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.

Future Vision Missing

Community chatter about the General Plan Update and the Right to Vote Initiative are too often reminiscent of those predictions of the future we used to see years ago.

Without a clue of what was coming in technology, ecology, politics, economics, culture or social dynamics; the vision of the future was simply a tricked out version of the status quo. And it is funny.

Here is a 1967 short minute and a half of Walter Cronkite visiting a home office in the 21st century. The obsession with gadgets (albeit clunky and huge) and the failure to acknowledge women hasn't really changed much at its essence in almost 50 years.

Tonight at the Encinitas City Council meeting we will hear the realtors, developers and other business interests version of the future land use for housing in Encinitas via the ERAC report. The Planning Commission report and the GPAC report were given in the previous to weeks. Neither of these reports or the speakers gave much of a clue to what the future might hold for our community beyond more of the same. Maybe the agendas were kept really narrow for some reason.

Innovative thinking has yet to be encountered since the so-called start up or in community reaction that followed. Lots of passion and effort, but envisioning the future or innovation - not so much. Besides ignoring completely the known challenges of our new century's climate change, fossil fuel depletion/pollution, economic breakdown; there was no strategy to address how our community might address shortages in our currently strong supplies in water, food or energy as current systems change. 

Oh wait, Mayor Barth has suggested rethinking the density bonus to fit our community and its resources, asked that certification for existing market low income housing be explored, recommended dozens of articles on housing and land use trends, challenges, alternatives and patterns in her weekly "Thought You Might Like to Know" newsletter's Food for Thought. Imagine if the new city council members and some city residents follow through and support some of this direction? Maybe something that recognizes a changing world could be incorporated into the news coverage of Encinitas' housing, land use, transportation, environment and economy.  

Tonight is also going to be about basics in our City Budget.  This is welcome if we are to acknowledge that we are immersed in change and the economy is not just going through a little bump. Citizens have been begging for open government and a clear picture of the City Budget.  As we have been seeing since this new council began, we are getting what we requested and this is good. My first questions . . . Have we a range of revenue sources for our city? If not, will this be explored? 

video source

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.

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.

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.

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.

Exxon Hates Your Children

How many of you scream at the Exxon Mobile commercials claiming "to care about the children" when we know it is their public relations arm messing with people's heart and mind disconnects to distract and confuse?  Big lies from the big guys - daily, all day.

The following ad has been created to refute the big lie.  *LOLsob*



From Grist:

There are two groups behind this genius ad: Oil Change International — an advocacy organization that’s fighting for clean energy and against fossil fuels — and The Other 98%, which calls itself “a grassroots network of concerned people fed up with the status quo in Washington.” There’s actually a policy agenda behind the ad — eliminating subsidies for fossil fuels. Here’s the argument the two groups are making:

Imagine if your government gave a company a sweet deal to build your local playground. Then, that company dumped toxic waste underneath where your kids play everyday, just because it was the most profitable thing for them to do.

What would you do? Obviously you’d protect your children and demand that the company fully pay to clean up their mess … you’d demand that your government immediately stop sending your tax dollars — subsidies — to that company.

That company is Exxon, the playground is our planet, and the sweet deal they get is by way of massive government handouts.

The groups are raising money for an ad buy next week; “the locations and scope will depend on the online fundraising campaign,” Oil Change International’s director told The Hill. But it looks like one of the audiences they’re looking to reach is Fox News viewers … and I would pay good money just to see how they try and defend Exxon against this argument. “Exxon loves your children! They make it possible for them to drive cars!” “They’re just trying to make money … oh wait …”

Well, this commercial -- brought to you courtesy of Oil Change International and The Other 98% -- answers them. And guess what: ExxonMobil really hates it. Why? Because it tells the stark, horrible truth about how Big Oil and ExxonMobil harms children in real ways, far more than having a bad score on a standardized test. It has them so aggravated that they're pushing to have the ads removed.

Via The Hill: 

“The campaign is offensive to the thousands of ExxonMobil employees and contractors who work hard every day to deliver an essential product in a safe and environmentally responsible way,” the company said in a statement Wednesday.

Via Crooks & Liars:

Well, shoot. I'm sorry, ExxonMobil, but it simply tells the truth about what you're really doing.

The company and oil industry more broadly are battling proposals to end tax deductions, arguing the efforts unfairly single out the industry for punishment and would stymie energy development.

Oil industry critics say that the tax code should not reward fossil fuel development at a time when scientists are increasingly sounding the alarmabout runaway global warming.

In this day of real-time news, it's really impossible for Big Oil to disguise their malfeasance and greed with slick education reform PR campaigns. That's what they really hate.

Scientists! Not Just FIRE (Financial, Insurance, Real Estate)

Our community is filled with scientists, with many being internationally recognized leaders in their respective fields.  Most often this rich resource is not utilized by the Encinitas council majority, city manager, city attorney and city staff.  Councilwoman Teresa Barth has long made this point.  This is all going to change with a new city council made up of curious, engaging and open minds.

During this campaign, both Lisa Shaffer and Tony Kranz have made it a priority to engage this resource of expertise and international experience for the benefit of the community. Having the benefit of Shaffer's own credentials in the scientific community are part of this opportunity. Of course, simply having scientific knowledge doesn't necessarily ensure there is no controversy.  In fact, the scientific method demands testing, challenging and pushing the limits.  Our city government is not so fragile it cannot tolerate pushing the boundaries of the status quo and the outdated or no longer valid assumptions.

At the last city council meeting, Oct. 10 the agenda held the long awaited visitation by the San Diego Department of Environmental Health.  One of the key issues requested by Russell Levan and Teresa Barth 10 months ago was a full staff report on bioremediation of contaminated florist nursery soils so prevalent in Encinitas.  

Sadly, the presentation, council deliberations and vote were tightly bound to the Hall Property timeline and budget questions.   

Nonetheless, Councilwoman Barth tenaciously confronted all of the negatives, stressed the continuous improvement and the future freedom of healthy soils demanding no monitoring or maintenance.  She needs to be supported by more voices and votes on the dais with reality of nature as a focus rather than simply Realty®.

Month after month Russell Levan spoke up to the council and asked that this environmentally friendly approach to cleaning the soils of corrupted agricultural land be agendized and discussed openly.  He got part of his request. 

For those interested - Paul Stamets' TEDtalk on 6 ways mushrooms can save the world.

Diversity in our community's makeup could stand this healthy, real attention.  The scientists are just one group that have as much value as the short term thinking and fixation on risk, fiscal outcomes through commercial, insurance, development and real estate.  This latter group and financial criteria, risk factors have been the only framework to judge any and all deliberations.  Don't take our word for it, watch clips and check out the posts.