Connections and How to Make Them

Our Earth! Photo taken September 22, 2013

I have been reading a lot these past few weeks and thinking about possible fixes to the fix we are in with our climate. My last post here reflects fairly accurately my impression to date about why we find ourselves in this dilemma. If we are doing most everything wrong, why have we taken this path in the first place? Why has our civilization evolved to the point that living our lives the way we live them has become life threatening? The technologies and techniques exist now to change our civilization, to reduce our fossil-fuel addictions and sequester carbon. But if we don't address the root cause, guess what – we will find ourselves back at this place again next generation or sooner.

Tim DeChristopher. a champion for climate action, spoke at the Chicago History Museum Friday night. He suggested that this crisis gives us an opportunity to rethink how we are in community. He compared the responses to two of the worst catastrophic weather events to date in the United States: Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy. The response to Katrina was corporate and military led and the choices made by those entities for that recovery effort has led to great loss of life, income and personal property. Images of the lawlessness and brutality and lack of compassionate consideration for the victims of that tragic event will be with me my whole life and the overall 'relief' effort will be a stain on our country's conscience for decades to come. The response to Hurricane Sandy was quite different as the participants in the Occupy movement stepped up almost immediately and started organizing the relief efforts neighborhood by neighborhood. FEMA and the Red Cross arrived and utilized the existing community network set up by the Occupy volunteers. For the many who wondered what the use was of the Occupy movement, you can now point to the Sandy relief as one result of what a unified community can do. This truly is what Democracy looks like. Or as DeChristopher famously said at his sentencing: "This is what Love looks like." (Local radio interview with DeChristopher from Friday, September 27, 2013 here.)

DeChristopher suggests, and I wholeheartedly agree, that the time to create a community that responds effectively to catastrophe is now. What kind of community do we want to have? Do we want one that relies on the military or a soulless corporation bent on making money to step in when catastrophe strikes again? Or do we want a resilient community structure that supports all members no matter their social standing or the color of their skin?

Which leads to a question we need to ask - what would our greater community, our civilization look like if we address this crisis head on, tackle its difficulties in creative and effective ways and set ourselves back on track to live our lives in peace. What would that community look like? I think it would differ significantly from how it looks now. We would begin to realize that we are not separate creatures moving along on separate paths. We are all connected. We are connected to all creatures on this planet from the smallest amoeba to the largest land mammal. And we humans are jeopardizing everything to maintain a lifestyle that is killing us faster and faster. If we truly understand our connection and our place in the chain of all living things, we won't be making decisions to despoil our nest and that of other living creatures as that ultimately affects us.

If we do indeed allow our culture to continue on with our addiction to oil and gas unchecked and if we do nothing about sequestering the carbon already existing in our atmosphere, the future for us is very bleak and will lead to no human, let alone other mammals, being able to live on the surface of the planet in a few generations – that is, those of us who survive the coming Ice Age (see Climate Change Model).

As I have stated here before, the technology and techniques for addressing both the reduction of carbon based fuel use and the sequestering of carbon exist and are known now. All that stands in our way now to avert these catastrophic events are our politicians. Our politicians here in the United States, standing in the way of our planet's survival, are becoming known as the most selfish, most self-centered and probably the most stupid creatures in power the world has ever known. Of course historical records are not available from the Easter Island or Anasazi cultures.

Write your congressman and urge them to read the recent IPCC report that states that climate change is happening now and that humans are responsible for the rapid warming of the planet. Everyone has a role to play in reclaiming our dying planet. Not sure who your representative is? Find them here. Not sure what to say? Here are some letters I have written to Representative Randy Hultgren, my representative (here and here).

Write them today and ask them to help us all in saving our planet and future generations. 

Don't remain silent. Make your role in addressing this crisis count.

Champions of the Order Lepidoptera

Earlier this summer I attended a workshop titled 'Finding and Rearing Giant Silk Moths' at the Elgin Public Museum a few miles north of where I live. I had no idea I would be interested in this before I received an email inviting me to attend and grew increasingly fascinated the more I watched these creatures up close. The workshop was led by Jim McGrath of the Nature Discovery Center in Michigan and its primary focus was education but also a hope to reintroduce these once plentiful giants back into our Northern Illinois area. My friends and I each came away from the workshop with printed instructions and three tiny Polyphemus caterpillars chewing on a leaf in a small resealable plastic bag. I spent the next month carrying my three guys around in a jar, bringing them to meetings and sharing the wonder of their beauty with whoever was polite enough to listen. I took one of them in its final instar to our church for a segment called 'For All Ages' to share with the children and was pleasantly surprised to find like-minded moth fanciers in the young boys and dad in the photo above.

They now refer to me as Moth Lady and when we saw each other again this past Sunday, they invited me to come over and visit their collection of caterpillars in various stages of development. They especially like to visit a spot west of town that has several milkweed plants growing unmolested from the weed killing townies. From these plants, they collect monarch butterfly eggs to take home and raise and then release.

At the Climate Reality training I attended earlier this month, I became aware of the current plight of the Monarchs through a fellow trainer, mentor Ina Warren,  and how important it is for these delicate beauties to have waystations throughout North America, such as the one my friends are standing in above. If you would like to be listed as a waystation for the Monarchs as they make they migrate through your area, click through to this Facebook page for more information: Milkweeds for Monarchs Waystations. 

From the Monarch Watch website: 

Why We Are Concerned
Milkweeds and nectar sources are declining due to development and the widespread use of herbicides in croplands, pastures and roadsides. Because 90% of all milkweed/monarch habitats occur within the agricultural landscape, farm practices have the potential to strongly influence monarch populations.

Unfortunately, the remaining milkweed habitats in pastures, hayfields, edges of forests, grasslands, native prairies, and urban areas are not sufficient to sustain the large monarch populations seen in the 1990s. Monarchs need our help.

What You Can Do
To offset the loss of milkweeds and nectar sources we need to create, conserve, and protect milkweed/monarch habitats. We need you to help us and help monarchs by creating "Monarch Waystations" (monarch habitats) in home gardens, at schools, businesses, parks, zoos, nature centers, along roadsides, and on other unused plots of land. Without a major effort to restore milkweeds to as many locations as possible, the monarch population is certain to decline to extremely low levels.

8/24/2013 Clarification: Orlie R. Taylor founded Monarch Watch and originated the idea of Waystations. My friend Ina Warren is an ardent supporter of the program and owner of the Milkweeds for Monarchs Waystations Facebook page promoting the waystations and alerting others to Monarch crisis.