Klamath Basin Tribes and allies from the commercial fishing and conservation organizations stage a rally at the bi-annual meeting of the international hydropower industry- Hydrovision 2006. [Photo credit: Patrick McCulley]
Good news for rivers: dam removal works pretty well. A paper published yesterday in Science reports findings that rivers recover relatively quickly from negative consequences of dams once they are removed:
Dam removal and the resulting river ecosystem restoration is being studied by scientists from several universities and government agencies, including the USGS and U.S. Forest Service, as part of a national effort to document the effects of removing dams. Studies show that most river channels stabilize within months or years, not decades, particularly when dams are removed rapidly.
“In many cases, fish and other biological aspects of river ecosystems also respond quickly to dam removal,” said co-author of the study Jeff Duda, an ecologist with USGS. “When given the chance, salmon and other migratory fish will move upstream and utilize newly opened habitat.”
Great video on the origins of the Rights of Nature movement as Ecuador becomes the first country to include Rights of Nature in its Constitution and communities across the United States adopt Rights of Nature and assert their community rights.
I lived and worked in New Mexico for eight years -- though I didn't live in Mora County, I often traveled through it on days off or trips to Colorado. I wasn't so much a community activist at that time, either -- more aligned and active through one or another of the "big greens".
I like this article by Staci Matlock for several reasons. First, she represents the issue of fracking in the context of life in this part of New Mexico. Then she goes a little deeper than many reporters are willing to go these days into the complexities of politics in multicultural communities and the dynamics shaped by colonization, settlement, land use, land ownership, water rights, and so on. Anyone who does organizing in multiracial/multicultural communities will likely appreciate the situation there. I really enjoyed reading this article and getting a deeper look at a place I was usually just traveling through...
People around the U.S. and the world who are deeply concerned about the influence of big corporations and the potential environmental damage from hydraulic fracturing methods — used to tap oil and gas supplies — cheer on Mora County.
But there’s more to this story — nuances and tensions that are hard to uncover unless you were born and raised in this hard-scrabble, beautiful and resilient Northern New Mexico county.
Jordan Flaherty has produced a great video on the situation with the Bayou Corne sinkhole in Louisiana. Especially encouraging to me were the interview segments with Wilma Subra and Lt. General Russel Honore. I'm really glad the people of Bayou Corne and Grand Bayou have support from folks of this caliber as they seek justice for corporate destruction of their communities.
About the video: The Bayou Corne Sinkhole is a window to the devastation that the
petrochemical industry has caused in Southern Louisiana. Featuring
correspondent Michael Okwu, produced by Jordan Flaherty, filmed by
Fletcher Johnson, edited by Leila Garcia. Interviews with Lt. General
Russel Honore, WIlma Subra, Anne Rolfes, Mona Degas, Michael Schaff,
Sonny Cranch, Michael Courreges, and Carla Alleman. Aired on America
Tonight on September 12, 2013.
While several thousand square kilometers of land area have been subject to surface mining in the Central Appalachians, no reliable estimate exists for how much coal is produced per unit landscape disturbance. We provide this estimate using regional satellite-derived mine delineations and historical county-level coal production data for the period 1985–2005, and further relate the aerial extent of mining disturbance to stream impairment and loss of ecosystem carbon sequestration potential. To meet current US coal demands, an area the size of Washington DC would need to be mined every 81 days. A one-year supply of coal would result in ~2,300 km of stream impairment and a loss of ecosystem carbon sequestration capacity comparable to the global warming potential of >33,000 US homes. For the first time, the environmental impacts of surface coal mining can be directly scaled with coal production rates.
Citation: Lutz BD, Bernhardt ES, Schlesinger WH (2013) The Environmental Price Tag on a Ton of Mountaintop Removal Coal. PLoS ONE 8(9):
e73203.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0073203
UNITED NATURES – a United Nations of all species
Directed by Peter Charles Downey
Release June 1st 2013.
Some of the world’s foremost environmental activists and philosophers
gather in this visually beautiful documentary that for the first time
in a feature film sheds light upon the new Universal Declaration of the
Rights of Mother Earth, which has been presented by Bolivia to the other
UN for United Nations recognition. Featuring Dr. Vandana Shiva, David
Holmgren, Dr. Helen Caldicott, Starhawk, Polly Higgins, Cormac Cullinan,
Father Bob Maguire, John Seed and others.
“The outer environment is a reflection of our inner environments” to
quote John Seed which encapsulates the spiritual and philosophical
self-reflective style of the film, courageously exploring the hypocrite
accusation often leveled at environmentalists, and debating humanity’s
place within nature and as part of the earth’s ecosystem.
Permaculture is considered Australia’s greatest intellectual export
and with David Holmgren the co-originator of permaculture, his partner
Su Dennett and their son Oliver all enhancing the homemade grassroots
origins of the documentary. And with the positivity of permaculture
philosophy the film is sure to resonate with the millions of people
around the world today, who without a central leader or organization,
share a common united global vision of sustainability, harmony, care for
the planet and the evolution of a new indigenous future – not only as
earthlings, but universlings!
Thousands of citizens have gathered on the mall in DC today to ask President Obama to move forward on climate and energy policy. The activists involved represent different campaigns and strategies to protect the Earth and restore ecological balance. Today they all march as one.
For several months, First Nations citizens of Canada, Native American Nations and many non-Indigenous allies have worked to reaffirm unity of the human family and love for Mother Earth. Check out the video and other links below to explore the growing movement.
In an interesting analysis of the Romney-Ryan Energy Plan, Bill Chameides used the "word cloud" app. Word clouds can be a very revealing way to look at ideas.
Read the rest of Bill's analysis (which includes a link to a pdf of the Plan) at www.huffingtonpost.com
Before today, I was only familiar with the symbolism of the Sankofa bird through Cassandra Wilson's music. Before I heard Pandora Thomas and Zakiya Harris of Earthseed Consulting, I had not thought of it in terms of my interest in environmental justice. But they helped me connect the dots and it made total sense that resonated with my own discoveries. How does this apply to environmental justice work?
You can't start with An Inconvenient Truth to get people interested in climate change, for example, if people in the community have trouble securing basic life needs. But if you ask people if they know someone dealing with asthma, high blood pressure, diabetes, inadequate housing, poverty, or limited access to healthy food, says Zakiya, everybody in the room will raise their hand. Then you can help them connect the dots between those more familiar day to day challenges in one's own community and dirty coal plants, climate change, toxic chemicals and other stressors and conditions of the environment.
If the African-American, Latino and other communities of color seem to be underrepresented in the mainstream environmental movement, it's not because they are not interested in environmental issues. All of these communities have their own stories, their own culture's way of relating to Earth, their own expertise to do what's needed where they live.
Too often, says Zakiya, environmentalists wanting to help don't ask the right questions to reconnect communities with the expertise they already have. We don't start off by meeting them where they are before we try to help them move forward. What we need to do is listen to their stories and then frame things in a way that allows them to share and bring their own expertise back into the light.
According to Pandora and Zakiya, education and training is a key to their successful work with people, because when people learn new things, that naturally sparks interest to become involved in something. Among the projects that Pandora and Zakiya talked about were The Green Life program at San Quentin, and the City Slickers Farms project in West Oakland.
At the end of the discussion, Zakiya and Pandora each had a final thought to share (I was typing fast to get this, but I think this is close to what each one said with minimal paraphrasing):
Zakiya: We are witnessing the greatest paradigm shift any of us have ever seen in our lifetimes. We will need to be more inclusive and recognize that their [communities of color that have largely been excluded from the environmental movement in the past] expertise might look different. Drop the guilt, start with your own inner work...we're not here to heal the Earth, we are healing ourselves so we can stay on the planet.
Pandora: Get outside. There are so many aspects of the movement that have actually disconnected us from life. Immerse yourself in the outdoors no matter where you are and just listen.
You can listen to the discussion by registering at the Spring of Sustainability program page, however I think there is a time-limited replay window.
Here's a video of a TedEX talk -- The Vision of Sankofa -- by Pandora and Zakiya:
