Vanishing Places

Christina Conklin and Marina Psaros’s 2021 book Atlas of Disappearing Places: Our Coasts and Oceans in the Climate Crisis provides alarming evidence of worldwide impacts from climate change and potential mitigating solutions to the crisis. Twenty locations are described considering impacts from pollution, storms, rising temperatures, and rising sea levels. I really like the artistic maps using an ink on dried seaweed technique depicting featured locations along with descriptions of the status of the problems and necessary actions that are urgently needed.

For example, one location is the San Francisco Bay Area with industrial toxic waste sites along the shoreline leaking chemicals. I previously lived in the Bay Area working as an environmental scientist consultant so I’m very familiar with the locations and issues impacting the region. I worked on environmental site assessments to identify contamination and remedial actions to clean up sights next to the Bay including landfills and power stations containing a variety of cancer-causing pollutants including arsenic, chromium, petrochemicals, and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). At the time we did not test for emerging contaminants including over 5000 types of perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) known now as “forever” chemicals.

The authors provide a map showing locations of many of these toxic sites surrounding the Bay Area that are vulnerable to flooding and sea-levels rising.

A positive futuristic ‘road map’ of actions taken by the year 2050 to make a difference. Activists demand EPA overhaul the Toxic Substances Control Act requiring chemical companies prove product safety before being released into the environment and improve monitoring and enforcement.

Other locations described in the U.S. are Hawaii, Maine, Houston, New York, Puerto Rico, and Virginia. International locations include in the Arctic, Asia, Middle East, and Europe.

HOPE

Hope Jahren is a best selling author and professor of Geobiology at the University of Hawaii in Manoa. I found her book “The Story of More: How We Got To Climate Change And Where To Go From Here” recently at the Salem Middle School library. This young adult version published in 2021 offers a very clear summary of global environmental impacts mostly due to our consumer lifestyles and actions we can take to use less and share more.

For example, America’s exorbitant consumption of 20% world’s resources and historically producing the most carbon dioxide with only 4% of the world’s population indicates we have the largest incentives and levers to change our habits. One of the strongest ways to positively change our story is to consume less such as conserving energy. That’s been my focus for almost 10 years since this blog began! I highly recommend readers of all ages get a chance to consume and act on the advice presented in this hopeful contribution!

The Climate Diet

I found The Climate Diet on the new book shelf at the public library. The author Paul Greenberg offers, “50 simple ways to trim your carbon footprint.” The small concise book is an easy and fun read with many practical ideas that are easy to implement. Many of these ideas are well known but it’s worth being reminded and during this COVID pandemic many people are being forced to change their habits by staying more at home, eating less meat and diary, buying energy efficient appliances and electric vehicles, riding bicycles, telecommuting, gardening and planting more trees.

Some of the ideas that I had not heard about include how much money banks fund the fossil fuels industry. JP Morgan Chase held the misdirected distinction of being the top money lender providing almost $270 billion from 2016-2019. The top four banks (Chase, Wells Fargo, Citi, and Banks of America) loaned about $811 billion to the industry that created and exacerbates the climate crisis. As consumers we make choices on our banks, credit cards, investments, and insurance. This reminds me of a blog I wrote almost six months ago on ESG.

Another useful idea for new construction or when the air conditioner needs to be replaced is to use a heat pump. The author adds a resource section including advice on heat pumps from NRDC.

Here is what the publisher says:

“ABOUT THE CLIMATE DIET

A celebrated writer on food and sustainability offers fifty straightforward, impactful rules for climate-friendly living

“Some strong and rational suggestions for reducing your personal impact here–and when you’re eating smart, you’ll have the energy to do the movement building we need to change systems too! This book integrates the individual and the societal in a powerful way.”–Bill McKibben

We all understand just how dire the circumstances facing our planet are and that we all need to do our part to stem the tide of climate change. When we look in the mirror, we can admit that we desperately need to go on a climate diet. But the task of cutting down our carbon emissions feels overwhelming and the discipline required hard to summon. With The Climate Diet, award-winning food and environmental writer Paul Greenberg offers us the practical, accessible guide we all need. It contains fifty achievable steps we can take to live our daily lives in a way that’s friendlier to the planet–from what we eat, how we live at home, how we travel, and how we lobby businesses and elected officials to do the right thing. Chock-full of simple yet revelatory guidance, The Climate Diet empowers us to cast aside feelings of helplessness and start making positive changes for the good of our planet.”

How's Your Climate?

How’s the weather and climate where you live? Perhaps if you’re not a winter skier you may have not noticed and even enjoyed the lack of snow this winter. However, there is a price to be paid in the coming months.

The southwestern United States is currently experiencing an exceptional drought (D4) as shown by the US Drought Monitor which states, “With large sections of the central and southern parts of the West Region already in D3 to D4, not much more deterioration can be introduced, but a few small areas deteriorated enough to be reflected on the map, specifically north-central Utah (to D2), interior northeastern Utah (to D4), and southeasternmost New Mexico along the Mexican border (to D4).” Severe drought is D2 and extreme drought is D3. So obviously D4 is really bad and now our local water supplier is calling for voluntary water conservation.

So how’s the climate where you live and how severe, extreme, or exceptional might it become in your and your children’s lifetime? In many places we see a direct connection between less winter snowpack, faster spring melts, declining water supplies, larger summer wildfires, more air pollution and less farm production. This is the situation in the western US, much of Australia, Africa, and other arid regions. More severe weather makes climate change bad news for most everyone as we share global food distribution as one example.

Coastal flooding will become more severe affecting hundreds of millions of people. Here are some projections from a recent article in Nature. Other reports discuss affecting our ocean circulation and increased severe hurricanes or monsoons around the world.

Finally, the new American President only one week in office is taking bold action. Yesterday, he held a climate day signing executive orders that address responding to the climate crisis as described in the White House fact sheet. There will be a climate summit during Earth Day in April and UN climate meeting in Scotland in November. See BBC news about special envoy John Kerry, who negotiated the Paris agreement, says time is running out for taking action!

South India's Water Crisis

The southeastern coastal Indian town of Chennai is facing a massive drought and loss of water supply. Monsoon rains did not fill reservoirs last fall as normally happens. Hot and dry weather produced little rain for several months until yesterday. Rain is predicted for the next several days but it may not be enough to provide water to all estimated 10 million people living there.

The city of Chennai made most of the news but the Indian government is reporting a wider spread water crisis due to monsoons arriving very late leading to conflict and villages being abandoned.

This is a humanitarian crisis that needs to be addressed directly, such as by government actions to improve infrastructure, and indirectly by all of us to address what we can do to lessen impacts on our planet and carbon emissions. I highly recommend everyone read the book: Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming  and check out my two blogs on the topic:

9-17-17 100 Solutions for Reducing Carbon and Living in a Cleaner World

9-30-2017 100 Solutions for Reducing Carbon Continued

Specific to India and other parts of the world, ideas from the Drawdown book that could help manage the water crisis include:

* Let rice field dry out in mid-season to prevent methane buildup

* Allow cattle to roam in forests to reduce deforestation

* Plant multiple crops together to improve biodiversity and health of soil; for example - in tropical areas can plant coconut, banana, and ginger together

* Keep fields vegetated rather than exposing soil to reduce erosion and loss of the carbon sink

Other low tech ways include adding shade balls to reservoirs for reducing evaporation demonstrated in Los Angeles and high tech ways to conserve water including aquifer injection, storage and recovery.

Update 7/19/2019

On June 30, I posted a blog about a new discovery of potential drinking water found beneath the Atlantic Ocean! This could have implications for other similar coastal areas including in India that deserves exploration and provide additional drinking water sources to drought-stricken areas.

Yesterday, National Public Radio provided an update on the water crisis in Chennai as to many of the causes including ‘urbanization’ where water runoff is diverted, such as for industrial use, instead of naturally flowing into the reservoir and groundwater for people to drink.