuries, sitting astride the Mid-Atlantic ridge/rift zone as it does, and from far more dangerous volcanos. Unfortunately, while the previous eruptions produced some spectacular photos and video, they generally didn’t last more than a day or two, or inconvenience too many people (other than the ~3800 residents of Grindavik and ~700 tourists and staff at the famed Blue Lagoon thermal spa that had to be evacuated), this current eruption is a much more serious matter — particularly in how it may impact the seasonal ozone hole over the Arctic Ocean. From livescience today: A massive column of sulfur dioxide that was pumped out by the erupting volcano on Iceland's Reykjanes Peninsula is currently traveling across northern Europe. Scientists are concerned it could impact the ozone layer. Scientists are tracking a massive plume of toxic gas moving across northern Europe that was spat out by the in Iceland. The gas cloud is unlikely to cause any serious health problems. However, it could impact the ozone hole above the , experts warn.
Tombs of the rich&powerful /Zuk’s Meta bunker & ‘survival follies’ /The limits of privilege by mikeymikey. Altruism is not in their DNA. While they willfully ‘dig our graves’ for profit, rather than invest in the preservation of the global ‘commons’, cognitive dissonance creates the self-delusion that they can ‘dig’ their way to safety. Indeed, the structure and limitations of their cognitive aptitudes leave them no other option. They are wholly unable to work for the common good. “Common” is anathema to them. In their minds, they were never common and association with anyone ‘beneath’ them is dangerous for their monstrous self-esteem and fragile inner self-worth. With few exceptions, the one percent and their hydra fringe, are so cocooned in their privilege that they cannot conceive of their vulnerability in a collapsing world. When they lost what little humanity they had, that perspective went with it. It would be easier to get a shark to go vegan, than for the ‘raptors’ of wealth to forgo their gluttony. Zuckerberg continues to permit FaceBook’s algorithms to allow the spreading of environmental disinformation, enabling the Fossil Fuel industry for his personal gain — for which he made the Guardian’s list of the top dozen climate villains
Earth Matters: Republican energy-transition saboteurs; Biden's eco-work; are EVs truly green? by Meteor Blades.