Earth Day 2014

Get involved with Earth Day!

Every year on April 22, over a billion people in 190 countries take action for Earth Day. From San Francisco to San Juan, Beijing to Brussels, Moscow to Marrakesh, people plant trees, clean up their communities, contact their elected officials, and more—all on behalf of the environment.

Like Earth Days of the past, Earth Day 2014 will focus on the unique environmental challenges of our time. As the world’s population migrates to cities, and as the bleak reality of climate change becomes increasingly clear, the need to create sustainable communities is more important than ever. Earth Day 2014 will seek to do just that through its global theme: Green Cities. With smart investments in sustainable technology, forward-thinking public policy, and an educated and active public, we can transform our cities and forge a sustainable future. Nothing is more powerful than the collective action of a billion people.

As the global organizer behind Earth Day, Earth Day Network creates tools and resources for you to get involved with Earth Day in your community. Here’s how you can participate:

Green Investment in Asian Cities to Reduce Natural Disaster Risks

In recent years, large-scale natural disasters have frequently occurred in various parts of the world, and the associated losses have increased. As a result, there have been growing concerns over the protective measures needed, particularly with respect to energy and infrastructure systems within cities that are also experiencing mounting risks and exposure levels.

In order to avoid risks and damage, and to strengthen resilience to natural disasters, national and local governments need to be prepared. At the local level, authorities must take action to construct policy packages that include locally based risk prevention facilities as well as risk finance and risk transfer systems.

A proposal for the establishment of a risk management facility has been submitted by the Parties and other organizations to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The proposal by the Munich Climate Insurance Initiative consists of a three-tier risk management module for the international level, an international risk pooling mechanism for developing countries, an insurance assistance facility to cover medium-level risks, and a prevention pillar to achieve risk reduction.

In addition to governments and private enterprises that offer financial support and the provision of necessary goods and services to cover losses post-disaster, risk financing and risk transfer tools such as insurance, reinsurance, and catastrophe-linked securities are key. Such tools help to reduce the negative economic impacts of extreme risks.

This article discusses the risks associated with natural disasters, with particular focus on the vulnerability of energy systems. It examines the opportunities for local/community-based infrastructure to prevent risks through installing locally based energy systems, financing mechanisms to prevent risks and risk transfer systems as well as the associated challenges that exist with respect to their establishment.

Natural disasters and risks

As Aekapol Chongvilaivan noted in his 2012 paper, natural disasters, such as the 2011 floods in Thailand, have had huge impacts on urban systems and their associated infrastructure.

The nuclear power plant accident at Fukushima in Japan on 11 March 2011, a result of an earthquake and tsunami, highlighted the constraints of the existing energy system in Japan as well as its vulnerability to extreme events. Japan’s energy system is very centralized and dominated by ten regional electrical companies — according to data from Japan’s Agency for Natural Resources and Energy, about 90 percent of the country’s power generation. For example, electricity in the megacities of Tokyo and Yokohama is provided by the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which depended on nuclear power plants for 29.7 percent of its total generated electricity.

The 2011 catastrophe increased public awareness on energy security, making it apparent that a review of energy security was necessary for the country, and that both a nationwide recovery plan and city-level recovery plans were needed. This has also emphasized the need for an innovative and resilient energy system with a diversified and decentralized energy supply and management system, including the development of more flexible, locally based energy supply and risk prevention facilities to quickly respond to risks.

Locally based development for enhancing resilience

More than a decade has passed since the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was adopted (in 1997), which commits its Parties to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, thereby setting mitigation targets and related climate change policy at the national level. This has also prompted individual cities to do the same, oftentimes more successfully.

For example, many local programmes and initiatives have been established in various countries, e.g., the Future City initiatives in Japan, Tianjin Eco-City in China, Thailand’s Low Carbon City pilot project and the Low Carbon Society project in Iskandar, Malaysia.

In Japan’s case, these city-based developments were launched as part of the National Strategic Projects in its “New Growth Strategy”, published in June 2010. The New Growth Strategy policies (blueprint for revitalizing Japan) were set up as a result of a Cabinet decision in 2010. One of the components is “Revitalizing rural cities and towns by utilizing regional resources; revitalizing big cities to serve as engines of growth”. The targets to achieve by 2020 are to utilize regional resources to the greatest possible extent and to increase regional power, as well as to make strategic, prioritized investments in airports, ports, roads and other infrastructure in major urban areas.

In consideration of natural disasters, which are expected to become more frequent and severe as a result of climate change, governments must be proactive and take a preventative approach to constructing resilient infrastructure and management systems within the city or community in cooperation with private and local non-profit organizations. Assessment of the damages of disaster risks and the costs associated with natural disasters ex-ante is also important. Therefore, for fully effective risk management and implementation, locally based facilities in line with an international risk management facility are needed.

After the recent sequence of natural disasters in Asia — including the flooding in Thailand, earthquake in Indonesia, and earthquake and tsunami in Japan — and their severe impacts on society, city-based risk management has become a major focus, particularly in Japan, and has been added in the components of local development strategies for enhancing resilience at this level.

In Japan, an “autonomous decentralized regional development model project utilizing regional renewable energy” was initiated in 2011. The project was implemented with additional funding of 1.0 billion yen in 2012. The budget was increased to 1.6 billion yen in 2013 under the programme of sustainable regional development (about 33 billion yen is planned to be distributed in 2013), according to the Ministry of the Environment budget request in 2013. The private sector has been a key actor in the implementation and has also included other players such as research institutions and local governments.

Community-based management systems and investment

In order for a decentralized, locally based energy system to exist, funding is required for the installation and operation of new facilities, such as solar power generation stations. In Japan, increasing attention has been paid to the establishment of such financial mechanisms as the result of raised public awareness on sustainable energy and security. Available funds have been identified through government subsidies, but cannot be fully relied upon, making it important to seek out other sources.

Various local funds have been established through investments from the private sector and also from voluntary citizen donations. Financial instruments have included the issuance of certificates, promissory notes, and small-issue bonds through financial institutions. For example, a micro-credit fund is an investment fund designed to finance microfinance institutions (MFIs), which provide financial services such as small loans to small enterprises. MFIs deliver microcredit through local banking, solidarity groups and individual loans.

In the case of Japan, for instance, after the Fukushima accident, the online retail investment fund management company (Music Securities Inc, Tokyo) set up new micro-credit funds to raise capital for small enterprises in the Tohoku region, which has been hugely affected by the accident. However, these instruments and methods vary and are dependent on the specific structures of funding within cities.

A challenge for local low-carbon energy investment availability and feasibility is the high degree of uncertainty and risks inherent in renewable energy technologies. Uncertainty is high due to the lack of experience and history in the case of green energy and community-based projects, and the lack of understanding on the associated social and environmental impacts as well as potential economic benefits. Therefore, local government and investors who provide subsidies or invest in these efforts must utilize proper analytical tools to estimate the cost-effectiveness of the local energy project including any economic, social and environmental impacts of its implementation prior to any decision-making.

Risk prevention and transfer

In addition to the establishment of locally based energy systems, risk prevention or risk transfer systems mitigating the financial impacts of natural disasters must also be established at the local level. Agendas for the formulation of systems to reduce disaster risk and establishment of funding mechanisms, such as risk financing, have been attracting attention. Risk financing can be used to quickly secure funds before and after disasters, and also investigates countermeasures against natural disasters, including methods such as insurance and climate change adaptation measures.

Economic loss attributed to extreme weather events around the world increases demand for the development of risk management and risk transfer schemes. Many nations, including both developed and also developing countries, have established such insurance schemes that improve adaptation capacity to disaster events.

One strategy to support the economic recovery immediately after a disaster includes a weather insurance index. This allows for the benefit of quick payment to aid in recovery post-natural disaster due to the parameters of the index (e.g., the wind speed of a hurricane or the degree of ground acceleration caused by an earthquake) rather than the actual damages that typically determine the conditions of payment. Use of these parameters aids in the liquidity of funding and helps insurees with more immediate recovery, as payments are paid as quickly as possible after the occurrence of disaster.

Development challenges

When introducing such a risk transfer mechanism, challenges are prone to exist in the development, dissemination and design of the risk transfer scheme. Uncertainty is high when disasters occur in places that, in particular, lack appropriate infrastructure for pre-disaster management, lack data related to weather, or have unreliable data with respect to quality. Other challenges include residual risk (e.g., the exposure to loss remaining after other known risks have been countered, factored in, or eliminated), the uncertainty of unexpected events due to the inability to quantify events of rare occurrence, the inaccuracy/unavailability of climate data, or poorly designed risk-mitigation mechanisms and management systems.

These are all of particular concern within developing countries where high residual risk results in high insurance premium costs that small enterprises and citizens in developing countries cannot afford. Therefore, for minimizing the residual and baseline risk, governmental support to cover expected losses and risk premiums, as well as to formulate reliable risk management mechanisms from accurate data (including compiled historical data and capacity development) is necessary.

Moreover, the challenges to the development of disaster risk insurance are profound in cities of developing countries that are disproportionately impacted by natural disasters such as typhoons, floods and drought — usually exacerbated by high population density and inadequate infrastructure. These challenges usually stem from the weaknesses that exist in observation systems including quality of data, availability of data, weather observation stations, the automation of the weather observation system to record and compile the data at the local/regional level (not only at the national level), and ageing facilities and equipment.

Therefore, for the improvement of risk prevention mitigation, first, the improvement of quality data and facilities to more accurately forecast and estimate risks is needed. The expansion, modernization and strengthening of a meteorological observation network is also necessary. Improvements in data processing are essential for the development of basic meteorological data for building a risk financing system, regardless of the field and approach of risk insurance or risk transfer mechanisms.

A policy package to prevent natural disaster risks at the local level — including low-carbon infrastructure, risk assessment for investment and risk transfer systems — are needed. Future disaster preparedness requires the establishment of risk financing systems. It is necessary to have not only locally based infrastructure systems such as community-based energy management and supply systems and financing mechanisms, but also risk transfer mechanisms including risk insurance for natural disasters.

In addition to the establishment of these systems at the local level, a basic infrastructure of data for risk assessment and estimates is required, and also a strengthening of regional or informational cooperation between cities or countries across both the developed and developing world.

Finally, it is imperative, as in the case of Japan, to develop and build a collaborative environment for public institutions and private companies for the success of these locally based initiatives.
Photo credit - Mark Garten Content Courtesy - Unu

Greenhouse Gas Emissions Explained, in 7 Balloons

In 2010 human activity caused 50 Gt CO2e of greenhouse gas emissions.

These emissions were 76% carbon dioxide (CO2), 16% methane (CH4), 8% nitrous oxide (N20) and 2% F-gases.

The big terrestrial emitters were China (23%), the USA (14%), Europe (10%), India (5%) and Russia (5%).

And the primary sources of emissions were energy (35%), industry (18%), transport (13%), agriculture (11%), forestry (11%), buildings (8%) and waste (4%).

The sources are explained in more detail in the balloons above, which technically shouldn’t float so well ;-).  These balloons don’t look very threatening, but they represent the large majority of positive climate forcings.

Which in English means they are major causes of climate change.

Check out our new eBook for ideas that will deflate your balloon.

Photo credit - shrinkthatfootprint Content Courtesy - shrinkthatfootprint.com

Today is World Oceans Day

Make the Ocean Promise

June 8th is World Oceans Day! On World Oceans Day, people around the planet celebrate and honor the body of water which links us all, for what it provides humans and what it represents. Be a part of this growing global celebration! Make your promise now via the World Oceans Day website @ http://bit.ly/ocean_promise

Celebrating World Environment Day on 5 June 2013

Think.Eat.Save.

The theme for this year’s World Environment Day celebrations is Think.Eat.Save. Think.Eat.Save is an anti-food waste and food loss UNEP - United Nations Environment Programme campaign that encourages you to reduce your foodprint. 

According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), every year 1.3 billion tonnes of food is wasted. This is equivalent to the same amount produced in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. At the same time, 1 in every 7 people in the world go to bed hungry and more than 20,000 children under the age of 5 die daily from hunger. 

Given this enormous imbalance in lifestyles and the resultant devastating effects on the environment, this year’s theme – Think.Eat.Save – encourages you to become more aware of the environmental impact of the food choices you make and empowers you to make informed decisions. While the planet is struggling to provide us with enough resources to sustain its 7 billion people (growing to 9 billion by 2050), FAO estimates that a third of global food production is either wasted or lost. 

Food waste is an enormous drain on natural resources and a contributor to negative environmental impacts. This year’s campaign rallies you to take action from your home and then witness the power of collective decisions you and others have made to reduce food waste, save money, minimize the environmental impact of food production and force food production processes to become more efficient. If food is wasted, it means that all the resources and inputs used in the production of all the food are also lost. 

For example, it takes about 1,000 litres of water to produce 1 litre of milk and about 16,000 litres goes into a cow’s food to make a hamburger. The resulting greenhouse gas emissions from the cows themselves, and throughout the food supply chain, all end up in vain when we waste food. In fact, the global food production occupies 25% of all habitable land and is responsible for 70% of fresh water consumption, 80% of deforestation, and 30% of greenhouse gas emissions. It is the largest single driver of biodiversity loss and land-use change. 

Making informed decision therefore means, for example, that you purposefully select foods that have less of an environmental impact, such as organic foods that do not use chemicals in the production process. Choosing to buy locally can also mean that foods are not flown halfway across the world and therefore limit emissions. So think before you eat and help save our environment! Know more at http://www.unep.org/wed/

Why the Insurance Industry won’t save us from Climate Change

RL Miller debugs the shaky Insurance industry and Climate Change relationship

A myth floats around among those seeking free-market solutions to climate change that insurers will be a positive force. Insurers are worried about the impact of climate on their business model. They will increase rates. Expensive insurance will drive people off the coasts. People and property won't be as affected by coastal storms. Most recently, Fast Company asked whether trillion-dollar storms will drive us off the coasts: "Just how long until large chunks of America's coastline become virtually uninsurable, starting with Lower Manhattan? Some would say this is a good thing, a perfect example of markets appropriately pricing risk and (dis-)incentivizing people accordingly."

There's only one problem: This market-driven solution won't work.

Insurers are worried about climate change, with good reason. A recent Ceres report found, generally, that they're ill-prepared for climate. Their model for pricing risks depends on historical models, which are meaningless in the time of the new normal.

For several years Munich Re, the giant reinsurer, has been advocating for governments to do something about climate change, based on rational self-interest: If governments can prevent it from happening, then insurers won't have to pay out. Guess that didn't work out so well -- thanks, United States Senate! As climate mitigation seems to be failing, adaptation strategies become necessary.

The first adaptation strategy will be to raise rates. Here, the free market advocates are giddy. Coastal insurance will become very expensive, so no one will live on the coasts! Yay! However, it won't work. A look at two southern California coastal communities illustrates the free-market failure of insurance to deter people from living near the coast.

Malibu is a notoriously high-risk area -- I joke, "Do you know what Malibu means in the Chumash language? 'Stupid people live here.'" It's prone to fires and landslides. Year after year, TV cameras cover muddy devastation, wrecked mansions, and teary-eyed residents vowing to rebuild. And, generally, they do rebuild. But they rarely do so with insurance money, because California policies don't cover landslides. Insurance in Malibu has become so expensive that many residents rely on the FAIR Plan, an insurance pool of last resort. Although California's FAIR plan was created in 1968 ostensibly to aid inner-city residents who were considered uninsurable after the 1965 Watts Riots, it now serves wealthy homeowners who have chosen to live in high-risk canyons and coastlines. And wealthy people have lobbied the state legislature for concessions in coverage.

Twenty-eight states have similar plans that cover certain high-risk weather events -- brushfires in Malibu; wind and hail damage in coastal communities in Georgia and New York. FAIR Plan high premiums and limited coverage haven't deterred people from living in high-weather-risk areas so far.

Another way of understanding how high premiums fail to act as a deterrent is to imagine yourself with enough money to buy your dream car -- that fire-engine-red Lotus, that 1965 Mustang, that Tesla Roadster. Insurance on that car is expensive. Does that stop you? If so, you're rare. People who can afford to live on the coast do so for reasons wholly divorced from pragmatic cost issues.

In short, the free market of high insurance premiums and limited coverage hasn't deterred people from living in pricey coastal communities. Climate change will raise premiums and limit coverage, but people will still want to live in Malibu. But what of less expensive coastal communities?

La Conchita is a small community sandwiched between the coast and steep, unstable mountains on the Ventura-Santa Barbara county line. A 1995 landslide buried seven homes. Property values plummeted, insurance became unaffordable, and people moved in anyway. Why did they move in? Because you could get a walk-to-beach home for $500,000 instead of the $5 million you'd spend in Santa Barbara or Malibu. The area took on a surfing haven reputation -- a little funky, a little high-risk, a lot less expensive. People moved in, paid cash, and thus weren't required to have insurance, or went onto the FAIR Plan -- again, the cost of insurance wasn't a factor. Then a second landslide in 2005 killed 10 people. The $500,000 house is now marked down to $350,000, and no one is buying it. Although no significant connection has been made between the storms of 1995 and 2005 and climate change, La Conchita may be a harbinger of what's to come: high-risk hamlets.

A new OECD report finds that the two American cities most vulnerable to rising sea levels are New York and Miami. Lower Manhattan is likely to end up like Malibu -- very wealthy people willing to ignore risks -- while Miami becomes a high-risk island, cut off from the rest of Florida as a wall of saltwater moves inland. Insurance rates aren't likely to uproot people.

In the medium-term (10 to 20 years), I wouldn't be surprised to see insurers attempt to restrict coverage for climate-related damage, much as has been done for mold/fungus coverage when mold became a hot-button issue in about 2001.

In the long-term, the industry may not survive in its present day form. It's built on charging risks based on past patterns. But past history can't map a new normal. The property insurance industry is reeling from the storms of 2011, and the life and health insurers have barely begun to consider the likely profound impact of climate change on their mortality tables. If the federal crop insurance program has yet begun to calculate the impact of climate on its program, I haven't seen it. Perhaps we'll end up with some sort of two-tiered program in which government extends the concept of a FAIR plan (minimal coverage, high premiums) to virtually every aspect of insurance, and some wealthy people choose to pay even higher premiums for additional coverage. For now, the insurance industry shouldn't be considered a player in the search for free-market solutions to climate change.

RL Miller is an attorney, climate/enviro blogger, runner, quilter, keeper of chickens. If you hate the terms climate zombies and oilpocalypse, blame RL Miller.© Grist Magazine

Is Green Enough ?

Mal Warwick asks Who would have believed it, even ten years ago?

All across America, and increasingly in other parts of the world as well, the people who run businesses, both large and small, are discovering that green is their favorite color. Green is in.

There’s no mystery about this. The public is rapidly coming to appreciate the severity of the threat posed by global climate change. A younger generation that learned about ecology in grade school is coming of age, changing attitudes from within the business world. And evidence continues to mount that consumers favor companies that are environmentally sensitive. Is it any wonder, then, that corporate executives and small businesspeople alike are scrambling to integrate ecologically sound principles and practices into their business operations?

It’s no wonder—we agree. But most of us involved in business have been far too slow to ask a second and equally important question:

Is green enough?

The words “sustainable” and “sustainability” have come to be equated with the ecological perspective summed up by the label “green.” But is that equation fair? If a company—or, for that matter, a society, or the planet as a whole—is run on the basis of green principles, is it sustainable?

I believe the answer is a resounding No. The planetary burden of nearly six billion poor people is sufficient to prove the point, without even exploring the economic implications of the profound gulf between Earth’s rich and poor. But let’s set aside these larger questions until there is an opportunity for us to discuss them at length. For now, let’s just focus on the business case for running our companies not just as environmentally sound enterprises but as what I term “values-driven businesses” grounded in the assumption that collaboration is the path to sustainability.

Values-driven business is based on five fundamental premises:

- Employees work more productively and pay more attention to a company’s profitability when they’re working for something they believe in, are treated with respect, well-paid, and receive a share of the profits. They also tend to feel better if the owner or top managers aren’t making out like bandits by comparison.

- Customers are more loyal and willing to forgive errors when a company’s dedication to quality products and services is obvious and when they deal with highly motivated employees—especially when employees are allowed to take the initiative to apologize and make things right.

- Consumers often show a strong preference to do business with companies that demonstrate a commitment to their community—and are sometimes disinclined to patronize those who don’t. Values alignment between a company and its customers builds loyalty. Customers are more forgiving of mistakes and less apt to buy from a competitor when its goods are on sale.

Your business will be better prepared for the future and more likely to survive its inevitable disruptions if you build stronger relationships today with your employees, your customers, your suppliers, and your community. And the planet we share will be more likely to survive the ravages of the human race if you do everything in your power to lighten your footprint on the environment. In other words, to use the contemporary jargon, your business will be more sustainable.

You—as the company’s owner or manager—will live a less stressful and more fulfilling life if you look on your employees, customers, suppliers, and the community as partners rather than adversaries.

In a values-driven enterprise, an ecological perspective is central. But the same logic that leads us to understand the interdependence of all living things helps us grasp the inescapable truth that a collaborative approach to our customers, our employees, our community, and our suppliers is equally important.

Mal Warwick’s latest book is Values-Driven Business: How to Change the World, Make Money, and Have Fun, co-authored with Ben Cohen, the first volume in the Social Venture Network Series. (See Svnbooks for more information) ©LOHAS

Two Acres and a Pile of Leaves

Conner Voss explains why today's Farming is not what it used to be!

Scritch, scritch, scritch. As a shovel to soil, axe to wood or chisel to stone—putting the rake to leaves is a timeless task of cosmic constancy. When I find myself taunted, twisted and oddly bound by the realm of infinite possibility in life, there is welcome peace in the simple, undeniable progress of a big leaf pile.

For so many reasons, this is good work: my feet are gentle on the ground, and my hands hold the tool—quiet, ancient—perfectly suited to this task. Scritch, scritch. There is room here for thought. It dances among my steady breath and between the shuttering leaves, all at once connected and irrelevant, meaningful and meaningless. With an undeserved degree of self-satisfaction, I am pleased by this paradox. I tell myself that there is wisdom in there somewhere, and then I pause, assume a familiar propped position, and begin to contemplate the purpose of this heady chore.

This is chestnut-tree detritus. Every autumn, descending in ligneous, spiny abandon, this fawn mat of organic matter blankets Digging Roots, our two-acre urban farm. If raked into huge piles and left undisturbed for a few years, the unfriendly mix of burrs and leaves would eventually mellow into a nutrient-rich leaf mold. If, on the other hand, it were left in place beneath the expansive arboreal reach, the very same thing would happen on a much longer timeline—as on a forest floor—and we would sacrifice valuable summer pasture, the ability to easily pluck chestnuts from the ground and perhaps the tolerance of our 12 neighbors, who are not keen on these suburban fence-lines becoming buried beneath wind-blown leaves. And so we rake.

Scritch, scritch. Resuming the satisfying rhythm, I cannot help but feel somewhat conflicted about this energy expenditure. Will I be here to utilize this leaf mold? Does it matter if I am? Does true stewardship require a sense of security?

My wife Sarah and I moved to this suburban lot roughly three years ago, ecstatic about the opportunity to develop our farming enterprise within an inspiringly vibrant social and professional community. We gladly accepted the responsibility of tending two close-in acres for what seemed very reasonable rent and the freedom to experiment with small-scale farming systems. If two acres proved an overwhelming task, we might have the social capital to rethink our long-term aspirations. Maybe I’d go back to school or take up a trade, or open a café. There are surely many ways to build a well-rounded, fulfilling livelihood.

But two acres isn’t too much for us. Quite the opposite—it isn’t enough, and we are yearning for more. The more we plan, the more we learn, the more we allow ourselves to reach for a full-time farming future, the more difficult it becomes to rake leased chestnut leaves on a sparkling Saturday afternoon. It’s impossible to pinpoint the exact moment in time when we became dissatisfied with our short-term arrangement. Slowly, subtly, we began to question the sanity in a system that does not encourage long-term decisions about our place.

Scritch, scritch, scritch. How do these monstrous piles of mined minerals, later to be deposited upon our vegetable beds, and eventually spread upon our dinner tables, fit into a month-to-month lease? How does the improvement of our pasture, later to be grazed by healthy chickens and lambs, further enhanced through dung and selective palates, and transformed into sustainable solar protein, fit into a month-to-month lease? Scritch, scritch. This labor, this tined effort is at least a four-year investment in soil fertility, self-sustenance and business security. As human participants in an all-encompassing cycle of life, death and return, the most efficient work is work that provides a service toward future fertility, diversity and resilience. Sarah and I are learning that the principle of working less, smarter, is easily applied within a system that maximizes the natural regeneration of our most valuable resources.

Our successful role as stewards seeking to survive, thrive and grow from the bountiful surplus of solar energy is completely dependent upon unwavering observation and well-timed participation. We need to see ourselves as part of the future of a place, and then perhaps we may be rewarded with the “interest” of life-long stewardship.

With this in mind, we hope to own land someday soon. Over two years ago and many leaf piles later, we started our farm search. It is an emotional trial far beyond anything we could have anticipated. We’ve researched hundreds of properties, and visited dozens and dozens more. Every candidate is cause for the difficult condition of detached projection—where we try to articulate the possibilities without fostering an unhealthy connection. Weekend after weekend, we’ve thrown ourselves into this arresting duet, frequently tumbling through a brief existential crisis when the chips don’t fall quite right. Many times we’ve returned home to wonder if this limbo is worth the trouble.

Neither of us was born into farming. There is no land to return to, and no native cultural knowledge to draw upon. Our approach is largely a scratch-and-sniff, pay-to-play, fake-it-’till-you-make-it type of operation. Given this pursuit, there is occasion to consider how wealth (specifically land) is transferred through time and space in our culture. We come from solid, middle-class families who have worked tirelessly to provide us with a plethora of options in life. In the first place, this safety net allows us to imagine a life as farmers at all. Our parents emerged during a time when small family farms were evaporating amidst the rapid commoditization of our food system, along with a depressing decline in rural agrarian communities.

It was the ’50s, and canned food was cool. And now, as the privileged offspring of baby-boomers, we are bequeathed the resources to examine voluntary simplicity, endowed the good credit to gamble with debt, and gifted the ideological support to swim against the social fish ladder. Even so, given our relatively affluent backgrounds, strong educations and bull-headed determination, good farmland feels like an uncomfortable financial stretch.

Perhaps the single greatest irony for us is that farming itself does not initially pave a welcome path toward owning a family farm. The major reason we transplanted to Portland was to work to save money to buy land. Full-time farming, for the time being, was put on hold. The burning question is: If there is an entire generation of young, aspiring farmers chomping at the bit to realize their agricultural destiny, but they must first move to the city to gain the capital to afford the inception of that destiny, will a resettling of our rural communities happen soon enough to change the game? That the prevailing method of changing the paradigm is to capitalize on it first is a mind-boggling contradiction. Doesn’t such a model imply that we are fighting ourselves?

To put farmers on the land, and keep them there, we may need a cultural reckoning wherein the true definition of profit involves the sustained ability to productively harness the energy of the sun. And let that be enough. Unfortunately, we can’t pay a mortgage with sunshine, and in many cases, with many lenders, we aren’t even enabled to pay a mortgage with farming.

My question is: In the end, what is land really worth? Is it worth its utility? Beauty? Ecological richness? Potential for subdivision? We’ve found that this assessment is grossly arbitrary, depending on who holds the deed, and what predominates the surrounding land use. In addition, the fate of farmland no longer accessible through traditional financing structures is utterly dependent on the emotional constitution and financial expectations of the owner. Are they willing to carry the loan? Are they willing to sell below “market (development) value” so that a couple of modest means might be provided the opportunity to carry on true small-scale agriculture in that place?

One of my favorite Chinese proverbs states: “You cannot build a foundation upon the sand.” Long-term tenure is the bedrock of our future foundation. Without it, there is little incentive to prioritize regenerative agriculture over short-term gains. The management processes that flow from cautious observation are qualified only as we build life in our soil—this takes time, patience and a measure of success not easily captured through cut-and-dry cost-benefit economics. The soil, our greatest asset, appreciates in value with time and dedicated care—a task for which we, as humans, are well suited, and to which we cannot afford to tend without complete commitment to our future.

Conner Voss first joined 'Oregon Tilth' as an AmeriCorps member and has served as the Organic Education Center’s garden coordinator since October 2008. He is currently establishing a farm. This essay originally appeared in In Good Tilth , a magazine devoted to the organic movement. IGT is project of Oregon Tilth , a non-profit advocating for biologically sound agriculture.

FireFighting a Global Warming Duel

Daily news continues to roll in with regard to global warming and weather change especially but international and national policymakers remain unsure of both its veracity and consequences. Information that supports the theories of eco-alarmists and environmental skeptics alike seem to pepper the airwaves, while news of bush fires in Australia and devastating floods in India only aggravate the issue. To add to the barrage, I recently read that an internationally funded Weather satellite has just been tasked to exclusively study the melting of ice that sits atop the North Pole, allowing researchers to watch the movement of ice in great detail for the first time (yes, apparently first time). And the borders of Italy and Switzerland have to to reworked due to the melting icepeaks!

This issue that the human industrial presence was causing an unprecedented rise in global temperatures sparked a lively discussion among 2 of my close friends who are also involved in this area but in diametrically opposite fields. One is a researcher at a Greencetric NGO that actively hunts environmental violations by corporates and fights it out in courts while the other is a lawyer who coincidentally represents these corporate baddies. I played the firefighter albeit with a green bias and got to hear interesting arguments.

For my attorney pal, he dismissed the alarmist point of view and argued that nature needs to be harnessed. With regard to ice melting at the poles and the Italian-Swiss borders, he felt we could gather scientific data before jumping to political conclusions. Just because a wacky global warming activist misrepresents scant satellite information for her own visionary schemes, he felt there was no reason to go off half-cocked and ban the global internal combustion engine.

He complained that there were too many people who wanted social change at all costs, such as those who released urban bred animals to certain death in the forests rather than use them to warm our bodies or fill our stomachs, those who would rather leave millions starve for water than let build a dam and those who preach about poverty alleviation, govt negligence but themselves don’t pay the tax. Hmmm!

Even if the ice was indeed melting at the poles, he argued that we needed to avoid the divisive rhetoric of the eco-radicals in dealing with it, if we need to deal with it at all. After all, he felt there has been far more damage to forests from Mother Nature’s rains and floods than harvesting by loggers would ever cause. And responsible loggers replant with a constructive purpose; nature still needs to be harnessed. Mother Nature doesn’t think, and often environmentalists and global warming worrywarts don’t take time for that either. He stated both needed to be challenged when they run amuck.

After my lawyer pal was through downing almost a full bottle of Smirnoff, my eco-warrior buddy made his case for caution in our overconsumption and overcopulating ways.

Mother Nature, as you say, “needs to be harnessed” because we as a species have this mistaken notion that our running amuck is a “natural” Progression. If we hadn’t been so arrogant as to think plopping down 7 billion people on this planet wouldn’t have adverse effects on the climate, ecology, etc. then we’d understand that losing 200,000 acres of forest to wild fires isn’t that big a deal – or wasn’t till we reduced our forests to such a small tiny mass. We’d rather believe that this planet can get along fine with very limited populations of all species except our own.

Sure, the ecosystem is very large and not all effects are felt immediately; however, the belief that our present course of action won’t result in the destabilization of said system and the destruction of the planet as we know it - is the same stupidity and lack foresight and judgement which resulted in so many our children being born deformed due to their parents either exposed or/ of drinking contaminated water and food. He added that everyone wanted to believe that if it looks good two years down the road, then there are no worries… but as we all now know, that’s a big mistake and too big a gamble to risk this planet.

After hearing this loud verbal duel, I was left with enough food for thought of my own that I couldn’t declare a verdict nor present my personal view to this hugely gigantic issue. Mankind I realized needed a much bigger, collective and gargantuan firefighter for this burning problem and I was just a small fry. Really small indeed.

- Websnacker is a blogger/bootlegger from Antartica