Thoreau's Legacy

by Richard Hayes

  Sue Mauger is the science director for Cook Inletkeeper, a community-based nonprofit organization focused on habitat and water-quality protection. She lives in Homer, Alaska.

  Dolphins in the Water

  off California

  Maddalena Bearzi

  Dolphins are vulnerable to global warming even if the effects on them are not immediately evident. Changes in weather patterns and the ocean’s increasing acidification as it absorbs more and more CO2 is likely to disrupt the habitats and distribution of the dolphins and their prey. Even increasing susceptibility to disease—as my own studies reveal—lowers reproductive success, and survival rates are linked to a warming ocean environment.

  Maddalena Bearzi is president of the Ocean Conservation Society and coauthor of Beautiful Minds: The Parallel Lives of Great Apes and Dolphins. She lives in Marina del Rey, California.

  Dolphins in the water off California. Photo by Maddalena Bearzi.

  A Beautiful Shrimp

  David Beebe

  I CAN’T HELP IT. THE CLOSER I LOOK, THE MORE I’M

  drawn in. This spot shrimp came from hundreds of feet below the dark waters of southeastern Alaska’s Alexander Archipelago—a place where the sun, as well as our awareness, truly does not shine.

  At first glance, the spot shrimp comes off asalmost cartoonish—or otherworldly. Then, after taking in this creature for a few seconds, I’m taken aback by the exquisite intricacy of its luminescent compound eyes, its striped and segmented legs and beautifully marked shell, all composed of the seemingly impossible melding of carbon and calcium molecules suspended in the sea, which somehow coalesce into an exquisite structural form of utility, complexity, and beauty.

  Yet because of global warming, in the acidified oceans that scientists say are only fifty years into our future, this kind of shell will dissolve before it fully forms. Our oceans have always played the important role of absorbing carbon dioxide from the air. But because of the rapid increase of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere through the use of coal and petroleum products, deforestation, and forest fires, our oceans are becoming more acidic.

  I can’t help it. The more I hear about ocean acidification, the more concerned I become. It is time for a much greater awareness of this debacle. Most humans’ appreciation of marine ecosystems stops at the reflections from the surface of the water and resumes at their dinner plates. My job as a commercial fisherman starts where most people’s vision stops, just below the surface of the water, where I pursue and capture the largess of intact ecosystems for the world’s dining tables. As a fisherman, I’m fated to be among the first to witness what happens in our oceans in the coming years, perhaps one of the first to glimpse firsthand the full magnitude of impacts on the planet from acidified oceans.

  According to recent studies, ocean acidification from unchecked global warming threatens marine ecosystems that supply food for over half of the world’s population. If scientific calculations are correct, and we have every reason to believe they are, ocean acidification will create catastrophic changes, leading to a famine of unimaginable proportions. Fortunately, we can avoid this catastrophe if we act quickly to reduce carbon emissions. Here’s hoping a greater public awareness of global warming and ocean acidification will keep our marine ecosystems intact so we can continue to feed the world.

  David Beebe is a Vietnam-era veteran who has worked as a commercial fisherman for the last twenty-five years. He lives in Petersburg, Alaska, in the heart of the Tongass National Forest.

  The Golden Rule

  Matthew, Nancy, and Emma Sleeth

  I USED TO BE A PHYSICIAN—THE CHIEF OF STAFF AND head of the emergency department—at one of the nicest hospitals in America. But I felt as if I were straightening the deck chairs on the Titanic, saving one patient at a time while the whole ship—the earth—was going down. Today I am one of a growing number of evangelical Christians whom the Lord is using to witness to people about his love for them and for the natural world.

  The Golden Rule allows us to see the moral side of many issues, including environmental ones like global warming. Love thy neighbor as thyself: one cannot ignore the Golden Rule and claim to be a Christian. It isn’t a suggestion or a guideline; it is a commandment from God. What is the connection between the Golden Rule and the environment? Aren’t our choices of homes, cars, and appliances just a matter of lifestyle, not a moral or spiritual matter? Does God care whether I drive an SUV, leave the TV on all night, or fly around the world to go skiing? The Bible doesn’t mention any of these things; they didn’t exist in Jesus’s time. Yet Jesus taught us to follow the spirit of the law, not the letter. From the spirit of the law and the example of his love, we can determine the morality of our actions. —Matthew Sleeth

  When Matthew suggested that he wanted to give up his successful medical career to “save the planet,” my stomach turned inside out thinking about what we might lose—our beautiful home, our harborside neighborhood, our vacations, not to mention health benefits and a retirement plan.

  The selfish part of me began to whine: what about the many years of undergraduate school, medical school, and residency we had gone through together? Wouldn’t he be wasting all that training? And there were the practical concerns: our kids were approaching their teen years, with college just around the corner. How could we possibly save enough money to pay for their education if our income dropped to zero? How would we put food on the table?

  But we took Jesus’s advice and began cleaning up our own act before trying to clean up the rest of the world. Over the next couple of years, we gave away half of our possessions and moved to a house the size of our old garage. Contrary to our fears, we found that the more we “gave up” in material things, the more we gained in family unity, purpose, and joy. Eventually, through many small changes, we reduced our electricity use and trash production by nine tenths and our fossil-fuel consumption by two thirds. —Nancy Sleeth

  I remember when my best friend Hannah cut off a foot of her hair. I thought I’d never get used to it. For the next month, every time I saw her I was once again surprised to see gentle waves of brown curling about her ears, too short to pull into her customary ponytail. But after a while Hannah’s short hair began to seem normal. Now I have a hard time picturing Hannah with long hair.

  The same forgetting can happen with global warming. The first time we read about the effects of climate change, we immediately commit to carpooling more. But soon we lose our enthusiasm, and pollution again seems normal, greenhouse gases unavoidable. Loss of zeal really means loss of heart. To make a difference, we have to care about the people affected by the environmental changes—and about the God who calls us to do something about it. —Emma Sleeth

  Matthew Sleeth is the author of Serve God, Save the Planet: A Christian Call to Action and the introduction to The Green Bible. Nancy Sleeth, a former communications director for a Fortune 500 company, is the author of Go Green, Save Green: A Simple Guide to Saving Money, Time, and God’s Green Earth. Emma Sleeth is a junior at Asbury College and a leader of the evangelical movement to prevent climate change. She wrote It’s Easy Being Green when she was fifteen. The Sleeths live in Wilmore, Kentucky.

  Nez Residence,

  Tó’sido, New Mexico

  Vangee Nez

  This is our ancestral land. To the south, Bennett Peak and Fort Butte jut out of the desert, and to the north, Tsé Bit’a’í (Rock with Wings) reaches into the sky. The Four Corners power plant and the San Juan generating station rank high in releases of nitrogen oxide, carbon dioxide, and mercury. Yet the Environmental Protection Agency has authorized dynamiting and drilling here for the Desert Rock coal-fired plant. A small group of warriors has protested, but the Navajo Nation’s president says the plant will be good for his people. It is not good for the animals, plants, rivers, sacred mountains, and future generations.

  Vangee Nez, Diné, from Tó’sido, New Mexico, is of the Red Streak Running into Water Clan. She is pursuing a Ph.D. in language liter
acy for indigenous language revitalization.

  Nez residence, Tó’sido, New Mexico. Photo by Vangee Nez.

  Dumpster Diving:

  My Day of Saving 66 Million BTUs

  Laura Pritchett

  ONE OF THE REASONS I FIND MYSELF IN A DUMPSTER

  in my Colorado town has to do with the changing climate. Usually my two children are in the dumpster with me, and usually we’re looking for aluminum, the most abundant metal in the earth’s crust. The symbol for aluminum is Al, and its atomic number is 13, but its most important characteristic is this: it is too chemically reactive to occur in nature as a free metal, so it gets locked in with other elements, mainly in the form of bauxite ore, and freeing it takes an incredible amount of energy.

  Basically, when you hold an aluminum can in your hand, you’re holding a bit of a strip mine and its accompanying piles of tailings, a power plant, and a smelter; you’re holding bits of boats and trains and the fuel required for transportation; you’re holding can- and soda-making factories.

  While digging out beer cans from the dumpster, I consider the facts. Recycling the aluminum in cans takes 95 percent less energy than freeing it from bauxite. One pound of aluminum makes about thirty cans, and each can requires about 3,000 BTUs. So for every two or three cans we recycle, we basically save one pound of coal. It sounds complicated, but it’s not. Not when you consider what three cans means in the bigger picture of a clean, pure sky.

  After digging in the dumpster for hours, my young son declares that it’s “metal-run time.” In fact, we are overdue at the recycling center, and there’s so much metal in the bed of my old pickup that it looks like a crazy robot, arms and legs sticking out monstrously, threatening to attack the normal cars that dare come near.

  While the guys at the center unload and weigh the metal, I entertain the kids with sidewalk chalk: we sit down on the blacktop to draw pictures of the earth and sun and shooting stars. We draw an entire universe, bright and healthy-looking.

  Finally, the workers are done: we have 108 pounds of cans, 400 pounds of scrap aluminum, 10 pounds of copper, 174 pounds of radiators, 116 pounds of insulated wire, 25 pounds of soft lead, 23 pounds of stainless steel, 30 pounds of yellow brass, and a bunch of batteries.

  If a coal-fired power system were used to produce that amount of aluminum, it would release 18,000 pounds (9 tons) of carbon dioxide into the air. That’s 56 million BTUs, which we’ve saved by recycling. Then there’s the copper—from the wire and radiators—which saves another 10 million BTUs and keeps an additional 3,000 pounds of CO2 from being emitted. And we’re talking just about the aluminum and copper here; we’re not even including how much earth would have been stripped, processed, and laid waste.

  Before we leave, I suggest to the kids that we go dumpster diving again. They let out a cheer, and so does a mountainside and the sky. At least I like to think so; it’s enough to keep the heart happy.

  Laura Pritchett is the author of a novel, Sky Bridge, and a collection of short stories, Hell’s Bottom, Colorado, which won the PEN USA Award and the Milkweed National Fiction Prize. She lives in Bellvue, Colorado.

  The Energy of Creation

  Donald Hoyle

  NOW A RETIRED CLERGYMAN, I STILL REMEMBER,

  from my seminary days in the early 1960s, a Franciscan monk who addressed the class. He said that the most important thing is to get your doctrine of creation right, and that if you do, all else will fall into place. I believe he was right, so I hope we will go back to using the natural, God-given sustainable energy from the sun, wind, water, and heat from the ground. Then we will be in accord with the doctrine of creation.

  We live in a time when the distribution and uses of energy are way out of balance and supply. As Mahatma Gandhi said, “The good Creator has put enough resources in creation to take care of man’s need but not enough to satisfy man’s greed.” Germany’s secretary of energy once pointed out, when asked how the developing countries would meet their needs in this time of energy shortages and crises, that we all have sun, wind, water, and geothermal energy available, no matter where we live on this planet. Although some places have insufficient water, abundant supplies of the other renewable energy sources can be harnessed.

  My own adventure in this time of energy shortages started when I replaced my oil-fueled baseboard hot-water system with geothermal energy from an existing artesian well. I have what is known as a “dump” system, in which water from my artesian well circulates through the system and returns to the ground by way of an existing hand-dug well.

  After putting in the geothermal system, I realized that heating and air-conditioning my house would require a lot more electricity. Luckily, I am blessed with a south-facing home that provides considerable passive solar heat and light. By installing photovoltaic panels on my roof, I was able to fulfill all my electrical needs, and I am now self-sustaining.

  I believe God has provided for the energy needs of creation. What we need to do is start thinking outside the box by working in accord with the natural cycles of nature rather than seeking to rape the earth to satisfy our insatiable greed.

  Donald B. Hoyle is a retired United Methodist clergyman. He lives in Mansfield Center, Connecticut, with his wife of forty-eight years.

  The Other Part of

  the Equation

  Howard V. Hendrix

  MY WIFE AND I HAVE HAD A TASTE OF A BETTER

  future. We’ve been lucky enough, worked hard enough, and made enough sacrifices that we are now able to live where we choose: in the Sierra Nevada, just shy of 5,000 feet in elevation.

  We can see the Milky Way at night and breathe without coughing up lung slugs, but it’s no simple Shangri-la. Living here is not easy, which may be why more people don’t choose the far exurban life.

  And even here we are not immune to the effects of global warming. Neighbors who have long lived here tell us about new phenomena they’ve never seen before—not just unusual weather but also unexpected flora and fauna. Poison oak, long prevalent in the foothills but extremely rare in our higher forests, has become more common up here. Another foothill species, the tarantula, recently showed up in a neighbor’s driveway. We hope it hitched a ride on a truck from the valley, but we suspect the big, slow-moving spider is a harbinger of the “species creep” that’s coming to our neighborhood.

  We are part of that species creep, too. Not just those of us who dwell in old, cut-over timberland, but all humanity. Living in a California forest throws into high relief one aspect of this situation: our species’ million-year dalliance with fire. Together, humans and fire have burned their way clear around the globe. Applying the ancient technology of fire to the ancient sunlight of fossil fuels is but the latest intensification of our relationship. As surely as playing with fire is like having unprotected sex, global warming is the unintended consequence—the unplanned pregnancy—of our long love affair with ourselves, our technologies, and our dominion over the earth.

  My wife and I do what we can. We own a hybrid car and try not to drive “off the hill” more than three days a week. Our house is built in such a way that we don’t need air conditioning. Nearly all our household heat comes from burning, in a superefficient wood stove, the short-term carbon derived from our overcrowded second- and third-growth trees. We’re also returning our forest to pre-1850 conditions by burning selectively and by chipping understory thickets and letting the chips decay in place.

  The most important thing we’ve done to shrink our carbon footprint is deciding not to have children, a choice that may have value not only for our household but also for the larger household of the earth. Worldwide, although smaller families currently tend to consume more energy-intensive resources as their wealth increases, it’s also true that the shelter, food, and water required by each additional person enlarges a family’s carbon footprint—regardless of the family’s wealth or poverty.

  I’d feel better about the future of life on earth if both the size of our overall human f
amily and our use of resources were not ratcheting up as fast as they are. Until we address both parts of the equation—not only hyperconsumption (by living more simply and using nonfossil energy) but also hyperpopulation (by voluntarily reducing birthrates)—all our “greening” will amount only to spraying slightly less flammable green paint on a forest fire.

  The life my wife and I have chosen is not for everyone, but, together with other families choosing other variants, we may be able to keep from “burning down the house.”

  Howard Hendrix has taught literature at the college level for many years and has written science fiction, political essays, and literary criticism. He and his wife live in Pine Ridge, California.

  Monetary Capital, Biological Treasure

  Lewis Ziska

  RECENTLY I HAD LUNCH WITH A SCIENTIST COLLEAGUE who had been active in presenting data on the perils of global climate change to world leaders. He told me that without fail, at the end of a presentation, policymakers would approach him separately and ask quietly, “But my country won’t be affected, right?”