Good News

A fact for today from a report by the Worldwatch Institute:

Wealth in the US has doubled since 1957, yet the number of people who say they are very happy has remained the same.

More isn't making us happier, any more.

That's extremely good news on a planet with billions of people whose basic needs are not met and whose life support systems are faltering. It means that we in the rich world can afford to share. We could use our wealth to restore ecosystems, help vulnerable communities adapt to climate change, invest in clean energy, all without 'giving away' something essential to our happiness.

All the statistics can do is point to the potential - that plowing some of our wealth into the communities of our brothers and sisters (human and non-human) wouldn't make us unhappy, and might in fact lift our spirits.

From Global Green Grants to Heifer International to Oxfam and American Friends Service Committee there are all sorts of ways to test this hypothesis, both near and far from home.

Beings Without Borders

Think about your left hand, feel it, move it, wiggle it. This hand that has been a part of your for as long as you have been a 'you.'

Think about the atmosphere. Colorless odorless air. Important, but not you. Air, out there, separated from you by the membrane that lines your lungs. Right?

Imagine life without your hand: hard, unpleasant painful, frustrating, it might be all of these. But, even hand-less, so many possibilities would remain before you – years and years of silly jokes and passionate embraces. Decades of walking in the wind and leaning backwards to see the tops of tall trees.

Now try to imagine life cut off from the atmosphere. Imagine your airway blocked, your body sucked under water or buried under deep snow. Without rescue your being would contract into a few last minutes of awareness. No more jokes, no more passion, the end of the feeling of wind in your hair.

So which is more a part of who you are, your limbs or the sky?

And why, against all the evidence, do we insistent that we are so small?

Another Reason to Cultivate Vision

If you need one good reason to discover your own vision of a future in which we have addressed climate change you should spend half a minute watching this video, produced by the US Chamber of Commerce as part of a campaign to rally voters against the Lieberman-Werner climate change legislation. In it you'll see a suburban family start their day, wearing hats and scarves indoors and cooking their breakfast over a candle flame before jogging off to work along an expressway empty of vehicles. A voice-over proclaims:

Climate legislation being consider by Congress could make it too expensive to heat our homes, power our lives and drive our cars.....Washington politicians should not demand what technology cannot deliver.

There is so much that could be said about this video, how it uses no facts about what technology can and cannot deliver, how it plays on fears of scarcity, how it neglects to mention the ways suburban families' lives might change if we don't cut carbon emissions.

But what I really want to say is: this isn't the future I see, when I close my eyes and imagine a society that has addressed climate change. I see city blocks filled with gardens and fruit trees, and local shops selling local goods. I see a renewal of manufacturing jobs providing honest important work and producing the infrastructure of a clean energy society. I see people who have considered the question 'what really matters' and oriented their lives around whatever answer they have found.

Even without the threat of climate change I'd choose that future over business as usual. I'm guessing, that, if they really felt they had a choice, most of my fellow citizens would choose it too. And, if they felt they had a choice, I don't think the fear of cooking eggs over candle flames is something that would keep them from their vision.

Barn Chores and Climate Change

Nora and I tromped down the hill together this morning, kicking through a deep layer of new white snow on our way to chores in the barn. We filled water buckets, cleaned out wheelbarrows-full of manure, refilled mangers with hay, fed a bottle of warm milk to the youngest calf. Outside the world was white and hushed, inside it was alive with the chatter of a seven year old, the munching of horses, the occasional bleat of a sheep.

We were cold by the the time we came home to our cups of tea and hot chocolate, but already, at the beginning of our day, we had done something together that was essential at least to the ten or so animals we cared for, and we had done it well and carefully. We had chatted with our neighbor who was milking cows and noticed the feel of snow on our eyelashes. By eight in the morning one child had done real work, tending, feeding and caring for the source of part of her own sustenance.

I would do this with her anyway, whether I held this huge responsibility to the future, or not. Whether I felt the need to find ways to live that contributed less to climate change or not. But, knowing that local organic food uses less fossil energy means that our wintery chores this morning gives my family, in a small way, an answer to "what should we do about climate change?"

In the world of policy makers and engineers that question is usually answered with ideas about technology and markets, both of which should, by all means, be applied to the challenges before us.

But I know, from my own experience, that the universe of possibility for responding to climate change stretches far, far beyond cap-and-trade policy and carbons sequestration technology. Not always, but much of the time, this universe stretches in directions that are also beautiful, healthy, and full of meaning. This universe of possibility stretches, also in ways that could help build the kind of resilient communities that will have the best chances of riding smoothly through the instabilities of a changing climate.

For me and my family many of the possibilities are centered around taking care of our needs through our own work on our community's land. That's what makes sense to us here, in our rural river valley.

Elsewhere the intersections of what reduces greenhouse gas pollution, builds resiliency, and is fun and satisfying may look very different. Elsewhere this may look like watershed restoration or community theater or a rebirth of local manufacturing.

To know what is possible, to begin to imagine and create it, we need to ask not just the experts, but ordinary people in ordinary places. What are those intersections for the heart of Detroit, for the plains of Kansas, for the small towns of Mississippi?

Northeast Temperatures

A few weeks ago, University of Vermont extension agent Vern Grubinger gave a talk here about climate change and agriculture. He showed this graph which contains data from 56 weather stations in Northeast that have been operating since 1900.

It and many other useful slide-sets and fact sheets are available at the website Climate Change and Northeast Farming.

The Planet. The Population. The Big Hug.

I'm just back from a fast paced walk. In the sleet.

These words leaping onto my computer screen via an advertisement from Ford Motor Company are the ones that sent me out into the gray afternoon, arms pumping, angry thoughts churning:

People really like the Earth. And for the most part, the Earth really likes people too. Actually, it could be the longest-term relationship ever. At Ford, we are doing everything we can to keep that relationship beautiful. So we are constantly creating technology that shows the Earth lots of love. The Ford Escape Hybrid, ever increasing MPG, ever-decreasing emissions. People and Earth. Exchanging gifts. No receipt necessary.

For a mile or so, my mind took these few sentences and ran with them.

"I love you, my dear Earth", I saw people saying, zipping about town in their Ford Escape Hybrids. "An ounce of CO2, a token of love, the perfect thank you for the longest-term relationship ever."

Ever increasing MPG, ever decreasing emissions? Perfect. We'll just ever-increase MPG to to infinity, ever-decrease emissions to below zero until one day driving a Ford Escape Hybrid will be an act of public service, sucking carbon right out of the atmosphere! No need for pricey complicated research into carbon sequestration after all, just a fleet of Fords.

As for people and Earth exchanging gifts, haven't we all known people like that, artists of the one-way exchange? All take, no gift. Thanks for dinner and here's the check.

So my thoughts unfolded as I walked, but I couldn't keep it up.

I started noticing all the little miracles of this ordinary day – the tingle on my cheeks of the cold rain, the dark branches of bare maples against the clouds.

We all know that advertising plays upon our deepest hopes - to have love, to be enough, to not be lonely, to be thought worthy. Is it so surprising that a team at Ford Motor Company thinks that being in a relationship, a beautiful relationship, with the Earth is one of those deepest desires?

Actually, how could it be otherwise, for we who evolved at the edge of forests, digging in soil, bending down at stream-sides to drink cool, clear water?

And there it is, the beautiful opportunity, right in plain sight: there are so many better, easier, more beautiful ways to fill our longing to reconnect than the unlovely and expensive Ford Escape Hybrid.

Maybe not everyone would agree that walking in the November sleet is beautiful or their heart's desire, but eating a fresh picked apple might do it, for a moment, or biking to work, or planting box gardens at the senior citizens' center. There are so many opportunities, many of them free, many of them cheap, all of them truly exchanges with the Earth, all of them sealing the bond of the longest relationship ever. These pursuits don't give the gift of a little less harm, the give the gift of no harm. Sometimes they even five the gift of restoration.

By the time my route came round again to home, the sun had come out.

A perfect rainbow, bright and unbroken, stretched the full expanse of the north sky.

Hold on Tight

"Hold on tight, firmly in touch with reality, unshakably committed to your highest dreams. Feel the pain. Summon your strength over and over to endure it........Your anguish, sometimes so unbearable, is in fact the force through which you can help the world come a little closer to being all that it can be."

It is from the column, A Letter, Anguish, and a Rubber Band, by Donella Meadows.