One Town’s Unexpected Economic Renaissance

                            COMMONER                             

Hardwick, Vermont embraced agricultural projects based on sharing

Here is a small town that thrives on a kind of agriculture where scale matters, stakeholders collaborate, and, in most cases, ownership has more to do with stewardship than it does with possession. Community members know each other by name and value civic engagement. Young people who moved away for bigger and “better” opportunities now flock home, seeking jobs and dedicating themselves to community improvement. This town, Hardwick, Vermont, embodies the spirit of the commons in so many ways—but it wouldn’t be that way without the vision and drive of Tom Stearns, an ardent commons advocate and the founder of High Mowing Organic Seeds.

Over his years working in the seed business, Stearns has come to understand that, even more so than the land he works, the seeds themselves are a special kind of commons. The vegetable seeds we have now, he says, are vastly different than the seeds that existed one hundred years ago, and today’s seeds will assume new qualities in the future. That’s partly why privatization and commodification have become commonplace in the seed industry. Corporate giants have denied public access to information about our seed resource because “when you control seeds, you control a lot,” says Stearns.

But the High Mowing team engages and interacts with everyone who uses seeds, including farmers and gardeners, plant breeders at universities, other seed companies, and soil scientists. They do this in an effort to bring the seed community’s collective wisdom to bear on how to develop new seed varieties, how to make seeds available to consumers, and how to promote them as a critical element in building healthy food systems. By encouraging this knowledge sharing, High Mowing empowers the whole community to engage in a ten-thousand year old practice of food provision that is vital for the future. They are framing seed saving as a commons‐based solution.

Stearns is also a co-founder of the Center for an Agricultural Economy, a Hardwick‐based nonprofit that coordinates regional food system activity. Among many other contributions to the community, the non-profit just purchased the old town common. Until recently, no one had hope that Hardwick, an aging granite-mining center, would ever recover from the mining industry collapse. The town common had been neglected since the thirties, but members of the Center for an Agricultural Economy saw its potential and purchased the sixteen acres in the heart of Hardwick. Today, Stearns describes all kinds of activity planned for the property, including an educational farm and community garden.

The combined effect of these many assorted commons solutions is a small town renaissance no one could have expected in Hardwick. Stearns describes countless new economic opportunities growing up around healthy food, ecological awareness, and value‐added agriculture. There are new jobs—good jobs—at High Mowing and elsewhere.

The rural “brain drain” is reversing in this area, as smart young people who moved away are coming home. People are once again running for town select boards and school boards. “People are actually competing [for those positions] because they want to have a voice,” Stearns says.

“It’s really cool.” When asked about the secrets to this success, Stearns speculates that Vermont’s size has something to do with it. Towns operate on a “human-scale,” and political figures are readily accessible (you might event spot the governor walking down the street, he says). As a result, people sense their ability to make an impact—they are not just one among millions. To Stearns’s mind, the hopelessness that comes from feeling inconsequential is one of the main obstacles to creating commons-based societies in other places today.

—JESSICA CONRAD

Editor: Another chapter in Celebrating the Commons: People Stories and Ideas for the New Year from Commons Magazine being presented each Sunday at EYNU.

350.org Co-Founder Sides with the Commons

                            COMMONER                             

Boeve encourages us all to step up as a global community to fight climate change

With equal parts poise and resolution, May Boeve fights climate change. Alongside author Bill McKibben and a group of college friends, she spearheaded a campaign called Step It Up in 2007 that organized creative actions across the U.S. and urged political leaders to cut carbon 80% by 2050. The campaign then went international under the name 350.org.

350.org “works hard to organize in a new way—everywhere at once, using online tools to facilitate strategic offline action.” You may have seen aerial shots of the human-made 350’s (the number that stands for the safe level of carbon in the atmosphere), or the climate street art, just two of the many ways 350.org’s organizing efforts have united individuals from around the globe in common cause.

Boeve emphasizes that the climate crisis requires us all to step up as a global community, and, today, 350.org’s initiatives are led by thousands of volunteer organizers in over 188 countries.

I recently had the opportunity to catch up with Boeve about how the commons connects to the growing global movement against climate change, 350.org’s stance against the fossil fuel industry, and the importance of the commons in her own life.

Boeve calls herself a commoner because she wants “to be part of a movement that’s trying to create something different than what we stand to inherit right now.”
How does the commons influence your work at 350.org?

The way we try to organize at 350.org has been a commons exercise, specifically through the distributed days of action we’ve held five different times. These days are all about bringing communities together on a particular day, with a particular theme, to deliver a message about preserving the climate, which is a global commons. People participate because they understand that their actions link them in a very direct way to thousands of individuals around the world. It’s an experiment in demonstrating how the sum is greater than its individual parts.

When I read Bill McKibben’s piece in Rolling Stone called Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math, I was intrigued by his belief that moral outrage might be what sparks a transformative challenge to fossil fuel. How does 350.org help people see the immorality of the fossil-fuel industry’s actions?

We all know that burning fossil fuels drives the climate to change and warm. That’s not news. It’s not news that the public attitude toward oil industry executives is largely negative. And we all know that those execs are the characters behind the drilling—that’s not news either. But what is new is the link: we have to make it clear that these executives are knowingly taking actions that will make it impossible for the rest of us, including future generations, to live on a healthy planet.

How do we connect the moral aspect? Our particular style of work is to influence public perception through action and global organizing. We find stories and examples of people who are challenging the system, who are seeing things in a new way, and in doing so, are changing the way the public at large understands this problem. Not as a problem about your individual actions and the car you drive and where you buy your food—which all still matters—but that this problem involves a set of actors who are making bad choices and are not being held account- able by our political system.

We must fundamentally change the way the public views the oil industry. Take the apartheid struggle: at a certain point, you had to choose which side you were on, whether you agreed that racial segregation was immoral, or whether you did not. That’s where we are right now with the oil industry.

What do you see as the biggest obstacle to fighting for, and protecting, the climate as a commons?

I think a huge obstacle to building this movement, second only to our opposition, is the ability for any one person to see that he or she can do something about the problem—because it’s really big. Another obstacle is the inspiration factor. How do we inspire people to spend their most valuable resource (their time) working to bring about a solution to climate change? It’s a challenge in an era when there are so many problems, many of which stem from undervaluing the commons. But there are many people doing impressive work for the greater good. In their work I see incredible promise, and that’s what keeps me inspired to work on climate change issues.

At 350.org, specifically, we’ve embraced social media tools as mass storytelling platforms from the beginning, and we’ve had a lot of incredible experiences. When we receive stories via email, we often write back and say, “Hey, we’re inspired by this, and we bet our Facebook followers will be too. Can we post this on our page?” Hundreds of thousands of people “Like” and “Share” the stories we post about individuals from all over the globe who are tackling seemingly insurmountable challenges for their communities.

There’s one specific example that comes to mind. A young woman from Baghdad participated in our first day of action all by herself, because her friends were afraid to cross a security checkpoint. The image of this woman standing alone with her 350 banner rose above the rest, and she wrote us a few months later to report that she had formed a local climate organizing group. The following year we hosted another day of action, and lo and behold, there she was with a group of ten. To me, and I think to many people, these stories show why it’s imperative that we work on climate change as a global community. There’s something special about knowing you’re taking the same action as someone else on the opposite side of the globe. Together we can stand as a peaceful army fighting for a different future.

—JESSICA CONRAD

Editor: Another chapter in Celebrating the Commons: People Stories and Ideas for the New Year from Commons Magazine being presented each Sunday at EYNU.

Seeds

It is planting time all over Encinitas. There is so much in the world of seeds that has changed dramatically within this last decade.  Did you know that Monsanto has bought most every single seed company?  It is a horror story and growing more frightening each spring.  

Speaking of women and growing things, the following interview with Vandana Shiva is an opportunity to hear one of the world authorities on growing food and healthy biodiversity. Shiva founded Navdanya (meaning 9 seeds) in 1984. From the website:

"Navdanya is actively involved in the rejuvenation of indigenous knowledge and culture. It has created awareness on the hazards of genetic engineering, defended people's knowledge from biopiracy and food rights in the face of globalisation and climate change. 

Navdanya is a women centred movement for the protection of biological and cultural diversity."

Two Options from The Perennial Plate on Vimeo. (This is also a plug for the Perennial Plate videos from a fan.)

If you know of someone who saves their own seeds in Encinitas, you have a good chance with vegetables that grow well in our coastal microclimate.

It is so difficult for we who are up against these gigantic companies. But, there are seed companies you can trust for heirloom quality, including Baker Creek and Territorial Seed Company. And their catalogs are gorgeous!  Here is some background from a highly successful and passionate Seattle gardener.

Small Space etc. - Intimate planting

Nature on a global scale is one thing, like the Amazon rain forest or our national parks. Thinking locally isn't too hard. Our community finally has an Urban Forest Manual and we have wonderfully vigilant neighborhoods protecting our historic trees. Our schools are planting trees all the time. This writer is putting in a backyard orchard, but the kind of fantasy images that excite are far more intimate, more tactile.

What follows are some provocative prototypes by designers from around the world. This isn't a DIY post or a linked piece for depth. It is merely to spark thought. Could you live this intimately with plant life? We know it has been proven that our indoor air is healthier with plants, test show stress reduction and the beauty is undeniable. Enjoy . . .

You might prefer fish to eels in this aguaponic coffee table setup.  This furniture photo is reminiscent of the 1982 science fiction Blade Runner movie.

Lifesavers

A dozen years ago the idea of green roofs was a novel one and the first pictures I collected were of humble dwellings and simple homes. These are still favored images and closer to what I'll be installing this year (or next).  Today it is becoming more and more acceptable in the architectural community and with planners to consider on a large urban scale. See last May's Tell-A-Vision for concept to heal the blight that is the big box, Wal-to-Wal, El Camino Real corridor aka car storage and large truck magnet.

Plants make life possible.  This is the introduction to this video clip. One of San Diego's own, Jim Mumford, gives a TED Talk to inspire us all to think of green roofs, green walls and other living elements as a part of our built environment. The time has come. This week is California Arbor Week, March 7-14. Let's hug us some trees and fondle some foliage, folks.

Invisible Resources

Twenty years ago, Gloria Steinem wrote “Revaluing Economics.” In the article, she talks about the two invisible resources upon which everything else is built in society and in the economy. Those two resources being the planet’s natural resources, the environment, and the work that women have done in the home to take care of families and children. Our vision for the economy of the future would actually protect them rather than make those resources invisible.

The month ahead will be dominated by discussions of Encinitas economy down at City Hall, so this perspective Steinem names will be invisible until and unless we make it a part of the conversation.

But, the key words are in the final sentence - protect them. We have written a great deal on this blog about protecting the environment.  We need to speak more on behalf of one half of our population - women.

It is in this spirit the following video introduces One Billion Rising, coming next week around the world. (Trigger warning for violence)

ABOUT ONE BILLION RISING (Website)

ONE IN THREE WOMEN ON THE PLANET WILL BE RAPED OR BEATEN IN HER LIFETIME.*

ONE BILLION WOMEN VIOLATED IS AN ATROCITY

ONE BILLION WOMEN DANCING IS A REVOLUTION

On V-Day’s 15th Anniversary, 14 February 2013, we are inviting ONE BILLION women and those who love them to WALK OUT, DANCE, RISE UP, and DEMAND an end to this violence. ONE BILLION RISING will move the earth, activating women and men across every country. V-Day wants the world to see our collective strength, our numbers, our solidarity across borders.

What does ONE BILLION look like? On 14 February 2013, it will look like a REVOLUTION.

ONE BILLION RISING IS:

A global strike
An invitation to dance
A call to men and women to refuse to participate in the status quo until rape and rape culture ends
An act of solidarity, demonstrating to women the commonality of their struggles and their power in numbers
A refusal to accept violence against women and girls as a given
A new time and a new way of being

Resources:

Dance instruction 

San Diego Event

50 Year Coastal Proposition

Guest Post by Dennis Lees, February 3, 2012

I wanted to make sure you are aware of a 50-year coastal protection program the Army Corps of Engineers is proposing for Encinitas and Solana Beach. It has been described minimally in The Coast News here and here. I believe this is an issue that we as Encinitans should be involved in. The ACOE will hold a public briefing on this project in our council chambers this Wednesday, 2/6, at 1800 (6 PM). The public will be able to ask questions and speak to their concerns.

The ACOE has been studying these issues for about 10 years. It started out evaluating ten alternatives, including:
No Action; Managed Retreat; Beach Nourishment at Various Increments; Notch fills; Hybrid-Beach nourishment and notch fill; Visible Breakwaters; Submerged Breakwater/Artificial Reef; Groins; Seawalls; Revetment

Preliminary screening eliminated the following alternatives:

Managed Retreat; Emergent Breakwaters; Submerged Breakwater/Artificial Reef; Groins; Revetments

This leaves:

No Action, representing unmanaged retreat; Beach Nourishment at various times in the future (this is a short-term fix; we've just completed the 3rd beach nourishment program since about 2000); Notch fills; a hybrid approach involving beach nourishment and notch fill; and Seawalls.

It is not surprising that the ACOE has already eliminated Managed Retreat, which recent comprehensive cost-benefit studies in Monterey Bay have show is the best environmental and economic alternative in the long term. For more information on this, see pdf reports from USC.edu, Monterey Bay.NOAA.gov and Costal.ca.gov.

These investigators, led by Dr. David Revell, have been evaluating the costs and short- and long-term benefits of a variety of approaches to shoreline preservation and restoration (beach nourishment, revetments, sea walls, armor rock, artificial reefs, etc.) and has come to some very interesting conclusions. I believe they have concluded that all but Managed Retreat are basically pouring money down a rat hole. Mother Nature will win in the end, whatever we do, and we are just delaying the final outcome at great expense to the taxpayers.

Managed Retreat, however, definitely does not satisfy the influential property and business owners, who are pushing to have their property protected at taxpayer expense.

The footprint for the proposed Encinitas/Solana Beach project is 3-4 times larger than the recently completed beach nourishment program and about two-thirds of it would occur here in Encinitas. The remainder is off San Elijo Lagoon and Solana Beach.

I recently took a very brief look at the appendix covering impacts to nearshore resources in the ACOE EIS/EIR for its proposed Encinitas/Solana Beach beach protection program and found it woefully wanting. In addition to eliminating a discussion on managed retreat, the ACOE document doesn't address environmental or fisheries impacts in the borrow sites at all. In fact, the only mention of "borrow sites" was to mention that a cultural resources survey will be conducted prior to dredging. It is likely, based on research conducted in nearshore waters, that biological resources in these areas vary substantially. However, studies assessing potential impacts to these habitats have failed to address this variation or adequately evaluate the ecological value of any of the proposed borrow sites and use the differences in ecological value as a criterion for site selection. These evaluations should be used to ensure that any dredging that occurs avoids the areas of highest ecological value, as demonstrated by intensive surveys by qualified benthic ecologists with experience in this habitat. Basically, previous studies have evaluated the "weeds" in the system, i.e., the ephemeral organisms living in the upper few inches of the sand, rather than the "trees", i.e., the long-lived organisms that live down to 2 or more feet deep in the sand (and equal to dredging depth) and contribute the most to fisheries. A consequence of this flawed approach is that the potential effects of dredging and the projections for recovery times are grossly underestimated.

In the past, agencies have not understood these issues and have accepted this approach. However, we are seeing changes in agency philosophies regarding the approaches for evaluating borrow sites and beach restoration programs. The California Coastal Commission is now starting to request studies addressing the issues involving the "weeds" and the "trees", which is the approach taken in discussions of nearly every other ecosystem subjected to development activities. (For example, when we assess the effects of clear-cutting in a redwood forest, an activity analogous to the proposed dredging program, we make the decisions based on the long-lived redwoods and other trees in the forest, not on the ephemeral grasses and short-lived shrubs growing on the forest floor.) In addition, the National Marine Fisheries Service appears to be leaning this direction.

However, the bottom line here is that the ACOE has completely omitted any discussion of Managed Retreat and borrow-site impacts from a proposed 50-year project that would require dredging many times more sand for the beaches in Encinitas and Solana Beach than all the dredging done for beach "nourishment" to date. These omissions are unacceptable. These environmental issues need to be addressed to protect the environment and our fisheries. Moreover, we need to protect the taxpayers. Particularly in light of sea-level rise, this is a battle that we cannot and will not win. We should make a wise decision to cut our losses and put the money into efforts that make sense for ALL taxpayers, not just wealthy landowners and businesses.

A Crucial Part of the Human Story That Must Be Recaptured

Photo by Nancy Battaglia for 350.org, a global citizens movement to curb climate disruption founded by Bill McKibben.

Bill McKibben looks to the commons as the solution to global climate disruption

I’ve spent most of my life as a writer—and one of the sweetest parts of that job is knowing that whatever I produce ends up in a library, an institution dedicated to the idea that we can share things easily. There are innumerable other examples of sharing all around—and they are the parts of our lives that we usually care most about. They don’t show up on balance sheets because they’re not producing profit—but they are producing satisfaction.

These things we share are called commons, which simply means they belong to all of us. Commons can be gifts of nature—such as fresh water, wilderness and the airwaves—or the products of social ingenuity like the Internet, parks, artistic traditions, or the public health service.

But today much of our common wealth is under threat from those hungry to ruin it or take it over for selfish, private purposes.

The most crucial commons, perhaps, is the one now under greatest siege, and it poses a test of whether we can pull together to solve our deepest problems or succumb to disaster. Our atmosphere has been de facto privatized for a long time now—we’ve allowed coal, oil and gas interests to own the sky, filling it with the carbon that is the inevitable byproduct of their business. For a couple of centuries this seemed mostly harmless—Co2 didn’t seem to be causing much trouble. But two decades ago we started to understand the effects of global warming, and now each month the big scientific journals bring us new proof of just how vast the damage is: the Arctic is melting, Australia is on fire, the pH of the ocean is dropping fast.

If we are to somehow ward off the coming catastrophes, we have to reclaim this atmospheric commons. We have to figure out how to cooperatively own and protect the single most important feature of the planet we inhabit—the thin envelope of atmosphere that makes our lives possible. Wrestling this key prize away from Exxon Mobil and other corporations is the great political issue of our time, and some of the solutions proposed have been ingenious—most notably the idea put forth by commons theorist Peter Barnes and others that we should own the sky jointly, and share in the profits realized by leasing its storage space to the fossil fuel industry. For that to work, of course, we would have to reduce that storage space quickly and dramatically. Barnes’ Cap-and-Dividend plan offers one way to make that economically and politically feasible.

But for this and other necessary projects to succeed, we need first to break the intellectual spell under which we live. The last few decades have been dominated by the premise that if we privatize all economic resources it will produce endless riches. Which was kind of true, except that the riches went to only a few people. And in the process they melted the Arctic, as well as dramatically increasing inequality around the world. The commons is a crucial part of the human story that must be recovered if we are to deal with the problems now crowding in on us. This story is equal parts enlightening and encouraging, and it is entirely necessary for us to hear it.

—BILL MCKIBBEN
FROM THE INTRODUCTION TO ALL THAT WE SHARE: A FIELD GUIDE TO THE COMMONS

Editor: Another chapter in Celebrating the Commons: People Stories and Ideas for the New Year from Commons Magazine being presented each Sunday at EYNU.

A Grassroots Group Stands Up for Everyone’s Water Rights

                            COMMONERS                             

The Detroit People’s Water Board champions the Great Lakes Commons

The Detroit People’s Water Board isn’t waiting for someone else to solve Detroit’s water problems. This community coalition is taking an out- front role on everything from fighting water shutoffs and privatization schemes to helping create a watershed plan for the region.
“Our name is a powerful statement,” says Priscilla Dziubek, a representative on the Board from the East Michigan Environmental Action Council. “People get that we are grassroots and we believe we have a rightful say in what happens with our water.”

The Detroit People’s Water Board (DPWB) is at the forefront of emerging efforts in the Great Lakes region to reclaim the water commons. It was born when community organizers saw the need to bridge a number of different water issues in the city—protecting low-income residents’ access to affordable water, preventing pollution and working to keep Detroit’s water publicly managed and accountable.

Charity Hicks, one of the founders of this

 grassroots organization to protect 

Detroit’s water for everyone.

“We focus on the question: what does water mean for all of us?” explains Charity Hicks, another founding member, from the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network. “The Board has a cross pollinating effect among people focused on poverty, health, growing food, jobs, ecological survival. We attend to both human and ecological sustainability.”

DPWB seeks to weave together social justice, citizen democracy and ecological health. The foundation for their work is fostering community and a deepened sense of the “we”—encompassing shared responsibility and equitable benefit.

People’s Water Board members could see that people were concerned about their own water, but they weren’t necessarily making a political connection. “Why in a water-blessed region are so many families’ shut off? Why would we turn over something so intrinsic to our public quality of life, our water, to private interests?” questions Hicks, alluding to the Board’s work to reconnect people to their water and to the community’s stake in what is happening. “We need to have a dialogue about those things we hold in common.”

Seeing the water as a commons, as “all of ours,” Hicks and Dzuibek agree, empowers people. They can make a difference in water issues, and in a bigger way in how we will live together and on this earth, Hicks observes. “We are saying: you are part of this conversation, you are an expert, we are all experts. We have full agency. This is what democracy looks like.”

– ALEXA BRADLEY

Editor: Another chapter in Celebrating the Commons: People Stories and Ideas for the New Year from Commons Magazine being presented each Sunday at EYNU.

Great Potential Lies Before Us

Image Source

For some the precocious child is just annoying.  You'll want to skip this one. For the rest of us there is something stirring about hearing clear statements, delivered with sincere passion and excitement.

I can recall at age 12 being asked to ride on a League of Women Voters float along with other kids.  This was an utterly passive experience compared with the bright young minds in the video clips here, but it instilled a deep sense of civic pride and responsibility I still feel lives within me and helps shape my choices. 

"Here are a couple of downer facts about mountaintop removal mining: 500 of the oldest mountains in America have been destroyed. There are 2,000 miles of streams poisoned." Source: I Love Mountains - No More Excuses, Appalachian Voices via Grist

The message constantly being attributed with Idle No More is one of solidarity and looking out for future generations of Indigenous Peoples and the environment. A message that can best be shared by members of future generations like 11-year-old Ta’Kaiya Blaney.

The Young activist talks about the changes in our environment, the Keystone XL Pipeline and more before sharing her perception on what Idle No More means. “As we are standing on unceded territory, and we have that right. And that’s what Idle No More is all about. It’s about us standing up and speaking up. We’ve never really been asleep and now more than ever we’re awake and we’re standing up.” Source: Idle No More Has Voices of the Future Generation

This is a couple years old but still timely. Birke Baehr -"What's Wrong With Our Food System? And How Can We Make A Difference?" via Mim Michleove on Facebook

According to Mary: Happy New Year

Totally agree with Mary Fleener's sentiments here and love how beautifully she illustrated this.  

For Encinitas You Need Us, 2013 will bring to light as much as possible about our community's food systems and 21st century innovations for the Encinitas Can Feed Us groove.

Gleaning

In this season of food drives, here is a challenging idea for Encinitas to consider in all the growing seasons to come. Gleaning. The video below speaks to Ventura County and their Food Share Program.

What do we have in San Diego County? We have Senior Gleaners with an emphasis on grocery store shelves in this coastal area. It would be good to hear what exists now and what might really fit well with our community goals and community future. Sounds like this is a wonderful start. And, boy do we have seniors. Encinitas seniors appear to be a vigorous and involved lot.

"The Senior Gleaners of San Diego County are working to enhance the food-giving capacities of local agencies, most of which run out of food on a monthly basis. Senior Gleaners is divided into three main working groups in the county , South County, North County and the Coastal area. Each area has a team of workers who volunteer to pick, sort, gather and deliver up to 100,000 pounds of food to area agencies monthly. Only agencies that qualify under federal poverty rules (and have a 501-c-3 nonprofit status) are eligible to receive the food. Growers contact team leaders when they have crops that are over-ripe or too costly to pick; certain grocery stores offer edible food that cannot be sold and packing sheds have crates of food that is not suitable for the marketplace but safe to eat."

The Gleaners from Hunger In California on Vimeo.

On another local note, how about gleaning urban neighborhoods where homeowners with more fruit trees than they can manage could contact Encinitas gleaners to harvest and distribute this foraged fruit?  What about involving the young? vets? women in particular? What about future plans to plant many fruit and nut trees in Encinitas Urban Forest for this kind of public use? The right entrepreneurial spirit could do a great deal here.

Waste is our easiest target for eradicating ills - be it insufficient food, energy, money, goods or services - or the existence of litter and pollution.

Turn Off That Damn Light!

Well, I laughed.  This also prompted the more serious issue of what our loss of night skies is doing to us and to the living world around us.

During this Solstice holiday, the following LA Times article excerpted below was recommended by friends.

The need for humans to have healthy sleep patterns has been well documented. Anyone of us who has had to work the midnight shift knows the havoc this can play on one's emotions and physical body.

"Our bodies need darkness to produce the hormone melatonin, which keeps certain cancers from developing, and our bodies need darkness for sleep."

"The rest of the world depends on darkness as well, including nocturnal and crepuscular species of birds, insects, mammals, fish and reptiles. Some examples are well known — the 400 species of birds that migrate at night in North America, the sea turtles that come ashore to lay their eggs — and some are not, such as the bats that save American farmers billions in pest control and the moths that pollinate 80% of the world's flora. Ecological light pollution is like the bulldozer of the night, wrecking habitat and disrupting ecosystems several billion years in the making. Simply put, without darkness, Earth's ecology would collapse."

The primary point here is that the author, Paul Bogard makes is that we can change this.

"It doesn't have to be this way. Light pollution is readily within our ability to solve, using new lighting technologies and shielding existing lights. Already, many cities and towns across North America and Europe are changing to LED streetlights, which offer dramatic possibilities for controlling wasted light. Other communities are finding success with simply turning off portions of their public lighting after midnight. Even Paris, the famed "city of light," which already turns off its monument lighting after 1 a.m., will this summer start to require its shops, offices and public buildings to turn off lights after 2 a.m. Though primarily designed to save energy, such reductions in light will also go far in addressing light pollution. But we will never truly address the problem of light pollution until we become aware of the irreplaceable value and beauty of the darkness we are losing."

In addition to this informative piece is a companion, Dark Skies (pdf) with some really good illustrations to support the Bogard argument.

This is yet another topic that has often been belittled and mocked as some hippy goofiness or NIMBY fixation, as with the Hall property plans for a Regional Sports Park's extensive exterior lighting. For this reason it seems we should help educate our friends, neighbors and city planners to the realities of night skies to our healthy and prosperity.

Hat Tip to C.J. and Jean Bernard Minster

Update via Encinitas Undercover 12/28/12
Read the letter to the UT Editor from a Cardiff student regarding 90 foot high lights.

Listen Up

Quote of the Day: 150 Year Returns

"In return for 150 years of explosive consumption, much of which does nothing to advance human welfare, we are atomising the natural world and the human systems that depend on it."

That has a way of putting climate crisis in perspective.  George Monbiot spells out the the fix we're in with "There Is No Stopping Climate Change Unless We Can Mobilize Against Plutocracy."

Good read for this Solstice Day, the shortest day of the year for us in the Northern Hemisphere tilted away from the sun.

About the Sand . . .

Hard to believe that this is indeed sand.

This week Logan Jenkins wrote a startlingly informative post on sand. Specifically he writes about Scripps scientists stake out Cardiff beach to measure sands of time. His source is Bob Guza, Scripps Institution of Oceanography professor and the tour includes Cardiff State Beach where a doctoral student (unamed by Jenkins) works in "an industrial sized container" in front of a "bank of computer terminals." Here is the best chunk of Jenkins' latest:

The goal of the research project — led by Guza and one of his former star pupils, Reinhard Flick, Scripps researcher and staff oceanographer for the California Department of Boating and Waterways — is simple: Watch the sand. Carefully.

The technology they’re using is a step up from Radio Shack: a laser scanner that collects data points multiple times a second; acoustic Doppler velocimeter; bathymetric mapping; and a bunch of other sci-fi stuff.

Guza, his love of sand gushing, says it’s insane that we spend millions on periodic beach “nourishment” while less than .01 percent of that money goes to measuring what happens to the sand once it’s dropped off.

[ . . . ] “Our beaches are changing,” Guza says. “We can either monitor them and have a good idea what they’re doing and what happens when we try to fix something, or we can not watch them and do stuff randomly and not know what works.”

This sounds so rational I can hardly believe it's real. And, it looks to me like the beach sand replenishment is yet another Stocks & Bond legacy that is being questioned.

Fracking Comes to California

Fracking being a real danger to water table safety and purity is becoming well known, in part due to Josh Fox's movie Gasland. But, if that isn't threat enough, the process causing earthquakes sounds extremely dangerous to this non-scientist.

Via Salon
The Federal Government auctioned off 18,000 acres of leased land in Central California.

"Eight different groups — including oil companies — bid for the leases involving 15 parcels of land up for auction in rural stretches of Monterey, San Benito and Fresno counties, Bureau of Land Management spokesman David Christy said. The agency plans to announce the winners within 24 hours.

Numerous environmental groups who saw the auction as a sign that California is next in line for an oil and gas boom protested outside the auction in Sacramento, with some activists donning hazmat suits.

The auction attracted a normal turnout of bidders, and about half the parcels went for just $2.50 an acre, much less than the typical price in nearby Kern County, an oil-rich basin along a mountain range north of Los Angeles."

Via Crooks & Liars

 

C&L's Karoli writes of the auction this week,

There were protests, of course, but that didn't really stop anything. Similarly, the regulations around fracking are so loose that having to get an additional permit is just part of the cost of getting richer to these oil barons. Worse, fracking regulations aren't even finalized yet, and were just pushed back yet again. Until demand lessens, they're going to be able to destroy the environment and hasten climate change. This needs to be as high of a priority as Medicare and union membership. The oligarchs will not be satisfied until they have exhausted or stolen every resource on the planet.

Related Story in the Cultural Environment 

Oil and Gas Industry Prepare Smear Campaign Against Matt Damon Flick "Promised Land"

Next month Focus Features releases Matt Damon’s new movie and the oil and gas industry is worried sick about it. The movie, Promised Land , is about a Pennsylvania farm town deciding whether to go forward with shale gas drilling after a team of landmen arrives in the area.

This is a worthy read, both for the orchestrated huge money tactics that are being rolled out by fossil fuel industry and for the story being told by this Hollywood film. (It is still difficult to believe that prisons are not filled with these fossil fuel industry decision makers, bribery agents and hucksters.)

But my primary reason for adding this story about a fictional place is what has the oil and gas industry giants so spooked and what our community is actively pursuing - citizen participation in decision making. This film sounds like a source of inspiration even if there are no shale fields directly under our feet. Whatever the resource or threat to climate change we must be vigilant.

Despite the industry's faux-outrage and attempts to stir up hype, the Damon movie is not anti-fracking or a propaganda piece. The film offers up a clear-eyed look at economic hardships faced in many rural communities. It also makes a simple point: with so much at stake, shouldn't communities have a candid, informed discussion about the risks and benefits of oil and gas drilling?

Political Power Shifts Toward Environment

The perfect follow-up to Bill Nye, the Science Guy's simple Climate Change 101 video earlier today is offering some solutions.  We just so happen to have this in our new city mayor, deputy mayor and city council.  The KPBS article and radio file spells this out this week. Mayor Teresa Barth is quoted.

“I think that you will see us talking about more environmental issues,” she said, “more sustainability issues.”

The KPBS goes on to say:

One of the Encinitas councilmen who lost his seat was Jerome Stocks. Stocks was the city’s representative on SANDAG, San Diego’s regional planning board. Stocks served as the SANDAG chair and a spokesperson for the region’s 2050 regional transportation plan. That SANDAG plan was recently struck down in court for not meeting the state’s greenhouse gas reduction goals.

Barth said she plans to nominate political newcomer Lisa Shaffer to replace Stocks as the city's representative on the SANDAG board, and bring a more environmentally-friendly perspective to regional planning.

Shaffer, who was the top vote getter in the Encinitas City Council election, is an ethics teacher at UC San Diego's Rady School of Management and has worked with Scripps Institution of Oceanography, NASA and NOAA.

Climate 101

Sometimes just keeping it as simple and direct as possible - for our children, our contrary friends/family/neighbors and for ourselves. For that we have the Science Guy, Bill Nye.

Landfill Harmonic Orchestra

The film shows how trash and recycled materials can be transformed into beautiful sounding musical instruments, but more importantly, it brings witness to the transformation of precious human beings.

Landfill Harmonic is an upcoming feature-length documentary about a remarkable musical orchestra in Paraguay, where young musicians play instruments made from trash.