The Keeling Curve

Hot.

The Keeling curve is the data plot used to keep track of the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.  The Keeling curve data has been continuously collected from the top of Hawaii's Mauna Loa since 1958.  Prior to the industrial revolution atmospheric carbon dioxide levels had not reached above 300 ppm in over 500,000 years.  Climate scientists for years have found consensus on one point, that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide in excess of 350 ppm will begin positive feedback loops that will place climate change, and more importantly, it's reversal, well out of our control.  Two weeks ago the Keeling curve crossed 400 ppm.

It is time to start preparing for drastic and irreversible environmental and climactic change.  

Bummer.

Photograph Courtesy of:

http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/eoc/special_topics/teach/sp_climate_change/p_keeling_curve

Wait and Watch II

Patience.

There is a Korean man that was sent by the education department of the Korean government to Northeastern Siberia to film educational nature videos.  How he interpreted this request in practice was to spend up to seven months at a time enclosed in small holes in the ground or on elevated platforms waiting to film Siberian tigers in their natural habitat.  Which he did, beautifully.  That no such footage was in existence previously is an indication of the elusiveness of these animals.  That there were times he waited for three or more months before seeing one is some kind of testament to patience, endurance, and the ability to wait and watch.  Is he crazy? A xenophobe? A recluse? No, in interviews he talks of the struggle to stay, his longing for the company of other people, how he missed his family.  Whatever the reason, his personal struggle and fortitude have given the world the best glimpse into the lives of these enormous and beautiful creatures, which is good, because of the handful or so of tigers he was able to find, at least two of them were killed by poachers before he finished the project.  If habitat encroachment and climate change are not doing enough to drive this dominant species to extinction, human greed will get the job done.  Perhaps we should take to heart the great lengths these cats have gone to avoid humans in modern times, and unless we are willing to simply wait and watch, we should leave them alone.

To watch a Nature documentary on the Tigers and see the footage:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/

Like what you are reading?  Then support the Kickstarter for my book Girl Gone Wild- On Being a Woman in the Wilderness.  Thanks!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1731666363/girl-gone-wild-a-guide-to-being-a-woman-outside?ref=city

Photograph Courtesy of:

http://blog.paperrater.com/2010/02/writing-strong-essay.html

The Sea Shepherd

Earlier this week the 9th circuit court in Portland Oregon declared the Sea Shepherd, a direct-action anti-whaling ship and its crew, pirates.  They were ordered to cease and desist their efforts to stop a Japanese whaling vessel from fishing in the Antarctic Sea.  What the Sea Shepherd does is get in the way.  They sail between whales and whaling ships, or between and in front of vessels.  It is not a safe practice.  Nor is it a form of protest the media finds new, interesting, or particularly worth reporting.

To be honest, my first response was that I could not believe the Sea Shepherd was still around.  I first heard about the Sea Shepherd close to twenty years ago when I first began working for Greenpeace.  Sea Shepherd was started by one of the original founders of Greenpeace during the early days of direct activism when Greenpeace was still known for taking to the seas.  Part of me regarded this kind of activism as a thing of the past; a tactic so clearly riddled with high stakes and gray areas that no one could possibly believe in its effectiveness.  But here they are, on video, being pressed between two ships, interviewing one another about their dedication to the movement and the environment, in court, being called pirates.  And while I want to be in support of them, the reality is that it is just so much danger, to themselves, and the other crews, and such little press coverage, that it hardly seems worth it.

This kind of activism radicalizes the environmental movement, allowing the conservative right to cast everyone concerned about climate change, resource conservation or air and water quality as first fanatics, then terrorists, and now pirates.  As much as I want to applaud their idealism, image matters.  Significant social change can only come with participation from the mainstream.  I think the time has come for the Sea Shepherd to change its tactics. 

References/Resources:

For a history of the Sea Shepherds:

http://www.seashepherd.org/whales/sea-shepherd-history.html

Greenpeace:

http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/

Oregonian Article on the Ninth Circuit Court Decision:

http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2013/02/sea_shepherd_whale_activists_c.html

Photo Courtesy of:
http://www.3news.co.nz/Sea-Shepherds-Bob-Barker-Steve-Irwin-rammed-by-Japanese-whalers/tabid/423/articleID/287525/Default.aspx

No Bull About It

Keystone.

On the morning of my 29th birthday I stepped outside onto the raised front porch of a cabin near Kenai, Alaska with my cup of coffee only to come eye to eye with a Moose.  She was huge, majestic  and clearly the dominant animal.  And she had a calf with her.  I watched them for a while, coming in and out of the treeline until they disappeared into the fog.  What I remember most from this encounter is the air of dignity that surrounded these long and lumbering creatures, the possessors of old souls.  

The state of Minnesota announced this week that for the first time in the State's history low numbers mean there will be no moose hunting season.  This comes after a six year decline in the state's moose population from over 8000 to just above 2000, a seventy percent decrease.  Worse than that, researchers are unable to identify a cause for the decline.  While climate change, hunting, and disease are likely culprits, there is no definitive evidence for a causal relationship between any of these factors and the observed decrease in the population.  

Moose, like other large, dominant species, are facing urban encroachment, declining water and air quality, weather changes, and a healthy hunting community, in the form of both humans and wolves.  They are also dependent on healthy, mature forests for their winter survival, the kinds of forests that are disappearing more and more rapidly as we increase our demand for build-able land and construction resources.  It is important to pay attention to the decline of a species that stands over seven feet tall and can weigh up to 1300 pounds because as go those large species, so goes the rest of us.  The decline of the moose is a good warning to us that there is no species that is too big to fail.  Including us.  

References Cited:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/02/07/171363250/minnesotas-moose-mystery-whats-killing-them

http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/moose/

A Walk In The Woods

saunterer.

A long weekend and the beginning of summer do a lot to remind us to go outside, breath the fresh air, listen to the birds, stretch our legs, and experience wildness. I think it’s important, amid the beer, fireworks, weenie roasts, and recreational vehicles that mark the American camping experience, to make sure that we do just that, stretch our legs and experience wildness. It’s not often anymore that the majority of us find ourselves away from the crush of noise, information, and development that comes with “civilized society”, and I think our distance from the wild plays a key role in our health and well-being, and our decision making as a people. Distancing ourselves from the wild is part of why we are able to devalue the environment, and that devaluation reveals itself in our politics, policies, and way of life. It allows us to waste resources, diminish habitat, allow entire species to go extinct, and engineer our bodies and our food.

I feel at my most engaged in the environment when walking through it. A walk in the wilderness does more to ease my mind, body, and soul than almost anything else. And it reminds me, in a tangible and profound way, that I am connected to this place, this world, this land, that it sustains me. Thoreau, in his 1862 essay, Walking, had this to say about the value of a walk in the woods, “I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks, who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering; which word is beautifully derived "from idle people who roved about the country, in the middle ages, and asked charity, under pretence of going à la sainte terre" — to the holy land… They who never go to the holy land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds, but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre, without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering.”

We can make no progress in the improvement of our daily lives, in the fostering of health, community, sustainability, or peace, until we acknowledge and embrace our connection to the wilderness. Take a first step, take a walk.

To read the full text of Thoreau’s Walking:
http://thoreau.eserver.org/walking.html

To Read Emerson’s Nature:
http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/emerson/nature-emerson-a.html#Chapter%20I

Photo courtesy of:
http://dinabloomphoto.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/edith.jpg

Friday Night Fish Fry

dam.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in conjunction with the Bonneville Power Administration and several other federal and state agencies announced last week that they will resume "Sea Lion removal" along the Columbia River this week. To be clear, "Sea Lion removal" is not the transportation of Sea Lions to alternative habitats without dwindling sources of food or radioactive water, its just killing Sea Lions, either with a rifle if you're a good shot, or by lethal injection (if you're not). Why, you might ask, are we killing Sea Lions? The official story is because they have migrated upriver in search of food, depleting the increasingly fragile salmon population. But really, its not how much salmon they eat, it's that they won't pay $10 a pound for it. So you see, the Sea Lions have to go.

Don't get me wrong, the decreasing salmon population is distressing, both for the salmon and as an indication of the overall health of our waterways. After constructing 25 dams on the Columbia and an additional 250 more throughout the watershed, the wild salmon population has dropped from 10 million to 300,000. The last thing the salmon should have to deal with on their long and treacherous life journey is a natural predator. Besides, this policy clearly reflects an acknowledgment of the impacts of human consumption and energy generation on natural systems while restoring balance between species and promoting biodiversity.