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Please let’s minimize longdistance travel by political leaders! The White House claims to prioritize climate action. Air travel has a major eco footprint. Use tele-conferencing, etc — not as glamorous but much more in keeping with climate policy.

Hope they are at least buying carbon offsets for all this flying.

In response to a friend who commented to the effect that at least these our current Pres, VP, and First Lady are using their travel to spread compassion, unlike Politician X who just does it to get attention:

I choose neither of those; I choose Option C; I choose curtailing the constant flying and other extreme longdistance travel. Climate is a stated priority of the new administration; they have now an opportunity to walk their talk and set an example.

The great thing about extending compassion is it can be done without physically traveling, thanks to modern communication technologies which bring us face to face with no need to engage in extreme travel.

And in response to the conventional wisdom that a politician needs to appear in person to be remembered and known:

Jimmy Carter turned down the heat and put on a sweater while sitting in the White House, to model conservation during the oil embargo of the 1970s. He didn’t have to travel anywhere to do this still-widely-remembered (by, ahem, those of us who are of a certain age) action.

We quite simply have to adopt new ways. Climate emergency is ringing the alarm louder and louder. This rockstar-like jetting around that politicians indulge themselves in is deadly from a climate standpoint, AND from a standpoint of tax dollars and resource stewardship. Greta Thunberg might just be correct when she laments that no politicians are really climate allies. That shouldn’t stop us from calling out the ones who claim to prioritize climate action but are still being dinosaurs, doing fossil-fueled photo-op business as usual.

If they cut back their travel and people start to give them flak for not leaving Washington, they can always say they want to use our tax dollars to maximum benefit to do the people’s business. And they can use it as a demonstration of their commitment to climate action.

Also — real leaders aren’t just about doing whatever it takes to rack up votes and recognition. Whether they succeed in getting elected or not, whether they have widespread recognition or not, real leaders that care passionately about some important issue will find a way to serve and advance that cause regardless.

WalkYourTalk #ClimateAction #SetAnExample

Further Reading:

• My tweet earlier this week to President, First Lady, Vice-President: “Dear @POTUS and @FLOTUS and @VP : Please match your climate words with ACTION by stopping all of your non-emergency air travel. Set an example for the world! Tele-technology works great for most things.”

• News articles that prompted this tweet. (Digging them up for you; stand by.)

— “Jill Biden’s travels show range of missions and emotions” (Darlene Superville, apnews.com). “… wrapping up a hectic, two-day swing through Dallas, Houston and Phoenix to promote COVID-19 vaccinations … Within the span of 36 hours this past week, Biden went from clinking cups of beer with Doug Emhoff, the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, at an Astros baseball game in Houston to joining the president in Florida to comfort families whose loved ones were lost or missing after the Surfside condo collapse. … Jill Biden’s pace of travel is on par with the president’s. The week before her stops in Texas and Arizona, she pushed vaccinations in Mississippi and Tennessee, and again days later in the Florida cities of Kissimmee and Tampa. … spending most of the Fourth of July weekend appearing in Maine, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania at events celebrating progress on fighting the coronavirus.” (My head spins.)

— “Harris Back On the Road After Opening Weeks in Washington” (Darlene Superville, apnews.com). (A whirlwind of public-relations travel, including what the White House is calling the “America’s Back Together” tour.)

—

Have you ever felt deflated or even entirely derailed by negative comments from people, be they strangers online or your own inner circle? If so, today I’ve got a major linky treat for you: a link to a whole nest of articles by Maria Popova of Brain Pickings, highlighting various wise people’s advice on how to avoid allowing detractors to stop us from doing our work.

“A master of beautiful consolatory letters and a champion of kindness as a central animating motive of life, Einstein wrote to Curie with wholehearted solidarity and support, encouraging her not to give any credence to the hateful commentaries in the press. The letter, found in Walter Isaacson’s terrific biography Einstein: His Life and Universe (public library), is a testament to the generosity of spirit that accompanied Einstein’s unparalleled intellect — a masterwork of what he himself termed ‘spiritual genius.’ …

“Complement with Kierkegaard on why haters hate and Anne Lamott’s definitive manifesto for how to handle them, then revisit Mark Twain’s witty and wise letter of support to Helen Keller when she was wrongly accused of plagiarism and Frida Kahlo’s compassionate letter to Georgia O’Keeffe after the American painter was hospitalized with a nervous breakdown.”

— Maria Popova, from “Don’t Heed the Haters: Albert Einstein’s Wonderful Letter of Support to Marie Curie in the Midst of Scandal” (blog post at brainpickings.org; visit the link to read the whole post, which includes links to her other posts highlighting advice from all the people mentioned above.)

I particularly resonate with the example, in one of the posts, of the writer whose “friend” offers the deflating comment, “Oh, so you’re writing again. Got an agent?” Almost that very same thing happened to me when I wrote my book DEEP GREEN. I told someone very near and dear to me, whose opinion meant the world to me, that I had written a book. Their first question: “Who’s publishing it?” (Not even preceded by “What’s the book about? Is it fiction? Nonfiction?”) I was absolutely flattened but managed to keep moving forward.

And I’ve had negative comments about my YouTube videos. On the subject of YouTube hater commenters in particular, Ms. Popova’s post that features Anne Lamott’s advice is something that fellow YouTubers and other public speakers might find particularly helpful. Visit the link above to get the whole nest of articles.

The advice on dealing with haters doesn’t just apply to professional writers, artists, creators; it’s just as applicable to anyone stepping outside their comfort zone in their everyday life. For some folks, it might be something as seemingly small as bringing a home-baked pie to a family gathering, when your family has only ever known you as someone who can’t cook.

Enjoy Ms. Popova’s treasure-trove of counsel from wise folks who have dealt with haters. And keep on showing up in the world, being yourself!

Having been born in the USA, and being a person who thinks of herself as a patriotic American, I am just as much of a sucker for fireworks and parades as anyone.

(Well, except that fireworks are upsetting to many pets, and to many veterans and other people who suffer from PTSD. The noise can supposedly also startle birds to the point where they lose their nests and abandon their babies. And the debris is harmful to aquatic and marine life when fireworks are shot over water, I read recently.)

But yeah, I get sentimental on the 4th of July, and I have been known to wear red, white, and blue; display the American flag; that kind of thing. I sometimes get teary-eyed when singing the National Anthem or saying the Pledge of Allegiance. Some Independence Day potlucks I’ve held in years past have featured a reading-out-loud of the Bill of Rights.

None of that keeps me from questioning the foundational integrity of my country, and seeking to root out the rotten planks. In particular: colonialism, in all of its forms. Including but not limited to:

– Our history of genocide and persecution of the Native Americans; and the lingering current-day effects of that history.

– Our history of kidnapping and enslavement of African people; and the lingering current-day effects of that history.

– Our continued military incursions into other countries, bringing untold suffering and generally causing more problems than we solve.

– Our historic and ongoing economic colonialism, putting pressure on forests, oceans, and other ecosystems worldwide to satisfy the “needs” of our rich industrialized consumer nation. Consuming far more than our share of the world’s resources, to the extent that we are actually on a fast-track to destroying our planetary life-support system.

I want my country to step up and be the best it can be. Nations, like individual human beings, are fallible. As a person who’s done plenty of wrong in her life, but was fortunate enough to find books, teachers, and programs that taught me how redemption is possible, I can attest to the power of confession, repentance, and atonement. And I consider it my patriotic duty to do my share of helping my country get into integrity; live up to the fine words of its founding principles.

Happy 4th of July, fellow USAmericans! And anyone else who chooses to join us in celebrating. Independence doesn’t mean being being free to do whatever we want. Our privilege comes with great responsibility. We have duties to fellow human beings; to all other species; to our beautiful and abundant land; to all ecosystems worldwide.

Further Exploration:

• “Rethink the Founding Fathers” (Anti-Racism Daily, July 2, 2021). “…[M]any believe the Constitution is an enlightened document, despite the fact that its authors weren’t exactly saint-like. By this way of thinking, George Washington was a historic hero and genius who helped invent democracy and freedom. But he didn’t extend these beliefs to the enslaved men, women, and children he owned as property and whose labor made him the richest man in Colonial America … In order to keep the ideals of Washington and Jefferson eternal, we’re asked to disregard the crimes against humanity that they executed in their pursuit of the nation. … Our nation is also quick to protect our Constitution to maintain superiority over other nations. But no cartoon villain portrait of America’s enemies can whitewash the horror of a continental Indigenous genocide … or the barbarity of a forced-labor empire of cotton, tobacco, and rice plantations sprawled across the South. … When Nazi jurists looked for a precedent for the kind of racial laws that led to the Holocaust, they found the American Jim Crow system a shining example … Today, ‘there are now more people under “correctional supervision” in America — more than six million — than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height’ …”

• The Constitution of the United States: A Transcription (U.S. National Archives)

• Declaration of Independence: A Transcription (U.S. National Archives)

• “Declaration of Independence Copy Sells for $4.4 Million” (Stephan Salisbury; Philadelphia Inquirer TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE). Cool story — can you imagine finding this in your attic or basement? And can you imagine having the engraving skills to produce this? “Concerned by excessive wear to the original Declaration, Adams commissioned Stone in 1820 to produce an exact rendering. The engraver labored for three years over his copper plate – eventually producing what is considered the most meticulous copy of the original document ever made. The 201 copies on parchment were distributed to the signers of the original Declaration, political leaders, and institutions. … The copy sold by Freeman’s … was one of two presented to signer Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Maryland, in 1824 (the other is in the collection of the Maryland Center for History and Culture) … It then passed to Carroll’s granddaughter and executor Emily Caton and her husband, John MacTavish, and subsequently descended in a Scottish family out of public view for 177 years …”

• A People’s History of the United States — 1492 to Present (book by Howard Zinn). I have only read maybe 20 or 30 pages of this 784-page book, but what I read really turned on a light-bulb in my mind, helping me understand that the history we’d been taught in school was seriously off. This book was my introduction to the roots of systemic racism. So much fell into place once I read how the plantation owners had created the concept of “whiteness” in order to foster division between their white indentured servants and the Africans they had enslaved. (According to Zinn, the white servants and the enslaved Africans felt a natural affinity for one another and they often socialized, did business together, and intermarried — a degree of cohesion that threatened the plantation owners’ power.)

Refusing single-use plastics is one of the most positive personal actions we can do to shift the marketplace, and the culture at large, away from practices that are killing the biosphere. But it can be hard to avoid plastic sometimes! What are some of your favorite tips?

A few of mine:

• Always carry my own spoon, cloth napkin, reusable cup with me.
• Refuse straws – since I don’t have a medical condition that would make it hard to drink without a straw.
• Refuse plastic lids when treating myself to coffee at coffee shops; if they say they have to give me a plastic lid on their paper cup, I find another place to get coffee.
• Refuse bottled water – don’t even have to give it a thought; no sacrifice there. I hydrate before going out, or take a reusable water bottle with me.
• Patronize Mom & Pop businesses that let me use my own cup, containers, etc.
• Only buy loose produce; no plastic-bagged produce. Also, some produce vendors at the farmer’s market will accept bags and containers for reuse.

And a tip from a friend:

“And be quick … ‘No bag, please!’ Cashiers are trained in expedience.”

Unfortunately there’s sometimes a lot of shaming and pushback against people trying to refuse/reduce plastics. “Oh, there are so many bigger issues in the world; why are you focusing on that?” The truth is, though, it is a big issue. And, everything we can do to reduce consumption in all other categories helps too. All reductions in every possible category are worthwhile.

Oh here’s another tip (literally): When a business like a coffee shop or restaurant bends its usual rules or practices to let me refuse plastic, I leave the server a huge tip!! A friend and I tipped $10 on a $12 coffee order. Reward earth-friendly practices!!!

Further Exploration:

• Plastic-Free July website: “Join millions of people reducing their plastic waste. Plastic Free July® is a global movement that helps millions of people be part of the solution to plastic pollution – so we can have cleaner streets, oceans, and beautiful communities. Will you be part of Plastic Free July by choosing to refuse single-use plastics?”

• “The Story of Bottled Water” (YouTube video by Annie Leonard, the same knowledgeable, energetic, and persuasive speaker who brought us “The Story of Stuff“).

I know I post about landscaping issues a lot, but the choices we make in our yards (and urban parks, and road medians, and commercial property grounds) are a major leverage point for climate resilience and the restoration of healthy ecosystems.

Leslie Nelson Inman, the highly knowledgeable & dedicated admin of Pollinator-Friendly Yards on Facebook, just posted a great quote:

“… our grass addiction comes at an environmental cost. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, maintaining those lawns also consumes nearly 3 trillion gallons of water a year as well as 59 million pounds of pesticides, which can seep into our land and waterways. Department of Transportation data shows that in 2018, Americans used nearly 3 billion gallons of gasoline running lawn and garden equipment. That’s the equivalent of 6 million passenger cars running for a year. … The Washington Post’s garden correspondent Adrian Higgins has covered everything from using organic fertilizers (or making your own from compost) to avoiding pesticides. The transition to electric lawn maintenance equipment is also well underway. But how we care for our lawns is secondary to the amount of lawn we have in the first place, experts say. Having less grass and more plants is among the most important factors in keeping a yard eco-friendly.”

(From “Ditching Grass Could Help Your Backyard Thrive“; by Tik Root in Washington Post, June 30, 2021.)

In related news, I learned that some landscaping contractors in my region have been spraying, on public lands, herbicides and pesticides known to be deadly to pollinators and aquatic/marine life. In addition, some violations of the rainy-season fertilizer ban have occurred. It’s digusting to me that these companies are allowed to earn tons of our hard-earned tax dollars to poison us.

Even if it weren’t massively destructive, it makes no fiscal sense. As I wrote in my ongoing correspondence with city officials, “Besides the fact that fertilizer runoff is a prime culprit in environmental crises including toxic algal blooms and the deaths of fish and wildlife (such as manatees), it makes no financial sense to be fertilizing an empty lot when we could be allowing native plants to grow there for free; or else using the land to grow fruits and vegetables organically.”

I will keep up my efforts to persuade officials and fellow citizens to change our landscaping emphasis to growing trees and other plants rather than buzzcut turfgrass. The other day I took a 7-mile walk through the midsection of my city. It was a blistering hot sunny day, and there were many long stretches of sidewalk with no shade. Meanwhile I passed the usual armies of landscaping employees on City or university properties, noisily barbering the endless flat swathes of grass. Imagine if we directed that energy toward planting and caring for trees and shrubs. Our city would be much cooler on a hot day (and also much less beset by gas fumes and gratuitous industrial noise).

But really, when it comes right down to it, there is no “us” and no “them.” We have all participated in this sodgrass-idolatry culture to some degree, even if it’s by not speaking out loudly enough against the mass biocide going on all around us day-in and day-out. I’m doing what I can do right now, which is working with fellow citizens and government people to reform our public landscaping practices. It’s harder to control such practices on private property, but

1) at the very least, we can stop using our tax dollars to poison ourselves, reduce our resilience, murder other species, and desecrate the natural beauty of our bioregions; and

2) cities and counties, through their official landscaping practices, can set the tone for private land-owners in a region. By de-normalizing sodgrass idolatry in the public sphere, we set an example and give homeowners and businesses more support for doing the same.

Further Reading:

• “The Record-Breaking Heat Wave That’s Scorching the Pacific Northwest” (Josie Fischels, npr.org, 6/29/21). “In some places, the heat is so intense it has even melted power cables. In downtown Portland, the Portland Streetcar service shut down on Sunday, posting a picture on Twitter of a power cable with a hole burnt into it. … Drought has created a vicious dry cycle
Widespread drought extending from the West and all the way into the Great Plains has only worsened under the heat dome. In the Northwest, a typically wet area, abnormally dry and drought conditions have expanded in a matter of weeks. … Scientists say the warming climate is making both heat waves and droughts more frequent and intense.”

• “The World Speeds Up–And We Slow Down” (Bill McKibben, from 6/30/21 edition of The Climate Crisis (email newsletter of The New Yorker magazine): “Last week, we discussed how the new heat affects human bodies. This week, we need to remind ourselves how these novel temperatures are affecting the planet itself. … during the past seven decades, as it’s got hotter in the Southwest, it’s also got less humid. In most places, the warming air leads to more humidity—hot air can carry more water vapor than cold air can. But evaporation off the sea surface provides much of the moisture, and the desert Southwest is nowhere near an ocean. In the Southwest, and in many other continental interiors, the extra heat is evaporating moisture straight out of the soil, desiccating the landscape and making huge fires all but inevitable. And, as the Times reported, citing Park Williams, a U.C.L.A. climate scientist, it’s very much a vicious circle: ‘Lower soil moisture should also cause temperatures to rise, Dr. Williams said, because there is little or no moisture left to evaporate, and evaporation has a cooling effect.’ The speed with which this happens is remarkable. And it is dramatically outpacing the speed at which humans—our governments, our economies, our habits, our mind-sets—seem able to adapt. AZCentral reports that some golf-course managers near Phoenix are ‘pushing back’ against a plan that would cut their water use by just three per cent.”

• “Ditching Grass Could Help Your Backyard Thrive” (Tik Root, The Washington Post, 6/30/21). The Washington Post’s garden correspondent Adrian Higgins has covered everything from using organic fertilizers (or making your own from compost) to avoiding pesticides. The transition to electric lawn maintenance equipment is also well underway. But how we care for our lawns is secondary to the amount of lawn we have in the first place, experts say. Having less grass and more plants is among the most important factors in keeping a yard eco-friendly.”

• (Added 7/4/21): “Deaths Spike as Heat Wave Broils Canada and the Pacific Northwest” (Vjosa Isai, Dan Bilefsky and Shawn Hubler, New York Times, 6/30/21). “Hyperthermia claimed nearly a dozen lives in one day in one Washington county. A small town in British Columbia set Canada’s heat record at just over 121 degrees Fahrenheit. … In Canada, John Horgan, the premier of British Columbia, said on Tuesday that ‘the big lesson coming out of the past number of days is that the climate crisis is not a fiction.’ … The sizzling temperatures have also imperiled the crops of farmers in British Columbia, wilting lettuce and searing raspberries. … While police usually attend to three to four sudden deaths a day, on average, the department said it has responded to more than 98 such calls since Friday, with 53 of those on Tuesday.”

At some point in the past few months, I had an exciting realization about my 1/10-acre micro urban homestead: It has reached the point of mulch/compost self-sufficiency. In other words, even if bringing in materials from outside (precious oak leaves bagged as “trash” by neighbors; cardboard & newsprint which are a great source of “browns” for the compost; palm duff; and other assorted local curbside biomass) became not-an-option, I now have enough self-restoring biomass on my property to “keep things running,” as it were. Hardy tall grasses that I cut every few months and they never fail to grow back quickly (sometimes I call myself an “urban hay farmer” LOL); large trees I can always prune small branches off of; etc. It’s a great milestone but one I have not taken the time to publicly acknowledge til now.

That said, I sure do cherish those oak leaves, cardboard, and other outside sources of biomass!

#MulchAdoAboutEverything #CompostMatters #SoilBuilding

How about you — What milestones have you hit lately that might deserve a bit of extra acknowledgment and celebration?

“Revenge Spending.” A friend just told me this is the term for the consumer feeding-frenzy we’re seeing as the pandemic restrictions have been lifted. In the one economics class I took in college, we learned the term “pent-up demand.”

I never thought that the stifling of consumer urges would lead to a “revenge” reaction. But, in a society where people feel entitled to what they want when they want it, that unfortunately makes sense.

When I did a search online, the articles I found on “how to avoid revenge spending” all had to do with financial prudence, as opposed to care of the earth and fellow beings. So I thought I’d write up some tips for all of us DEEP GREEN allies.

• Yes you can whoop it up!! Food and drink are a typical “reward” that many of us choose when we’ve been feeling deprived. Nothing wrong with that; we’ve all gotta eat, and it’s one of the best ways to spend time with friends and family. And if you spend with a local business it’s a win for your community too. To make your eco vote go further, choose a dining establishment that has “green” appeal; for example, a place where it’s easy for you avoid single-use plastics; a place that sources from local farms; a vegan café that doubles as a community education center, etc. Oh, and hey! Now that it’s OK to have people over again, you can even use your own kitchen or patio as the dining establishment!

• Buy Black! Spend a nice big chunk of money to purchase goods and services from your local Black-owned businesses; you’ll be helping to dismantle systemic racism while satisfying your spending urge.

• Spending on something useful can be every bit as satisfying as spending on something frivolous. If you have a bunch of cash piled up, there’s no better time than now to soend it on rainbarrels, fruit trees, permaculture design courses and other training/education, bicycles, good walking shoes, and other things that will be durable assets to your household.

• A lot of people are jumping onto airplanes right now. Got faraway friends and relatives and really want to see them? Offset that flight (or car trip, bus trip, plane trip) by buying carbon offsets, and enjoy your trip. A DEEP GREEN friend and fellow permie recently told me she had purchased double offsets for her trip to Cali to see family. Eco green stars for you, sweet friend!

• The pandemic invited us all to look deeper into our life priorities. After seeing so many people go through such hard times from job loss, looming evictions, and other catastrophes, some of us might find ourselves motivated to find more ways to invest in our local community. Laura Oldanie’s blog is a great resource for alternative investment ideas.

• “Revenge” is a harsh motive. A lot of people felt resentful of the pandemic and pandemic restrictions, as though it were something personal done to them. Such a reaction is perfectly human, perhaps, but we can stop ourselves and notice when we’re having it. And we can make a conscious choice that we refuse to take our resentment out on Mother Earth and our fellow beings, including fellow human beings. Instead of re-venge spending, may I suggest re-newal spending; re-generation spending; re-paration spending …

• Constructive revenge: Some things deserve to be targets of revenge! You could take revenge on hunger by buying food for someone in need, or starting a community food-forest; take revenge on environmental destruction by refusing to use herbicides and pesticides in your yard; take revenge on rudeness and entitlement by finding more ways to practice compassion.

Further Reading:

• “Americans look forward to ‘revenge spending’ after a year inside — here’s how to make the most of it” (Alicia Adamczyk; cnbc.com). The header notwithstanding, this article gives tips on how to be sensible and avoid impulse spending. But the author reassures us it is OK to let loose a bit too! (An opinion I share actually; we just need to aim our spending in an ethical and eco-friendly manner.)