End of the semester: this I believe

camp: Johnston Wilderness Campus

Well, it’s the end of the semester and I feel compelled to wrap this up. There’s a lot I didn’t cover, I guess, in terms of day-to-day experiences, but I feel like I got most of the big idea s down. I have a long list of things to research and learn more about, and I doubt I’ll ever get through the reading list that’s been growing in my head all semester. Anyway, it seems appropriate to finish off the semester with a few lists. So, here they are.

things I believe:

Local solutions to problems are time-consuming and sometimes messy, but they’re probably the best way to solve a lot of environmental problems. For example, the utility-scale solar clusterfuck.

Each individual wolf has an intrinsic right to exist, but somehow, I have to be ok with killing them anyway.

Similarly, I don’t like forest management, but I’ve come to accept it as a necessary evil. Or, in the case of Kendall and the aspen, a necessary good.

I like ranchers, or at least Todd Nash, the Boises and Katie’s dad. I don’t mind subsidizing them, but I don’t believe any corporation should be able to graze on public lands.

I think I’m ok with utility-scale solar, and that scares me, because fundamentally, I don’t see how it’s different from a dam. And I thought I was opposed to dams. Though NGS seems like a compelling case for giving them a second look, and what kind of world do we live in that we have to make these choices in the first place?

Questions raised by big solar:

What do I value? What am I willing to sacrifice?

What do we destroy for PV?

How much water, and where?

Will we close coal plants, or just raise demand to meet capacity?

Do we care about the desert tortoise?

How urgent does climate change need to be before we sacrifice idealism?

Is my solution going to be my child’s environmental problem?

Someone needs to blow up Glen Canyon Dam. But really, I’m not sure I care about that anymore either.

Knowing a place—the way Craig does or the way Mary does—is a valuable skill.

Our government will never solve climate change, but people like John Wick and Nils Christofferson might.

I want the last chapter of Dead Pool to come true.

I believe everything I’ve written about NGS and the scale of our problem, but I still hope we might learn jujitsu fast enough to make it count.

I’m torn between two approaches to activism:

1) The responsibility of an activist is not to navigate oppressive systems with as much personal integrity as possible, it is to confront and dismantle those systems.

2) What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.

I know 1 is right, but 2 is so seductively beautiful.

I want to fight. Even if it’s too late. Especially if it’s too late.

Industrial solar in the desert

This entry is part of my journal from Semester in the West. For all SITW journal entries, click here. For all SITW posts, including blog posts I wrote while on the program, click here. To learn more about the program, click here.

camp: San Bernardino County, California

So yesterday afternoon we went to the Sierra Club’s Desert Committee meeting which was largely focused on renewable energy development on public lands. It’s a very interesting political situation—the national Sierra Club supports utility-scale solar in the Mojave, because climate change is a big enough problem that they’re willing to sacrifice. The California Sierra Club is opposed, and from what I saw at the meeting, a lot of their motivation is NIMBY related, but not necessarily wrong. So much infighting amongst the environmentalists there and so much anger in tone when addressing people on the same side. Maggie’s sociology-related theory is that that generation grew up wanting to stick it to the man and had to fight for recognition of environmental issues. Our generation grew up knowing the system was fucked—we didn’t have to realize it in college. We’re about dialogue and compromise, so we listen. I think it has a lot to do with politics too. Republicans are a right-wing party whose rhetoric is even further right (like Tea Party). Dems are centrist and talk center-left sometimes, but they mostly backpedal and capitulate. So no one’s even paying lip service to the far left, much less enacting policies that they support. And that leads to frustration.

So I don’t like their rhetoric, but I’m glad someone is fighting for the desert. I’m glad someone will be watchdogging any large-scale solar and wind projects that do get approved on public lands, because those corporations need to be held accountable with the same level of scrutiny we would apply to any other project. I worry about the precedent we set by allowing large utility companies to develop projects on public lands. I think I’m willing to sacrifice the desert tortoise for the greater good, but after talking to Jim Harvey this morning, I’m not convinced it’s necessary. Feed-in tariffs seem to make sense, though I really want a better knowledge of PV materials and manufacture before I start getting excited about rooftop solar. The Solar Done Right guy I talked to at the meeting said the Department of Energy was doing a cradle-to-grave analysis of PV vs. concentrated solar. God, I want to see that, and apparently they might not release it. Freedom of Information Act…

We also talked to Jim Harvey this morning. He made a pretty compelling case for doing feed-in tariffs and distributed generation rather than utility-scale solar on public lands. I still want to look into PV and also his claim that deserts sequester a ton of carbon and that benefit goes away with power installation. I find it disheartening that none of these new power facilities/installations—not the rooftop proliferation in Germany and not the large projects proposed in the Mojave—have actually closed any coal plants. And overall, I think environmentalists need to be more proactive about these sorts of issues. I love Alex (Wilderness Society dude)’s acronyms—Nowhere on Planet Earth (NOPE) and Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything (BANANA). These are the new NIMBY, and we have to be more than that if we want to make progress.

I guess one of the things I’m wondering is if we accept that large utility-scale projects hurt the desert and that solar rooftop is a better solution, what is our best course, as activists and environmentalists? Do we acknowledge political reality and recognize that climate change is urgent even while feed-in tariffs are infeasible in a market dominated by big utilities? Or do we stall large projects and right the system, fight for the desert? I’m tempted to side with political reality, yet I know that if the project in question were Glen Canyon Dam or a nuclear plant, I’d right to the bitter, bloody end to keep it out of the desert. Maybe. Or would I? Maybe climate change is so serious that radioactive waste, flooded canyons and decimated salmon runs are worth it. Except we’re not closing any coal plants when we add all this solar and wind. And while that’s discouraging in terms of ever stabilizing our climate or having a future with pikas and Bangladesh, it does mean that we should do solar right the first time, even if it takes longer.

A feed-in tariff makes sense whether the utility scale stuff happens or not. So I want to look into that, into getting an initiative started to get that going in Washington. That seems like the perfect thing to bypass the state legislature with and go straight to the people, yet Jim seemed confused and taken aback when I suggested it. We’re not good at being proactive, which makes sense to an extent, because a lot of people get into activism by opposing something close to home, something where they never believed the corporation would take it that far. We fight and oppose, but we have trouble being proactive and finding good alternatives. We don’t recommend alternative sites, because everything is sacred. We don’t try to pass initiatives that would pave the way to a brighter future we imagine. We don’t go after coal plants. If Bill Gates shifted his entire foundation and fortune towards repowering the US, it would be done. We could close the coal plants and still guarantee all the employees their salaries for the next five years. We don’t have that kind of money and we’re used to seeing ourselves as underdogs with no real cards to play besides emotional appeal. But we’re past that. This problem goes beyond a hippie concern for trees and Gaia. So we need to use that lever and push for what we want, not just against what we don’t. And I’m serious about that initiative. You have to start somewhere.

Trash

This entry is part of my journal from Semester in the West. For all SITW journal entries, click here. For all SITW posts, including blog posts I wrote while on the program, click here. To learn more about the program, click here.

camp: San Bernardino County, California

First, the stuff from today while it’s fresh in my mind. This morning, we went to the community center in San Bernardino County, California, where they were collecting hazardous waste and having a market where people bring random stuff and sell it. I love the community interaction this fosters. I feel like so much of the excitement of going shopping is just finding something new, something you didn’t have before. And so much global resource consumption would be cut if American did this kind of stuff more instead of just buying new crap. I want to get involved in efforts like this—freecycling, dumpster diving, barter economies, local currencies and grassroots flea market type things. I think building these systems and methods of interaction is incredibly important and has the potential to be so much fun. There’s so much adventure in going to an open air market or digging through someone else’s trash, so much satisfaction when you find something worth having. Kids love discovery. Just have to get them when they’re young and they’ll be sold for life.

Hazardous waste fascinates me. And makes me want to be a chem major. It’s so strange that all medical waste is labeled a biohazard and disposed of by incinerating it. Even HIV-infected blood is harmless after a few hours in the open air. Burning plastics releases dioxin into the air, something much more pervasive and scary. And yet, we can’t stick used dressings in the normal trash. God, I want to design better plastics. Non-petroleum based substances that don’t contain BPA or any other endocrine disruptors, that don’t release dioxin or any other carcinogens, even when burned. I wonder how old the idea of hazardous waste is. Even waste isn’t that old—maybe a century, one and a half at the most. I’m impressed that they can recycle so much of it—I think he said 60-70%, including the electronics. I need to learn more about semiconductor manufacturing.

And it’s late and I’m exhausted, so more catch-up tomorrow.

Life lessons from the field

Semester in the West is coming to an end. We have less than two weeks left in the field before we start driving back to Whitman, then another two weeks at Whitman’s Johnston Wilderness Campus working on our podcasts and final epiphanies. After spending this much time in the field, I’ve learned some important life lessons. So, here’s a brief list of the most important things I’ve learned this semester.

1. Do not, under any circumstances, step on a cactus while wearing fleece booties. And if you do, make sure your first action after spending fifteen minutes painstakingly picking cactus spines out of your feet isn’t to put your bootie back on and then step on another cactus right next to your chair.

2. If you try to make chocolate chip cookie dough without butter or eggs and instead substitute applesauce and vegetable oil, your dough will form a pancake-like substance when cooked on a griddle and will taste mostly like apples with a hint of vanilla.

3. If it’s pouring rain and so windy you can’t set a tent up, your best recourse is to put your stuff under a tarp and have a dance party in a trailer while waiting out the storm. If you choose to do this, having beer and chips for dinner will be far easier than cooking. Traffic flare lights also work really well to illuminate the dance floor.

4. Swimming holes are great for feeling clean, but after the mineral residue in the water dries in your hair, you will still want a real shower.

5. The dedication a group of twenty-one people for doing daily ab workouts is surprisingly high, but will decline in the face of twelve-mile hikes or rainstorms.

6. Putting the internet in “green” mode (as opposed to work-only mode) will result in everyone trying to go on Facebook at the same time and will crash everything for the next half-hour. If you instead leave the internet in work-only mode all semester, everyone will check Facebook surreptitiously at random times, thus preserving the internet for everyone else to use.

7. All-you-can-eat pizza buffets are always a bad idea, no matter how nice the restaurant pretends to be. However, they are indispensible on ten hour driving days.

8. Rattlesnakes command a respect unrivaled by most animals you are likely to encounter in the desert. And even if you think you’ve gotten over your childhood fear of snakes, you’ll still want to keep a good distance.

9. Tolerance for spicy foods can be increased, but only to a point. Don’t order food with red chiles in New Mexico unless you mean business.

10. Beds are a really beautiful and underappreciated thing. And showers, while probably overrated in day-to-day life, are incomparably wonderful after two weeks of strenuous hiking in the desert.

Building habitat for birds

This entry is part of my journal from Semester in the West. For all SITW journal entries, click here. For all SITW posts, including blog posts I wrote while on the program, click here. To learn more about the program, click here.

camp: Roswell, New Mexico

Today, we saw birds in a wildlife refuge, where ponds are filled and drained each year to provide “natural” habitat for the migrating birds. I read the newsletter, which talked about how so many people were viewing the birds from an unsafe location on railroad tracks that the entire pond had to be closed for people’s safety. This all reminds me of a zoo, except that the birds are free to come and go. But it’s so controlled. So managed. So like Owens Lake. I wonder what the history is, if this is one of the restoration “wetlands” mandated by Congress as penance for bulldozing habitat to create another parking lot. Did this used to be a real wetland, without the drainages and surrounding fields of government-commissioned crops? And do we pay farmers to grow those crops because they’re what the birds want to eat or because the crops are in surplus and we’re trying to find as many uses as possible for them? I suppose I could’ve asked Paul or someone at the visitor’s center instead of just assuming that everything’s a conspiracy against nature and for farmers and agribusiness. But that wouldn’t be any fun.

I don’t mean to devalue the refuge for what it is—habitat for birds that need it. I’m glad we have protected areas and places for those birds to eat and hang out. Mike Prather understood the necessity of compromise better than anyone else we’ve met, and if he can see the “construction site” that is Owens Lake as a victory, then I can be grateful for man-made refuges. But it just seems to god-like. Here is nature. Here is our highway, our railroad, our thriving metropolis in the middle of the desert. So even as I accept that we grow cancerously, that we’ve spread out enough to make setting these places aside a necessity, I still wish it were otherwise.

Election night

This entry is part of my journal from Semester in the West. For all SITW journal entries, click here. For all SITW posts, including blog posts I wrote while on the program, click here. To learn more about the program, click here.

camp: near Santa Fe, New Mexico

Election night! And what a shitshow it is. Dems were down 42 house seats and 7 governorships when I went to bed. Murray will pull through, Joe Manchin got West Virginia (!), Rand Paul in Kentucky (crazy shit), Blanche Lincoln is getting her ass kicked and Tim Fucking Eyeman’s stupid anti-tax bullshit is winning as we vote to repeal taxes on soda and candy, not give schools money for energy efficiency and nor impose an income tax on people making more than $200,000 a year. We’ll keep the Senate, the House is fucked, redistricting will be a Republican wet dream and our government will continue to be center-right and full of crazy people. I’m comforted by the knowledge that even if Democrats controlled 535 seats in Congress and Obama was still in office, we wouldn’t be doing shit about climate change anyway.

I should mention Kendall* and aspen and climate change. How water is stored best by aspen, how they’re in decline for a number of reasons, many of which go back to climate change. How she said a lot of people in her forest don’t care about or even accept climate change, but if you start talking water shortages, they pay attention. I wish we could get people motivated about mitigation as easily as adaptation. The climate is changing and people see it. Show them problems and they’ll support solutions Ascribe causality to those problems and you’re a communist trying to destroy the American economy. So even for mitigation, we learn to be bilingual—green jobs, energy security, savings via conservation. This is our Esperanto. Mention habitat, polar bears, ocean acidification or taxing carbon and you become the enemy, hostile enough that the best response is to shoot first. And so it goes—locally, people see things and can talk about solving them, but nationally, James Infhoe will chair the House Committee on Energy and Whateverthefuck once Dems lose. And so the long defeat marches steadily on. Half the army has yet to see the cliff.

*Kendall Clark, Supervisor for Carson National Forest, who we met with.

Halloween

Halloween is tomorrow, and the Westies have quite the series of events lined up. Our beer pong tournament (beer optional) kicks off tomorrow night. We have an elaborate bracket which will eventually pare our twelve teams down to a single champion pair. I’ve decided to partner with Matthew in a somewhat dubious combination, given that he’s never had a beer or played pong, and my total experience is one game of water pong in my dorm lounge last year. However, our team is named “Geopolitical Schadenfreude”, so my hopes are high.

Naturally, we’re also planning costumes (current plans include a tent, Lady Gaga and Winnie the Pooh) and an epic dance party. My cook crew is on duty tomorrow as well, though I have no idea what we’re making for dinner.

We’ve spent the last few days doing a writing workshop (sadly, our last) will William deBuys, an author who focuses on the nature, culture and history of the Southwest and particularly New Mexico. We camped out on his land and worked on an organic farm for a day in order to draw inspiration for character sketches. We harvested carrots and sunchokes, learned how to plow with a mule team, went for walks while Bill told us about the history and ecology of Northern New Mexico and read to each other in a wide field punctuated by cow pies.

I’ll post my character sketch and some other writing from our workshop with Craig soon. And hopefully I’ll be back to my political musings (no doubt the election will give me plenty of fodder). But for now, I’m just excited for Halloween.

However, if you’re American, at least eighteen and not convicted of a felony, for the love of God, VOTE. And have a good Halloween.

Finding beauty in a broken world

This entry is part of my journal from Semester in the West. For all SITW journal entries, click here. For all SITW posts, including blog posts I wrote while on the program, click here. To learn more about the program, click here.

camp: with Bill deBuys, Northern New Mexico

Reading Finding Beauty in a Broken World. My thoughts are far from the West, though there are plenty of parallels to be drawn. How can people do this to other people? How do we lose our connections and common ground? How do we fail to see people as people? It’s Rwanda, Darfur, the Congo, apartheid, the Guatemalan civil war, Pinochet, the death houses in Juarez, the conquering of a continent. Where does it end? How do we see these things occurring and fall silent? How can I possibly focus my energy and commitment as an activist, a writer, a person? Trying to do anything but fix the planet and solve climate change is criminal, because all of our futures are at stake. Seeing the human suffering occurring in Congo or the girls sex-trafficked in India and choosing to care about polar bears instead is equally criminal. But I can’t be everywhere. I cry, wring my hands, call out in the night, beg a God I don’t believe in for forgiveness. I don’t want to be complicit. I don’t want to stand silent while people are tortured, animals are skinned while alive, habitats are bulldozed, ecosystems are paved over.

I find hope in the communities where people are starting to heal, to rebuild themselves with dignity. I trust in people’s ability to nourish their own communities, to find inner strength and courage even in the midst of unspeakable acts of cruelty. I pray, knowing it won’t change a thing, and I write, still hoping someday I’ll stumble across an answer, another small nugget of truth.

The border

This entry is part of my journal from Semester in the West. For all SITW journal entries, click here. For all SITW posts, including blog posts I wrote while on the program, click here. To learn more about the program, click here.

camp: with Bill deBuys, Northern New Mexico


The border fascinates me. I am drawn to stories of migrants staking everything on their ability to walk invisibly through the desert and compelled by the way so many twisted realities intersect just south of the places I have grown up calling home. I feel moved to help individuals, and part of me wants to drive to Nogales and stuff my trunk full of as many willing bodies as I can find before passing through a checkpoint back home. I feel powerless to change policy—when so many sessions of Congress have still failed to pass the DREAM Act, what hope is there for an open border? I want to speak Spanish with the authority of a journalist who cares. I want these people to know that in my eyes and the eyes of so many others like me, they are not illegal. I say a prayer—that everyone walking ceaselessly through the desert makes it to the Promised Land safely.

Climate nihilism

This entry is part of my journal from Semester in the West. For all SITW journal entries, click here. For all SITW posts, including blog posts I wrote while on the program, click here. To learn more about the program, click here.

camp: with Bill deBuys, Northern New Mexico

I am the last generation to be born and raised on cheap energy with the promise of a better life.

I am the first generation slated to be poorer and die sooner than my parents.

I drive past clear cuts, open pits of coal, landfills, smokestacks belching black clouds into the air. I am seduced by the vision of industry, impressed by the sheer magnitude of the changes we have made on this land. I don’t want a world without city-sized industrial fortresses or Superfund sites, because then I would have nothing left to fight.

I know we’re past the point of saving the planet. I hope we’re past the point of saving ourselves. I’ve always wanted to watch the apocalypse.

I like the idea of fighting a losing battle. Winning is black and white, its narrative a simple recollection of events. The story of losing requires nuance, character, tragedy. I’ve always found the Trojans a more compelling people, Hector a better hero than Achilles. Valor and heroism are determined not by how many victories you win, but by how your defeat finally occurs.

I find the world a more beautiful place with such clear imperfections. I like the causes, but no the effects. I find smokestacks terrifyingly beautiful, but not dissolving coral reefs. I see moral contradiction written on every landscape.

I know industrial capitalism is killing the planet. I don’t want industrial capitalism to go away because I want to see this awful comedy play out until the bitter, bloody end.

I’m tired of being sad and too numb to be angry. Some days, all I want is a house with a garden and lot of books so I can come home to someone I love and put all the frustration and passion and uncertainty I have into loving them, before we make dinner together and ignore the fire raging all around us.