A look at the Violence against Women Act: How Hegemonic Masculinity and Patriarchy Undermine Women

“It is not the case that a man who is silent says nothing. Anonymous.” (Basso, 1970)

In the U.S. today, hegemonic masculinity, in which patriarchy is dominant over all other forms of masculinity, (Leatherman, 2005) creates a situation where policies regarding women’s issues are more descriptive than substantive (Borelli, 2005). Thus, progress on issues such as domestic violence, welfare reform, abortion rights and trafficking is slow; while policies meant to address these issues are less effective. While we’ve made progress since the 1970s regarding women’s issues, ideologies regarding women, entrenched within cultures for thousands of years, still prevent issues such as domestic violence from being fully addressed, despite such feminist tactics as gendering policy debates and other efforts. (McBride, 2005)

Just as McBride, Leatherman and Borelli looked at women’s issues and policy from a gendered viewpoint, I wanted to use their work and the work of others, to look at domestic violence related policy debates from a gendered viewpoint to determine whether gender in government and politics had created a situation where “women’s under-representation in political office” had impacted public policy regarding domestic violence. I believe this sheds light on why violence against women still exists, despite landmark legislation like the VAWA, due to ideologies that drive hegemonic masculinity.

In their 2012 report, Men Rule, The Continued Under-Representation of Women in U.S. Politics, Jennifer L. Lawless and Richard L. Fox state: “women’s under-representation in American politics raises grave concerns regarding democratic legitimacy and fundamental issues of political representation.” (p. 2) Because domestic violence still occurs on the scale that it does, it is an issue that illustrates the consequences of women’s under-representation in politics. As domestic violence is related to an ideology of power and control, it is directly related to hegemonic masculinity.

            To support my thesis, I first describe how the abusive mind works and how it is related to Leatherman’s description of hegemonic masculinity on the foreign policy front. Next, I discuss the long history of attitudes which have kept women subordinated and under the control of men, to show why it has been only within the past 40 years that domestic violence has been addressed. I review the work of such experts as Lundy Bancroft, Faith Lutze, Nancy Meyer-Emerick, Leatherman, McBride, Borelli and even Christine Pizan.

 

Introduction

When the Violence against Women Act 2011 (VAWA – S.1925) recently came up for renewal, it faced considerable opposition. For some, the proposed bill did not do enough to help women and for others it extended law enforcement too far, such in tribal cases, in ways that were unprecedented. Others felt that laws already in place prohibiting violence were enough to protect women. (Allen, 2012) Originally passed in 1994, VAWA set out to create sweeping measures to address and to end domestic violence; it was the first national legislation to criminalize domestic violence. Augmenting VAWA, in 2009 the President signed the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010, an act intended to decrease violence against women in Native American communities. (Rosenthall, 2010) However, both the current immensity and prevalence of domestic violence, and the fact that these two acts have only existed since 1994 and 2010 reveal a deep underlying sociocultural problem that will require much work into the future.

When it was first proposed, VAWA did not pass easily. According to Nancy Meyer-Emerick, VAWA “was the result of four years of intense lobbying, ultimately by more than a thousand organizations.” (2001, p. 4) Yet, while VAWA is considered by many to be groundbreaking legislation, it still does not address “the subtle and complex nature of the terrorization of women by prohibiting verbal intimidation, coercion, and unwanted physical contact,” as the laws addressing the “gendered form of abuse (known as) sexual harassment” do. (Meyer-Emerick, 2001, p. 5) Essentially, it is for reasons like this that VAWA is more descriptive than substantive such that its reauthorization is facing opposition. For example, Charlotte Allen, of Women against VAWA Excess, states that one key flaw is that “the reauthorization bill … doesn’t provide …. the most important thing female victims of crime need: the ability for prosecutors to prove their cases in court via physical and forensic evidence.” For example, Allen believes the bill needs to provide a provision for rape kits (Allen, 2002).

 

How hegemonic masculinity is similar to the abusive mind

To see how policies regarding violence against women are impacted by hegemonic masculinity, it helps to understand the underlying attitudes that operate in the abusive male in relation to Leatherman’s definition of hegemonic masculinity. Hegemony by definition is dominance by one group over another. It is important to note that there are various forms of masculinity, but it is the dominant form (in the U.S., hegemonic masculinity) that “functions at the level of the whole society and shores up male power and advantage,” by not only subordinating females, but also subordinating other masculinities. (Leatherman, 2005) As Borelli states, since policy debates are addressed from the dominant frame, it is possible to see that if the dominant frame is one of hegemonic masculinity (aggressive patriarchy) women’s issues hardly stand a chance in the public policy realm.

Lundy Bancroft, former director of Emerge, the nation’s first program for abusive men, has worked with angry and abusive men for more than twenty years. From this work, Bancroft boils the issue of violence against women down to an abusive mentality that is strikingly similar to Leatherman’s description of hegemonic masculinity. Bancroft states that despite the many myths which try to pin reasons for men’s abusiveness on everything from a bad childhood to an alcohol problem, the reality is that abusive men have an abusive mentality: they are controlling, they feel entitled, and they consider themselves superior to women. (Bancroft, 2002, pp. 49-75.) The similarities between Leatherman’s descriptions of the U.S. in regards to its relationships with the world are strikingly similar to the kind of relationship Bancroft describes that an abusive man has with his partner, in situations of domestic violence.

To demonstrate her theory, Leatherman looked at the war in Iraq to show how hegemonic masculinity impacted foreign policy there. Leatherman states “the U.S. policy of hegemonic masculinity puts the United Nations in a subordinate, feminized position, discrediting its efforts to preserve a space for consensus building.” (Leatherman, 2005) In this way, Leatherman sees the relationship between the U.S. and other countries as a gendered relationship, which she states “like all international relationships, are about power and resistance.” (Leatherman, 2005)

The kind of power and control described in Leatherman’s assessment of the “arrogance” exercised by the United States and its “aim of imposing its own will on the world while stripping the United Nations of its role and legitimacy in international affairs,” is the same kind of power and control that strips women of self, in situations of violence against women. If the U.S. operates from this position of hegemonic masculinity, “an aggressive, nationalist orientation to foreign policy…that prioritizes national interest, aggrandizement and domination over the pursuit of common interests and the global public good,” it follows that policies regarding women, such as the VAWA, will be framed and addressed in the same manners we see in foreign policy, with similar results.

Domination is at the core of both hegemonic masculinity and domestic violence. The same ideologies which support hegemonic masculinity also create the context for the widespread prevalence of violence against women in the home, as well as the cultural and societal structures which continue to allow it. These ideologies also create the dynamics of government such that public policy that addresses violence against women still remains more descriptive than substantive, as Dorothy McBride stated with regards to her analysis of the “three policy debates in Congress: welfare reform, abortion regulation and trafficking.” (McBride, 2005) After all, the same thought processes and ideologies that drive government and foreign policies and that create Leatherman’s hegemonic masculinity don’t just suddenly appear on the foreign policy level or within any part of government. They make their way into such policy due to a root cause, something that lies much deeper in the human psyche.

 

Long history of male dominance sustains violence against women

In fact, more than six centuries ago, Christine de Pizan described what could be the underlying cause for domestic violence and government’s failure to properly address it when she stated: “why do so many men, in so many places and times, fear and rail against women, who are, after all, at least physically, the weaker sex?” (Pizan, 1405, 1998, p. 3-4; Gilmore, 2001, p. 1-2) Pizan’s ideas are important today, not so much because they were ahead of their time, but because the same issues still exist today.

In his book, Misogyny, the male malady, David Gilmore refers to Pizan, and then goes on to make an honest assessment of himself that I believe reveals an underlying attitude of misogyny that contributes to a government that still remains a mostly male dominated environment, leading to hegemonic masculinity, where women and women’s issues (while better than in Pizan’s time) largely remain underrepresented. Gilmore states: “Like most baby boom males, I consider myself a tolerant and enlightened man, and I harbor a sincere fondness for women….. However, I do recognize occasional negative stirrings in myself, feelings that certainly exist in most of my male friends whether they will admit to it or not: these include impatience, peevishness, a tendency to scapegoat females, atavistic impulses (usually erotic), frustrations in trying to communicate, and anger over inherent differences.” (Gilmore, 2001. P. xi.).

         While Gilmore’s “negative stirrings” do not necessarily cause violence against women on their own, these underlying attitudes contribute to its cause and continued existence in society and, they contribute to hegemonic masculinity. Lutze & Symons state “masculine identities within North American culture are founded on power. Culturally, men are to be strong, independent, unemotional, and aggressive….Thus men in patriarchal societies are granted inherent superiority over women and the power to both protect and discipline others.” (2003, p. 320). It is this kind of power that Leatherman asserts allows a type of aggressive masculinity to become the dominant masculinity in U.S. foreign policy. Leatherman points out that “as Cynthia Enloe reminds us, patriarchy is not natural. It requires great effort to reproduce it and sustain it every day.” (Leatherman, 2005)

         Gilmore’s self-assessment illustrates an underlying attitude, present in Lutze & Symons’ version of masculinity, which is defined by power and control, and what Leatherman calls the “social construction of gender roles” where the masculinity dominant in politics, foreign policy, and in the homes of women who face violence is the aggressive, patriarch form of masculinity. It is for this reason that policies become more descriptive than substantive, even though they often appear substantive.

 

 

 

Progress towards women’s issues only seems substantial

In their article “The Evolution of Domestic Violence Policy Through Masculine Institutions,” Faith Lutze and Megan Symons state, “The attention that domestic violence (DV) has received over the last 30 years through social movements, the media, legislative changes, and agency level responses has brought about what might be considered substantial legal and policy changes over a relative short period of time.” (2003, p. 321) The key words here are “might be considered substantial,” since there is so much more which still needs to be done.

Indeed in the last forty years we have made progress. In 2010, President Barak Obama signed the Tribal Law and Order Act, addressing domestic violence on tribal lands.  In 1994 The Violence against Women Act was signed into law, so that today, everywhere in our nation, domestic violence is illegal. Today, laws are more consistently enforced than ever before in our history. Today, we have shelters that did not exist before the 1970s including SAGE the local domestic violence and sexual assault center in my community. Haven House “the first shelter for battered women and children was started in 1964” one year before I was born. (LaViolette & Barnette, 2000, p. 2)

         Yet, progress on domestic violence issues has been more related to providing education and support in the aftermath of violence than to preventing it. This is because “little attention has been paid to identifying and modifying the structural and cultural sources of abusive behavior” (Buzawa, Buzawa, Stark, 2012, pp. 2, 23) that Pizan, Bancroft, Luzte & Symons and others describe.

         What keeps the underlying root causes of violence against women largely out of the debate, is a long tradition where “institutions have been designed to protect male privilege within a patriarchal system.” Thus, the “inherent power embedded in masculinity, and the ability to formulate law, institutions, and policy from this position of power, translates into gendered institutions and policy development” created “in favor of men,” which have “severely limited women’s ownership of property, rights within marriage, control of sexual reproduction, and their defenses against rape and domestic violence.” (Lutze & Symons, 2003, p. 320) It has been a male privilege to use violence against women in the name of discipline for centuries, and in fact this legal right “to discipline their wives remained intact until (as recently) as the 1970s.” (Lutze & Symons, 2003, p. 321-22.) This leads to a form of hegemonic masculinity that “denies women equal access to the law” as well as a failure of public policy and “the criminal justice system to adequately respond to domestic violence” (Lutze & Symons, 2003, p. 321-22) essentially rendering VAWA less effective. This is an example of how VAWA is more descriptive than substantive.

         In fact, looking at a timeline of the laws governing marriage and wife beating throughout history, against the backdrop of a mere 40 years of progress, provides some insight into why even today, violence against women still exists. “For hundreds if not thousands of years the domestic assault of women has been considered a necessary tool for a man to maintain order and discipline in his home.” (Bancroft, 2002, p. 8) From a policy and legal standpoint, according to Michael Olivero, in Domestic Violence, “Traditionally, domestic violence has not been treated with the same concern as violence committed between strangers. When the victim and perpetrator were related it was as if the legal system transformed the behavior into a less heinous offense. An attitude of indifference to domestic violence extended throughout the criminal justice system.” Thus, it was not until the 1990’s that domestic violence was approached consistently by the judicial system. (Olivero, 2007.)

 

Analysis of VAWA reveals Leatherman’s’ hegemonic masculinity

Although Meyer-Emerick does not use the term hegemonic masculinity, its impact can be seen in her study of policymaking on violence against women in the United States which was published in 2001 as “The Violence against Women Act of 1994: an Analysis of Intent and Perception.” Meyer-Emerick’s goal was to determine “why current policymaking was limited to criminal, physical acts, although (she had found that) the problem (of addressing domestic violence) requires sociocultural changes.” Her review of literature revealed that “the roots of the problem are in the sociocultural system” (Meyer-Emerick, 2001, p. 101) ideas, which are described in Gilmore’s, Leatherman’s, Lutze & Symons’ and Pizan’s work.

Meyer-Emerick conducted an in depth analysis of VAWA, examining beliefs about the causes of domestic violence, and whether the accepted causes of violence and those revealed through her work were addressed in VAWA. Finally, she set out to determine why various causes of domestic violence against women were not addressed by VAWA. (Meyer-Emerick, 2001, pp. 8-9) Meyer-Emerick interviewed federal policy makers, local practitioners and held focus groups with survivors, perpetrators and the general public. For her analysis, she referred to the work of three theorists whose work was based on the use of power, specifically “three types of power: the power of ideas, the power of the state and the power of men.” (Meyer-Emerick, 2001, pp. 7,8) The three theorists she chose were Michel Foucault, whose theories regarding sexuality and violence were discussed in The History of Sexuality. She also reviewed Jürgen Habermas “for his analysis of the role of the state within the market and sociocultural system” and Catherine MacKinnon, who “theorized that a gender hierarchy dominated by men was preserved through the erotization of sex by violence.” (Meyer-Emerick, 2001, p. 8)

            While no one knows for certain the exact causes of violence against women (both in our nation and on a global level) most studies reveal that it stems from some men’s feeling of entitlement to dominate women. Meyer-Emerick states that violence against women arises because “women are socialized on a daily basis through both subtle and blatant messages to accept many types of abuse, just as men are socialized to be dominant and in control.” (2001, p. 5) This type of control is essentially what Leatherman described as the US hegemonic masculinity, dominance by the U.S. over other countries and the UN.

            In her comparison of VAWA with the “causal roots of the problem, (within the sociocultural system) Meyer-Emerick concluded that VAWA was narrower in scope than it might be, given the complex nature of domestic violence against women. In fact, she concluded that in some ways VAWA might work to support men’s power because it does not provide provisions for subtle forms of abuse. (Meyer-Emerick, 2001, p. 102-108.)

 

Hegemonic masculinity silences my community regarding domestic violence

            A recent issue in my own community illustrates how hegemonic masculinity disrupts progress on issues such as domestic violence, despite legislation such as VAWA. During the month of October in my small town, Breast Cancer Awareness Month overshadowed National Domestic Violence Awareness Month despite the murders of two local women (domestic violence related fatalities) and in fact domestic violence never made the local paper. I had hoped these tragic murders would make it timely and important for our local newspaper to provide readers and the community with insight into the often-misunderstood social tragedy of domestic violence, so I submitted a proposal for a guest editorial. In addition, our local domestic violence and sexual assault center had changed its name and location that month. Yet the topic of domestic violence was never addressed in our local paper.

Like the Western Apache, where silence is its own communication, (Basso, 1970, p. 25) silence can tell us a lot about the dominant ideologies in our culture. As Leatherman pointed out, the patriarch form of masculinity is dominant over all others in the US leading to what she termed is a hegemonic masculinity that creates an aggressive, dominating form of US foreign policy. Under this regime, other ideals are silenced. While it might seem that what happens on the international stage has no bearing on issues that happen in our own communities, in fact how the US deals with foreign policy is indicative of how we deal with all other policies, especially policies regarding women. Like any form of tyranny, the perpetrator’s primary weapon is often the power to render both victim and society silent.

This was evident last year, when in my own community, two women were murdered, one in August and the other in October, allegedly by a partner or ex-partner. Thirty-eight-year-old Ortencia Arroyo Alehandre was murdered in front of her two children by her estranged husband, who this year was convicted of first-degree murder. (Robbins, 2012) Two innocent children are now forever impacted, not only because they’ve lost their mother, but because of what they’ve witnessed. Yet, the local media did not report these murders as domestic violence related murders, and in October, despite the two deaths, the paper remained silent in regards to National Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

 

Despite being an immense problem, domestic violence is not adequately addressed

      Meyer-Emerick states, “The scope of the problem of violence against women is immense. When first introducing the Violence Against Women Act in 1990, (then) Senator Joseph Biden cited the FBI Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), ‘Crime in the United States’ (1988, 7) which states that ‘every 6 minutes, a woman is raped; every 15 seconds a woman is beaten.’” (Meyer-Emerick, 2001, p. 8) In fact, Meyer-Emerick states “in recognition of the brutality and subtlety of violence against women I will be using the term ‘terrorization’ to more accurately reflect the traumatization suffered by women” to “emphasize the reality that women in the United States are overwhelmingly the recipients of psychological, emotional, sexual, and physical indoctrination and attacks on their humanity because they are women.” (Meyer-Emerick, 2001, p. 8).

      According to Bancroft, “government statistics show that 1,500 to 2,000 women are murdered by partners and ex-partners per year…comprising more than one-third of all female homicide victims.” In fact, millions of women and children live in tyranny, pinned down by the power and control tactics of an abuser who is often skilled at hiding his behavior. The problem is so prevalent “the U.S. Surgeon General has declared attacks by male partners to be the number one cause of injury to women between the ages of fifteen and forty-four…because 2 to 4 million women are assaulted by their partners per year in the United States…” (Bancroft, 2002, p. 8)

In my own community, Ortencia and Vicky’s names will now be among the more than 755 people, mostly women, who have been killed in Washington State in a domestic violence related fatality since January 1, 1997 according to the Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence Fatality Review.

 

Conclusion

For thousands of years, domestic violence against women has largely been ignored, due to under-representation of women in political office, supported by hegemonic masculinity. Only with the women’s movement, and subsequent modest increases in numbers of women holding office, has domestic violence been taken seriously, such that progress began to be made. When “the women’s movement spawned the shelter movement, along with advocacy for women’s rights” it caused attention to be paid towards “violence against women in their own homes” so that “by 1978, battered wives had become a separate topic, distinct from reports on assaults and murders.” (LaViolette and Barnet, 2000, p. 2)

Still, while such progress is good, stemming from many factors such as the feminist movement which brought the idea of gendering policy debates into the arena, it will require more than policies to end domestic violence, while these are necessary. It will require a complete change in ideologies, such that society no longer operates from a male privilege, patriarchy or hegemonic masculinity ideology. These attitudes drive government policies, especially those addressing violence against women so they hardly have a chance to become substantive.

Like many complex and misunderstood issues, domestic violence is a difficult topic to discuss. Yet, it is only because we have broken the silence that we have made any progress at all. That progress has come in fits and starts, in inches not miles. Difficult as it may be, we must continue to talk, and to advance feminist issues by gendering policy debates. McBride describes gendering policy debates as the act of framing those debates from a gender perspective based on “ideas about men and women in relation to each other and ideas about women or men as a group distinct from each other.” (2005) McBride asserts that policy debates must be gendered so that substantive representation can take place to pave the way for feminist goals to be achieved. Specifically, in order for feminists, “to gender policy debates” they must “insert references to (their) conceptions of gender into the frame of the debate.” (2005) Domestic violence requires this kind of debate.

There is hope. I believe in breaking the silence as all of these authors have done, starting back in 1405 with Pizan, we will change the underlying ideas of misogyny, patriarchy and hegemonic masculinity that currently operate on a foreign and domestic level in our country. Then, we will end domestic violence.

         For more information, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) or TTY 1-800-787-3224 or go to http://www.ncdsv.org.

 

References

Allen, Charlotte, “It’s Not Over Yet!” (April 12, 2012) Women Against VAWA Excess, accessed via http://womenagainstvawa.org/

Bancroft, Lundy. (2002) Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men. New York: Penguin Books.

Basso, Keith. (1970). “‘To Give Up on Words’: Silence in Western Apache Culture.” Language and Social Context. Second Edition. Created for Nancy McKee. WSU. Custom Publishing.

Borrelli, MaryAnne. (2005.) “Chapter 10. Cabinet Nominations in the William J. Clinton and George W. Bush Administrations. Gender, Change and Representation.” Gender and American Politics: Women, Men, and the Political Process. 2^nd edition. Tolleson-Rinehart, Sue and Jyl J. Josephson, editors. New York: M.E. Sharpe, Inc.

Buzawa, Eve, Carl Buzawa and Evan Stark. (2012). Responding to Domestic Violence. The Integration of Criminal Justice and Human Services. 4^th Edition. California: Sage.

Fawcett, Jake. (2010, December). Up to Us. Lessons learned and goals for change after thirteen years of the Washington State Domestic Violence Fatality Review. Seattle, Washington: For the Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

Gilmore, David D. (2001) Misogyny, the male malady. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

LaViolette, Alyce D. and Ola W. Barnett. (2000). It Could Happen to Anyone, 2^nd edition. Why Battered Women Stay. California: Sage Publications, Inc.

Lawless, Jennifer L. and Richard L. Fox. (2012) Men Rule, The Continued Under-Representation of Women in U.S. Politics. WA DC: Women & Politics Institute.

Leatherman, Janie. (2005) “Gender and U.S. Foreign Policy. Hegemonic Masculinity, the War in Iraq and the UN-Doing of World Order.” Gender and American Politics: Women, Men, and the Political Process. 2^nd edition. Tolleson-Rinehart, Sue and Jyl J. Josephson, editors. New York: M.E. Sharpe, Inc.

Lutze, Faith E. and Megan L. Symons. (2003, March.) “The Evolution of Domestic Violence Policy Through Masculine Institutions: From Discipline to Protection to Collaborative Empowerment.” Criminology & Public Policy. Vol. 2, No. 2. pp. 319-328.

McBride, Dorothy E. (2005) “Gendering Policy Debates.” Gender and American Politics: Women, Men, and the Political Process. 2^nd edition. Tolleson-Rinehart, Sue and Jyl J. Josephson, editors. New York: M.E. Sharpe, Inc.

Meyer-Emerick, Nancy. (2001) The Violence Against Women Act of 1994: An Analysis of Intent and Perception. Westport: Praeger Publishers.

Olivero, Michael. (2007) Domestic Violence. National Social Science Press. Video.

Robbins, Jefferson. (2012, March 8)  “‘When you find my dad, please don’t hurt him’ Trial opens in domestic stabbing death.” The Wenatchee World. Accessed via http://www.wenatcheeworld.com/news/2012/mar/08/when-you-find-my-dad-please-dont-hurt-him-trial/.

Rosenthal, Lynn. (2010, July 29) “The Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010: A Step Forward for Native Women.” Council on Women and Girls. The White House. President Barack Obama. Accessed via http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/cwg.

 

Man’s Industrialization Heats up the Environment. The Upside and Downside to Man’s Inventiveness

In 1991, while I was a student at Seattle Central Community College, I wrote a research paper entitled “Man’s Industrialization Heats up the Environment: The Causes and Effects of Atmospheric Pollution.” The paper started off by stating: “Since the mid-1800s, man has been continuously altering the global environment through his industrialization. Today, industrialized societies such as the United States, Europe and the Soviet Union are releasing atmospheric pollution in unprecedented proportions. The ensuing results are global warming, depletion of the ozone layer and the greenhouse effect among other phenomena. As more and more nations strive to become industrialized causing increasing releases, these pollutants are creating a new environment on a global scale. In turn, many environmental changes which will follow will occur on a scale large enough to result in widespread adverse physiological aspects to man, such as an increased rate of cancer and other diseases – impacting his future.”

Indeed, man’s inventiveness has led to the industrial revolution, such that during the past 150 years, economies, agriculture, and population have benefited, increasing the quality of life for many people on the planet. By some accounts, 700 million people are alive today, due to advances in agriculture alone. It’s hard not to sing the praises of such advances. However, at the same time, this growth has used up natural resources in unsustainable ways. While we’ve been basking in our innovation, the planet has suffered from the unintended consequences of this industrialization such that the “degradation of water, atmospheric and terrestrial ecosystem services” now threatens to reduce quality of life for both man and other species on the planet.  Widespread environmental issues have caused species extinctions, fallow land, pollution, erosion and increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide among others. (MA Synthesis, 2005, 1, 5).

In 1968, Hardin called the phenomena of rapidly using up resources the “tragedy of the commons.” Due to this tragedy, we are now in a new revolution, the sustainability revolution where many smart minds around the globe are working on sustainable design and on developing ways to employ the triple bottom line so we can live on the planet, “in health and prosperity for the foreseeable future.” In his article, Innovating Our Way to the Next Industrial Revolution, Peter M. Senge, states: “What’s so new about the New Economy? Our real future lies in building sustainable enterprises and an economic reality that connects industry, society, and the environment.” (Senge, 2001, p. 24)

Nature already creates connections in the web of life, where all things within ecosystems are interrelated. So in a sense, what Senge is describing is a way to look at all of life from the perspective of an ecosystem. From this vantage point, we can address the tragedy of the commons, through the triple bottom line and Robert Gibson et al’s requirements for sustainability. In Sustainability Assessment: Criteria and Processes Gibson et al (2005) state there are eight “essential requirements for progress towards sustainability.” (Gibson 2005 p. 95) These requirements include: Socio-ecological system integrity which works to build ecological relationships and to maintain vital ecosystem services; Livelihood sufficiency and opportunity so that everyone (current and future generations) has enough for a “decent life and opportunities to seek improvements” (98); Intergenerational Equity, which reduces the “dangerous gaps in sufficiency and opportunity between the rich and poor” (101); Intragenerational Equity which “favors options and actions that are most likely to preserve or enhance the opportunities and capabilities of future generations to live sustainably” (103); Resource Maintenance and Efficiency which reduces the damage from the extraction of raw materials, incorporating the idea of waste equals food by avoiding waste altogether and dramatically reducing “overall material and energy use per unit of benefit” (105); Socio-ecological Civility and Democratic Governance which builds the “capacity, motivation and habitual inclination of individuals” within our society, communities, and world to apply all the principles of sustainability through collective responsibility” (107); Precaution and Adaptation which ensures that decisions made are the ones which make the most positive contributions to sustainability while using the precautionary principle which integrates social, economic and environmental considerations on a local, regional and global scale, for the long-term.

Much of today’s efforts toward sustainability stem from the work of people such as Aldo Leopold, and the many scientists working on the MA Synthesis. In 1933, when Leopold wrote The Conservation Ethic, he was heralding a bold new thinking, calling for a “third” ethic whereby people considered land as more than mere property, thereby considering cause and effect in their interactions with nature. Civilization, he said, was “a state of mutual and interdependent cooperation between human animals, other animals, plants, and soils, which may be disrupted at any moment by the failure of any of them.” (Leopold, 1933, p. 183)

Indeed, 50 years after Leopold made these statements conservation has become a household term. With the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) initiated in 2001, conservation has now expanded around the globe. Today, we have a language to describe the many benefits we derive from nature, called ecosystems services, which helps us to consider the consequences of our actions in relation to these benefits. It might sound simple, but using a term such as “ecosystems services” has helped us to make progress towards beginning to control what Leopold said were “reactions resulting from the interplay of ecological and economic forces.”

Today, to encourage responsible use and management, conservationists, scientists and others, including the writers of the MA synthesis, have adopted terms such as “ecosystem services” to describe the benefits such as food, fuel, fiber, and timber that people obtain from nature. The MA divides ecosystem services into four categories, (provisioning, regulating, cultural and support) (MA Synthesis, 2005, v.) such that we can begin to think more consciously about them in our everyday lives. As “consumers” we can easily relate to thinking about the various benefits we derive from nature as “services.” Thus, this language tool has made a dramatic difference in helping ordinary people grasp the consequences of the use and misuse of ecosystem resources. For example, by thinking of ecosystem services in the provisioning category, we can link benefits such as food, water, timber, and fiber to the specific ecosystems of forest, oceans, or grasslands. Regulating services are those ecosystem dynamics that affect climate, floods, disease, wastes, and water quality. Benefits such as recreational, aesthetic and spiritual are categorized as cultural ecosystem services. Soil formation, photosynthesis and nutrient cycling are support services. (MA Synthesis, 2005, v.)

Further, we can relate ecosystem services to what the MA calls “constituents of well-being,” such as “security, basic material for a good life, health, good social relations, and freedom of choice and action.” For example, provisioning services such as food, fresh water, timber, fiber and fuel have a direct impact on security, basic material for a good life, and health: a lack of food can lead to poor health, lack of timber may result in housing issues which reduce security, lack of fibers can result in lack of clothing or trade items, etc. To a lesser degree all of the ecosystem services affect at least four categories of the constituents of well-being. (MA Synthesis, 2005, v, vi)

Thinking of our planet in terms of ecosystems services and the triple bottom line is important because the problems caused by our industrialization are complex. One of the problems which has gained considerable attention in the last decade is greenhouse gasses and global warming, and for good reason. Geological records show that for hundreds of millions of years the earth has experienced climate changes, warming and cooling, warming and cooling. In fact a warm planet sustains life. Furthermore, “without greenhouse gasses, the earth’s temperature would be at 0 degrees Celsius” and unable to support life as we know it. (Beall, Climate Lecture, 2012.)

However, something is different now and it is a cause for concern. According to scientists who have contributed to the Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report, the concern today is the acceleration in the rate of global warming when compared to the past, combined with widespread changes in ecosystem biodiversity and other issues that impact ecosystem services. Scientists have found that “global GHG emissions due to human activities have grown since pre-industrial times with an increase of 70% between 1970 and 2004….and that C02 emissions have grown annually by 80%, from 21 to 38 gigatonnes (Gt). …Of the more than 29,000 observational data series from 75 studies that show significant change in many physical and biological systems, more than 89% are consistent with the direction of change expected as a response to warming.” (Synthesis, 33, 36.)

These and other factors have set the earth on a warming trend, where the earth is expected to warm as much as .177 degrees Celsius per decade, which could amount to an increase of from 2 to 10 degrees Celsius within the next 100 years. In addition, due to the earth’s wobble and shape of orbit, warming is not necessarily uniform or evenly distributed. A surface temperature anomaly exists such that the arctic and northern hemisphere warm faster. (Beall, Climate Lecture, 2012.) In fact, according to the Climate Change 2007 report, “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice and rising global average sea level.” (Synthesis, 30.)

The earth is equipped to balance natural greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere that occur from such things as plant photosynthesis and plant and animal respiration. However, as humans have increased industrial activity primarily from the 1750’s to present, this human activity has resulted in increases in GHGs, disrupting the earth’s natural energy balance. To maintain the balance, or energy equilibrium (the quantity of radiation absorbed by the earth must be equal to the quantity of radiation leaving the earth), the earth’s temperature rises, a principle known as negative feedback. Thus, the planet has been warming at an increasing rate that outpaces the planet’s ability to remove C02 from the atmosphere. (Climate Lab, 2012)

According to the 2007 Climate report, the causes of climate change are “greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, atmospheric concentrations, radiative forcing, climate responses and effects.” Since the 1800s scientists like John Tyndall and others have been tracking global temperatures and from the 1960s scientists such as Keeling have also been measuring C02 emissions and other climate variables. Using ice core samples to create proxy data for atmospheric concentrations of C02 in the past, we have been able to compare past with present, creating a graph that is accurate back to around 400,000 years or more. From this data, scientists have noticed changes in global temperatures and C02 concentrations, and, a notable difference in the rate of change. This, combined with sea levels rising, polar ice melting, and a warming acceleration that coincide with human activity leads scientists to attribute the latest warming trend to anthropogenic causes. (Beall, Climate Lecture, 2012.)

The primary causes of anthropogenic climate change include those human activities, which produce greenhouse gas emissions and alter land cover, such as clearing forests.  “Human activities result in emissions of four long-lived GHGs: C02, methane, nitrous oxide and halocarbons.” (Synthesis, 37). Various industrial activities, which rely on fossil fuels, are the primary source of GHGs. Fossil fuel burning, forest clearing, agricultural fertilizers, and other factors cause GHG emissions. We drive cars, fly in airplanes, make products from fossil fuels and use fossil fuels to run many industrial activities and this burning of fossil fuels adds surplus carbon dioxide into the system, upsetting the natural equilibrium of the earth. (Beall, Climate Lecture, 2012.)

As global warming cause’s climate change and other disturbances such as flooding, drought, wildfire, insect infestations, and ocean acidification, it also poses major threats to ecosystem services globally. As the health of ecosystems erodes, this will cause a disruption in food provisioning, water availability and quality, as well as lead to extinctions and loss of biodiversity. Our entire planet is a system of interrelated parts (biotic and abiotic), including the plants and animals, insects, bacteria, the soil, water, air and minerals and more, which create a biodiversity, or “nature’s tool shed.” Humans rely on ecosystem services such as habitat, carbon sequestration, water storage, provisioning (food, fiber) and medicine (such as Taxol) (genetic resources, biochemical) and fresh water. The components of an ecosystem and each species play an important role in maintaining a balance that creates a healthy ecosystem. Some provide shade, or places for nests, others such as worms break down soil, and others repair nitrogen or perform other important functions such as pollination. Without these important roles being performed, a chain reaction occurs, where the habitat can begin to break down and species begin to die. (Beall, lecture, WSU, 2012)

In 2005, according to NASA, the lowest level of polar ice was recorded. The melting of the ice caps concerns climate scientists because of what is known as positive feedback, especially with respect to albedo in the Polar Regions. This is because albedo, which is a measurement of reflectiveness, decreases as polar ice melts and exposes more land and ocean, which absorb heat rather than reflect it. This causes further warming of the earth and surface temperatures. A positive feedback is somewhat like a multiplier effect. As the earth has warmed, it has set into motion other events, such as an increase in wildfires, increases in soil respiration and other positive feedback items, which emit C02 and further warm the planet. This, combined with the reduced ability of the planet to offset C02 emissions through absorption by oceans and plants, further exacerbates the warming trend.

Another concern is ocean impacts due to global warming such as sea level rises, changing circulation patterns, severe weather, changes in weather patterns and ocean acidification. Sea levels could rise up to 40 inches, due to thermal expansion. (Beall, Climate Lecture, 2012.) In fact, according to Robert B. Gagosian, a potential cause for concern that is often overlooked is an abrupt and dramatic climate change caused by changes in ocean currents, especially the Ocean Conveyer. “Fossil evidence clearly indicates that abrupt climate changes have occurred in the past,” he states, and due to disruptions in the sensitive threshold of ocean currents, Gagosian believes we could see large, global, abrupt climate changes in the future, due to global warming. As temperatures warm, changes occur in the Thermohaline conveyor belt effect of the oceans. This conveyor helps to move water and nutrients and warms the planet. As the sun hits the water, the water warms, and the current moves north, and as it evaporates, it releases moisture. The cooler salty water sinks and these temperature deviations drive the current. It takes 1,000 years for the water to move all the way around the planet, meaning that even if the earth were to cool after warming, it would take a very long time to do so. 

To offset these global warming issues, scientists are studying potential mitigation and adaptation measures. Adaptation measures work to reduce vulnerability to climate changes, while mitigation works to reduce or reverse the causes, such as reducing emissions. Various strategies for adaptation include expanding rainwater harvesting, adjusting planting dates and crop variety, relocating seawalls and storm surge barriers, heat-health action plans for humans along with emergency medical services, diversification of tourism activities, realignment, relocation and redesign of transportation systems such as roads and rail, and changes to energy. While there are constraints, many of these changes could occur as we educate people to better understand the impacts of climate change and the need to act now. (Synthesis, 57)

Mitigation could include reducing emissions or improving energy efficiencies. For example, one scenario calls for reducing C02 emissions by about 6 GtC02 equivalents per year by 2030. This would require changes in policy, technologies, and energy infrastructure investment. (Synthesis, 58,59) Scientists are also studying ways to implement mitigation strategies in energy supply, transportation, buildings, industry, agriculture, forestry and waste systems.

Thankfully, there is good news, and it comes from new innovations in renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, ocean thermal conversion, ocean wave power, geothermal power, and hydrogen among others. For more than 36 years, one of the people on the forefront of this endeavor, Amory Lovins, has been working to wean “hydrocarbon man” off fossil fuels. In a Foreign Affairs piece in 1976, Lovins described “two energy choices then facing the nation: The ‘hard path’ (more of the same) and the ‘soft path’ (efficient use and a shift to renewable supply).” Today, Lovins (of the Rocky Mountain Institute) remains optimistic, recently stating that “business and society can pull off this transformation even if the U.S. Congress keeps failing to act.” In a recent interview, Lovins explained “the oil industry will ultimately forego fossil fuels and jump aboard the green bandwagon. One system is dying and others are struggling to be born.”

To map the way, Lovins recently published Reinventing Fire, “his step-by-step blueprint for how to transition to a renewable energy economy by mid-century.” Two of the renewable “green” energy sources that are emerging, and which seem to make the most sense are solar power and wind power, which, according to the U.S. Department of Energy is actually a form of solar energy. (Wind program) Since we are already harnessing the sun’s power through the stored energy of fossil fuels, it makes sense to transition to a more sustainable way of using the sun’s power. And solar power is abundant. “More energy from the sun falls on the earth in one hour than is used by everyone in the world in one year,” states the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in its “Solar Energy Basics.”

            While solar power has very little impact on land, air pollution, or CO2 emissions, it can’t provide all the necessary elements to provide a consistent supply of electricity. Other downsides are that solar panels are expensive and can be affected by weather, thus it is difficult for the average individual to install them and maintain consistent production. The other renewable power to consider is wind power, where the wind’s kinetic energy is converted into mechanical power which drives the turbine. In turn, the mechanical power can be converted to electricity. A small, single turbine can produce about 100 kilowatts of electricity, and a larger turbine can produce several megawatts of electricity. Like solar power, wind turbines have little impact on land, air pollution and CO2 emissions, but they are expensive to make and install, and are dependent upon wind patterns, and thus do not produce a consistent amount of power all the time either. This is why they need to be combined with other technologies.

            Like Amory Lovins, I believe it will take a combination of efficiencies and renewables to solve our current energy issues. We can start by educating each person to be wiser in his or her individual use, and, continue to create better efficiencies in the production and transmission of electricity and other energies, and in building and transportation design and infrastructure. These efforts should be conducted in tandem with developing and implementing wide scale new renewable energy technologies by private industry and the government. Even today, we lose approximately 60% of our electrical energy per kilowatt produced, due to inefficiencies in design and other issues. (Beall, lecture.) Much work remains to be done to turn the tides begun a century and a half ago.

And then there’s water. It is one of life’s miracles. A compound made of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen, the only chemical substance that occurs naturally as a liquid, solid and a gas. All of terrestrial life depends upon it. It is water. And only a “minuscule share of the world’s water—less than one-hundredth of 1 percent” is available for drinking. (Postel) And therein lies the problem.

The statistics concerning water on earth are dire and overwhelming. The reports read almost like science fiction. Lakes, rivers, streams, wetlands and huge seas like the Aral Sea in Central Asia, once “the world’s fourth-largest inland body of water,” (Postel, 19) are drying up. Human cultures, indigenous tribes dependent on waters for fishing, such as the Cocopa Indians, are going extinct, while others are on the brink. Wars are being threatened in places like Egypt over access to water from the great Nile River. Millions of people are dying of painful, yet treatable diseases such as cholera and dysentery. (Postel)

All over the world a common theme is emerging, and it has been culminating for thousands of years, problems with water resources, which, as Postel states are “rapidly emerging as one of the greatest challenges facing humanity in the decades to come: how to satisfy the thirst of a world population pushing nine billion by the year 2050, while protecting the health of the aquatic environment that sustains all terrestrial life.” Thankfully there are solutions, in both old and new technologies, which might avert disaster if we can implement them in time. But are we too late?

Like any resource, which seems abundant (like fossil fuels) water is also something that has been taken for granted in most places on our planet since the dawn of civilization. With oceans and rivers and lakes surrounding most cultures, and rain and snow falling, water has appeared to flow inexhaustibly, leading to its use for agriculture and human consumption, often in ways that are not sustainable. And if we didn’t have a stable supply of water nearby, either via a waterway or through precipitation, we simply diverted water sources from elsewhere to meet our needs, creating entire civilizations in places where, without water, no one would survive, such as Phoenix, Arizona.

It is true that water is abundant. However, what is alarming is that “only 2.5 percent of all the water on earth is freshwater, (the kind we can drink) and two-thirds of that is locked away in glaciers and ice caps,” states Postel. This leaves only a “minuscule share of the world’s water—less than one-hundredth of 1 percent” available for drinking or renewal “through rainfall and other precipitation.” I doubt many of us have stopped to consider this fact. So we use water in excess, for crops, to drink, to cook, to bathe, for leisure and more because we do not realize that quite simply, our freshwater supplies, what we depend upon for life, are not abundant and finite.

Thus, the major threats to both water quality and quantity are directly related to humans, either through our use or improper management of water and sanitation. In some cultures, such as Ethiopia, the source of the Nile River, where water has been abundant, local people have not known how to access the water properly, and thus suffer from disease, poverty and death. In other places, peoples have not made the connection between animals and even humans defecating upstream of drinking water, leading to disease and death related to poor sanitation. And in places where we have learned how to harness water, populations increase, forcing food production to increase, and thus agriculture places an increasing burden on water supply. At the same time, there are more people using water for drinking, cooking and bathing, further increasing the burden. This leads to rivers and streams and aquifers and groundwater being used, often at rates that exceed sustainability. At the same time, many of mankind’s efforts, from agriculture and farming to mining and industry, and lack of proper sanitation, lead to poor or toxic water quality. Thus, “more than a billion of the world’s people lack a safe supply of drinking water, and 2.8 billion do not have even minimal sanitation,” states Postel.

Indeed, the number of people globally facing drinking water stress is in the billions. According to Montaigne, “1.2 billion people drink unclean water and about 2.5 billion lack proper toilets or sewerage systems. More than five million people die each year from water-related diseases such as cholera and dysentery.” Slaughter cites similar statistics, stating that in 2009, “almost 1 billion people lacked access to potable water. Each year, 3.575 million die from waterborne diseases.” According to Montaigne, the United Nations has recently said: “2.7 billion people would face severe water shortages by 2025 if consumption continues at current rates.” Put into the perspective, that the world population is predicted to grow to nine billion by 2050, while the earth’s water supply is not increasing, one can see an enormous dark cloud in the future. While this potential shortage lies on the horizon, according to Postel, global ground water depletion through over pumping continues, at an estimated “160 billion cubic meters a year, an amount equal to the annual flow of two Nile Rivers.” According to Slaughter another issue that contributes to water problems is that “traditional water treatment approaches are not effectively meeting …growing needs.”

As water is essential to life, so is food. Presently agriculture accounts for “70 percent of all water use,” according to Montaigne and many agricultural practices have been and still remain inefficient, using more water than is necessary for crop production. These practices include over pumping water from aquifers or diversion of rivers, and streams, to supply “conventional flood or furrow irrigation systems,” which according to Postel, provide only 50 to 70 percent of the water to the crop, resulting in huge waste of water.

And while people suffer from water miss-use, so do eco systems, which play an important role in life, through the ecosystem services they supply. Examples of what happens when eco-systems are left out of the equation, as they mostly are, include California’s diminishing San Francisco Bay delta, “home to more than 120 species of fish…which “supports 80 percent of the state’s commercial fisheries;” and Florida’s Everglades, “which has shrunk by half,” (Postel) or “China’s Yellow River,” which “has failed to reach the sea most years during the past decade,” the Colorado and Rio Grande rivers, which also are drying up and the Ogallala aquifer beneath the Great Plains, which has been severely depleted. (Montaigne.)

To solve these issues of water over use and shortage, of access to water and of providing clean drinking water, many people across the globe are stepping in to offer solutions. Some of the most promising are based on localized efforts. For sanitation and water treatment, solutions include water recycling and the desalination of seawater or “networked water treatment systems, and on-site energy generation systems,” which augment the traditional large, centralized systems, to better meet demand, such as those recommended by Slaughter. To improve efficiency and increase water supply for agriculture, locally designed solutions include reviving ancient but abandoned techniques, such as johads, the earthen dams and reservoir systems which collect rainwater during monsoon seasons, dating “back to 5,000 years in India,” or extracting water from “seasonal wetlands called dambos,” using the treadle pump. Others are high-tech, such as using super-efficient drip irrigation, which supplies crops with “exactly what they need every day.” (Postel and Montaigne)

Montaigne traveled across the globe, visiting villages and places where these technologies are being implemented, such as in Goratalia, Rajasthan, India, where Rajendra Singh helps villagers build earthen dams and reservoirs, known as a johad, of which Singh and his company have helped to install “an estimated 4,500 dams in about 1,000 villages, all built using local labor and native materials.” In Katuba, Zambia, a region north of Lusaka, the capital, another man is helping. Paul Polak has helped many villages install the treadle pump, to gain water from dambos. He has helped install many of the 1.3 million treadle pumps in Bangladesh and hopes to bring the pumps to “30 million farm families in the developing world.”

Supplying the world with water for drinking, sanitation and agriculture is challenging, and the trade-offs of providing water have boosted family incomes and national GNP’s while destroying ecosystems and cultural diversity. Still, successful and sustainable solutions are being implemented, such as those on a local basis, including drip irrigation, dams and reservoirs, and treadle pumps, to name a few. New legislation, such as the National Water Act in South Africa, the National Hydrological Plan in Spain, and the National Energy Policy Act in the United States, among others are addressing the issue from a broader rule and policy basis. What remains is a “new ethic: all living things must get enough water before some get more than enough,” states Postel.

 “Use of water resources, impacts to aquatic ecosystem services and agriculture have always been tightly linked,” states Allyson Beall in her lecture notes on water. (Beall, 2012, lecture) More than seventy nine years ago, Aldo Leopold talked about the link between humans and our natural world in his 1933 essay, The Conservation Ethic. (Leopold, 1933, p. 183)

Nowhere is this delicate balance between man and nature more evident than in the interplay between farming, soil fertility and water resources and the demand for and impacts of fossil fuel use in the agricultural sector. While what is known as the green revolution increased productivity, it didn’t take into account the delicate interdependence between man and nature that Leopold talked about. Instead, its reliance on large-scale monoculture farming dramatically increased the impacts to water and soil. (Beall, 2012, lecture).

One place the impacts of the green revolution can be seen is in India, one of the fastest growing places on earth. (Beall, 2012, lecture.) Norman Borloug, an American plant breeder took the green revolution to India in the “mid-1960s” when he brought a high-yield variety of wheat there to help the country “feed its people during yet another crippling drought.” (Bourne, 2009, p. 6) To get high yields, these methods rely on a special plant type that not only requires water but is also dependent on fossil-fuel based synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. Borloug’s dwarf wheat, for example, required a lot of water and synthetic fertilizer as well as “little competition from weeds or insects” in order to produce its high yields. (Bourne, 2009, p. 6) Still, the green revolution farming method can be credited with helping to feed many people who may not otherwise have been fed. “Some scientists credit increased rice yields alone with the existence of 700 million more people on the planet.” (Bourne, 2009, p. 8)

One can’t blame Borloug or anyone else for that matter for wanting to share something that could feed millions of starving people. Indeed, the green revolution turned vast swaths of land into productive green crop land through what is known as large-scale monoculture farming, a practice where large fields are planted with the same crop, such as Borloug’s wheat, or “miracle” rice, or cotton or other crops. However, because the monoculture farming relies on unsustainable practices, such as over irrigation and lack of crop diversity (planting the same crop in vast quantities), many places such as Punjab, India, where Borloug’s wheat was initially planted, began to experience a wide range of problems, such as drops in their water tables and negative impacts to soil fertility such as salinization and waterlogged soils. (Bourne, 2009, p. 6) The irrigation methods of the green revolution changed the soil profiles from a desert profile (a soil which had received little rain, thereby creating a middle layer comprised of minerals that had soaked down from the top) to something which, when over-irrigated, causes the mineral water on top to mix with the minerals in the lower layers. This causes the soil to accumulate excessive salt. Eventually, this can result in desertification, a soil degradation where the cropland is converted to desert-like land with a drop in its productivity. (Beall, 2012, lecture.)

The other problem with monoculture farming results from the use of the large, heavy combines, cultivators and tractors (Mann, 2010, p. 1) which literally smash the soil into hard, impenetrable slabs. This eradicates the soil’s natural, loose heterogeneous properties, air pockets and space, which enable plant roots and other organisms to flourish, a necessary component in healthy soil. (Mann, 2010, p. 1) This leads to a degradation of the soil, and a subsequent drop in crop production because the plants are not able to thrive in poor soil. In addition, the fertilizers and pesticides used in monoculture farming can have negative impacts on important beneficial insects, such as bees, spiders, worms, ladybugs, praying mantis and others, which function in the ecosystem world, by providing various services, such as making soil (worms), pollination, or fending off harmful pests, such as aphids. A single crop planted in succession over many years also depletes the soil of important nutrients, leaving the soil unable to sustain crops.

Large-scale monoculture farming also impacts water resources because it often depletes aquifers, rivers and streams, and results in the diversion of streams and rivers, which in turn changes wetlands and other ecosystems. (Beall, 2012, lecture) This is of concern because once the groundwater or aquifer is damaged or depleted, or a wetland is lost, it often cannot be restored. Diminishing wetlands has a widespread consequence on many waterfowl and other aquatic species. The Aral Sea, at one time the world’s fourth largest lake, provides an example of what can happen when rivers are diverted for farming. (Beall, 2012, lecture) Today, the lake is perhaps only 30 percent of its original size and it has become salinated, contaminating the groundwater with salt, which in turn is a source of drinking water, which curdles milk. The salty dust on the dry lake bed also blows away in the wind, causing widespread health problems. (Beall, 2012, lecture)

These are examples of ways in which irrigation practices can cause non-point source pollution, through what is known as the return flow, when the irrigation water carries the pesticides and fertilizers used on the crops into the ground water or streams, changing water chemistry. (Beall, 2012, lecture) Irrigation can also cause erosion, which reduces soil fertility and which can impact water quality as it carries particles away. As soil or dust runs off the land and into nearby streams, it creates greater turbidity in the water, which can greatly impact aquatic life, by changing the ecosystem. In addition, water temperatures and flows can be altered as streams or rivers are channeled, straightened or dammed. For example, a straightened stream has a faster water flow than a winding stream, (Beall, 2012, lecture) and this faster moving water can have higher oxygen content. Withdrawing water from a surface water system (streams, lakes, reservoirs, wetlands, and estuaries) can permanently deplete ground water supplies, as well as the surface stream. Hirsh, 1998, p. III.)

The green revolution was a marvel of its time: It enabled us to dramatically increase crop yields, thereby feeding people when they might not otherwise have been fed. This improved quality of life in many drought-ridden areas of the world, such as in India, China and Africa. However, this practice did not consider many of the other components of the ecosystem, and thus has negatively impacted water resources and soil quality. To solve these issues, we now need sustainable alternatives to large-scale mono cropping, perhaps ushering in a new green revolution that can address inequities in food distribution, price and quality, especially in urban areas, without destroying the planet. And with the global population expected to reach between 9 and 9.5 billion by 2050, we have no time to waste. Thankfully, solutions are being studied and developed ranging from low-tech urban or city gardens, to high tech vertical farms cultivated in city high rises, among others.

One example is Cuba, where a food crisis spurred a “focus on agro ecological technology …supported by the state/university research, education and extensions system.” (Zepeda, 2003, 1) In response to the crisis, which was created in part due to U.S. isolationist practices beginning in the 60’s, followed later by the fall of the Soviet Union which cut off needed imports of food, oil and fertilizers to the tiny country, Cuba’s people established a “self-sustaining system of agriculture that by necessity was essentially organic.” (Buncombe, 2006, 1). By 2006, Cuba had “7,000 urban allotments…which fill(ed) perhaps as many as 81,000 acres.” (Buncombe, 2006, 1). Some of these plots are in the capital of Havana, and they not only provide food, but also jobs and a sense of community. The country was able to transform its agricultural systems, because the Cuban government created a national policy which supported the new farming method. Cuba was essentially forced to make a radical decision, since it was dependent on imports for a significant portion of its staple food and energy products. (Zepeda, 2003, 1) With the new policy, “anyone wishing to farm could do so rent free,” and, get fair prices for foods sold at markets, boosted by a focus on local production to reduce transportation and energy costs. (Zepeda, 2003, 2) Now hardly anyone goes hungry in this very poor country and in fact, calorie intake has risen to 2,580 per capita per day (Zepeda, 2003, 2) up from “between 1,000 and 1,500 in 1993. (Buncombe, 2006, 2).

In Chicago, where the Department of Planning and Development created a program called “Chicago: Eat Local Live healthy,” several organizations are using sustainable farming methods, or urban agriculture, to feed people. Growing Power and Growing Home are two among many, which are part of an “urban agriculture movement” that is growing (Doster, 2008, 2). These nonprofits turn land on city lots into community gardens where they employ “high-intensity food production” methods where, at Growing Power, they “cultivate 150 varieties of vegetables, herbs, and edible flowers.” The urban gardens also provide vegetables to restaurants, operate at farmer’s markets and support local school gardens. These gardens not only provide food, often in areas known as “food deserts,” (“large geographic areas with no or distant grocery stores”) (Doster, 2008, 2) they also provide added benefits to the community, including a sense of place and the renewal of neighborhoods, which helps people create bonds and reduces crime. (Doster, 2008, 3)

On the high tech side of the new green revolution is an idea called vertical gardens. According to Dickson Despommier, “growing crops in city skyscrapers would use less water and fossil fuel than outdoor farming, eliminate agricultural runoff and provide fresh food.” (Despommier, 2009, 1) Vertical gardens rely on the use of three techniques, “drip irrigation, aeroponics and hydroponics, … which have been used successfully around the world.” (Despommier, 2009, 2) Using hydroponics, plants “are held in place so their roots lie in soilless troughs, and water with dissolved nutrients is circulated over them.”  The advantages to using these methods in skyscrapers, is that high yields can be produced year-round, avoiding problems such as drought and floods, while also reducing human pathogens. These gardens also are not dependent upon climate. (Despommier, 2009, 2) Despommier cites as an example the “318-acre Eurofresh Farms in Arizona, …which produces large quantities of high-quality tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers 12 months a year” in a desert climate. These farms could also transform empty buildings into productive urban gardens, providing fresh foods in urban areas. “A one-square block farm 30 stories high could yield as much food as a 2,400 outdoor acres, with less subsequent spoilage.” (Despommier, 2009, 3) Of course some of the downsides might include providing water and energy to the skyscraper farm, as well as the potentially high cost to purchase and convert the high-rises, but these could be overcome.

These food alternatives need to be considered, because both low tech urban farms and high-rise farms could reduce our carbon, water and waste footprints by eliminating the reliance on fossil fuel based fertilizers and pesticides, as well as using water more efficiently than large-scale monoculture farms (using water wise systems like drip irrigation or hydroponics). In addition, by allowing cultivated lands to return to their natural state, we can also reduce carbon because in “temperate and tropical zones the regrowth of hardwood forests could play a significant role in carbon sequestration.” (Despommier, 2008, 2).

While large-scale agriculture helped us grow large volumes of food to feed not only ourselves but the world’s starving people, it also created widespread negative impacts to our environment. Now that we have come to understand these issues, many urban areas are turning to urban gardens, where gardens are planted on city lots, front yards and more. In areas where space is an issue, large cities might consider turning skyscrapers into vertical farms using hydroponics, aeroponics or drip irrigation. Architect and founding member of the Congress for the New Urbanism, Andres Duany sees a new urban landscape called agrarian urbanism, “settlements where the society is involved with food in all its aspects: organizing, growing, processing, distributing, cooking and eating it.” He describes his idea in his new book, Garden Cities: The theory and Practice of Agrarian Urbanism.

Back in 1991 when I wrote my essay on the topic of global warming and environmental issues, I concluded by saying: “The consequences of global warming are under dispute. According to Anzaas, Rhys Jones, a prehistorian at the Australian National University in Canvera, people have the flexibility to cope with enormous changes in their environment. They should have little trouble adaption to the greenhouse effect. (Feb. 24, 1990. P. 24.) Others, according to Richard Kerr, such as Richard Lindzen, Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology say “both the data and our scientific understanding do not support the present level of concern. (Dec. 1, 1989, p. 118.) They are in the minority. From the evidence which is being discovered there does appear to be need for concern, but widespread panic is not warranted. It would be wise to look at the effects of past environmental changes on man, to determine what course will now occur as a result of the enormous impact man is having on his environment.”

            Today, I would agree that, while panic is not warranted, a deep concern certainly is. Today, we’ve come much farther on the path toward damaging the environment than in 1990, and we now have more evidence and models which can predict the future in a much accurate way. Reading my report from 1991 makes me feel sad, since it seems the damage has been going on at such a rate, despite knowledge even then, that we needed to do something, and do it quickly. If I didn’t have such hope and confidence in man’s inventiveness, I might panic.

What makes me most hopeful is that we have so many truly smart, caring and compassionate people from so many disciplines working on many, many projects to make our world a different place. From volunteerism like Good.com, make a difference day and many more, to people finding cures for diseases, to those working on environmental and regional planning, we have a synergy of good work. If we encourage people to incorporate gardens into their daily lives, either through raised bed, container or traditional kitchen gardens, or turn lawns into gardens, using the idea of the victory garden or kitchen garden, we could also reduce our food’s carbon footprint. Community gardens and growing at least some of your own food helps people get back to nature so they have a better understanding of the inter-relatedness of human activity and ecosystems, the environment and more. Another component is for people to live closer to the grocery stores so that we can bike and walk (or use public transit) to get to necessary services. Cities were once planned and developed with a 1.5 mile walking radius, and streets were configured on a grid.

 

Resources:

Astill, James “Seeing the wood“, The Economist, September 25, 2010, Vol. 396 Issue 8701, special section pg. 3-6 accessed via http://www.economist.com/node/17062713?story_id=17062713

Attenborough, David. The Truth About Global Warming; – Attributing Climate Change to Humans. YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9ob9WdbXx0

Beall, Allyson. (2012) ESRP 101 Lectures.” WSU, Accessed via Angel.

Daily, Gretchen C. and Susan Alexander et al. (1997) Ecosystem Services: Benefits Supplied to Human Societies by Natural Ecosystems. Issues in Ecology. Number 2, spring 1997. Washington DC: Ecological Society of America.

Duany, Andre’s. (2011). “Agrarian Urbanism: ‘Food not as a means of making a living, but as a basis for making a life.” Sustainable Communities. Vol. 1. No. 6. Nov. /Dec. 2011. pp. 18-21.

Gagosian, R. 2003. Abrupt Climate Change: Should We Be Worried? Prepared for a panel on abrupt climate change at the World Economic Forum.

Gibson, R.B. , Hassan, S., Holtz, S., Tansey, J., and Whitelaw, G. 2005 Sustainability Assessment: Criteria and Processes. Earthscan, London.

Hardin, G. 1968. The Tragedy of the Commons. Science, New Series, Vol. 162, No. 3859 (Dec. 13, 1968), pp. 1243-1248

Leopold, Aldo. (1933) “The Conservation Ethic.” The River of the Mother of God and Other Essays. Edited by Susan L. Flader and J. Baird Callicott. (1991) Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press.

Lovins, Amory. (2012) Reinventing Fire: Bold Business Solutions for the New Energy Era (actionable solutions for four energy-intensive sectors of the economy: transportation, buildings, industry, and electricity.) http://rmi.org/ReinventingFire

McDonough, William & Michael Braungart 2002. “Redefining Green.” Adapted from an article published in Perspective, Spring 2003, accessed via http://www.mcdonough.com/writings/redefining_green.htm

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. (2005) Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Synthesis. Washington DC: Island Press. Pp 1-34.

National Renewable Energy Laboratory Energy Analysis, “Solar Power and the Electric Grid” http://www.nrel.gov/csp/pdfs/45653.pdf

National Renewable Energy Laboratory, “Learning About Renewable Energy – Solar Energy Basics” http://www.nrel.gov/learning/re_solar.html

Senge, Peter M; Goran Carstedt; Patrick L Porter. “Innovating Our Way to the Next Industrial Revolution.” MIT Sloan Management Review; Winter 2001; 42, 2; ABI/INFORM Global pg. 24, accessed via http://faculty.washington.edu/mlg/courses/108A06/senge_01_smr.pdf

Vaughn, Kelly. (2012) Amory Loving’s Farewell to Fossil Fuels. Rocky Mountain Institute Outlet. http://blog.rmi.org/Amory_Lovinss_Farewell_Fossil_Fuels

Aldo Leopold: Early conservationist paves way to modern ecosystem services sustainability

If Aldo Leopold were alive today, he likely would be pleased. The father of wildlife management and the United States’ wilderness system likely would approve of the modern movement towards sustainable use of ecosystem services.[1]

In 1933, when Leopold wrote The Conservation Ethic, he was heralding a bold new thinking, calling for a “third” ethic whereby people considered land as more than mere property, thereby considering cause and effect in their interactions with nature. Civilization, he said, was “a state of mutual and interdependent cooperation between human animals, other animals, plants, and soils, which may be disrupted at any moment by the failure of any of them.” (Leopold, 1933, p. 183)

Indeed, 50 years after Leopold made these statements conservation has become a household term. With the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) initiated in 2001, conservation has now expanded around the globe. Today, we have a language to describe the many benefits we derive from nature, called ecosystems services, which helps us to consider the consequences of our actions in relation to these benefits. It might sound simple, but using a term such as “ecosystems services” has helped us to make progress towards beginning to control what Leopold said were “reactions resulting from the interplay of ecological and economic forces.”

Citing the story of the bluegrass, which was planted and flourished in the Mississippi valley, Leopold noted that people either tended to care for the land (enough to fight for it), when specific crops had economic gain, or their actions caused ruin, as in the story of “Moses’ land of milk and honey.” (Leopold, 1933, p. 183) Today, to encourage responsible use and management, conservationists, scientists and others, including the writers of the MA synthesis, have adopted terms such as “ecosystem services” to describe the benefits such as food, fuel, fiber, and timber that people obtain from nature.

The MA divides ecosystem services into four categories, (provisioning, regulating, cultural and support) (MA Synthesis, 2005, v.) such that we can begin to think more consciously about them in our everyday lives. As “consumers” we can easily relate to thinking about the various benefits we derive from nature as “services.” Thus, this language tool has made a dramatic difference in helping ordinary people grasp the consequences of the use and misuse of ecosystem resources. For example, by thinking of ecosystem services in the provisioning category, we can link benefits such as food, water, timber, and fiber to the specific ecosystems of forest, oceans, or grasslands. Regulating services are those ecosystem dynamics that affect climate, floods, disease, wastes, and water quality. Benefits such as recreational, aesthetic and spiritual are categorized as cultural ecosystem services. Soil formation, photosynthesis and nutrient cycling are support services. (MA Synthesis, 2005, v.)

Further, we can relate ecosystem services to what the MA calls “constituents of well-being,” such as “security, basic material for a good life, health, good social relations, and freedom of choice and action.” For example, provisioning services such as food, fresh water, timber, fiber and fuel have a direct impact on security, basic material for a good life, and health: a lack of food can lead to poor health, lack of timber may result in housing issues which reduce security, lack of fibers can result in lack of clothing or trade items, etc. To a lesser degree all of the ecosystem services affect at least four categories of the constituents of well-being. (MA Synthesis, 2005, v, vi)

As if echoing Leopold’s assertions about human impacts on the environment, the MA asserts that “people are integral parts of ecosystems and that a dynamic interaction exists between them and other parts of ecosystems, with the changing human condition driving, both directly and indirectly, changes in ecosystems and thereby causing changes in human well-being.” (MA Synthesis, 2005, v) According to the MA, indirect drivers of change, such as “demographic, economic, sociopolitical, science and technology and cultural and religious” drivers can have an impact on human well-being and poverty, while at the same time, influencing direct drivers of change, such as “land use, species introduction and removal, fertilizer use and pest control, harvest and resource consumption, climate change” and others. (MA Synthesis, 2005, vii).

The MA’s primary objective is to “assess the consequences of ecosystem changes for human well-being and to establish a scientific basis for actions needed to enhance the conservation and sustainable use of ecosystems and their contributions to human wellbeing.” (MA Synthesis, 2005, ii) Changes and consequences are reported in Ecosystems and Human Well-Being, a synthesis of the MA, based on findings of the four MA Working Groups. During Leopold’s time, humans were only beginning to see the consequences of poor land use and management, which all too often cannot be seen until after the pendulum has swung wide. By the time the UN initiated the MA in 2001, the expedient judgments that Leopold had warned about had led to widespread environmental issues such as species extinctions, fallow land, pollution, erosion and increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide among others. (MA Synthesis, 2005, 1, 5).

The MA’s key findings provide a stark picture of the challenges that lay before us if we want to stop such damaging practices, possibly reverse damages, and move forward more sustainably. Four key findings of the MA are: 1) “Over the past 50 years, humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in any comparable period of human time in history, largely to meet rapidly growing demands for (provisioning services) food, fresh water, timber, fiber, and fuel. This has resulted in a substantial and largely irreversible loss in diversity of life on Earth.” (loss of biodiversity) 2) While changes in ecosystems have resulted in “substantial net gains in human well-being and economic development” for some, for others they have resulted in costs “in the form of degraded ecosystem services, exacerbating poverty.” 3) “The degradation of ecosystem services could grow worse, blocking the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.” 4) “Reversing the degradation of ecosystems, while meeting increasing demands for their services, can be partially met under some scenarios that the MA has considered, but these involve significant changes in policies, institutions, and practices not yet under way.” (MA Synthesis, 2005, pp. 1-20).

In their report Ecosystem Services: Benefits Supplied to Human Societies by Natural Ecosystems, Daily et al state that the major threats to our natural ecosystems and delivery of ecosystem services are “land use changes that cause losses in biodiversity as well as disruption of carbon, nitrogen and other biogeochemical cycles; human-caused invasions of exotic species; releases of toxic substances; possible rapid climate change; and depletion of stratospheric ozone.” (1997, p. 1) These direct drivers of change, which have led to “irreversible” changes through the loss of biodiversity are caused by increases in “land converted to cropland, significant portions of coral reefs lost or degraded, a greater amount of water held up by dams, increases in reactive (biologically available) nitrogen in terrestrial ecosystems, and an increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide.”(MA Synthesis, 2005, p. 2)

The MA ties the major threats to ecosystems services, first, to five indirect drivers of change, including population change (growth and migration), change in economic activity (economic growth, disparities in wealth, and trade patterns), sociopolitical factors (conflict, public participation in decision making), cultural factors, and technological change. According to the MA, “collectively, these factors influence the level of production and consumption of ecosystem services and the sustainability of production” and can lead to irreversible ecosystem degradation. (MA Synthesis, 2005, p 19). Other threats to sustainable management of ecosystem services identified in the MA include “inappropriate institutional and governance arrangements, market failures and misalignment of economic incentives, social and behavioral factors, underinvestment in technologies that might lead to better use and fewer harmful impacts, and insufficient knowledge or poor use of existing knowledge concerning ecosystem services and management. (MA Synthesis, 2005, p. 20).

Like Leopold, linking ecology with economics, Daily et al state that ecosystem services are “worth many trillions of dollars” and policies are needed “that achieve a balance between sustaining ecosystem services and pursuing the worthy short-term goals of economic development” which, when they cause negative consequences to ecosystems, result in costs that are “hidden from traditional economic accounting,” that are “borne by society at large.” (1997, p. 13)

In conclusion, Leopold’s call for an ethical criteria for conservation helped launch a movement toward sustainable use of ecosystem services, that in turn led to such tools as the MA. Leopold’s ideas were a call to action, pointing to the cause and effect of human use and management of nature’s resources. These ideas are applicable today, and in fact have been and will continue to be instrumental in helping us to achieve our global sustainability goals.  As Leopold stated, as ethics are expanded to “provide fair judgment rather than judgment that is simply expedient” this paves the way to extend ethics to ecological processes. (Leopold, 1933, p 181). While an ethic helps people to choose why to do something, science, with its objectivity, facts-based inquiry, quantification, modeling and other tools, can step in to explain how we might better use, manage and preserve our ecosystem services. Yet, in order to get to this important step, we first needed to change our ideology about ethics, as they relate to our Earth. Leopold pointed the way.

Works Cited:

Beall, Allyson. (2012) ESRP 101 Lectures. “Ecosystem services and biodiversity.” WSU, Accessed via Angel.

Daily, Gretchen C. and Susan Alexander et al. (1997) Ecosystem Services: Benefits Supplied to Human Societies by Natural Ecosystems. Issues in Ecology. Number 2, spring 1997. Washington DC: Ecological Society of America.

Leopold, Aldo. (1933) “The Conservation Ethic.” The River of the Mother of God and Other Essays. Edited by Susan L. Flader and J. Baird Callicott. (1991) Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press.

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. (2005) Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Synthesis. Washington DC: Island Press. Pp 1-34.

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[1] Aldo Leopold Foundation. http://www.aldoleopold.org

Rate of planetary warming follows Newton’s Law of Motion:

A body in motion tends to remain in motion, unless a force acts upon it.

Thus, based on the experiments in our lab, which showed how C02 emissions are on a path of exponential growth, unless we do something fairly drastic, the levels will surpass our ability to change them. After performing the exercises in the three different CO₂ simulators, I’ve concluded that it is a difficult if not impossible task to restrict further global warming to 2 degrees. In fact, it may not be possible to reduce emissions to achieve this goal, for a number of reasons. The primary reason is that there are complex factors, which affect emissions and absorption, such that emissions into the environment are accelerating at a rate where the planet cannot remove the carbon fast enough, so there is an overflow.

An analogy for this is Newton’s first law of motion, where a body in motion tends to remain in motion, i.e. “An object that is at rest will stay at rest unless an unbalanced force acts upon it. An object that is in motion will not change its velocity unless an unbalanced force acts upon it.”

In addition, it seems that carbon encapsulates kinetic energy, holding potential energy in it. Otherwise, how could it be used for fuel? Carbon contains stored energy from millions of years ago. Thus the molecules which are emitted today as C02 continue to hold energy which causes warming. So if the rate we are pushing these particles out into the environment exceeds our planet’s natural ability to remove or absorb the C02 through forests, oceans etc., there is more energy potential in the atmosphere, increasing the rate of warming.

One way to look at it is to look at the kinetic energy of a car in motion. For example, if I am driving my car, at each speed I travel, I need to leave a certain distance between my car and the car in front of me. (In fact, there is “a quadrupling of stopping distance with a doubling of vehicle speed.”[1]) This is because, my stopping distance is reduced proportionately by the rate of speed I am travelling. Thus, if I follow the car too closely at 60 miles per hour, and am required to stop, I may not be able to avoid crashing into the car in front of me.

Our current rate of C02 emissions is causing a similar effect in our environment. In addition, we are not yet able to stop all the various components which are contributing GHG’s, so rather than having one faucet, running water into the sink, we have many. In effect, there is a multiplier effect in the environment that increases the effects of GHGs.

The three simulations showed this, the cause and effect relationship between CO2 emissions and the ability of the natural systems to absorb and reduce the effects, in order to maintain a balance. MIT’s Greenhouse Gas Simulator showed that in order to stabilize CO₂ concentration, we would need to decrease our present levels dramatically. My first estimate in the simulator was to lower CO2 emissions to 4 GTc, to levels at around the 1900s rate, so that the levels do not exceed the net removal rate by nature (i.e. absorption by the ocean or biomass.) This did reduce the levels to a level lower than the stated goal, but that would require a dramatic change for us. For example, if “the annual carbon dioxide emissions increased to about 7.2 GtC (billion metric tons per year of carbon equivalent) in 2000–2005,” this would require a reduction of more than 3 GTc’s based on my model. We’re now in the year 2012. This illustrates that we cannot emit more CO2 than the net removal mechanism can accommodate. (If you’ve ever had a “slow drain” in your house, where when you run the water, the water drains so slowly that the sink fills up, this is similar to how our rate of emissions is exceeding our capacity to remove them. Our atmosphere (sink) is filling up faster than nature (drain) can remove the CO2.)

Next, I attempted to match the historic path of CO₂ concentrations using the proportional, the sink saturation, and the positive feedback scenarios. Each of these scenarios showed the rate of change between the emissions of CO2 and the net removal. In the proportional model, I needed to reduce CO2 emissions by 46% from present in order to meet the goal of 500 ppm by 2,100. In the sink saturation model I needed to cut emissions by 42% and not overshoot. It seemed to produce the closest to reaching the net removal goal. For the positive feedback model, I needed to cut emissions by 54% to meet the goal of around 500 ppm by 2,100. This is because in the positive feedback model, there is a multiplier effect at work where through the warming, a chain effect is set off, such that other factors begin to contribute more CO2, such as soil emission, fires and other factors of positive feedback, while at the same time, the plants and ocean absorb or remove the CO2 at a reduced rate. In the sink saturation model, the limiting factor is that the plants and ocean are becoming more saturated and less able to remove the CO2. The positive feedback scenario has this, plus more sources of C02 emissions. It’s sort of like the filter in my heating system. If it becomes clogged, it can’t do its job.

The next experiment showed the relationship between the economy and CO2 emissions. As people have more spending power, they tend to use more greenhouse dependent tools, i.e. fly, drive more, etc. which adds more C02 to the atmosphere. In this experiment we were able to control the carbon intensity of the economy by using a simulated lever to control the rate of emissions along a historical path. There were three scenarios, no delay, a 20-year delay and a 40-year delay.

In the first scenario, we would need to control the intensity to around .18 to .21 tC/$ to reach a goal of 500 ppm. With a 20-year delay, we would need to reduce this further, to about .04 tC/$ and with a 40-year delay, .01 tC/$. This shows that the longer we delay mitigating or controlling C02 emissions, the more we will need to do later, and, we may not be successful.

Using the Climate Momentum Simulator, there were six different scenarios. This showed that even though emissions are reduced, sea level and temperature continue to rise. This again is due to the momentum, the trajectory, which I explained using Newton’s laws of motion. It’s like a pendulum swinging. Even if you slow things, it takes time to stop the rate of motion already in motion.

These experiments illustrate the IPCC’s results:  “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level….Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.”

 

References:

Attenborough, David. The Truth About Global Warming; – Attributing Climate Change to Humans. YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9ob9WdbXx0

Beall, Allyson, (2012) Lecture Carbon and Climate 2, WSU Media Center.

The Greenhouse Gas Emissions Simulator
http://www.climateinteractive.org/simulations/mits-greenhouse-gas-simulator

Climate Momentum Simulator
http://climateinteractive.org/simulations/climate-momentum-simulation

The Climate Bathtub Animation
http://www.climateinteractive.org/simulations/bathtub

 

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[1] http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/pegrav.html#pe

Huston, I think we have a water problem!

The Palouse Basin Water Visioning tool is very interesting; and it also made me feel sad. Based on what we’ve been learning during this section of the course, and knowing how scarce water is in so many parts of the world has made me feel very uncomfortable about my own water use, and that of our city and country. We take so much for granted, and sometimes so much so that I feel like I’m on a runaway train. I enjoy taking baths, and we have a garden, which we water in the summer months, and a small lawn area, but even with the ways I have attempted to cut back on water use, it’s not enough. I may have to stop taking baths.

So for this lab, I went to my water utility, which for me is the Chelan County PUD and asked them to print out my water use history going back several years. This information is provided in gallons, so for the visioning tool, I converted my numbers to cubic feet. My highest water use occurs in the months of July, August, September and October. However, in looking at my bill and comparing the year 2011 to 2010, I found my water use had jumped dramatically. In 2010, the bill was fairly consistent, averaging at around 6,683 gallons per month. The past December water use is also very high for that time of year, 14,300 gallons compared with 5,100 for the prior two years. Obviously this points to a problem and since we haven’t changed our daily habits, I believe this is due to some leaks that we need to fix inside, such as my kitchen sink, which has a drip. I also have a downstairs toilet which I need to repair. Thinking about this reminded me of an article I read where some guy from MIT or some other place like that developed a software tool to help people calculate where in their homes they are wasting water and energy. I think I need to contact him. So I visited the USGS website, where I found a calculator, more about that in a moment.

So based on the Palouse Basin Water Visioning tool, I used the winter bill, which was December 2011. During that month, my family used 14,300 gallons of water. This converted to about 1,900 cubic feet of water, which then converted to 158.7 billed (use per person). I used the tool on the left to enter or change numbers for various factors, such as washing machine, dishwasher, hand washing, toilet flushing taking showers, and running water in sinks. Based on that if everyone used water like my family, the Grande Ronde well would drop from around 2,250 feet to less than 1,800 feet above mean sea level by the year 2100. It was a little difficult to determine the exact numbers of present and future levels above mean sea level, due to the graph’s left hand measurement units. Still, this is dramatic. What is also frightening is that my water use for the months of August, September, and October more than doubled from the prior year. We’ve lived in our home for three years and have had a garden each year, since 2009. For some reason, the year 2010 water use is low compared to both the 2009 and 2011 numbers.

The good news is that now, armed with this information, I can audit my home and make some big changes, such as, first, fixing all leaks and faucets. Next, I plan to look into water-efficient appliances, such as toilets, dish washer and washer. According to the visioning tool, “Average water use for low volume toilets is 1.6 gallons per flush although some low volume fixtures use only 1 gallon. Toilets that were installed in the 1970s typically use 3.5 gallons while older fixtures can use 4.0 gpf to as much as 7gpf for pre-1950s fixtures. (Handbook of Water Use and Conservation, Amy Vickers 2001).”

Based on this and the year in which my home was built, (1983), our toilets are probably using 3.5 gallons of water per flush. Wow. Based on 2-3 flushes per day per person, this could be 31.5 gallons per day, just on toilet flushing. When it comes to showers, we use a lot of water, possibly 30 gallons per shower. “Low flow shower heads use a maximum of 2.5 gallons per minute or less (2.2gpm and 1.5gpm). The flow is often stated on the shower head itself or on the accompanying literature. Higher flow shower heads come in 3.0gpm, 4.0gpm and for pre 1980′s fixtures 5.0-8.0 gp.”

Next, my washing machine: According to the visioning tool: “High efficiency clothes washers use 27 gallons or less per load depending on the size. Some use as little as 14 gallons per load. Traditional top load or older machines use between 43 and 56 gallons per load. (Handbook of Water Use and Conservation, Amy Vickers 2001)” Based on my typical washing of about 2 loads per day, I am using 86 gallons of water a day, x 7 is 602 gallons per week. My dishwasher is newer, but I’m sure I could find a more efficient model. The visioning tool provides this information: “Newer water efficient dishwashers use 7 gallons per load on normal full cycle settings. Higher efficiency or water saver settings can use as little as 4.5 gpl. Dishwaters that are older than 1995 may use from 9.5 to 14 gpl. (Handbook of Water Use and Conservation, Amy Vickers”

Now, back to my leaks: At this website, http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/sc4.html the USGS provides a “Drip Calculator: How much water does a leaking faucet waste?” When I entered the number of drips I might have on my leaking faucet, the calculation showed that I could be losing 2 gallons of water a day (43,200 drips) or 1,041 gallons per year.

The USGS site states: “Well, maybe it’s just a small drip — how much water can a little drip waste? True, a single drip won’t waste much water. But think about each faucet in your home dripping a little bit all day long. What if every faucet in every home on your block … in your town … in your state also dripped? The drips would add up to a flood of water wasted down the drain. There is no scientific definition of the volume of a faucet drip, but after measuring a number of kitchen and bathroom sink faucets, for our calculations below (numbers are rounded), we are going to use 1/4 milliliter (ml) as the volume of a faucet drip. So, by these drip estimates: One gallon is 15,140 drips; One liter is 4,000 drips.” The city of Wenatchee has a population of approximately 27,000 people so if we all have leaky faucets, we’d be wasting 54,000 gallons of water per day, which equates to 19,710,000 gallons per year.

To conserve water outside, I plan to install drip irrigation for my garden. My biggest challenge, however, will be in educating my husband and son, who both like to take long showers, and who don’t see a need to conserve, surprisingly.

All of this conservation is important due to the potential to drain our aquifers, as we’ve learned in our lessons. The Palouse Basin Water visioning tools states this: “Ground water on the Palouse is primarily found in two geologic structures: the Grande Ronde formation and the Wanapum formation. These formations are old basalt (lava) flows that formed in the area between 17-14 million years ago. (Douglas, A. 2004 @ http://www.webs.uidaho.edu/pbac/Theses/Theses_Index.htm)”

Where I live is just outside The City of Wenatchee I learned that our water comes from the Rocky Reach Aquifer. “Located just north of Rocky Reach Dam, the Eastbank Aquifer is the primary source of drinking water for the City of Wenatchee, East Wenatchee Water District and the Chelan County PUD. Aquifers, such as the Eastbank Aquifer, act as a natural filter and underground storage for water. The Eastbank Aquifer is recharged by the Columbia River, and as indicated by the high quality water it produces, the aquifer is an excellent filter. In addition, the Aquifer currently supplies an average of 10 million gallons per day to Wenatchee Valley residents and 30 million gallons per day to the PUD fish hatchery.” – City of Wenatchee website.

Like non-point source pollution, and other conservation methods, there is much more to be done to conserve our resources and to keep our planet healthy for the future. It all starts with each of us.

 

References:

Beall, Allyson, (2012) Water 1, 2 &3, WSU Media Center.

City of Wenatchee, information about local water. http://www.wenatcheewa.gov/Index.aspx?page=349

Palouse Basin Water Visioning Tool. Accessed via WSU, Angel.

USGS, leaky faucet calculation tool. http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/sc4.html

Many agencies where I live work on pollution and water quality. Still, more can always be done

When it comes to protecting the environment, most of us like to think we’re doing as much as we can. We recycle, or volunteer for a conservation organization, or purchase organics or maybe ride the bus, bicycle or walk, hang our clothes to dry, wash with cold water. Or, we point our fingers at others, loggers, fishing operations, industrial outfits and maintain a blind eye to our own pollution, like non-point sources of pollution, those pesky pollutants which can’t be traced to an exact source, but for which each of us is a likely contributor. In some ways, the more we learn, the more overwhelming it becomes. Still, knowledge is power, so there is hope.

Non-point source pollution could be considered as any foreign substance that makes its way into any ecosystem, including natural and human-made pollutants that derive from sources other than a point sources such as “a pipe, ditch, channel, tunnel, conduit, well, discrete fissure, container, rolling stock, concentrated animal feeding operation, or vessel or other floating craft, from which pollutants are or may be discharged.” The pollutants can be biological in origin, such as livestock or pet waste or contaminants from septic or sewers, in addition to such things as fertilizers, herbicides, insecticides, oil, grease, paints and chemicals that are discarded in agricultural, residential or urban areas and then are washed into lakes, streams, rivers and oceans by rain or snow run-off. Sediments from construction or other land-use, as well as stream bank erosion can also be NPS. Other waste products from mining and other operations are NPS.

According to the EPA, “Nonpoint source pollution generally results from land runoff, precipitation, atmospheric deposition, drainage, seepage or hydrologic modification. The term “nonpoint source” is defined to mean any source of water pollution that does not meet the legal definition of “point source” in section 502(14) of the Clean Water Act.” Non-point source pollution is troubling because, as its name implies, it has no single point of origin. Instead, it has many sources and cannot be monitored precisely. It is of concern because these pollutants, which derive from household, urban, agriculture, forestry, mining and other practices, wind up in our water supplies. The specific types of NPS can be oil, anti-freeze, paint and other household cleaners, and many others.

As I went about my normal routine for the past week, I observed and did some thinking about places in my community that are possible sources of non-point source pollution. Starting with my own property and the ways my family and I live on it, I began to consider the Squilchuck Valley where I live, which is formed by a creek which drains into the Columbia River. I started to ask questions such as: What about my property and the creek which runs through it? Squilchuck Creek flows down from Mission Ridge, a ski resort. During the winter, thousands of people ski at Mission Ridge and this opens the door to many types of pollution, from oil and fuel leaks to other wastes discarded in the parking lot or other places. There are orchards, farms, cows, vineyards and more up and down the valley. There is an aquifer on my property, in the lower garden area, so what about the people who lived here before me? How did they manage the pests on the fruit trees and in the garden? In my garden, I have more than two dozen fruit trees, raspberries and vegetables, so I think about how we mitigate for bugs. I use organics, but I don’t know about the people before me. I also have chickens, two dogs, three cars, an army truck, and a biodiesel area. I compost chicken manure. But what about how we wash cars, discard pet waste, etc.? What about our septic system and those of our neighbors?

Any of the waste from any of these sources, or dumped on the ground here at my house or in the valley would make its way into Squilchuck Creek and eventually into the Columbia River. The EPA reports that “the most recent National Water Quality Inventory reports that runoff from urbanized areas is the leading source of water quality impairments to surveyed estuaries and the third-largest source of impairments to surveyed lakes.” Thinking about this made me think about the beautiful estuary down near town, the Horan Natural Area, a natural wetlands, which lies between the Wenatchee River and the Columbia River. It consists of “100 acres of wetlands, with 2 miles of gravel trails that connect 15 viewing stations, which reveal a variety of habitats for waterfowl, birds and mammals.” (Horan, brochure.)

On my way into town, I drive through South Wenatchee, at the bottom of Squilchuck, a dilapidated, poorly maintained area. Many yards contain garbage and currently the City of Wenatchee is engaged in a long-term clean-up of the area. A new housing development went in just as you start the climb up Squilchuck. Storm drains and concrete walls have been put in place to manage water runoff, and many developments include retention ponds for drainage.

The types of non-point source pollution I observed in my community included drops of oil in parking lots, from cars which have oil leaks. In various rural areas, such as along Squilchuck, I often see garbage which gets dumped as well as dead animals. These eventually disappear, and I am not certain whether nearby neighbors do some of the cleanup or if the county does this. With orchards and agriculture up and down the valley, there is much potential for pollutants such as oil and fuel leaks, due to the many farm vehicles, and pesticides. Also, waste from cattle and horses are sometimes seen on roadways, which eventually get into the water system. People dropping cigarettes onto the ground are another issue I’ve seen. When I look into the creek which runs through my property, I sometimes see debris which has been tossed in, tires, wood, garbage and other items. There is often garbage that gets thrown out into the road.

Regarding drinking water, many cities, including the city of Wenatchee produce “Water Quality Reports.” The City of Wenatchee has a website http://www.wenatcheewa.gov/Index.aspx?page=349 which describes its water quality program. From this website, I learned that our water comes from the Rocky Reach Aquifer. “Located just north of Rocky Reach Dam, the Eastbank Aquifer is the primary source of drinking water for the City of Wenatchee, East Wenatchee Water District and the Chelan County PUD. Aquifers, such as the Eastbank Aquifer, act as a natural filter and underground storage for water. The Eastbank Aquifer is recharged by the Columbia River, and as indicated by the high quality water it produces, the aquifer is an excellent filter. In addition, the Aquifer currently supplies an average of 10 million gallons per day to Wenatchee Valley residents and 30 million gallons per day to the PUD fish hatchery.”

Fortunately in my town and county, we have a several conservation organizations, which are working to maintain our land and water, such as the Chelan-Douglas Land Trust, the Chelan County PUD, the Cascadia Conservation District and more. I discovered that our city and county have several programs which work together to improve water quality and to reduce or eliminate pollutants. One is the Wenatchee Valley Stormwater program and a Stormwater Utility which was created in 2008. The programs are administered by the public works department and they prepare and send out information regarding the program, helping people to better understand what to do and what not to do. This information can be found at http://www.co.chelan.wa.us/pw/stormwater/default.htm. For example, in January 2010, the Stormwater program sent a letter out to homeowners and addresses outside of city limits explaining the program.

At our city and county websites I discovered there are various activities designed to mitigate the pollution in my community. “Program pollutants carried in stormwater runoff are quickly becoming a leading cause of water pollution in rivers and lakes. The Urban Growth Area of Wenatchee falls under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Phase II requirements which require a specific set of actions to meet these Clean Water Act mandates. Chelan County is required to get a stormwater quality permit from the Department of Ecology for this service area under the NPDES regulations. This NPDES Phase II planning area will have the same boundary as the new Chelan County stormwater utility. In February of 2007, the Washington State Department of Ecology issued the Eastern Washington Phase II Municipal Stormwater Permit to the City of Wenatchee, Chelan County, Douglas County and the City of East Wenatchee. This permit requires each jurisdiction to develop and implement a stormwater program with the goal of reducing the amount of pollution in stormwater.”

I discovered the stormwater goes into drains and pipes and then into rivers and streams, which would mean that it ultimately ends up in the Columbia River, which runs through the city. There is also a “Wenatchee Valley Stormwater Technical Advisory Committee (WVSTAC). Over the past five years this program has been developed and implemented. Additional information can be found on the WVSTAC webpage.”

In addition, the Department of Ecology has developed projects for Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDL) of specific pollutants, for specific waterways, such as the Squilchuck Creek, and others, to improve water quality. Of course there are challenges faced by my city or agricultural area in trying to reduce these pollutants in order to be in compliance with a TMDL since it would be difficult to trace precisely where the contaminants are coming from. At the Department of Ecology’s website, I learned there is a table, which “lists overview information and links to specific water quality improvement projects (also known as total maximum daily loads, or TMDLs) for this county.” Some of the pollutants on the watch list include: DDT, PCB, Total Phosphorus, DDE, Dissolved Oxygen and pH, Fecal Coliform, and water Temperature.

The city of Wenatchee has a population of approximately 27,000 people. It is the largest city in the county and, is where the county seat sits, as well as a county/regional jail. There are many businesses in the city, and a bustling tourist industry. With regards to private business or individuals, I’m not aware of specific programs which deal with NSP, other than the ones mentioned above. I would like to research this more, as I have noticed some specific health problems here, such as cancers, sinus infections, asthma and others, more than I noticed when I lived in Seattle.

I believe there is much being done to mitigate non-point source pollution in my community, based on all the agencies and information I found. However, there is still a need to educate the public about this type of pollution, so that individuals and business owners can work to mitigate their own NPS issues. Before this project, I hadn’t heard of this term, even though I obviously know that oil, fuel and other wastes dumped on the ground do impact the water system. One issue that is troublesome is prescription drugs, which often get flushed down the toilets.

 

References:

Beall, Allyson, (2012) Lecture Carbon and Climate 2, WSU Media Center.

EPA site’s opening page for the links provided – http://www.epa.gov/owow_keep/nps/

• http://www.epa.gov/owow_keep/nps/whatis.html
• http://www.epa.gov/owow_keep/nps/whatudo.html

• http://www.epa.gov/owow_keep/nps/urban_facts.html
• http://water.epa.gov/polwaste/nps/outreach/point7.cfm

• http://www.epa.gov/owow/NPS/Ag_Runoff_Fact_Sheet.pdf
• http://www.in.nrcs.usda.gov/technical/agronomy/newconbuf.pdf

• http://www.epa.gov/owow_keep/nps/healthywatersheds/
• Chelan County PUD Dist. No. 1, Conservation & Customer Service 661-8008; Water Dept. 661-4254.
• www.chelanpud.org/water-conservation.
• Brochure: WaterWays.
• Xeriscape. Riverfront Park Demonstration Garden. Designed and planted by WSU Master Gardeners in partnership with Chelan County PUD.
• Chelan-Douglas Land Trust.
• “How to Be a Salmon Friendly Gardener” Snohomish County Public Works.
• Wenatchee River Salmon Festival. Leavenworth National Fish Hatchery
• Cascadia Conservation District: Started a Watershed Stewardship Campaign in 2011.
• Chelan County Shoreline Master Program.

Even broccoli has a carbon footprint: When I eat, I contribute to the CO2 emissions on the planet through the choices I make

We know that driving our gas guzzling cars contributes to the overall CO2 emissions on our planet, but did you also know that every time you lift a fork of food to your mouth, you are also adding to the CO2 emissions? Who would think broccoli would have a carbon footprint? Turns out broccoli and everything we eat has some percentage of CO2 emissions attached to it. In fact, according to CleanMetrics Corp., if I purchase broccoli that travelled 100 miles it would contribute production emissions of 0.16, transport emissions of 0.02 and waste emissions of 0.00. (2012, Cleanmetrics.com.)

The most surprising element I found from running the various calculators for our lab this week was that production had the highest carbon footprint in the total food scenario. I thought transportation and packaging would be higher due to the use of fossil fuels and the processes that often go into making packaging. I liked the calculator at PlantGreen.com best, but found the methodology of CleanMetrics Corp’s carbon emissions food calculator interesting. CleanMetrics states on their website: “We looked at several sources (such as the USDA, About Seafood, and others) to come up with a list of about 31 food commodities that are commonly consumed in the US. For each of these commodities, we picked a typical North American production system or an average of several North American production systems (in one or more agricultural regions) to calculate the production emissions.” (2012, Cleanmetrics.com.)

1. What factors impact the carbon footprint of food in general? Describe at least three.

Knowledge is power, so in order to reduce my carbon footprint (or mouth print for food); it helps to know how I am contributing CO2. There are a number of factors which impact the carbon footprint of food. Any process in the food cycle (from farm to cradle) which uses a fossil-fuel based ingredient adds a carbon footprint component to the food we eat. This would include the energy costs, and the transportation costs involved in the various aspects of the food, from the farmer’s machinery, to delivery to a warehouse or processing plant, to the distributor, to the grocery store, all transporting the food in the supply chain. Another component is the various chemicals farmers use, such as fossil-fuel based pesticides or fertilizers, such as nitrogen. The packaging of the food adds another element to the carbon footprint. Labor costs could also be included, since the workers drive fossil-fuel based vehicles to get to their jobs.

In addition, when we as consumers drive to the store to purchase our food, we have contributed to the carbon footprint as well. In fact, consumer’s driving to the store had the highest percentage of the carbon footprint, according to Planetgreen.com. And food miles make up 20% of the carbon footprint. “According to calculations in a Washington Post article, farmers using small trucks can delivery 3,200 lbs. of food for every gallon on fuel expended. Tractor trailers can only delivery 100 lbs. of food for every gallon of fuel.” (2012, PlanetGreen.com.)

This surprised me. I thought packaging was the larger of the two. Planet Green also states: “The type of food you eat and how it’s produced is the single largest component in your dinner’s carbon footprint, 40 percent of the total. Cooking is 29 percent, how it’s packaged is 5 percent, emissions associated with food disposal and retail are just 3 percent each.” (2012, PlanetGreen.com.)

2. Based on the factors in question #1, describe how your choices for a lower carbon breakfast, lunch and dinner actually lowered your carbon footprint for those meals.

There are a number of ways we (or I) can lower the carbon footprint of my food choices. One way is to grow a significant portion of my own food organically, thereby removing some of the reliance on fossil-fuel based elements. Following organic methods removes the use of fossil-fuel based pesticides and fertilizers, and when I grow my own food, the transportation costs are eliminated, except for seeds. (I could also save my own seeds.) Packaging and production CO2 emissions also go down since most of the food I grow is fresh and not packaged. I could also raise my own livestock, such as chickens, goats, pigs or cows, from which to get meat, milk and eggs. I do have chickens. I could also buy grains and grind the grain for bread. These are all things my parents did as I was growing up. We grew our own veggies, made our own butter, had whole milk from cows, and my mom made her own flour for breads.

Another way I could lower my carbon footprint is to purchase fruits and veggies from a farmer’s market or cooperative. For items I purchase at the store, I could purchase organic, and, foods with minimal packaging or minimal production processes. Since red meat has the highest carbon footprint of all of our foods, eating a vegetarian diet would reduce CO2 emissions by 33 percent, according to Planet Green. “On the basis of grams of CO2 emitted per calorie, a vegan diet is about 33 percent lower in emissions that the average American omnivore diet. That meat-heavy diet emits 4.3 grams of CO2 per calorie. A vegetarian diet is about 21 percent lower than meat-eating.” (2012, Planetgreen.com.)

1. 3.      What kinds of challenges would you anticipate if you wanted to lower your carbon footprint?

The challenges to lowering my carbon footprint could include the time it takes to raise a garden and to process the food myself. Reading packaging labels and shopping for foods with less processing and packaging also takes more time. Some garden items require more time than others to process, or can. It also requires weaning oneself off of certain foods that I buy in the store, such as latte’s, or processed food, like pizza. Another challenge is planning. I do raise a garden and I can fruit from my own garden, and make my own jams, but it takes time to plan the garden, prepare the soil, plant the seeds and care for it, then pick and process. Our society has become so convenience oriented, so one of the best ways to reduce our carbon footprint is to get back to the land by growing some of our own foods.

1. 4.      What kinds of things could a community collectively do to enable community members to lower the carbon footprints of their food?

Encouraging and supporting local farmer’s markets and food cooperatives and local food are all significant ways to help community members lower their carbon footprint. In addition, educating people about the importance of organic foods, buying local and learning to grow at least some foods on their own is another component. In Wenatchee, where I live, we have a nice farmer’s market, a food co-op, and a community garden and many people, even in the city grow gardens. Seattle, where I lived before, had many such programs, and Seattle Tilth is an excellent group which “inspires and educates people to grow food organically, conserve natural resources and support local food systems in order to cultivate a healthy urban environment and community.” (2012, seattletilth.org.)

Another component is for people to live closer to the grocery stores so that we can bike and walk (or use public transit) to get to necessary services. Cities were once planned and developed with a 1.5 mile walking radius, and streets were configured on a grid. These were called “traditional neighborhoods.” The new urbanism movement has been working to preserve this and to create traditional and walkable neighborhoods. One significant person to follow is Andre’s Duany who recently wrote an article titled “Agrarian Urbanism: ‘Food not as a means of making a living, but as a basis for making a life,” in the Nov. /Dec. 2011 issue of Sustainable Communities. Duany created a proposal for a city, which has a “pervasive pattern of squares that can be dedicated to allotment gardens. The overlapping urban blocks have turned lots at their ends, a layout which allows every dwelling to directly face a square.” (Duany, 19)

Like Duany suggests, if we encourage people to incorporate gardens into their daily lives, either through raised bed, container or traditional kitchen gardens, or turn lawns into gardens, using the idea of the victory garden or kitchen garden, we could also reduce our food’s carbon footprint. One interesting group which is doing this is Food Not Lawns. At their website, they explain how they got started: “Food Not Lawns was founded in Eugene, Oregon in 1999 by a small group of activists who had been cooking Food Not Bombs (free meals in the park) for several years and decided to start gardening too….With the publication of Heather Flores’ book, Food Not Lawns, How to Turn your Yard into a Garden and Your Neighborhood into a Community, …in 2006, new local FNL chapters starting popping up all over. Now we are a global community of … gardeners, working together to grow and share food, seeds, medicine, and knowledge.” (2012, Foodnotlawns.com.)

Since food producers follow consumer trends, education needs to happen on both sides of the spectrum. We need to educate the general public about the various aspects of their food which contributes to the carbon footprint, and we need to provide education and incentive to food producers to use less processing and packaging and employ other methods to reduce the carbon footprint of our food.

Resources:

Duany, Andre’s. (2011). “Agrarian Urbanism: ‘Food not as a means of making a living, but as a basis for making a life.” Sustainable Communities. Vol. 1. No. 6. Nov. /Dec. 2011. pp. 18-21.

“Food Carbon Emissions Calculator.” CleanMetrics Corp. April 8, 2012. <Accessed via http://www.foodemissions.com/foodemissions/Calculator.aspx>.

“About Us.” Foodnotlawns.com. Food Not Lawns. April 8, 2012 <http://www.foodnotlawns.com/>.

“Know your Food’s Carbon Emissions?” PlanetGreen.com. April 8, 2012. Discovery Communications, LLC.  <http://planetgreen.discovery.com/games-quizzes/greenhouse-gas-emissions-food-quiz/>.

“About Us.” seattletilth.org. Seattle Tilth. April 8, 20120. <http://seattletilth.org/>.

This is what war does: an essay

At 4 p.m. today I will go to a special gathering for our young friend whose husband lost his life, a casualty of war. On November 5, he committed suicide because he could no longer handle what war does to you when you’ve gone on two deployments to Iraq. He was 34 years old, with a 14-year old son. On Saturday I will go to his funeral and when his fellow soldiers perform the missing man formation, it will pierce my heart again and I will cry. I’ve been to this funeral before. And I will wonder how many more of us have to die?

I am so tired, now. I try not to think, but the thought surfaces again: how much more can I take? I try to recall a time when I did not know war, a time before it had colored my dreams and shattered my life, a time before I had become a prisoner of war.

Sometimes, when the sun brushes a subtle color onto a window pane or a branch tangos gently in the spring breeze, or little girls skip to school— I see it. Blurring in and out of focus, always out of reach; it’s the street corner. The place I once loved.

I got on the wrong train that day and I never came back. Now, in a crowded grocery, or while crossing the street, or when taking a certain turn down a road, I see the bricks on an old Victorian, feel the bridge spanning the water, see the narrow streets between centuries-old buildings, smell the lush trees—

And a pain happens

And an elephant stomps on my heart.

 And I wonder —

How do I get back? To there?

To the place I once loved?

These are the remains of my life: blurred faces, bits and pieces of conversations; the calls and chatters of seagulls strutting in the park; the train that whistles, on schedule each day, far, far off, then louder, louder as it scrapes across steel, slips in, then out of town. These are the remnants of the lives that go on without me.

And I wonder —

How do you come back from murder? from the slow death that kills every fiber, every idea, every love, slowly, wringing the last bit of moisture from a cloth, twisting, squeezing, suffocating, strangling? To death.

I want to shout, don’t think anyone would hear me. Still, I know I must find my way back —to the train—back to the corner—back to my life.

This is all I have now: the smell of the air, swollen with moisture, drifting up from the sea that leaves a salty taste in my mouth. It’s an ironic gift, given only to those no longer there, imperceptible until you’ve gone.

******************************************

If you had visited Seattle in 1995, you might have seen me there. That was the year I turned thirty, the year I lived on the nineteenth floor. From my deck and floor-to-ceiling windows, I savored an expansive, always-changing view of Elliot Bay. On a bright day in May, the watercolor scene of seagulls and sailboats had encouraged me to take the apartment on the spot.

I got paid to write, studied method acting at a studio in an old church, and once, got exercise-induced asthma from the dust. I memorized scripts in minutes, loved improvisation, and walked to the market for breakfast.

What happened didn’t happen all at once. Maybe if it had, I could have saved myself. Instead, the fragments of my life slipped away gradually, like little bits of sand eroding from a rock. It happened as I drove over the Aurora Bridge, or when I went to the post office, or when I stopped off at the grocery store, or when I cancelled class to be with him. I didn’t realize, then, that what seemed like tiny, little concessions was the sum of my life.

I was no different from you or any other girl really; just a tender, tiny frog swimming happily in the water, not knowing the pot had been turned on, until one day, I had been boiled.

I know you’re asking: Why? Why didn’t you just leave?

You might think I would have left, the first time he raged, or maybe when I began to stop — acting, writing, wearing hats and fun clothes, having coffee with friends, singing while doing the dishes, or wearing perfume.

These things I stopped doing, I stopped doing, one by one, over time, not all at once. It happened the way you might remove a flower, here or there, from a bouquet.

It’s hard to explain, really. It’s hard to describe the hatred he had for these things, how he criticized me incessantly

told me I looked stupid in hats

told me that my friends were dykes

that my voice was terrible

that my perfume smelled like rotting cabbage.

And in those seemingly, inconsequential concessions I made to keep the rage at bay, I stopped                       being.

And so today, there is no singing in this house.

I know it’s hard for you to understand this. I can’t blame you really. A recent survey conducted by The Allstate Foundation and ORC International showed, “even though domestic violence affects one in four women in their lifetime, more than one-third of Americans have never discussed the issue with a friend or family member. Three out of five believe that it is a difficult issue to discuss.”

There is no singing in this house because singing is not allowed.

The slightest miss-step here can bring on rage: smoldering looks, cruel insults, violent outbursts, smashed furniture and walls – and broken lives.

So, I ask you, how do we start a conversation toward ending domestic violence? What questions could we pose? If Einstein discovered the theory of relativity by asking, “What would the universe look like if I were riding on the end of a light beam at the speed of light?” I wonder… “What would the universe look like if we ended domestic violence?

I wonder what could happen if we asked: ‘why does he batter?’ instead of ‘why does she stay?’”

I wonder… would Ortencia Arroyo Alejandre and Vicky Lee Harvey and MacKenzie Cowell still be here today to enjoy the fall leaves that dance and swirl as they turn pumpkin-orange, crimson-red and lemon-yellow?

Our town is a small town, so you probably know about Ortencia, Vicky Lee and MacKenzie. If you read the newspaper, you know that on October 4, fifty-nine-year-old Vicky Lee Renner, a former beauty queen and cheerleader, was murdered, allegedly by her boyfriend, who bludgeoned her to death with a rock. You know that in August, 38-year-old Ortencia Arroyo Alehandre was murdered in front of her two children by her estranged husband. You know that Mackenzie Cowellwas seventeen-years old when she was murdered in February 2010, allegedly by a male classmate. (Her car was abandoned down the hill a mile from my home.) What you probably don’t know is that these women died as the result of domestic violence. That detail wasn’t highlighted in the stories you read. So you didn’t know that.

You might not have given much thought to the stories about Ortencia and Vicky Lee. It was a bright summer day when the story about Ortencia appeared and it was early Fall when we learned about Vicky Lee. You were probably busy going to the Lake or walking the loop, or just enjoying summer. In North Central Washington, October is busy, alive with color, promise and good causes. Everywhere pink ribbons remind us about breast cancer. Rotary International works to end polio. Make a Difference Day, the grand finale, provides proof that this is a community that cares.

Yet my heart aches for MacKenzie, Ortencia and Vicky, and the thousands of women and children whose lives have been ended by domestic violence. It’s hard for me to think about these women. Like you, I want to remain in my shell, shielded from the pain but if I want to make a difference I must venture outside to ask: How would MacKenzie, Ortencia and Vicky want us to change the world?

It’s hard for me to ask these questions. I wish I could point to the progress we’ve made to share a rosy picture. Yet, I can’t ignore that in the short time I’ve lived here two women in my community have been murdered by a partner or ex-partner. I can’t ignore that Ortencia and Vicky’s names will now be among the more than 755 people, mostly women, who have been killed in Washington State in a domestic violence related fatality since January 1, 1997 according to the Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence Fatality Review.

I can’t ignore the “statistics that show that 1,500 to 2,000 women are murdered by partners and ex-partners per year…comprising more than one-third of all female homicide victims,” writes Lundy Bancroft, former director of Emerge, the nation’s first program for abusive men, in his book Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry Controlling Men. I can’t ignore the millions of women and children who live in tyranny, pinned down by the power and control tactics of an abuser who is often skilled at hiding his behavior. I can’t ignore these things because I know the problem is so prevalent “the U.S. Surgeon General has declared attacks by male partners to be the number one cause of injury to women between the ages of fifteen and forty-four… 2 to 4 million women are assaulted by their partners per year in the United States…” —Bancroft, 2002.

Indeed in the last thirty years we have made progress. Yet, it was not until 1994 that The Violence Against Women Act was signed into law, so that today, everywhere in our nation, domestic violence is illegal. Today, laws are more consistently enforced than ever before in our history. Today, we have shelters that did not exist in the 1970s including our local domestic violence and sexual assault center, recently renamed SAGE.

Knowing about these laws and these shelters and our local services might make you feel better. You think we’ve come a long way so you can relax a little. You recall an article about a study a few years back that even seemed to say that domestic violence is on the decline. But you didn’t read the fine print. You didn’t see where it says that a great proportion of assaults and domestic violence crimes are never reported. That makes the results not so good.

And like so many people, you probably subscribe to the myths that still prevail. I can’t blame you really. Domestic violence is a misunderstood societal problem. You might think that women who are in or who stay in abusive relationships are stupid, uneducated “doormats,” women who like to be treated badly or who provoke violence. You might think these women choose abusers. If you think this way, you won’t realize that domestic violence can and does happen to anyone, and that these women are courageous women who must often use many tactics to navigate the circumstances of their lives with an abuser, every day.

You don’t know until you’ve lived it, the many reasons why women choose to stay in abusive relationships, reasons that range from economic, to religious, to traumatic bonding to many others. You may not know that the most dangerous time for an abused woman is when she attempts to leave, that even when a women does leave, the problem does not go away, that the abuse often continues. Divorced women are stalked, threatened or murdered more often than married women. When children are involved, abusers often retaliate by mounting custody battles that are injurious to both women and children.

*******

 And you wouldn’t know why I stay. If you had known me in 1995, you might not recognize me today. You would not know that when my husband returned from Afghanistan, after serving in combat for a year, he was a different person. You wouldn’t know that he had always been intense, bossy, occasionally verbally abusive and prone to temper tantrums. You wouldn’t know that within about six months of his return from war, his temper and attitude toward me became so hostile I told him I thought he needed to see someone, because I didn’t know what was going on with him. No one had prepared me for how to deal with a returning combat veteran. No one had provided information regarding posttraumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury or the other issues my husband began to experience after the war, including not wanting to touch me anymore.

You wouldn’t know my husband had served with a Special Forces A team in various remote locations in Afghanistan, a tour he considered to be the pinnacle of his life. You might even think that because he chose to enlist after September 11^th that he would not come home with issues like the soldiers who were drafted in Vietnam. My husband earned a Bronze Star for his service, and he continued to work for another year overseas in contract defense operations. Like so many people, you might think we’ve learned from our experiences of the Vietnam War that the military helps its veterans so that the problems of the past no longer exist. When my husband came home from Afghanistan, he was sent to Fort Bragg, NC for a week to debrief, then to his home base for a few days, and that was all. It was a rapid transition back to civilian life, with little time to decompress from his time in combat. That’s not enough time to decompress after being in a war zone for a year.

If you watch the news, you’ve probably seen the stories, heard about veterans coming home. You think the VA helps them. At my suggestion and that of a friend, my husband made a visit to the local Veterans Administration Office where he started a claims process, which resulted in him being awarded a service-connected disability for posttraumatic stress disorder. But he was also prescribed around sixteen different medications, drugs like Amitriptyline HCL, Amoxicillin, APAP/ Hydrocodein, Bupropian HCL, Cipro, Citalapram Hydrobromide, Codeine / Acetaminophen, Docusate NA, Doxycycline Hyclate, Fluoxetine HCL, Hyrdrocodone Bitartrate/ Acetaminophen, Ibuprofen, Lorazepam, Methaquine, Naproxen, Prazosen HCL, Propranolol HCL, Queitiapine Fumarate, Risperidone, Sinutab with Codeine, Paraselamol Phenyl Propanolamien HCI, phenyl Toloksamiensitrateat/ Codein phosphate, Zolpidem Tartrate (Ambien), Vardenafil HCL and Venlafaxine HCL. Some were antidepressants, some narcotic, some pain medications, and all together a pretty wild cocktail.

We kept the bottles containing the drugs in shoeboxes there were so many.  I made a spreadsheet listing all the medications. I purchased the book “Prescription Drugs,” which lists the protocols for prescription drugs and their various side effects. After the problems began, (that at first I attributed to his experience overseas, and then were exasperated by these drugs) I began to research the various medications and found that some were not to be taken with others. I wondered why this would happen, but no one ever explained this.

There was an incident that happened in January. My husband had just returned from a trip to South Africa. He’d been on an airplane for more than eighteen hours. When he got home, he was tired, but otherwise, I didn’t detect any problems. That night, I had been reading bedtime stories to my son, in his small bedroom near the living room when all of a sudden my husband erupted into a wild, loud rage. I heard smashing and crashing. My husband had grabbed an old rifle that was sitting behind the couch and smashed the walls in a violent rage, all the while yelling at me about a television show that had inadvertently been blocked because we had just installed Direct TV that day. He was screaming, “Get your fucking ass in here or I’m going to….”

I was terrified yet somehow managed to grab my son so that we could leave the house through the front door. I left, but came back to get my dog from the outside kennel, and then I drove around for a bit and then I stopped at a hotel, but they didn’t take dogs. So I returned home where my husband was sitting on the couch. I told him that my son and I were going to bed. I told him that he better not move or say a word, and he didn’t.  After this incident, things became worse with verbal abuse and hostility so I met with my pastor to ask for help and prayer. I also went up for prayer every Sunday and began attending a support group for women whose husbands are combat veterans who have PTSD.

Sometime in September of that same year, I left again with my son, to stay at a “safe” house, because my husband’s attitude, verbal abuse, name calling and use of profanity were only becoming worse, with no improvement and he was self-medicating with marijuana.

You wouldn’t have known any of this if you had seen me at the grocery store, or at the library or at one of the monthly meetings I hosted in town, or even if you had been a close friend. At first, I kept silent about what was going on in my home, telling no one, but one day I told one of my best friends. I joined a support group that was a lifeline because at first, that was the only place I could go to talk and to learn about what I was experiencing.

You also wouldn’t know that I had reservations about the counseling I received from the domestic violence advocate in Seattle, because, when I told her about my husband’s military background and the incident that happened in January, the advocate immediately recommended that I leave, get a restraining order and disappear. This led me to the local court to file for a restraining order, which was denied because the incident which was so outlandish had happened all the way back in January. When I called the advocate, she told me this was pretty normal, that I needed to go back and re-file at the next time slot, making sure I told the judge I was living in constant fear. When I returned at 1 p.m., the order was granted but I ultimately decided not to go through with it and had it deleted.

You might wonder why I withdrew the restraining order. You wouldn’t know that the way in which the restraining order had been written would have made my situation worse. My husband had friends in law enforcement, and unfortunately those people had told him about my whereabouts. This could have resulted in a very unsafe situation for me. The advocate had also suggested that I file the paperwork for a confidential address and then leave town with my son, with just the clothes on my back.

You might wonder why I didn’t go to the military for help. We did not live on base. We lived in a city, 100 miles from my husband’s post. My husband’s unit had never contacted me the entire year he was deployed to Afghanistan. I did not have enough contact with anyone at my husband’s command or base to trust them. There was a combination of shame and denial. On the one hand, I felt very bad that all this was happening and thought if I learned enough, it would stop. On the other hand, I kept telling myself it wasn’t that bad. I did not want to tarnish my husband’s service record. It seemed like reporting the incidents would have long-term consequences that could ultimately cause more problems.

You might feel there is no hope. There is. If you see another woman like me, you can listen. By doing so, you’ll let her know that she matters. This can help her do the most important thing, break the silence and isolation. Tell her about support groups and suggest ways that she might attend without causing an issue with the batterer. My husband tried to isolate me, he refused to repair my car, he locked the gates to our house and “misplaced the key,” and he would and still does talk very negatively about me going to a group, but somehow I find a way to go.

Tell her to be aware of her safety and to work with an advocate to create a safety plan. She needs to have a spare set of keys, documents and clothes hidden where they can be easily located in an emergency or she can keep them at a friend’s home. For me, conducting this secret operation felt wrong at first, but I realized it was necessary due to my husband’s “illness.”  I kept tabs on his behavior, and realized that while he was in the shower, I could make calls, or hide things for later.

Having some kind of work, whether it’s a part-time job or volunteer position, is another way to break the isolation, to get out. I went back to school. At all costs, a survivor needs to orchestrate a way to get out of the house even for a short while, without raising alarms. This can be difficult when the batterer is controlling and attempts to use either verbal threats or physical threats to cause her to not want to go anywhere. But most of us can still get out, to the post office, grocery store, etc. so we can talk to someone we can trust.

If you want to help, here are three things you can do:

1. Listen, compassionately to the survivor so that she can tell her story.

2. Empower her, don’t do things or think for her, don’t blame or be judgmental or “better than thou.” Make gentle suggestions about safety, a safety plan, about breaking the isolation.

3. Validate her. The batterer is probably telling her that she is worthless, stupid and telling her how and when to do everything. She needs to regain her dignity and self-hood.

Tell her to call the national hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) or TTY 1-800-787-3224. Tell her she has a purpose on the planet. Tell her “please don’t let someone else stop you from living.”

Hello world!

Welcome to Creativity Catalyst. This is where I’ll share essays I write about culture, community and women’s issues. Enjoy.