Who controls the controllers?
If there is to be an answer to the problem of control, it’s going to be more control. Only now what’s got to be managed is not a nature that exists—or is imagined to exist—apart from the human. Instead, the new effort begins with a planet remade and spirals back on itself—not so much the control of nature as the control of the control of nature.
Kolbert, Elizabeth. Under a White Sky (p. 8). Crown. Kindle Edition.
As the societal worldview has shifted from the modern to the postmodern, we have come to appreciate more the systemic view of things rather than the linear, reductionist modern view. This has led to an understanding of what is called “second order change.” We aren’t managing just a component of a system but the whole system because if you change the component, this change influences the whole of which the component is a part.
In environmental studies this appreciation of the broader system is called “ecology.” Ecology is a whole new way of perceiving, understanding and thinking about our experience of the world. We become aware of the interdependent web of existence of which we are a part.
As some people manipulate parts of the whole without awareness of the impact this manipulation has on the interdependent web, how are these people to be controlled? In other words, as Kolbert points out, who controls the controllers?
Second order change is a whole new way of thinking that takes place beyond the thinking that created the problem in the first place. There is only a minority of people in our present society, 20% at most, who can think systemically and engage in second order change. If homo sapiens is to survive on the planet with any quality of life, it will have to evolve to the next level of thinking beyond the modern. How do we educate and influence more of the population to think systemically?
Until more of the population is able to think systemically we are trapped in the polarized conflicts which we observe and find frustrating in our contemporary times. People need to have the cognitive and emotional skills to rise above and think beyond the dichotomies. As Charles Johnston has written, it is not “what” we think but “how” we think that is causing the problems.
Topic Three
$250,000 per year
Now Seidemann makes most of his income from contract killing for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. It seemed rude to ask him how much, but later I learned that contract fishermen can gross more than $5,000 a week.
Kolbert, Elizabeth. Under a White Sky (p. 18). Crown. Kindle Edition.
Gross income for a contract fisherman would be $250,000 per year. I wonder what their net would be?
Topic Four
I’d like to become a tree..
The final tally was six thousand four hundred and four silver carp and five hundred and forty-seven bighead. Collectively, the fish weighed more than fifty thousand pounds. They were shipped west in the semi, to be ground into fertilizer.
Kolbert, Elizabeth. Under a White Sky (p. 19). Crown. Kindle Edition.
Once the dead carp are ground into fertilizer I wonder where the fertilizer goes and what the fertilizer is used for?
Horse manure is good for rose bushes. What is carp fertilizer good for?
Reminds me of the phrase used when ashes are applied to foreheads in the form of a cross on Ash Wednesday. “Thou art made from dust and to dust thou shalt return.”
I have been working on my Pre Plan for funeral services and have decided to be cremated. Two of my adult children have asked me, “What do you want done with your ashes, Dad?” How about mix them in with the carp fertilizer so my ashes can make things grow? I’d like to know, though, what I will grow into. I’d like to become a tree. I like trees.
Topic Five
Down the drain.
The Mississippi River’s drainage basin is the third largest in the world, exceeded in area only by the Amazon’s and the Congo’s. It stretches over more than 1.2 million square miles and encompasses thirty-one states and slices of two Canadian provinces. The basin is shaped a bit like a funnel, with its spout sticking into the Gulf of Mexico.
Kolbert, Elizabeth. Under a White Sky (p. 19). Crown. Kindle Edition.
Talk about going down the drain. Now I know what my brother meant when he told me there was no such thing as gravity, the whole world sucks.
I am reminded of Johnny Horton’s great song, The Battle of New Orleans, which hit the air waves in 1959 when I was 13. It was the first 45 rpm record I ever bought. It was a top 10 hit that year. I bought it at Houston’s 5 & 10 in Brockport, NY. Little did I know then that it was more than the British that were going down the Mississippi to the Gulf Of Mexico, it was a huge drainage basin for the central United States from Canada to the Gulf. Wow! What I have learned 63 years later.
Topic Six
Living in the Garden of Eden
The Great Lakes’ drainage basin is also vast. It extends over three hundred thousand square miles and contains eighty percent of North America’s fresh surface water supply. This system, which has the shape of an overfed seahorse, drains east into the Atlantic, by way of the St. Lawrence River.
Kolbert, Elizabeth. Under a White Sky (p. 19). Crown. Kindle Edition.
I live six miles to the south of Lake Ontario. The lake level is regulated by an international commission by somehow managing the outflow into the St. Lawrence sea way.
People here complain of the cold and snow and move south. They aren’t aware that they are living in the Garden of Eden. Lake Meade is being drained and the Colorado River is no longer providing all the water needed in the South West. Here we are sitting on 80% of the freshwater in North America.
It’s snowing as I write this. Got about 12 inches in the last 24 hours. Love it! The birds are hitting the feeder outside the window and the Cardinals are so lovely against the pristine white backdrop.
Topic Seven
The most invasive species on planet Earth.
Irons believes the best hope for halting the invasion is to enlist what might, with a certain amount of squinting, be seen as a biological agent. What species is large and voracious enough to make a serious dent in the carps’ numbers? “Humans know how to overfish things,” Irons told me. “So the question is: How can we use this to our advantage?”
Kolbert, Elizabeth. Under a White Sky (p. 25). Crown. Kindle Edition.
It seems very clear, at this point in evolution, that homo sapiens are the most invasive and deadly species on the planet.
According to the Genesis myth, homo sapiens were given the earth by God Almighty to dominate. It has taken a few millennia but by golly we’re dominating the heaven out of it, beyond any recognition of its previous splendor.
With this power, given to homo sapiens by its Creative Source, comes great responsibility for care and evolutionary co-creation. Will we be loving or exploitative? That’s the fundamental question for all of humanity and for the future of our planet.
What do you think about homo sapiens' responsibilities for managing the evolutionary trajectory with the Creative Source and Force?
Topic Eight
A new word I learned is “subsidence”.
We’re in an uphill battle against sea-level rise and subsidence,” Barth said.
Kolbert, Elizabeth. Under a White Sky (p. 44). Crown. Kindle Edition.
Topic Nine
What on earth is happening?
Plaquemines has the distinction—a dubious one, at best—of being among the fastest-disappearing places on earth. Everyone who lives in the parish—and fewer and fewer people do—can point to some stretch of water that used to have a house or a hunting camp on it. This is true even of teenagers. A few years ago, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration officially retired thirty-one Plaquemines place names, including Bay Jacquin and Dry Cypress Bayou, because there was no there there anymore.
And what’s happening to Plaquemines is happening all along the coast. Since the 1930s, Louisiana has shrunk by more than two thousand square miles. If Delaware or Rhode Island had lost that much territory, America would have only forty-nine states. Every hour and a half, Louisiana sheds another football field’s worth of land. Every few minutes, it drops a tennis court’s worth. On maps, the state may still resemble a boot. Really, though, at this point, the bottom of the boot is in tatters, missing not just a sole but also its heel and a good part of its instep.
Kolbert, Elizabeth. Under a White Sky (pp. 31-32). Crown. Kindle Edition.
The sea levels are rising. The loss of land is even more consequential in other places than Louisiana. Reality is when it happens to you.
Have you been affected in any way by rising sea levels?
Topic Ten
New Orleans would not exist were it not for slave labor.
One year after its founding, L’Isle de la Nouvelle Orléans suffered its first inundation. “The site is drowned under half a foot of water,” Bienville wrote. The settlement would remain submerged for six months. Rather than retreat again, the French dug in. They raised artificial levees atop the natural ones and started cutting drainage channels through the muck. Most of this backbreaking labor was performed by African slaves. By the 1730s, slave-built levees stretched along both banks of the Mississippi for a distance of nearly fifty miles.
Kolbert, Elizabeth. Under a White Sky (pp. 35-36). Crown. Kindle Edition.
Much of the wealth of the United States was created by slave labor. With the question of reparations being owed to African Americans by the people of the United States, mostly whites since they owned and benefited from the practice of slavery, it is increasingly clear how much is owed to African Americans even the existence of a city like New Orleans.
How you have you and your family benefited from slave labor in the United States passed down through the generations?
Topic Eleven
Why not just move to higher ground?
But New Orleans’s world-class drainage system, like its world-class levee system, is a sort of Trojan solution. Since marshy soils compact through dewatering, pumping water out of the ground exacerbates the very problem that needs to be solved. The more water that’s pumped, the faster the city sinks. And the more it sinks, the more pumping is required.
“Pumping is a big part of the issue,” Kolker told me, as we climbed back onto our sweaty bicycles. “It accelerates subsidence, so it becomes a positive feedback loop.”
Kolbert, Elizabeth. Under a White Sky (p. 50). Crown. Kindle Edition.
The proverbial vicious circle. The more you pump, the more the subsidence and the more the subsidence the more you’re going to have to pump to keep the land dry.
And so the question is why not move to higher ground?
“Let me enumerate the reasons.”
“Okay, but supposing you give me just one good one and save us both some time and energy.?”
Topic Twelve
Nature or human made?
Since then, a lot has happened to complicate the meaning of “control,” not to mention “nature.” The Louisiana delta is now often referred to by hydrologists as a “coupled human and natural system,” or, for short, a CHANS. It’s an ugly term—another nomenclatural hairball—but there’s no simple way to talk about the tangle we’ve created. A Mississippi that’s been harnessed, straightened, regularized, and shackled can still exert a godlike force; it’s no longer exactly a river, though. It’s hard to say who occupies Mount Olympus these days, if anyone.
Kolbert, Elizabeth. Under a White Sky (pp. 59-62). Crown. Kindle Edition.
Are human beings dominated by nature or is nature dominated by human beings? If there is an interdependence how can this be best understood, respected, and managed? “Natural disasters” make the news on a consistent basis and those of us not victimized cluck our tongues and say something like “Ain’t that awful. Those poor people.” Sometimes we may even send aid or even go to the scene to help.
Natural disasters are humbling. We humans are brought down a peg or two by forces beyond our control. Have you ever been victimized by nature? If so, what happened? How did you manage?
Increasingly, with climate change humans are made aware of our complicity in creating our own “natural” tragedies. We finally have to face up to our own responsibilities for contributing to the problems we have created for ourselves. Silly humans that we are, we thought for awhile, in our arrogance, that we can control Nature. But alas, Mother Nature laughs.
A father and son, age 5, are taking a walk and it starts to rain. The little boy asks his father, “Daddy, why is it raining?”
The father replies, “Well, son, it is raining because God is crying.”
The son asks, “Why is God crying?”
The father replies, “I don’t know for sure but it is probably because of something you did.”
Topic Thirteen
One species mourning the death of another.
What was different in the nineteenth century was the sheer pace of the violence. If earlier losses had unfolded gradually—so gradually that not even the participants would have been aware of what was going on—the advent of technologies like the railroad and the repeating rifle turned extinction into a readily observable phenomenon. In the United States, and indeed around the world, it became possible to watch creatures vanish in real time. “For one species to mourn the death of another is a new thing under the sun,” Aldo Leopold noted in an essay commemorating the passenger pigeon’s passing.
Kolbert, Elizabeth. Under a White Sky (pp. 73-74). Crown. Kindle Edition.
One species mourning the death of another. To what extent does homo sapiens mourn the deaths of thousands of other species which the Anthropocene has perpetrated? In some instances this extinction has not been inadvertent but deliberate. To what extinct is homo sapiens becoming aware of its collective guilt?
Topic Fourteen
Moral distress
02/10/33
I was struck, and not for the first time, by how much easier it is to ruin an ecosystem than to run one.
Kolbert, Elizabeth. Under a White Sky (p. 77). Crown. Kindle Edition.
Yesterday, 02/09/22, working to obtain my 36 CEUs for re-licensure as a Licensed Clinical Social Work Psychotherapist in New York State this November, 2022, I attended a presentation yesterday by Dr. Abigail Latimer entitled “Moral distress and moral injury in Social Work''.. Dr. Latimer’s definition of “moral distress “ is “Psychological disequilibrium and negative feelings that occur when the believed correct ethical action cannot be taken due to real or perceived constraints.”
As I am reading Under a White Sky my moral distress syndrome is being exacerbated. Some of the symptoms of moral distress syndrome are:frustration/anger, blame, regret, powerlessness, headaches, GI problems, sleep disruptions, high blood pressure. There are others as well. I find myself muttering, “Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ almighty. Holy crap.” My daughter said to me, “Are you talking to yourself, Dad?”
“Praying is all,” I say.
Topic Fifteen
The “tame” and the “wild.”
Twenty thousand years ago, wolves were domesticated. The result was a new species (or, by some accounts, subspecies) as well as two new categories: the “tame” and the “wild.” With the domestication of wheat, around ten thousand years ago, the plant world split. Some plants became “crops” and others “weeds.” In the brave new world of the Anthropocene, the divisions keep multiplying.
Kolbert, Elizabeth. Under a White Sky (p. 82). Crown. Kindle Edition.
The distinction between “wild” and “tame” points to aspects of Mother Nature becoming dependent on homo sapiens for its maintenance and survival.
There is an intentional interdependence created by homo sapiens on the natural world which involves management of an ecology whether the human is fully aware of all the components of this system or not.
There is a concept in systems theory which is described as “when the solution becomes a problem.” Often times humans have adapted to challenging circumstances which in the short run solved the problem presented by the challenge but in the long run the solution becomes another problem itself which can be even more challenging.
As a therapist I am challenged every day by problems which people have created for themselves that at one point in time may have been adaptive.
An easy example is addictive drugs which are mood altering, the worst of all being alcohol. People drink alcohol to alter their moods. Alcohol is one of the quickest most effective antidepressants. But in excess and/or used continually, creates worst problems up to death.
Killing animals for food and sport meets human needs until the species hunted is killed to extinction.
What is needed is good stewardship and awareness of our radical dependence on Mother Nature. This takes great humility and respect of the interdependent web of existence of which we are a part.
What does this distinction between "tame" and "wild" mean to you. How has it influenced your life or have you never thought about its meaning for you, your community, humanity and the planet before?
Topic Sixteen
Synanthropes
Consider the “synanthrope.” This is an animal that has not been domesticated and yet, for whatever reason, turns out to be peculiarly well suited to life on a farm or in the big city. Synanthropes (from the Greek syn, for “together,” and anthropos, “man”) include raccoons, American crows, Norway rats, Asian carp, house mice, and a couple of dozen species of cockroach.
Kolbert, Elizabeth. Under a White Sky (p. 82). Crown. Kindle Edition.
Even though I am 76 I keep learning new stuff. The psychogeriatric specialists tell us that continuing to learn keeps us young. So maybe I’m a young 76 because I learned a new word reading Elizabeth Kolbert’s book, Under A White Sky: “synanthrope”. It’s a great word. I like saying it and using it.
Two years ago we had a fox who made a den under our shed in the back yard and gave birth to four pups which she raised there. I put up a trail cam and we caught pictures of the pups coming out at night and playing. I was delighted to be this close to nature. They weren’t domesticated but were wild, kind of, but seemed to be okay living in such close proximity to us humans, under our shed in our backyard.
Now I know what these foxes are called: synanthropes. Isn’t life grand? What are your favorite synanthrope experiences?
Topic Seventeen
Anthropophytes
In botany, “apophytes” are native plants that thrive when people move in; “anthropophytes” are plants that thrive when people move them around. Anthropophytes can be still further subdivided into “archaeophytes,” which were spread before Europeans arrived in the New World, and “kenophytes,” which were spread afterward.
Kolbert, Elizabeth. Under a White Sky (pp. 82-83). Crown. Kindle Edition.
Like synanthropes which are wild animals that co-inhabit ecological spaces with humans, anthropophytes are plants that co-inhabit ecological spaces with humans. They not only co-inhabit but intentionally thrive.
What are your favorite anthopophytes which you spend time, money, energy, and talent on cultivating to live alongside you and the plants are better off for it?
Topic Eighteen
With assisted evolution will planet earth ever get back to being natural?
The corals subject to this selective pressure would, it was hoped, undergo a kind of “assisted evolution.” These corals could then be used to seed the reefs of the future.
“I’m a realist,” Gates told me at one point. “I cannot continue to hope that our planet is not going to change radically. It already is changed.” People could either “assist” corals in coping with the change they’d brought about, or they could watch them die. Anything else, in her view, was wishful thinking. “A lot of people want to go back to something,” she said. “They think, if we just stop doing things, maybe the reef will come back to what it was.
“Really what I am is a futurist,” she said at another point. “Our project is acknowledging that a future is coming where nature is no longer fully natural.”
Kolbert, Elizabeth. Under a White Sky (p. 94). Crown. Kindle Edition.
One of the big lessons in Kolbert’s book is that homo sapiens has impacted “nature” to such a degree that “nature” will never go back to being “natural” on this planet as long as humans are on it. This awareness is very humbling and terrifying. What a huge responsibility. To what extent do you think that homo sapiens will evolve along with the natural world they are impacting so that it could be said that homo sapiens are good stewards and have left the world a better place than they found it?
Topic Nineteen
What do you call natural selection after The End of Nature?
A century and a half after On the Origin of Species, Darwin’s argument-by-analogy is still compelling, though every year it gets harder to keep the terms straight. “Feeble man” is changing the climate, and this is exerting strong selective pressure. So are myriad other forms of “global change”: deforestation, habitat fragmentation, introduced predators, introduced pathogens, light pollution, air pollution, water pollution, herbicides, insecticides, and rodenticides. What do you call natural selection after The End of Nature?
Kolbert, Elizabeth. Under a White Sky (p. 97). Crown. Kindle Edition.
Good question - what do you call “natural selection after the end of nature?” How about “unnatural selection” or the “anthropocene.” Homo sapiens have now become like gods influencing the evolution of nature on planet Earth. Are we up for the job?
Topic Twenty
Coral reefs and oceanic life.
The Great Barrier Reef isn’t a reef so much as a collection of reefs—some three thousand in all—that stretches over one hundred thirty-five thousand square miles, an area larger than Italy.
Kolbert, Elizabeth. Under a White Sky (p. 104). Crown. Kindle Edition.
The number of species that can be found on a healthy patch of reef is probably greater than can be encountered in a similar amount of space anywhere else on earth, including the Amazon rainforest.
Kolbert, Elizabeth. Under a White Sky (p. 105). Crown. Kindle Edition.
It’s estimated that, worldwide, reefs are home to between one and nine million species, though the scientists who conducted the crustacean study concluded that even the high-end estimates probably are too low. It is likely, they wrote, that “the diversity of reefs” has been “seriously under-detected.”
Kolbert, Elizabeth. Under a White Sky (p. 105). Crown. Kindle Edition.
How reefs support so much diversity under such austere conditions has long puzzled scientists—a conundrum that’s become known as “Darwin’s paradox.” The best answer anyone has come up with is that reef dwellers have developed the ultimate recycling system: one creature’s trash becomes its neighbor’s treasure.
Kolbert, Elizabeth. Under a White Sky (pp. 105-106). Crown. Kindle Edition.
Since no one knows how many creatures depend on reefs, no one can say how many would be threatened by their collapse; clearly, though, the number is enormous. It’s estimated that one out of every four creatures in the oceans spends at least part of its life on a reef.
Kolbert, Elizabeth. Under a White Sky (p. 106). Crown. Kindle Edition.
How much does the average American know about coral reefs? What did you learn about them in school if anything?
Topic Twenty One
The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.
The Great Barrier Reef is administered as a national park by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, which goes by the awkward acronym GBRMPA (pronounced “gabrumpa”). A few months before my visit to Australia, GBRMPA had issued an “outlook report,” something it’s required to do every five years. The authority said that the reef’s long-term prospects, which it had previously characterized as “poor,” had declined to “very poor.”
Kolbert, Elizabeth. Under a White Sky (p. 106). Crown. Kindle Edition.
It is somewhat reassuring to learn that the Australian Government is monitoring and attempting to manage the Great Barrier Reef. Would you like to go visit?
Topic Twenty Two
Homo sapiens plays god with genetic engineering.
In the last decade or so, genetic engineering has undergone its own transformation, thanks to CRISPR. CRISPR is shorthand for a suite of techniques—most of them borrowed from bacteria—that make it vastly easier for researchers and biohackers to manipulate DNA. (The acronym stands for “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats.”) CRISPR allows its users to snip a stretch of DNA and then either disable the affected sequence or replace it with a new one.
Kolbert, Elizabeth. Under a White Sky (pp. 115-116). Crown. Kindle Edition.
Whether you like it or not genetic engineering is here. Homo sapiens’ technology raises all kinds of bioethical issues. Should we do this or do that?
Who made homo sapiens god? We did. Will we use our technology wisely? What should be some of the guiding principles of its use?
Topic Twenty Three
Are you playing God?
“What we’re doing is potentially adding on maybe ten more genes onto the twenty thousand toad genes that shouldn’t be there in the first place, and those ten will sabotage the rest and take them out of the system and so restore balance,” Tizard said. “The classic thing people say with molecular biology is: Are you playing God? Well, no. We are using our understanding of biological processes to see if we can benefit a system that is in trauma.”
Kolbert, Elizabeth. Under a White Sky (p. 119). Crown. Kindle Edition.
“Are you playing god?” is not the right question because yes we are playing god and have been since the Garden of Eden. Playing god is what got us kicked out to begin with.
The better question is, “Are you playing god, responsibly, with humility, reverence, and worshipfully?” Are we simply extracting resources from Mother Nature for our own greedy ends giving no thought to this impact on the other ecological systems of which we are a part?
Topic Twenty Four
Homo sapiens are co-creators with Mother Nature their evolutionary trajectory.
In a world of synthetic gene drives, the border between the human and the natural, between the laboratory and the wild, already deeply blurred, all but dissolves. In such a world, not only do people determine the conditions under which evolution is taking place, people can—again, in principle—determine the outcome.
Kolbert, Elizabeth. Under a White Sky (p. 131). Crown. Kindle Edition.
What’s the outcome? Does anybody know? Does anybody have a vision of our evolutionary outcome they would like to share?
Topic Twenty Five
How good is homo sapiens getting at playing god?
The issue, at this point, is not whether we’re going to alter nature, but to what end?
“We are as gods and might as well get good at it,” Stewart Brand, editor of the Whole Earth Catalog, famously wrote in its first issue, published in 1968. Recently, in response to the whole-earth transformation that’s under way, Brand has sharpened his statement: “We are as gods and have to get good at it.”
Kolbert, Elizabeth. Under a White Sky (p. 137). Crown. Kindle Edition.
In our growing ability and technology at playing god how good have we gotten at it? We have engineered many benefits but also have engineered some negative side effects. Do you think the good has outweighed the bad or the bad outweighed the good?
Topic Twenty Six
Should we try to be gods or do we have no choice?
Responding to Brand, Wilson has observed, “We are not as gods. We’re not yet sentient or intelligent enough to be much of anything.”
Paul Kingsnorth, a British writer and activist, has put it this way: “We are as gods, but we have failed to get good at it…We are Loki, killing the beautiful for fun. We are Saturn, devouring our children.”
Kingsnorth has also observed, “Sometimes doing nothing is better than doing something. Sometimes it is the other way around.”
Kolbert, Elizabeth. Under a White Sky (p. 142). Crown. Kindle Edition.
To say that we are not gods manipulating Mother Nature is a position ensconced in denial and ignorance. We are gods manipulating nature whether we like it or not.
Since we are already gods, the question is whether we will do good or evil? This is a matter of making the unconscious shadow conscious. This is a matter of taking responsibility for ourselves and our ecology. This is a question of spiritually waking up, cleaning up, and growing up.
This waking up, cleaning up, and growing up is inevitable. It is only a question of how fast or slow, how satisfying and fulfilling or how painful with how much suffering.s
Topic Twenty Seven
Negative emissions
If anyone can be said to have invented “negative emissions,” it’s a German-born physicist named Klaus Lackner.
Kolbert, Elizabeth. Under a White Sky (p. 149). Crown. Kindle Edition.
The big emphasis in the media for curbing climate warming has been the decreasing of carbon emissions. The idea of decreasing or stopping the use of fossil fuels with renewable energy to limit the amount of CO2 being emitted into the atmosphere.
I had heard about ideas about drawing CO2 out of the air by planting trees, etc, but the term “negative emissions” seems to be less common. Besides trees have you heard of any schemes before to take CO2 out of the air?
Topic Twenty Eight
Will homo sapiens develop a level of maturity fast enough to survive on the planet?
In the narrative in Kolbert’s essays which make up the text of Under A White Sky, Kolbert asks many interesting existential, philosophical, and spiritual questions. She describes the physical domains and then asks many questions about the responsibilities of homo sapiens for influencing and managing the ecology of which they are a part.
The questions Kolbert raises can be addressed from the four quadrants of the AQAL model. Kolbert starts with the upper right quadrant of the phenomenological system. Then she often describes the lower left quadrant of the cultural, and the lower right quadrant of the institutional systems responsible for understanding and managing these various domains. Lastly she asks very important questions about human consciousness and the level of spiritual development of homo sapiens to manage their role as co-creators of their evolutionary future on planet earth.
Elizabeth Kolbert’s book Under A White Sky can be read and discussed from multiple perspectives and the management of the phenomena she describes likewise is multidimensional.
The survival of homo sapiens on planet earth will depend on the level of cultural maturity which homo sapiens can attain in order to develop an equilibrium with Gaia.
The question might be how can a greater level of cultural maturity be attained more quickly? What will this growth take? How can the ingredients for this growth be provided?
Topic Twenty Nine
When it comes to CO2 how is the atmosphere like a bathtub?
During the first few months of 2020, a vast, unsupervised experiment took place. As the coronavirus raged, billions of people were ordered to stay home. At the peak of the lockdown, in April, global CO2 emissions were down an estimated seventeen percent compared with the comparable period the previous year.
This drop—the largest recorded ever—was immediately followed by a new high. In May 2020, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere set a record of 417.1 parts per million.
Declining emissions and rising atmospheric concentrations point to a stubborn fact about carbon dioxide: once it’s in the air, it stays there. How long, exactly, is a complicated question; for all intents and purposes, though, CO2 emissions are cumulative. The comparison that’s often made is to a bathtub. So long as the tap is running, a stoppered tub will continue to fill. Turn the tap down, and the tub will still keep filling, just more slowly.
Kolbert, Elizabeth. Under a White Sky (p. 153). Crown. Kindle Edition.
When it comes to CO2 Kolbert’s analogy of the atmosphere being like a bathtub is very helpful.
Kolbert notes that in May of 2020 the atmosphere had record levels of 417.1 parts per million for Carbon Dioxide.
The safe level of CO2 is considered to be 350 ppm which is what gave the environmental group 350.org its name. Are you a member?
Topic Thirty
Bacteria upcycle carbon dioxide into useful chemicals.
In a new pilot study, the researchers selected, engineered and optimized a bacteria strain and then successfully demonstrated its ability to convert CO2 into acetone and isopropanol (IPA).
Not only does this new gas fermentation process remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, it also avoids using fossil fuels, which are typically needed to generate acetone and IPA. After performing life-cycle analysis, the team found the carbon-negative platform could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 160% as compared to conventional processes, if widely adopted.
The study was published today (Feb. 21) in the journal Nature Biotechnology.
For more click here.
Kolber doesn't mention this in her book as a strategy for carbon remission in the atmosphere. It seems plausible to me and I wonder what it would take to scale it up?
Topic Thirty One
Four categories of questions about climate change
There are four categories of questions that are of interest and seem very important.
First, what are the scientific findings about factors contributing to the climate change we are experiencing?
Second, what fuels the norms and attitudes of the science deniers and the science believers?
Third, what is the role that various institutions and organizations play in mobilizing public attitudes and supports for the vision and mission they espouse?
Fourth, how are attitudes and values shaped by the level of spiritual maturity of individuals, families, communities, nations, and the world.
It would seem, at least to some, that managing the ecology of the planet since it has become increasingly dependent on anthropomorphic activity, is the major challenge facing homo sapiens as a species. How homo sapiens manages this challenge has very significant consequences not only for the evolution of homo sapiens but for other entities on the planet and maybe our solar system.
The immediate question is how can we mobilize a social movement to demand positive action on the factors that would mitigate negative impacts on the CO2 levels in the atmosphere contributing to global warming?
There are several things which individuals and groups can do such as withdraw investments in fossil fuel corporations, not voting for climate deniers, joining pro climate groups to enhance solidarity and political power.
Topic Thirty Two
Plant a tree for Lent.
Then there’s the issue of equity. Since carbon emissions are cumulative, those most to blame for climate change are those who’ve emitted the most over time. With just four percent of the world’s population, the United States is responsible for almost thirty percent of aggregate emissions. The countries of the European Union, with about seven percent of the globe’s population, have produced about twenty-two percent of aggregate emissions. For China, home to roughly eighteen percent of the globe’s population, the figure is thirteen percent. India, which is expected soon to overtake China as the world’s most populous nation, is responsible for about three percent. All the nations of Africa and all the nations of South America put together are responsible for less than six percent.
Kolbert, Elizabeth. Under a White Sky (p. 154). Crown. Kindle Edition.
Holy smokes! When I read this, being an American, I feel guilty and I’m thinking, “How could our President, Donald Trump, withdraw us from the Paris Climate Agreement!? It seems like the height of arrogance. It exhibits a grandiose sense of entitlement to the other countries of the world who must deal with the consequences of our behavior. I am ashamed, and being a former Catholic, as we enter the Lenten season, think we should recognize, acknowledge, and repent for our sins against Mother Nature and make amends to all the peoples of the world for what we have done.
One of the practices of Lent is to give something up to remind ourselves that we need to purify our egos so that we can become more aware of God’s love for us. What are you giving up for Lent this year? I think I will give up some money to organizations trying to improve the ecology of the planet by limiting carbon emission and extracting it from the atmosphere. At the very least, it being spring, we could all plant a tree.
Topic Thirty Three
NETs = Negative Emission Technologies
Another family of negative-emissions technologies, or NETs, takes its cue from biology. Plants absorb carbon dioxide while they’re growing; then, when they rot, they return that CO2 to the air. Grow a new forest and it will draw down carbon until it reaches maturity. A recent study by Swiss researchers estimated that planting a trillion trees could remove two hundred billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere over the next several decades. Other researchers argued that this figure overstated the case by a factor of ten or even more. Nevertheless, they observed, the capacity of new forests to sequester carbon was “still substantial.”
Kolbert, Elizabeth. Under a White Sky (p. 159). Crown. Kindle Edition.
Planting and growing trees seems like a great idea because trees draw carbon dioxide out of the air. Of course, they will eventually mature and die and rot and release the carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere unless you can control the rotting and the carbon re-release process.
This is where BECCS (bioenergy with carbon capture and storage} comes in. Are there ways to capture the stored CO2 in trees?
Glad you asked. Yes.
You can learn more about BECCS by clicking here.
For your homework, please read the article and report your findings in our next class. Thank you for your great question.
