Author Archives: Kit Stolz

“My Life is My Message”

Went to Santa Barbara last night to hear Wangari Maathai, winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, speak. She is the first environmentalist given the award, and said more than once that she believed she was given the award because the prize committee wanted to awake people to the connection between peace and sustainability.

Maathai, a sturdy woman with an beaming, unlined faced, spoke simply but powerfully about the importance of "embracing our problems."

She focused on how we must help people look at issues directly, and returned again and again to a favorite phrase: "The bottom is heavy." She helped launch the Green Belt movement that has planted thirty million trees in Kenya and other nations in Africa, but insists that her greatest achievement is not planting the trees, but making sure they survive, and for that, she says, we need to provide motivation, understanding, and incentives to local people, most of whom are poor and uneducated.

When the movement first began, they would go into a community and organize three-day seminars. On the first day they would ask people: "What are the problems in your community?"

And people would list problems.

On the second day, they would ask people: "Where do these problems come from?"

And the people would say: "It is the government." But the Green Belt people would continue to ask questions, such as, why is the water dirty? Because it rains very hard. Yes, but it always rains very hard; why is it the river dirty now? Because people live too close to the river. Why do people live too close to the river? Because they need the water. They cannot cultivate further away from the river, because the soil has washed away? Why has the soil washed away? Because the trees are not there to protect it. Why aren’t the trees there to protect it? Because they have been cut down. Why have they been cut down? And so on…until the solution became plain: They must plant trees.

The seminars were an exercise in "breaking the inertia" and motivating people to plant trees, and grow crops using furrows and terraces, Maathai said. When it came time to plant trees, she succeeded in motivating women (but not men, who refused to work on this new project). She went to train them with Kenyan foresters, but discovered something:

"A lot of professional people can be very complicated."

So she found ways to teach women how to plant trees without using technical terms and jargon. "And what do you know, when the trees grow up? They look just like the other trees!"

Unfortunately, I don’t have time to fully report on the speech, but here are some other wonderful quotes from Maathai, whose appearance was well-attended…even Oprah Winfrey was in the crowd!

"You know, when people are really rich, you sometimes don’t know what to tell them."

(As my wife Val pointed out, a notable hush fell over the Santa Barbara crowd at that moment.)

She talked about visiting Japan, and helping the Environmental Minister there rediscover an ancient Japanese concept–Mot Tai Nai–which is roughly comparable, she says, to the American concept of Reuse, Reduce, Recycle.

She mentioned a discussion about the Kyoto Protocols while in Japan, and said that "millions of Americans are living by the spirit of the Kyoto Protocols, so never mind what is happening in Washington, D.C."

My personal favorite? She talked about the dangers of consumerism, which she pithily pointed out can result in making purchases and coming home and discovering that: "You have not what you really need, but what you want."

Below the fold is a version of the speech she gave after winning the Nobel Prize (just one of her many, many honors).

I asked her if she thinks there’s a connection between our fast-paced Western style of life and the difficulty we have living in harmony with our planet, and our home. She wasn’t sure about that, but pointed out that in the Book of Genesis, God spends six days making our home, and all the other animals, and making sure their lives are good. Only then, at the last minute–"almost as an afterthought"–does he create Man. She added that the plants and the animals could survive very well without us, but we could not survive without them. Good point, Wangari!

Waangari_maathai

Cheap Shots and Harsh Realities

A week ago, in a column in the LATimes, a careless young faux-conservative named Jonah Goldberg mocked the idea that we need to fear climate change. Here was one of his big "gotchas":

For example, Gore blames the disappearing snows of Mt. Kilimanjaro on global warming, but a 2003 study in Nature identified the clear-cutting of surrounding moisture-rich forests as the culprit.

Ah, well, thank God for that!

But, of course, it’s not that simple. I almost wish it was.

Here’s the full story on Kilimanjaro; its vanishing glaciers, its diminishing forests, the drought, and its vanishing rains, via Salon and a journalism program at the University of California at Berkeley. It’s written by Kate Cheney Davidson. It’s also available as a radio program at Living on Earth.

Personally, I prefer the secure retrieval and searchability of text, and will take the liberty of posting the story below the fold.

You’ll note nowhere in the story anyone sneeing at what is happening today on the mountain, unlike distant, oblivious, know-it-all Goldberg.

Iceonkilimanjaro

Forget the Middle East…

Had the interesting experience last week of being interviewed by a good journalist (and friend) named Nomi Morris, formerly a bureau chief in Jerusalem for Knight-Ridder, and in Berlin for Time. Somehow she was able to get accurate and telling quotes out of me with just a few scrawls on a notebook. I’m envious, Nomi!

She writes a column for the Santa-Barbara News-Press. I’d link to it, but they’ve put up a firewall for all but subscribers, so it wouldn’t do you much good. It’s posted below the fold: Please read!

Here’s a taste:

A new survey in the National Journal showed that only 23 percent of Republicans in Congress believe humans are causing global warming. But Time’s poll found that 85 percent of Americans believe the mainstream science and want controls enacted. This means that by 2008, whether a Democrat or Republican is in the White House, environmental policy will change. 

That’s in part a reference to this study, brought up by Roger Pielke, Jr at Prometheus.

Also in the piece is a glancing reference to an important story in The Washington Monthly called "The  Emerging Environmental Majority." The piece says that the reason a bill designed to sell off public lands brought forward in the present-giving season last year by Richard Pombo and his slimy cohorts failed was that duck hunters and other "hook and bullet" users of the wilderness no longer disliked environmentalists as much as they feared far-right anti-environmental zealots. True, I think, and I hope Christina Larson is right when she argues that global warming will provide a new working consensus for the movement…although to write a brief history of the environmental movement and not mention John Muir and his inspiring presence? Mystifying.

Hinted at but not discussed in Nomi’s piece is the aspect of climate change that is most alarming and least understood: The possibility of big climactic swings. Here’s a good discussion from earlier this month in Scientific American. As the piece mentions at one point, "a conservative interpretation of the data [from the Cretaceous period] is worrisome enough," and adds:

In short, CO2 seems to pack a bigger punch than expected, perhaps because the warming becomes self-reinforcing.

Consensus Builds on Global Warming

The journey of a thousand miles…begins with a single consensus.

Remarkably, despite the opposition of the White House, a consensus on the need to reduce the rising levels of CO2 emissions right here in the U.S. appears to be forming.

Here’s a news story from Bloomberg, quoting numerous Republicans, including moderates (Christine Todd Whitman, former chief of the EPA in Bush’s first term), conservatives (such as Lindsay Graham from South Carolina), and likely presidential candidates, such as John McCain, on the need for legislation now.

The change is palpable in the Senate. Graham, who has said in the past that he was “on the fence” about climate-change legislation, became a stronger advocate for taking action after a trip to Alaska in August with McCain and Senators Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, and Hillary Rodham Clinton, a New York Democrat. They heard from Native Alaskans who are experiencing melting permafrost, coastal erosion and other effects of climate change.

"Seeing is believing,” says Graham spokesman Kevin Bishop. Bishop says Graham believes global warming is a problem that must be addressed, while declining to say if Graham would support specific legislation such as the McCain-Lieberman measure.

"When you have the overwhelming evidence from eminent scientists on one side, and a few skeptics on the other, we are guided by the thoughts of the overwhelming, not the few,” says Representative Sherwood Boehlert of New York, who heads the House Science Committee.

Below the fold I’m posting a much deeper story by Amanda Griscom Little, on the particulars of the bills coming up for action. A vigorous debate among enviros has broken out about the bills being brought forward, by the likes of Dianne Feinstein, Jeff Bingaman, and John McCain and Joe Lieberman, among others. For those who think the movement isn’t going far enough, here’s a thought from the story:

"Even if climate advocates defy the odds and manage to break through the congressional impasse, it’s all but inevitable that Bush is going to veto whatever they manage to push through," says Sierra Club analyst Brendal Bell.

[Little adds]:

If that’s the case, why not push the debate in a greener direction and try to build support for the kind of legislation that could make a difference?

Remember Ketchup the Vegetable?

Back in the l980’s, the Reagan administration famously categorized ketchup as a vegetable, to meet minimum nutrition requirements for school lunches. Now the second Bush administration has continued this glorious tradition of Republican prevarication, this time in regard to wetlands. Check out "Field & Stream" conservation director Bob Marshall’s biting column on the topic. ThisContinue reading “Remember Ketchup the Vegetable?”

Advertising Sustainability

A great image from Australia, the clear winner (according to the quite wonderful Oikos environmental economics blog) in an advertising competition sponsored by the Australian Conservation Foundation. David Jeffrey sensibly asks: Why are you interested in environmental issues? Because you’re passionate about nature? Because you’ve visited places that are beautiful and think we can makeContinue reading “Advertising Sustainability”