.JPG "Earthen Spirituality")
Living within a living, loving planet
Archive for May, 2019
Don’t Waste Food
May 27th
A 2012 study by Newcastle University reported that allotments and community gardens can improve people’s quality of life in numerous ways.
It can help to curb social exclusion, increase physical exercise, encourage a nutritious diet, support mental health, help people relax, teach new life skills, empower people, give individuals self‐esteem, reconnect people with the food they eat, educate citizens about healthy food and environmental stability, tackle CO2 emissions, reduce packaging, support more sustainable waste management, conserve biodiversity, facilitate social interaction, build cohesive communities, strengthen social ties and networks, secure our food supplies and even reduce perceptions of crime.
Rob the Poor to help the Poorer
May 26th
Rob the Poor to help the Poorer
Fairness to young people is fine, but to rob the poor to help the poorer is ridiculous.
Surely this is a both/and rather than an either/or. Whereas young people are eligible and have the opportunity to obtain a better, higher paying job, the over 75’s are watching their purchasing power diminish as they notice food and other essential products steadily increase in price seemingly just because they can. State pensioners, as everyone knows, have made national insurance contributions for up to 35 years. Pensioners should not suffer financially because the government did not invest those contributions so the interest and/or profits could help pay the future outlay.
Scrap ‘outdated’ free TV licences for over-75s, peers say
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48046595
It is calling for other universal pensioner benefits, such as the winter fuel allowance and free bus passes for the over-65s, to be cut and for the triple lock guarantee for the state pension – which ensures the weekly allowance rises by a minimum of 2.5% every year – to be reconsidered.
“We are calling for some of the outdated benefits based purely on age to be removed,” said Lord True, the Conservative peer who chairs the committee.
“Policies such as the state pension triple lock and free TV licences for the over-75s were justified when pensioner households were at the bottom of the income scale, but that is no longer the case.”
Sky: Of course, those without an income at all are at the bottom of the scale.
A New Way to Slash CO2 Emissions
May 26th
A New Way to Slash CO2 Emissions
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/a-new-way-to-slash-co2-emissions/
“Carbon farming depends on the activity of microbes in the soil, says E2.” “The group, the US-based Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2), describes itself as ‘a national, nonpartisan group of business leaders, investors, and professionals from every sector of the economy who advocate … smart policies that are good for the economy and good for the environment’”
“Depositing four tons of carbon per acre in just 10% of California’s agricultural land, it is estimated, would be the equivalent of taking 4.3 million cars off the road.”
Increased carbon in the soil around trees increases the amount of sugars available to feed the microbes who live in a symbiotic relationship with tree roots in that the roots provide sugars which enliven the microbes that in turn feed the tree.
“The microbes help the plants take up nutrients, retain water and tolerate stress, functioning as a key part of the process by which plants produce the roots and leaves that end up as carbon in the soil.”
America’s Reproductive Slaves
May 26th
America’s Reproductive Slaves
MAY 20, 2019
Chris Hedges
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/americas-reproductive-slaves/
As Chris Hedges points out, the new Alabama law is draconian. It is disgraceful and an insult to women in Alabama and thus to all American women. Further, it is shameful and by implication, threatens women’s constitutional rights.
“Raising children is not a lifestyle choice. It is labor-intensive work that demands of parents, and especially women, huge physical, emotional, financial and time commitments. The wider society reaps the benefits of this work. It has a social and moral responsibility to compensate and assist those who raise children.”
A new diet for gassy cows is helping the environment
May 26th
A new diet for gassy cows is helping the environment
Cattle farming is responsible for almost 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization.
So some farmers in Colombia have been piloting a different way of raising cows that has proved better for the environment.
A film by Daniel Gordon for People Fixing the World.
Far better to invest in something like this than space travel. When it comes down to it, nobody knows whether humans or any Earthly animal or plant can survive out of the cloak of Earth energy.
Brilliant Idea for heating Large Offices
May 18th
Advanced Heat Recovery (AHR) system
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-05-16/the-little-technology-that-could/
“What’s impressive is that it prevents about 1.8 million pounds of carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere each year, cutting the museum’s carbon footprint by 16 percent. This is significant in the fight against climate change, stresses Patrick Hamilton, the museum’s Director of Global Change Initiatives, because buildings account for one-third of US greenhouse gas emissions.”
“We love that,” he said, “because it means we have $293,000 that can be redirected to the scientific and educational mission of the museum rather than to paying utility bills.” Science Museum of Minnesota
“Here’s how it works. Heat generated by all the electricity used by the museum’s computer servers, elevator motors, telephone switching equipment and other big electricity loads is piped into the two heat recovery chillers rather than being rejected to the outside, as is standard procedure in most commercial buildings. Inside the chillers, compressors step up the heat energy to produce 115 oF water, which then is used to warm incoming fresh, cold winter air and circulated through radiators along the building’s extremities. It makes no sense at all for the Science Museum to purchase energy to heat the building while at the same time it discharges hot air to the outside.
“You don’t throw your aluminum in the garbage at home. You recycle it. So, you should recycle the heat in your building instead of throwing it away,” explains Matt Presser, account manager at Ingersoll-Rand, which manufactures the Trane chillers used at the Science Museum.”
System change not climate crisis
May 18th
SYSTEM CHANGE NOT CLIMATE CHANGE
Vicky Robin from Vicky Robin Blog
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-05-16/from-despair-to-repair/
“Yes! But notice that most system change has to do with human civilization, human inventions gone awry – democracy, justice, infrastructure, food production, finance. Our actions come from fixing our civilizational future. Now our grief is overwhelming: almost everything is too little too late… but if we stop CO2 we may save a remnant of the beauty, intelligence and glue of our human presence on the planet.
I am not saying this is wrong!!! I want to do all of this as well, and work daily locally on it. It’s just missing the true heart of the matter – that we as humans act upon the earth for our benefit but we do not act with the earth at any level of scale for healing all life.”
Human Extinction
May 7th
Human Extinction
Risk ‘misunderestimated’: War, sleeping pills, and the Extinction Rebellion
By Kurt Cobb, originally published by Resource Insights
May 5, 2019
Just when we need wise leadership and global cooperation, what we are seeing is internal fighting over rigid local opinions. It is like people on a train that has jumped the tracks and is headed down the mountain fighting over who gets access to the dining car first.
“The ultimate question that the Extinction Rebellion poses is this: Why should we care about human extinction? The geologic record suggests that humans will one day go extinct no matter what they do. So, what if that happens sooner rather than later?
The answer to those questions hinges on whether a person defines his or her community strictly in spacial terms and does not include temporal terms. In other words, are we a community of people only by space (and then only weakly at that) or are we a community that extends through both space AND time?
In other words, does it matter whether human culture continues?
Those who deny climate change are answering the last two questions “no.” If those who accept that climate change is largely human-caused do not see it as an existential question, they may as well be deniers.”
“The hardest minds to change are those who accept climate change as a reality, but cannot embrace the necessary steps implied by that belief. Will the Extinction Rebellion change that? I’d like to think the answer is yes. But I think a more thoroughgoing change in human hearts and perceptions will likely only come from actual catastrophic consequences hitting much larger groups of people and only if they understand that those consequences are the result of climate change.”
Risk misunderestimated War
May 7th
Risk ‘misunderestimated’ War, sleeping pills, and the Extinction Rebellion
By Kurt Cobb, originally published by Resource Insights
May 5, 2019
“How is it that the awareness of risk has become so blunted among so much of the world’s population?”
Exactly, we are like a frog in a pot of water that has gone sleepy whilst the water is steadily headed toward the boil. Will we jump out in time or not? That is the critical question we must answer.
“It also seems plausible that the infrastructure we have built—dams, reservoirs, roads, electric grids, seawalls, water systems, and other industrial and agricultural systems—will not withstand intact the heat, drought, floods, sea level rise, severe weather and other problems that unchecked climate change will bring with it. At the very least, we are unlikely to be able to reliably grow enough food to feed all of us.
How is it that the awareness of risk has become so blunted among so much of the world’s population? Of course, for the poorest among us—those who barely make it from one day to the next—risk is immediate, personal and abundantly clear. Lack of food, shelter, medical care and protection from violence are existential questions that command attention.”
Fossil Fuel Subsidies
May 5th
Dirty Energy Dominance: Dependent on Denial
How the U.S. fossil fuel industry depends on subsidies and climate denial.
Oil Change International (OCI)
http://priceofoil.org/content/uploads/2017/10/OCI_US-Fossil-Fuel-Subs-2015-16_Final_Oct2017.pdf
“Policies, rules, and provisions in the tax code that continue to support fossil fuel production undermine efforts to transition to a clean energy economy, and rob the public purse of the resources needed to do so. Removing these highly inefficient subsidies – which waste billions of dollars propping up an industry incompatible with safe climate limits – should be the first priority of fiscally responsible climate, energy, and tax reform policies.”
“The United States federal and state governments gave away $20.5 billion a year on average in 2015 and 2016 in production subsidies to the oil, gas, and coal industries, including $14.7 billion in federal subsidies and $5.8 billion through state-level incentives. At the state level, this is likely a significantly conservative estimate, given limits to available data.”