Refugia Newsletter #81

Clean energy transition persists, plus COP29, gophers, climate art, fake dead whales, and the enemy within

Refugia News

Hello, friends. How are you? I’m managing to function, every day about an inch better. I still feel as if we woke up on Nov. 6, sci-fi style, in a bleak, alternative timeline that wasn’t supposed to happen. But here we are.

As I mentioned last time, I’m not happy that the whole refugia concept has suddenly become so much more needed and relevant. Yet I’ve been noticing how much I’ve needed the concept and the reality of refugia these past weeks. I’m trying to lean on the network of refugia people that has already formed around faith-and-climate work in recent years, the people who have already been finding, creating, and nurturing refugia spaces of all kinds. You are in that network. I’m grateful for you. Welcome, if you are just now joining. Let’s stick together more than ever, shall we?

My strategy for survival is now this: Seek to strengthen, however I am able, this “refugia network”—or whatever we want to call it. I’m asking myself how I can help grow this underground mycorrhizal network (warning! fungi metaphor!) and change the soil, supporting the health of the whole system. It may not work. But what can we do but try?

Considering how many Christians voted for the president-elect and all he stands for (or what they thought he stands for), I’m sorely tempted to give up on the church altogether, and I don’t blame anyone who has. But I know that many Christian communities remain stalwart in preaching the Jesus-gospel with their words and their deeds. I meet these people. I study them. So I’m sticking with those Christians as well as with people of all faiths and good conscience who continue to practice our deepest shared principles of goodness, justice, truth, compassion, fairness, humility, and love—for our neighbors and the earth.

Speaking of networks, I’ve joined Bluesky. This is the new alternative to Twitter/X that has gained millions of members since the election as people leave Twitter/X in droves. Bluesky is determined to avoid all the evil pitfalls of other social media, especially algorithm manipulation. So far, I’ve been finding a HUGE and burgeoning network of climate science folks, climate reporters, and faith-and-climate folks. If you do social media, you can find me @debrakrienstra.bsky.social.

I’m also trying to dose my news consumption carefully so I don’t get too triggered by all the chaos, incompetence, and ill intentions in the pending administration. I’m paying more attention to international climate work as well as to democracy and climate work on the state and local level. And I’m focusing on what I can actually do. My personal worry rays are not going to change anything. (I think Jesus said something about this in Matthew 6, eh?)

Finally, I’m trying to pray and trust more. Boy, that’s hard right now. But I’m trying.

What are your strategies?

Focus on wonder. This oak leaf hydrangea in my yard combines color and texture right now to stunningly beautiful effect. Thanks to the wise and eloquent Bethany Cok for her essay on wonder in a time of darkness.

This Week in Climate News

Most of what I’ve been reading since the election amounts to this idea: the clean energy revolution is happening despite what the new US president will try to stop it. The reason: money. Clean energy makes more economic sense. (And it sure beats paying the costs for even more worsening climate impacts.)

This excellent article by Matt Simon in Grist sums up how US states and localities will continue to drive the clean energy transition because solar, wind, and geothermal are cheaper, cleaner, and more resilient than fossil fuels. Trump and his enablers can cause a lot of damage, but the economics are not in his favor. Simon writes:

The man who has called climate change a “hoax” also can be expected to wreak havoc on federal agencies central to understanding, and combating, climate change. But plenty of climate action would be very difficult for a second Trump administration to unravel, and the 47th president won’t be able to stop the inevitable economy-wide shift from fossil fuels to renewables. 

The economics are not in his favor, and neither are the politics. Even though Trump has “promised to rescind the remaining funding in Joe Biden’s landmark climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA,” doing so would be a bad idea politically, because people like it. Or at least, in red states, they like the results of it. Some 85 percent of announced investments from the IRA have come to red districts. Simon writes:

The irony of Biden’s signature climate bill is states that overwhelmingly support Trump are some of the largest recipients of its funding. That means tampering with the IRA could land a Trump administration in political peril even with Republican control of the Senate, if not Congress.

In Washington, a blue state, voters just soundly rejected an anti-climate-action ballot initiative. Simon interviewed Washington Governor Jay Inslee, who remarked:

“Donald Trump’s going to learn something that our opponents in our initiative battle learned: Once people have a benefit, you can’t take it away…. He is going to lose in his efforts to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, because governors, mayors of both parties, are going to say, ‘This belongs to me, and you’re not going to get your grubby hands on it.’”

Whether the US Congress will be able to do anything useful in the next two-to-four years is of course extremely doubtful, but here is some more good news: a number of climate champions from all over the country will be joining both the House and the Senate—including my home state of Michigan’s new senator, Elissa Slotkin. This article from the Inside Climate News folk is worth reading if you need reassurance that there are people in Washington committed to facing climate realities with actual solutions.

Meanwhile, ambitious states will be modeling how to make the clean energy transition. Maryland, for instance, has adopted ambitious goals and made significant progress, already reducing their emissions some 40 percent between 2005 and 2022. California is the fifth largest economy in the world, and has also been a leader in renewable energy, international partnerships, and corporate responsibility law. These are just two examples.

We also have to look to the international scene to understand the big-picture reality. As Katharine Hayhoe wrote in her Substack on Nov. 9, the transition is happening, whatever the US does. Hayhoe writes:

Clean energy is like a giant boulder that’s already reached its tipping point and is now rolling downhill toward a greener future. It’s got millions of hands on it, from individuals to some of the biggest countries, cities, and companies in the world. It could still be slowed by actions of governments and corporations—delays that will have serious consequences for people and planet alike—but it can’t be stopped. Gravity, history, and progress are on our side.

If you want a wonky and reliable report on the whole complicated picture of global energy transition, I suggest this report from the International Energy Agency or this one from Bloomberg NEF (from which the above graphic comes). Notably, as I’ve written before in this newsletter, China is not messing around when it comes to responding realistically to climate change. Whatever nonsense goes on in the US, China is determined to dominate the economic benefits that accrue from clean energy manufacturing, exports, supply chain management, and financial influence. We can concede—or try to compete.

What can we US citizens do? Focus on state and local action. And cheerfully address clean energy skeptics with the economic and self-interested arguments that seem to motivate people most (unfortunately). Check out this quick and helpful set of talking points from Bill McKibben’s Nov. 18 newsletter. The basic idea: let people know that clean energy is just good sense that benefits them personally. Who likes waste? Who likes spending money that they don’t have to for energy? Why not use superior technology? Better yet: tell the story of your own experience: I love my solar panels! My electric car is powerful and cheap to run! My heat pump saves massive amounts on my energy bills! For me, this is all true.

Deeper Dive

Well, I guess I should talk about COP29. I’d rather talk about wildlife crossings or beavers or something, but fine. Let’s just do it. COP29 is this year’s edition of the annual UN climate summit or “Conference of the Parties.” Some 190 countries send representatives and thousands of other interest groups come as well (including faith groups). This year’s COP gathers almost 67,000 people in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. Is Azerbaijan a petro-state? Why, yes, it is. This small country on the Caspian Sea earns 90 percent of its export income from fossil fuels.

COP ends as I am writing this (it may go overtime though), so we won’t know what the results will be in terms of final negotiations. The main agenda this year: “how to supply enough cash to poor countries to help them cut greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate-driven extreme weather” (see Guardian source below).

To put this in perspective, this article by Elizabeth Kolbert for The New Yorker sums up what is at stake:

Every year, before the start of the annual climate negotiating session, or COP—short for Conference of the Parties—the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) issues an “emissions gap” report. This year’s report was titled “No More Hot Air . . . Please!” and it makes for dispiriting reading. Most countries’ emissions-reductions pledges are inadequate and, in any event, they have failed to meet them. As a result, limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius—a goal agreed to at the COP held in Paris in 2015—has, for all practical purposes, become impossible. (The goal refers to the long-term temperature average, so, technically speaking, one year above the limit does not yet mean it’s been breached.) Without a huge international effort, the chance to limit warming to two degrees Celsius will also soon slip away.

That huge international effort has to include helping less developed countries fund their own transitions to clean energy. An article in The Guardian quotes the chief of the European Climate Foundation, Laurence Tubiana:

One of the founding pillars of the Paris agreement is financial solidarity between developed and developing countries. Such solidarity makes it possible for all countries to gradually raise their national ambitions to achieve the goal of limiting temperature rise to 1.5C. However, there can be no climate justice without fiscal justice, as all countries are facing the same challenge: how to fund the transition while ensuring that those with the greatest means and the highest emissions pay their fair share.

Is this happening? No, not really. So far even the attempt to pledge $250 billion is stalling, when more than a trillion is needed. Keep in mind, the world spends $7 trillion annually on fossil fuel subsidies.

Image credit: Mike Muzurakis for IISD/ENB.

Every year, observers express frustration at the lack of progress. This year, some key international leaders—including a former UN Secretary General—are calling for vast reforms aimed at somehow eliminating or at least severely reducing the influence of fossil fuel interests on the negotiations. It won’t be easy. According to the Guardian article:

At least 1,773 coal, oil and gas lobbyists have been granted access to Cop29, according to data analysed by the Kick Big Polluters Out activist coalition. That is more than all but three countries (Azerbaijan, Brazil and Turkey), and considerably more than the 10 nations most vulnerable to the climate crisis, who have a combined 1,033 delegates.

Moreover, it’s not as if fossil-fuel influence has been growing gradually over time. No, it’s been baked in from the jump. Recent investigative reporting by the tireless folk at Drilled has uncovered the receipts:

As former UN leaders Ban Ki-moon and Christiana Figueres join global climate leaders in calling for an overhaul of the system, documents newly uncovered by Drilled reveal that the fossil fuel industry’s influence over the COP process was a foregone conclusion, embedded into its design from the very beginning.

This Drilled article offers a deep-dive into a long and unsavory journey of fossil-fuel influence both obvious and covert through trade organizations, government reps with ties to the industry, cover-ups of the industry’s early knowledge of how emissions impact climate, and more. And the US has been complicit from the very start in helping this happen. Sigh.

Refugia Sightings

OK, time to turn away from the grim world of politics and toward … gophers!

If you have read Refugia Faith, you know that the book begins by describing the eruption of Mount Saint Helens in 1980. After this devastating eruption, sooner than expected, the mountainside began greening up. Why? Refugia—little pockets of life survived beneath the ash and destruction. (As always, I credit Kathleen Dean Moore’s wonderful book Great Tide Rising with introducing me to the refugia idea through this example.)

In 1983, when much of the mountain was still a moonscape, a group of researchers was trying to figure out how to help the renewal process along. One study included releasing northern pocket gophers for just 24 hours in limited areas. Well, an article released this month in Frontiers in Microbiomes reports: the gophers made a huge difference. Decades later, we can still see the difference they made.

MUST DIG: the inner mandate of the northern pocket gopher. Image credit: Matthew L. Miller

According to an article on the study by Alexa Robles-Gil for Smithsonian, “the gophers played a key role in restoring fungi and bacteria in the soil—and the health of gopher-inhabited areas stood in stark contrast to areas where the gophers had never been.”

Here’s how it worked:

The secret to life was mycorrhizal fungi. These organisms are essential to plant growth: They form symbiotic relationships with roots, allowing them to access more nutrients from the soil and protecting them from diseases. The gophers promoted growth of the fungi by burrowing and moving the soil around, which brought buried fungal spores to the surface and introduced new microbes.

Good job, little critters! According to another article on this study, by Bill Chappell for NPR, the gophers didn’t love the job, but they did it:

The gophers were grumpy about being taken from Butte Camp, their home on the southern side of the volcano, to the northern area known as the Pumice Plain. Sharing a photo of one, [Mia Maltz, lead author of the study] says, "She/he was not happy about being stuck there, or being recaptured for transport back home."

The gophers stayed for only about 24 hours before being whisked away. But their visit altered a landscape where, after the eruption, the pumice "contained no measurable carbon (C) or nitrogen (N)," according to the study.

When scientists returned to the fenced plots six years later, they were stunned to find some 40,000 plants there, while nearby patches of land remained desolate. In the decades since, the effects have kept compounding.

I have so many questions. How do you know when a gopher is grumpy? How do you gather them up again once you’ve set them loose? Well, for now, I shall simply send a shout-out to my friend Rev. Dani Postma for sending me this story.

Next, you know how I love a good climate artist. Here are two stories about how artists are reaching people with climate-related work. Thanks to the intrepid Louise Conner of The Ecological Disciple (connected with Circlewood) for introducing me to both these stories.

First, a multi-site installation by Maya Lin. She’s the incredible artist/architect who designed the Vietnam Veteran Memorial in Washington, D.C. This work is a memorial, too. Conner explains:

Titled What is Missing?, this work is an ongoing, multi-site installation that is not only created in different places and different times, but is also being created in different mediums such as sculptures, videos, writings, and a website, where all the pieces are brought together….

The science-based art of the installations highlights the degradation and loss of the habitat that are behind the extinctions. The degradation and/or loss of forests, water, prairies, and other habitats is approached through art so that the viewer can approach the facts in a new way.

Although Lin calls What is Missing? a memorial, it isn't a memorial in the sense of a funeral service after hope for revival is past. It isn't solely a lament for what has been lost or on its way to being lost; the experiences it creates also calls viewers and listeners to action, encouraging them with stories of actions that have resulted in positive change.

The website is worth exploring. It’s wild and weird and includes nature sounds.

From the What is Missing? website: “Storm King Art Center, 2018. This installation includes three ten-foot-tall tubes, each housing a single stalk of prairie grass, from the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas—revealing its entire structure—from root to tip, highlighting the restorative role of perennial and native grass species in regenerative agriculture and ranching practices that could help reduce climate change and store carbon in the soil.”

Finally, how about a fake beached sperm whale at COP29? It’s a traveling exhibit, complete with fake blood, stinky fish buckets to create smell, and actor-scientists who pretend to do research on it. The purpose is educational: to create visceral interest that makes people curious. Imagine the surprise of people seeing this thing when they’re nowhere near the ocean—just the Caspian Sea.

Again, let’s consult Louise Conner’s summary:

Made from molded fiberglass, this life-size replica of a beached sperm whale on Baku Boulevard drew crowds and interest from both out-of-town visitors and local residents, many of whom didn't realize it was fake.

It looked (and smelled) like a rotting whale, but was actually created by an Antwerp, Belgium group named the Captain Boomer Collective. For about ten years, this collective has been moving its beached whale exhibit across Europe and Australia, drawing people in with its sudden and realistic appearance….

The beached whale exhibit provided both kids and adults with an opportunity to learn about whale parasites, habits, teeth, spermaceti oil, and the hazards these huge mammals face, as the "scientists" talked through what they were doing with the "whale."

Beached Whale, Baku Boulevard, November 2024 for COP29, the Captain Boomer Collective. Image from Ecological Disciple.

The Not-So-Wayback Machine

Last week, for the Reformed Journal blog, I felt compelled to write a theological take on the election. The essay got some heartfelt response, I’m grateful to say. It helped me to write it. Maybe it will help you in some small way.

The wan plea Why can’t we all just get along? seems trivial and stupid, but it’s actually a good question, one humans have been asking since forever. Maybe the rock-bottom answer is always the same: the primordial sin plaguing us since Cain and Abel. Kin-conflict, kin-hatred, kin-violence.

Ultimately, existentially, maybe it’s just this: we love to have enemies.

I went out to the lake on November 16 and took so many photos. This is one of my favorites. Something about the sky and the rocks in the water. Beauty in the gloom.

As always, thanks for reading, and until next time, be well.

Note: Bold type in quotations is added unless otherwise indicated.