climate crisis Archives - Macska Moksha Press

Learn How Project 2025 Threatens the Environment

November 7, 2024 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Four Corners Generating Station in New Mexico. Photo taken prior to installation of emission controls equipment for removal of sulfur dioxide and particulate matter. (Credit: National Park Service)

In our corporate-ruled system, which only allows candidates who put profit over planet, those of us who care about the environment had our work cut out for us no matter who won the presidential election. (See my 10/7/24 post: “The Environment & the Election.”) But with Trump at the helm, we know specifically what we’re up against: Project 2025.

We all need to familiarize ourselves with Project 2025 because the time to start resisting it is now. Below is a list of educational resources I recommend, in article, video and podcast form.

The broad strokes: Project 2025 is a 900-page document put out by the right-wing Heritage Foundation that’s intended to guide policy and staffing in a Republican presidency. It covers all areas of governance, with environmental topics taking up a full 150 pages. The main thrust of Project 2025 is to dismantle the administrative state, which will include weakening or eliminating regulation that protects the environment.

Paraphrasing a summary by Earthjustice, Project 2025 proposes to gut the Endangered Species Act, repeal the Antiquities Act (which empowers the president to declare national monuments), weaken the Clear Air Act and undermine NEPA (the National Environmental Policy Act), which is one of the best tools that environmentalists have for pushing back on environmental destruction in the US. It also seeks to maximize fossil fuel production, cut EPA funding for studying toxic pollution, shut down climate research, and reject the concept of environmental justice. (Their full summary: “What Project 2025 Would Do to the Environment – and How We Will Respond.”)

That’s the tldr, but we need to know more than that, hence the list of resources. But before that, I want to address the feelings of despair or helplessness you might have about both Trump’s vote total and the harrowing details of Project 2025. Let’s put these things in perspective.

Can Our Veggie Gardens Feed us in a Real Crisis?

July 14, 2019 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

A haul from the Author’s urban farming operation in Portland, Sept. 15, 2007 *(Photo C.H.White)*

Massive flooding and heavier than normal precipitation across the US Midwest this year [2019] delayed or entirely prevented the planting of many crops. The situation was sufficiently widespread that it was visible from space. The trouble isn’t over yet: Hotter-than-normal temperatures predicted to follow could adversely affect corn pollination. Projections of lower yields have already stimulated higher prices in UN grain indexes and US ethanol. Additionally, the USDA is expecting harvests to be of inferior quality. Furthermore, the effects of this year could bleed into 2020; late planting leads to late harvesting which delays fall tilling, potentially until next spring, when who knows what Mother Nature will deliver.

Accuweather’s characterization of this as a “one-of-a-kind growing season” is literally true only in terms of its exact circumstances (given increasingly chaotic events) but not in its intensity (which will surely be exceeded). Prudence would dictate that we heed this year’s events as a warning and get serious about making preparations for worse years. Literal cycles of “feast or famine” have marked agriculture since its birth and sooner or later we will experience significant shortages here in the US, if not from the weather, than from war or lack of resources.

The Midwest floods and their possible repercussions for the food supply got some attention in the news (though not enough). One of the most common suggestions I saw on social media was: “Plant a garden!”

If only it were that simple.

I used to be a small-scale organic farmer so take it from me: totally feeding yourself from your own efforts is very, very challenging. Though some friends and I tried over multiple seasons, we never succeeded, or even came anywhere close.

Do we need a dictatorship to respond to Climate Change?

July 2, 2019 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

MLK: "Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals." — Collage by the author

Globally, June 2019 was the hottest June on record. Though it is tricky to attribute any particular event to anthropogenic climate change, scientists estimate that the likelihood of the month’s extreme heat was made five times more likely by human contributions.

This heat is no anomaly. The top ten hottest years on record globally have all occurred since 1998. This list includes every year since 2013, which is to say, 2012 was the last year that was not one of the ten hottest recorded. (See “The 10 Hottest Global Years on Record.”) Because 2019 is an El Niño year, when temperatures tend to be higher, some are already predicting that it will end up being the hottest year on record.

In India, people are running out of water. In the US Midwest, farmers are having difficulty planting crops. Greenland ice is melting at unprecedented levels. Drastic events continue to happen “sooner than predicted.”

This list of dire events could go on and on, but so could the list of measures we should be taking but are not.

How We Are All Climate Change Deniers

June 22, 2019 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

*Cartoon by Ken Avidor. More of his work can be found at Bicyclopolis*

Recent polls have shown that the number of US citizens who believe in climate change is rising (see here, here, and here). These numbers have been hailed as positive—even as “a new era of public concern about climate change”—and they are positive, as far as such things go (with US Americans ranking 3rd in the world for climate change denial). They reflect media coverage of extreme climate events all over the world and the well-publicized predictions of respected organizations that are projecting disaster within thirty, twelve, or even five years. However, it’s also true that these percentages go up and down over time and that once current storylines run their course—and summer is over in the northern hemisphere—the rise in numbers will prove to be soft.

But “soft” is also how we could describe belief in climate change in the US in general. Regardless of claims made to pollsters, virtually all of us—both socially (which is increasingly online) and to ourselves (more importantly)—are actually climate change deniers when the rubber hits the road.

An apt expression, we might say, since we all need to stop driving.

That wasn’t intentional, but yes, let’s start there.

Climate Change: Why is it so often “sooner than predicted”?

June 18, 2019 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

NASA graphic: 2015 was the warmest year since 1880

A June 15th headline elicited feelings in me of both shock and déjà vu: “Climate change: Arctic permafrost now melting at levels not expected until 2090” [Independent, June 15, 2019]. Shock because that’s quite a bit ahead of time. Déjà vu because how often does a climate change headline or story use a phrase like that? “At levels not expected until” or “faster than expected” or “sooner than predicted”? I opened a search engine and started plugging in these and other variants to find out. It didn’t take long to answer my question: regularly, as it turns out.

Here are a few examples, from 2014 to the present [all emphasis is mine]:

Our Preoccupation with the Presidency is Killing the Planet

March 4, 2019 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

"The really critical thing isn't who's sitting in the White House, but who is sitting in – in the streets, in the cafeterias, in the halls of government, in the factories. Who is protesting, who is occupying offices and demonstrating – those are the things that determine what happens." - Howard Zinn

Meme by the author. Original photo by Jim.

The 2020 US presidential campaign is already underway. With each day that passes between now and election day, all other topics will receive less attention, both from talking heads on the news and from regular folks (and bots) in the social media universe.

This is quite unfortunate because the race for this office is far less important than a myriad of other topics, chief among them the environment and (inextricably connected) US militarism.

“But wait,” insists the true-believer political junkie. “The outcome of this race will have a big effect on those issues.”

Yeah, except that it won’t.

Read More…

The Troubles of “Invasive” Plants – zine

January 16, 2019 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

“On the topic of so-called ‘invasive’ plants, we don’t have an axe to grind, but there sure is one we would like to dull.”

“The Troubles of ‘Invasive’ Plants” is a 21,000+ word project by Nicole Patrice Hill & Kollibri terre Sonnenblume for Macska Moksha Press. Excerpts are posted online (see below), but the full version is available only as a zine that you can download here free-of-charge.

Hardcopies are for sale here.

The Scarlet “I”: Climate change, “invasive” plants & our culture of domination

January 16, 2019 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

This is part three of a three part series. Read part one & part two. The full series, along with additional material, is available as a zine, here.

Dandelion (Taraxacum officinalis) [Photo by KtS]

By Nicole Patrice Hill & Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Changing plant communities at the local scale are symptomatic of the changing climate globally. Patterns of temperature, precipitation and seasonal timing are shifting, and with them, the patterns of birth, growth, reproduction—and survival—of all living creatures.

One widely observed syndrome is “season creep,” in which Spring has been arriving progressively earlier in the calendar year. This does not mean that every Spring starts sooner than the year before, but that an overall trend has been observed. For example, a survey of leafing, flowering and fruiting records from 1971-2000 for 542 plant species in 21 European Union countries showed advanced timing for 78% of the plants. According to other sources, “Spring events, such as blooming, frog breeding and migrant bird arrivals, have advanced 2.3 days per decade.” Winter snow cover duration—as measured from Fall to Spring—has decreased throughout the Northern Hemisphere since 1978. The earlier the snow melts, the less water is available during the hot summer, which affects a wide range of plants, animals and other life.

Winters have been warming. For example, the average February maximum temperature in the US rose by 0.3 F per decade from 1895-2016. This general rise in the “floor” has been accompanied by an increase in “extreme” events, such as “false Springs” when temperatures warm up enough to trigger life cycle stages in a variety of species. When more “normal” weather arrives later—or another extreme event follows, but this time on the cold side—a plant can be injured or even killed. A common example is when a hot spell causes fruit trees to flower, and then a frost—even just a “normal” one—zaps the flowers, thereby taking out that year’s harvest.

When we were farmers, we experienced how extreme events affect crops. In the Spring of 2013, periods of warmer-than-average weather alternated with periods of colder-than-average weather a few times, and the transitions between them were quick, as in 36 hours. Spring greens thriving in “normal” cool temperatures would go to flower prematurely when the temperature rapidly heated up. Then, warm weather crops would stall out when the temps fell. Annual vegetable plants don’t do well with such erratic conditions and we watched helplessly as our failure rate climbed.

What to do at the end of the world? Interview with climate crisis activist, Kevin Hester

March 12, 2018 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

(Photo courtesy Kevin Hester)

Kevin Hester is an environmental and anti-imperialist activist living in New Zealand who is raising the alarm about the dramatic, planetary-scale changes that are underway. He is expecting “the imminent collapse of the biosphere from the perfect storm of runaway abrupt climate change and indifferent human hubris.” He regularly publicizes the latest pertinent stories and data on his website, kevinhester.live, and on his interview show, Nature Bats Last, on the Progressive Radio Network (which he took over from Guy McPherson, the well-known proponent of Near Term Human Extinction theory).

In January of this year, I spoke with Hester over Skype, as part of researching an upcoming (and nearly finished) new book. What follows is a transcript of the conversation, edited for clarity.

Sonnenblume: So I don’t know very much about you except that you’re an activist around climate change and specifically around abrupt climate change.

Hester: Correct. And also, I’ve been involved in anti-nuclear, anti-racist organizations all my adult life as well. So I’ve been in that whole spectrum of environmentalism and geopolitics, the whole gamut.

Sonnenblume: New Zealand doesn’t have any nuclear there, right?

Hester: Yes. Myself and my peers played a small role in that where we used to protest out on the water where the nuclear ships used to come to New Zealand. We’re a member of the ANZUS treaty (Australia-New Zealand-United States) and we fought the government into a corner and backed them up and got enough public support to have New Zealand declared nuclear-free. In the very early 1990’s. It was a really big victory for us.

Sonnenblume: And that’s still the case, right?

Hester: It is, but incrementally the government of New Zealand is making a rapprochement with the Americans. I would be certain that American ships are using our international waters for ships with nuclear weapons, and probably nuclear-powered. The government just turns a blind eye to everything.

Sonnenblume: Right. It seems like that’s kind of the story these days.

Hester: Yes. Subservience to the empire. Whatever America wants, America gets. They get it either officially or unofficially, from what I’ve seen.
Read More…

Partisan Fiddling while the Planet Burns

February 27, 2018 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Today I write from Mendocino County, CA – 120 miles north of the Bay Area, on the edge of the “Lost Coast,” and in the circulation zones of both the Anderson Valley Advertiser (“Fanning the flames of discontent”) and the Green Fuse – where the effects of a freakish “split polar vortex” are impossible to ignore. This weather anomaly delivered a biting cold wind that has dug in with icy claws and is hanging on persistently. Snow is on the way.

It’s not Minnesota cold (where I spent seven winters) and I’m certainly grateful for that. So, though nightly lows have dipped below freezing, the lettuce that overwintered in the garden has survived, and the kale and carrots have been deliciously sweetened. (If you’ve never tasted winter-harvested kale or carrots, then you’ve never tasted kale or carrots, as far as I’m concerned.)

Though on the chillier end, these temps are not out of the historic range for this area at this time of year. What’s jarring about them is that they came right on the heels of a warmer-than-usual mid-winter thaw. The sun heated the oak-dotted hills to 75 degrees for a week, coaxed out flushes of wildflowers on the slopes, induced the mustard greens to bolt, and hatched clouds of moths. For a few sultry, open-windowed nights, the spiders in the cabin captured these moths by the dozens and wrapped them up tight for later. Some are still hanging high on the walls like ill-fated campers in mummy-style sleeping bags (or dwarves from tree branches).

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