Kit Stolz

Kingsnorth: Environmental activism doesn’t work

Because the scientific news about climate change continues to cast a gloomy shadow over our future, and perhaps because the press is bored with the usual happy Earth Day talk, two prominent magazines featured this week scathing denunciations of climate activism.

In Pacific Standard, James McWilliams of Texas State University calls for a Kafka-esque "narrative of complete and utter ruin," as opposed to the false hope offered by the likes of activist Bill McKibben:

…the problem with climate change discourse isn’t the skeptic. It’s the true believer—and the fact that, for him, the slow burn of global warming obviates radical action despite knowing that nothing else will do. This paradox leaves many of us who take climate change seriously more or less speechless—or merely talking about building codes—while the planet cooks due to our hyper-charged consumerism.

Meanwhile The New York Times Magazine features the journey in thought of Paul Kingsnorth, formerly a British environmental activist, now a man who has now simply had it with efforts to slow or halt climate change and environmental degradation. He thinks it's useless.

“Everything had gotten worse,” Kingsnorth said. “You look at every trend that environmentalists like me have been trying to stop for 50 years, and every single thing had gotten worse. And I thought: I can’t do this anymore. I can’t sit here saying: ‘Yes, comrades, we must act! We only need one more push, and we’ll save the world!’ I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it! So what do I do?”

Kingsnorth and a fellow former activist, Dougland Hine, together — almost accidentally — launched an "Uncivilization" movement. Hine explained:

“People think that abandoning belief in progress, abandoning the belief that if we try hard enough we can fix this mess, is a nihilistic position,” Hine said. “They think we’re saying: ‘Screw it. Nothing matters.’ But in fact all we’re saying is: ‘Let’s not pretend we’re not feeling despair. Let’s sit with it for a while. Let’s be honest with ourselves and with each other. And then as our eyes adjust to the darkness, what do we start to notice?’"

Two points. First, as Lucy Jones the thought leader of the USGS efforts to prepare for disaster (climatogical or geological) in Southern California put it in a talk last December at the American Geophysical Union — Imagine an American without Los Angeles — disasters are inevitable, but catastrophes are not.

Example? She offered the experience of the Northridge earthquake of l994 in Los Angeles vs Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. The Northridge earthquake was one of the biggest disasters in the history of the world in its time, in terms of cost, but the governmental response was effective, and although the regional economy took a dip as freeways, telephone lines, and other infrastructure took a major hit, not to mention the loss of nearly sixty people, Los Angeles recovered quickly.

In contrast the inept governmental response to Katrina turned a disaster into a full-scale catastrophe, resulting in the largest diaspora in the history of the U.S., redistributing over a million people from the region across the country. The city still hasn't fully recovered, and is not expected to.

The point being that, as Jones said, disasters are inevitable, but catastrophes can be averted. The Kingsnorth/Hine argument is that nothing has yet worked, re: climate and the other big environmental questions, and so we must give up on activism to find the radical solution that will work.

But what victories have ever been found in failure, in giving up? Makes no sense to yours truly.

On a personal scale, we don't stop living, even when faced with the inevitability of death. Far from it. And in the environment, as the renowned poet Wendell Berry points out in The Peace of Wild Things, nature is its own reward:

The Peace of Wild Things

BY WENDELL BERRY

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Most tellingly of all to yours truly, Kingsnorth in his personal life has moved away from conventional civilization, to remote Scotland, but has chosen to marry and have children.

That in itself is a living faith in "the grace of the world," is it not?

At such times I knew I was worthy of myself: Jung

From C.J. Jung's "Memories, Dreams, Reflections," chapter two ("School Years"):

Nothing could persuade me that "in the image of God" applied only to man. In fact it seemed to me that the high mountains, the rivers, lakes, trees, flowers, and animals far better exemplified the essence of God than men with their ridiculous clothes, their meanness, vanity, mendacity, and abhorrent egotism — all qualities with which I was only too familiar from myself, that is, from personality No. 1, the schoolboy of 1890. Besides his world there existed another realm, like a temple in which anyone who entered was transformed and suddenly overpowered by a vision of the whole cosmos, so that he could only marvel and admire, forgetful of himself.

Here lived the "Other," who knew God as a hidden, personal, and at the same time suprapersonal secret. Here nothing separated man from God; indeed, it was as though the human mind looked down upon Creation simultaneously with God.

What I am here unfolding, sentence by sentence, is something I was then not conscious of in any articulate way, though I sensed it with an overpowering premonition and intensity of feeling. At such times I knew I was worthy of myself, that I was my true self. I therefore sought the peace and solitude of this "Other," personality No. 2.

[which is why I am off to the trail for a few days — in the Anza-Borrego desert]

The play and counterplay between personalities No. 1 and No. 2, which has run through my whole life, has nothing to do with a "split" or dissociation in the ordinary medical sense. On the contrary, it is played out in every individual. In my life No. 2 has been of prime importance, and I have always tried to make room for anything that wanted to come to me from within. He is a typical figure, but he is perceived only by the very few. Most people's conscious understanding is not sufficient to realize that he is also what they are.

Think that's sharply articulated — and I suspect often confused with Nature in and of itself.

Has regulation halted fracking in California in 2014?

That's the suggestion from an environmental law blog forwarded by the able, thoughtful attorney Brian Segee of the Environmental Defense Center.

According to the post by attorney Mike Mills, Fran Pavley's AB 4, approved by the mostly Democratic legislature last year and signed by the Governor in January was clearly not intended to halt fracking. The bill instructed DOGGR (California's Department of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources) to allow oil well stimulation practices as long as the noticing and permitting requirements were met.

But, Mills writes:

"The emergency regulations appear to not only have created significantly more problems than they solved for the industry in California, they also have created by administrative regulation the moratorium that the Legislature and Governor rejected at the end of 2013 legislative session."

Yesterday I spoke to a "land man" (for a small oil company in Texas) who has spent substantial time in Ventura County buying mineral rights in recent months. He said that most of the millions of dollars spent in this area on such leases, spurred on by fracking, came from the Occidental and Vintage Petroleum companies, in the Santa Paula and Fillmore areas. He said that despite the millions they have spent there actually has been little development or fracking, due in part to opposition at the county government level.

He speculated out loud — not prompted by yours truly — that most of these leases, which are usually for a five-year span, might not be renewed when they come due starting next year.

66% chance of an El Niño — a big one — in 2014: NOAA

Scientists now are closely watching the Pacific and will know with more certainty in two or three months what the winter should bring. For now, all the trend lines are showing a greater likelihood of a wet winter than a dry one, particularly with the massive Kelvin wave still moving.

“Don’t hyperventilate yet,” Patzert said. “It’s a little too early to say the drought will be over, but this Kelvin wave is no dud. This is a stud.”

In March, the climate/weather experts at NOAA/the CPC/JPL/etc declared we had a 52% chance oi an El Niño.

In April yesterday they said the chances had jumped to 66% –and it looks like a big one.

From Paul Rogers' story in the San Jose Mercury News:

"Considering the desperate situation we are in here in the American West, wouldn't it be sweet if the great wet hope came riding over the horizon on these Kelvin waves?" said Bill Patzert, a research scientist and oceanographer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

The Kelvin wave now in the central Pacific is larger and warmer than any since records were first kept 35 years ago — even exceeding the Kelvin wave of 1997-98. That winter was the last major El Niño event, when rainfall across California was double the historic average, rivers flooded and mudslides closed highways. Seeing similar conditions shaping up, even early in the year, is attracting scientists' attention.

Patzert is only the most colorful of the many experts quoted on the building ENSO of 2014.

"We're seeing a pretty strong tilt toward El Niño," said Michelle L'Heureux, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center in College Park, Md.

But what could end one extreme could begin another: Researchers are particularly intrigued by an enormous mass of warm water flowing through the Pacific that has been linked to heavy winter downpours and flooding in the past.

The satellite picture of the Kelvin wave is indubitably awesome.

Scientists now are closely watching the Pacific and will know with more certainty in two or three months what the winter should bring. For now, all the trend lines are showing a greater likelihood of a wet winter than a dry one, particularly with the massive Kelvin wave still moving.

"Don't hyperventilate yet," Patzert said. "It's a little too early to say the drought will be over, but this Kelvin wave is no dud. This is a stud."

Montecito rich ignore drought, guzzle millions of gallons

A great story on the drought in Santa Barbara from the innovative Mission and State publication includes this jaw-dropper on the rich in Montecito from Alex Kacik:

Despite a combined population of about 10,400 people, Montecito and Summerland residents use much more water—particularly when it comes to maintaining their lush landscapes—than most cities in the county. According to the Santa Barbara County Water Agency, Goleta residents used an average of 66 gallons per person per day in 2012, compared to 86 gallons in Santa Barbara, 84 gallons in Carpinteria and 290 gallons in Montecito.

In fact, Montecito’s single-family residents use the most water, accounting for about 74 percent of the district’s 6,017 acre-feet of total water use last year. To put that in perspective, an acre-foot is 326,000 gallons of water, and a five-minute shower uses 10 gallons, while a typical 15-minute lawn watering uses about 700 gallons. There are three customers who used 92 acre-feet between them last year, which is nearly 30 million gallons. Combined, the 6-acre, 20-acre and 40-acre properties used more water than the 110-acre Westmont College, which used 88 acre-feet last year. It takes about 2 acre-feet to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

“It’s almost as if [those customers] are in a bubble and that they truly aren’t aware of the situation we’re in,” said [General Manager Tom] Mosby, adding that about 200 Montecito single-family residences [5 percent] use 25 percent of the district’s water. “But they have to become aware of it. These people will come down one way or the other.”

Read the whole thing, and you'll see as he indicates that the water agency does have fines in place, and even the ability to shut an egregious customer off.

But still!

Talked to Renee Roth, a G3 gardener who spoke eloquently on drought-tolerant and ocean-friendly landscapes at our drought symposium a few weeks back, and she said that she is taking a master gardening class in Santa Barbara, and heard from a couple of her classmates that they have no intention of changing, as many SoCal gardeners are trying to do, in the face of this drought.

This despite the fact that Lake Cachuma, the city's reservoir, is at just 39% of capacity.

I heart the Sespe Wilderness

Looking south, towards Santa Paula Peak.

Pulitzer Prize-winner on Shakespeare: What the hell?

From a great and wonderfully long interview with Tracy Letts, who won a Pulitzer for his knock-out play "August Osage County":

I like Shakespeare, but I never know what the hell is going on. The actor David Pasquesi is a dear friend of mine, and we’ve talked about this before. He says, “I don’t know why directors bother setting Shakespeare in different places, on the moon or in a resort.” He’s like: “I understand Verona. It’s what they’re saying that I don’t understand.”

Fascinating to hear an actor say this. Always thought part of the fun of being an actor must be to learn to truly understand Shakespeare.

Here's Letts in another play, as an actor, in "Who's Afriad of Virginia Woolf?"

Letts, as George, is the strangler.

Drought comes to Ventura county: VC Star

Drought can be a slow-motion crisis, and that's what it's looking like here in Ventura County, from an in-depth story from the Ventura County Star:

During this third year of drought, crops in Ventura County will go unplanted, farmworkers will lose jobs, plants and trees will see more salt-related stress and growers will begin following the available water out of the county and the state.

Those last-resort actions are the only options left for many growers in key agricultural areas who are facing irrigation wells being shut off and anticipated emergency mandates to cut water use as the industry struggles through another year with little rain.

“If there’s no water, there’s no water,” said Greg Lewis, production manager for the county’s largest celery grower, Florida-based Duda Farm Fresh Foods Inc. “We have to be cognizant that ranches with wells are the ranches where you want to be. Those with delivered water is not where you want to be.”

Pic from a strawberry farm in Oxnard, expect to go dry in June. Read more: http://www.vcstar.com/news/2014/apr/03/ventura-county-drought-means-fewer-acres-planted/?partner=RSS#ixzz2y2gjunpZ
– vcstar.com

A spiritual retreat ruled by a cat: St. Barbara Monastery

Hidden in an oak woodland, across a bridge and over a stream, on Highway 150 not far from Thomas Aquinas College in Ventura County, can be found one of the least ordinary of sanctuaries for the traveler in search of spiritual renewal.

[Here's a favorite human interest/travel story I wrote recently for the Ojai Valley Guide (pdf) and the story in a more browser-friendly version]

It’s the St. Barbara Monastery, housing four sisters of the Eastern Orthodox Church, who open their modest four-bedroom home and a nearby campground to travelers on a donation-only basis.

Mother Victoria and her fellow three sisters of faith of wear only black, produce income mostly from the construction of redwood coffins, and pray four times a day. Given the seriousness with which they take their traditional faith, and the many hours they spend praying to expiate their sins, it’s easy to fear frowning faces, heavy accents, and stern looks of condemnation for a visitor from the 21^st century.

Instead, in conversation around the dinner table, an impish humor quickly emerges from the sisters, Americans all, to surprise a visitor. Especially quick with a quip is Mother Nina, but all of the sisters – even Mother Victoria, who was born into the church, and retains at all times a matriarchal dignity – have their witty moments.

Who rules the monastery? Punkin, an orange tabby, the sisters agree, and declare him the ruler of all he surveys in the monastery. The cat sits still and his eyes close sleepily as he is complimented, as if to say – of course, of course.

Mother Victoria explains how the monastery came to move from Goleta, where a larger group of sisters and one monk had been living, to an obscure home in the country, eight and a half years earlier. Partly the motivation was economic, because despite the fact that the monastery houses a relic from the 4^th century Saint Barbara of Kiev, after whom Santa Barbara was named, affordability was an issue in the area.

“We had a realtor, and she told us now don’t bother the people at this property. Just go take a look as best you can. So we parked by the highway and walked out on the bridge, but the gate was closed. So we peered through the gate to see what we could see,” Mother Victoria said. “And the orange cat squeezed himself through the bars of the gate and walked out on to the bridge and welcomed us.”

Mother Victoria smiles.

“And we said oh we have to have this cat. So we bought the cat and they threw the house in for just a little bit more.”

In the early years of the monastery, she explains, they were a much larger group of sisters and a monk. Mother Paraskeva – the youngest of the group – picks up the thread of the story.

“We had seventeen people living on the property – imagine that! We only have two rooms in this house, but we must have had a dozen or fifteen trailers on the property. You should have seen it! We used to joke that we were living in St. Barbara Trailer Camp.”

“Or gypsy camp,” says Mother Victoria, in a corrective way, but she smiles.

On the property now under construction is chapel. When the monastery was applying for the permit for construction, a biologist and an the inspector from Ventura County came to look at the property. The inspector took Mother Victoria aside to tell her she simply couldn’t be housing that many trailers on the property.

The order took the news philosophically.

“Our bishop was of the opinion that it was of God because the sisters who left went on to inhabit a defunct property in Northern California that used to be a monastery,” said Mother Victoria. “So God used the county of Ventura to create two monasteries where there had been one.”

Although the Eastern Orthodox church is not nearly as well known in California as many other Christian faiths, it has five million followers in the United States, and countless millions more overseas, especially in Eastern Europe. Many of the visitors to the monastery are followers, and some come on tours. A van of eleven pilgrims on tour of monasteries in California and the Southwest stopped in for a brief visit on their way north to visit a church and orphanage in San Francisco earlier this year.

Kurt Luebke, a member of the tour from Tucson, explained how he was converted.

“When I was seventeen, my mother passed away, and I started going to the old Greek Orthodox Church,” he said. “I can literally say that the first time I went I didn’t know a word that was being said but I could feel the presence of God. I love it. It’s not a religion, it’s a faith.”

Also on the tour was Elizabeth Brollini, who plans to launch an orphanage for children in the Tucson area. She said she has been working in child services for twelve years, but feels the kids need more than the child welfare system can offer.

“The kids are really suffering,” she said. “I’ve been inspired by St. John the Wonderworker [in a church in San Francisco] and he will be our saint, to feed our spiritual thirst. We are fully incorporated already, and looking for a home. I think these monasteries are little pieces of heaven on earth.”

Mother Victoria said that visitors often misunderstand the icons of saints in the Orthodox Church, thinking that they – the paintings, which contain the relics — are being worshipped.

The relics include a tiny fragment of the “True Cross” of Christ’s crucifixion, reputedly, and a sliver of the forefinger of Saint Barbara, a 4^th-century martyr venerated by the Orthodox and respected by Anglicans, but not by Catholics, who doubt the history of her story.

“The saints intercede for us,” Mother Victoria said. “They bring our petitions to the attention of God. The popular way of explaining icons is as windows to heaven, because they are portraying the saints as they are in heaven.”

Sometimes the monastery attracts followers who stay longer than expected. Mitch Denny, a young carpenter on a spiritual quest, came to the monastery intended only to camp out for a day or two before exploring the backcountry, but has ended up staying for months.

He tells the story with wry amusement in his voice. He visited a number of monasteries, he said, and even a famous monk in England, looking for guidance, but could not found the answer he was looking for. Yet he wasn’t ready to settle down into the trade.

“I bought a backpack and prepared to wander to go from monastery to monastery. I thought I would come here and test my gear, because I’d heard there was good camping up in the hills. So I came and they said we’re starting this casket making business, can you build some shelves?” he said. “So I stayed a few days and built some shelves, staying a little longer than I thought, and they said if you want you can rest in that trailer over there, and then at the end of the week they said, well, you know we have this chapel project…”

Denny smiles.

“And here I am.”

“Watch out!” Mother Nina said with to the visiting reporter. “It could happen to you!”

Accommodations at the monastery are simple: a couch with a view, and a campground by the stream. Campers have use of a firepit and a portable toilet. A flock of ducks noisily hangs out at a few shallow pools in the early morning. The nuns freely share their meals, tea, and prayers, but do not offer entertainment, televised or otherwise, and the chapel, which is under construction, will not be finished for some time.

Mostly the monastery is about spiritual renewal – an escape from the demands of the insatiable ego.

“Our visitors usually come to pray with us and be with us in services,” said Mother Victoria. “They share conversations with us around the table. A meal of some sort. Many of them come with a desire to speak one on one.”

A simplicity and peace awaits visitors to the St. Barbara Monastery, which is ruled by Punkin, and visited every morning by a peacock named His Majesty. The residents welcome visitors of all sorts.

“You never know who is going to come across that bridge,” said Mother Victoria.

Pain can lead to growth: Geoff Dyer (and the research)

Geoff Dyer writes so well it seems somehow demeaning to call him a critic, but that's how the world slots him, pretty much, and in books like "Out of Sheer Rage" — his admiring account of D.H. Lawrence's battles — he helps redefine the form.

At only 56, last week Dyer suffered a stroke, while living in Santa Monica. He survived, without losing speech or mobility, but the experience left him appreciative of the life he has left:

Life continues unchanged except that I’ve had to cut out the twice-baked hazelnut croissants and I’m not playing tennis just now: I pulled a calf muscle which is taking ages to heal. A side-effect of Lipitor or a main-effect of middle age? I don’t know, but in keeping with the advice in the brochure I’m still getting plenty of exercise. I’m constantly out on my bike, in the amazing light and weather. How long would you need to live here to start taking that for granted? Longer, if you’re from England, than one lifetime, even one as lengthy as my dad’s. There’s a line in Tarkovsky’s Solaris: we never know when we’re going to die and because of that we are, at any given moment, immortal. So at this moment it feels pretty good, being where I’ve always longed to be, perched on the farthest edge of the western world. There’s a wild sunset brewing up over the Pacific. The water is glowing turquoise, the sky is turning crazy pink, the lights of the Santa Monica Ferris wheel are starting to pulse and spin in the twilight. Life is so interesting I’d like to stick around for ever, just to see what happens, how it all turns out.

Turns out this focus on the moment is also a focus in psychology — on trauma as a means to growth. From Tom Jacobs in the Pacific Standard:

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger—and also, apparently, more appreciative of life’s little pleasures.

In the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, University of British Columbia psychologist Alyssa Croft describes a study of nearly 15,000 French adults. Those who had gone through painful life events, ranging from divorce to serious illness, were more likely to take time to appreciate transitory delights, such as gazing at a waterfall they happened upon while taking a hike.

This heightened ability to enjoy the moment (which is not shared by people still struggling with traumatic experiences) helps explain the phenomenon of “post-traumatic growth,” which we examined in ourJuly/August 2013 issue.

It suggests we’re more likely to stop and smell the roses once we’ve already felt the prick of a thorn.

[paper by Alyssa Croft et al, called "From Tribulations to Appreciation: Experiencing Adversity in the Past Predicts Greater Savoring in the Present," should be available thru sage as a pdf here]

An interesting remark from the paper:

We suspect that a well-developed ability to savor pleasurable events might be a necessary precursor to attain positive growth after traumatic life experiences.

Hmmm. An appropriate image, perhaps: