Category Archives: Climate Change

Our Youth and Sustainability

“… the assumption that young people will somehow figure out a way to undo the deeds of their forebears, has crept into and spread like a cancer through UN climate scenarios.”

Lately I have been involved in a series of meetings with about thirty people and we represent all ages. It turns out I’m the oldest of the group and the people I’m most in need of hearing from our younger folks especially on sustainability issues, the most pressing being global warming, because I work from home and there are not many younger folks involved in local organizations including neighborhood associations, museums, and even churches. There are exceptions, of course, but what I see is mostly white hair and I live in a city with a reputation for being where young people come to retire.

After the last meeting I returned to my office and found in my inbox a newly added video to YouTube entitled, Young People’s Burden, a conversation between the renowned climate scientist Dr. James Hansen of Columbia University’s Earth Institute and his granddaughter Sophie Kivlehan. I ask you to take 17 minutes to listen to Dr. Hansen and Sophie talk about how they both are plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed by Our Children’s Trust against the federal government in their efforts to secure “the legal right to a stable climate and a healthy atmosphere for all present and future generations” the very essence of the sustainability movement.

A second and related video is an interview (August 2016) with Julia Olson of The Children’s Trust. It is less than twenty minutes and like the Jim Hansen interview I urge you to share it with colleagues and especially your youthful friends and family members.

Finally, Dr. Hansen et. al. published a paper, Young People’s Burden: Requirement of Negative CO2 Emissions. Download PDF here.

Both of the above videos are in the EarthSayers.tv special collection, Climate Justice, which compliments our more general climate change and climate change risk special collections. EarthSayers.tv is a specialized search engine to all curated, video content addressing sustainability and advancing those speaking on behalf of Mother Earth and her children.

Ruth Ann Barrett, Sustainability Advocate, October 28, 2016, Portland, Oregon.

Climate Justice and Sustainability Advocacy

The chief curator (me) at EarthSayers.tv, Voices of Sustainability, has created a new channel addressing Climate Justice. The impetus for doing so arose out of a study by the Yale yale Program for Climate Change Communication. They conduct scientific research on public climate change knowledge, attitudes, policy preferences, and behavior, and the underlying psychological, cultural, and political factors that influence them. Of particular interest was their audience research, Global Warming’s Six Americas. A must read.

For climate change communicators I assume that this study formed the foundation for your present programs and campaigns. However, for those of us sustainability advocates with an environmental, social, and economic bent the Yale Program research may have been missed given the information overload that climatographer Mark Trexler addressed in his whitepaper, The Problem of Infinite Information in Corporate Climate Change Decision-Making.

Initially, these are the voices we are advancing on the topic of Climate Justice with more to come. Start with Linda Haydock of the Inter-community Peace & Justice Center’s What is Climate Justice? Continue on with Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and former imgres United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on “Climate Change as a Human Rights Issue” and Julia Olson of Our Children’s Trust on “Securing the Legal Right to a Stable Climate.” If you parent or work with the more youthful among us, especially millennials, you might want to listen to the conversation between Dr. James Hansen and his grand daughter, Sophie Kivlehan on ” Young Peoples Burden.”

There are other voices to include Pope Francis, M.E. Tucker, David Korten, Anthony Leiserowitz, Tim Brennan and HH Dalai Lama.

“Most Americans say global warming is personally important to them, but don’t talk or hear about it much.” Yale Program Climate Note of September 29, 2016

I can’t do much about the talking part, but I can improve on the number of people, like you, hearing about it. It’s up to you to re-frame the conversation around climate change to climate justice and talk with your family, friends, and work colleagues.

“More than half of those who are interested in global warming or think the issue is important “rarely” or “never” talk about it with family and friends (57% and 54% respectively).”

Ruth Ann Barrett, Sustainability Advocate, October 7, 2016, Portland, Oregon.

P.S. What sparked my interest was the Yale Program report, Faith, Morality, and the Environment: Portraits of Global Warming’s Six America’s which led to an EarthSayers’ initiative, Faith and Climate Justice. More on Faith and Climate Justice in my next blog post.

Picture Earth Right Now

I was reminded of this 1946 photograph of Earth, the first photo from beyond the atmosphere when I curated one of the latest views of Earth, a NASA Goddard visualization entitled, One Year on Earth as Seen from 1 Million Miles, (2:46) noting how far we’ve come from that grainy black and white photograph taken nearly 70 years ago to the breathtaking visualizations of today.

We are getting to know more about our Mother Earth from “out there” and heart hopefully it translates to a better understanding and love “in here” nothing short of a change in consciousness, a move from head to heart guided by the Laws of Nature.

There are many such visualizations on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel and I have curated those I found most interesting and added them to EarthSayers.tv, the Voices of Sustainability including this video, The ‘Voice’ of our Earth. (4 minutes)

“Our Universe Is Not Silent~Although space is a vacuum, this does not mean there is no sound in space. Sound does exist as electromagnetic vibrations. The specially designed instruments on board the Voyager and other probes, picked up and recorded these vibrations, all within the range of human hearing (20-20,000 cycles per second).” – NASA Space Recordings Of Earth, Published on Aug 13, 2011.

The NASA Goddard visualizations also capture changes to our Earth that make it difficult if not impossible to ignore the effects of global warming to include this recent video, Earth’s Long-term Warming Trend, 1880-2015 (30 seconds) which shows temperature changes from 1880 to 2015 as a rolling five-year average. Orange colors represent temperatures that are warmer than the 1951-80 baseline average, and blues represent temperatures cooler than the baseline.

Many of these visualizations are enormously popular on YouTube such as the One Year on Earth video mentioned above with over 1.6M views. The number of views for videos addressing global warming suggest our citizens, unlike some elected officials, are active in the learning cycle. An example is another recent video, NASA Sees Temperatures Rise and Sea Ice Shrink -Climate Trends 2016 (47 seconds) published a week ago with over 68,000 views. This news story is what we should be talking about in all sustainability conversations – even informal talk about the weather one hears over cocktails and around the dinner table if we are to increase awareness and change behaviors.

“Each of the first six months of 2016 set a record as the warmest respective month globally in the modern temperature record, which dates to 1880.” – NASA Goddard

Ruth Ann Barrett, Sustainability Advocate, July 29, 2016, Portland, Oregon.

Infinite Information In Corporate Climate Change Decision-Making

Climate Change Risk expert Mark Trexler and his partner, environmental lawyer Laura Kosloff, launched The Climate Web in a large part because of the problem of “Infinite Information.” This problem, Mark says, is analogous to the adage “water water everywhere but not a drop to drink.” Given the rapidly changing nature of conversations around both climate science and climate policy, it’s a critical problem for business. As corporate decision-makers are deluged by information, it becomes harder to discern what data, news, opinions, and analyses really matter to making wiser, more prudent decisions.

It’s the same problem that drove us to found EarthSayers.tv, a specialized search engine to all curated, relevant voices of sustainability. It is very difficult to learn from and be inspired by our leaders when you can’t find them. There are now over one hundred and fifty YouTube channels relevant to sustainability, including those channels of our Indigenous Peoples, our wisdomkeepers with video content that is valuable but not necessarily findable.

There are a legion of search engine optimization (SEO) experts in the highly commercialized web. So, Mark, Laura, and myself are not the only ones addressing the infinite information problem. But we have distinguished ourselves by providing access to “actionable knowledge” on climate change and calling out the unfiltered voices of the sustainability leadership using technology coupled with curation in our two unique websites, The Climate Web and EarthSayers.tv . We invite you to visit and use them in your research, due diligence, and educational activities and programs.

cover shot Mark and Laura have some helpful resources for users to learn how to effectively use The Climate Web. For one thing, see this video, An Introduction to The Climate Web with Mark Trexler on the EarthSayers’ channel, Climate Change Risk. Secondly, I recommend you take a look at their recently published white paper, Infinite Information – A Key Barrier to Business Decision Making on Climate Change? — your complimentary copy is available for download here.

As publishers and curators Mark and Laura can help you use the Climate Web to your best advantage in developing executive briefings, supporting decision-making workshops, conducting topical trainings, engaging in climate risk scenario planning, and much more to include customized spotlights and decision dashboards.

Ruth Ann Barrett, Sustainability Advocate, July 22, 2016, Portland, Oregon

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Spoken Word Artists on Climate Change

Increasingly there is a greater number of our artists, musicians, and performers who are addressing climate justice or injustice as the case may be. As islanders experience flooding at the edges, those of us till dry and thinking there is still time and a Plan B might do well to listen to our poets and spoken word artists. Here are three such performers, two added this week to our climate change special collection on EarthSayers.tv. Give a listen in just three quick clicks and share the performances of these three dedicated and talented artists. Spread their stories.

Spoken word artist Isabella Borgeson shares her poem on the aftermath of Super Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda), one of the strongest storms to ever hit the Philippines (November 8, 2013). Four minute video published by Climate One on YouTube on May 14, 2016. Click here. (4:00)

Follow Isabella on Twitter.

This multimedia video produced by the Wisconsin Educational Communications Board features Elijah Furquan, a spoken word artist in Milwaukee, WI, who describes the effects of extreme heat on his urban community.Uploaded to YouTube on Dec 22, 2010. (2:46) Click here.

Spoken word artist Terisa Siagatonu (Samoan) shares her poem on climate change and talks about the realities of climate change from her unique perspective as a spoken word artist/arts educator, community activist, and Project Director for PIER: the Pacific Islander Education and Retention project at UCLA, an access project that exists to combat the low matriculation rates of Pacific Islander students into higher education by offering services ranging from free tutoring, mentorship, and peer advising to Pacific Islander high school students in Los Angeles. Published on May 23, 2016 by Climate One. Click here. (6:00)

Follow Terisa on Twitter.

Published by Ruth Ann Barrett, Sustainability Advocate, May 27th, 2016, Portland, Oregon.

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Inspiring Sustainability Champions

This past month we have called out on EarthSayers.tv, Voices of Sustainability, two sustainability champions. These two indigenous leaders address sustainability, as a concept, in their presentations and are active in sharing their wisdom with us through online video. Their guidance has been invaluable to us.

Robin Kimmerer

Ilarion Merculieff

Today Earth Day, we introduce you to Ilarion (Larry) Merculieff (Aleut), Founder of the Global Center for Indigenous Leadership and Lifeways and Dr. Robin Kimmerer, SUNY distinguished teaching professor and Director, Center for Native Peoples and the Environment.

We trust you will find in their words inspiration and a better understanding of why it is the elders from all four directions of Mother Earth are calling for a “change in consciousness, a move from head to heart guided by the Laws of Nature,” a weave of nature with humankind.

These are but two of their teachings – a place to start.

Going to the Heart of Sustainability, Ilarion (Larry) Merculieff, Kalliopeia Foundation, (1 hour, 26 minutes).

Restoration of Our Relationship to Land, Robin Kimmerer, Ph.D., Center for Humans and Nature, 34 minutes.

Ruth Ann Barrett, Sustainability Advocate, April 22, 2016, Portland, Oregon.

Spongy Parking Lots and Sustainability

Oregon Drought

It takes a drought sometimes for a fresh approach to catch on.

An NPR Morning Edition program (January 2015) was about the urban planners in Los Angeles seeing npr cities the need to view the city as a sponge, absorbing water, rather than corralling, then whisking it away down the drain and into our waterways. “Engineering water into submission” is how they talked about it on NPR and it dates back to the Romans and aqueducts. It also is how I got to the idea of retrofitting existing surface parking lots to be spongy ones as part of my neighborhood work as a sustainability advocate.

I live in the Old Town Chinatown (OTCT) neighborhood of Portland, Oregon. One rarely hears the word, sustainability pass anyone’s lips at land use meetings despite the City’s reputation for sustainability, awards for its healthy, connected neighborhoods and a significant number of LEED certified buildings. Similar to skid row landscapes in other medium and large-sized cities, OTCT is peppered with surface parking lots, many waiting for infill or development especially those owned by the redevelopment agency, with centrally located ones returning money in the manner of a cash machine to its owners and managers.

After listening to the broadcast, it wasn’t hard to extend this fresh idea of spongy to the problem we face here in Old Town Chinatown. Not only are the surface parking lots signals of a blighted landscape, but planet-wise they waste precious water; pollute as water run-off contains toxins e.g. gasoline, heavy metals, and nasty Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) with heavy rain days being particularly worrisome as they may result in combined sewage overflow* (CSO); and they contribute to the overheating of our urban areas as heat islands, “pushing air temperatures up to 10°F (5.6°C) warmer than surrounding areas with open land and vegetation.” Portland State University’s Vivek Shandas has lead an effort to map heat islands and make the tool available on-line.

Surface parking lots, impervious surfaces, are a sustainability nightmare.

The advantages to local businesses of “parking” as a requirement by cities to attract employers and shoppers is hardly offset by the damage to our environment, the health of our residents, the local economy (they are not taxed at the same rate as nearby buildings) and to those elements of sustainability often referenced to as “externalities.” Economic factors, money, often reigns supreme in much of local decision making. Of course the costs to mitigate the damage done to our planet and people is born, eventually, by the taxpayer, those living in blighted areas and our children and grandchildren.

“An awful lot of urban planning particularly in poor areas has doubly impoverished

the poor by the ugliness which surrounds them and its understandable that it so difficult to

reach and sustain gentleness there..” John O’Donohue

The good news lies in retrofitting many of these surface parking lots. Locally we put together a cross collaboration team of architects, engineers, designers, and our resident expert on low impact development also known as green infrastructure, Maria Cahill. Retrofit tools and methods are readily available for conserving water, then returning it to the ground or filtering it for re-use in nearby parks and gardens; decreasing pollution of nearby rivers and streams especially in times of heavy rain days – projected to increase here in Portland in this age of climate change; reducing the heat by increasing the tree canopy; and using rain gardens, living walls, and swales to significantly reduce the harm done by surface parking lots.

City documents, plans, or RFPs don’t often call out retrofitting surface parking lots. It must happen in some cities because Toronto, for example, published a Guide for Greening Surface Parking Lots which covers mainly new lots and in Portland’s Climate Action Plan decreasing Urban Heat Islands are called out “… especially in areas with populations most vulnerable to heat, through strategies such as revegetation, tree preservation planting and maintenance, de-paving and porous pavement, green infrastructure like bioswales and eco-roofs and site development performance standards.” The Climate Action Plan also addresses sequestering carbon “through increased green infrastructure (trees, plants, soil) and natural areas. Reduce effective impervious areas by 600 acres. Expand the urban forest canopy to cover at least one-third of the city with a minimum canopy cover of 25 percent of each residential neighborhood and 15 percent of the central city, commercial and industrial areas.”

Retrofitting doesn’t necessarily mean a reduction in parking spots if that turns out to be a gating factor in getting local support for a demonstration or pilot project, as we are doing. The effort to retrofit Spongy Parking Lots is an opportunity to take a closer look at mobility options (where “by car” and “more parking” is not the default option for solving issues raised by employers in our central city and by retail merchants and the entertainment/hospitality industry.

The OTCT Community Association, made up of primarily business owners and some non-profit organizations serving the homeless and providing addiction treatment, recently formed a new committee, Transportation and Mobility of which “Mobility & Parking” is on the agenda. Too soon to tell how it will function as a gateway to fresh ideas and innovation, but our team is ready with the recommendation for our redevelopment agency in collaboration with our Bureaus of Environmental Services and Planning and Sustainability invest in demonstration project for spongy parking lots here in OTCT given their number and the harm they produce, and, in terms of the neighborhood’s role in the emerging mobility movement to get people out of their cars in this age of climate change. Be it a private or public surface parking lot doesn’t matter as long as the owner, along with a majority of Oregonians, “values the state’s natural beauty, outdoor recreation opportunities, and relatively clean air and water. They also value a good economy, but they want an approach to economic development that recognizes the importance of the state’s natural environment to its quality of life.”

We have been identifying our spongy champions working in the many agencies that would be involved in bringing a demonstration project forward and raising awareness through social media, especially videos on our PDXdowntowner YouTube channel. There is our webpage at www.spongyparkinglots.com where we have included an overview of spongy parking lots, relevant links to videos, articles and whitepapers, and an overview of our team members.

Like our Facebook page to indicate you support thinking spongy when it comes to surface parking lots.

Ruth Ann Barrett, Portland, Oregon, August 31, 2016

Note:

*CSO has been a big issue in two cities I have lived in – Portland, Oregon and San Francisco, California. Portland’s CSO Control Program (December 2011) reduced CSOs to the Columbia Slough by more than 99% and to the Willamette River by 94%.

Sustainability with Resiliency

Sustainability with resiliency is how I think about these two important concepts working together. Which is why I started to pay more attention to those talking about resiliency and then created a new Resiliency and Communities collection on EarthSayers.tv, voices of sustainability. At first, I recognized that there is quite a bit out there on personal resiliency. Three years ago I interviewed Raz Mason, who is trained as a chaplain, on the topic of sustainability and resiliency. Although I didn’t agree with her that the term sustainability suggests a steady state, I was impressed how she talks about resiliency as it relates to the individual and family.

However, in terms of community resiliency, I was moved to action by the voice of Dr. Judith Rodin, President of the Rockefeller Foundation, author of The Resilience Dividend, and one of the world’s leading public thinkers. She was the first voice added to the Resiliency and Communities special collection on EarthSayers.tv. I discovered that resiliency at the community level incorporates what we traditionally call emergency management yet moves us towards being better able to plan for and then recover from not only the weather, but social and economic shocks.
And exactly how do we do resiliency planning and investment, to prepare, when crisis seems to be the new normal? How do we revitalize, not just build back our communities?
Well, I recommend you give a listen to Dr. Rodin’s hour long discussion brought to us by The RSA, a London based, British organization committed to finding practical solutions to today’s social challenges. And circulate* an excerpted version (six minutes) of her talk (bit.ly/adaptandgrow) to friends and colleagues who you know are looking for fresh ideas. I let our local emergency management director, Carmen Merlo, know that I had heard Dr. Rodin and was very supportive of Ms. Merlo being Portland’s first Chief Resiliency Officer, a CRO being a recommendation from Dr. Rodin’s experience with the Rockefeller project, 100 Resilient Cities.
Our worldview influences the actions we take and so it’s possible that with crisis being the new normal we all are hearing the call to action to bring resiliency planning to our cities and towns, making it part of every sustainability plan, program, bureau and initiative. We just need help doing it and the courage.

Ruth Ann Barrett, Sustainability Advocate, March 30, 2015, Portland, Oregon.

* Suggested tweets: Our communities and #resiliency benefits of planning explained by Dr. Judith Rodin (video), http://bit.ly/adaptandgrow and/or Advice we need to hear: How to Build Better, More #Resilient Cities with Judith Rodin (video), http://bit.ly/adaptandgrow

Sustainability: Cows, Sage Grouses, and Grasslands

Two disconnected events yesterday and today were linked in my mind to the large, open spaces of the West and the challenges we face in striving for a sustainable future. The first was spotting this marquee yesterday with “The Sustainability Secret” catching my eye. The cowspiracy took longer to process.

Cowspiracy is a new environmental documentary (trailer here) with the emphasis on the industry with the link to a sustainability secret being secondary as suggested in the title. After reading about the intrepid filmmaker “uncovering the most destructive industry facing the planet today, and investigates why the world’s leading environmental organizations are too afraid to talk about it” I don’t think the film reflects a whole systems approach to problem solving, but I won’t say much more until I have a chance to see it. And there was that nasty situation in 1998 summed up in this story headline as “Oprah Winfrey vs. The Beef People.” Will maintain an open mind.

What came along today in my inbox was a New York Times documentary on the Sage Grouse and Wind Turbines. These two events together got me thinking of several sustainability champions that address climate change from the perspective of grasslands, carbon, cows and (what wasn’t mentioned much) climate change:

Allan Savory

In this video, Grasslands, Carbon, and Climate Change, Jeff Goebel talks about the importance of restoring grasslands to pull carbon out of the atmosphere, doing so rather quickly, and the relationship of grassland restoration to climate change. His interview relates to cows and places like Wyoming where sage grouse live. Jeff has been influenced by the work of Allan Savory who isPresident and Co-founder of the Savory Institute in Boulder, Colorado and is featured here in this video interview, How to green the world’s deserts and reverse climate change.

“Desertification is a fancy word for land that is turning to desert,” begins Allan Savory in this quietly powerful talk. And terrifyingly, it’s happening to about two-thirds of the world’s grasslands, accelerating climate change and causing traditional grazing societies to descend into social chaos. Savory has devoted his life to stopping it. He now believes — and his work so far shows — that a surprising factor can protect grasslands and even reclaim degraded land that was once desert.

As an urbanite I feel more comfortable learning about the economic and social aspects of sustainability especially when it comes to understanding the conversations and recommendations of experts. Yet my roots are firmly planted in the farmlands of Ireland and Canada, my family having been dairy farmers so I’ve been interviewing farmers and experts like Jeff Goebel and Allan Savory then adding them to the EarthSayers.tv in special collections addressing biodiversity and climate change. I hope this post proves useful to understanding what may well be a sustainability secret, one I would argue of many.

Ruth Ann Barrett, Sustainability Advocate, Portland, Oregon, July 25, 2014

IPCC Ocean Systems and Oceans Advocacy Part II

On Monday, March 31st, I published a blog post on a concept video around OceansAdvocacy, proposing a web-based communications infrastructure to support advocates from all walks of life, but not representing any organizations they might be affiliated with, if they choose to do so. The advocacy landscape is highly fragmented and many organizations, profit and non-profit, are not being successful at meeting their goals due in a large part to under-financing and being over whelmed by the problems brought upon us by global warming and the continued dislocation of entire countries because of war and violence. I think a citizen-rooted network of networks is required if the global village is to be more successful at oceans conservation. I visualized a connected oceans community, based on the Google product’s Maps, Earth, Google+, and YouTube, inspired in part by the recent release of the Global Forest Watch.

To add fuel to my suggestion, this is the final draft of the Ocean Systems, Chapter 6 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report officially release d on March 31st.

The executive summary begins:
“Ocean ecosystems have responded and will continue to respond to climate changes of different rates,magnitudes,and durations (virtually certain). Human societies depend on marine ecosystem services,which are sensitive to climate change(high confidence),in particular the provisioning of food (fisheries and aquaculture) and other natural resources, nutrient recycling,regulation of global climate(including production of oxygen and removal of atmospheric CO2), protection from extreme weather and climate events, aesthetic, cultural, and supporting services.” [6.3, 6.4, 6.5]

I recommend reading the entire Executive Summary and other chapters of interest to you found here on the IPCC site. As of this morning, nearly 500 citizens have clicked on my 3/31/14 post, distributed through the 3BL Media Network, some viewing the attached concept video, and I am hoping that this update adds to an understanding of why we are at a critical juncture and heed Jimi Hendrik’s advice:Ruth Ann Barrett, Sustainability Advocate, April 2, 2014, Portland, Oregon. Call or email comments and suggestions. (ruthann@earthsayers.tv/415-377-1835)

P.S. There is an IPCC video here, Climate Change: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability by IPCC, in the EarthSayers.tv special (and growing) collection on climate change.