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Climate Crisis

Hanford Journey 2022

WE LIVE IN AN ERA where the necessity to decarbonize the world’s energy has become quite clear, even if the oil and gas-based industries fight tooth and nail against abandoning fossil fuels. To mitigate a climate catastrophe, we need to turn to other, sustainable modes for generating the energy that we need. Renewable energy, solar and wind sources, might be our best alternative, but they are facing enormous obstacles, political resistance by the fossil fuel monopoly being one of them. But they also are linked to very high installation costs, a lack of infrastructure, particularly adequately sized power storage systems. Electricity generation from natural sources does not necessarily happen during the peak electricity demand hours and given the volatility in generation as well as load, storage is a huge, but expensive component. Lack of policies, incentives and regulations have not exactly encouraged investment into these alternative sources either.

No surprise then, that we hear renewed calls for nuclear power as a reliable, “clean” source for energy, often accompanied by the promise that the old days of large, risky plants and unsolved storage problems of radioactive waste are gone.

As if.

I attended this year’s Hanford Journey, a day focused on environmental clean-up. Hanford was an integral part of the Manhattan Project which produced plutonium for the first atomic bombs dropped in Nagasaki and released massive toxins into the ground and Columbia river where it operated. The event, sponsored by Columbia Riverkeeper and Yakama Nation Environmental Restoration Waste Management (ERWM,) made abundantly clear that nuclear waste still presents a clear and present danger to our environment and the people who live near the rivers and polluted land. We don’t even have a handle on the current dangers, and yet people are advocating for increased use of nuclear power. Some are even claiming it is our ethical obligation to promote it as the only way to combat a climate catastrophe and promising that everything will be fine with the arrival – coming soon, if you invest in us! – of small modular reactors.

I was visiting as part of a film crew exploring the possibility of making a documentary film about the current state of nuclear power development. The interest in the topic had evolved straight out of our last films, Necessity (Oil, Water and Climate Resistance//Climate Justice and the Thin Green Line) which revealed the particular vulnerability of tribal nations to environmental pollutants. (An ArtsWatch review of the films by Marc Mohan can be found here.)

Both Hanford Journey sponsors were quite helpful in providing an opportunity for all of us to learn about the history of the clean-up efforts, view the site from boat, and talk to and hear from people who are involved in the struggle. The Yakama Nation ERWM program engages in oversight of this process and issues affecting Hanford Site natural resources. Their involvement includes participation in technical, project management, policy meetings on response and natural resource damage actions, as well as oversight of cultural resource compliance. The Columbia Riverkeeper’s mission is “to protect and restore the water quality of the Columbia River and all life connected to it, from the headwaters to the Pacific Ocean.” The organization uses legal advocacy and community organizing in numerous conservation efforts.

Map of the Hanford Site —- Simone Anter, Staff Attorney, Columbia Riverkeeper

IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL DAY, with a sense of purpose and hope delivered by multiple speakers, honoring the legacy of tribal environmental leader Russell Jim and promising to continue his mission of Hanford clean up to ensure the safety of future generations. Davis Washines, Government Relations Liaison, Yakama Nation and DNR Fisheries Resource Program for Superfund Section, talked about the history of the people indigenous to the region and their relationship with the river, the price they paid from the exposure to life-threatening pollutants and the governmental hesitancy to fully keep clean-up commitments.

Davis Washines, Government Relations Liaison, Yakama Nation and DNR Fisheries Resource Program for Superfund Section

Laura Watson, Director of the Washington Department of Ecology, evaluated how few resources are spent and how many more are needed. “The Hanford site is and remains one of the most contaminated sites in the world, and is probably the most complicated cleanup that’s ever been undertaken in human history.” Many more talked about what the situation meant for them and their families, past and present.

Kids were playing in the water, families and friends gathered for group pictures, lunch was served.

Puyallup Canoe Family

I met Ellia-Lee Jim who had been selected to be Miss ’22-’23 Yakama Nation, and chatted with Denise Reed, Puyallup and Quileutea cultural coordinator, who wore beautiful items she made with cedar weaving which she also teaches.

Ellia-Lee Jim

Denise Reed and her cedar woven hat and belt

Multiple nonprofit groups, including The Hanford Challenge and Heart of America Northwest, were on-site to educate and encourage us to become involved with ongoing advocacy efforts. A major issue right now, for example, is the Department of Energy’s attempt to reclassify high-level waste at the Hanford site to low-level waste which will allow cleanup shortcuts and unsafe disposal.

Brett VandenHeuvel, the soon-to-be-former Executive Director of the Columbia Riverkeeper (Lauren Goldberg will be his successor on August 1,) drove us from the Mattawa event site to the river, where boats, run by Tri-City Guide Service, took us out onto the Columbia and to the B reactor — one of nine plutonium reactors built at Hanford.  (There was also a hike out to White Bluffs and the Hanford Reach National Monument to view the H, DR, D and F plutonium reactors, which I had to miss.)

Archeologist and ERWM advocate Rose Ferri was our guide on the boat, helping to understand the history of the Hanford Reach, one of the few remaining stretches of river where chinook salmon spawn in significant numbers, a stretch of 51 mile, to be precise, the last remaining free-flowing portion of the 1,212 miles of the Columbia.

Rose Ferri

The National Monument contains an insane number of species overall – details can be found here – all of whom depend on being protected from toxic and radioactive pollution from the Hanford site. Because Hanford is off limits to visitors, the land has been undisturbed for years, a buffer zone between ecological disaster and agricultural industries, beautiful in its sparsity.

THE HANFORD NUCLEAR SITE has been operating since 1943, after the forced removal of the people who lived on the 580 square miles on which 9 reactors were built. 1855 treaty rights to use the land for fishing, hunting and gathering, signed by the Yakama Nation, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR), the Nez Perce Tribe, and the Wanapum, were often not honored. During the 40 years of plutonium production, cesium and iodine were generated, and chromium, nitrate, tritium, strontium-90, trichloroethene and uranium, among others, leaked into the soil and seeped into the groundwater.

There were some single-shell underground storage tanks for the most dangerous liquids, but the rest flowed freely. The last reactor was shut down in 1987. Clean-up began – theoretically – in 1989 when the U.S. Dept. of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, and Washington State signed a Tri-Party Agreement. Only in the year 2000 were 2,535 tons of irradiated nuclear fuel in the K Basin along the Columbia River transferred into dry storage. In the following years treatment and immobilization plants were constructed, but will only be fully operative in 2023 from last I heard. Weapons grade plutonium was transferred to South Carolina.

In 2013 we learned that the single-shell tanks leak, and 4 years later one of the PUREX tunnels containing highly radioactive waste partially collapses. Ignoring these warning signs of potential catastrophe, the U.S.Department of Energy decided on a new interpretation of which kind of waste requires most stringent storage requirements in 2019.


“…. “high-level nuclear waste” (HLW) under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) that would exclude some dangerous waste traditionally considered HLW from stringent storage requirements. For over 50 years, the term HLW, as defined in the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (AEA) and the NWPA, required the disposal of this most toxic and radioactive waste in deep geologic formations to protect public health. Energy’s new interpretation opens the door for less robust cleanup and the possibility of more waste remaining at Hanford.” (Ref.)

The Tribes and their allies continue to fight for a comprehensive, fully funded, thorough clean-up. Events like Hanford Journey are one way of getting informations out into the public, and familiarizing those of us who are able to attend and experience the landscape, with the history and the scientific consequences of delayed or compromised action. I wish that information could be even more widely spread.

***

I DROVE BACK TO RICHLAND, WA, across the Vernita bridge ,

and passed by a long stretched mountain, Lalíík, or Rattlesnake Mountain, that I had just seen from a very different perspective. I had been told it was the tallest treeless mountain in the world, sacred to Tribes in the region. It is designated a Traditional Cultural Property (TCP), a property that “is eligible for inclusionn the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) based on its associations with the cultural practices, traditions, beliefs, lifeways, arts, crafts, or social institutions of a living community.“(Ref.) At least that sacred mountain had been cleaned up with funds from a 2010 Recovery Act.

The whole story concerning Hanford and the depth of its operational impact on the Tribes of the region can only be understood if you have a glimpse of what it implies for their culture, never mind their existential dependence on non-toxic fish. Is that incorporated into the narratives that are officially told? I was about to find out.

***

THE REACH MUSEUM in Richland, WA, is a beautiful new structure with a mission statement that asserts inclusivity. Open since 2014, it offers various exhibits, with a permanent one on the Manhattan Project and the Hanford enterprise among them.

The staff is super helpful and friendly, the grounds are gorgeous and represent the beauty of the region. You are greeted outside with lots of affirmative information about the “clean” source of power that is nuclear energy.

You are also immediately made aware by historic photographs of trailer parks (and a real trailer) during the peak employment years of Hanford, that the region benefitted economically during times of hardship due to work opportunities. Some 50.000 people arrived at this remote region, families included. Not a mention though, there, whether these opportunities of housing and work were available to the indigenous inhabitants who were driven from their land by the Manhattan project.

The website for the museum is richly informative and emphasizes a desire to tell stories from differential perspectives and acknowledges their Native American partners “who historically used this region—a gathering place of the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla, the Wanapum people, and the Nez Perce Tribe who cared for this land since time immemorial.”

As far as I could see, one statement poster, in a gallery that, overall, lays out the developments, successes and trials of the Manhattan Project (Gallery 2,) speaks to tribal presence. Acknowledging expulsion, but not going into anything further.

The focus is on the war effort,

the feats of engineering,

and the impact on Cold War developments.

Overall, a well designed, informative exhibition with a combination of local and (inter)national historical information.

To their credit, some safety considerations are mentioned, however mostly regarding the workers in an environment that was experimental in its newness, with less attention to the continuing concerns. The printed and easily accessible materials in this room were quiet about the continuing poisonous legacy and unsolved problem of long-term nuclear waste storage, however, unless I missed something, which was of course entirely possible after a long, intense day.

What would Albert think?

If you check out the educational resources on their website, the topics of Shrub – Steppe and Geologic Past are fabulously covered. In detail, comprehensive, engaging. The topics of the Hanford Legacy and Columbia River Resources are announced to be coming soon. Given the centrality of those topics as well as the controversy attached to them, in some ways, I wondered why they have not yet been designed. Your guess is as good as mine.

I have no intention to diss a museum I rather liked. I am fully aware how hard it is, particularly during this pandemic, to keep small institutions alive, much less current. But my question about how information about the continual danger of toxic environments, long-term storage of radioactive waste and un-remediated injustice of treaty betrayals reaches the mainstream, remains. This is particularly important now that calls for renewed efforts and investments into nuclear energy are getting louder. It might, or might not be a solution to our energy woes – decisions have to be based on knowledge of all the facts, though. Columbia Riverkeeper and tribal ambassadors work hard and, undoubtedly, effectively in many regards to spread the word. It is time, that the rest of us follow suit.

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Rebels Needed

What comes to mind when you look at today’s photographs? Bucolic scene? Oregon Pastoral? A lazy summer afternoon? A longing for the country side?

Would your thoughts change if I told you I had to walk through the herd of cows because they left their wide open pastures to seek shade under the tree canopy of the hiking path during this untimely heat? (Luckily I have bovine affinities, and did not mind moving slowly among them, although the thought crossed my mind that here I was all alone in the middle of nowhere, borscht if something should happen.)

Would you look at the photos again with different eyes after you’d read the latest reports on cows’ interactions with the environment beyond crowding solitary hikers? If you learned that meat and dairy production emit more greenhouse gas than entire nations, Germany and France, for example?

That air pollution from farms leads to 17,900 U.S. deaths per year, most coming from people living downwind at near distances? Would it make you feel less positive about these grazing gentle giants?

Or would it make you feel sorry for them if you realized that exposure to hazardous smoke like we’ve seen all summer decreases their milk production and makes them much more susceptible to disease and even death? Astonished when you read that scientists have successfully trained calves to use a latrine (major implications for climate worries, if their excrements no longer foul ground and air.)

Fooled you – today is not so much about the appreciation of cows – or lack thereof – but instead about water. Which is, in many ways, related to raising life stock.

Take the Colorado River, for example. About 40 million Americans depend on the water from this river, some in locations as distant as Phoenix, Denver, Los Angeles and San Diego. A lot of it is used to irrigste farms for both vegetables and alfalfa for cattle feed. In 1922 seven different constituents (AZ, CA, CO, NM, NV, UT and WY) agreed to a legal compact as to how the water should be divided up. Never mind that they overestimated how much water there was to begin with, or failed to specify what to do in case of serious drought. The division was proportional, depending on who had come first – even if late comers developed cities with many more users than had been the case 100 years ago.

Senior water rights trump everything else, with the amendment that if you don’t use all your water one year, the next year’s allotment might be adjusted downward for lessened need. That leads to farmers actually throwing out unneeded water, because they do not want to risk smaller future quotas. Some states have decided to tap water levels by essentially drilling tunnels into the bottom of Lake Mead, sucking out water before it gets to anyone else. Now the water is running out and no-one can agree to how much they’re willing to give up, clinging to a set of laws established a century ago.

There would be one simple solution to delay the huge problems with water shortage. If every American family would stop eating meat just one day a week it would translate to a savings of water equivalent to the entire flow of the river, saving the water now used to grow cattle feed. Meatless Mondays has indeed been installed by organization as well as individuals as one step we can all take. NYC, for example, has meatless Mondays in citywide public schools; so do many administrations across the country, hospitals included. Church Councils are advocating for it as well, arguing that it not only saves 100 billion gallons of waters, but also 70 million dollars of gas for transporting feed and cattle, 3 million acres land no longer razed for grading, and 33 tons of antibiotics used to treat sick cows no longer put into circulation. Those are large numbers for a small sacrifice.

Of course it is not just the Colorado River that is endangered. Closer to home, we have near catastrophic conditions going on in the Klamath River due to the Climate Crisis. Here is a thoughtful report on what is at stake.

Drought condition are not the only danger to our water supplies. Counter-intuitively the same is true when there is severe flooding, last seen with Hurricane Ida. As of last week, 51 water systems across Louisiana, each serving between 25 to 20,000 people, remain shut down due to Ida. Another 242 remain under boil water advisories. Around 642,000 people remain without access to clean water, according to the Louisiana Department of Health. The storm ripped power lines that provide the electricity to pump and run treatment facilities. Many of those facilities never acquired the legally required back-up generators in case of electricity outage. The problem with those, though, is that they use gas, but the storm has led to fuel shortages and flooded roads and freeways that would allow supplies to be shipped in. Last but not least the storm has ripped up the system of water pipelines, so even if you had treated water you could not get it safely to consumers.

Can’t help in this case but think of Coleridge’s poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’: “Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink…”

We need change. We need rebels who push harder for tackling the oncoming climate disasters.

Music about the Colorado River today by the incomparable folk singer Katie Lee who was an environmental activist until age 95 or so – if you click on the first track it takes you automatically through all of them.

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Giant Contrasts

I had hoped to post something refreshing today, a day where we yet again reach temperatures above the 100 degree mark. Maybe art installed below the surface of the sea would do the trick. Seeing the sculptures suspended in that green/ blue element might indeed have a cooling effect when imagining yourself among them. In contrast, thinking about those sculptures, as the artist intended, might make you hot all over again, since they tackle ocean preservation, the perils of climate change and the refugee crisis in ways that impress on us the dire facts we are facing.

Crossing the Rubicon, 2017, 41 life-sized sculptures and a wall, Lanzarote, Canary Islands.

I found Jason deCaires Taylor‘s work on a site called ArtworksforChange which addresses environmental issues and has a particularly nifty link: featured tours of selected art projects by environmental organizations like Earthday Network, Oceana, Global Footprint Network, World Wildlife Fund and The Natural Resources Defense Council. (I’ve linked to their tour as just one example.)

DeCaires Taylor, trained at the London School of Arts, has lived, worked and installed his sculptures made of marine concrete (pH neutral cement, fibers and aggregates) across the world, in different oceans. Whether executed in Mexico, the Canary Islands, the Caribbean, Cyprus or Australia, the work is designed for impact on many different levels.

Jason deCaires Taylor Sculpture, 2021, at Museum Park Aiya Napa, Cyprus

It engages communities who live by and from the ocean and brings them (and their ecological plight after hurricanes, for example) attention as well as tourism $$.

Jason deCaires Taylor, Sculptures of 90 fishermen and women, 2009,  Isla Mujeres, Cancun, Mexico

It provides new habitat for marine life, from surfaces that encourage coral and sponge growth to spacing that helps aggregate fish to constellations that provide sheltered homes for crustaceans.

2009, Cancun, Mexico

And, importantly, it lures divers away from sensitive coral reefs to dive at these underwater museum parks instead.

Jason deCaires Taylor, Ring of Children 2006, Grenada, Caribbean

Here is a short clip where he explains his approach and offers visual footage of the process.

To rebuild natural habitats and mitigate damage caused by tourism to at-risk underwater areas, the sculptor engages in a collaborative process between scientists and other experts which helps him build up a knowledge of materials and conservation that defines his work. He also collaborates with local communities (to the tune of 850 life sized sculptures by now, encompassing everyone from yoga instructors and fishermen to nuns and a two-year old boy,) which gives them a sense of ownership of the reefs. His philosophy as expressed in an Podcast from the Modern Met:

“I think artists have a moral obligation,” he explains to us. “We’re really important for helping to shape people’s feelings and emotions and inspire people and warn people about what’s happening. And I think scientists are very good at producing the data that supports it. But I think what’s really important is to be able to emotionally connect to people to help inspire social change. And I think that’s where we come in.”

His newest project has just been launched off the coast of the resort city of Ayia Napa in Cyprus, featuring over 90 figurative and nature-inspired sculptures installed at the seabed of a marine protected area. Here is a sampling of many of the new sculptures from his website.

Cyprus is an example of the threats to our natural world in more ways than one. The island, like so many of the neighboring regions in the Mediterranean, has faced incredible loss through fires, human life above all. We know what pollutes the oceans. We also know what contributes to wild fires. But in this particular case there is a nasty twist. A lot of the houses with large yards on the island are owned by British people or other Europeans able to afford an island getaway (Cyprus has an intense night life and party scene as well.) Many of these absentee owners have not traveled there for almost 2 years due to risks of Covid-19 with the consequence that their yards, usually tended before or upon arrival, sprouted large amounts of high and drying grasses or other weeds – all fueling the fires in ways that never happened when owners were present. In reverse, many Cypriots usually leave Cyprus during the hot summers. Because of the pandemic they stayed home, and subsequently grilling, barbecues or careless cigarettes have caused multiple incendiary incidents. (Ref.)

It is obviously a conflagration of dire events. And we are reminded, AGAIN, by this week’s UN Climate Science Report that theoretically we could do something, but that time is running out and the current inertia leaves no grounds for optimism. This NYT article speaks to the history and the potential future.

Jason deCaires Taylor MUSAN – Museum of Underwater Sculpture Aiya Napa, 2021

Giant contrasts between fires, floods, rising oceans, but they all have destructive power in common. Maybe we’ll join those underwater sculpture populations soon whether we’d like to or not – now there is a freezing thought.

Photographs are of natural maritime sculptures, the only one this non-diver has access to.

Music today is from Cyprus, with both Greek and Turkish artists united.

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Early Visions

When I did my reading last week for Earth Day it struck me how the topic of environmental harm can be traced back across centuries. Poets as diverse as William Blake, Wordsworth, Larkin, to name just a few Brits, wrote about the dangers of industrialization and the destruction of the English countryside – man-made dangers, just as climate change is a result of man-made fossil uses on a larger scale.

Going back in time even further, Ovid told the tale of Phaeton, retold below by one of our own outstanding poets, Eliza Griswold.

The power of this poem, for me, lies in the fact that it manages to outline the psychological mechanisms that can lead to destructiveness, a destructiveness that ultimately affects so many more than the individuals involved, changing the course of the world.

The original myth had Phaeton, mobbed for being fatherless, seek out his father Apollo, the sun god. His father feels guilty for having abandoned him and wants to prove his love by granting him a wish, any wish. Kid asks for the most powerful thing to make up for his feeling of being an outsider (or maybe the potentially most destructive one to exert his revenge?), to drive his father’s chariot of the sun. Catastrophe ensues when Phaeton, as was predicted, cannot control the powerful horses, freezing the earth when he veers from the path, then scorching it when he comes too close, making peoples’ blood boil through their skin which turns them Black, a race created. Zeus intervenes, seeing the havoc reeked, and kills Phaeton by throwing him off the chariot. Apollo’s mourning throws the world into darkness for days on end.

Ovid on Climate Change

BY ELIZA GRISWOLD

Bastard, the other boys teased him,
till Phaethon unleashed the steeds 
of Armageddon. He couldn’t hold 
their reins. Driving the sun too close 
to earth, the boy withered rivers, 
torched Eucalyptus groves, until the hills 
burst into flame, and the people’s blood 
boiled through the skin. Ethiopia,
land of   burnt faces. In a boy’s rage 
for a name, the myth of race begins.

A boy’s rage for a name? Or an ancient example of what maligning implies – the polarization of in-group to out-group that leads to both, hate and power grabs. The poem perfectly closes the circle by starting with one divisiveness (social ostracism) and ending with another (racial disparity.) Contained within: catastrophe.

It is a reminder that crises, be they global warming, pandemics, homelessness, wars are not some outside events that happen and have to be dealt with. They are created in the ways we manage our desires, our hurts, our greed, our guilt (Apollo knew of the impending doom but could not renege on a guilt-driven promise.) That is true for both, individuals and societies at large.

Our inability to see the urgency of needed action or hesitancy to commit to it, given the frightening implications, are perhaps the result of paralyzing anxiety, as discussed a few days ago. But they might also be partially driven by our reliance on all the myths forever told – there will be a Zeus who last minute comes to the rescue, or science or any other God resigned to saving humanity, the planet. Wishful thinking, if you ask me…..

Here are some Greek dances that will liven up this Monday morning …..

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A Shift towards Healing

All I can do is to recommend something as I write this on Earth Day – but, oh, do I hope you take me at my word and make some time this weekend to check out this essay from BBC Future. The article is devoted to a discussion of how we can handle our emotions regarding climate change and all the dangers it implies. Although it centers around ecological grief and anxiety, I believe that its teachings can be easily transferred to other kinds of traumas we are dealing with, the experience of living in a pandemic-struck world included.

At its core is the question how we can avoid denial, disavowal or paralysis when exposed to a barrage of fear-inducing news, since these reactions prevent us from taking needed steps to tackle the issues. How can you integrate climate anxiety – not a pathology but an appropriate reaction to what we have learned about the likely future of our planet – into your life and the ways to live it without letting it suffocate everything? How do you make decisions – many young couples, for example, worry about starting a family – during times of emotional upheaval?

The authors, Rachel Clissold, Ross Westoby and Karen E McNamara, guide us through ways that trauma has been handled by traditional peoples across history as well as in contemporary settings. They focus on connectivity, stillness and contemplation, insights about the amount of time it might take to approach healing and how social connections help process our emotions. Each of these topics is presented with lots of information on how those processes work or have worked for groups of people in the past who experienced existential threat and upheaval.

One of the facts that certainly registered with me is that taking small steps, even if they seem utterly futile for the larger picture, does provide a sense of agency that dampens the more negative emotions. You don’t have to become an activist, or invent a weather machine or start living in a plastic-free cave (should these still exist) to find some form of healing. Not into biking? Going vegetarian? Stop buying clothes before you’ve worn out the old ones? There are always alternative steps. Start taking shorter showers…

In any case, if you’re not up for reading, then watch the documentary (currently on Netflix) that is introduced in the beginning of the piece: My Octopus Teacher will lift you up.

Photographs today are from New Mexico where indigenous tribes, nations and pueblos knew how to live in unison with nature for centuries before colonial ravagers arrived. The images were taken on an early morning solo hike at the Kasha-Katuwe National Monument exactly 2 years ago. I wrote about the history of the place here.

Here is the view you are rewarded with when you make it to the top.

And here is today’s (sort of) musical contribution of someone who makes a difference.

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Thoughts on Flatulence

Flatulence, you know, the activity that releases methane into the atmosphere, is not usually a topic discussed in polite company. But since we all appreciate some good news these days, flatulence it shall be. Or the absence thereof.

Many of you might have heard the report already on NPR 2 days ago. It has been picked up all over the place: one of the major sources of methanol emissions, gas with high global warming potential, heating up the atmosphere, are the burps and farts of cows. There, I said it.

Cows have several stomach chambers, in which microbes help digest the food. They belch due to enteric fermentation, which is the digestive process of converting sugars into simple molecules for absorption into the bloodstream and which produces methane as a by-product. On the other end of the cow, manure is dropped which contains and releases methane as well.

It turns out (and it seems to be a bit of a rediscovery, if you look at what the ancient Greeks or 18th century Icelanders reported,) adding seaweed to the bovine feed helps reduce methane emission by an astonishing 98%. Minute amounts of those submarine grasses seem to be enough.

Asparagopsis taxiformis and Asparagopsis armata are 2 species of a crimson submarine grass that drifts on waves and tides all around the world’s oceans. These 2 species are emerging as an effective tool in innovative, regenerative, and cleaner production for the wider agriculture sector. Asparagopsis and other types of seaweed have specialized gland cells that make and store bromoform, an organic compound. When this deep red seaweed is freeze-dried, powdered, and sprinkled as a garnish on a cow’s meal, bromoform blocks carbon and hydrogen atoms from forming methane in the stomach. (Ref.)

Given that there are about 1.5 billion cows on our planet, this seems an exciting step forward in our attempts of decarbonization to save the earth.

Incidentally it also seems to make the cows healthier and increase milk production. The whole seaweed issues started in this newest version, in fact, when a farmer noticed that his cows that feed near the ocean shore thrived in comparison to his other ones that fed at higher pastures. The power of observation, leading to scientific exploration.

Unclear to me, though, is how large-scale seaweed production will impact marine environments, and how much global efforts to get people away from eating beef will be undermined if we now think cows are no longer complicit in climate change. There are still the countless acres of Amazon rainforest cut down to make pastures for cows, who surely will not be fed seaweed in the first place…

But for now, let’s celebrate diminished flatulence – we take our small victories where we can find them these days – and amuse ourselves by going back to what Benjamin Franklin had to say in 1781 on the very topic. “It is universally well known, That in digesting our common Food, there is created or produced in the Bowels of human Creatures, a great Quantity of Wind.” The essay can be found here. A fun read. It is titled: A Letter to a Royal Academy about Farting. Gone with the wind, I guess, since it never arrived at that august body.

Music today is by Tcherepnin from his Le Monde en Vitrine – The Greyhounds and the Cow. It was incited by the vitrine of a patron of the arts that held numerous chachkas. “The first movement,” the composer wrote, “is inspired by a group of miniature greyhounds in glass, which in the show-case stands next to a massive porcelain cow. The greyhounds are full of action, whilst the cow is placid. This contrast inspired me deeply. How often in life is our enthusiasm thwarted by something as placid as a cow!” To which I say: Give me placidity any day….

(Placidity – a feeling of calmness; a quiet and undisturbed feeling. placidness. calmness – a feeling of calm; an absence of agitation or excitement. 2. placidity – a disposition free from stress or emotion.)

Here is fuller menu of his piano works, if you click play all.

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(Almost) Year-End Report

As many of you know I have been involved in a project for years now that tries to raise awareness of not just the problem of climate change but of the ways we can support resistance against those ignoring or exploiting the crisis.

Burnt forests from years past, I have not visited the 2020 damage yet

The last time I was able to shoot still-photography footage for Necessity – Oil, Water and Climate Resistance was early this year until public contact was no longer a possibility for me. I reported on it here.

The project had started in Minnesota, documenting how front-line communities who suffer the most consequences from the climate crisis fight against the expansion of pipelines carrying highly toxic tar sands oil through Native lands and essential waterways. I have linked to the trailer for the documentary before but will do so here again for new readers.

Melting glaciers and decreased rainfall endanger water levels

With very limited resources, we completed NECESSITY Part I in 2019, which is now available through the Zinn Education Project to educators and to activist groups for community screenings. Equally important, it led to co-producing a k-12 climate curriculum based on the documentary film through Zinn Education Project. For more information, go to the ZEP website. The film has also been part of the program of a number of festivals, including the Eugene Environmental Film Festival in October helping with our goal towards education.

Drought sharpens the competition for water between farmers and salmon-dependent tribes

It was surely a joint effort: Legal experts discussed the record of disparate treatment in the justice system and the legal strategy of the necessity defense, which makes a moral case for acts of civil disobedience, while medical and scientific experts addressed the health effects of fossil fuels and dangers of pipeline and refinery infrastructure. The filmmaking team itself built collectively on their training in psychology and anthropology. Most importantly, indigenous leaders provided deep insights, including forms of resilience and modes of resistance.

Dams and construction affect the natural flow of the river(s) and endanger salmon habitat

We are now on to NECESSITY Part II, hoping to complete it by spring 2021 and to distribute the feature-length films as a multi-part ongoing story of legal tactics, Indigenous leadership and allyship in the fight against fossil fuels and for climate justice. This round plays out in our very own backyard – the threatened resources and landscape of Oregon. It describes the organizing that has been done in the Pacific Northwest to keep fossil fuel installations out of our communities, an important part of helping our state be prepared.

Changes in weather patterns affect indigenous flora.

Most of us on the production team are volunteers. But there are production costs that cannot be covered simply by working for free. Here is the link to the campaign to help fund the effort:  https://www.gofundme.com/necessity-oil-water-and-climate-resistance/

If you can donate, terrific. Equally welcome would be your willingness and/or ability to spread the word about the project and its educational services, if things are tight right now, or weighted in favor of more pressing charity needs.

Rising sea levels and increased water temperature endanger mammals, fish and sea birds in their interconnected ecosystem.

Photographs today are of my attempts – paralleling those in the documentary – to capture the natural beauty of the region as well as the vulnerability of the local habitats.

Music is a contemporary work that speaks to ecological concerns: Become Ocean by John Luther Adams.

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