What are You waiting for?

We each need to do something - now.

That was the message from Dr. Kathleen Dean Moore at last night's Moral Ground discussion at MCC. If you would like to leave a world to future generations as rich in possibilities as the world we were born into, then you need to take action.

Identify your passions - the things that bring you joy - and your gifts, and figure out where those intersect with the environment's needs.

For example, Dr. Moore is a philosopher and a writer - those are her gifts and passions. So she decided to write a book, and to use her skills as a philosopher to develop strong arguments that she could use to inspire others to act.

One of those arguments really hit home for me -- if you love the Earth (and all the known and unknown treasures it contains), and you believe that the Earth and those treasures are in trouble, you have an ethical obligation to act. It would be wrong to do nothing.

I do love the Earth and the abundance of life and mystery that it has. I love that there are many things that people will never know -- like what early humans thought when they looked at the night sky, what was the creature like that first breathed air into a lung, or did the first squirrel to find - and eat - an acorn think "Yum" (in whatever way a squirrel might articulate that thought!).

I do believe that the planet - the the way we live today - is going to be a thing of the past, sooner than we want to believe. When we consider that if everyone living in China today were to live in the same way that the average American lives -- two cars per family, television, computer, buying more stuff than they need at stores that don't even pay their workers a living wage, the world would not have the resources to support it!

Think about that. In America, we live in a way that will never be enjoyed by most of the rest of the world. And by continuing to live this way, we are in fact reducing the quality of life for others.We are contributing to the spread of more deadly diseases by insects that thrive in the hot environment that is expanding across much of the planet. We are contributing to rising sea levels and increased violent storms that are forcing people from their homes. We are contributing to a melting polar ice cap that is displacing Inuit peoples from the land (or ice) that has been their home for thousands of years.

As Dr. Moore commented: "If aliens came to our world and started treating it the way we treat it - dumping poisons into our water, ripping mountain tops off for the coal and tossing the rubble into the rivers, putting poisons into the products we give to our children... We would be outraged, and we would fight back at these invaders' treatment of our world." But for some reason, when we are doing it to ourselves, we just take it as the price of doing business, or perhaps it seems too big a problem to tackle, so we go back to the couch and click on the TV.

Well, whether you want your grandkids to inherit a world as full of possiblities as the world you enjoy, or think it's unjust to force other people from their homes because of the way we live, or just because you love the Earth and everything in it, act. Act now. Today.

Start small, start large, but make a change - and another and another. Do what you can, today and every day. If you care about the future, the time to act is now.

Another Reason to Buy Local Food!

As if we needed another reason to purchase our food from local sources, along comes the Great American Egg Recall of 2010!

Billions of eggs potentially tainted with Salmonella bacteria, and thousands of people sick as a result.

The photos of the factory egg "farms" are too awful for me to include here -- chickens packed in cages, stacked on top of one another in conditions that should be criminal. And why? Because Americans want cheap eggs. Lots of cheap eggs. At the rate of 150 (or more) eggs per person, per year, that adds up to nearly 50 billions eggs a year - and that's just the ones folks buy in cartons -- add in all the eggs that are used as an ingredient in the foods we buy, and we are looking at closer to 75 billion eggs consumed each year in the US!

At a price of about $1.00 per dozen, we are talking about at least $4 billion in egg sales each year.

There is an alternative, you know. Yep, more folks could buy their eggs from local farmers.

My husband and I pay $2.50 a dozen for eggs from a family near Harvard, IL. The eggs are fresh, delicious, and safe. The chickens that lay the eggs seem to live happy lives -- at least they appear content running around in the farmyard when I go there to pick up the eggs. And a bonus is that the yolks are a gorgeous shade of deep yellow, not the insipid pale yellow of factory eggs.

The family raises the chickens to sell them as, well, chickens, later after they are good and fat. But the chickens have this pesky habit of laying eggs until they are sent off to be butchered, so the family also collects and sells the eggs.

Fresh eggs have an advantage that factory eggs lack -- they haven't been washed, so they still have the "bloom" intact on the surface of the egg shell. This "bloom" protects the otherwise porous surface of the egg, preventing bacteria from entering the egg.

As a result, fresh eggs can be stored at room temperature, and in Europe, that is how they are sold and kept.

Factory eggs in the US are washed after being collected to remove any surface dirt and bacteria -- which is actually part of the reason for the Great Egg Recall of 2010 -- even trace amounts of bacteria can entered the washed eggs, and once inside, salmonella does not take much time to multiply into enough bacteria cells to make someone sick.

So, remember that next time you buy eggs at the grocery store. Ask around, I bet you can find a local farm that sells fresh eggs -- and I bet you'll agree that they are worth every penny!

Are the bats trying to tell us something?

I read an article about bats in the most recent University of Vermont alumnae magazine today. It made me want to cry.

Bats are dying due to a little-understood disorder called "White nose syndrome." The disorder causes the bats to wake frequently throughout their winter hibernation, and since they are hungry when they wake, they fly off in search of insects - their primary source of food. The problem is that in the winter, there are no insects, so the bats expend valuable energy in futile searches before returning to their winter slumbers. By the time they wake in the spring, the bats are so emaciated, that they are susceptible to other illnesses that healthy bats can easily fight off. So, the bats die from a variety of things, so it has been hard to pin-point the exact cause of the syndrome.

Researchers at the University of Vermont have been studying the bats in Vermont, trying to determine what is causing this disorder to decimate the bat populations across the country in a very short time period. Consider: the disorder was first identified in eastern New York state in 2006, and since that time has killed millions of bats in the Northeast US, rapidly spreading down the east coast, and towards the Midwest.

There have been articles in the local paper recently about the discovery of rabid bats in McHenry County, warning people to avoid coming into contact with bats in the event the bats are rabid. So, there may be those who think that bats are dangerous to people, so who cares if bats die?

Well, maybe we should care if all the bats die.

As one of the researchers comments in the article: the bats could be the canaries in the coal mine, perhaps giving us a warning about the general degredation of the environment that we all depend upon for life. Consider that frogs and toads are dying off at an alarming rate across the globe due to a fungus. And Colony Collapse Disorder is affecting bee populations across the US. With no known cause, the loss of bee populations has the potential to destroy the country's agriculture system, as bees are the primary pollinators for many crops!

Do we really want to take the chance that these dramatic die-offs of three unrelated groups of organisims are just a weird coincidence? Or are we prepared to heed the warnings and start making changes to clean up and improve the environment that we all depend upon for survival?

After all, the coal miners couldn't see or smell the invisible gas that killed the canary, but they knew enough to heed the warning that the dead bird gave them. Unlike the coal miners, we can't just move out of the mine into the clean air. We are living in the mine. Will we take the steps necessary to clean the air, water and soil around us before it's too late?

Go Play Outside!

Those are the three words that American children do not hear enough. Michelle Obama talks about battling childhood obesity. Chicago Wilderness runs the Leave No Child Inside project. A whole organization called the Children & Nature Network now exists to encourage and support people and organizations working to connect young people with nature.

Results of a recent University of Michigan study show that our brains work better when we have regular exposure to nature. This echoes the results of many other studies that say there are abundant reasons to spend more time in nature. Health. Kids are less likely to have attention-deficit disorder. Hospital patients get well faster. And... there is an ever-growing list of reasons to spend time outdoors. The Association for Psychological Science has a nice summary of the Michigan study on their website.

The effects of nature on the brain are especially important during the years from birth through age 11, when many of the basic patterns and processes in the brain are being formed. The term videophilia has been coined by researchers to describe the new state we are living in. They define videophilia as meaning "the new human tendency to focus on sedentary activites involving electronic media."

Videophilia has been a trend since 1987 -- about the time that video games, home movies, VCRs, home computers, etc started to appear. Since 1987 the trend has also been that there are fewer visits to local, state & national parks. There are fewer hikers than before 1987. There are fewer campers. You get the picture.

I'm not sure what the answer is, but a good start would seem to be "Go Play Outside!"

Driving (me) Insane

Did you ever think about the amount of space in our communities that is devoted to parking? A lot. Next time you go to the store, note the size of the parking lot. Guaranteed, it is huge.

Americans are obsessed with our cars. We drive to work. Drive to the store for a gallon of milk. Drive to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription. Drive to the pizza place to pick up a pie for dinner. Drive, Drive, Drive.

In McHenry County, the average person has a commute of greater than half an hour each way, each day, and the vast majority of those people drive. They drive alone in their cars to and from their jobs five days a week.

My husband and I are very average in that way. His commute is about 35 minutes each way, and mine is about 25. I manage to carpool once in a while with a co-worker, but not nearly as often as I should.

All this driving has consequences to the environment, generating carbon dioxide and other exhaust chemicals that contribute to air pollution. The reliance on the car has impacts on our health too. We don't walk as much as we should -- when was the last time you walked to the store? the library? to visit a friend? Are you carrying a few extra pounds? Do you drive to the gym for a work out?

But the rest of the world is very different.

My friend Kathy Bergan Schmidt sent me this article from the Milwaukee newspaper. The author lives in Spain, where he and his family DO NOT OWN A CAR. Get this, they walk. Walk to the store. Walk to the movies. Walk to visit friends. Their property taxes are also a fraction of what ours are.

I bring this up because the McHenry County board is reviewing a new land use plan for the county, and the draft that was given them by their planning commission proposes that tens of thousands of new residents move to areas that are currently farmland, and are far removed from jobs, schools and shopping. This type of development is commonly known as sprawl.

Studies by American Farmland Trust and others have shown that sprawl is expensive for communities. It is more expensive to provide services like school buses, fire protection, road maintenance, etc. to all those scattered homes. So, taxes increase to cover the costs -- taxes increase for everyone, not just the folks who live in sprawlville.

And the crazy thing is that there are rumors that some board members think that even more sprawl should be permitted.

Let's think about this:

more sprawl = more cars on the road

more sprawl = less walking, more driving

more sprawl = higher property taxes

Any questions?

Amphibians Under Threat

The April 2009 issue of National Geographic Magazine has an article about the dramatic, worldwide decline of amphibians (frogs and salamanders) due to a fungus that has been spreading rapidly over the last couple of decades.

The fungus, chytridiomycosis, targets the protein keratin which increases in frogs as they mature. So, a pond with the fungus may be teeming with tadpoles, but have no adult frogs. (And once those frogs mature, they will die too, and then the source of future tadpoles is gone...)

Even areas that are remote from civilization, like lakes high up in the Sierra mountains, have seen devastating die offs of frogs as the fungus has reached those seemingly isolated spots. The following quote seems to sum up the problem:

" 'Today's amphibians have taken not just a one-two punch, but a one-two-three-four punch. It's death by a thousand cuts,' says University of California, Berkeley, biol­ogist David Wake. Habitat destruc­tion, the introduction of exotic species, commercial exploitation, and water pollution are working in concert to decimate the world's amphibians."

Add to these other items the spread of the chytrid fungus, and the population of frogs and salamanders across the planet are in trouble. Hundreds of species have already gone extinct. Many other species are now found only in captivity, where scientists hope they can keep them around through breeding programs, and then reintroduce them to the wild once (if?) the situation with the fungus is resolved.

"Why care about frogs? 'I could give you a thousand reasons,' says herpetologist Luis Coloma. Because their skin acts not only as a protective barrier but also as a lung and a kidney, they can provide an early warning of pollutants. Their insect prey carries human pathogens, so frogs are an ally against disease. They serve as food for snakes, birds, even humans, playing a key role in both freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems. 'There are places where the biomass of amphibians was once higher than all other vertebrates combined,' says David Wake. 'How can you take that out of the ecosystem without changing it in a major way? There will be ecological consequences that we haven't yet grasped.' "

It all goes back to Aldo Leopold's rule about intelligent tinkering: be sure you keep all the parts.

For a quick slide show of frogs from around the world, click here!

Call me Savage

In a previous post, we read the wonderful quote from Chief Seattle. One of the parts that struck me as particularly poetic was his use of the phrase "I am savage and I do not understand..." in reference to the nonsensical things that he observed the white man do.

Well, call me savage, because I don't understand some of those things either.

Like how some people can choose machines at the expense of the natural world.

Or how some people can think that clean air, clean water or safe & abundant food are "special interests." Last I checked, we all had to breathe air, drink water and eat to live. In fact, people can only live without air for a couple of minutes, without water for a few days, and without food for a few weeks (depending on how much ballast they are carrying, I suppose).

But how long could a person live without a car? Without a television? Without a cell phone? You get my point. Billions of people have and will live long and happy lives without any of those things.

Is it so awful to consider the needs, rights and integrity of the natural world when we make decisions about our daily lives? Is that really such a savage idea?

Ask yourself: will my actions enrich the web of life or degrade it?

Thanksgiving Message

This from Chief Seattle (Seatlh), c. 1860

We are a part of the Earth and it is a part of us.

The perfumed flowers are our sisters;

The deer, the horse, the great eagle,

These are our brothers.

The rocky crests, the juices of the meadows,

The body heat of the pony, and man -

all belongs to the same family.

So when the Great Chief in Washington sends words

That he wishes to buy our land, he asks much of us.

If we decide to accept, I will make one condition:

The white man must treat the beast of this land as his brother.

I am savage and I do not understand any other way.

I have seen a thousand rotting buffalos on the prairie,

left by the white man who sot them from a passing train.

I am savage and I do not understand how the smoking

iron horse can be more important than the buffalo

that we kill only to stay alive.

Where is man without the beasts?

If the beasts were gone, men would die

from a loneliness of spirit.

For whatever happens to the beasts

Soon happens to man.

All things are connected. This we know.

The Earth does not belong to man;

Man belongs to the Earth. This we know.

All things are connected.

Whatever befalls the Earth befalls the sons of the Earth.

Man did not weave the web of life,

He is merely a strand in it.

Whatever he does to the web,

He does to himself.

Thank you to retired TLC board member Dale Galloway for sending this lovely statement to me.

Think about this: Man did not weave the web of life - he is merely a strand in it. If we all think of this simple idea when we are making decisions in our daily lives, just imagine the profound effect it could have on the planet? "Will this action strengthen the web or make it weaker?" Keeping in mind that while some actions may strengthen one's personal strand, they will weaken others...

Wow. That whole notion kind of blows me away!

Have a happy, sustainable, nourishing, and web-strengthening holiday!!

Food & the Environment

I am reading a Barbara Kingsolver book "Animal Vegetable Miracle" - her first non-fiction book. It's about her family's year of living as close to the land as they could - raising their own food, and making the decision to buy only local food (with a few exceptions like coffee, flour & chocolate).

I'm not far into the book yet, but I like what I have read.

The family decided to move from Arizona to the family farm in Virginia (in the Appalachians) - they had grown increasingly concerned that living in Tucson was unsustainable. Not only was their food imported from who knows where, but their water was brought in from the Colorado River - a River that supplies water to millions of people before reaching Mexico where it is little more than a brackish trickle. One alarming thing was when they were told by the local government not to use their tap water in fish tanks because it would kill the fish. Presumably, the problem was high mineral content not chemical pollution, but even so, I know that would give me pause. Another stunning fact was that the average product item in the grocery store has travelled 1500 miles. How else do you think we get tomatoes in January?

While reading along, a recent conversation with one of our board members came to mind. While talking with Haje Black, owner of Saulte! Farm & Vineyard in rural Woodstock, I said something about the price of organic produce being a deterrent for some folks. She quickly replied that the cost of one chemotherapy treatment is $25,000 - in other words, it's all about priorities.

Another recent news story also came to mind: the high rate of human food imports from China that are rejected by the FDA -- even though the FDA only inspects about 1% of shipments. Some of the items rejected in April included apple juice, apple concentrate and frozen fish (which was deemed "filthy").

To me, the lesson learned from the story was that other nations do not have to meet our standards for food products that they ship here. They can use chemicals that are banned in the US because they are known to cause cancer. We have no control over their production processes, so for instance, fish often contain high levels of antibiotics that are illegal here. Why? Because the fish are raised in such polluted waters that they are sick, and need the antibiotics (and anti-fungal) medication to live long enough to get to market.

Think about the recent tragedy where many family pets died after eating pet food that was manufactured with a contaminated ingredient shipped from China. They were deliberately adding an industrial chemical to a pet food ingredient to increase the protein content of the product to boost the sale price. We only found out because dogs and cats became ill and died.

So, where is this story leading? It leads me to one simple conclusion: buy local food. Know where your food comes from - not just the country of origin, but the actual farmer.

We do that with beef, buying what little beef we eat at the Woodstock Farmer's Market from Michele Aavang of Willow Lea Farm. Sure, it costs more, but I know that it doesn't have steroids or pesticides or hormones in it. I also know the cows are treated humanely. How do I know this? Because I know the farmer.

It's the same idea with the CSA farm share from Salute! (which should start in a couple of weeks). I know Haje. I have been to her farm and met Michelle the full-time farmer. I have toured the fields. There is no doubt in my mind that the produce we receive each week for 20 weeks (June-October) is fresh & organically raised.

There was a great statistic in Kingsolver's book: if everyone in America ate one meal a week that was comprised of all local ingredients, our nation would save millions of barrels of oil EACH WEEK! That's just from the reduced transportation of our food.

One meal a week. Any one meal. It could be breakfast on Wednesday!