Disqus - Latest Comments for mkdevereaux

Re: SOF Observed

mkdevereaux — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 17:59:06 -0000

How about calling preliminary "tastes" like the above, which are good marketing tools, after their movie counterparts-- "trailers"... in this case audio trailers.

Re: Our Coverage of Climate Change

mkdevereaux — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 23:31:00 -0000

You will like this resource. It's not so long or so technically written that a lay person cannot understand it. It's an overview of how ecosystems and inhabitants are likely to adapt to climate change, and it's really well done:

http://www.rff.org/rff/docu...

It's from
Resources for the Future think tank:
http://www.rff.org/Focus_Ar...
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Re: Our Coverage of Climate Change

mkdevereaux — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:02:43 -0000

I really believe history will show that the emerging "backstory" of the climate change debate will eclipse all the arguments about what is causing climate change and the uncertainty of its impacts. The fact is, a small, yet enduring shift in weather patterns has already caused loss of snowpack worldwide and reduced water availability for farming. In California, this shift (both reduced water supply and loss of winter chill necessary for certain crops as well as killing pests) now threatens agricultural production in the Great Central Valley, which will have repercussions not only in California but around the world: California forced to model new waterways: http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/20090409/gw1

This has caused a seachange in how people view the food supply system while exposing its weaknesses, much like Michael Moore did for the health care industry in his film, "Sicko."

http://www.rocfund.org/ and http://fooddeclaration.org/

The paradigm shift called for by Roots of Change and Food Declaration.org is necessary for human and ecosystem wellbeing, and will take 20-50 years to bring about. That is the same timeframe for the leading edge of expected impacts from climate change to hit us, and still that debate has not yet fully addressed the fact that individual behavior in food choices and our collective food systems will be a key strategy for mitigating impacts if we begin now to change, or a key stumbling block if we don't. The irony is that it took the threat of climate change due to human activities—the greenhouse gases we've put into the air—to finally focus attention on how we've abused the natural resources on which life depends—the primary fertility of soil and the water we've squandered. All the while, it was acceptable that the people who actually harvested our food-- primarily ethnic farmworkers-- lived in poverty, struggled to feed their children, and lacked basic healthcare. In terms of their quality of life and opportunity for advancement, their situation is not so different from the Old South of the Civil War era.

I suspect that human activities are accelerating and making less resilient natural processes that have in the past and continue to this day to produce long-cycle patterns of heating and cooling in global weather. We do need to understand those patterns, and how we are effecting them. But the fact remains that the civilizations that have fallen in the past (Easter Island, the Mayans, Iceland, etc) did so not so much due to those cyclic disturbances in weather patterns, or even long periods of drought, but rather to loss of their resource base-- topsoil and tree and grass cover, and loss of biodiversity. The land could no longer feed them. Climate change vis a vis our food production system is generally the backstory now, and no doubt it will become the central issue for the next generation. When we talk about "sustainable systems" as those we manage for current needs without robbing the next generation, the way we eat today cuts to the very heart of the matter.

Re: Our Coverage of Climate Change

mkdevereaux — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 13:23:17 -0000

Dear Trent,

This is a follow-up to my previous email with a specific story idea to kick off a discussion of what each of us can do to address global climate change with plants and the resources available to urban dwellers. We don't have to wait for politicians to come to their senses and craft a socially just international treaty, although that is necessary, too. Collectively, through private actions related to what we eat and how it is produced, we all can begin immediate to mitigate global climate change.

Every urban dweller, whether living in a dorm, home or apartment, can plant a special garden out of found materials: a keyhole garden. Keyhole gardens are intensively cultivated microgardens that are designed to feed families healthy, local foods; withstand temperature extremes; be built on a lawn, carport or parking lot; conserve water; don't require land ownership; and create compost for soil management and restoration. The design makes gardening accessible to children, the elderly and the disabled. With a keyhole garden, every person can take responsibility for their share of carbon banking and the global nitrogen cycle.

The ideas of keyhole gardening and permaculture fit together, and could be promoted much like Victory Gardens were promoted during WWII. Only this time, the war is against human-driven climate change.

Keyhole gardens: A great little video made in Lesotho, showing how a group of schoolchildren made a keyhole garden. The charity Send a Cow showed them how to ...www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjcjCCx3BWY

Permaculture: http://www.permacultureinte...

Found materials that can be used to build keyhole gardens: cement chunks, milk cartons filled with sand, rocks, lumber scraps.

Besides David Holmgren, an interesting and articulate person to interview about the value of urban gardening would be the editor-in-chief of the Earth Island Journal, Jason Mark (jmark@earthisland.org): http://www.earthisland.org/...

Best, Kathryn Devereaux

Re: Our Coverage of Climate Change

mkdevereaux — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 12:38:22 -0000

Dear Trent,

An author conversant with the restorative nature of plants is Michael Pollan (Botany of Desire, Omnivore's Dilemma). He understands the science well enough to make it both interesting and understandable through his wonderful ability to tell a plant's story. Author Wendell Berry can articulate those issues very well, too. What most people don't understand is how the natural resource base is tied to our ability to respond to global warming. Mainly what we hear about through the media is what might be possible in terms of reducing CO2 emissions and slowing things down, when nitrogen is just as important: http://asi.ucdavis.edu/inde.... After human energy consumption, ag animals (for our high-meat diet) are the greatest greenhouse gas emitters and groundwater polluters. The fact is, plants would be our greatest hedge against the impacts of climate change if we had not destroyed our soils (download the 1930s classic Tree Crops: A Permanent Agriculture, which shows how long we've been talking without taking action: http://www.journeytoforever.... So, soil restoration, if that is even possible at this point, is task one. Soil is designed to be an amazing carbon bank if allowed to do its thing. Then, genetic biodiversity is how plants have responded to climate change in the past. So, conserving every remaining scrap of biodiversity is task 2 (See Cary Fowler, director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust: http://www.croptrust.org/ma.... Besides Dr Fowler, author and scientist E.O. Wilson is perhaps the most famous and passionate advocate for conserving biodiversity. He is a profound "big thinker," which is the impression I've gotten when I've heard him interviewed. Task 3 is to strengthen our national food security system (see Dr Tom Tomich, director of the Agricultural Sustainability Center: http://asi.ucdavis.edu/kell....

And, as I mentioned before, in the days ahead we need to be clear about our values (download Dr Lindsay Falvey's "Religion and Agriculture: Sustainability in Christianity and Buddhism, http://www.iid.org/books.php). We recently lost Father Thomas Berry, who really is the voice we need right now, so quotes from "Dream of the Earth" would be relevant at this critical juncture: http://www.greenmountainmon....

All signs seem to point to the fact that we underestimated climate change impacts, and they will arrive sooner and be more disruptive than expected. With all the uncertainties and gaps in our knowledge, there will be surprises, probably both good and bad. If you look at the rising problems with water availability and quality that we have now in the West, one example of a nasty surprise will be water nitrates. The high levels we measure now in California groundwater supplies are the result of activities from 30-50 years ago, i.e. before California farmers and lawn enthusiasts began fertilizing everything so heavily. That incredible load of nitrogen will begin to show up in groundwater 10-30 years from now, at the same time as our aquifers will have been depleted from overuse and drought. The uncertainties of how we will address the public health impacts of all that, particularly the impacts on infants and pregnant women, and sustain food production are causes for real concern. California is the "market basket" of the world, and what happens to soil, water and agriculture here will affect the food supply and economy of every state.

If it would be helpful, I could chase down the best stories of how plants respond to climate change, and how they might lead us through this challenge if we can start to pay attention and give them some respect. Krista herself could drop them in the conversation -- authors Pollan and Wilson likely would be the most responsive and come back with even more examples.

Best, Kathryn Devereaux

Re: Our Coverage of Climate Change

mkdevereaux — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 16:24:46 -0000

Also, when it comes to global warming, it has really helped me to keep things in perspective (and find solutions in my own backyard) by keeping "first causes" for our lack of resilience to weather change in the foreground-- overpopulation and loss of soil and water resources. Soil is forst and foremost a carbon bank. The following article reminds us that the rush to make biofuels as a way to achieve "green" energy independence and reduce combustion of oil products has largely been a disaster, here and around the world. This article first appeared in the Earth Island Institute Journal, Spring 2008 (http://www.earthisland.org/...

Peak Soil-- The Silent Global Crisis
by Stephen Leahy

A harsh winter wind blew last night, and this morning the thin snow cover has turned into a rich chocolate brown. The dirt covering the snow comes from cornfields near my home that were ploughed following the harvest, a common practice in southern Ontario and in the corn-growing regions of the US Midwest.

A handful of this dirty snow melts quickly, leaving a thin, fine-grained wet mess. It doesn’t look like much, but the mucky sludge in my hand is the prerequisite for life on the planet.

“We are overlooking soil as the foundation of all life on Earth,” says Andres Arnalds, assistant director of the Icelandic Soil Conservation Service. Arnalds is an eloquent spokesperson for the unheralded emergency of soil erosion, a problem that is reducing global food production and water availability, and is responsible for an estimated 30 percent of the greenhouse gases emissions. “Land degradation and desertification may be regarded as the silent crisis of the world, a genuine threat to the future of humankind.”

Arnalds is dead serious when he calls soil erosion a crisis. Each year, some 38,000 square miles of land become severely degraded or turn into desert. About five billion acres of arable land have been stripped of their precious layer of topsoil and been abandoned since the first wheat and barley fields were planted 10,000 years ago. In the past 40 years alone, 30 percent of the planet’s arable land has become unproductive due to erosion, mainly in Asia and Africa. At current erosion rates, soils are being depleted faster than they are replenished, and nearly all of the remaining 11 billion acres of cropland and grazing land suffer from some degree of erosion.

Most of this erosion is simply due to plowing, removal of crop residues after harvest, and overgrazing, which leaves soil naked and vulnerable to wind and rain. It is akin to tire wear on your car — a gradual, unobserved process that has potentially catastrophic consequences if ignored for too long.

Arnalds has seen our perilous future crisis by looking into the past. Eleven hundred years ago, the first Icelandic settlers came to a cold island mostly covered by forests and lush meadows, and blessed with deep volcanic soils. In a pattern repeated around the world, settlers cleared the forests and put too many animals on the meadows, until 96 percent of the forest was gone and half the grasslands destroyed. By the 1800s, Iceland had become Europe’s largest desert; the people starved, and the once prosperous country became one of the world’s poorest. “Once soil is gone, you can’t get it back,” Arnalds says. “It’s a non-renewable resource.”

Nickel and Dimed to Death
No one knows how much food-producing land will be left by 2050, when another three billion people are expected to join the current global population of 6.5 billion. What we do know is that right now, 99 percent of human food calories come from the land. Global food production has kept pace with population growth thus far thanks chiefly to the extensive use of chemical fertilizers. But food production per acre of land is starting to decline, primarily due to loss of productive land and water shortages. The latter is often the result of soil erosion because soil and vegetation act as a sponge that holds and gradually releases water. And that soil erosion, in turn, is exacerbated by chemical farming practices that over time break down soil structure.

Add to these challenges climate change’s impact on soil erosion and the competition between growing food and producing biofuels, and it’s frightening to consider the challenge of feeding nine billion people when nearly one billion go hungry right now. Arnalds summarizes the challenge: More food will have to be produced within the next 50 years than during the last 10,000 years combined. “Securing food in many places will become a crisis of rapidly growing proportions.”

Erosion largely goes unnoticed by farmers as it “nickels and dimes you to death,” says David Pimentel, an ecologist at Cornell University who has conducted extensive research on the subject. Even if there were no humans on the planet, soils would still erode. The soil formation from the weathering of rock and the breakdown of plants, however, would be faster than the erosion rate; it takes roughly 500 years to create one inch of soil. Once humans remove natural vegetation, soil is exposed to raindrops that easily dislodge it, washing soil particles into creeks, streams, rivers, and eventually into the ocean. One rainstorm will wash away .04 inches of soil. This may not seem like much, but over one acre of land that fraction of an inch adds up to tons of topsoil.

Wind also disrupts soil, and can transport dust huge distances. Dry and windy conditions blew nearly two inches of topsoil off Kansas farmlands during the winter of 1995–96. Contrary to common belief, the topsoil loss in Kansas didn’t end up being neatly deposited on farms in neighboring states. More than 60 percent ended up clogging ditches, streams, rivers, and lakes. That makes waterways more prone to flooding (further exacerbating erosion) and contaminates them with fertilizer and pesticide residues, Pimentel says.

Every rainy day or windy night steals a thin layer of soil from any exposed piece of ground until there is little left but sand and rock. “Iowa has some of the best and deepest soils in the world,” Pimentel says, “and they’ve lost nearly 50 percent in the last hundred years.”

Erosion’s potential threat to humanity remains largely ignored by the world community. When soil experts from around the world met in Selfoss, Iceland in August 2007, they concluded that an international treaty is needed to spur countries into taking action to protect their soils. The soil scientists proposed that, at the very least, soil ought to have its own year — “The International Year of Land Care” — to focus the world’s attention on soil stewardship.

But hold on a second. While politicians, CEOs, and autoworkers might not think much about soil, surely farmers, whose very existence depends on soil, don’t need a bunch of international lawyers and bureaucrats at the United Nations to tell them to protect their lands. After all, controlling erosion isn’t rocket science. By now it’s well known that agricultural practices such as protecting soil with cover crops when the land is not growing edible crops, keeping post-harvest plant residues on the land, and reducing overgrazing and forest clearance are some of the ways to protect soils.

“Farmers know their success depends on the soil, but they often have more immediate needs, such as feeding their families, paying school fees, or fleeing corrupt governments,” says Michael Stocking of the University of East Anglia in Britain, and one of the leading experts on agriculture in tropical countries. Most farmers face so many short-term challenges that it is difficult to invest in the long-term protection of the soil. Social and economic pressures force many farmers to “mine the soil” until the land is completely denuded and is turned into “badlands,” Stocking says.

Such badlands can be found in every country in the world, and are easy to spot. A more worrisome trend is the hidden danger of losing soil fertility on lands that appear healthy. “Fertility loss on good soils has a much bigger impact than further degradation of badlands,” Stocking says.

Healthy topsoil is a complex mixture of minerals, bacteria, fungi, microscopic invertebrates, and larger invertebrates such as ants and earthworms that break down nutrients and transfer them to the roots of plants. Degradation of soils diminishes this incredible below-ground biodiversity, reducing crop yield as well as soils’ ability to store and filter water and to regulate the global cycles of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus.

Edwin Remsberg
In the past 40 years alone, 30 percent of the planet’s arable land has become unproductive due to erosion.While some American farmers control erosion using low- or no-till techniques for planting, the majority are mining the soil, according to Craig Cox, executive director of the Soil and Water Conservation Society, headquartered in Iowa. “Soil conservation has taken a back seat to maximizing production,” Cox says.

As Cox drives the rural roads of Iowa, he sees fresh signs of erosion on the world’s best farmland. “It’s amazing to see the extent of erosion here, mainly because of the absence of basic soil conservation techniques,” he says. Those techniques — such as planting grasses along the edges of waterways and leaving crop residues on the soil — are some of the hard lessons learned during the dust bowl years of the 1930s. But those lessons have been forgotten — or ignored. Driven by the high costs of fertilizer and fuel, and currently lucrative crop prices, farmers are planting rows of corn right to the edge of stream banks, and sometimes in the streams themselves. “It’s amazing and discouraging to see,” Cox says.

Bad News Biofuels
It’s all the more discouraging because American farmers had reduced soil erosion by about 40 percent between 1985 and 1995, largely due to government policies like the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). But CRP programs are now taking a back seat to the desire to cash in on the biofuel bonanza. Erosion is ignored while the US government provides billions of dollars in subsidies for biofuels. “Biofuels and climate change are real threats to America’s soil health,” Cox says.

Farmers are eagerly plowing up CRP lands, pastures, and highly erodible land to grow corn — 12 million additional acres of corn in 2007 alone — so they can profit from the ethanol boom. Ethanol is mainly made from corn, and the federal government hopes the US will be producing 35 billion gallons of the stuff by 2017. Reaching that goal would turn much of the US into a giant cornfield and has already doubled the price of corn in the past two years. Corn is particularly hard on the soil, requiring plenty of fertilizer, water, and pesticides. Cox says ethanol has sparked a “gold-rush mentality” among farmers who are mortgaging the future health of their soils for short-term profits. “There’s no question that the ethanol boom is increasing erosion.”

Not surprisingly, land prices and rents in the corn belt have jumped upward, creating additional pressure to “mine the soil to pay the mortage.” Farmland has been a popular investment for many years, and in some states, half of all farmland is rented. This reduces the incentives for soil conservation, since the farmer who works the field is not the permanent caretaker of the land. Ethanol-driven land degradation will not disappear even if the much-touted cellulosic ethanol technology is commercialized. The cellulosic process uses crop residues like corn stalks and wheat straw (rather than grains like corn or soy) to make ethanol. While cellulosic ethanol won’t directly use food as fuel, the loss of crop residues would further expose soils to erosion. And it would also reduce organic matter in soils, greatly diminishing their fertility, Cox says. “I’m very concerned there will be serious consequences for soils if cellulosic ethanol goes forward.”

Hard Rains of Climate Change
Strange new weather patterns linked to global climate change could further harm vulnerable soils. Increasing corn and soy production could expose soils to the hard rains that climate change is producing.

A number of studies have documented increased rainfall intensity in the US since 1970. In many regions, the amount of overall rainfall hasn’t changed, but the rain comes in shorter, more intense bursts, doubling the normal rates of erosion. This is particularly noticeable in the southern US, Cox says. A brand new computer climate model that uses data collected over the last decade reveals that soil scientists have substantially underestimated the amount of erosion from climate change’s hard rains. “It could be four times higher than we thought,” Cox says. And that rate appears to be accelerating as hard rains wash soil off the land, ruining streams and destroying aquatic habitat. The soil conservation techniques of yesterday may not be enough to keep soil healthy with climate change, he says. “There has been very little attention paid to the impact of climate change on soil conservation.”

“Soil is the connection to ourselves. … To be at home with the soil is truly the only way to be at home with ourselves, and therefore the only way we can be at peace with the environment and all of the earth species that are part of it. It is, literally, the common ground on which we all stand.”
— Fred Kirschenmann
There are some 2,300 billion tons of carbon locked in the world’s soils, far more than the 790 billion tons currently in the atmosphere. Land degradation, including deforestation of farmland and desertification, may account for as much as 30 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas releases, according to studies by Rattan Lal of Ohio State University. Aside from removing the natural vegetation, plowing the soil releases organic carbon into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. Conventional agriculture methods have already reduced soil carbon by 30 and 60 percent in much of the US, says Don Reicosky, a research soil scientist with the US Department of Agriculture who is based in Morris, Minnesota. Carbon is a key ingredient for plant growth and crucial for soil fertility. For Reicosky, carbon is the primary driver of the entire living soil ecosystem: “Carbon does great things for the soil but it takes a generation to see the impacts.”

Farmers have only been able to escape the impacts of this massive loss of organic carbon thanks to cheap chemical fertilizers made from fossil fuels. But that short-term solution is just making matters worse, according to a new study out of the University of Illinois. In examining crop records and soil samples from the Illinois Morrow Plots dating back 100 years, soil scientists were surprised to see corn yields falling on plots that had received the most chemical nitrogen fertilizers and crop residues. It turns out that even with additional crop residues, fertilized soils have much less soil carbon, likely resulting in higher releases of carbon into the atmosphere.

Keeping carbon in the soil may be one of the quickest ways to reduce global carbon emissions. And if that’s not enough reason to substitute carbon storage for crop yield as the ultimate goal of farming, then the improvements in soil fertility and declines in erosion that will give us a chance at feeding a crowded world ought to.

“Blaming the farmer for these problems is futile, since we’ve created the economic system they operate in,” says Fred Kirschenmann, a North Dakota organic farmer who works at Iowa State University’s Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture. That system forces farmers to produce as much as possible no matter what the cost, Kirschenmann says.

A Different Way of Farming
The Kirschenmann family broke out of that system in the late 1960s when Fred learned of organic farming around the same time that his father, a veteran grower, saw their farm’s soil quality deteriorating despite best efforts to protect it. Their primary objective was to rebuild the soil, and after years of trial and error, their 3,500 acres were certified as organic in 1976; they have never looked back. Today, about 1,000 acres are in native prairie and used for grazing livestock, and the rest is managed in a diversified operation with eight to nine crops each year in three different rotations. Being debt-free — a rare privilege in farming country — enabled the Kirschenmanns to take the economic risk of finding a way to farm that was environmentally sustainable.

While organic farmers eschew chemical fertilizers, they often use intensive tilling to eliminate weeds, which can break up soils. But most organic farmers are careful to maintain cover crops and add manures to keep the soil covered and well fed with organic matter. As a result, erosion is many times less than on conventional farms. And because organic soils are more fertile, they absorb more water deeper, further reducing erosion and allowing them to better withstand droughts. A USDA study using data collected between 1994 and 2005 confirmed that organic fields have much more living soil matter than those farmed by conventional methods that did not till the soil. Corn on the organic plots also produced 18 percent higher yields.

“Agriculture’s biggest problem is the health of soil; erosion is just a symptom,” Kirschenmann says. Overcoming that problem means fundamentally re-thinking our food production systems so that the first priority is to preserve the fertility and ecological health of the land. As to how this can be done, Kirschenmann refers to the writings of Sir Albert Howard, a British botanist who wrote in 1940 that farmers ought to farm as nature does in the forest. There should always be livestock and a multitude of plant varieties; all “wastes” should be returned to the soil so that growth and decay balance each other; great pains need to be taken to store rainfall. In such a system, Howard wrote, plants and animals protect themselves from disease.

That approach may seem quaint in our technology-driven industrial culture, but Kirschenmann points out that the cows on his farm no longer need visits from the vet. Soil considerations aside, Kirschenmann wonders why — if conventional agriculture is so effective — 62 percent of Iowa farm families have off-farm jobs.

“Our system is clearly dysfunctional, and in destroying soil, we are putting enormous burdens on future generations,” he says. “We need to start to be behave as members of the land community instead of continuing to act like conquerors.”

Stephen Leahy is a freelance environmental journalist who has written for many publications, including New Scientist and The Sunday Times (London), and is the science and environment correspondent for Inter Press Service News Agency (IPS), a wire service headquartered in Rome.

Re: Our Coverage of Climate Change

mkdevereaux — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 15:16:16 -0000

I think it will be important to cover the fuller range of stories related to global climate change than is covered in the mainstream media, which focuses mainly on disaster scenarios. Understanding what might happen is important, mainly for the pressure it places on all of us to find ways to change and adapt (which is unpleasant for us short-lived humans), but the natural world has always made it its business to adapt to constant change. The plant kingdom, for instance, has faced several periods of global warming and its opposite-- ice ages. There are lesons to be learned, there. We understand the response as natural selection, but focusing on that endpoint rather than the means misses something really amazing about the plant world-- the genetic and biochemical machinery it has to successfully respond to change. For instance, as the ozone layer thins, more UV radiation strikes the earth's surface, where it can cause destructive changes to DNA in both humans and plants. Many plants, however, respond with a class of organic chemicals called polyphenols, which absorb UV and disarms its effects. Plants use those polyphenols, and we've identified thousands of different forms, for many purposes besides UV "sunscreen," such as defense (plant makes itself taste bad), attracting bees (polyphenols are the basis of scent and color), wounding etc. In fact, one of the most amazing facts I've read is how a plant can tell the difference between a scissor wound (scientist snips a leaf sample), where there is no polyphenol response, and a bite wound from a caterpillar, where the bug's saliva causes a big polyphenol response to dissuade the bug from eating the plant. Other wound responses include creating polyphenols that attract the predators of the attacker. It's like calling in a big brother or a fixer to take care of a bully. An insect walking across one leaf can cause all the adjacent leaves of a plant to manufacture foul-tasting polyphenols. It's the plant's version of a gunslinger's quick draw. Likewise, as temperatures and moisture conditions change, even in very modest ways at this point, we already are seeing reports of amazing adaptations by plants. They aren't waiting for some crisis point in global warming-- they are busy now even as I write. The thing about polyphenols is that many of them are very good, even vital, for humans. They are the carotenoids and vitamin antioxidants in our diet, like vitamins A, C and E, as well as the antioxidants we seek in wine and green tea. Interestingly, we know now that a diet rich in plant polyphenols can work in humans as an internal sunscreen, giving the skin a natural SPF of 15, just like they work in plants. Wherever UV exposure is increasing because of the disappearing ozone layer, plants will be making more polyphenols. It's a whole new rationale for eating bioregional foods and being a "locavore." It's also a wake-up call for all of us to make every effort to protect every remaining shred of plant biodiversity that we have so carelessly destroyed-- we need those plants to have every capability at their disposal to respond to climate change in order to help maintain human life. Through the threat of climate change we've finally discovered the real value (to us) of genetic biodiversity. Granted, the oft cited claim of "potential new drugs" is a good one, but now we are in the real-time process of witnessing its real power-- the plant world's ability to respond to environmental change using its arsenal of thousands of biochemicals.

My point is, since we are a major cause of global warming, we tend to think ony humans have any solutions. If you look at how humans evolved and migrated to new areas following receding glaciers or even massive wild fires, it's clear that can't be so. The plant and animal kingdoms had to first make the necessary adaptations before humans could enter new areas and find something to dine on. Plants are, and always have been, natural sources and sinks for nitrogen and carbon, the two main players in global warming. When the global nitrogen and carbon cyles change, plants change, individually and as communities, in order to survice. We need to start treating them with more respect for what they do for us, learn from their adaptations, and revalue the landscapes they create, which, through their roles in maintaining global carbon and nitrogen cycles, serve purposes higher than humans at present can comprehend. Peat bogs are just one example.

No doubt there will be plant heroes unrelated to those we value for food and fiber that climate change will finally make us notice, communities of which will create new sinks for carbon dioxide and nitrogen, the basic building blocks of life for plants and soil microbes. As we face climate change, a little fear is not such a bad thing, so long as it drives us to appropriate change and opens our eyes to our necessary relationship with the natural world. We need to respect and protect it, and, most of all, step back and let it do its thing.

Re: SOF Observed

mkdevereaux — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 14:42:15 -0000

Shiraz-- one more thing. Maybe what you call "black theology" as articulated by Rev.Cone and Rev Wright is not theology so much as psychology, or even therapy, with a theological driver. It also retains values and traditions that otherwise would be lost in mainstream culture. It reminds me of the indignant anger of leaders of other groups that historically have been oppressed, such as Native American authors Dr. Jack Forbes at UC Davis and Vine Deloria,who wrote "God is Red." Native American churches are also clearly recognized by name alone. When the oppression has included genocide and perfect cruelty, it is no wonder that even the scholarly Dr Forbes, and clergy like Rev. Cone, speculate openly that "there is something wrong with white people." I would reframe it as "humans are slow to recognize the perverse effects of domination culture and politics." But there is more. Everywhere we look, from the caste system in India to all forms of slavery, sexism and tribal violence around the world, religion has had little power to change human behavior. America began as groups of the oppressed seeking freedom,and look what happened. The story of the Samaritan woman gives us the needed remedy. After she threw off the chains of society's power over her, and saw herself for who she truly was, she didn't run back to the village to take revenge on those who had hurt her. She ran to gather them up and bring them to the well, so that they could learn the same thing.

Re: SOF Observed

mkdevereaux — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 14:14:34 -0000

Out of all the theologians I've ever listened to, Father Rohr is most gifted in his ability to articulate the original intent of the "gospel to the oppressed," which the African-American church hears in a way that perhaps is more sensitive than the dominant culture, or the "Pharisees" and the "rich" that Jesus also addressed. "Black theology" as articulated by Dr. King contains those core truths, but I'm not so sure the syncretism of Rev. Cone represents it in the same way. It's different. In contrast to the inclusiveness that Jesus revealed as he walked around as love-in-action or "Living Water," and the inclusiveness Dr. King sought, the theology Rev. Cone articulates seems to have many exclusive elements in it, beginning with having "African American" in the name of the church. What does that mean? Is it social inclusiveness on African-American terms, or exclusiveness on Malcolm X terms? Is it about justice, or reverse racism? Is it a declaration that only the "black church" really understands the Gospel, and the white infidels don't? If that is so, how do they explain the sexism that Bishop McKenzie articulated? I'd like to know more. It really seems that you have bumped into the tip of an iceberg here.

Re: SOF Observed

mkdevereaux — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 17:27:26 -0000

I really appreciate the transparency of your journalistic process, and your desire to provide meaningful conversation in all of your shows. I believe that the Jeremiah Wright material is important and has enduring value. I, for one, finally grasped how the African-American church experiences and understands the Gospel. That did put some of his more seemingly outrageous comments from the pulpit into context. (It was, after all, his ad-lib comments in Washington DC at a press club that got him into trouble, not so much the comments he has made from the pulpit). That alone would make a great show. I do understand how challenging it must have been to bring racism, politics, church and Bishop McKenzie all into the context of one show, without shorting anyone. In my view, their was some redundancy in the Wright material in the final cut, and it was obvious that Bishop McKenzie didn't want to pursue that conversation. A little more editing there might be worthwhile if the show is re-aired at a later date (a different musical score would help, too), without sacrificing the entire segment. The piece that could be cut almost totally, to make room for the Samaritan woman, is the Rev. Cone material. On your web site, there is a link to that full conversation, which is more worthwhile than the snippet that ended up in the final cut. I really would love to hear at least two more shows that this one inspired-- how the African-American church understands the Gospel (including hearing from Rev Wright himself) and, most of all, an entire show about sacred story in the Christian tradition. Rev McKenzie has deep insights, and so do people like Carolyn Myss and Father Richard Rohr, both of whom have deepened my understanding considerably. With a teacher who can take you deep into meaning, past institutionalized theology and doctrine, the stories as lived experience are truly amazing and transformational.

Re: A New Conversation on Abortion

mkdevereaux — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 16:47:20 -0000

I am happy to hear that the abortion conversation is changing. "More adoptive homes" and remedies of that type that target teens are not new ideas and merely supply a band-aid. They entirely miss "cause" -- Teenage girls are raised in a predatory environment that does nothing to protect them. Since it is important to balance opinion with fact, the reason why the abortion debate is so futile and hopelessly entrenched is that it doesn't address root causes, which include the following:

1. The teenage birth rate in the United States is the highest in the developed world, and the teenage abortion rate is also high. (UNICEF. (2001). A League Table of Teenage Births in Rich NationsPDF ).

2. Kaiser Family Foundation study of US teenagers, 29% of teens reported feeling pressure to have sex, 33% of sexually active teens reported "being in a relationship where they felt things were moving too fast sexually", and 24% had "done something sexual they didn’t really want to do". Several polls have indicated peer pressure as a factor in encouraging both girls and boys to have sex. (U.S.Teen Sexual ActivityPDF (147 KB) Kaiser Family Foundation, January 2005. Retrieved 23 Jan 2007)

3. According to the Family Research Council, studies in the US indicate that age discrepancy between the teenage girls and the men who impregnate them is an important contributing factor. Teenage girls in relationships with older boys, and in particular with adult men, are more likely to become pregnant than teenage girls in relationships with boys their own age.

4. A review of California's 1990 vital statistics found that men older than high school age fathered 77 percent of all births to high school-aged girls (ages 16-18), and 51 percent of births to junior high school-aged girls (15 and younger).

5. Men over age 25 fathered twice as many children of teenage mothers than boys under age 18, and men over age 20 fathered five times as many children of junior high school-aged girls as did junior high school-aged boys. Studies by the Population Reference Bureau and the National Center for Health Statistics found that about two-thirds of children born to teenage girls in the United States are fathered by adult men age 20 or older. (Gracie Hsu, Statutory rape Family Research Council )

6. A 1992 Washington state study of 535 adolescent mothers found that 62 percent of the mothers had a history of being raped or sexual molested by men whose ages averaged 27 years. This study found that, compared with nonabused mothers, abused adolescent mothers initiated sex earlier, had sex with much older partners, and engaged in riskier, more frequent, and promiscuous sex.

7. Studies have found that between 11 and 20 percent of pregnancies in teenagers are a direct result of rape, while about 60 percent of teenage mothers had unwanted sexual experiences preceding their pregnancy. Before age 15, a majority of first-intercourse experiences among females are reported to be non-voluntary; the Guttmacher Institute found that 60 percent of girls who had sex before age 15 were coerced by males who on average were six years their senior. One in five teenage fathers admitted to forcing girls to have sex with them. ( www.csa.za.org)

8. Multiple studies have indicated a strong link between early childhood sexual abuse and subsequent teenage pregnancy in industrialized countries. Up to 70 percent of women who gave birth in their teens were molested as young girls; by contrast, 25 percent for women who did not give birth as teens were molested.

9. Studies have indicated that adolescent girls are often in abusive relationships at the time of their conceiving. (ranzcog.edu.au: Teenage pregnancy ; ranzcog: Teenage mothers-sexual volence ; edc.org: Abusive boyfriends ; safersouthwark.org.uk) They have also reported that knowledge of their pregnancy has often intensified violent and controlling behaviours on part of their boyfriends. In the UK women under age 18 are twice as likely to be beaten by their child's father than women over age 18. Similar results have been found in studies in the United States. A Washington study found 70% of teenage mothers had been beaten by their boyfriends, 51% had experienced attempts of birth control sabotage within the last year, and 21% experienced school or work sabotage. (gldvp.org:Teenage mothers-domestic violence ; www2.edc.org: Teenage mothers-abusive boyfriends)

10. Sociologist Mike A. Males noted that teenage birth rates closely mapped poverty rates in California:[46]

11. Women exposed to abuse, domestic violence, and family strife in childhood are more likely to become pregnant as teenagers, and the risk of becoming pregnant as a teenager increases with the number of adverse childhood experiences. According to a 2004 study, one-third of teenage pregnancies could be prevented by eliminating exposure to abuse, violence, and family strife. The researchers note that "family dysfunction has enduring and unfavorable health consequences for women during the adolescent years, the childbearing years, and beyond." When the family environment does not include adverse childhood experiences, becoming pregnant as an adolescent does not appear to raise the likelihood of long-term, negative psychosocial consequences. Studies have also found that boys raised in homes with a battered mother, or who experienced physical violence directly, were significantly more likely to impregnate a girl. (Tamkins, T. (2004) Teenage pregnancy risk rises with childhood exposure to family strife Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, March-April, 2004 Abused Boys, Battered Mothers, and Male Involvement in Teen Pregnancy - Anda et al. 107 (2): e19 - Pediatrics)

12. Studies have also found that girls whose fathers left the family early in their lives had the highest rates of early sexual activity and adolescent pregnancy. Girls whose fathers left them at a later age had a lower rate of early sexual activity, and the lowest rates are found in girls whose fathers were present throughout their childhood. Even when the researchers took into account other factors that could have contributed to early sexual activity and pregnancy, such as behavioral problems and life adversity, early father-absent girls were still about five times more likely in the United States and three times more likely in New Zealand to become pregnant as adolescents than were father-present girls. (Ellis, Bruce J. et al (2003) Does Father Absence Place Daughters at Special Risk for Early Sexual Activity and Teenage Pregnancy? Child Development, v74 n3 p801-21 May-Jun 2003)

13. Studies by the Population Reference Bureau and the National Center for Health Statistics found that about two-thirds of births to teenage girls in the United States are fathered by adult men age 20 or older. The Guttmacher Institute reports that over 40 percent of mothers aged 15-17 had sexual partners three to five years older and almost one in five had partners six or more years older. A 1990 study of births to California teens reported that the younger the mother, the greater the age gap with her male partner. In the UK 72% of jointly registered births to women under the age of 20, the father is over the age of 20, with almost 1 in 4 being over 25. (Advance Report of Final Natality Statistics (1991). Monthly Vital Statistics Report, vol. 42, no. 3, Supplement 9. National Center for Health Statistics, Sept. 1993 ;Family Planning Perspectives, July/August 1995. ; California Resident Live Births, 1990, by Age of Father, by Age of Mother, California Vital Statistics Section, Department of Heath Services, 1992. ; FM1 Birth statistics no.34 (2005) Office For National Statistics pp 14-15. Note: 24% of births to women under 20 were solo registrations where the age of the father cannot be determined. )