faulker083

For about twenty years, the Rochester Regional Group of the Sierra Club ’s Earth Day forum has been a yearly opportunity to engage with the public on environmental issues. We’ve hosted local and state public officials responsible for our environment, local reporters, prominent speakers on protecting our Great Lake’s waters, and other issues like local food options. Our most attended forum was when Dr. Hansen talked to about 800 people on April 21. 2015 at Monroe County Community College. [Watch the entire speech, with an introduction by Dr. Susan Spencer. Very high-quality  video .] Clearly, who we invite to speak makes a difference. But we only have so many recourses at our disposal. Each year we try to figure out the most important environmental issue that is most likely to attract a large audience. (What’s the point of trying to communicate with the public, if they don’t show up?) I’ve been writing about the journey to Earth Day each year for quite a while, trying to build mome...

If it’s true that we are merely consumers (as some view our existence), and not the moral stewards of our planet, then consider humanity’s Climate Change options for our future. There are several climate scenarios to choose from—depending on your taste for disruption. Your choices are, as brilliantly and illustrated in this interactive chart, 1.5C, 2C, and beyond: The impacts of climate change at 1.5C, 2C and beyond  "Carbon Brief has extracted data from around 70 peer-reviewed climate studies to show how global warming is projected to affect the world and its regions. "  Scrolling through the above list is fascinating, like strolling up and down aisles in a grocery store. For example, do you want a 1.5C world where winter minimum temperatures in France will rise .09C? Or maybe a 3C world where rainfall will increase by 21% in Eastern Europe? Lots to choose from. But there’s a catch, actually many of them. First, costs vary considerably with your choices not only by dollars a...

The Dust Bowl , the worst environmental disaster in US history, sent the soil from millions of acres of the Great Plains into the atmosphere ruining a major ecosystem and many people’s lives. The disaster occurred in the early 1930’s just after the stock market crash of 1929. But crash didn’t affect the farmers until wheat prices dropped below what would keep a farmer’s family alive and the farmer’s tractor payments going. Thinking that if they produced more wheat they could make ends meet, the farmers tore up more soil to plant more wheat, which didn’t work because the wheat prices just kept falling. However, removing more of the Great Plains precious soil dramatically turned the Dust Bowl into a decade of hell. Instead of heeding the warnings of earlier dust storms and information from old timers that droughts were common, the farmers did exactly what would turn a problem into a major catastrophe. The Dust Bowl was an early warning that humanity could, intentionally or not, cause gre...

What set off John Quincy Adams to rail against slavery throughout his 16-year tenure at the U.S. House of Representative wasn’t necessarily the evils of slavery itself. The 6 th President of the United States spent most of his life (and his presidency) quietly disapproving of this ‘ peculiar institution ’ but he was hardly a life-long abolitionist. Like many other white men of his times, he thought it would just go away. No, it was the “"gag rule," which had prevented the House of Representatives from debating petitions to abolish slavery”( Wikipedia ) that really got Adams riled up because the rule was unconstitutional. Few cherished and held sacred our Constitution as Adams had. In pursuit of the gag rule’s appeal (which he won in 1844), Adams did become a fierce opponent of slavery doing much to embolden the abolitionists and hold our country’s feet to the fire over its original sin. Our country, a couple of decades before exploding into the cataclysm of the Civil War, s...

One of the significant questions we must ask ourselves at this time (though many decades ago would have been even better) is what should we save from Climate Change ? (Of course, for ethical reasons we cannot ask ((even in the darkest regions of our mind)) who should we save from Climate Change? No matter how drastic Climate Change becomes, I cannot imagine a point at which we would seriously contemplate a “ Lifeboat Ethics ” situation, where we save some but not others.) We should save everyone from Climate Change, especially people in the future. Before I talk about what we should save from Climate Change, we should acknowledge that to even pose such a question is to recognize there is now enough widespread awareness that Climate Change is occurring on a scale and time frame that makes this question possible. It would have been considered highly speculative to bring this question up twenty years ago but now people are acting on this: Saving Scotland’s Heritage From the Rising Seas ...