Disturbing Effects of Climate Change

This time of year, people think about the North Pole--that's where Santa lives and where the elves make toys. And many of us have a mental picture of the early explorers who located the pole and planted a flag there over a freezing, ice-capped ocean. But this summer the world was stunned by news and pictures from a Russian ice-breaker which encountered a North Pole dominated by open water, not solid ice. While open water areas are not unknown in the Arctic Ocean, this one was unusual in its extent. Moreover, as icebreakers journey to the pole, they spend a lot of time cutting through ice. According to the scientists aboard who'd made the trip before, the motion of the ship is normally jerky--stop and go--as the ship hits thicker ice areas, is halted and must laboriously break through ice ridges. This summer's trip was unusually smooth, as the ship cut through the unexpectedly thin ice quickly and easily.

Scientific studies show that the ice sheet over the Arctic Ocean has been thinning over the last few decades. Transport companies have anticipated the de-icing of the Arctic, and the opening of the long-sought northwest passage, which will facilitate shipping between Europe and Japan.

It may happen sooner than we think. The US, European nations and Australia have scientific teams actively drilling core samples from ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. New information about climates of the past hundreds of thousands of years is being gleaned at unprecedented rates. One factor that has clearly emerged from these studies is that climate change need not occur in a gradual linear fashion. Climate change, especially warming events, may happen in rapid jumps or steps, over time scales short even relative to human life times, decades. Associated with these warming events are higher levels of greenhouse gases.

In mid-November an important inter-governmental conference on climate was held at the Hague in the Netherlands. This meeting, the 6th Conference of the parties to the Climate Convention, was an attempt to reconcile approaches towards achieving greenhouse gas reductions which were agreed to in Kyoto. The Conference failed to agree on the quantity of carbon dioxide credits to be granted for forest preservation and re-growth and for clean energy technology transfer for the third world.

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, one of the most pervasive underlying issues at stake at The Hague is the cost of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Defenders of the status quo argue that reducing our fossil fuel use will cause wrenching disruptions to the US economy, and this perspective has become accepted in the minds of policymakers and the public. However, many credible studies have shown that reducing fossil fuel use is both feasible and affordable.

The sad thing is that our newly elected government does not even consider climate change to be a problem, and intends to conduct business as usual. Alternative energy for the Bush administration will probably mean additional coal burning, which causes higher CO2 emissions than natural gas per unit of electricity generated. We can only hope that our leaders will consider the public opinion polls in addition to words from their corporate sponsors. It is for us, the people, to lead, and to influence the opinions of those in power. They must be convinced of the dangerous nature of our present course.

For more information:

"Scenarios for a Clean Energy Future" is the product of a federal Interlaboratory Working Group. Released on November 15, the report has two key findings: (1) smart public policies can significantly reduce not only carbon dioxide emissions, but also air pollution, petroleum dependence, and inefficiencies in energy production and use; and (2) the economic benefits of these policies appear to be comparable to their costs. The report may be found at http://www.ornl.gov/ORNL/Energy_Eff/CEF.htm.

A second study cited by the Union of Concerned Scientist is the International Project for Sustainable Energy Paths (IPSEP). This report criticized outdated assessments that have distorted the debate on implementation costs. The principal finding of their latest report, "Solving the Kyoto Quandary: Flexibility with No Regrets," released on November 12, is: "If energy productivity investments are put at the center of mitigation action, climate change abatement can be achieved at a net economic benefit for the US and other countries." You can access this report at http://www.ipsep.org.

Jeff Chanton is on the faculty of Florida State University's Department of Oceanography.

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What is the Red Hills Bioregion?

The Red Hills and Gulf Coastal Lowlands bioregions are bounded by winding watersheds of rivers to the east (the Aucilla) and to the west (the Ochlockonee), both of which originate in Georgia and eventually empty into the Gulf of Mexico.
The boundary between the 2 bioregions is the Cody Scarp, where the elevation of the land drops from 215 above sea level to less than 100 feet. The Cody Scarp runs east to west just south of the Capitol, at about the latitude of Tram Road. To the north, the Red Hills penetrate into Georgia, including the plantation lands between Thomasville and Tallahassee, and a significant portion of the native longleaf pine forests remaining in the United States.

A bioregion….

is a distinct geographic area encompassing a unique set of soils, climate, geological underpinnings, native plants and animals, and human culture, often defined by a watershed. A bioregion refers to both geographical terrain, and a terrain of consciousness-to both a place, and the ideas that have developed about how to live in that place.

To Join Heart of the Earth:

Send $15.00 to Norine Cardea, 9601-16 Miccosukee Road, Tallahassee, Florida 32308.

You will join together with hundreds of other members of the Red Hills bioregion in an individual pledge and receive a periodic newsletter, an identifying bumper sticker, and the opportunity to join in support groups, classes and field trips to help you on your way. We hope you'll want to share your experiments in sustainable living on our web site, and in our newsletter, and in our occasional gatherings.

Phone: (850) 216-8400
E-mail: info@heartoftheearth.org
http://www.heartoftheearth.org

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Heart of the Earth Winter Solstice Celebration

Thursday, December 21, 2000, at Sundown
Community Center of the Miccosukee Land Co-op

Bonfire - Soup and Bread Provided - Music
Bring a ground cover to sit on and dress warmly
Call (850) 216-8400 for directions

Hymn to the Winter Solstice

Cold the winter wind does blow
Long is the night Warm the fire within the hearth
Our heat and light
Snow is sifting softly down
By the moon's light
Burrowed deep, the small ones rest
Curled warm and tight
Sleeping trees stand bare and strong
Season's respite
Swords are oiled and sheathed away
No wars to fight
Summer's heat faint memory
The days were bright
Fall's harvest now dried and stored
Comforting sight
Winter now reigns in the land
And all is night
Cycling to the Spring again
With all set right
Longest night before the dawn
LET THERE BE LIGHT!

The Winter Solstice is a time of transformation and renewal. It is a time of incubation where the earth and all it's inhabitants gathers strength for spring's coming rebirth. As the caterpillar surrenders in the darkness of its cocoon and in time emerges as a new butterfly, so too can we surrender ourselves to the dark to allow for our own transformation, emerging into the light with a new vision and a renewed energy for the coming rebirth of the earth. Come join us in celebration!

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We do a grave injury to ourselves and all creatures if we ignore these cries of distress from our earth. Instead, we must listen deeply - more deeply than humans have ever listened before - to what the earth is saying. And we must gather courage to transform our destructive relationship into one that is mutually enhancing to us all. Let us all begin to dream deeply of a future in which there is room for all - all that flies, swims, crawls, or walks upon the earth.

Author Unknown

Not long ago I was sitting alone on a moss covered hill overlooking Friday Harbor, one of the islands that make up the San Juan Island chain just off the coast of Washington State. Along with ten other people from around the country, I had come to this place to spend five days in intensive community with others of like mind, to escape for awhile the noise and distractions of the man-made world, and to reestablish my connections to the natural world.

Friday Harbor is one of those places that make you want to stay forever. It was a beautiful, crisp, autumn day, with clear blue skies and a soft breeze blowing off the ocean. As I looked out over the harbor, I let my gaze gently touch each part of the landscape. I noticed that, no matter where I looked, I could not see anything that was not connected to something else; nothing was separate. Each flowed into the other. There were no boundaries where one thing stopped and another began. Every feature of the landscape was part of a perfect tapestry, and I too was a part of it all.

What happened next is difficult to put into words. But in that moment of clarity, all of my senses were heightened and I was overwhelmed by the beauty all around me. Through tears of both intense joy and profound sadness I found myself transported from a purely intellectual way of knowing my connection to nature to deeply experiencing that profound bond. I no longer felt separate from anything around me. And in that timeless moment, I felt myself merge with the sky, the trees, the seals in the harbor below. I was not separate from them. I felt their energy flowing through me and mine through them. I felt this profound shift, and knew, unmistakably, that I was, and always have been, connected in some mysterious way, to the earth and to all of life that was now present before me. For that brief moment, I was able to awake from the numbness of separation.

Backed by thousands of years of conditioning, this numbing, illusion of being separate from naturepermeates our culture. Nature is "out there" somewhere, separate from the "in here" experience of ourselves and our everyday lives. We have failed to recognize that the nature "out there" and the nature "in here" are one and the same, and that we are intimately bound and inextricably a part of the whole. Our relationship to the natural world is that of a leaf to a tree. We have no independent existence apart from the tree. No tree, no leaf.

This illusion of separation has enormous consequences for our lives and for planet earth. As long as we see "the" environment as out there, we can leave it to someone else to protect while we go on with our every day lives. All of this changes when we deeply know, deep in our hearts, that what we are protecting is ourselves.

The good news is that there seems to be a cultural transformation occurring in the world today, what long-time environmental activist Joanna Macy calls "The Great Turning." At least on an intellectual level, many of us are beginning to realize that this sense of separation we feel is culturally induced and illusionary.

But this is not enough. Unfortunately, we cannot think our way out of this cultural conditioning. The habits and attitudes are far too deep-rooted.

As I had on that autumn day in Friday Harbor, we must begin to deeply experience our connection with nature, not only in our minds, but in our hearts and in our bodies. Through community, ritual, and being in nature, we can begin again to experience not only the wonder and healing power of the leaf, but the profound wisdom and intelligence of the tree itself.

Heart of the Earth is in the process of forming workshops and an on-going support group to work on healing the sense of isolation and alienation from each other and from the natural world that is all pervasive in our culture. Through the experience of community and ritual we will explore our personal issues in the context of re-establishing our connection to nature. Come join us on this journey.

Barry Fraser is a licensed therapist and group facilitator living in the Red Hills bioregion.

Heart of the Earth Pledge
(PDF file, free Adobe Acrobat Reader® required to view)

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Small Changes Can Have A Big Impact

By investing a little money and a little effort, we have been amazed to see a reduction of 28 percent in our use of electricity compared to the same months of 1999. In the three months since taking the Heart of the Earth pledge, we have reduced the carbon dioxide emissions generated by our use of electricity by 1.5 tons, and saved $118 in electricity costs.

We did three things:

1. Investing in compact fluorescent light bulbs and accessories.

We replaced five regular light bulbs in our most highly used light fixtures with compact fluorescent bulbs. They cost about $12 each at Lowe's or Home Depot, but they are estimated to save $48 in replacement bulbs and electricity costs over their lifetime of six or more years. If you have Talquin Electricity, that means a reduction of 200 lbs. of carbon dioxide emissions annually for one bulb.

Usually you can just screw the new bulbs into existing lamps, but in some cases a few easy adaptations are necessary. For one overhead fixture, we purchased a spherical globe, for around $10. For one old lamp we replaced a short lamp "harp" that holds the lamp shade with a longer one so the compact fluorescent bulb would fit, for $2.

While at Lowe's buying compact fluorescents, we got caught up in our efficient-lighting enthusiasm and bought a beautiful frosted glass lampshade-style chandelier to replace our energy-guzzling but highly-used dining room candelabra. A circular fluorescent light bulb fits unobtrusively into it, using 30 watts per hour instead of 200. We also got rid of a halogen lamp. The Earth Day Guide to Planet Repair calls halogen torchieres "the lighting equivalent of the sports utility vehicle." They use 300 to 500 watts per hour, compared to 23 watts for a compact fluorescent bulb equal to a 100 watt bulb.

2. Adding an Energy-Efficient Showerhead

We replaced our teenage daughter's showerhead with an efficient water-saver type-a step we overlooked when she started taking showers instead of baths. My husband and I have used one for years and like it better than the showerhead it replaced. We paid $17 for a hand-held shower, considerably more than a simple water saver showerhead, which cost from $2 to $10. Our total investment for the shower and the whole lighting overhaul was $135, so with $118 savings in three months, our investment has all but paid for itself already.

3. Using Solar for Some Clothes Drying

I decided to use a clothesline to hang out the sheets and all those "hang to dry" clothes. I like it so much I'm now line drying two loads a week, using the dryer just for jeans, towels, and socks. Advantages: 1. Satisfaction because the clothes come out wrinkle-free 2. Less hassle- I don't have to get the clothes out immediately to prevent wrinkles, or worry about what things shouldn't be tumble-dried. 3. I hang good shirts and pants on hangers, so all I have to do is put them in the closet at the end of the day. 4. Best of all, I got out in the beautiful fall weather while doing my chores.

Transportation Update

We saved $50 on gasoline last month by carpooling three days a week, with an estimated 17 percent reduction in our use of fossil fuel for transportation. Progress, but still need to work on this one. If you would like to carpool, but don't have a partner to carpool with, call Commuter Services of North Florida at 1-888-454-7433 for a free computerized ride-matching service.

The fuel mix used to generate City of Tallahassee Electricity is 92 percent natural gas (thanks to the activism of Tallahassee environmentalists who defeated a coal-fired plant a number of years ago) and 8 percent purchased electricity generated from coal. It produces an estimated 1.4 lbs. of CO2 for every kWh of electricity.

The fuel mix used to generate City of Tallahassee Electricity is 76 percent coal, 17 percent natural gas, 6 percent fuel oil, and one percent other sources (nuclear and hydroelectric). It produces an estimated 2.2 lbs. of CO2 for every kWh of electricity.

LucyAnn compiles and analyzes data professionally for the Dept. of Juvenile Justice and in her spare time for Heart of the Earth

		% of kWh	Tons of CO2 for Tal.	Tons of CO2 for Talquin
Lower or turn off heat, raise AC to 82° F, and turn off hot water when gone for 2 days or more		10%	0.70	1.5
Use a programmable thermostat to raise or lower temperature		10% to 20%	0.7 to 1.4	1.5 to 3.1
Raise your thermostat 1° F in summer when using AC		5%	0.35	0.8
Lower your thermostat 1° F in winter when heating		3%	0.21	0.5
Lower hot water temperature by 20° F (from 140 to 120 ° F )		5%	0.35	0.77
Replace a refrigerator that is more than 10 years old		(774 kWh)	0.54	0.85
Use a clothesline to reduce dryer use by half		(438 kWh)	0.31	0.48
Use high-efficiency showerheads		2%	0.14	0.31
Insulate hot water heater and hot water pipes		2%	0.14	0.31
Replace one 100 W bulb with a compact fluorescent bulb		(95 kWh)	0.07	0.1

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Someone asked me recently why exactly we in Heart of the Earth are tying this movement so strongly to bioregional awareness. Wouldn't it be just as effective in these urgent times to put all our effort into helping people work on personal fossil fuel reductions? That question really made me think.

Here's what it comes down to. Bioregionalism is biological reality: only natural systems can ultimately provide the physical basis for our existence, the real obvious stuff like oxygen and water and wood to build our houses with, along with the more subtle needs for live oak shade and cardinal song.

Yet, our busy modern lives seem so divorced from the landscape we live in. Maybe it's because we apparently live "on top of" the land that we have so little sense of our true dependence and interconnection with place.

The Red Hills and all that they are can appear to be simply pictures outside our windows. The windows of the rooms of our homes, our schools, our churches, our stores, our offices, if we are lucky. The windshield of our cars. No wonder, since the living landscape is "out there," on the other side of so much glass and steel, that it might come to seem merely decorative. And increasingly more inscrutable, marginal, even, as television and computer screens dominate our visual experience. And yet this specific piece of earth allows our existence, with a twist: as the great cultural historian Thomas Berry says "while other life forms generally survive only within a limited bioregion, we can establish our human presence almost anywhere on the planet." And actually, our very mobile lifestyles aren't entirely new on the planet even native tribes with strong affiliations to certain bioregions often participated in complex trade to supplement what they could glean from their local landscape. In the end, this particular place we live uniquely presents us with a set of constraints, opportunities, seasonal specificities, that we will find no where else at all on the planet.

For our own survival, and that of the great abundance of life forms that live here too, we have to begin the long slow process of 'living in place,' of knowing home, of reinhabiting. We must become native to this place by waking up to the particular ecological relationships that operate within and around it-to establish an ecological and socially sustainable pattern of existence within it.

We can begin by asking ourselves the question: where is it that I live?

Susan Cerulean is a writer living in the Red Hills Bioregion.

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On behalf of my family, my clan, and my Nation, I am honored to share with you a story, a story that you will not hear from other sources, but one that I believe is important to share and keep alive for the future of all of our children. It is the story I have been taught of the first nations, the people native to this land, the people whose own history tells a creation story of being from this place, of this place, kin to this place from the very first times; the People who say the spirit of this land is Red.

I know of no traditional people who define themselves as having immigrated across the Bering land straights. These myths are alien creations. But I do know of many native people who tell of a creation time when they emerged from the belly of the mother earth or were born from the earth in some other way at a place they know as the center, the heart of their land, the heart of their people. It is not uncommon to find traditional communities who have oral and written histories that go back 40, 000 years in relationship with the same land. In the languages of most southeastern Indigenous People there is one word "ani wi da" that means the People, the land, their history, their culture. The Native People of this land have never seen themselves as apart from the land, but rather as a part of the land, as a child born of the mother earth, as a grandchild of the sun, and as a sibling of the plants, birds and animals that share the same homeland. Traditional Native People have been taught a world view that demands respect for the land in the same way that they respect their mothers, fathers, elders and other kin.

When the first Europeans arrived here 508 years ago they found flourishing Nations with large populations living in concentrated urban centers. They encountered a People who truly practiced "sustainable development." They found a People whose political and personal decisions were made with consideration of how their actions would impact "ani we da" --the people and the land for seven generations. Some will tell you that the reason that Indigenous populations did not adversely impact the land was because of low population numbers, but that fiction is simply not holding up under the scrutiny of modern investigation. Contrary to what you have been taught in school and what you have probably read, the Indigenous population prior to European contact was probably as high as the current population of the U.S.

Contemporary demographers are reevaluating the written records of the Spanish and the archeological record and some have estimated the population of the Florida's alone to have been 14 million, and the continent to have been as high as 200 million. When the Spanish marched into Apalachee along the same road we call Apalachee Parkway today, they recorded marching for the equivalent of 7 miles through planted fields and orchards cleared for as far as you could see on either side of a wide avenue. Large-scale, sustainable agriculture took advantage of over six feet of rich topsoil that has eroded to less than 6 inches today. Agriculture flourished through diversified plantings and the nitrogen-fixing practice of interspersing rows of fruit trees with open areas of companion plantings of corn and beans, squash and grains. This scale of agriculture could have easily fed a city of 200,000 people; a city with the same name and nearly the same population of Tallahassee today.

These Native People managed the surrounding forests with controlled burning to facilitate the harvest of acorns and nuts and to enhance populations of quail, turkey, deer and other game. They harvested fish, turtles, alligators and mussels in abundance from clean surface waters. And they lived in closely-knit, large communities with complex social and spiritual organizations, the evidence of which remains today in the mound complexes we see at sacred gathering places across the land. Ceremonial mound complexes and pyramidal earth structures were built here that were larger than the great pyramids of Egypt. You live, walk, drive over these centers of Indigenous secular and sacred learning and politics each day as you go to school at Buck Lake Elementary, or Florida A&M University, or go to work in the capital complex on the 7 hills of Apalachee. The places that were settled by Europeans were the places that had been cleared and developed as urban centers, and farmed by many generations of Native People. This place was treated with respect, and so the air and water remained clean for thousands of years of continuous Native habitation.

Current estimates suggest that within 50 years of contact with the Europeans, 95% of the Indigenous population had been killed, either from by disease or direct assault by the invaders. The large urban centers could no longer be maintained and the First Nations People started to regroup with other groups. Political and ceremonial centers were abandoned, as survival became the focus of everyday life. Consider what would happen to society today if we lost 95% of our spiritual leaders, artists, teachers, doctors, scientists, architects, historians, and 100% of our military leaders in such a short time span. Think of what would be lost.

I suggest to you that such was the loss of a balanced, earth-centered social organization, with technologies and a rich, healthy, orderly way of life. I also suggest to you that there is much to be learned and gained from a real understanding of what remains of that earth-centered way of life that can benefit us all today and in the future. We can not turn back the clock, but we can choose to move forward by making political and personal choices that put respect for the earth, clean air and clean water, as our top priority. If our children's children are to be sustained on this land between the two rivers that we call our home, then we must take steps to stop the destruction today and relearn how to live as a part of the land. We begin by becoming one with this place, by knowing its many splendors and by loving it as our own kin, as our home, not just as a resource to be exploited. Thank you for listening to my story, Skeeh.

Susan Anderson is a long time social justice and environmental activist and member of a traditional ceremonial community of the Easter Band of the Cherokee.