Invasive species control: Where traditional environmentalism and climate activism align

Sometimes, when I think about climate change, I feel like there’s not much point to things like species preservation. If the rising temperature is going to kill most endangered species anyway, then what’s the point? At minimum, shouldn’t we invest all that money and effort into ending fossil fuel use?

The thing is, as I’ve mentioned before, we need those species. More accurately, we need functioning ecosystems, and those are made up of a diverse array of organisms. More than that, there’s ample evidence that in dealing with climate change and chemical pollution, actively working to support struggling ecosystems may help a great deal. Just as it would be dangerous to think we’re separate from the biosphere, it’s also dangerous to think that if we solve the fossil fuel problem, everything else will fall into place. In a world where we desperately need to reduce atmospheric CO2 levels, does it really matter if the plants are “local”, as long as they’re photosynthesizing and feeding insects?

Well, as it turns out, yes. It really does matter.

It is no secret that the ecological health of the planet is under serious threat. Scientists have previously identified invasive species, drought and an altered nitrogen cycle, driven in part by the widespread use of synthetic fertilizers, as among the most serious planetary challenges, with global climate change topping the list. Many have assumed that climate change would consistently amplify the negative effects of invasives—but, until now, there was no research to test that assumption.

“The good news,” says Bethany Bradley, professor of environmental conservation at UMass Amherst and the paper’s senior author, “is that the bad news isn’t quite as bad as we thought.”

To reach this conclusion, the team, led by Bianca Lopez, who conducted the research as part of her postdoctoral training at UMass Amherst, and Jenica Allen, professor of environmental conservation at UMass Amherst, conducted a meta-analysis of 95 previously published studies. From this earlier work, the researchers found 458 cases that reported on the ecological effects of invasive species combined with drought, nitrogen or global warming.

“What we found surprised us,” says Lopez. “There were a number of cases where the interactions made everything worse at the local scale, which is what we expected to see, but only about 25% of the time. The majority of the time, invasions and environmental change together didn’t make each other worse. Instead, the combined effects weren’t all that much more than the impact of invasive species alone.”

That surprised me, too, when I first read this, but have you ever seen what it looks like when an invasive plant takes over an area? Growing up, I spent a lot of time with my dad as he studied garlic mustard. It’s a biennial plant from the UK that can be used as an herb in cooking (hence the name), and is remarkably good at generating vast amounts of durable seeds. In the US, one plant setting seed is enough for them to start taking over. They spread so densely that nothing else can grow, and if you want to kill off a population, you have to uproot and remove the flowering plants every year for something like five years before you can be sure that there aren’t any seeds that will just sprout and undo all your work.

Another one I’ve worked with is honeysuckle – a woody shrub brought to the US from Asia as a decorative plant, if memory serves. Like the garlic mustard, when it takes over, it chokes out everything else, but the effect is more extreme and obvious. I’m not certain that it’s allelopathic, but it sure seems like it is, because nothing grows under them. Part of that is also because they put out leaves not just before trees do, but before spring wildflowers do. Normally, a forest will have a variety of plants growing in the understory, for a variety of reasons. In large parts of the U.S., honeysuckle forms such a dense layer that it’s like a green fog over the landscape in the early spring, and it’s just bare soil and dead leaves underneath that fog.

So really, it shouldn’t have surprised me. Invasive species cause major changes to the landscape when they take root, and it makes sense that an ecosystem that’s missing so many plant species will operate very differently from one that has a healthy level of diversity.

“What is so important about our findings,” says Allen, “is that they highlight the critical importance of managing invasive species at the local scale.” And the local scale is precisely the scale at which effective and swift action is most likely to happen.

In fact, as Allen points out, it already is. “Organizations like the Northeast Regional Invasive Species and Climate Change (RISCC) Network, which is a consortium of scientists and natural resource managers dedicated to sharing information and best practices about dealing with invasives, are already implementing a whole range of proactive practices to deal with invasive species.” And because confronting invasive species is comparatively cost-effective and doesn’t require future technological innovation, real progress can be made right now, especially by preventing the spread of invasive plants before they take over.

“Our work shows that dealing with invasive species now will make our ecosystems more climate resilient,” says Bradley.

And as we know, resilience is key. There’s a tendency among modern left-wing climate activists of dismissing the environmentalist movement of the 20th century. To a depressingly large degree, I think that’s valid. While the movement did have some real successes, it was rotten with white supremacy, colonialism, and outright lies about indigenous people “mismanaging” the land. I say it “was” that way, but it often still is. That said, the focus on native species and the control of invasive species continues to be something that they got right.

If you’re looking for something to do about climate change, and you’re not sure where to start, you could do worse than looking into local efforts to deal with invasive species, and joining with those. I’ll just say that if you’re new to this stuff, try to get some actual training before you start uprooting plants – sometimes it’s extremely hard to be certain what kind of thing you’re dealing with (that applies to animals and fungi as well), so look for efforts that are associated with a university of a nature center.

None of this stuff will lessen the need for revolutionary systemic change, but everything we can do to buy ourselves room to maneuver is worth doing. Helping your local ecosystem means helping your region with climate change, and if you do it with a group that’s already active, then it’s a way for you to network and organize.

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Sea life in this region survived a past warming event. Here’s how we can get the fuckers this time around.

I looked into this research because the headline was about how life in the Gulf of Mexico seemed to survive a warming-driven marine mass extinction 56 million years ago.

“Oh neat,” I thought. “Another bit of research showing is how we can help the biosphere weather the shitstorm we’ve created!”

And then I read the second sentence.

An ancient bout of global warming 56 million years ago that acidified oceans and wiped-out marine life had a milder effect in the Gulf of Mexico, where life was sheltered by the basin’s unique geology – according to research by the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG).

Published in the journal Marine and Petroleum Geology, the findings not only shed light on an ancient mass extinction, but could also help scientists determine how current climate change will affect marine life and aid in efforts to find deposits of oil and gas.

Oh. Oh yeah. We live in the Bad Timeline, where Irony came to die.

The research itself is interesting. Petroleum geology, as I understand it, is concerned with the most effective ways to find oil and gas deposits. This often means studying the stuff found when drilling, and then looking for those same things in other places to find new places to drill. This is one of those areas where the pyramid scheme of capitalism is creating what I would consider to be an ethical quandary for those scientists who’ve found profitable employment in service to corporate interests. We’re now at the point where an article is simultaneously studying how global warming caused a mass extinction in the past, while also working to accelerate the rate at which the planet is currently warming.

“Be sure to get the newest issue of Mass Murderers Monthly, where we study past and present mass murder, and use that knowledge to ensure the continuation of this noble tradition!”

“This event known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum or PETM is very important to understand because it’s pointing towards a very powerful, albeit brief, injection of carbon into the atmosphere that’s akin to what’s happening now,” he said.

Cunningham and his collaborators investigated the ancient period of global warming and its impact on marine life and chemistry by studying a group of mud, sand, and limestone deposits found across the Gulf.

They sifted through rock chips brought up during oil and gas drilling and found an abundance of microfossils from radiolarians – a type of plankton— that had surprisingly thrived in the Gulf during the ancient global warming. They concluded that a steady supply of river sediments and circulating ocean waters had helped radiolarians and other microorganisms survive even while Earth’s warming climate became more hostile to life.

“In a lot of places, the ocean was absolutely uninhabitable for anything,” said UTIG biostratigrapher Marcie Purkey Phillips. “But we just don’t seem to see as severe an effect in the Gulf of Mexico as has been seen elsewhere.”

How nice for the ancient Gulf of Mexico. This time the region is littered with abandoned oil wells that will do their part to make the Gulf more hostile to life in exciting new ways! Still, it’s useful to consider what made the Gulf something of a refuge from an ongoing mass extinction.

The reasons for that go back to geologic forces reshaping North America at the time. About 20 million years before the ancient global warming, the rise of the Rocky Mountains had redirected rivers into the northwest Gulf of Mexico – a tectonic shift known as the Laramide uplift – sending much of the continent’s rivers through what is now Texas and Louisiana into the Gulf’s deeper waters.

When global warming hit and North America became hotter and wetter, the rain-filled rivers fire-hosed nutrients and sediments into the basin, providing plenty of nutrients for phytoplankton and other food sources for the radiolarians.

The findings also confirm that the Gulf of Mexico remained connected to the Atlantic Ocean and the salinity of its waters never reached extremes – a question that until now had remained open. According to Phillips, the presence of radiolarians alone – which only thrive in nutrient-rich water that’s no saltier than seawater today – confirmed that the Gulf’s waters did not become too salty. Cunningham added that the organic content of sediments decreased farther from the coast, a sign that deep currents driven by the Atlantic Ocean were sweeping the basin floor.

Basically, the factors that saved life in the region 56 million years ago, will almost certainly not save them now. Not only have some of the rivers changed their flow (the Colorado used to empty into the Gulf of Mexico), but we also don’t have a particularly sustainable relationship with fresh water, and the Mississippi Delta dead zone created by agricultural runoff is pretty much the inverse of the life-giving effect the researchers attribute to ancient rivers.

As always, I’m glad to know more. This is knowledge we can use, if we ever get around to doing something about our looming extinction. I also think this is evidence that if we do really start changing things, it will likely start improving ecological resilience downstream (literally, in this case).

When we talk about climate action, there’s a lot of stuff considered low-hanging fruit. Improving energy efficiency and putting solar panels along highways and railways are a couple examples. I think that we should also be expecting to take an active role in ecosystem management, even if it’s only out of self-preservation. As much as possible, we should be dong things that will make future action easier, and that will buy more time for that action. If we can figure out a way to stop polluting and draining our rivers (like maybe by changing how we grow food?), the rivers will start doing some of our work for us.

Unfortunately, none of that will matter until we stop actively making the problem worse. It’s maddening that people are still forging ahead, looking for new places to drill, even as they’re learning about how the conditions that industry is currently creating caused a mass extinction. It honestly feels like I’m watching people who’ve been completely brainwashed, to the point where they’re not even capable of considering that they need to stop.

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Video: Humanity is not a parasite, and why we need social ecology

With fascism and climate change both looming large on the world stage, I think it’s important that we counter the narratives of ecofascism specifically. It’s not currently the dominant form of fascism, but the second fascists see environmentalism as a path to power, they will try to use it. Worse, the rhetoric to support a turn like that is already deeply embedded in society. Talk about overpopulation, humanity being “the real virus”, doom being inevitable, or (and I can’t imagine why this one has been used less in recent years), “we need a new plague”.

This is why a number of people have said that the only thing more dangerous than conservative denial and obstruction will be when conservatives decide to admit that climate change is real, and to impose their solutions to it. St Andrewism is someone I think you should keep an eye on in general, and this video is no exception. We need to get better at adapting our population centers to work with their surrounding ecosystems, not against them.

 

Have a tiny bit of good news about climate change; as a treat!

There’s a book I got years ago – I think it might have been a stocking stuffer – called The Miseries of Human Life. The book was originally printed in 1806, and dwells not on true horrors like war and poverty, but specifically on the minor miseries of our lives. Those things that seem to afflict us all, simply for the crime of being human. It’s things like hangnails, or food that slips out from under your knife when you try to cut it. It’s people conversing across you at a bar, or being suddenly overcome with sleepiness while listening to someone talk, even though you’re genuinely interested, and respect the speaker.

One such misery of modern life is the fact that every speck of good news about climate change seems to fall into the category of “well, it’s still bad, but it’s not as bad as we feared”. We never get unambiguously good news. I hope that will change in my lifetime, but as it stands, it’s a minor frustration, like a sock that keeps slipping down your heel as you walk.

So, there’s good news! It seems that methane emissions from melting permafrost aren’t as bad as we feared!

Permafrost runs like a frozen belt of soil and sediment around Earth’s northern arctic and sub-arctic tundra. As permafrost thaws, microorganisms are able to break down thousands of years-old accumulations of organic matter. This process releases a number of greenhouse gases. One of the most critical gasses is methane; the same gas emitted by cattle whenever they burp and fart.

Because of this, scientists and public agencies have long feared methane emissions from permafrost to rise in step with global temperatures. But, in some places, it turns out that methane emissions are lower than once presumed.

In a comprehensive new study by a collaborative from the University of Gothenburg, Ecole Polytechnique in France and the Center for Permafrost (CENPERM) at the University of Copenhagen, researchers measured the release of methane from two localities in Northern Sweden. Permafrost disappeared from one of the locations in the 1980’s, and 10-15 years later in the other.

The difference between the two areas shows what can happen as a landscape gradually adapts to the absence of permafrost. The results show that the first area to lose its permafrost now has methane emissions ten times less than in the other locality. This is due to gradual changes in drainage and the spread of new plant species. The study’s findings were recently published in the journal Global Change Biology.

“The study has shown that there isn’t necessarily a large burst of methane as might have been expected in the wake of a thaw. Indeed, in areas with sporadic permafrost, far less methane might be released than expected,” says Professor Bo Elberling of CENPERM (Center for Permafrost), at the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management.

This is good news. Methane doesn’t last as long in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, but it’s much more powerful as an insulator in our atmosphere, and the reason climate change is so dangerous is the speed at which it’s happening. Anything that means it’s moving slower than it could be is good for us. It means that we have just a little bit more time to act.

What’s even better is the reason why the researchers think there’s less methane production:

According to Professor Elberling, water drainage accounts for why far less methane was released than anticipated. As layers of permafrost a few meters deep begin to disappear, water in the soil above begins to drain.

“Permafrost acts somewhat like the bottom of a bathtub. When it melts, it’s as if the plug has been pulled, which allows water to seep through the now-thawed soil. Drainage allows for new plant species to establish themselves, plants that are better adapted for drier soil conditions. This is exactly what we’re seeing at these locations in Sweden,” he explains.

Grasses typical of very wet areas with sporadic permafrost have developed a straw-like system that transports oxygen from their stems down into to their roots. These straws also act as a conduit through which methane in the soil quickly find its way to the surface and thereafter into the atmosphere.

As the water disappears, so do these grasses. Gradually, they are replaced by new plant species, which, due to the dry soil conditions, do not need transport oxygen from the surface via their roots. The combination of more oxygen in the soil and reduced methane transport means that less methane is produced and that the methane that is produced can be better converted to CO2 within the soil.

“As grasses are outcompeted by new plants like dwarf shrubs, willows and birch, the transport mechanism disappears, allowing methane to escape quickly up through soil and into the atmosphere,” explains Bo Elberling.

The combination of dry soil and new plant growth also creates more favorable conditions for soil bacteria that help break methane down.

Like I said – less methane is good even if it’s just being replaced by CO2. Ready for the even better news? There doesn’t seem to be a big increase in CO2 either.

“When methane can no longer escape through the straws, soil bacteria have more time to break it down and convert it into CO2,” Bo Elberling elaborates.

As a result, one can imagine that as microorganisms reduce methane emissions, the process will lead to more CO2 being released. Yet, no significant increase in CO2 emissions was observed by the researchers in their study. This is interpreted as being the result of the CO2 balance, which is more heavily determined by plant roots than the CO2 released from the microorganisms that break down methane. Crucially, even though methane ends up as CO2, it is considered less critical in climate change context as methane is at least 25 more potent greenhouse gas as compared to CO2.

The article goes on to talk about the role precipitation could play in affecting this – more water probably means more methane – but I find this genuinely encouraging. It’s another indication that if we can get our act together, the ecosystems around us will probably help us in our efforts to stabilize the climate. This is also information that we could put to use in trying to mitigate permafrost emissions in other areas, as we look to engaging in stewardship of a rapidly changing planet.

It’s worth remembering, sometimes, that the indifference of our universe means that sometimes things work out in our favor in ways we didn’t expect. Obviously that’s no guarantee of a good outcome, but it does give me more motivation to do what I can now, so that as those bits of good luck come our way, we’re better able to make use of them.

If you like the content of this blog, please share it around. If you like the blog and you have the means, please consider joining my lovely patrons in paying for the work that goes into it. Due to my immigration status, I’m currently prohibited from conventional wage labor, so for the next couple years at least this is going to be my only source of income. You can sign up for as little as $1 per month (though more is obviously welcome), to help us make ends meet – every little bit counts!

New research shows climate action will save lives in the short term. Our leaders will not care.

A new study has found that decarbonizing the U.S. energy system would save tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars every year, and this will do nothing to make those in power move any faster.

A new study adds to the case for urgent decarbonization of the U.S. energy system, finding that slashing air pollution emissions from energy-related sources would bring near-term public health gains including preventing over 50,000 premature deaths and save $608 billion in associated benefits annually.

I’m going to make a brief aside here. At this point I have no faith that anyone with the power to make a difference on climate change will actually do so any time soon. Those empowered by our system have made it clear, through decades of inaction, that they have no interest in doing anything to prevent that system from destroying us all.

It’s also worth noting that the ideas of saving lives and money don’t actually hold any value to the people running our world. That number of premature deaths isn’t far off from the number killed by the US for-profit healthcare system, but because that system makes a few people very rich, it’s protected by both major parties. It doesn’t matter that a universal system would save money and lives, because that’s not the point. Likewise, the folks running the U.S. government are perfectly fine pouring trillions of dollars into endless war all over the planet. They do not care about lives lost or money wasted, as long as they get some personal benefit in the process.

That said, I like research like this. I think this kind of thing is useful in making the case that there are far fewer downsides to climate action than some would have us believe. It’s also useful for making the case that those who claim to care about life, money, or climate change are just lying for votes, for as long as they’re not doing everything they can for real climate action. When it’s clear that the truth is not enough to move the powerful to action, we need to consider how research like this can be used.

Published Monday in the journal GeoHealth, the analysis by Mailloux and fellow UW-Madison researchers focuses on emissions of fine particulate matter, referred to as PM2.5, and of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides from the electric power, transportation, building, and industrial sectors.

Those sectors account for 90% of U.S. CO2-equivalent greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the paper notes. The bulk of the emissions from the sectors comes from fossil fuel use, though the study points to “a substantial portion” of particulate pollution stemming from wood and bark burning and “a small portion” resulting from non-combustion sources.

“Many of the same activities and processes that emit planet-warming GHGs also release health-harming air pollutant emissions; the current air quality-related health burden associated with fossil fuels is substantial,” the analysis states.

The study also notes that “the current pace of decarbonization in the U.S. is still incompatible with a world in which global warming is limited to 1.5°C or 2°C above pre-industrial levels,” and that “deep and rapid cuts in GHG emissions are needed in all energy-related sectors—including electric power, transportation, buildings, and industry—if states and the country as a whole are to achieve reductions consistent with avoiding the worst impacts of climate change.”

The researchers measured the potential benefits of the removal of the air pollution, ranging from all-cause mortality to non-fatal heart attacks and respiratory-related hospital admissions, using the Environmental Protection Agency’s CO-Benefits Risk Assessment tool.

They also looked at the impacts of both U.S.-wide and regional action on the reductions; they found that nationwide actions delivered the biggest benefits, though “all regions can prevent hundreds or thousands of deaths by eliminating energy-related emissions sources within the region, which shows the local benefits of local action to mitigate air quality issues.”

According to the analysis, the pollution reductions would save 53,200 premature deaths and provide $608 billion in annual benefits. The avoided deaths account for 98% of the monetary benefits. But apart from avoidance of human lives lost, the particulate matter reductions offer further benefits including up to 25,600 avoided non-fatal heart attacks, as well as preventing 5,000 asthma-related emergency room visits and avoiding 3.68 million days of work lost.

I know the tone of this post has been gloomy. It might be possible for me to not be consumed by frustration at the state of things, but if so, I’ve yet to figure out how. That said, it is good to know that the right choice will have benefits beyond “merely” keeping the planet hospitable to human life. As much as I’m afraid I’ll be saying this until I die of old age, it’s good that the only real obstacles to a better world are political. It means that we know we can do things differently, and make a better world in the process.

I think it’s also worth pointing out that the lives saved by taking these measures would be disproportionately poor and non-white. I’m in favor of real, targeted reparations, but the reality is that most actions we take to benefit all of humanity will benefit all humanity, if we actually do the work right. It should come as no surprise that those people most subjected to the ravages of pollution are also those with the least social and political power.

This study will do no more to move our so-called leaders than have the studies that came before it, but as with those prior studies, it makes it clear that we need to take matters into our own hands. Those who we’ve foolishly empowered to solve problems for us will not act until it is far too late. Sometimes that knowledge makes me despair, but then I remember that if we can figure out how to actually take the steps, a better world is within reach.

If you like the content of this blog, please share it around. If you like the blog and you have the means, please consider joining my lovely patrons in paying for the work that goes into it. Due to my immigration status, I’m currently prohibited from conventional wage labor, so for the next couple years at least this is going to be my only source of income. You can sign up for as little as $1 per month (though more is obviously welcome), to help us make ends meet – every little bit counts!

A video on part of the ADHD experience

I think it’s pretty common, in any area of activism or advocacy, to get passionate about something before you fully understand it. We look back on things we did years ago, and while we understand our reasoning at the time, we also can see how we’d do that differently today. Writing that sentence out, I think it probably applies to most aspects of life. It’s part of what we are, and it always will be, no matter how much we cringe at some of our memories. I think that kind of reflection is also an important part of who and what we are, and we live in a world that doesn’t often allow us to have time for it.

There are some things in this video that don’t fit my life one to one (I think that’s part of why I haven’t seen more than one or two videos from this channel, but some of this hits hard.

That feeling she describes – like I never get to actually have time off, because I haven’t “earned” it. That’s part of what made my salaried work at TERC so difficult towards the end – it wasn’t that I was doing worse or less work than others necessarily, it’s that the way I did it meant that I never really got time off, and no matter how many different techniques I tried to keep my brain in line, they’d only work for a short time, because they became a sort of hobby in themselves, until they just stopped working.

I’m working on a new novel now, in addition to this blog and my other fiction projects, and it’s going well. I’ve been able to maintain daily posting and work on fiction projects, all without burning out. That didn’t just happen out of nowhere – it happened when I managed to convince myself that time spent writing really, truly counted as “work”. I don’t know if I’ll be able to make ends meet with this. I am incredibly lucky in that I have a couple years in which there are almost no external forces determining my schedule, and while it took me a while to get into it, I’m finally able to write. I finally have the time and the energy to do the work that I want  to do, at my own pace. If I’m honest, the thought of having to go back to the way things were is horrifying. For all the good things in my life, it often didn’t feel like living. It felt like I was waiting to get my shit together, and then my life would start.

It felt that way all through my 20s, and most of the way through my 30s, even when I had a good job, a decent income, and good benefits. I got a brief taste of this life back in Somerville, when I took a little time off after leaving TERC, but I also had the threat of the U.S. healthcare system hovering over me. A big part of why I care so much about building a world where people get free time to themselves by default, is that that seems like the only way that people will ever be able to pursue happiness.

 

Green spaces are good for your brain.

I like greenery. I like the idea of cities that are covered in plant life, for a whole host of reasons, many of which I’ve gone into before. It’s fair to say that I’m already pretty convinced that this is a good idea, but now another piece of evidence has come along:

Published in the journal JAMA Network Open, the study found that exposure to greenspace around one’s home and surrounding neighborhood could improve processing speed and attention, as well as boost overall cognitive function. The results also showed that lowered depression may help explain the association between greenspace and cognition, bolstering previous research that has linked exposure to parks, community gardens, and other greenery with improved mental health.

“Some of the primary ways that nature may improve health is by helping people recover from psychological stress and by encouraging people to be outside socializing with friends, both of which boost mental health,” says study lead author Marcia Pescador Jimenez, an assistant professor of epidemiology. “This study is among the few to provide evidence that greenspace may benefit cognitive function in older ages. Our findings suggest that greenspace should be investigated as a potential population-level approach to improve cognitive function.”

For the study, Pescador Jimenez and colleagues from SPH, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and Rush Medical College estimated residential greenspace with a satellite image-based metric called the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). They measured psychomotor speed, attention, learning, and working memory among 13,594 women aged 61 on average and primarily White, from 2014 to 2016. The women were participants in the Nurses’ Health Study II, the second of three studies that are among the largest investigations into the risk factors for chronic diseases among US women.

Adjusting for age, race, and individual and neighborhood socioeconomic status, the researchers found that greenspace exposure was associated with psychomotor speed and attention, but not learning or working memory.

In addition to depression, the researchers also examined the potential roles of air pollution and physical activity in explaining the association between greenspace and cognitive function, and they were surprised to only find evidence of depression as a mediating factor.

“We theorize that depression might be an important mechanism through which green space may slow down cognitive decline, particularly among women, but our research is ongoing to better understand these mechanisms,” Pescador Jimenez says. “Based on these results, clinicians and public health authorities should consider green space exposure as a potential factor to reduce depression, and thus, boost cognition. Policymakers and urban planners should focus on adding more green space in everyday life to improve cognitive function.”

While the study shows evidence of this association, the greenspace metric that the researchers used to measure greenspace exposure does not differentiate between specific types of vegetation. In a new project funded by The National Institute on Aging, Pescador Jimenez will apply deep learning algorithms to Google Street View images to better understand which specific elements of greenery, such as trees or grass, could be the driving factors for health.

The researchers also hope that their study is replicated among other racial/ethnic populations and assesses associations with cognitive decline over longer periods of time.

“The distribution of green spaces in cities is not uniform,” says Pescador Jimenez. “Increasing everyday access to vegetation across vulnerable groups in urban cities is a crucial next step to achieve health equity.”

That last point is key. Not only is distribution of green spaces not uniform, but there’s also almost always a strong racial element in determining the healthiness of one’s surroundings. If you want more on that, Mano Singham did a good writeup to go with John Oliver’s video on environmental racism in the United States. Unfortunately the racial and economic microcosms we often see in my home country are often replicated at a global scale. This is part of why I focus so much on politics – if we can’t change how humanity is run, then even if we manage to survive climate change, we’re going to keep running ourselves into crisis after needless crisis. Among other things, I think that means improving the quality of life of those at the bottom, and uplifting the rest of us as they catch up, and resources allow. Improving where people live should be a big part of that.

Morbid Monday

Some days it’s all just too much, you know?

We’ve got so much information coming at us, and all of it seems to point to looming disaster. It feels like every year the odds get better that I’ll be one of the billions who might be killed by climate change and its effects in my lifetime. The labor action we’ve been seeing in the U.S. is encouraging, but at the same time, corporate/capitalist power seems to be greater than it’s ever been, and perfectly willing to destroy us all in the name of endless growth.

And yet we’re forced to keep pretending that everything’s normal, because that’s what the folks at the top want to believe. We have to keep paying rent, keep paying taxes to governments that refuse to do anything meaningful about the crisis, keep wasting our lives working for the profit of others.

And apparently we have to have war. It’s not enough that we’re destroying the foundations of our own existence, we also have to have bloodthirsty assholes always looking for the next war, apparently delighted that our system seems to depend on an endless market for weapons.

I’d say it’s never-ending, except that it seems to be driving us towards what looks to be a pretty conclusive – and unpleasant – finale. For all we have the material and intellectual resources we need to solve the technical aspects of this crisis, we don’t seem particularly close to resolving the political obstacles. We’re experiencing a convergence of crises, all of which seem to be the result of problems being put off for later. The inherent unsustainability of capitalism, economic and social injustice, the proliferation of horrific weapons, the relentless rise in pollution even in our own bodies, the destruction of ecosystems, the deliberate waste of resources, the warming climate – the list goes on, and on, and on.

But everything’s normal. Everyone has to keep paying someone richer than them for the right to live, to keep wealth and power flowing upwards to the top of this global pyramid scheme we’ve all been forced to join.

Sometimes it all just feels pointless. We’re all condemned, and we’re just going through the motions until the ax falls.

Of course, that feeling in itself is one of the lies we’re told – that all of this is just the forces of nature taking us where they will, rather than the result of deliberate policy, and of wars fought around the world to set us on this path. But the people who benefit the most from a population swamped in despair or apathy just have so much power, and so much willingness to use that power to prevent any change.

Humanity has seen massive political shifts in the past, and that’s cause for hope in itself, but the odds do not seem to be in our favor.

Obviously I’m not giving up, I just wanted to vent a little.

I also wanted to say that I’m not sure what the next couple weeks are going to look like for this blog. It looks like Raksha has reached the point where I have to schedule her death. She’s been a constant part of my life for almost 15 years, and I’m having some trouble coping. I hope you’ll all bear with me.

I think when we’re in the middle of bad times, it’s very easy to feel as though that’s how things will be for ever. Pessimism feels safer, and based on how we’ve been trained to see the world, it often feels more “rational” – If you always expect the worst, all your surprises will be pleasant wants, and all that.

But that’s an illusion that catches us. It’s like deciding to never have a pet, because you will inevitably mourn their passing. It’s like avoiding romance or friendship, because letting people into your life brings the possibility of pain.

It’s a path to never truly enjoying anything, lest the loss of that thing lead to pain. It’s not easy to accept that we’re going to hurt. It’s not easy to accept that we’re going to die, or that those we love will die, or will decide they will no longer be part of our lives.

But that risk is also what opens us up to those experiences that make it all worth it, from watching a puppy bounce through the tall grass, to watching an old dog gallop a couple paces for the joy of it, before returning to her normal slow shuffle.

There may come a time for each of us, when the pain is more than we can bear, but it’s worth remembering that that’s almost never today, and it’s usually not tomorrow either.

And there’s still a lot we can do to make life better for those around us.

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Weep for Cassandra if you must, but heed her warnings, for humanity’s sake

It’s April of 2022. We’ve had a couple years of disruption, primarily caused by the collision of late capitalism and SARS-CoV-2, which itself followed a couple years of unrest in the United States, and the growing realization that fascism was still a real threat. And in the background of all of this, we’ve had a steady march of disasters fueled by global warming, and scientific reports quantifying exactly how screwed we are.

Small wonder, then, that superstition seems to be on the rise. Every headline about black goo in a sarcophagus, or climate change revealing ancient artifacts was met with a lot of joking-not-joking about curses, or Pandora’s Box.

For myself, I have to wonder if some early climate scientist broke an indecent agreement with Apollo, so that all future climate scientists would be cursed to speak the truth about the growing threat of climate change, and to be disbelieved or dismissed by everyone with the power to do anything about it. Worse, an entire industry has formed around attacking and discrediting climate scientists. If you want to get a taste of that frustration, you can check out things like The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, by Michael E. Mann.

I once heard someone say that the more you learn about nuclear power, the less it scares you, but the more you learn about climate change, the more it scares you. Imagine, then, the life of someone whose full time job is monitoring this unfolding catastrophe, and reporting on it to what often seems like an indifferent world.

The reality, of course, is that most of humanity is not indifferent. Most of us care very much about what’s happening, we just don’t currently have the power to change anything. That’s something we should be working on, but in the meantime, at least part of our efforts do need to go towards convincing the ruling class to at least stop accelerating towards the proverbial cliff. Climate scientists have been making that case for decades now, and it has been a thankless task.

Among the many attacks levied against them, one that always irked me especially was the claim that climate scientists were “getting political” by describing the implications of their research, and by urging action. It is so obviously insincere, and yet it has hung around. I think part of its longevity is the fact that it does double duty. It casts doubt on the science, and it communicates to the audience that “being political” is an inherently bad thing. That’s dangerous, of course, because if we’re going to have any hope of a better world, we must get political , and at a scale the world has never seen before.

I am nowhere close to being alone in making the Cassandra comparison, and unfortunately it seems to be just as unpleasant as you’d think. Peter Kalmus, a climate scientist, published this letter in association with a protest carried out by him and his colleagues:

I’m a climate scientist and a desperate father. How can I plead any harder? What will it take? What can my colleagues and I do to stop this catastrophe unfolding now all around us with such excruciating clarity?

On Wednesday, I risked arrest by locking myself to an entrance to the JP Morgan Chase building in downtown Los Angeles with colleagues and supporters. Our action in LA is part of an international campaign organized by a loosely knit group of concerned scientists called Scientist Rebellion, involving more than 1,200 scientists in 26 countries and supported by local climate groups. Our day of action follows the IPCC Working Group 3 report released Monday, which details the harrowing gap between where society is heading and where we need to go. Our movement is growing fast.

We chose JP Morgan Chase because out of all the investment banks in the world, JP Morgan Chase funds the most new fossil fuel projects. As the new IPCC report explains, emissions from current and planned fossil energy infrastructure are already more than twice the amount that would push the planet over 1.5°C of global heating, a level of heating that will bring much more intense heat, fire, storms, flooding, and drought than the present 1.2°C.

Even limiting heating to below 2°C, a level of heating that in my opinion could threaten civilization as we know it, would require emissions to peak before 2025. As UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in the press conference on Monday: “Investing in new fossil fuel infrastructure is moral and economic madness.” And yet, this is precisely what President Biden, most other world leaders, and major banks are doing. It’s no exaggeration to say that Chase and other banks are contributing to murder and neocide through their fossil fuel finance.

Earth breakdown is much worse than most people realize. The science indicates that as fossil fuels continue to heat our planet, everything we love is at risk. For me, one of the most horrific aspects of all this is the juxtaposition of present-day and near-future climate disasters with the “business as usual” occurring all around me. It’s so surreal that I often find myself reviewing the science to make sure it’s really happening, a sort of scientific nightmare arm-pinch. Yes, it’s really happening.
If everyone could see what I see coming, society would switch into climate emergency mode and end fossil fuels in just a few years.

I hate being the Cassandra. I’d rather just be with my family and do science. But I feel morally compelled to sound the alarm. By the time I switched from astrophysics into Earth science in 2012, I’d realized that facts alone were not persuading world leaders to take action. So I explored other ways to create social change, all the while becoming increasingly concerned. I joined Citizens’ Climate Lobby. I reduced my own emissions by 90% and wrote a book about how this turned out to be satisfying, fun, and connecting. I gave up flying, started a website to help encourage others, and organized colleagues to pressure the American Geophysical Union to reduce academic flying. I helped organize FridaysForFuture in the US. I co-founded a popular climate app and started the first ad agency for the Earth. I spoke at climate rallies, city council meetings, and local libraries and churches. I wrote article after article, open letter after open letter. I gave hundreds of interviews, always with authenticity, solid facts, and an openness to showing vulnerability. I’ve encouraged and supported countless climate activists and young people behind the scenes. And this was all on my personal time and at no small risk to my scientific career.

Nothing has worked. It’s now the eleventh hour and I feel terrified for my kids, and terrified for humanity. I feel deep grief over the loss of forests and corals and diminishing biodiversity. But I’ll keep fighting as hard as I can for this Earth, no matter how bad it gets, because it can always get worse. And it will continue to get worse until we end the fossil fuel industry and the exponential quest for ever more profit at the expense of everything else. There is no way to fool physics.

Martin Luther King Jr said, “He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.” Out of necessity, and after exhaustive efforts, I’ve joined the ranks of those who selflessly risk their freedom and put their bodies on the line for the Earth, despite ridicule from the ignorant and punishment from a colonizing legal system designed to protect the planet-killing interests of the rich. It’s time we all join them. The feeling of solidarity is a wonderful balm.

As for the climate scientists? We’ve been trying to tell you this whole time.

This was one part of a multinational protest by over 1,000 climate scientists, aimed specifically at the big banks that are funding – and profiting from – our destruction. The notion that scientists ought to be non-political has always been a lie that could only ever benefit the powerful. In a world that seems to only value the sensational, we need acts of civil disobedience like this, and we need to build the capacity to wield collective power for the collective good. These scientists are in the right when they aim for the heart of our capitalist system, and while I really, really want to be wrong about this, I have little hope that our corporate overlords will suddenly decide to do the right thing.

One thing I think we should be doing, beyond organizing and protesting, is finding ways to bring up climate change with politicians and their representatives. Not just climate change, but the ways in which our system – working as it was designed – is making it profitable to turn this planet into a sweltering hellscape. Make it impossible for them to ignore, and when they respond with talking points, challenge those, and the ones that come after them. Individually, we’re limited in how much time and energy we can spend on this. Anyone with a sense of perspective realizes that the mightiest effort of one person is a drop in the bucket, compared to the size of the problem. If we can get enough of us moving in the same direction, those drops can become a relentless storm, and if we can’t force our rulers to at least go with the flow, then maybe we can wash them away.

Thanks to StevoR for requesting the topic.

If you like the content of this blog, please share it around. If you like the blog and you have the means, please consider joining my lovely patrons in paying for the work that goes into this. Due to my immigration status, I’m currently prohibited from conventional wage labor, so for the next couple years at least this is going to be my only source of income. You can sign up for as little as $1 per month (though more is obviously welcome), to help us make ends meet – every little bit counts!

What’s with all those big green and brown things that sway in the wind? Are they actually worth anything?

The way our society determines value is deeply flawed. It’s not that there’s no relationship between what things cost, and the resources expended to produce them, but a great many things are vastly over-valued, and many other things – including most life forms on the planet – are vastly under-valued. Those flaws are compounded by the fact that we seem to be increasingly encouraged to view every aspect of our lives through the lens of capitalism, in which things are generally deemed to have no value unless it’s proven someone will pay money for them. Unfortunately, that’s the world we’re still stuck in, so there’s probably some merit to calculating the economic value of life. When it comes to wildlife, the ways in which it benefits humanity are called “ecosystem services“, as part of what I view as a failed attempt to get capitalism to assign any value to a habitable environment. Quantifying their value to us may not do much to change policy or stop environmental destruction, but it does put things in terms to which we’re accustomed:

Trees sequester and store greenhouse gasses, filter air pollutants, provide wood, food, and other products, among other benefits. However, the service value of 400 individual tree species and tree lineages growing in forests and plantations in the contiguous U.S. was not previously known. To determine the ecosystem services value of U.S. trees, researchers mapped the value of trees and calculated the economic contributions to these services of every US tree species and lineage. They measured the net value of five tree-related ecosystem services by calculating the value of benefits provided, minus the direct costs incurred to produce these services. The five key ecosystem services included climate regulating services from carbon storage, filtration of particulate matter from the air that harms human health, and provisioning services from production of wood products, food crops, and Christmas trees.

The researchers found that the value of these five ecosystem services generated by trees totaled $114 billion annually. Carbon storage in tree biomass comprised 51% of the net annual value, while preventing human health damages via air quality regulation, contributed to 37% of the annual value. The remaining 12% of the net annual value came from provisioning services. Trees in the pine and oak families were the most valuable, generating $25.4 billion and $22.3 billion in annual net benefits, respectively. The study had several limitations that likely contributed to an undervaluing of ecosystem services since the researchers did not have access to data for many ecosystem services such as erosion control, flood regulation, and shade-related energy savings. They also did not evaluate disservices of trees. Future studies may provide more accurate estimates of the monetary value of these benefits.

According to the authors, “This study shows that the ‘hidden’ value of trees — the nonmarket value from carbon storage and air pollution filtration — far exceeds their commercial value. Sustaining the value of trees requires intentional management of forests and trees in the face of myriad and simultaneous global change threats. Our study provides information and an approach that can contribute to precision forestry practices and ecosystem management.”

Cavender-Bares adds, “The fact that tree lineages have evolved to inhabit different ecological niches across the continent is important for sustaining the ecosystem services that we depend on for our life support systems. These benefits from trees, however, are increasingly at risk. Our research team found that climate change threatens nearly 90 percent of tree species, while pests and pathogens put 40 percent of the combined weight of all U.S. trees at risk. We also found that the species and lineages of greatest ecosystem service value are the most at risk from pests and pathogens, climate change, and increasing fire exposure.”

One of the most irksome parts of this environmental collapse is that we know what’s happening, why it’s happening, and how to stop it. That’s not even a general “we know what’s happening”. We have thousands of scientists all over the world studying everything. That’s why we’re able to do things like putting a dollar value to trees, or wetlands. Day after day, week after week we hear the relentless accounting of everything that’s going on around us, and yet we still have to try to dress up reality with dollar signs and big numbers in a hopeless effort to get the tiny-minded ghouls who run the world to pay attention to what’s being lost.

It’s draining. But hey – at least we know roughly what trees are worth!