Hunting Cattle

After reading through most of Cows Save the Planet and other Improbable ways of Restoring Soil to Heal the Earth by Judith D. Schwartz, my main takeaway is that which the author probably intended by her choice of book title: stop eating beef unless it was grazed rotationally. Through numerous visits to ranchers who take the effort to move their herds to graze intensively one area at a time, Schwartz makes a convincing case that there is no better way to enrich large tracts of soil. If it were possible to increase the cattle population by herding in this fashion, the world would be a better place.

Can they save the planet? Maybe they can get us most of the way there if we also follow through with the 18 other solutions that precede managed grazing on Drawdown's list of 100 things that need to be done. They point out there that managed grazing, "does not address the methane emissions generated by ruminants (cattle, sheep, goats, etc.), which ferment cellulose in their digestive systems and break it down with methane-emitting microbes." If you look down the list to #72, however, you can find something that does address that particular biological shortcoming - biochar. There is movement afoot for biochar to be allowed in animal feed in the U.S. Chickens are likely to be given the nod first, but cows should be included not long thereafter. Canada may be leading the U.S. in permitting these changes. Europe is ahead of both.

In cattle, methane is mainly generated in the rumen, i.e. the first bovine stomach. It comes out mostly from the front end. By altering the enzyme and microbe environment in the rumen, a small percentage of biochar in a ruminant's feed can alleviate some of that gas while solving a host of other animal health imbalances. Hey, if cows are going to save the planet, we should do something for them, right?

Either way, managed grazing still pencils out in the black when you do the carbon accounting. With this in mind, I checked out the list of suppliers to my local farmstand, Chesapeake's Bounty, and noticed that at least three (Grand View Farm, Monnett Farm, and P. A. Bowen Farmstead) are holistic grazers. If I don't find what I want at the Bounty, Monnett sells at the California, MD farmers' market April through November.

With the prices for this beef running about double what the grocery stores charge, I am strongly considering buying a side of beef the way Dad used to do. That way you save about 3 to 4 dollars a pound, but you need three big coolers to bring it home and lots of freezer space. The cuts are vacuum packed and last for a year or more. Even as an 8-year-old, I had the sense that buying this much meat at one time was pretty macho. So what if it's the closest I'll ever get to hauling home a kill from the hunt? I imagine the feeling will be pretty much the same.

The Meaning of Your Life

The U.S. is as cold as ICE when it comes to refugee resettlement. The Harumph administration is blocking access to immigrants and cutting the number of  refugee slots to the lowest since 1980. World population growth (about 70% since 1980) alone should justify an increasing allowance, but the trend has been downward since the beginning of Ronald Reagan's term. People still immigrate, but they do so illegally. It happens all over the world. Most refugees end up in city tenements, not in camps.

Hats off to sanctuary cities for being proactive in making room for immigrants. The choice to offer refuge is primarily humanitarian, but also involves security considerations, cultural impacts, and a little-discussed aspect that affects the chances of continued existence for all people everywhere -- the global human footprint.

In a harsh way, migration driven by climate change and its social and environmental repercussions can contribute to correcting the problems of overpopulation, global warming, and loss of biodiversity. The natural tendency for desperate people to relocate to cities leaves a smaller human footprint elsewhere. We should not hinder this tendency, but encourage it by offering succor to refugees in cities here and abroad. The more people we can get to leave the countryside, the better chance we have of nature battling back to make life sustainable on Earth.

The visionary Kim Stanley Robinson describes how this would work. I was particularly enamored of his consideration of drawing down atmospheric CO2:

Meanwhile, cities will always rely on landscapes much vaster than their own footprints. Agriculture will have to be made carbon neutral; indeed, it will be important to create some carbon-negative flows, drawing carbon out of the atmosphere and fixing it into the land, either permanently or temporarily; we can’t afford to be too picky about that now, because we will be safest if we can get the CO2 level in the atmosphere back down to 350 parts per million. All these working landscapes should exist alongside that so-called empty land (though really it’s only almost empty – empty of people – most of the time). (Emphasis mine)

This provision allows for a priestly class of carbon farmers to live and work outside the confines of a city. Yet, this idea goes far beyond even stopping global warming. Read the whole Robinson article so the title of this post can sink in. To explore the project to preserve half the planet, the Half-Earth Project has a data-rich interactive globe on their website. Whether our role is to help make cities livable for billions more or to make the wider world livable to the rest of life, we all have our work cut out for us.

Retirement in the Time of Cholera

I reached my sabbath decade a couple of years ago. Even before that, my long work history in federal service allowed me to take retirement. The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, so I work away at things that I believe will be helpful, trying to emulate our Father in Heaven who rests and enjoys the fruits of his labor, while keeping everything on an even keel.

During the final decade of my life-cycle, maintaining an even keel looks like it will require battening down the hatches. Financial collapse looms. Best to turn liquid assets into something more permanent. The Social Security Administration tells me that if I live another 3 years, I have a better than average chance of making it to 83 years. That fails to include the life-threatening risks that accompany hard times and ecological collapse, not to mention the prospects of Social Security insolvency. I think I'll take that bird in my hand.

Financial planning should include short-, medium-, and long-term goals. Those time frames compress in the sunset years. Right now, I see them as 1, 5, and 10 years. These days, financial assets for the medium- and long-term time frames should be kept in gems or precious metals. These should be put to use as the occasion arises to purchase durable goods and property that will have near-term, as well as lasting, value in production or trade.

Working for pay should be low priority. Managing and reducing assets already acquired, i.e. having one's affairs in order, should be emphasized.

Aside from survival, the sabbath decade should be one of enjoyment. Rewards should come from diligent saving. Vacations and hobbies should be undertaken more earnestly, pets and spouses given more time and attention. Luxuries have no place in my budget, but there are some things that money can buy that could make life a bit more enjoyable. Following Ralph Nader's advice, I subscribe to Consumer Reports to know what could be worth buying, though living with less is my m.o.

I've come to put the pleasure of good cooking nearly on par with life itself.  Everything around me can go to Hell, but tasty, wholesome food is my bottom line. When that basic pleasure is gone, I don't think I will last much longer. Could that be why people who lose their sense of smell die within 5 years? Smell and taste are mutual senses.

Nap time is also hugely rewarding. Sleep comes so much easier in the middle of the day, especially when I've been doing physical labor. Many days, a 10- or 15-minute nap brings wonderful relief from the tiredness that comes with age.

Naps and night sleep fill the mind with dreams, which for me have little waking value, but are valuable in and of themselves. Perhaps if food fails, I can find a way to alter my mental state to allow me to endure by consuming raw foods and pharmaceuticals, living out my remaining days with nightdreams and daydreams as a refuge from the waking nightmare of civilization's collapse.

Only War can Save Us Now

When Senator John McCain ridiculed Navy Secretary Ray Mabus by stating, “You are the Secretary of the Navy, not the Secretary of Energy,” over his efforts to shift the Navy to a "Green Fleet," I was  glad I hadn't voted for him for President. Mabus had the right idea about using the military to address the energy-cum-climate crisis, he just didn't take it far enough. In fact, the military can be excused for burning through our last drops of oil, as long as they do it for the sake of stopping egregious greenhouse gas pollution that could soon kill us all.

A Green friend of mine seemed a little perplexed when she heard that my background included diplomas from two war colleges. She asked, "what do you study at a war college?" to which I tritely replied, "how to make war.  A useful skill ... if you happen to find yourself in one." In terms of our current plight, the problem with war is not that it is the epitome of wasted energy, but that it is undertaken for the sake of feeding our energy addiction. Any power that threatens a fossil-fuel dependent economic paradigm is who we tend to fight.

We have come to the point that the only thing that will save the current crop of humans from widespread die-off is a rapid reorientation to reducing our collective carbon footprint and reversing whatever damage we can. Perhaps even more urgently, we need to exclude the built environment from squatting on the most sensitive ecological areas and half of the earth's landmass. Short of going to war, that all involves too much self-imposed hardship. Make a war out of it, and patriotic fervor overcomes that chariness.

No other human enterprise is as effective as war in eliciting heroic activity by vast numbers of participants. War is the only institution capable of commanding great numbers of people to willingly endure suffering for the sake of victory. All the Green solutions put forth for overcoming our climate crisis involve widespread physical hardship, which can only be self-imposed through a warring mentality. (Geoengineering solutions' appeal is their supposed avoidance of hardship, but they carry potentially catastrophic risk or are unsustainable.)

The war we need is not the pitiful "War on Climate Change" of past administrations. Almost nobody joins a war so ephemeral. War must have physical objectives and culminate in the breaking of an enemy's will. War can be fought in cyberspace, but it has its foundation in meatspace. It must be carried out militarily, not by a loose-knit gaggle of volunteers.

Game theory would probably help in planning the War Against Climate Pollution. Just as we had to do all the second guessing required to prevent a nuclear war and understand how to execute one, we should model actions, effects, and reactions of forcing other countries' hands in an effort to prevent runaway greenhouse gas emissions. Game theory would also show us how much fossil fueled power we could cede in winding down our own emissions as others relinquish theirs.

Diplomacy should lead in attempting to resolve causes of excess pollution. Information exchanges and economic arrangements should also be set up before resorting to military action. After sufficient warning, military actions, if necessary, should be initially strategic and carried out with cyber weapons to, for example, shut down production at a plant producing HFC's.  If the violations don't cease, kinetic attacks could be used. Bloodshed should be avoided as much as possible. Strong arming is the main approach.

Targeted infrastructure would include coal power plants, oil refineries, concrete plants, fertilizer factories,and other point sources of pollution. What we are interdicting here are actually weapons of mass destruction, when you consider how greenhouse gas emissions added to the current inventory may push temperatures past the level of human tolerance. We should avoid taking on countries having the ability to fight back in any serious way. Escalation is not what we want. It detracts from the real goal - stopping pollution.

However, such a self-righteous war on pollution from the U.S. will not last unless we begin taking a stand on reducing our own emissions. We have to stick to the Paris Agreement, ratified, rejected, or not. The military can stay strong for as long as needed to complete the mission, but they too will have to diminish once things settle down and other great powers dispense with their own ambitions. As the world burns, the folly of dominance and colonialism will become evident. There is no need to fear dominance by China or Russia. Any incursion on their parts would be short-lived as distance becomes more tyrannical with the elimination of U.S. oil exports and the end of global trade. Ultimately, the only way to win this war is to lose the same things we seek to deny others.

Once we have stopped reliance on fossil fuels, everyone can then carry on with their decidedly more physically demanding lives, sharing stories around the TLUD of how they fought and won in the war against the Polluters. Their young listeners will look to the day when they can match these deeds of glory by pushing out the Squatters.

Strong Words that Could Start a Revolution

In Laudato Si, Pope Francis uses strong language to raise the alarm of our existential crisis, prescribes some corrections, and upbraids some common behaviors and mentalities that aggravate the problem. I pulled out those I could find with their source paragraphs indicated for context:

59.  periods of deep crisis which require bold decisions 

61.  things are now reaching a breaking point, due to the rapid pace of change and degradation 

64.  Christians in their turn “realize that their responsibility within creation, and their duty towards nature and the Creator, are an essential part of their faith”. 

66.  human life is grounded in three fundamental and closely intertwined relationships: with God, with our neighbour and with the earth itself. 

67.  we must forcefully reject the notion that our being created in God’s image and given dominion over the earth justifies absolute domination over other creatures.  

79.  The work of the Church seeks not only to remind everyone of the duty to care for nature, but at the same time “she must above all protect mankind from self-destruction”. 

 90.  we should be particularly indignant at the enormous inequalities in our midst, whereby we continue to tolerate some considering themselves more worthy than others.

111. generate resistance to the assault of the technocratic paradigm. 

114.  the urgent need for us to move forward in a bold cultural revolution. Science and technology are not neutral;

159. Intergenerational solidarity is not optional, but rather a basic question of justice, since the world we have received also belongs to those who will follow us.

 185.  water is a scarce and indispensable resource and a fundamental right which conditions the exercise of other human rights. This indisputable fact overrides any other assessment of environmental impact on a region.

186. If objective information suggests that serious and irreversible damage may result, a project should be halted or modified, even in the absence of indisputable proof. 

194. It is not enough to balance, in the medium term, the protection of nature with financial gain, or the preservation of the environment with progress.  

197. A strategy for real change calls for rethinking processes in their entirety, for it is not enough to include a few superficial ecological considerations while failing to question the logic which underlies present-day culture. 

208. Disinterested concern for others, and the rejection of every form of self-centeredness and self-absorption, are essential if we truly wish to care for our brothers and sisters and for the natural environment.

224. it is no longer enough to speak only of the integrity of ecosystems. We have to dare to speak of the integrity of human life, of the need to promote and unify all the great values.  

229. We have had enough of immorality and the mockery of ethics, goodness, faith and honesty. It is time to acknowledge that light-hearted superficiality has done us no good. 

Since we need a cultural revolution, where else might it begin than with the leader of something like one-sixth of all people on the planet? Could we take these ideas and spread them to others, igniting a revolution? Francis takes a strong tone in this encyclical. I would like to use these ideas as principles with which to challenge even strangers on behaviors and lifestyle choices that are counter to the Franciscan revolution. Realizing basic limits of my cultural understanding, I would restrict my scolding to others of my generation (Boomers), and take a more respectful or patronizing tone with those of older and younger cohorts. It will be interesting to see where this leads.

Dining In

Taking the Drawdown list at face value, the 100 measures listed are potential candidates for reducing my family's carbon footprint (including biochar, #71, which occupies so much of my time). Many of the measures do not pertain to someone in my situation. I am owner of only 1 acre, mostly forested, on a hillside in a temperate climate zone. Yet, there are some I can pursue that, right or wrong, are ranked even higher than biochar.

The first is: "#3 - Reduced Food Waste." For our family, there is some room for improvement with this. I am trying to eat what I grow and what I preserve, but sometimes the bounty is too great. I need to give more food away, at least until the quality of my produce will allow me to specialize and sell at farmers' markets. Mushrooms may be the ticket. Oyster mushrooms seem most promising, since I might soon be able to clone great quantities. Foods we don't eat go to composting (#60), so we don't truly waste any of it.

Related to #3 is the next measure on Drawdown's list: "#4 - Plant-Rich Diet." This is a most welcome requirement. I recommend retirement as early as possible, since I have found it allows time for lots of cooking, but even if you can't afford to retire yet, I recommend making cooking a priority. I can hardly stand to eat out anymore; restaurant food is either so disgusting or too expensive, or both.

I say this because last year I discovered a handy feature in some of the cookbooks my wife has purchased over the years, but had never been put to use. The "Taste of Home" annual recipes
have a special index based on ingredients. It makes it easy to find a recipe that contains what you have on hand. No longer do I bother with questionable online recipes which offer such searches. I just grab one of the dozen "Taste of Home" books on our shelf and find a kitchen-tested recipe that gives me something to look forward to every day. Adding any missing ingredients to our shopping list allows us to buy them anytime we happen to be in a supermarket. As the pantry fills with staples, less and less shopping is needed to make whatever recipes are chosen. By selecting recipes containing produce that we grow, we are able to enjoy amazing food at affordable prices while also achieving measure #3.

Who knew that saving the planet could be so enjoyable?!!

The Coming Scramble for Survival

Necessity is the midwife of devolution. Invention's mother is running out of resources, so she is reverting to the tried and tested. Her next brood will be a passel of low-tech survival tools. System design and implementation takes about a decade and that is about all the time we have before nature puts her foot down (if the rate of Arctic sea ice melt is a reliable leading indicator). The rate of ocean warming will increase promptly after the ice is gone. Coastal cities will experience a markedly more rapid increase in flooding events. It will finally become clear to the man on the street that we haven't done what it takes to turn the tide and cannot spend another decade working on it. The new systems that we could have had ready to withdraw CO2 from the atmosphere will not be available in sufficient quantities to prevent a great die-off. Suffering will move people to act individually and locally and one of the only negative CO2 tools available to the average Joe will be the biochar that they can make on their own. Enduring the diminished resource future will, however, carry the built-in solution of doing less of what has long been damaging the climate. 

Below, a list from Drawdown.org shows 71 solutions before it gets to biochar, about one-third of which are scalable to the human individual level. Collective activity won't entirely cease and the ultra-wealthy will still be able to command some sizeable projects, but beyond what takes place in the next few years, there won't be much civic initiative to avoid the continuation of today's burgeoning apocalyptic chain-of-events. Debt levels keep rising and all it will take is a crisis for everything to collapse in a way that will take a century or more to heal. Some places "get it" more than others, though, so living in a state governed by the cognoscenti may allow some of today's heroes to continue a more efficacious collective fight against global warming into the next saeculum. If so, a few people may survive to perpetuate the human species.

1 Refrigerant Management 2 Wind Turbines (Onshore) 3 Reduced Food Waste 4 Plant-Rich Diet 5 Tropical Forests 6 Educating Girls 7 Family Planning 8 Solar Farms 9 Silvopasture 10 Rooftop Solar 11 Regenerative Agriculture 12 Temperate Forests 13 Peatlands 14 Tropical Staple Trees 15 Afforestation 16 Conservation Agriculture 17 Tree Intercropping 18 Geothermal 19 Managed Grazing 20 Nuclear 21 Clean Cookstoves 22 Wind Turbines (Offshore) 23 Farmland Restoration 24 Improved Rice Cultivation 25 Concentrated Solar 26 Electric Vehicles 27 District Heating 28 Multistrata Agroforestry 29 Wave and Tidal 30 Methane Digesters (Large) 31 Insulation 32 Ships 33 LED Lighting (Household) 34 Biomass 35 Bamboo 36 Alternative Cement 37 Mass Transit 38 Forest Protection 39 Indigenous Peoples’ Land Management 40 Trucks 41 Solar Water 42 Heat Pumps 43 Airplanes 44 LED Lighting (Commercial) 45 Building Automation 46 Water Saving - Home 47 Bioplastic 48 In-Stream Hydro 49 Cars 50 Cogeneration 51 Perennial Biomass 52 Coastal Wetlands 53 System of Rice Intensification 54 Walkable Cities 55 Household Recycling 56 Industrial Recycling 57 Smart Thermostats 58 Landfill Methane 59 Bike Infrastructure 60 Composting 61 Smart Glass 62 Women Smallholders 63 Telepresence 64 Methane Digesters (Small) 65 Nutrient Management 66 High-speed Rail 67 Farmland Irrigation 68 Waste-to-Energy 69 Electric Bikes 70 Recycled Paper 71 Water Distribution 72 Biochar 73 Green Roofs 74 Trains 75 Ridesharing 76 Micro Wind 77 Energy Storage (Distributed) 77 Energy Storage (Utilities) 77 Grid Flexibility 78 Microgrids 79 Net Zero Buildings 80 Retrofitting