Refugia Newsletter #22 by Debra Rienstra: weather whiplash, utility wind farms, purple zone preaching, and syllabus secrets

Refugia News

We have reached the most stressful week of the year for academics: the week before classes begin. I write to you amid piles of books and a flurry of draft syllabi. I'll be ready. But even after 26 years of university teaching, this time of year still makes me anxious. What will my students be like? Will my ambitious syllabi actually work with real students? I always feel better after the first day of classes: after I "see the whites of their eyes," as I say.

Refugia work presses on, meanwhile. In the past two weeks, I completed two more Refugia Podcast interviews, and I'm preparing for two more, first with Dr. Ruth Padilla-DeBorst, a theologian who has lived in intentional community in Costa Rica, and second with two other Fortress Press authors, Sharon Delgado and Talitha Amadea Aho. Sharon is the author of Love in the Time of Climate Change and The Cross in the Midst of Creation. Talitha is the author of In Deep Waters: Spiritual Care for Young People in a Time of Climate Crisis.

I'll share more about these great people in this newsletter soon. And of course, you'll be able to listen to their interviews on the Refugia Podcast, with episodes releasing weekly starting Sept. 18.

This Week in Climate News

Two main news stories this week: summer heat waves and Inflation Reduction Act analysis.

First, the heat waves. Weather in Michigan this summer has been quite pleasant, so it's hard to fathom the serious hardships other people around the world are experiencing this year. But it's all too real.

I have a colleague at Calvin who spends her summers in New Mexico. When I asked her this week how her summer went, she said, "Well, it started with wildfires, and then there was flooding." Indeed, "weather whiplash" has characterized the American West this year. Here's an article by Seth Borenstein on the AP News website that explains how extreme drought and flooding can go together.

Parts of northern Texas, mired in a drought labeled as extreme and exceptional, are flooding under torrential rain. In a drought. Sound familiar? It should. The Dallas region is just the latest drought-suffering-but-flooded locale during a summer of extreme weather whiplash, likely goosed by human-caused climate change, scientists say.

No doubt you've heard about the truly terrifying ongoing heat wave in China. Here's a quick summary of facts around China's 70+ days of heat so extreme that in some places, nighttime temperatures have remained above 90° Fahrenheit. And you may recall extreme heat waves in East Asia, Europe, and Africa this year, too.

How do we know these record-breaking heat (and flood) events are caused--or more precisely, greatly intensified--by climate change? Because of a maturing field of study called "attribution science." Here's an explanation, complete with helpful visuals.

Finally, for an interesting look at how Americans are adjusting to extreme heat, read (and appreciate the accompanying photos for) this great piece by a big reporting team at Inside Climate News.

Someday, we were told, we would feel the effects of all the gas and coal we burned on this Earth. Someday we would face heat waves hotter and longer than we have ever known. Someday has arrived. This summer, at work and at play, indoors and outdoors, in neighborhoods rich and poor, Americans are facing a persistent new reality: extreme heat.

Now for a few updates on the Inflation Reduction Act, passed into law on August 16.

For an entertaining general summary of what's in the bill, you could watch this 22-minute video by Hank Green, who is kind of a professional explainer. Very helpful.

This article in the Washington Post details the consumer-facing, energy-cost-saving provisions of the legislation.

And here's an analysis by Benji Jones of Vox considering the benefits and limits of the farming provisions in the bill.

Finally, this piece by Manuela Andreoni in the New York Times explains how reduction in fossil fuel pollution brings immediate public health benefits. Early modeling efforts suggest that the savings in health care costs and in lives from the IRA could be significant.

Deeper Dive

First, a correction. I want to thank reader Bob Sluka of A Rocha for alerting me to some concerns about the group I linked to last time: Ocean Cleanup. Bob sent me this fascinating journalistic work by David Shiffman at Southern Fried Science, a marine science and conservation website. Shiffman, concerned about critiques of Ocean Cleanup he was reading among the ocean science community, asked 15 experts to weigh in with their concerns, and then he got the COO of Ocean Cleanup to respond. (Note: this is a 2018 piece.)

I come away from this piece (appropriately) more skeptical about Ocean Cleanup and also more appreciative of how science works: experts critique one another and challenge claims even of those who share their values--everyone here wants to clean up the oceans, but is Ocean Cleanup understanding the problem fully? Is dragging the big plastic pieces out addressing the bigger problem of microplastics? Are they really doing the work to avoid killing living things in the process? And so on. I'm glad Bob sent this piece, and I want you to know, readers, that I am here to learn. I don't mind being corrected. It's hard to see the whole picture, so we have to help each other.

Bob also sent along this handy link to A Rocha's plastics toolbox, which I commend to you.

This plastic toolbox will help you contribute to global efforts to fight plastic pollution in the oceans, as an individual, family, group or church. It brings together science, theology, education and lifestyle, with videos, downloads and other resources.

Well! On to today's official deep dive. I simply want to hold up a beautifully written, longish piece by Sammy Roth in the Los Angeles Times on the challenges of building utility wind farms in the West.

Roth writes: "Solar and wind farms can create jobs and tax revenues, reduce deadly air pollution and slow rising temperatures. But they can also disrupt wildlife habitat and destroy sacred Indigenous sites. Some small-town residents consider them industrial eyesores."

Roth examines, with fairness and clarity, siting conflicts, big money investors in renewable energy who stand to make millions, small-town people unsure about the changes they're facing, the technicalities of constructing wind farms and the science of wind dynamics and more.

Billionaire Phil Anschutz — who owns the Coachella music festival, the Los Angeles Kings hockey team and L.A.'s Crypto.com Arena — is preparing to build the nation’s largest wind farm. We traveled the route.

Refugia Sighting

If I can, I like to highlight here churches and groups that are creating "refugia spaces" as I tend to call them. But how does one create such spaces? On that question, I commend to you three books that I've read in the last few weeks in order to prepare for my interview with Rev. Dr. Leah Schade.

Leah is a homiletics professor at Lexington Theological Seminary in Kentucky. She has a heart for helping churches become places where people can talk to each other, even when they disagree, and work together on what she calls "issues of public concern." She combines deep research--including surveys of preachers--biblical and theological wisdom, good humor, great writing, and lots of specific examples.

Here are three books I commend:

Preaching in the Purple Zone: Ministry in the Red-Blue Divide (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019)

Outlines a researched and tested process to build the capacity for fruitful conversation and action in church communities, especially on contentious issues.

Creation-Crisis Preaching: Ecology, Theology and the Pulpit (Chalice, 2015)

Specifically about preaching on climate, offering theological and biblical basis as well as plenty of practical advice and annotated examples.

Rooted & Rising: Voices of Courage in a Time of Climate Crisis (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019)

An essay collection that celebrates how people from different faiths are addressing the climate crisis from a faith perspective.

The link below will take you to Leah's EcoPreaching site on Patheos. And look for the Refugia Podcast episode featuring my interview with her!

Exploring environmental issues, the church, and politics from a faith perspective.

The Wayback Machine

In honor of "get your syllabus done" week, I present this cheeky but all-too-true piece I wrote in 2019 about the secrets encoded in a professor's syllabus. This one got a lot of love from fellow professors when it came out. Hope you enjoy, too. (You won't see the original comments here because, like most of my essays, this one first appeared on The Reformed Journal blog before it came to live on my website).

For all you college students out there, it’s time to gird up your binders and get ready for a parade of professors thrusting their course syllabi at you. On the off chance that you will actually read these syllabi—my research shows that only about one-third of students do, and only when gently bribed—you might be interested to know that syllabi are full of subtexts and encoded messages.

Thank you!

Thanks for reading! I keep these newsletters quickly scannable, with opportunities for deeper reading as you are able. I also tend to emphasize the connections between faith communities and climate action.

You can send me a response to this newsletter simply by replying to the email that brought it to you. If you are so inclined, please follow me on Twitter or Facebook @debrakrienstra. You can always contact me on those platforms, too. Also check out my website at debrarienstra.com.

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