Sea Level Rise

Here's an interesting fact: in our interconnected world, driving your car contributes to the drowning of our present coastline.

Scientists now believe that warming trends, caused by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions to the earth's atmosphere, will accelerate the rate of sea level rise on our planet. Since the end of the last ice age, 15-18,000 years ago, sea level has risen 250-300 feet. Over the last 50 years, tide gauge records show a rise of about 2 millimeters a year on the Gulf Coast of Florida, which translates into 8 inches per century.

Global sea level rise is caused by two factors. One is the delivery of water to the ocean as land ice melts, such as mountain glaciers and polar icecaps. The second factor is the thermal expansion of water within the oceans. As the temperature of the waters in the oceans is raised, and the seas become less dense, and spread, occupying more surface area on the planet.

If business continues as usual, the carbon dioxide content of the air will double by 2100. This doubling will enhance the greenhouse effect and result in a 1 to 5 degree Centigrade increase in global temperature. These temperature increases will cause sea level rise to accelerate. Best estimates are that sea level will be 400 to 500 millimeters higher by 2100, which translates to a rate of 16 to 20 inches per century. On low relief coasts, such as the Big Bend, this could translate into hundreds of feet of shoreline loss. How can we prevent this from happening? Emit fewer greenhouse gases from our cars, our homes, our built infrastructure as a whole.

The Heart of the Earth Council recommends: The Heat is On by Ross Gelpspan (Perseus Books, 1997). Pick up a copy of this book for a marvelously readable but devastatingly candid account of the brutal politics of debunking the scientific method by the opulent vested interests of the fossil-fuel lobby.

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

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Affordable Investments in the "Great Work"

As parents, we plan and invest for our children's educational future, but what about investing in their future on this planet? Dennis Harden, a founding member of Heart of the Earth, has been doing just that by installing high-efficiency doors and windows in his home, bit by bit as he can afford it. So far, he has replaced three sliding glass doors and seven windows in his late 1960's home with thermally-sealed double-paned windows and doors.

Super-windows and super-insulation, rather than huge investments in alternative energy systems, are the keys to dramatically reducing your home energy use, according to designers of energy self-sufficient homes around the country. Windows and doors are the weakest spot in the insulation envelope of your home, and a good place for a major investment in living more sustainably on the earth.

A standard aluminum frame window conducts about 1,431 btu's of heat out of your house per hour in the winter, or inside in summer, while thermally-sealed windows, which use a non-conductive composite for the frame, conduct one btu per hour. Replacement doors and windows should be custom made. Thermally-sealed double-paned windows like Dennis purchased cost about $300 for single-hung, or $400 for double-hung from Crystal Windows. For slightly more, a new titanium low-e glass further cuts radiant heat entering the house in summer by 75 percent, and allows heat gain in winter. Dennis chose to finance the project himself, but the City of Tallahassee Energy Services offers 5% interest loans for city residents to replace old windows and doors with high-efficiency ones. Loans for up to $5,000 are available.

As energy use soared and bills doubled around the city during the coldest winter on record, Dennis' electric bill remained about the same as it was during last year's mild winter. Equally satisfying, the Hardens noticed a big increase in the comfort of their home this winter, with no drop in temperature next to the windows. "I wanted to improve the comfort, efficiency, and look of the house. It has done all three," Dennis says.

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

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After some members of our Spiral Garden community in Woodville attended the Heart of the Earth presentation at United Church last September, we decided to get more organized about car-pooling. Here we were poignantly reminded that, yes, global warming is a huge environmental problem. But every reduction that each of us makes in fossil fuel use can help solve this problem. It's that simple!

So, even though some of us were already ride-sharing, we agreed we could do more. All of the ten households in this community have gotten involved with this effort at some level. Some drivers leave their cars in town overnight, and just car-pool the commute from Woodville. Others run errands for each other. My husband ride-shares or rides his bike to work four times a week.

I give people rides when I can, but mainly what I do is stay at home more. We both had some resistance about shifting our schedules and priorities to make these changes, but now we are starting to enjoy a better quality of life because of them. Howie is getting more exercise, and he enjoys visiting with the neighbors in the car. The children and I are not rushing around as much, and we are exploring our back yard, the woods and the neighborhood with a renewed curiosity.

Here's how we got organized. First we filled out individual schedule forms which were used to match up consistent rides. Then we made copies of a master schedule and a telephone roster so that each participant could quickly figure out who to call when they want to share a ride. We also hold monthly meetings to discuss the process and to announce any schedule changes.

The changes in my family's lives have been gratifying, but most importantly, after years of being too overwhelmed about global warming to do much of anything, I am finding it liberating to finally, slowly, dig my head out of the sand, raise it up, look out on the horizon, and meet with a steady gaze my responsibility as a driver.

If you would like more information on how to start a car-pooling plan, you can call Adrienne at 421-8102.

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Surely no one living in the Red Hills of north Florida failed to notice the arrival of spring this year, on the 20th of March. The return of emerald green to our trees seemed especially celebratory after the cold, long winter, punctuated by so many frosty nights. It's felt like a return to a proper seasonality, after a couple of years of warmer than usual winters. In some ways, life feels so comfortingly familiar, so simple, so joyous, as the flowers unfold in their own time, and the songbirds slip back into our forests to sing and build their nests.

The first day of spring is also known as the spring, or vernal equinox--the half-way point between summer and winter solstice, one of two days when the northern and southern hemispheres receive the same amount of sunlight, and the days and nights are of identical length (equinox means "equal night").

I think of the equinoxes as times of balance, and believe this a time to realign and balance my own life. Yet despite the brilliance of the spring, the fate of our world seems ever more precarious.

It's easy to feel as if our very life support system is spinning out of control, on almost any level that we pay attention to human-induced trends playing out all around us. We hear that within twenty years, global warming will have caused the melting of all the snow and ice from the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro--this after we'd barely digested news of the slushy hole in the polar ice cap last fall. We listen to our new administration press forward with their relentlessly corporate agenda, to brazen proposals to roll back water and air standards, and open to oil drilling the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge ( which the Bush administration depersonalizes with the acronym "Anwar").

Even as scientists in many disciplines join ranks to support the certain threat of global warming to our planet, the Bush team not only fails to acknowledge what we face, but the necessity of changing our course of action.

You can almost feel the pulse of the planet pick up its pace in response to human consumption of fossil fuels. All around us, right in our own bioregion, you can wince at the substantial chunks of living forest falling every day, their red clay soil to be converted to substrate for new malls or yet another office park. We seem unable to stop the hamster wheel of growth, at any level.

And most of us who want so badly to make a difference often feel we must work more feverishly than ever before, if we are to have a chance at mitigating the madness. I have been wondering, lately, if what we need to do isn't exactly the opposite. Each of us is a cell in this living landscape, and I wonder if we might not effect a real slowdown in the out-of-control metabolism being forced on our planet, if we simply slow ourselves down. Our own lives. Our own days. The number of commitments we take on. This would only work if the time we gain were to be spent more deliberately-it wouldn't work if we simply plopped in front of the tube. But what if we stopped moving so fast around town, in our cars, and instead, planted that garden, learned those local birds and trees, got involved in the neighborhood council, and took stock of our own household energy use?

The equinox is definitely a time when the hours of the light and dark are balanced-but it is also a time of intense change, which you can sense in the shifting of the place of sunrise, and the lengthening of the light. This is my springtime prayer: Let us find within ourselves the resources to help bring similar change to our feverish planet. Let our contributions be swift and organic, and at the same time, slow and deliberate, and all that is needed. For the sake of all the unborn, of all species, waiting for their chance at living, let this be so.

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

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Pledge Power

Have you bought a compact fluorescent bulb since taking the Heart of the Earth Pledge to reduce your fossil fuel use? We'd like to know! Each compact fluorescent bulb that replaces a regular incandescent bulb prevents hundreds of pounds of CO2 from entering the atmosphere over its five to seven year lifetime. I'll calculate the impact of this simple action, multiplied by our growing numbers, to remind us that we do have the power to "power down" the damage were are doing to this still beautiful but fevered planet.

Please e-mail LucyAnn@heartoftheearth.org or call (850)841-4985 and let me know the wattage of the bulb or bulbs you bought, the wattage of the bulb it replaced, and your electric company. If you forgot, the wattage is generally printed on the base of the bulb, usually 15W for one that replaces a 75W bulb, and up to 30W for a circular one that replaces a 150W bulb or fixture.

If you haven't bought one yet, please check out the light bulb section at Home Depot, Lowes, Wal-Mart, or even Publix. For as little as $8.99 and the effort of changing a light bulb, you can start reducing your fossil fuel use. Compact fluorescents are not only getting cheaper, they are flicker-free, produce a warm light, and are available in a constantly increasing array of sizes and shapes-even dimmable ones. If at first you don't find what you want, persist, because Heart of the Earthers have been snatching up new models as they appear.

I'd also love to hear if anyone has started carpooling, bought water-saving showerheads, insulated their water heater, put a timer on it, increased their bike trips, or any other small or large actions to reduce your personal fossil fuel use.

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As I walk in the cool evening air, the tensions of the day melt away from me like gently falling raindrops on a summer's day. I've temporarily escaped from the sometimes smothering, stale indoor world of computers, TVs and artificial lighting into twilight's enfolding arms. Taking a slow deep breath of evening air, I sense the familiar presence of the real world beginning to descend upon me. Surrendering to it's embrace, I thankfully close my eyes, and allow it to surround and fill my entire being. I am rewarded with feeling of calm, quiet, and peace.

Continuing my walk, the myriad of night sounds touch the outer edges of my awareness. So many voices, each separate and distinct, yet together creating a unique collage that reverberates with the collective voice of the whole. All parts of the evening chorus are equal. There is no need for conductor or hierarchy in this orchestra. No need to regulate this self-organizing structure. No one dominates or tries to out-sing the others; the cicadas don't sing their nightly song to drown out the whispering voice of the night breeze; the whippoorwill, owl and cricket have no need or desire to outdo each other. They blend their voices effortlessly to create each twilight's enchanting concerto.

Walking under a streetlight, my thoughts turn away from the immediate toward the human presence on the planet. Questions beckon me: Why do we humans think it necessary to sing above and dominate this perfectly structured orchestra? Who gave us the right to organize it into artificial, hierarchical sections of plants, animal and humans? Who gave us the idea that we can perform solo in this symphony?

How arrogant we are to think that we can speak for all other species of plants and animals on the planet, that we have appointed ourselves the sole conductor who decides for all of life what's good, bad or what shall remain in existence. That through our own delusional thinking we allow ourselves to destroy not only each other, but any other species that suits our fancy. That all other species on this planet have no rights apart from what we arrogant humans allow them.

This simple truth, that other beings and features of earth have intrinsic value distinct from their value as resources for human use, is at the core of Deep Ecology, a term coined 30 years ago by the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess. Deep Ecology embraces the ecospiritual view that we are inseparably interconnected with all of creation, that we are an integral part of the earth, rather than at the center or on top.

In promoting our missions of bioregional education and combating global climate change, Heart of the Earth is firmly grounded in these Deep Ecology principles. Our "ecocentric" vision recognizes that if we are to change the present environmentally destructive course, it is imperative thatwe not only begin to take personal responsibility for reducing our negative impact on the environment, but that we also experience ourselves as part of the living earth and find our role within this context in protecting the planet.

Heart of the Earth will begin offering Deep Ecology empowerment workshops in the fall of 2001. These workshops will introduce the Deep Ecology approach, working with ideas, feelings, spirituality and personal action planning. If you are interested in participating or want more information, please contact us at (850) 4985 or e-mail us at info@heartoftheearth.org. Barry Fraser is a licensed therapist and group facilitator living in the Red Hills bioregion.

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