I so, so, so long for spring. I guess I have to wait for April…. when in other years magnolias were already in bloom in early March.
Morning – is the place for Dew –
Morning – is the place for Dew –
Corn – is made at Noon –
After dinner light – for flowers –
Dukes – for setting sun!
by Emily Dickinson F223 (1861) 197
Magnolias, not unlike those captured in the photographs, were planted in Dickinson’s garden over 150 years ago, species not native to the region. By now they have migrated, to neighboring towns and from there up North, with climate change making it possible for them to survive in habitats not native for them.
Looked at it the other way around, should gardeners help non-native species to survive by adding them to regions that now have temperatures and water conditions suitable for them? They are doomed to die in their original habitats, after all?
Natural range shifts have certainly been documented by living beings that are able to move to preferred locations, like birds, insects and mammals. Historically, those migrations would have brought plants with them, in the form of seeds traveling via droppings, or clinging to fur and the like. But the species that would have dispersed the magnolias – the mastodons, giant ground-sloth and other mega-fauna – are extinct.
Here is the dilemma: on the one hand you might cheer the survival of a species under changing climate conditions, and go all in to give it a horticulturally helping hand. On the other side, though, many new species might then contribute to the decline and disappearance of those that are truly native to a particular region, themselves stressed by the new climate conditions. After all we know from biology research that a species’ risk of becoming invasive increases with the distance of its historic native range from the region it is colonizing. (Ref.)
I have no solution. Let’s just look at these pictures from other years, harbingers of spring, and enjoy them. We have to take joy were we can find it in these dark, wet days, and blooming trees are among the most joyful things I can conjure.
Music offers a spring song from Dvorak’s Poetic Tone Pictures – with a few others from that Opus thrown in as a bonus for being brave and cheerful!
Science today, not fairy tales. Although the Brothers’ Grimm The Wolf and the seven young Goats was a favorite of mine due to clever trickery and happy ending. Oh, do I like happy endings. Not always true for German fairy tales, or German anything, but I digress.
Goats first: European scientists have observed Alpine ibex, a species of mountain goat, across the last many years. They found that with increasingly hotter temperatures, the goats are shifting their diurnal habits to more nocturnal explorations, to avoid the heat.
Maybe the best move available to them, and one could celebrate their adaptability. But the shift involves numerous problems. If your visual system is set up to function in the day time, it is difficult to see at night. This matters for finding your footing in the craggy, mountainous landscapes where these mammals live, leading to slower movement and more potential accidents in this treacherous environment. More importantly, it is difficult to spot the vegetation that is your food source, signaled by color, washed out in the dark; less food leading to malnutrition is going to affect population density. Finding mates also becomes more difficult, again resulting in shrinking population numbers.
Pica and Marmots in action
Another complication is the exposure to nocturnal predators, wolves in particular, who the goats can avoid if grazing during the day. The impact of heat seems to be threatening enough at this point in time that goats are shifting their habits despite the looming dangers. One wonders what that will imply for the years to come.
Plenty of wild goats visible on a hike I took a decade ago in the North Cascades’ Mount Baker region. Goat Mountain is an 8.2 miles round trip with a steep elevation gain of 3.100 ft to a summit of 5.600 ft. We camped overnight (kids carried the gear, I was spoiled with carrying only a small backpack, water and camera) before hiking to the top, and then down to a glacial lake. It is the most beautiful hike through hemlock and pine forests, remnants of lava of the 1980 explosion of Mt. St. Helens, wildflower meadows and eventually phenomenal vistas of the surrounding mountains.
It was August, with snow banks on the summit and the lake still covered with remnants of ice. Reports from last year (2023) showed no snow and a completely ice-free lake already by the end of June.
Wolves were spotted in the Mount Baker wilderness area for the first time since the 1930s in 2014. I did not see any, ever, in the wild. But I have recently read about research with wolves that posits some fascinating questions.
Princeton University evolutionary biologists and toxicologists have tracked and examined wolves in and around the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ) and compared them to wolf populations in neighboring wildlife areas. Chernobyl was the site of the catastrophic nuclear accident in 1986 in Ukraine, with one of its 4 reactors blowing, releasing huge amount of radioactivity into the atmosphere. Over 300.000 people had to be relocated, with countless health issues caused by radiation exposure emerging over the years. The area around the explosion is now an exclusion zone and the reactor itself encased in concrete sarcophagus, improved in 2016 to a structure supposed to contain the radioactive remnants for at least a century.
If you look closely, the goats are little white dots to the left of the snow field and also in the island within.
It turns out that the CEZ wolves have flourished – their population is seven fold compared to those in neighboring regions, despite the chronic, low-dose, multigenerational exposure to ionizing radiation they have been exposed to for the last 4 decades. The researchers speculate that two factors play a role in this advantage: natural selection of cancer-resistant or cancer-resilient genes in the animals and not having to deal with the stressors of human activity, in particular hunting. The removal of human threat alone is considered a huge survival benefit.
Wolves are at the top of the food pyramid, which means all of the radioactivity accumulated by those lower in the food chain ends up in their diet. It could be the case that those who have cancer resistant or resilient genes have survived more frequently than those who don’t and have transferred these genes to their offspring, creating a selective gene pool. If they are resilient, they might get cancer at the same rate as other wolves, but survive longer with a stronger immune system response. If they are resistant, they won’t get cancer as much in the first place. The burning question is, of course, if looking at their blood cell composition reveals some clues to where immunity is lodged. The researchers also looked at the genomes of the exclusion zone wolves compared to other populations and found “that the fastest evolving [genome] regions within Chernobyl are in and around genes that we know have some role in cancer immune response or the antitumor immune response in mammals.”
The implication for human health are huge – oncological research might benefit from these findings if genetic information can be isolated and translated into the human genome. Of course, just when you think you are on to something massively important, it all grinds to a halt: the research was impacted first by the pandemic, and for the last two years by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, making it impossible to continue data collection. War’s ripple effects.
Music today is neither goat nor wolf, but named after the properties of another great beast: Elephantine. The album by Egyptian Jazz musician Maurice Louca and his many northern European colleagues (he spends his time between Berlin and Cairo) is intense and requires close listening. You’ll be rewarded by an amazing mix of musical cultures and styles. Not easy listening, though.
You’ve probably walked by these plants during most of the year without noticing if you’ve hiked in Tryon Creek Park, or coastal areas or really anywhere in the Western United States where boggy hollows or streams can be found. Lysichiton americanus, commonly known as skunk cabbage, extends from Cook Inlet, Alaska, south through British Colombia and the Pacific Northwest states to Santa Cruz county, California, with isolated populations in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. It is part of the Arum plant family that also includes Calla lilies and Jack-in-the-Pulpit, found naturally in similar habitats.
Maybe the humongous size of the leaves caught your attention now and then – they grow to 3 feet long and 32 inches wide and are the largest of any native plant in the region. They grow from a rhizome that can reach over 12 inches long, and any individual plant can grow for some 20 years, with rhizomes believed to last for perhaps centuries, with seeds produced after the plant is 5 years old.
In February, however, you will be alerted to these plants by eyes and nose: they do smell faintly like a skunk and they have a crayon-yellow cape, called a spathe, surrounding their spadix, indeed looking like a little lantern, as suggested by nature writer Ruth Foster, from whom I learned much about today’s topic.
Turns out, they are botanical geniuses, if you will. They can produce heat, and the yellow spathe is shaped in a way that has the air inside circling around in a manner that maintains an even temperature, a warmth that attracts pollinating bugs and bees who come to warm up. Moreover that heat vaporizes the foul odor from all those tiny flowers on the fleshy center spike into the air, calling to insects with the false promise of dead animal for lunch (microbial decay rising the temperature of a carcass and it stinks!) On top of it all, different temperatures create different odors, in turn a magnet for different kinds of pollinators, giving these plants a large evolutionary advantage in early spring.
When I looked at them last week, the bloom was long over, with just a straggler or two providing a model. But the visuals were amazing none the less, with the waxy surface of the leaves reflecting light, and the interplay of back-lit appearance and shadows delighting the photographer.
It is important to remember that they are highly toxic, though, to humans and small mammals. Deer and bears seem to be able to tolerate the leaves, high in protein which they need after the winter season. But even a small taste for us would burn our mouth and cause laryngeal swelling that can lead to choking. The leaves and stems contain needle-like crystals of calcium oxalate that puncture mucous membranes like fire. (The name Arum for that plant family comes from the arabic word for fire – ar – appropriately.)
Early first-Nation people knew about this. They learned that roasting the roots of the plant, or cooking it with numerous changes of the boiling water, would make it safe as emergency food. The waxy leaves were used to wrap other cooked foods with no negative effects, or folded into cones for drinking cups. Boiled juice from the roots was also used as medicine for bad colds. The knowledge was included into the stories told from generation to generation.
“There’s an aboriginal legend about the origin of the flowering part of this plant. Long ago there were no Salmon. The People ate Skunk Cabbage leaves and roots. Finally, the Salmon came up the river and Skunk Cabbage, in human form, stood up and alerted the People to their arrival. In return, Skunk Cabbage was given an elk-skin blanket and a war club.”
From the Oregon encyclopedia:
On the lower Columbia and Willamette Rivers, the Kathlamet and Clackamas peoples had stories about skunk cabbage as an important food that kept people alive before the salmon first came to the rivers. In the Coosan Trickster cycle stories, the first Trickster learned how to cook skunk cabbage. He tried to eat it raw but spit it out. Then he put the root in hot ashes to cook. When it smelled sweet, he took it out. It tasted fine now, and so he said that is how human beings will cook it when they come into the world. Then he cut the root into many pieces and one at a time picked up a piece and put it down, each time saying, “Give this to your…” and naming a different kin name (mother, father, grandfather, and so on). In that way, he named familial relationships for the human beings to come in the world. (Ref.)
Note how multiple teachings are handed down in parallel: safety of food preparation as well as the learning of kinship structure, all wrapped in stories.
I tried to enjoy the beauty of the sight without giving in to pessimism: so much of global wetlands, marshes and bogs are of course endangered through climate change. If they are increasingly arid because of droughts, or if they are flooded by atmospheric river storms once too often, the conditions for skunk cabbage (as the rest of the indigenous flora) will be dire. Alas, I did not completely succeed in warding off catastrophic thinking. What else is new….
Clouds on the horizon, indeed. Here by Debussy, transcribed for 2 pianos…. Nuages.
After the catastrophe in Fukushima, Germany’s governing parties, abiding by a societal consensus reached as early as Chernobyl, decided in 2011 to phase out the last remaining nuclear reactors. It finally happened exactly a month ago, on April 15th, 2023.
Nuclear Power in Germany: Finally History!
Not so for the rest of Europe, where 12 of the 27 EU-nations insist that nuclear power is the way to go. They prolong the run times for old power plants and build new ones, with Poland planning to react 6 new reactors, and Holland, Great Britain Hungary and Slovakia not far behind. The largest producer of nuclear energy, 2nd only to the U.S., is, of course, France. They have 56 reactors, with 14 new ones in the planning stages.
This is all the more astounding since France has been facing a fiasco: they do not have enough electricity to meet domestic needs, much less export for economic gain, since in 2022 more than half of its reactors had to be shut down, at least temporarily, because of grave cracks, corrosion and general decay in its aging facilities, and because the summer heat and drought affected the cooling towers, with not enough water available, forcing them to be turned off. They are also grappling with political scandals around the falsification of documents that assured the safety of faulty construction materials for new reactors.
The fact that one clings to a path once chosen even if it makes no longer any sense is called “escalating commitment.” If done by you or me – “hey I stick with a job I don’t love, because I invested so much to get to this position in the first place” – it will only harm ourselves. Done by governments, it can harm a nation, or more.
Here in the U.S. we are seeing a version of this, with people granting that the old nuclear plants were bad, but also loudly proclaiming that the new small modular reactors (SMRs) will solve our energy crisis and propel us into a cleaner, cheaper future.
It ain’t so.
To find out why, you can watch Atomic Bamboozle at the Hollywood Theatre or at the Kiggins Theatre in Vancouver, WA, in case you missed the showing at Cinema 21 that I also advertised, some 2 months earlier. Highly recommended, given my vested interest in this film as part of the production team. The documentary will be shown in conjunction with PORTRAIT 2: TROJAN, a meditative short film on the day that the Trojan Nuclear Plant was imploded and decommissioned, by Portland-based artist and filmmaker Vanessa Renwick. In case my recommendation isn’t enough, here’s on from a more familiar name:
Of particular interest for the upcoming showings are several speakers, Joshua Frank and Kamil Khan among them, who will, in turn, introduce the project, and participated in a panel discussion.
Joshua Frank wrote Atomic Days – The Untold Story of the most Toxic Place in America. The book conveys the calamitous risks and staggering costs attached to nuclear power. The author is emphatically describing the threats implicit to all forms of nuclear energy production, not just from the left over underground tanks iat Hanford, currently corroding during ever delayed clean-up activities tagged at $677 billion and growing, tanks that are leaking radioactive broth from its 56 millions of radioactive waste into the ground water and Columbia river at Hanford, and that before the damage from a potential catastrophic earthquake.
There are also related, but perhaps less familiar perspectives that need to be amplified. Here is one of the relevant commentaries on the book:
Frank, by the way, will be also on site for a discussion/community reading of his book on Saturday, June 10th 3:30 – 5 pm at the Goldendale Community Library in the context of one of the most interesting and effective programs offered by the Fort Vancouver Regional Libraries: Revolutionary Reads. (Details in link.)
Kamil Khan is the new executive director of Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility, who just recently moved to Portland. Hailing originally from Pakistan, a nuclear-capable power, he is, in his own words, aware of some of the implications of its use.
“What those celebrations of (underground nuclear testing) did not factor was the environmental and social costs of testing, maintaining, and expanding the nuclear arsenal. I firsthand saw the ramifications of a bloated military budget and the divestment from necessary social programs as a result. I was also privy to the lack of political stability and scapegoating of “enemy” countries; this nuclear flexing was a compounded abomination to the very real human suffering occurring on the daily.”
Other speakers and panel discussants are
• Jan Haaken, director and documentary filmmaker • Samantha Praus, producer • Lloyd Marbet, executive director Oregon Conservancy Foundation • Patricia Kullberg, Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility, moderator.
Photographs today are from the Hanford site and region, where the documentary film crew spent time last summer. Music is self explanatory…
Given the marathon of two in-depth reviews last week I think I’ve used up (almost) all my words for October… let’s just quietly hang out on the beach then.
Afternoon soft light, winds sweetly teasing, tons and tons of gorgeous birds.
You think you could just sit there and bathe in the momentary peace and beauty. That is until you see the crab. Snatched by a pelican.
What comes to mind? The warming of the waters due to man-made climate change. (Or, as is also the case, issues of over-extraction and regulations that contributed to the extinction.)
The Alaska snow crab harvest has been canceled for the first time ever after billions of the crustaceans have disappeared from the cold, treacherous waters of the Bering Sea in recent years. The Alaska Board of Fisheries and North Pacific Fishery Management Council announced last week that the population of snow crab in the Bering Sea fell below the regulatory threshold to open up the fishery. But the actual numbers behind that decision are shocking: The snow crab population shrank from around 8 billion in 2018 to 1 billion in 2021, according to Benjamin Daly, a researcher with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. (Ref.)
It doesn’t help to see the loving pelican parent feeding that crab to junior. What comes to mind?
The World Wildlife Fund’s Living Planet Index, which monitors 32,000 separate populations of species around the world, found that on average they were 69% smaller than they had been in 1970.
Here is a beautiful essay by Bill McKibben with the title A Fast-Emptying Ark – The World Grows Quieter by the Day. He spells out familiar causes – habitat destruction, climate change – but also offers an almost poetic lament.
And with my brain’s tendency for far flung associations, I think of birds bringing harm to other birds. In Oregon this month alone Canada geese, mallards and bald eagles carried the highly pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI virus) across areas where they can infect domestic poultry.
In Florida almost the entire bird stock of a small farm was killed by the virus brought in by an invasion of Egyptian geese – Hurricane Ian produced much standing water in which the virus finds good conditions to multiply. In this particular case, a beloved internet creature – the emu Emmanuel who used to be of “help” creating educational videos about farming – was also afflicted and the owners are trying everything to rescue him. I wonder if such a single instance of an internet celebrity – he really was and for good reason (his owner was wonderfully funny in talking to him) – might alert many people to issues of climate change who would otherwise be uninterested or uniformed.
Let’s hope the loss has some positive consequence attached. Including the insight that who we vote for matters for action or inaction regarding climate change. Voter registration deadline is tomorrow. There are only two states with direct ballot measures on the issue this year – California voters will decide the fate of Proposition 30, the Tax on Income Above $2 Million for Zero-Emissions Vehicles and Wildfire Prevention Initiative, and The Clean Water, Clean Air, and Green Jobs Environmental Bond Act of 2022 that would allow the state to sell bonds to fund $4.2 billion for environmental improvements that, according to the proposal, would “preserve, enhance, and restore New York’s natural resources and reduce the impact of climate change.” (Ref.) But who governs states or legislates federally plays of course a huge role in general.
We were walking along the promenade, kids visiting from L.A., a rare treat. The sky and the light changed rapidly, threatening showers, then sun emerging. Remarking on the brown, muddy water of the Willamette river, I mused about writing about the dangers of cyber war for water treatment centers. “You shouldn’t,” I was told, “it’s too depressing.” Couldn’t help but think of a snarky poem from the 1930s, by one of Germany’s most astute satirists and writers, Erich Kästner. He urged to face the truth and not insist on pretending that the world is all right. I follow, quite obviously, in his footsteps, with the same approach, though not his talent. (Below is the original for my German readers and my attempts at translation which can, of course, not capture the elegance of his rhymes, but I think I got the gist.)
“Und wo bleibt das Positive, Herr Kästner?”
Und immer wieder schickt ihr mir Briefe,
in denen ihr, dick unterstrichen, schreibt:
»Herr Kästner, wo bleibt das Positive?«
Ja, weiß der Teufel, wo das bleibt.
Noch immer räumt ihr dem Guten und Schönen
den leeren Platz überm Sofa ein.
Ihr wollt euch noch immer nicht dran gewöhnen,
gescheit und trotzdem tapfer zu sein.
Ihr braucht schon wieder mal Vaseline,
mit der ihr das trockene Brot beschmiert.
Ihr sagt schon wieder, mit gläubiger Miene:
»Der siebente Himmel wird frisch tapeziert!«
Ihr streut euch Zucker über die Schmerzen
und denkt, unter Zucker verschwänden sie.
Ihr baut schon wieder Balkons vor die Herzen
und nehmt die strampelnde Seele aufs Knie.
Die Spezies Mensch ging aus dem Leime
und mit ihr Haus und Staat und Welt.
Ihr wünscht, daß ich’s hübsch zusammenreime,
und denkt, daß es dann zusammenhält?
Ich will nicht schwindeln. Ich werde nicht schwindeln.
Die Zeit ist schwarz, ich mach euch nichts weis.
Es gibt genug Lieferanten von Windeln.
Und manche liefern zum Selbstkostenpreis.
Habt Sonne in sämtlichen Körperteilen
und wickelt die Sorgen in Seidenpapier!
Doch tut es rasch. Ihr müßt euch beeilen.
Sonst werden die Sorgen größer als ihr.
Die Zeit liegt im Sterben. Bald wird sie begraben.
Im Osten zimmern sie schon den Sarg.
Ihr möchtet gern euren Spaß dran haben …?
Ein Friedhof ist kein Lunapark.
*************************************************
“And Where’s the Positive, Herr Kästner?“
You send me letters, again and again,
with the question, thickly underlined:
"Mr. Kästner, where’s the positive?"
Well, the devil knows where it's at in these times.
You’re still reserving the empty space
above the couch for the good and the bright.
You still deny that, besides being smart,
you need to summon your courage all right.
You retreat, once again, to Vaseline
to pretend there's butter on the stale, old bread.
You insist, yet again, with a trusting mien:
"Upgrades to seventh heaven are right ahead."
You sprinkle sugar on top of your pain
and assume the sugar will make it flee.
You overstretch your wide-open heart
and rock your flailing soul on your knees.
The human species has been falling apart
and with it house and state and world.
You request that I'll fix it with a pretty rhyme
and think that that way the pieces hold?
I don't want to lie. I will not lie.
Times are black, no white-washing can be allowed.
There are others who’ll pamper you happily
and some even do it for free in this crowd.
Invite the sun to all body parts,
and wrap up your worries in tissue paper!
But do it quickly. You have to hurry,
or else the worries get greater and greater.
An era is dying. It will soon be buried.
In the East the casket is fashioned right now.
You'd still like your fun and games in a flurry?
A graveyard is no amusement show.
So what is it about water that makes me invite you to store enough to last for some days for you and your pets, independent of earthquake prep?
Cyber attacks can unfortunately do more than just interrupt water testing. They can actually manipulate things to poison the water. Why should that happen here, you ask? Well, that’s probably the same question pondered by almost any municipality in this country and the you have cases like the one in Oldsmar, Florida, last year. A hacker, using someone else’s stolen credentials, gained control of the operational panels and drove up sodium hydroxide content in the water to poisonous levels. It was caught, fortunately, swiftly enough to prevent lasting damage, but that was a question of luck. (Ref.)
The Biden administration has certainly been on alert for the threats, during normal times associated with cyber criminals or individual actors. They have an active program in the works to heighten security measures. How that plays out if we are – however indirectly – at war or in conflict with more sophisticated and powerful state actors, I have no clue. We are seeing in real time how a population can be cut off from water during a war, as reported from Ukraine.
And yet these worries are a drop in the bucket, compared to the general situation of water scarcity and quality in the world. Here is ICCP’s new report on the ravages half of the world is facing in the light of climate change. I think we can all intuit the overall picture. What I did not know is how few of the suggested adaptation strategies are actually tested for whether they work or not. These strategies are aimed at water hazards (droughts, floods, groundwater depletion, glacier depletion) or water-related direct responses (irrigation, rainwater harvesting and wetlands conservation).
There are more than 1,800 climate change adaptation strategies registered worldwide, yet only 359 had been analyzed for effectiveness. We do not know if most of these strategies actually reduce the impacts of climate change on health, safety and economy. Here is an overview of the types of adaptive measure we are talking about and what we know they might or might not accomplished. A muddy picture.
No white-washing then, even if we wanted to. But before you curse me for drowning you in miserable thoughts at the beginning of the weekend, here is an antidote. A bit of sugar to sprinkle, if you will, after all. The link describes the public hotline where you can dial in to receive a (pre-recorded) pep talk by – Kindergarteners! Call 707-998-8410. My favorite: option #4 – the laughter of 5 year-olds as a cheer-me-up.
A pod village for the houseless, next to the Hawthorne Bridge
Almost out of the door, I grabbed the small point&shoot camera despite knowing better. It had been a bad week of painful lymphedema in chest and arm around the incisions, and I really should not lift my arm too much. Oh well. Was I ever glad I had at least this camera with me when doing the familiar round at Oaks Bottom. Come join me!
They were out, my cherished crows, in masses, hanging in the trees squawking, strutting through the meadow. Which should be much less straw colored in February, reminding me that we’ve now had four years in a row where rainfall was way below average.
Entering the wooded path, the beauty – Japanese print-like – of the duckweed on reflecting water was inspiring, even with the knowledge that it is found growing in water associated with cropping and fertilizer washout, or down stream from human activities, particularly from sewage works, housed animal production systems and to some extent industrial plants.
Given the color, I was not sure if it was common duckweed or more likely azolla, red water fern. The ducks didn’t care, and neither should we. Both are fascinating plants, providing nutrients and helping ecosystems.
Gadwalls, I learn. They live in the Great Plains but migrate through here.
The herons were unperturbed, out for lunch, ignoring me walking but a few meters away from them. I guess the loudly singing tree frogs at the pond’s rim were on the menu.
Beaver activity was visible everywhere,
but I think this fellow was a muskrat.
I can never tell. A kilometer further down I spotted this guy, and given his lunch, a fish, the likelihood was otter. As I said, cheap camera, not the resolution one would have wished for with this sight. I mean how often do you see an otter eating fish 15 minutes downtown from city center?
When I got to the viewpoint, the extent of the drought became more visible. This should be a lake, folks, not a dry hole in the ground.
If you are like me, it gives you the creeps. If you are like many of our compatriots, it instills fear, sometimes to the point of a condition that the the American Psychological Association (APA) defined as eco-anxiety, ”a chronic fear of environmental doom.” It is not listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5,) but clinicians all over report attempts to treat it.
Not sure if this was the doe or one of her fawns that I regularly saw last summer
Last April, an article in the Scientific American described in depth what therapists are facing and how they have to make decisions about how to treat the massively increased numbers of patients who present fear if not panic in the face of climate catastrophe. A 2020 poll by the American Psychiatric Association showed that “more than two-thirds of Americans (67%) are somewhat or extremely anxious about the impact of climate change on the planet, and more than half (55%*) are somewhat or extremely anxious about the impact of climate change on their own mental health.”
Red-tailed hawk
The NYT joined the topic with an article last week, describing the treatment approach by one of the earliest proponents of a necessary treatment approach to eco-anxiety.
Here is the dilemma: there is a tension between eco-anxiety’s role as a rational response to an existing threat, on the one hand, but also a potentially debilitating response, on the other hand.
There’s no clear, standard definition as to when eco-anxiety is unhealthy. It is rational to be fearful in view of a threat, and the threat is real. It is, however, unhealthy if it paralyzes your daily function, as it now does for scores of people. There is also the question of therapists’ own (political) beliefs. If they think your analysis of the threat is exaggerated or delusional (they don’t believe in climate change or its imminence) they will pathologize your response, which will have an impact on your therapeutic relationship.
Scrub Jay
Therapists themselves also feel unable to cope with their own feelings about environmental destruction. “When a therapist hasn’t begun to come to terms with their own emotions around climate change, it can add to the emotional turmoil of clients coping with overwhelming grief and anxiety, said Tree Staunton, a climate psychotherapist in Bath, England. For example, a therapist’s own grief, anxiety or guilt might come off as defensiveness or withdrawal.“ (Ref.)
Then there are the cases of people, in particular children, who have been personally impacted by traumatic events like fires, flood and tornados or hurricanes caused or aggravated by climate change, who are living with actual PTSD that needs to be treated while the threat of these events is ongoing.
Willamette River bank bordering Oaks Bottom on the Westside
The trolls were out, en masse, in the comment section for the NYT article. But so were thoughtful letters to the editor (2 examples below,) that highlighted important facts found both in and beyond the article.
“… the corporate construct that cleverly shifts the responsibility of a carbon footprint onto each individual. This is similar to the way the petrochemical and plastics industries have shifted all responsibility for recycling, particularly of the packaging they create, onto the individual, although the responsibility for recycling plastics should lie with the manufacturers.” (Mary Englert, Portland, Ore. The writer is a retired licensed professional counselor.)
“youth distress is directly related to the experience of governmental dismissal of and inaction on climate change. Young people are essentially reporting that their governments are gaslighting them by dismissing and devaluing their concerns, and by falsely stating that they are taking necessary action.This has significant political implications. Multiple reviews of the mental health effects of climate change (this is not a new topic in academia) all predict civil unrest and conflict as the long-term outcome. Politicians have a chance to correct course, honor their young constituents’ fears and act decisively. While therapy matters, preventing climate catastrophe matters more.” Mary G. Burke, San Francisco. The writer is a professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco and a member of the university’s Climate Change and Mental Health Task Force.
Baldies
It is easy to feel helpless and anxious when thinking what we can do about the destruction of our world, when really a few large corporations—and complicit politicians—call the shots. But there ARE things one can do, and in the doing alleviate some of the anxiety.
There are some political moves that can help activists. Science is contributing tools to fight collective helplessness.
There is important information that you can read, outlining possible next steps. Earthtrack, for example, offers tons of information about governmental subsidies that harm the environment. Environmentally harmful subsidies (EHS) are government actions that by design or effect accelerate the production or consumption of natural resources or undermine broader ecosystems supporting planetary health. The data show at least $1.9 Trillion a year (2% of global GDP) being dished out to Energy, Mining(non-energy), Fisheries, Forestry, Water, Construction, and Transportation industries. The organization informs about both the beneficiaries of such subsidies, worldwide, and reports on possible actions against them.
Anna’s Hummingbird
And then there is art. The hole in the ground where the Oaks Bottom Lake should be reminded me of this project from L.A. last year.
Cara Levine and associated artists provided their week-long participatory event as a communal reaction to and lifting of grief over the losses incurred during the pandemic – including the land, where the dig took place, of The Shalom Institute campus – which was devastated by the Woolsey Fire of 2018. Might as well throw our eco – fear into the mix, or the hole as the case may be, being strengthened by knowing we are not alone.
Or we could be digging ourselves OUT of a hole by collective action. You know where you find me doing just that.
Scrub Jay
Music today is one of my picks when I try to deal with surges of anxiety.
Admiration: today’s images of polar bears taking over an abandoned weather station have gone viral in the last few weeks. Wildlife photographer Dmitry Kokh traveled by boat to Kolyuchin Island, Chukotka, Russia, last year and photographed the giants (gentle they are not,) likely with drones. There was something that captured me on so many levels
– the beauty of the photographs themselves.
– the underlying disquietude that bears are driven ever further into human habitat due to melting ice from climate change.
– the spirited approach to photography that involves traveling along hazardous routes.
I went to his website and saw stern requests not to publish without permission. Sent him an email and had a positive response within 48 hours. Grateful! Спасибо!
Here is a short video of the bears moving about. I urge you to look also at Kokh’s grey heron images which he took in Russia during the 2020 pandemic lockdown. They are stunning.
Amusement: As with all things that deservedly go viral on the Internet, there is a spirited approach to creating memes that mark the occasion. In the case of the polar bear house invasion, you now find AirBnB ratings that pretend to have traveled to this remote spot in the Chukchi Sea.
Awe: and talking about spirited approaches – few are more mind-boggling than those of Joel Berger, a scientist at the Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology, Colorado State University. Berger’s goal is “problem solving to achieve actionable conservation.” In his own words:
“Science is but one of many avenues to achieve this. Although policy change can be a goal, so can be altering attitudes, inspiring others, or solving mysteries. My own work tends to be with species larger than a bread box, and thematically on issues concerning population ecology, thermal ecology, effects of people on species as landscapes change, migration, and climate stressors. Understanding how we’ve altered food webs is also important. Much of my efforts continue to be in remote ecosystems, although there are clear advantages to work on biodiversity issues in the mountains and deserts of the Intermountain West.”
Cold-adapted species have held a special place in his research, and here the polar bear theme re-emerges. The scientist, in his quest to understand the impact of stressors like climate degradation and extreme icing events on muskoxen, the largest Arctic mammal, actually donned a polar bear costume to approach the herds in the wild. The 7-year longitudinal study with observations in both the Western and Eastern Arctic revealed, as expected, not exactly good news. Here is a video of Berger in action as a polar bear.
If I were, say, 40 years younger, I’d apply to be a research assistant. Why? Just look at the locations where he is involved: Northern Rocky Mountains and deserts to the west, the Arctic in both Asia (Wrangel Island, Chukotka, Russia) and Alaska, and some areas within central or high elevation Asia – Mongolia, China (Tibet), and Bhutan. And the questions he and his teams are asking:
In the meantime, I’ll read scientific news on polar bears….
Instead of music today here are the sounds of the arctic, and an Inuit poem contemplating the everlasting ice and scientific research affecting the region. It is a video (28 minutes) best watched when in a meditative space.
You might remember that I don’t watch sports. Not even the Olympics. I, like everyone else, however, cannot escape images that appear in the media, and my eye was drawn to Kengo Kuma’s wooden architecture of the Tokyo stadium.
A day later the German magazine Der Spiegel provided more background on the architect who has made his mark all over the world with wooden construction, or as the article waxed poetically: created symphonies composed of wood.
His work is indeed pretty spectacular, both in its diversity, its technological innovation and in his continual referencing of contextual features of the landscape or the history in which these new buildings are embedded. The NYT wrote about him extensively three years ago, hailing him as an architect of the future. Our very own Japanese Garden here in Portland is also graced by one of his designs, part of the new Cultural Village. I have not been there since it re-opened after construction and learned today that already repairs are underway.
” We are currently conducting some repairs in the Cultural Village, so the Jordan Schnitzer Japanese Arts Learning Center and Fukuta Concierge Desk are temporarily closed. Thank you for your understanding.
Photographs of the building then have to be found here, while mine captured wood on the grounds of the garden in former years. It is interesting to note, though, that some kind of technological wizardry is always smuggled in despite traditional appearances.
“The (building’s) eaves appear to be clad in razor-thin slabs of stone but, in reality, they are constructed of marine-grade aluminum panels, printed with hi-resolution images of granite. Each has been treated with eight coats of Lumiflon, a clear resin which will prevent the photographic finish from weathering.”
Here are some images of Kuma’s ingenuity across the globe.
Foto: Takumi Ota / TASCHEN – Marketolace with adjacent Hotel in Yusuhara (Island of Shikoku 2010)Foto: Hufton + Crow / TASCHEN – Victoria & Albert Museum Satellite in Dundee, Scotland.Foto: Takumi Ota / TASCHEN – Daiwa Ubiquitous Computing Research Building at University of Tokyo. Contains sensors for wind speed, radiation exposure, dust particle pollution, temperature and humidity to which the building adapts.FOTO: DAICI ANO – GC Prostho Museum Research Center (DENTAL OBJECTS…) The wooden structure carries all the load, with no glue used whatsoever.Foto: Eiichi Kano / TASCHEN – Former shipyard converted into theatre and shopping mall in ShanghaiFoto: Eiichi Kano / TASCHEN – New Museum at China Academy of Art Xiangshan Campus in Hangzhou – built on an old tea plantation, thus terraced, reusing old tiles found in the region.Interior viewFoto: Martin Mischkulnig / TASCHEN – Civic center The Exchange – Sydney, Australia. Supposed to look like a nest. 20.000 meters of wrapped wood….
You would think that building with wood is indeed the way to go if aiming for sustainability and reducing our carbon foot prints, heavily impacted by cement and steel.
Claims are proliferating: It can save the planet! It is the hottest new thing! In fact people are proudly announcing sustainability as an asset to selling condominiums in wooden-clad buildings, right here in Portland, OR. The 8-storey Carbon12 building gives you a song and dance about that in their short advertisement video, which you can see here.
Not so fast, alas.
Let’s forget about things that go wrong just because a new trend still has growing pains, like the collapse of an Oregon State University project due to inadequate glue, a project that was heavily supported by the timber industry hoping for revitalization. A more lasting problem is the fire risk posed by large wooden structures, like 18 storey-high planned buildings in urban areas. Firefighting unions across the country are signaling opposition.
The bigger question is whether the claims about sustainability are indeed correct. (I am summarizing arguments from a yale.edu article here.) The hope is that global commercial construction can be turned from a giant source of carbon emissions into a giant carbon sink by replacing concrete and steel construction with mass timber. That does depend, however, on how forests that produce mass timber are managed, and how much CO2 would be emitted in the logging, manufacture, and transport of the wood products used in the construction. According to folks from the Center for Sustainable Economy as well as researchers in forestry departments across the country we simply dont have all the necessary data. Just as a local example, the forest product industry here in Oregon is the largest source of CO2 emissions, because of fuel burned by logging equipment and hauling trucks, the burning of wood, and the decomposition of trees after they are cut. In addition, any analysis of CO2 must account for how much the forest is taking up before and after logging, data we simply don’t have. Nor do we know how long the timber products in buildings will last and where they will end up when being replaced, producing Co2 in their own decomposition.
Here is a recent letter by representatives of numerous environmental groups, including the Audubon Society, the Sierra Club, and Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility, that listed a large number of concerns, including fears of more aggressive clearcuts, and selective planting of suitable building timber that would lead to a huge loss in biodiversity, never mind increasing the spread of fires in a too hot world. It is really one of these issues that is so much more complex than it looks at the outset when we are desperately looking for alternatives to the ways we have been polluting the environment until now. And of course the science alone will not decide – there are economic considerations as well, as lobbying efforts by powerful constituencies are part of the mix. Not out of the woods yet.
One thing we do know for sure, though: do due diligence before you buy a condominium, no matter how it’s built, with weakening concrete, or mass timber. Reasons were laid out in the recent NYT, linked to below.
On that note, let’s listen to Liszt. The piece is called forest murmurs, but could as well be the water drowning your apartment…. ok. Let’s be more optimistic. Here is Schumann and his forest scenes instead. Into the woods!
Unless you are into dystopian end-of-the-world movies that contain violence, cannibalism, stratified societies, slave-work, murder and mayhem during an 18-year-long train ride with fewer survivors than you can count on one hand, you have probably not seenSnowpiercer.
I have, if only for the reason that I watch every thing that has Tilda Swinton it… but I also like films where there is a glimmer of hope at the end, if you think that two surviving humans and a polar bear on an iced-over planet earth predict a happy ending.
The 2013 film by Bong Joon-ho, based on a French graphic novel, is visually and intellectually brilliant, but not for the faint of heart. Or stomach. Then again, wouldn’t you want to explore what Terry Gilliam meets Samuel Beckett looks like, as one clever reviewer wrote? In any case, I’m bringing it up because the premise of the movie is that scientific eco-engineering has produced unanticipated, catastrophic results, a new ice age on earth that only a few humans, fit into a moving train, survived. And this very premise, science with unpredictable results, has occupied my thoughts after reading about real-life plans to manipulate the climate.
Here is the deal (much of which I learned from this NPR conversation which also pointed to Snowpiercer): who should control the earth’s thermostat?
Let’s assume we are not that far away from having technology that allows us to cool the earth. (We don’t have it yet, but it’s a safe bet that we will be there soon. Just ask the folks at the National Academies committee that examines solar geo-engineering research.) We could, for example, use volcanoes as a model, and shoot a lot of sulfate particles into the atmosphere – they act like little mirrors and would reflect sun light back to its source rather than having it come to us, warming earth. Another path might be to make clouds artificially whiter, so they, too, would reflect light back, don’t ask me how.
Of course we have no clue about the consequences, whether for wind, rainfall, or the ocean acidity. It might disturb weather-patterns that are necessary for agricultural production, create flooding or droughts, we simply don’t know. Sulfate injection would also lead to ozone depletion which is quite dangerous for our health since it increases UV light exposure, a source of various cancers.
Independent of unintended, dangerous consequences there is the question who has the ability, and/or right to make these decisions and go forward with manipulations of the atmosphere. The cost is, as these things go, not at all an obstacle – $ 2 billion or so – so any rogue nation state (think Bolsonaro), or entrepreneur (think Musk) or big corporations (think Koch brothers) could swing it. If they see a gain in cooling temperatures in the southern hemisphere (never mind what it might do for the rest of the world) or as a justification for continued fossil fuel extraction to enlarge their fortunes, who is to stop them?
This rings particularly true as the world is waking up to the climate crisis and and some quarters starting to exert pressure on the powers that be to change their ways. This week alone Big Oil suffered three defeats where it eventually will hurt them, their bottom line. A Dutch court told Shell to cut emissions by 43% by 2030; and both Chevron and ExxonMobil lost key shareholder votes, with more progressive constituencies demanding emission cuts and electing directors demanding climate action.
If we can fall back on short-cut solutions through temporary solar engineering we might think we can avoid making the long term hard changes, not just corporations, but all of us who consume too much, produce too much waste and are addicted to energy. Efforts to decarbonize our economy and put the brakes on global warming will be hurt if we dream of rescue by means of some futuristic science.
In the meantime we face the Kafkaesque situation where fossil fuel giant ConocoPhillips plans to open many more drilling stations in the arctic – yesterday given the green light by the Biden administration – with the plan to stabilize the melting permafrost with cooling units so that heavy machinery can commence fracking for fossil fuels that will warm the earth even further….
Let’s watch dystopian movies instead and get it into our heads that that WILL be our future if we put off any meaningful change.
And remember what (purportedly) Socrates said in Halcyon:
Photographs today are of the greenest of green pastures to remind us what is at stake if drought catches up with the entire planet.
Music is The sorcerer’s apprentice – we had to learn Goethe’s poem of the same name, another example of hubris and unintended consequences, by heart in school.
