Refugia Newsletter #27 by Debra Rienstra: green and edible cities, wildlife decline, banking, fungi, wombats, and the wisdom of burning bushes
Refugia News
We've enjoyed a stunningly beautiful autumn here in Michigan--I don't take this gift for granted. But I also admit that I've hardly been able to enjoy the beauty outside since I've been so busy doing refugia-related things, mostly at my computer. The irony! Hoping the craziness will ease over the next week or two.
I also hope you'll check out the latest episodes of the Refugia Podcast. Last week's episode featured a conversation with Rev. Jim Antal, a longtime veteran of the climate fight and an inspiring, prophetic speaker and leader. The episode that drops on the 23rd will feature Rev. Gerry Koning, who describes how his congregation basically gave themselves a makeover in order to become a refugia church, called now The Refuge.
Next week, I look forward to meeting once again with the marvelous group of D.Min. students in the Refugia Church cohort at Western Theological Seminary. We'll be talking about works Thomas Berry, Pope Francis, Katharine Hayhoe, Willie James Jennings, how the church has responded to crisis historically, and what we would like to "deconstruct" even as we re-construct our way of "doing church" together--among other things. I know it will be a rich and beautiful week.
This Week in Climate News
Two main news stories: wildlife decline and edible cities.
The Living Planet Index, in its bienniel report, concluded that from 1970 to 2018, wild vertebrates declined 69 percent. Obviously, that's a scary number. What does it mean, though?
Catrin Einhorn of the New York Times wrote this piece attempting to explain. That number represents, of course, only vertebrate species that we actually have data on--which is certainly not everybody, and with population studies we're always talking about best-data estimates. (It's not as if polar bears are willing to register themselves online or something.) Moreover, that 69 percent number is an average of all decline percentages of species where data is available.
Nevertheless, this is sobering news. Even when the wildlife population specialists working on the study eliminated the outlying highs and lows, the average was still looking grim. You can read the whole study here if you like.
So what can we do? We can support efforts to restore and preserve habitat and hope that refugia do their thing. It's important to remember that this does not all have to happen "out there" in the wild. We can, at least for many plants, animals, and insects, create space even in cities. Urban green space is the subject of another article that got a lot of traction in the last two weeks: a piece on "edible cities" by Cathy Free in the Washington Post.
The article surveys efforts across the world to use urban properties, public and private, to plant fruit trees, berry bushes, vegetables and so on--for the taking. Volunteers tend these gardens, and anyone is free to take what they need of the produce. Edible city projects are about food security as much as habitat and green space restoration--and there's something wonderfully biblical about promoting "gleaning." Even more, the process of creating and tending these "grace gardens" (my term) also builds community.
I've also seen articles about creating more urban green space specifically as habitat and carbon sequestration, such as this little piece about Madrid's "urban forest," a 75-kilometer "green wall" around the city.
And maybe you've seen coverage of Singapore's ambitions to make "urban jungle" a more-or-less literal phrase. One term for this is "biophilic architecture."
As I drive past the abandoned lots and deteriorating commercial properties on my city's major big-box-store corridor, I now dream about urban forests, or orchards, or plant-covered, sustainable buildings. It's all becoming more and more possible.
Deeper Dive
Let's talk about banking. Last week I mentioned the wonderful podcast A Matter of Degrees and their recent series on "How can I help?" Part 1 of the series includes a helpful segment about moving your personal money away from banks and investments that use your money to finance the fossil fuel industry.
To follow up on that, I want to share an old piece by Bill McKibben--old meaning dated May 20. In it, McKibben argues that "your money is your carbon." In other words, even if you're tooling around town in an EV powered by solar panels on your roof, and you've installed a heat pump, and you've given up beef, as long as you have your money in big banks, you are funding carbon emissions.
This is the personal side of a bigger, corporate power issue: the hugest tech companies with the greenest of aspirations also have THEIR money in the big banks of the world, and therefore THEY are also funding fossil fuels. Here's McKibben's article in The New Yorker that names names and totes up numbers of billions.
The good news in all of this is that we can shift our money. Individuals like you and me can take our little bits out of banks like Chase, Wells Fargo, Citicorp, and Bank of America and put it instead in banks that have gotten out of the fossil fuel finance business. (Third Act is inviting people to pledge to do this, and helping them learn how.)
And major corporations can put pressure on banks to change their ways. Take note, in case you happen to be the CEO of Apple or something. No? Well, at least you can take a look at the sizeable report that compiles the research about who has how many billions where and what that means for fossil fuel financing.
Refugia Sighting
That Refugia Podcast episode I mentioned above, the one featuring Rev. Gerry Koning, is a splendid refugia sighting in a church context.
But I've also got two great bio-refugia stories I've been holding onto for a while. Today is the day.
First: fungi. Fungi, we are learning more and more, hold life together. They help create the web of relationships essential to any refugium space. This little essay from last August by Somini Sengupta in the New York Times proposes why we might be so fascinated with fungi these days:
"Maybe we are all thinking more about our relationships to one another in an age of increased isolation. Maybe fungi embody an enmeshment we crave."
Second: wombats. Here's a piece from way back in May of 2020 about how wombats helped save other creatures during the Australian fires of 2019. How? The wombats' underground tunnels "allowed small mammals to shelter in their burrows in order to survive the infernos." What could be better than wombat refugia?
Learn about how wombats helped during the Australian wildfires.
The Wayback Machine
I was surprised, when I revisited this essay from October of 2020, to remember how raw I felt then. Reading the essay now brings back the grief and weariness of those days, the intense anxiety leading up to the 2020 US election, the weight of struggling daily with Covid isolations. I looked out at the autumn trees preparing for winter, and envied them:
"How wise are the trees to flame up in glorious radiance and then go dormant. How wise to weather the coldest days by stilling themselves as severely as they can without actually dying. To shrink to the stick-and-branch basics, bare structures and silence, and rest for many, many cold weeks."
As we approach another election and another winter, I look again to the wisdom of trees and the words of scripture:
“Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning: great is your faithfulness.”
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.
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