Changes to Tucson’s Ronstadt Transit Center Should Mostly Benefit Bus Riders

I have spent many hours in transit centers -- waiting for trains or buses, whiling away some time during a layover, or waiting for the arrival of a friend -- and whether I was in Union Station in Chicago or the main train station (hlavní nádraží) in Prague, I’ve watched people striding purposefully along, taken advantage of the shops and cafes on offer, and I've enjoyed the barely controlled chaos around me. Obviously, transit centers are necessary so that travelers can use the washroom, buy something to eat or drink, and find a bench to sit on because sometimes a layover or wait can last for hours, but it seems that the kind of transit center a city needs depends on the range of transit services offered and how long people are likely to have to wait there.

This brings me to the two proposals recently unveiled by developers showing how they would convert Tucson’s Ronstadt Transit Center into a “multimodal transit center,” including apartments, a café and retail outlets, and even a hotel. Why, I ask, would our city want to do that? Ronstadt is a place where the routes of Sun Tran buses converge, and you can go there to catch any bus that travels through the city’s downtown. But at Ronstadt an hours-long wait should never be necessary because, even though Sun Tran schedules are sometimes woefully inadequate, if you are unlucky enough to have just missed your bus on a hot Sunday afternoon, you should never have to wait there more than an hour.

So though it’s nice that the proposals keep Ronstadt situated in downtown Tucson, their notions of the need for multiple uses communicates the idea that the needs of bus riders are simply not important enough to merit a space for themselves. Why does Ronstadt have to be made “multimodal,” and in what way is it an “underutilized piece of land” as city planners have stated? As Greg Evans wrote in the Occupied Tucson Citizen in March of 2013, regarding Bus Riders Union misgivings about proposed changes at Ronstadt:

How it is that a place through which 27,000 people pass daily in our otherwise quiet downtown could be considered “underutilized” explains the union’s concerns: it is underutilized commercially. And this leads us to the issue of it becoming “multi-use.” One could argue that the Ronstadt Center is already multi-use, in that it was designed to be convertible into an open plaza for special public events such as Second Saturdays downtown—which it, of course, is currently being used for.

But, in this case, multi-use means mixing public use with private use, most likely in the form of allowing the Congress Street section of Ronstadt to be developed into retail space.

Evans' article was prescient because, in fact, two and a half years later, the two developers do propose mixing public use with private use.

I have taken a long look at both proposals, and I find something to like about each of them. The Alexander proposal does offer more to bus riders, and except for moving all stops indoors, it would be quite possible to accomplish these goals in the current Ronstadt Center: “Improve conditions for Bus Drivers …[and]… enhance the riders’ experience and provide amenities,” which would include “increased security and safety, indoor waiting area, free Wi-Fi; public restrooms; ticket sales/ customer service; small retail space/ vending machines; change machines; customer service representatives; lost and found storage; transit guides; benches; improved ADA access; and bike lockers.” In fact some of those services are already available, though most of the bus riders I know would appreciate upgraded restrooms and staffing of the Information Booth.

As for the Peach proposal for public spaces, I think the existing Ronstadt Center could easily accommodate Open Space Goals that include "Location for public art; Park-like feel with large trees and grass area; Varied public seating for social interaction; Smaller, flexible space for a variety of passive uses; and Interactive art." But in regard to the private development with retail uses, the residential spaces and the hotel, these developments would only get in the way of people enjoying public spaces and bus riders using public transit. As Greg Evans points out in his recent July 29 article in the Occupied Tucson Citizen, both proposals would push the transit functions of Ronstadt into a very small space that would make the center far less appealing for bus riders than it is at present. And I believe that any changes at Ronstadt should be for the benefit of transit riders first and foremost.

For Some of Us, It’s a Dry Monsoon

Hail from June 30 storm

Though Tucson’s 2015 monsoon season supposedly started in late June, we haven’t really seen much rain yet (here are some totals). In fact our first storm featured golf-ball-sized hail banging on roofs and cars for such a long time that the ground was covered with chunks of ice and it seemed like it had snowed on the 30th of June. There have only been a few small rainfalls since then, and because our neighborhood continues to be dry, lots of birds have been coming to our yard for water and food.

This morning while Greg and I were sitting on the patio, we saw some kind of crested flycatcher in the big Mexican Crucillo and a Hooded Oriole on one of the hummingbird feeders. Two Broad-billed Hummingbirds were fighting over the other feeder. There were Cactus Wrens on the peanut feeder, a family of quail on the seed block, and a small flock of Lesser Goldfinches on the nyjer feeder. And just now as I sit at my desk writing this post, a Gila Woodpecker landed on my window screen with a piece of peanut in his beak; he kept trying to squawk his raucous call in spite of having his mouth full. Lots of birds come to our backyard because they need water, and thanks to some expert advice from the folks at the Wild Bird Store, we have more of a variety of feeders and consequently more varied birds. The goldfinches are a new and surprisingly persistent addition.

At the nyjer feeder, any time of the day – other than when a roadrunner has just been through the yard and the small birds have scattered – there are ten or more Lesser Goldfinches and a couple of Pine Siskins. The nyjer feeder forces the goldfinches to eat upside down, which doesn’t seem to be much of a problem for them. Here are a few pictures from that feeder:

Three goldfinches on the nyjer feeder

Goldfinches and a siskin

 But it's a dry heat and a dry monsoon, and I'm starting to worry that -- at least in our neighborhood -- we won't get the kind of rainfall we need to keep the desert healthy. Here are a few more backyard photos:

Looking for something?

Cholla flowers

White-winged Dove on the seed block

In Praise of Saving the Planet

I recently read Pope Francis’ new encyclical on climate change, and I was moved by its lyricism, the depth of scientific understanding it displays, and its intensely serious concern for a problem that affects every person on earth. Though I disagree with the Catholic Church’s teachings about some things, I appreciated this strong statement of environmental awareness and its empathy for the poor and dispossessed.

Generally referred to as "Laudato si" (the full title is "LAUDATO SI', mi' Signore" or "Praise be to you, my Lord"), the encyclical is named for a canticle by St. Francis of Assisi. Pope Francis not only shares St. Francis’ name but also his joyful interest in and concern for the natural world. It is notable that this strongly worded admonition to Catholics – and in fact all of us – to do what we can to reverse climate change comes from the first pope to hail from the global South. I also learned on Democracy Now that one of the authors of the encyclical was Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana, and understandably "Laudato si" frequently reminds us that climate change will cause the most suffering for the poor and those in the developing world.

The encyclical pays homage to St. Francis of Assisi, who is well known for his canticle that praises Brother Sun and Sister Moon. To some this language seems almost animistic, but the encyclical notes that, “If we approach nature and the environment without this openness to awe and wonder, if we no longer speak the language of fraternity and beauty in our relationship with the world, our attitude will be that of masters, consumers, ruthless exploiters, unable to set limits on their immediate needs. By contrast, if we feel intimately united with all that exists, then sobriety and care will well up spontaneously.” [Section 11]

“Laudato si” is sometimes focused on religious matters, but it attempts to appeal to a wide audience by acknowledging many points of view. For example, it praises participants in the environmental movement and those “who tirelessly seek to resolve the tragic effects of environmental degradation on the lives of the world’s poorest.” [Section 13] Those who are concerned about loss of biodiversity will be glad to read statements like this: “In our time, the Church does not simply state that other creatures are completely subordinated to the good of human beings, as if they have no worth in themselves and can be treated as we wish.” [Section 69] But human beings are given priority and the encyclical clarifies: “Certainly, we should be concerned lest other living beings be treated irresponsibly. But we should be particularly indignant at the enormous inequalities in our midst, whereby we continue to tolerate some considering themselves more worthy than others.” [Section 90]

Sometimes “Laudato si” enters the realm of social ecology as it criticizes "rapidification" or the "more intensified pace of life and work" that we experience in the 21st century [Section 18]. It calls into question our "throwaway culture" that "quickly reduces things to rubbish.” [Section 22] As a result, it says, “The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth.” [Section 21] Global climate change is seen as a consequence of the intensified consumerist lifestyle enjoyed by those in the developed world, and we are told that this needs to change because "The climate is a common good, belonging to all and meant for all…. Humanity is called to recognize the need for changes of lifestyle, production and consumption, in order to combat this warming or at least the human causes which produce or aggravate it.” [Section 23]

“Laudato si” never loses sight of the twin problems that are its focus: “the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor” [Section 49]. In fact, there are echoes of Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything as when the encyclical describes our world as one in which “… economic powers continue to justify the current global system where priority tends to be given to speculation and the pursuit of financial gain, which fail to take the context into account, let alone the effects on human dignity and the natural environment. Here we see how environmental deterioration and human and ethical degradation are closely linked.” [Section 56] And everyone is encouraged to be part of the solution: “A change in lifestyle could bring healthy pressure to bear on those who wield political, economic and social power. This is what consumer movements accomplish by boycotting certain products. …This shows us the great need for a sense of social responsibility on the part of consumers. … Today, in a word, ‘the issue of environmental degradation challenges us to examine our lifestyle.’” [Section 206]

Sometimes the language in “Laudato si” is so strong that it calls to mind an ecodisaster novel: “Doomsday predictions can no longer be met with irony or disdain. We may well be leaving to coming generations debris, desolation and filth.” [Section 161]. Catholic or not, serious readers will find it hard to ignore a plea to avoid a future of “debris, desolation and filth,” though even the Pope’s authority is not enough to guarantee success. A change in lifestyle takes commitment and a willingness to "act locally."

For example, using public transportation helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and here in Tucson that means riding SunTran buses. But local transit faces a number of financial and logistical problems -- not to mention attitudinal problems, by which I mean that people resist using it. (Interestingly, “Laudato si” addresses both the benefits and problems of public transit as follows:

The quality of life in cities has much to do with systems of transport, which are often a source of much suffering for those who use them. Many cars, used by one or more people, circulate in cities, causing traffic congestion, raising the level of pollution, and consuming enormous quantities of non-renewable energy. This makes it necessary to build more roads and parking areas which spoil the urban landscape. Many specialists agree on the need to give priority to public transportation. Yet some measures needed will not prove easily acceptable to society unless substantial improvements are made in the systems themselves, which in many cities force people to put up with undignified conditions due to crowding, inconvenience, infrequent service and lack of safety. [Section 153]

On July 8, I attended the monthly membership meeting of the Tucson Bus Riders Union where we talked about how difficult it is to get the mayor and City Council to increase transit options in our city rather than cut them. Casa Maria, a lay Catholic Worker community that helps homeless and needy people, is a driving force behind the current Bus Riders Union, and I have seen, again and again, the Casa Maria folks stand up for low-income people, refuse to be intimidated, and consistently fight against throwing poor people “under the bus” as the city decides how to allocate ever-diminishing funds. At the meeting we agreed that appealing to elected officials is necessary, but it is even more important to get more people to come to our meetings, speak about their needs, and stand up to the “undignified conditions” SunTran riders must often endure.

In a recent blog post at the Casa Maria site, Brian Flagg said he was proud to be Catholic as he watched Pope Francis live up to his stated concerns for the poor and the environment. From what I have seen, Casa Maria truly has a similar commitment to answering “the call to solidarity with the poor” that is at the heart of their mission. By nurturing the Bus Riders Union, Casa Maria does more than most of us to help address climate change and its consequences. And anyone in Tucson who cares about the poor and homeless is aware that climate change is here and poor people must bear its harsh realities most painfully. (See “Cruel and Unusual: Closing Downtown’s Parks to the Homeless in a Heatwave.”)

Another lifestyle choice, switching to a plant-based diet, is a solution that is particularly important in a world in which overpopulation is a problem few want to address. Because of the Church’s longstanding opposition to birth control and abortion, I expected that Pope Francis would insist that overpopulation is not the problem. (Here’s what Laudato si has to say about overpopulation: “To blame population growth instead of extreme and selective consumerism on the part of some, is one way of refusing to face the issues. It is an attempt to legitimize the present model of distribution, where a minority believes that it has the right to consume in a way which can never be universalized, since the planet could not even contain the waste products of such consumption. Besides, we know that approximately a third of all food produced is discarded, and “whenever food is thrown out it is as if it were stolen from the table of the poor”. [Section 50]) But many people on the left and in the progressive movement also refuse to cite overpopulation as a major driver of climate change. (See Naomi Klein’s extremely harsh rejoinder to a question about population at a Town Hall Seattle talk she gave last October for This Changes Everything: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b2B-ys3N1o, Minute 44.)

But as the film Cowspiracy shows, animal agriculture is another powerful driver of climate change, and it seems that the more meat-eating humans there are, the less room there is for all the other creatures praised by St. Francis and Pope Francis. In Cowspiracy Dr. Will Tuttle says, "Ten thousand years ago free-living animals made up 99% of the biomass, and human beings only made up 1% of the biomass. Today, only 10,000 years later, which is really just a fraction of time, we human beings, and the animals that we own as property, make up 98% of the biomass and wild, free-living animals make up only 2%. We basically completely stole the world/ the earth from free-living animals to use for ourselves and our cows and pigs and chickens and factory farmed fish, and the oceans have been even more devastated." No amount of praise for the remarkable beauty and diversity of the natural world will bring it back again if habitat is destroyed to make way for factory farms and fields of fodder.

Not only would a turn toward a plant-based diet make make our carbon footprints smaller, it would also end the factory farm system that subjects pigs to gestation crates, hens to merciless crowding and other cruelties which are experienced by billions of creatures every year. (Here’s what Laudato si has to say about animal abuse: “We have only one heart, and the same wretchedness which leads us to mistreat an animal will not be long in showing itself in our relationships with other people. Every act of cruelty towards any creature is “contrary to human dignity”. [Section 92]) When I was a child Catholics abstained from eating meat on Fridays. A re-institution of that practice would help both the planet and the animals, as well as bringing the health benefits of a plant-based diet to more people.

There does in fact seem to be an increased interest in the benefits of veganism, and there is something of a flurry of activity around the plant-based diet in Tucson this summer. The film PlantPure Nation is being shown in Tucson this week. Opening night featured a vegan food court and a chance to buy a cookbook by a local vegan restauranteur, the proprietor of Lovin’ Spoonfuls. We also now have two vegan restaurants downtown -- Urban Fresh and Veg in a Box. Greg and I have eaten at Urban Fresh several times recently, and the food is well-prepared, reasonably priced, and wholesome. In addition, the proprietor and his wife are knowledgeable advocates for plant-based eating, and the vegan meals they offer are fresh and delicious. I only wish that more writers and activists who tell us about the need for lifestyle change to save the planet would advocate veganism.

Merchants of Doubt: the Film and the Book That Inspired It

In the summer of 1990 I briefly worked as a temporary secretary at the Leo Burnett ad agency in the Chicago Loop. Tobacco giant Philip Morris was one of Burnett’s valued clients, and I remember being told that I should run instantly to find an appropriate account representative whenever there was a call from Philip Morris. (Burnett is well known for creating the Marlboro Man in the 1950s and the Virginia Slims “You’ve come a long way, baby” campaign in the late 1960s, both for Philip Morris products.) At the time it made me uncomfortable to be in such a tobacco-friendly environment -- I knew that the link between cigarettes and cancer had been established in the early 1950s -- and I quickly moved on to another workplace.

My Burnett experience came to mind again recently when I read Naomi Oreskes’ and Erik Conway’s Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. This meticulously researched yet engaging book, published in 2010, describes in great detail the Tobacco Strategy, a game plan used by a few scientists who collaborated with lawyers and PR experts to cast doubt on the evidence that smoking is harmful (and later used the same tactics elsewhere, as the book’s subtitle implies). The Marlboro Man may have been the perfect embodiment of a sexy, freedom-loving smoker, but the ad agencies and PR companies couldn’t have succeeded without the scientists who encouraged people to doubt the dangers of tobacco. But why would scientists help undermine the mounting evidence against smoking (and help spread doubt about other issues), and why did so many people believe them? Merchants of Doubt gives very complete and sobering answers to these questions, and this ground-breaking book has inspired Robert Kenner’s 2015 film of the same name.

The Sony website describes Merchants of Doubt, the film, as a “satirically comedic, yet chillingly illuminating ride into the heart of conjuring American spin.” That’s another way of saying that it takes us to the place where scientific research confronts political ideology and human psychology – a complex territory, difficult to explore. Even so, the film moves along at a lively pace and immediately engages viewers by introducing us to Jamy Ian Swiss, a performing magician who specializes in "close-up card work" and who studies the reasons why we believe in his illusions. As Swiss notes, “The thing that sets magicians apart from con men and other kinds of thieves and liars is that we're honest liars.” Then Kenner treats us to some creative card-trick-inspired opening credits before going on to focus on a group of pundits-for-hire and spin doctors who specialize in creating doubt and confusion about well-understood threats to human health and planet Earth.

This particular type of doubt-mongering had its origins in the 1950s when Big Tobacco was eager to spin the mounting evidence that cigarettes are harmful. Kenner interviews Stanton Glantz, an American Legacy Foundation Distinguished Professor of Tobacco Control, who cites the importance of the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library (which Glantz helped to make public and which inspires some of the film’s most creative graphics). This library contains more than 14 million documents, most notably the memos that indicate tobacco executives knew about the risks of smoking but denied that nicotine is addictive and smoking causes cancer until they were forced to acknowledge the truth. Nonetheless, during the 50 years that the tobacco companies successfully used this strategy, they continued to make money from a product that caused harm. The film includes some remarkable footage from the 1980s Morton Downey, Jr. Show, which shows Glantz taking on a tobacco industry rep and then being taunted by the chain-smoking host. Though Downey had a reputation for going way over the top, the tobacco rep’s comments sound equally absurd. It’s important to remember that the tobacco companies continued their doubt-mongering ways until 2006, which is when they were found guilty under the RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act of conspiracy and judged to have “devised and executed a scheme to defraud consumers and potential consumers” about the negative health consequences of smoking. Unfortunately, by that time the Tobacco Strategy had been taken up by other corporate players.

After a disturbing look at the reasons why toxic flame retardant chemicals are so ubiquitous (essentially because big tobacco didn’t want to have to create a slower burning cigarette so that a smoker would be less likely to set the house on fire if he/she fell asleep while smoking), the film shifts its focus to James Hansen’s 1988 testimony before Congress concerning the reality of human-caused climate change. This was the point at which big energy companies began to adopt their own version of the Tobacco Strategy in order to foster climate change denial. Kenner interviews Naomi Oreskes, who says that it was the constant media reports about the supposed lack of consensus among climate scientists on climate change that prompted her to analyze “928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003 and published in the ISI (Institute for Scientific Information) database with the keywords ‘climate change’” (see Science, December 3, 2004). She found that none of the scientists whose work she surveyed expressed doubt about the reality of human-caused global warming, yet doubt-mongering pundits continued to insist that the science was uncertain. When she published her findings in the journal Science, she was attacked by these same doubt-mongers.

Kenner also gives atmospheric scientists Katherine Hayhoe and Ben Santer a chance to tell how they’ve been subjected to threats and attacks because of their work, and we meet some of the pundits-for-hire who engage in this questionable behavior. Marc Morano, executive director of the climate-change-denying site ClimateDepot.com, admits to posting climate scientists' email addresses so his supporters can send them threatening messages, and he brags about playing a scientist on TV “more than occasionally.” Kenner also interviews James Taylor from the Heartland Institute and physicist Fred Singer, the only credentialed scientist in this group of doubt-mongers. Singer was also part of the campaign to deny the health risks of secondhand smoke.

Toward the end of this entertaining yet well-made film, Kenner does begin to sound a bit glib. It’s nice to see a conservative like former Republican Congressman Bob Inglis and a libertarian like Skeptics Society Executive Director Michael Shermer say that they’ve changed their positions on climate change and to see them speaking out about the overwhelming scientific evidence that influenced them. But the film also seems to imply that the tide is turning and that the doubt-mongers are on the losing side. Yet based on the evidence Kenner presents in the film, it’s unlikely that the Tobacco Strategy will be retired any time soon. Spin doctors will likely find other ways to exploit it for their own interests and those of their clients because they do what they do for money – and their clients (whether they are big tobacco companies or big energy companies) have plenty of cash.

But what about the few well-respected scientists who have been willing to lend credibility to the Tobacco Strategy? Were they also motivated by money? Due to his medium’s time limits Kenner is forced to gloss over most of the details about these men, but the book Merchants of Doubt fills in much more of the story. Co-author Naomi Oreskes is currently a Professor of the History of Science at Harvard, and as you might expect, she and Erik Conway provide lots of historical background. Though it seems improbable because we’ve grown accustomed to tobacco warnings and no-smoking policies, in the immediate aftermath of World War II cigarette smoking had positive connotations, even before the doubt-mongering began. This was in part because Adolf Hitler was intensely opposed to smoking, and though in the 1930s German scientists had shown that cigarettes caused lung cancer, after the War these studies were considered suspect because of their Nazi associations. It took some time for them to be taken seriously, and in the meantime respected public figures like TV newsman Edward R. Murrow could usually be seen clutching a smoldering cigarette.

Then in 1953, three things happened that were important to this story: Sloan-Kettering Institute in New York City demonstrated that cigarette tar caused fatal cancers in mice; Reader’s Digest (the most widely read publication in the world at that time) ran an article called “Cancer By the Carton”; and the presidents and CEOs of the largest tobacco companies in the U.S. decided to cooperate on a PR campaign to defend cigarettes. Over the next fifty years the bad news about tobacco was spun in as many ways as possible, and people were led to believe there was “reasonable doubt” about the harm to human health caused by smoking. Because science is a process of discovery, Oreskes and Conway tell us, it is “vulnerable to misinterpretation,” and the tobacco industry found they could use “normal scientific uncertainty to undermine the status of actual scientific knowledge.” One of the things the tobacco industry did to increase the sense of uncertainty about tobacco was to fund research that emphasized the doubt factor. When respected scientists, such as Dr. Frederick Seitz, were willing to run doubt-enhancing research programs, this gave the research credibility and amplified doubt. As one tobacco industry executive wrote in a now-notorious memo: “Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the minds of the general public."

But why would Seitz and other respected scientists help Big Tobacco in this way, and why would they later use the same strategies when scientific research proved to be a problem for other business interests? According to Oreskes and Conway, their behavior was motivated not by money but by political ideology. In particular the book looks at three scientists who were significantly involved in the development of weaponry and rocketry during the Cold War: Robert Jastrow, Astrophysicist and Head of Goddard Institute for Space Studies; Frederick Seitz, President of National Academy of Sciences, Rockefeller University, and Consultant to RJ Reynolds Tobacco; and William Nierenberg, Nuclear physicist and long-time Director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography. In the early 1980s these men were on a panel that advised the Reagan Administration on SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative, or "Star Wars"), and in 1984 they founded the George C. Marshall Institute to defend SDI against criticism from other scientists (i.e., the 6500 scientists and engineers who refused to work on SDI because it undermined the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction, which up to that point had kept both sides from launching a nuclear first strike).

By 1989, as the Cold War moved toward its conclusion, these Cold Warriors found a new enemy: Environmental "extremism,” which they defined as the exaggeration of environmental threats by people with a left wing agenda. Seitz was already involved with Big Tobacco, and the Marshall Institute began to use tactics very similar to the Tobacco Strategy – they worked to convince people that the science was unsettled on issues like secondhand smoke, acid rain, and climate change. The new enemy and the new threat, as they saw it, were the Watermelons -- environmental activists who were green on the outside and red on the inside. And according to Oreskes and Conway, opposition to government regulation -- seen as a slippery slope leading to socialism – is what motivated these respected scientists (who, by the way, were all addressing issues outside their specialties) to spread doubt about what the majority of scientists actually believed. The Marshall Institute – and later other conservative think tanks like the Heartland Institute and the Cato Institute -- worked hard to deny the severity of these problems and insisted that the science was too uncertain to justify government action. (As an example of how effective this strategy is, a 2009 paper reports that “Fifty-two percent of Americans think most climate scientists agree that the Earth has been warming in recent years, and 47% think climate scientists agree (i.e., that there is a scientific consensus) that human activities are a major cause of that warming,” whereas in fact 97.4% of climate scientists actually do agree that climate change is real and humans are causing it.)

Oreskes’ and Conway’s book not only inspired the film version of Merchants of Doubt, but it also provides important background information to the film. And unlike the film, the book doesn’t end on a glib or overly upbeat note. Instead, in their final chapter, Oreskes and Conway ask us to “[i]magine a gigantic banquet” at which millions of people have been eating and drinking abundantly and well for many years, and then to imagine that these people receive a bill that many of them refuse to pay or even to acknowledge. “This is where we stand today on the subject of global warming. For the past 150 years, industrial civilization has been dining on the energy stored in fossil fuels, and the bill has come due,” the authors say. The reason we doubt our responsibility is not just because of the work of spin doctors and doubt mongers. Many of us didn’t even know we were at a banquet, and we were certainly not aware that the bill would include paying the price for acid rain, DDT and other pesticides, the ozone hole, and more. Oreskes and Conway even cite a book about decision theory to explain that we are reluctant to change our behavior because “acting to prevent future harm generally means giving up benefits in the present: certain benefits, to be weighed against uncertain gains.”

Science rarely provides certainty, but it does provide evidence – that cigarette smoking harms us, that our world is warming, and so on. The main message of Merchants of Doubt is that we should listen to those many scientists who are giving us a reality check rather than those merchants who want to sell us doubt. The future of our planet and our species depends on it.

March 2015 Wildflowers

According to the calendar spring has just begun, but here in the desert temperatures have already edged up into the 90s. But more so than in many recent years, the desert around me seems refreshed and ready to endure the powerful heat and dryness to come.

Mid-March in our neighborhood, facing the Catalina Mountains

In late March of 2014, 60% of the State of Arizona was in a severe to moderate drought and rainfall had been scarce (0.59 inches since the first of the year). This year we have had 3.45 inches of rain since the first of the year, due in part to a very impressive rainfall at the end of January. Even so, 55% of the state is in a moderate drought, including Tucson, so we’re not yet out of the mega-drought we’ve been experiencing for so many years.

Thanks to the rain we received this winter, we did have some spring flowers, though not the spectacular flowers that are popular with the tourists (such as Mexican gold poppies). Most of the blooms I saw in March were on shrubby perennials like brittlebush, though globemallow and desert marigolds made a nice show.

Brittlebush flowers

Desert globemallow

Fairy duster flower

Globemallow and desert marigold

Sadly, in our neighborhood at least, there was only an occasional penstemon or lupine.

Left to right from the top, Parry's Penstemon, New
Mexico Plumeseed, Coulter’s Lupine, and Phacelia

Now the palo verde trees are bursting into bloom, and the prickly pear and cholla are budding, but just around the corner waits the challenge of lengthening days, baking heat, and monsoon rains that won’t arrive until after the summer solstice…

Film Review of Cowspiracy: the Sustainability Secret

Giuseppe Arcimboldo - Rudolf II of
Habsburg as Vertumnus
(this is a Google Art Project image)

Cowspiracy: TheSustainability Secret is a 2014 documentary that was made with great skill by Keegan Kuhn and Kip Andersen, despite their tight budget. While Kuhn operates the camera, Andersen demonstrates in an engaging and sometimes humorous way just how bad animal agriculture is for our planet. Though Cowspiracy also touches on the cruelty involved in intensive meat production, the filmmakers spend much more of their time trying to fathom why environmental groups like Greenpeace, Sierra Club, and Rainforest Action Network won’t talk about the damage caused by humans’ burgeoning appetite for animal products.

As the film unfolds, Andersen carefully examines the facts as though he too is learning about them, and he makes a convincing argument that eating meat, dairy, and seafood doesn’t make for a sustainable world. You can go to the film’s website to find the studies and statistics cited, but here are just a few of the environmental problems he mentions:

• Climate Change: According to reports from the United Nations and the EPA, animal agriculture is responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, whereas transportation contributes only 13%. In 2009 another source, Worldwatch, attributed 51% of all worldwide greenhouse gas emissions to livestock and their byproducts.
• Depletion of Fresh Water: While fracking (hydraulic fracturing) uses from 70-140 billion gallons of water annually, animal agriculture uses between 34 and 76 trillion gallons of water annually. The meat and dairy industries use 29% of the world’s fresh water.
• Deforestation: Animal agriculture has been responsible for 91% of Amazon destruction, and 136 million acres of rainforest have been cleared in order to produce meat.
• Threats to Ocean Ecosystems: Each year human beings take 90 million tons of fish from the world's oceans. For every pound of fish caught for human consumption, 5 pounds of marine organisms are unintended by-kill and are discarded.

These are serious numbers that will impress anyone concerned about the fate of our planet. As a result Cowspiracy, though it is likely to entertain and engage all viewers, speaks most directly to environmental activists. (After all, if you don’t believe that the earth is in peril, that climate change is a real threat caused by human activity, and that endangered species should be protected from extinction, you are not likely to be influenced by the studies and statistics cited.) And as the filmmakers carefully make their fact-based argument about the negative effects of animal agriculture, they also ask why so many environmental groups have a persistent blind spot when it comes to recognizing these negative effects. In an attempt to answer this question they arrange (or try to arrange) a series of interviews with staff members of some of the nation’s largest environmental groups. Though Andersen doesn’t flinch from asking tough questions, he often receives answers that are unsatisfactory, which leads to a further set of questions:

1) Could environmental groups have been bought off? Andersen tries to set up an interview with Greenpeace staffers to talk with them about the effects of animal agriculture on the environment, and Greenpeace staffers politely refuse – twice.  Then Andersen goes to the Animal Agriculture Alliance (AAA, “an industry-united, nonprofit organization that helps bridge the communication gap between farm and fork”) to ask if AAA gives money to environmental groups like Greenpeace. The AAA rep refuses to answer this question, and the interview is then terminated. Shortly afterward, the film’s financial backer calls to say that, “due to growing controversial subject matter,” they will have to pull out. The mysteries of the film’s loss of funding and why Greenpeace would not speak about animal agriculture on-camera are never solved.

2) Could environmental activists be afraid for their lives? Andersen speaks with the Executive Director of Rainforest Action Network, who says it’s hard to determine the single largest cause of rainforest destruction. But Leila Salazar Lopez at Amazon Watch says that animal agriculture (i.e., clearing land to graze animals and to grow genetically modified corn and soy as feed) is the major driver of rainforest destruction. Then she cites the number of activists who have died in Brazil for saying so. Perhaps fear and concern over physical survival keeps some activists from speaking out about animal agriculture, and Andersen says he had to pause and consider his own safety before deciding to continue making the film.

3) Could environmental groups be afraid of legal consequences? Andersen interviews Howard Lyman, a former cattle rancher who was sued by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association for talking about “mad cow” disease on the Oprah Winfrey Show. Lyman reminds Andersen that animal activists and environmentalists are at the top of the FBI’s domestic terrorist list, and he said it took five years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to extricate himself from suits filed by the cattle industry. The possibility of being embroiled in a lawsuit or being labeled a domestic terrorist is daunting, and the filmmakers again consider dropping their project, but Andersen decides that “either you live for something or die for nothing” and goes on.

4) Could environmental groups be afraid to alienate their membership base? Michael Pollan tells Andersen that the big environmental groups are membership organizations and can’t challenge that which is dear to people. Dr. Will Tuttle compares the avoidance of this issue by Greenpeace and other groups to the dynamics at work in a dysfunctional family – the real problem is the one thing no one wants to talk about.

Cowspiracy shines a very unflattering light on some of the biggest and most important environmental groups in the country, but the film isn’t just about environmental groups and individual activists who don’t want to look at uncomfortable truths. Andersen also interviews committed environmentalists who agree with the film’s premise. These include Dr. Richard Oppenlander, Michael Pollan, and Dr. Will Tuttle.  And the film’s website links to other groups that acknowledge the environmental impact of eating meat:

1) Friends of the River encourages people to use less water by eating less meat. 

2) Newly released recommendations from the U.S. Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee include the call for reduced meat consumption, in part because of the negative environmental impact of animal agriculture. 

3) And Worldwatch Institute has advocated a plant-based diet since at least 2004. 

Cowspiracy makes a convincing argument thoughtfully and engagingly. The filmmakers conclude that, in a world with a burgeoning human population, worsening climate change, significant species extinction, and huge inequalities and disparities of wealth, a meat-based diet is a selfish luxury. That’s one of the best arguments I’ve heard for adopting a plant-based diet.

The Media and The Merchants of Doubt

Last week the Arizona Daily Star published a two-part editorial that purported to debate whether or not carbon dioxide is good for us. I wrote a letter in response to this specious debate, and I was happy to see that it appeared in the Star on January 17. Here's the text of the letter:

Beware of ‘experts’in climate change debate

Re: the Jan. 12 editorials “Do carbon dioxide’s pluses trump its negatives?”

On Jan. 12 the Star published a reframing of the debate over climate change that addressed the “pluses” and “negatives” of carbon dioxide.

Roger H. Bezdek, author of the piece, called “CO2’s benefits outweigh costs many times over, study shows,” claims that there is “no scientific evidence for significant climate effects of rising CO2 levels.”

He denied in one sweeping statement all of the data assessed and published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Yet Bezdek is not a scientist but is an “energy economist,” who touts the benefits of fossil fuels.

As Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway show in their book Merchants of Doubt, industry shills try to convince us that there is doubt about the science on issues like global warming, and the media are partners in this doubt-mongering when they treat scientific matters as if they require an airing of both sides of a debate in the interests of fairness and balance.

[Note: Art nouveau floral image is from Dover images.]

Tucson Activist Mary DeCamp Returns from the Great March for Climate Action

Activists use a variety of tactics to draw attention to chosen causes, and marches have long been part of the activist repertoire. For example, the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament was launched in 1986 to raise awareness of the dangers of nuclear proliferation. Then last year, Ed Fallon, a former Iowa legislator who helped coordinate logistics for the Great Peace March, was inspired after meeting 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben to initiate the Great March for Climate Action (also called the Climate March) to raise awareness of the threat of global warming. Like the Great Peace March in 1986, the Climate March started in Los Angeles on the first of March. There were 35 full-time marchers, but hundreds of people marched for a day or more. On November 1, when the Climate March walkers ended their 8-month, 3,000-mile march with a rally in Washington, D.C., one of the footsore travelers who had been with the march for (most of) the long haul was Tucson activist Mary DeCamp.

I’ve worked with Mary on the Tucson Peace Center Board and in Occupy Tucson, and I have been on many demonstrations and in many meetings with her. So last spring when Mary told me she had decided to go on the Climate March, I was both impressed by her willingness to do something so difficult and concerned about how the Tucson activist community would get along without her. But I could see that she was committed to participating, so I decided not to whine about how much we’d miss her. Instead, I decided to try to support her as much as I could. On April 7, Mary and her small dog Birdie joined the Climate March in Phoenix. (Another Tucsonan, retired school teacher John Jorgensen, had joined the Climate March in California on March 1.) For the next eight months, I tracked the progress of the Climate marchers by regularly checking their website.

For most of the march Mary went “gadget-free,” meaning that she chose not to have a phone or computer with her. But each time she was able to get to a library or use a computer in someone’s home, Mary sent out thoughtful and concisely written descriptions of life on the march and of the landscapes she saw during her trip across the country. Here are a few excerpts from her blog (which were posted on the Tucson Peace Calendar).

On May 13 she wrote: “Instead of badgering my local elected officials, I now write a letter each day that is signed by all the Marchers and sent to President Obama. We were invited to sleep on sacred ground by the Laguna Pueblo authorities and given a police escort through their land. We get visits by local activists in the communities we pass through – a few nights ago we heard from Danny Lyons who was a photographer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the Civil Rights Movement. We get prayed over and blessed and thanked — what a life!”

On June 5 she wrote: “I have decided to go gadget-free on the Great March for Climate Action. No computer, no phone, no camera, not even a watch, and hardly ever even a glimpse at a television screen.

“This choice is an odd one, I know. It means I lose touch with friends and family and don’t get as much internet time as any normal 6-year-old in America does these days. But it has given me a great gift as well: time. I have time to read and to think and to do odd jobs around camp because my eyes aren’t on a screen and my fingers aren’t on buttons.”

In mid-July while in her home state of Nebraska Mary wrote: “The hail damage across this section of Nebraska will spell big losses for the crop insurance folks. Winds have been high enough to twist irrigation rigs into unworkable pretzel-like sculptures in some fields. Perhaps those directly affected by intensifying weather like this will see that climate change is real, it is happening now, and what is in store for us is very worrisome. We’ve been faced with a lot of right-wing-radio listeners who repeat the notion that the world has *always* been changing, or that other planets are also heating up so it is not human-caused, or that only God can control future weather systems so there is nothing that can be done by human hands to intervene.”

On September 13 she wrote: “The big confined animal feeding operations (CAFO’s) in Nebraska and Iowa were a surprise to many Marchers – they’d never really thought about the source of our meat-driven diets. I believe a couple of folks on the march converted to vegetarian during that leg of the journey. We have about half omnivores and half vegetarians or vegans. Most of our meals rely mostly on veggies and fruits and grains, but we don’t go entirely meatless. Really, it is incredible the quality of food that can be prepared for a big group out of the back of a U-Haul truck. Much of the meat we do eat is given to us by local supporters who raise it themselves in more humane conditions.”

On October 1 she described her stay at the Our Lady of the Pines Retreat in Fremont, Ohio: “This is a retirement center for the Sisters of Mercy nuns and these kind souls opened their facility to shower, to shelter, and to feed us as we make our way across the USA raising awareness about climate change. The grounds are truly lovely, with many benches, meditative spots, artwork, and natural beauty to please the senses and to offer restful pauses in the day.

"I learned of Sister Moira Kenny, a valiant nun who just recently moved from the center to a new home elsewhere. By chance, I chose a mug that commemorated Sister Kenny’s jubilee ceremony to mark 50 years of service. I found out she’d been arrested and imprisoned for six months for her protest actions at the School of the America’s at Fort Benning, GA. This school trains ruthless dictators and has been a focal point for pacifists who want to voice their opposition to military “answers” to global problems. Unfortunately, the “criminals” in social confrontations too often turn out to be folks like Sister Kenny who have the courage to question the status quo business model promoted by the military-industrial-complex.”

On October 18 she wrote: “When this cross-continental walk began on March 1, 2014, we didn’t quite know what to expect. What a wild idea – get a group of heretofore unacquainted activists to throw in together for eight months of walking and camping and talking and listening. We had to figure out how to move people along at a reasonable pace to make our targeted arrival date of November 1 in Washington, DC. We had to feed people, transport their gear, tend to their medical issues, and deal with their poop – both physical and psychological – all along the route.

"And somehow, we have made it happen. We have stayed together. We’ve eaten wonderful meals and some not-so-good food during the past 7.5 months. We’ve enjoyed song and dance around campfires. We’ve lost sleep as train whistles continually hounded our outdoor overnight sights. We’ve despaired together about the dirty industrial presence that intrudes upon us as we make our way eastward. We’ve seen great beauty in our national forests and community parks. We’ve watched the seasons change and the landscapes shift as we cross the country. We’ve had rallies and pot-lucks and presentations and teach-ins and home-stays all along the way.”

And when she returned in mid-November Mary sent out a press release that said in part: “The Great March for Climate Action set out amid torrential downpours in Los Angeles, CA on March 1, 2014 on their path to Washington, DC, walking and camping along the route. The group typically numbered around 40, though 350 different individuals registered to walk at various times along the way and thousands followed the progress online as virtual Marchers.

"The traveling band averaged about 15 miles a day, following a path that took them through the drought-stricken southwest, along the route of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, and through the heart of fracking operations in Ohio and Pennsylvania. They met with citizens in the communities they crossed where the locals hosted rallies, pot-lucks, discussion groups, presentations, and parties.”

Last Sunday, November 30, I heard Mary describe her Climate March experience to a group of 25 supporters. Her talk filled in some gaps about things Mary hadn’t described in her emails. For example, she told us how the marchers governed themselves, and she said that she and Birdie had been elected to the governing council. Though there were no arrests, no violence, and no fights along the way, there was a judicial branch that handled disputes. She also said, “I’m predisposed to action and getting things done, not just sitting around talking.” So Mary spent a lot of her time on the march helping to prepare meals, acting as a camp-scaper, and helping to drive the kitchen truck.

Mary described the March as “life-changing,” and she said that she has pledged to go car-free and to simplify her life by keeping her belongings to a minimum. (Before she left to go on the Climate March, donated her car to KXCI, our local community-owned radio station, to help with their fund drive.) “I’m scared for our country,” she said soberly, adding that she feels the need to be fit and resilient, love a lot more, shore up the social fabric, and make connections. Those are tough goals, but her participation in the Climate March shows Mary’s ability to walk the walk.

Desert Broom in Bloom

Many people realize that the hardworking honeybee is an endangered and necessary creature, but beyond that, in my experience, people see insects as inconveniences to be eliminated, much like the plants we call weeds. But inconvenient plants and insects can also be beautiful, and paying attention to small living things can help us understand and feel connected to the natural world.

In a blog post last year called “We can't ignore the little things that keep us alive,” scientist and environmental activist David Suzuki talked about his childhood fascination with insects: “To me, insects were endlessly riveting. Many of them display spectacular colours and patterns and occur in shapes and forms that are far more bizarre and surprising than any Hollywood sci-fi creation.”  He went on to explain the important roles small creatures play in the healthy functioning of ecosystems, and he lamented the fact that “In our concern with protecting grizzlies and polar bears, whooping cranes and redwood trees, wolves and caribou, we give short shrift to the small creatures that keep the planet livable.”

Here in the Sonoran Desert, an opportunity to enjoy insects and other small creatures comes around each year when desert broom begins to flower. This plant is native to our region, so it isn’t actually a weed, but desert broom prefers disturbed areas and therefore behaves like a weed. And after it blooms it produces lots of silky little seeds that clog swimming pools and make a mess. As a result, there are more articles on the internet about how to destroy it than about how to enjoy it. (For one of the milder opinions, see “Desert Broom…Is It a Desert Plant or a Noxious Weed?”) Nonetheless, if you live in the Sonoran Desert, you can see desert broom in bloom in late October. Its small cream-colored flowers attract an amazing variety of insects. If you belly up to the plant and listen to the busy hum, you can be pretty sure that these small and hard-working creatures will be preoccupied with finding food and strengthening themselves in preparation for the cold and dry weather to come, and they will barely notice you.

Greg and I have taken pictures of the same group of flowering desert broom plants in October of 2012, 2013, and 2014. Sometimes people who are walking or bicycling along will stop and ask what we’re looking at. “Butterflies,” I say, but really there are so many insects it’s hard to say which I'm most interested in. There are wasps, bee flies, flies, dragonflies, and even tiny lizards hoping to snag some of the smaller insects. Here's a gallery of some of the insects we have been able to watch. [Click on the photo to view a larger image.]

Great Blue Hairstreak, 2014

Queen butterfly on desert broom; 2012

Three Queens; photo by Greg Evans, 2014

Common Snout, wings open, 2014

Common Snout, wings closed, 2014

Paper Wasp and bees, 2014

Tarantula Hawk Wasp, 2014

Mexican Amberwing perched near desert broom, 2013

Some type of Metalmark? 2012

A Hover Fly, 2014

Mexican Cactus Fly, 2014

Bee Fly, 2013

Gray Hairstreak and Honeybee, 2014

Now the desert broom has gone to seed, and its white, silky seeds are beginning to drift around. I sometimes grab a pinch of seeds, release them into the air, and remember that some people call desert broom “Snow on the mountain.” I also hope that people can learn to appreciate this plant, which may not seem to be useful to home owners but obviously has its place in our ecosystem.

Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate

Signs from September 21, 2014 Tucson Solidarity Protest,
which coincided with the NYC People's Climate March
(Photo by Greg Evans)

The September 21 People’s Climate March in New York City was a convergence of activists from all over the world to sound the alarm about climate change. The New York Times gave a crowd estimate of 310,000 people, and here in Tucson 250 activists took part in a march that was one of over 2,500 global solidarity events. Members of groups including 350.org, Tucson Climate Action Network, and Occupy Tucson marched from Himmel Park Library to the parking lot at Rancho Center where an exhibit of electric cars was the occasion for an informal rally. The Arizona Daily Star gave no coverage to this Tucson solidarity march, prompting Kathy Babcock, in a September 26 letter, to ask, “How many marchers does it take for the Star to consider covering an event?” But, despite the lack of full media coverage, the crowds of people in New York and the large numbers of solidarity events worldwide highlighted an increasing sense of urgency about climate change.

Naomi Klein’s new book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate -- already a New York Times bestseller -- is an eloquent expression of this urgency. Published just days before the People’s Climate March, the book was launched in New York on September 18 at an event sponsored by the New School, The Nation magazine, and 350.org. As he introduced Ms. Klein at this event, Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org, said that “...uniquely, Naomi has been able to realize something that's hard to grasp, which is that climate change is not one more problem on a list of problems that we need to ... do something about. It's a... way of grasping what it is that everything adds up to, the power relationships on our planet, the way that wealth and power are distributed.” And in fact Klein has a unique vantage point from which to view this issue because she is the author of The Shock Doctrine, a book which shows how the neoliberal capitalist order takes advantage of crises to double down on its consolidation of power. She theorizes that things could be different with the climate crisis. In the introduction to This Changes Everything, she says, “Rather than the ultimate expression of the shock doctrine – a frenzy of new resource grabs and repression – climate change can be a People’s Shock, a blow from below..." She says this is because, unlike right-wing shock doctors who exploit emergencies to push through policies that make us more vulnerable to crises, the activists who are sparking transformations in response to climate change are helping to move us toward both a more ecological and a more just world.

Klein worked with a number of fact-checkers and researchers, and This Changes Everything is impeccably researched, with a depth and breadth that is compelling, if sometimes overwhelming. In the first section of the book, "Bad Timing," Klein tells us it’s no wonder there are so many right-wing climate deniers -- the right is right in the sense that it would be “intellectually cataclysmic” for right-wing ideologues to acknowledge climate change. But what about the rest of us? What kinds of measures should we demand? Citing works like Tim Jackson's Prosperity Without Growth, Klein suggests that we need to pursue "selective degrowth" and "support those parts of our economies that are already low-carbon and therefore do not need to contract," such as "the public sector, co-ops, local businesses, nonprofits." Earlier in the book she says, “I'm convinced that climate change represents a historic opportunity... on the scale of the New Deal but far more transformative and just.” She adds that, as we bring down our emissions levels we will also be able to bring forward policies that improve lives, create jobs, and close the widening gap between rich and poor. She discusses ways we might go about "growing the caring economy, shrinking the careless one." This could in turn lead to shorter working hours and the call for a guaranteed annual income, which Klein says “…discourages shitty work (and wasteful consumption)." And much of the first section of the book addresses the question of how we can stop using fossil fuels and transition to renewables in a fair and equitable way, both in this country and around the world. How this will defeat the 1% is not so clear. 

When Klein talks about groups that have long actively opposed capitalism, she says “If we are part of industrial or postindustrial societies, we are still living inside the story written in coal./  Ever since the French Revolution, there have been pitched ideological battles within the confines of this story: communists, socialists, and trade unions have fought for more equal distribution of the spoils of extraction, winning major victories for the poor and working classes.” She acknowledges that in all of these movements there were those who understood the connection between capitalism’s abuse of the natural world and its abuse of human beings, but she doesn’t devote much attention to the left, adding that, except among anarchists, challenges to the domination of nature mostly came from “the intellectual realm” and the left has largely been a part of the extractivist project. It would have been difficult to examine anticapitalist ideologies thoroughly in an already dense 460-page book, but doing so would have given more coherence to her sometimes incomplete arguments about how we’re going to stop neoliberal capitalism from doing what it does best. To be clear, Klein doesn’t give much praise to the environmental movement’s contribution to this fight against the domination of nature either; in part, she says this “has to do with the movement’s unduly elite history, particularly in North America.”

In the second section of the book, "Magical Thinking," Klein debunks what she considers to be wrong-headed solutions to the problem of climate change. She begins by looking at the environmental groups she calls Big Green, by which she means green groups with a lot of corporate backing like Conservation International, the Nature Conservancy, and WWF (originally the World Wildlife Fund). Though she aims her harshest criticism at the Nature Conservancy (which actually drilled for oil on its Texas City Prairie Preserve, once home to endangered Attwater’s prairie chickens), she says that Big Green groups have done little to help solve the problem of climate change because they “consistently, and aggressively, pushed responses that are the least burdensome, and often directly beneficial, to the largest greenhouse gas emitters on the planet – even when the policies come at the direct expense of communities fighting to keep fossil fuels in the ground.” In this section she also examines the solutions proposed by “messiah” billionaires like Richard Branson, T. Boone Pickens, and Bill Gates, who either fail to deliver the money and assistance they promise (Branson and Pickens) or want a quick end-run around the problem via geoengineering (Branson and Gates). And she attends a conference of the Royal Society, Britain’s prestigious academy of science, to hear scientists debate geoengineering. At one point geoengineering proponent David Keith tells her, “It’s pretty clear that just putting a lot of sulfur in the stratosphere isn’t terrible. After all, volcanoes do it.” (Note, for example, that one proposed geoengineering project would spray sulfate particles into the upper atmosphere to create a “global dimming effect.”) What Keith doesn’t mention is that volcanic eruptions, such as Mount Pinatubo which erupted in 1991, can cause or badly worsen regional drought, and the potential for harm is great. This is why Klein refers to geoengineering as an example of how climate change could be exploited by shock doctors if “in the desperation of a true crisis all kinds of sensible opposition melt away and all manner of high-risk behaviors seem temporarily acceptable.”

Klein frequently says that people should not have to choose between poverty and pollution, and in the third section of the book, “Starting Anyway,” she gives many concrete examples of people who are fighting both for economic and environmental justice. This section of the book is filled with descriptions of inspiring movements – from indigenous people’s struggles in Canada, the U.S., and South America to university-based divestment campaigns and Blockadia, the “roving transnational conflict zone” that crops up wherever there’s a need to fight extractive projects. One of these movements can be found in the city of Richmond, California, where Chevron has a huge refinery, and where local residents have experienced many health and safety problems as a result of that refinery, including fires in 1999 and 2012. Klein describes Richmond as “Predominantly African American and Latino,… a rough-edged, working-class pocket amidst the relentless tech-fuelled gentrification of the Bay Area,” and she says that in 2009 community members successfully blocked Chevron’s plan to expand its refinery so it could process heavier crudes, such as the bitumen from the tar sands. Klein also cites the solar co-ops employing growing numbers of workers in Richmond, “who might otherwise see no option besides the Chevron refinery.” After her speech at the September 18 NYC book launch, Klein led a panel discussion that included four other activists who are struggling both for environmental and economic justice. One of the panelists was Michael Leon Guerrero of Climate Justice Alliance, a group which has been doing organizing work in Richmond . He described the city as the scene of collaborations among unions, environmental justice organizations like Asian Pacific Environmental Network, urban farming groups and student groups that are all coming together to develop alternatives and build political power. Since Klein’s book was published, voters in Richmond rejected Chevron's attempt to influence the local election, even though the oil giant spent more than $3 million on a slate of pro-Chevron candidates. According to one estimate, this failed effort cost Chevron $72 per voter. What we see in Richmond – and in the outpouring of people who joined the People's Climate March in New York, Tucson, and all over the world -- shows that people really are starting to fight back. This Changes Everything is an homage to and an inspiration for these onoing struggles.

Make sure you check out the Beautiful Solutions section of the book's website, which promises to gather "the most promising and contagious strategies for building a just, democratic, and resilient world." Both the book and the site encourage us, in thoughtful and challenging ways, to become part of the solution and in that way to help to change everything for the good of the planet and our communities.