writeaboutwarming

December 31, 2009 – Time to take your brave pill. Why? Because today it’s time to talk taboo’s. Don’t kid yourself; that’s a hard thing to do. We’ll try to approach this taboo openly and honestly (which is what I always try to do). It’s time to talk about Overpopulation. The first question is, why talk about it? What does too many people living in the world today have to do with global warming? There are, by the way, 6.7 billion people living in the world, right now. All the forecasts I’ve read predict a global population of 9 billion by 2050. We aren’t spread across the globe evenly, of course. Some countries are very densely populated (think China, India, and some other countries in Asia - and Africa), while others could support more people (think Russia and Canada). The simple-minded approach would be to insist that, by moving people from one place to another, the imbalance could be corrected. Problems arise, however, when you tell people they must leave all that is familiar to th...

December 22, 2009 – The post-Copenhagen verdict runs the gamut from “By George, we’ve got it!” to “The sky is falling!” depending upon whom you believe. My hope and my prayer is that it is a beginning, one upon which we will shortly build. One note to readers: when you hear that the United States is advocating a 17% reduction in carbon emissions by 2020, be mindful that we use 2005 emissions as our starting point. The rest of the world uses 1990, as stated in the Kyoto Protocol. When we convert our reduction to a starting point in 1990, the reduction works out to be 3 – 4%. Call it what you like. It’s not enough. That’s why Copenhagen must be considered a beginning only. My hat is off to the thousands of delegates who worked tirelessly to bring us this far. One attendee came up with what I thought was a brilliant idea. Perhaps you heard: George Soros, the billionaire investor, has proposed that developed countries lend money they received in Special Drawing Rights (SDR) from the Intern...

December 15, 2009 – I’ve made lots of compost piles over the years, but none in the last ten. I decided a few weeks ago I was overdue. Blessed with an abundance of wooden dowels – the remnants of previous projects – I set to work (though I did have to buy chicken wire). There’s an area alongside our patio that must measure 5’x3’. It was perfect because there was mulch on top of the black plastic I’d used to keep away the weeds during my fruitless attempt to grow a mountain laurel. I understand that compost will decompose in sun or shade; this spot gets a bit of both. I’d refrained from composting out of laziness, I guess. I never wind up with as much as I think I should, and amending the soil in my vegetable garden with green manure and peat moss seemed easier. I still think so, actually. However, letting all those fall leaves go to waste seemed a shame. These days, we need to recycle whenever the opportunity arises. So – the 4’ dowels sank into the soft soil ea...

December 8, 2009 – It’s funny. The size of the group of people who are impassioned about the need to do something about climate change has, I suspect, reached critical mass. The fact I only suspect our numbers have reached the tipping point is attributable to our not all being together in one place (other than cyber space). That makes it hard to tell. That’s also the reason we’re not doing anything. We don’t have the impetus provided by hearing someone yell “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!” What ARE we doing? Sitting in front of our computers and nodding in agreement. It’s awful when you realize that’s exactly what the politicians are hoping we’ll do. The number of global warming experts who are now genuinely frantic about the need for us to change our behavior seems to be growing. Maybe that’s the missing piece of the puzzle: when they begin holding up signs and protesting, that will be the signal for the rest of us to join them. Until then, we seem to be left s...

December 2, 2009 – There was an article in yesterday’s issue of USA Today I’d like to talk about. It’s on the Op Ed page, under the heading “The Forum.” The title of the article is “Groupthink and the Global Warming Industry,” and it’s by Jonah Goldberg. It seems that in late November, someone hacked their way into email at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU), part of the University of East Anglia in England. What they found is disappointing and disturbing. If the emails made available to the public are to be believed, scientists at the CRU have been manipulating data in order to make it tell the story they want it to. The emails also discuss the importance of making data unavailable to unfriendly colleagues, i.e., global-warming skeptics. If these emails truly are representative of the way the CRU goes about its business, then the CRU has done enormous damage to itself and its reputation. While the wealth of data that daily increases our knowledge of climate change supports the se...

November 23, 2009 – Pesticide use has increased in the United States. Yes, that’s right, I said increased. We’re spraying more poison on our food. Small amounts of that poison enter our bodies when we eat those foods. Small amounts of that poison enter our children’s bodies when they eat those foods. The best news of all? The poisons are getting stronger. Before going further, allow me to relate what I suspect was a case of coming to grips with this very Frankenstein in my own front yard. This year’s crop of dandelions was nearly unprecedented. (One might say they grew like weeds ….) Since we try to treat our yard for them as infrequently as possible, we had a bumper crop. Our yard was a sea of yellow. Then a neighbor came calling, claiming to be speaking on behalf of other neighbors. The short and the long of it was the dandelions had to go. Our front yard isn’t small – nearly half an acre. There could be no question of digging the dandelions up anywhere near as fast as the neighb...

My apologies for taking so long to write this article. I hope you'll find it worth the wait! November 19, 2009 – I’m learning more about Transition Towns (see my Oct. 20 blog). Read on to learn more about the concept and its current status. First, though, let’s get started with some transition vocabulary. Two ideas that are central to understanding this grassroots movement are relocalizing and permaculture. Relocalization is, in fact, the United States’ own version of transitioning. While transition takes its name from the need for communities to make the transition from being carbon-based to post-carbon, relocalization focuses on the need for communities to make basic goods and services available locally. This, in turn, necessitates re-skilling. More vocabulary! Let’s go back over this paragraph and make some sense of it. What is meant by saying that a community is carbon-based? Simply this: communities throughout the world derive their energy from fuels containing lots of carbon:...