Refugia Newsletter #59
Voting in 2024, optimism in new books, whales, beavers, and Little Ice Age art
Refugia News
Whew! What a week! Calvin started second semester this week, and absolutely everyone scheduled every meeting and event for this week, too—at least it seemed like it. Sometimes husband Ron and I will say to each other: “I really need to stay home from work to get some work done!” Actually, he did stay home a bit due to heavy snowfall in our region. The roads were a mess, but the trees are still looking absolutely gorgeous with their puffy parkas of snow.
Meanwhile, I’m happy to share with you an episode of the Princeton Theological Seminary’s Distillery podcast just released. Host Shari Oosting and I talked creation theology, refugia, and church transformation. Next week, I’ll be recording another episode of the Green Lectionary podcast; we’ll be trying to figure out the post-flood story in Genesis 9. Finally, I’d like to warmly invite you to join me for an online webinar on Thursday, January 25, at 7:30 EST with the Center for Deep Green Faith. I’ll be giving a little talk, and then there’s a panel discussion with some great people. Join us!
There’s nothing like a snow-laden spruce. Sigh.
This Week in Climate News
My younger son and his wife were visiting last week and we had a rousing good discussion on disillusionment among young voters. Philip and Heidi described how young, progressive voters are disappointed and angry about Gaza (among other things) and threatening to stay home on election day in protest. “Noooooooooo!” Ron and I responded, and we proceeded to discuss how to deal with disillusionment, the inevitable disappointments of electoral politics, the privilege of voting, and most of all, how to think about voting as strategic.
So I thought I would feature some news stories I saw this week about the US elections coming up this fall.
Both older (65+) and younger (18-34) voters are most likely to vote “climate first.” A recent study (released in November) from the Environmental Voter Project found that, while young voters are still the most likely to be “climate first” voters, the next most important climate bloc is age 65 and older! I think the lesson here is that older climate voters need to encourage younger voters to vote, even if they’re mad. They should be mad. But they should still vote! An argument that helped with Philip and Heidi was: “vote in this election to show that young people do vote and thus need to be listened to.”
Source: “Gray is the New Green: The Growing Strength of Older Climate Voters,” Environmental Voting Project, November 2023, p. 3.
If you’re wondering “how can I help???” and you’re one of those older people, join Third Act Faith and/or sign up for their monthly newsletter. We’ll be engaging in voter turnout campaigns. (Thanks to my friends over there for the TAF January newsletter, which alerted me to the EVP study.)
US leadership is still key. The US may not be the world’s leader on shifting quickly to renewable energy, but as a gigantic economic power, the direction we set still has the potential to influence the rest of the world and to help shift the balance even more firmly away from fossil fuels. This article in the New York Times newsletter by Manuela Andreoni nicely summarizes what’s at stake around the world this year with the many major elections happening.
Get ready for a fossil fuel PR blitz. The fossil fuel industry knows how to manipulate public opinion. Keep an eye out for “paltering” this year—the use of partial information to create a false impression. This article by Marianne Lavelle in Inside Climate News explains how the American Petroleum Institute (the big industry group) plans to pretend that the fossil fuel industry is actually helping bring emissions down:
[T]he API notably is not challenging the need to address climate change. Instead, its “Lights On Energy” campaign—which Sommers told Fox Business will be “an eight-figure” national television and digital advertising blitz in the run-up to the 2024 election—portrays the industry’s work as both vital to the economy and a key to achieving global greenhouse gas reductions.
Look for these deceptive arguments:
exporting natural gas will help other countries reduce their use of coal
we have to keep burning fossil fuels because: national security
we have to keep extracting and burning because: economy
don’t worry: we’ll use carbon capture!
All of those arguments have a grain of truth, a grain overwhelmed by the full range of actual facts. Be ready.
Bonus article: how former Democratic senators got big bucks from the fossil fuel industry to promote natural gas as a “solution.”
Down-ticket has big impact. I was astonished to learn from the recent talk by Katharine Hayhoe for Third Act Faith that only about 1% of elected officials in the US serve at the federal level. The other 99% are state and local. I couldn’t find a reliable and recent exact breakdown, but it looks like about 540 elected federal officials, 7,000 state, and some 500,000 local! With so much great climate work happening at state and local levels, it’s critical to pay attention to down-ticket candidates. I’m rather convinced that the way to make the most impact for climate work is to run for the local zoning board. (Not for me, thanks, but maybe for you?) The Climate Cabinet group helps develop local climate leaders and helps them win races. You might use their scorecard to help analyze your state officials’ records.
Deeper Dive
I hope you don’t mind if I suggest couple deeper dives for which I personally have only skimmed the surface. Two new books offer an optimistic view of our future. Have you read them? I will get to them eventually. For now, I’m just reading reviews.
Hannah Ritchie, senior researcher at Oxford and editor with Our World in Data, has a new book called Not the End of the Word: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet. I love Ritchie’s work, because she plows through common conceptions of difficult problems and says, “But let’s look at the data.” Bring on the data! In this new book, she brings the data to bear in order to argue that we are not doomed. Instead, we are making significant progress toward a better, sustainable world. Not that we can relax; in fact, we have to work faster. But we can do that work in the knowledge that we are building on momentum.
Ritchie may be a “senior researcher” but she’s only 30 years old! Brilliant, but so young. In this video, Ritchie herself introduces the book. Here’s a quick, book-based essay by Ritchie in The Atlantic. And in this interview with David Marchese in the New York Times Magazine, Ritchie argues that, fortunately, we don’t need to argue with people about climate change in order to make progress on renewable energy because, essentially, economics is doing the work:
There might be messages that are used as political bait but in the end, it will come down to economics. These solutions will continue to get better and cheaper, and people will implement them regardless of whether they care about climate change.
The second book high on my reading list is Climate Capitalism: Winning the Global Race to Zero Emissions, by Akshat Rathi, a climate reporter for Bloomberg.
I read about this book over on Sam Matey’s Substack. Rathi examines, from a global perspective, the economic levers that can help move us forward to a sustainable future. I’ll offer this long quotation from Matey’s review, partly so you can enjoy the word “kludgey” about half way through:
Ultimately, the lesson of Climate Capitalism, drawn out from the evidence of a dozen in-depth case studies and the global exponential growth of clean energy, is a deeply heartening one. We do not, in fact, need to destroy and rebuild all of our economic and governmental institutions to deal with climate change; we just need to reform, focus, and direct the systems we already have, overcoming fossil-fueled corruption to unleash our innovation-driven clean energy future. The kludgey politico-economic mishmosh of a global civilization we have right now, with democracies and autocracies and free-market-ish companies and state-owned and state-subsidized companies and tariffs and regulations and government-funded research labs and eccentric billionaires and venture capital funds and stakeholder revolts and all the other moving pieces, is gradually turning towards clean energy, thanks to lifetimes of dedicated work by a worldwide assemblage of extraordinary people.
Refugia Sighting
Two stories about the amazing resilience of nature, the wisdom of creatures, and the potential for healing when humans pay attention and cooperate.
First: whales. Researchers were very excited to report that humpback whales have returned to Cumberland Bay off the tip of South America. The discovery of humpbacks there in 1904 led to a brutal slaughter of 24,000 whales in 12 years. Only about ten years ago, humpbacks starting coming back to this bay and scientists believe their numbers have rebounded. Douglas Main covered the story for The Atlantic:
But starting about a decade ago, humpbacks began to show up again—and their numbers have kept growing. According to a recent study led by Jackson, the species has recovered to near pre-whaling levels in Cumberland Bay. “Now we’re seeing what looks like restoration,” she says. “That’s pretty exciting.”
Besides the simple fact that whales are amazing creatures worth protecting and celebrating, they also do ecosystem work. Whale poop, for instance, is important to marine ecosystems! Thanks again to Sam Matey for finding this wonderful graphic from an issue of Nature:
Source: Nature
I’m always excited to find stories about beavers. Reintroducing beavers to appropriate areas helps improve water managements and ecosystem health. In fact, some people in Europe are engaged in “beaver bombing” or “beaver black ops,” releasing beavers without permission. Obviously, that practice is controversial. However, in many places, beavers are being quite officially and intentionally reintroduced. Last month, California celebrated the launch of a big beaver reintroduction program, partnering with Indigenous leaders. You’ll see in this charming video that they release beavers in groups. That’s because beavers are family-oriented; they do better when they’re relocated together.
The Wayback Machine
Let’s go way, way back today to the Little Ice Age, a period of climate cooling in the northern hemisphere that occurred from the 1300s to the mid-1800s. Wait, does this mean that our current global warming trends are just a natural cycle? No. Here’s an explanation of the difference between the mild, regional cooling and the rapid, global warming we’re experiencing now. (Based on natural factors only, we should be cooling right now, not warming rapidly.)
This lovely article in the JSTOR Daily by Tim Brinkhof surveys the art of the Little Ice Age, particularly the art of the European Low Countries. People had to adapt to bitterly cold winters, and art historians have studied what we can learn about food shortages, hunting techniques, and even ice-related recreation in the period.
Hunters in the Snow (Winter) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1565
I’ve always liked this painting of the Frost Fairs on the Thames as well.
A Frost Fair on the Thames at Temple Stairs, London 1684, Abraham Hondius (c.1625–1691)
Well, that’s all for this week. Thanks for reading. Till next time, be well.
(As always, bold emphasis in quotations is added unless otherwise indicated.)