Honey, We Fried the Planet

The guy that I know who goes on and on about mass extinction is not far from the truth.

Ten years ago, when I started this blog, I was very into the idea of ‘peak oil’.  A lot of people were talking about it.  We were also very aware of climate change, but thought that peak oil would hit before any real damage could happen.

I still believe in peak oil, in the sense that there is only a finite amount of oil in the earth and much of it will be out of reach, since it would take more energy to extract than it would give.  So it's been a kind of race between peak oil and climate change. Unfortunately, right now, climate change is winning.

I think a big part of this is our desperation to keep living the lifestyle that we’ve been living for as long as we can. Peak oil folks didn't see how desperate we would get. (The Petrocrats would use the word ‘ingenious’.)  Shale oil, fracking, and oil from the tar sands, along with deep offshore drilling, have certainly bought our lifestyle more time, but they are incredibly dirty ways to get oil, causing lots of pollution. Looking at the figures now, it seems like we still have plenty of available oil, in fact, more than enough to destroy the planet with.

Yes, it would be very possible to live differently and be able to sustain the world, but it seems increasingly unlikely that enough people will choose this path in time to make a difference.

I won't repeat all the awful facts. You can read the news on climate change and see where it's going. You can march and protest and chain yourself to oil tankers and live incredibly sustainable lives and even (but please don't) shoot politicians and CEOs, but unless you can get the majority of people to change their ways, I'm not sure that it will be enough.

Further, I am skeptical and worried about the urgency people approach this with. One of the things I say often is that it was urgency that got us into this mess, and I don't think urgency will get us out of it.

Are we doomed? My optimist says no, my pessimist says yes, and honestly I don't know. (As the saying goes, it's hard to make predictions, especially about the future.)

What I do know is that things are going to get worse, and the first and most important thing that I can think of to do, is to be nice to everyone. Yes, this is another version of being kind.  If we are doomed, think of it as palliative care, and if we get a chance to build a better future, I hope that kindness and compassion will be at the foundation of it.

In the meantime, whatever the future brings, we still have to get through today and tomorrow and spending your time fretting about might or even will happen simply saps your time and  energy that would be better used in getting something done now.

I realize that writing about the destruction of the world and then going on to other subjects feels a little like the newscaster reporting a horrible massacre and then saying, “And in other news…”, but it’s what we need to do in order to do something with our lives.

And, I am not saying that you shouldn't do anything. I am just saying you should do what you think is right, because you think it's the right thing to do, and maybe it will make a difference, but there are no guarantees.

Quote of the Day:  “There are those who are trying to set fire to the world,

We are in danger.

There is time only to work slowly,

There is no time not to love.” - Deena Metzger

Radical Lichenology

I’ve talked about lichens before in a post about viruses, lichens, and slime molds, all things that don't easily fit into the usual biological categories. The easiest thing to say about lichens is that, although they aren't a single species, they act as if they are.  What lichens really are is a relationship.

In the book, Radical Mycology, which I’ve referenced in the last two posts,  there is a chapter on lichens called, naturally, Radical Lichenology.  It's written by Nastassja Noell, who apparently has a degree in Lichenology from Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. She defines lichens as being at least “a symbiotic relationship between a fungus and algae and/or photosynthesizing cyanobacteria.”  She goes on to point out that a lichen often contains more than that--sometimes including many other microbes and even fungi, becoming a “miniature ecosystem.”

According to her, there are three ways of looking at lichens.   The first is the ‘Reductionist Perspective’, seeing a lichen as just a fungus and a photosynthesizer working together.  The second is what she calls the ‘Mycocentric Perspective’, seeing the fungus as being in charge and treating the algae as if it were a plant that the fungus is raising.  The third is the ‘Systems Perspective’, where the lichen is an ‘emergent property’, an ecosystem that includes all the living things that make up a lichen, as well as the light, and temperature, and gas levels, and nutrients involved.

Lichens grow very slowly, at the rate of perhaps a millimeter a year, but some of them last for thousands of years.  In dry times, they can go into a dormant, desiccated state in which they can survive for more than a hundred years only to revive when rehydrated. However, they are very sensitive to pollution, so much so that they can be used as indicators of the environmental health of an area.

The chapter contains a lot more about lichens, how to harvest them, how to cultivate them, and how to use them for food and medicine, but what interested me was the fascinating relationships involved in a lichen as well as the systems perspective  that Nastassja Noell takes in looking at lichens and talking about them.

Quote of the day: “Lichens are expressions of pure joy.  … Inside the ecosystem of a lichen are most of the primary components of life: fungi, bacteria, algae, and cyanobacteria, all living in a discrete synergistic system that can rarely be synthesized in vitro but can withstand the extreme conditions of outer space….  The fungal symbiont creates a thick protective skin around the algae to protect it from desiccation.  In exchange, the algae gives the fungus photosynthesized sugars. And together, they form shapes and pigments that help them survive and thrive in their other-worldly surroundings.” - Nastassja Noell

The Soul of Soil

I’m here at a co-op house that I usually stay in when I’m in the Boston area and I was looking for something to read.  A novel perhaps?  But I couldn’t find any novels I wanted to read on the co-ops bookshelves.  I was finally settling down with a book on “libertarian paternalism”, when I happened to spot The Soul of Soil on an out of the way shelf.

There it was.  Soil chemistry.  Soil biology.  Compost!  I love this stuff.

I’ve written about soil stuff before (see particularly The Story of Soil, 3/13/10, and Soil Science, 7/20/13) but it’s always good finding and reading more.  This book is especially good because it takes a systemic viewpoint.   It talks about organic agriculture, and regenerative agriculture, and even permaculture, but mostly the authors (Grace Gershuny & Joseph Smillie) claim the title ‘ecological agriculture’ for what they do.

The only thing that bothers me is that they sometimes seem to not understand some basic biology.  For example, the authors appear to need to describe everything as either an animal or a plant.  They actually describe fungi as plants that “do not contain chlorophyll”.  This is a system of classification that hasn’t been used in biology since the 1970s.  But their knowledge of chemistry and the various soil critter seems sound and they even point out that the most common variety of earthworm in North America came with the Europeans and “turned out to be better adapted to cultivated conditions than its native predecessor.”

As far as I’m concerned, I can’t read too much about the soil.  I think that taking care of the soil is key to taking care of ourselves, especially when it comes to growing food or any form of plant life.  The authors use the quote: “Feed the soil, not the plant,” and go on to say “soil organisms will provide a balanced diet to crops.”  I’m willing to forgive a lot to anyone who cares this much about the soil a little mistake or two.  (Plus, this is a really fun book to read--at least if you like soil.)

Quote of the Day: “...to understand soil is to be aware of how everything affects and is affected by it.  We are all part of the soil ecosystem.” - Grace Gershuny & Joseph Smillie

Emergence

Emergence by Steven Johnson is a wonderful, frustrating book.  

It starts off talking about slime molds, which are sort of the mascot of the self-organizing systems world.  These are tiny single celled creatures that, when threatened, coalesce into a multicellular organism.  For years scientists searched for the ‘pacemaker’ cells that started the process.  It turns out there are no pacemakers.  Slime molds have a completely decentralized method of coalescing.  

I’ve referenced Steven Johnson before--way back in a post on Clustering and Coping (8/13/08).  Even then I mentioned he had a book called Emergence.  I just hadn’t read it until recently.  I picked it up in the bookstore that I’m now working in when I visited it in November.  I’ve now read it twice.

One of the things it reminds me of is Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom’s book, The Starfish and the Spider, which I’ve talked about in two early posts: Catalysts and Network Weavers (8/31/08) and Decentralization (12/9/08).  The big difference is that Brafman and Beckstrom’s book focuses on the phenomenon of decentralization, where Johnson focuses on emergence which is a decentralized process.  In some ways this is the most important process in self-organization.  And, in many ways, it’s unpredictable.

What’s wonderful about Emergence is how clearly Johnson spells out what’s involved in the process.  What’s frustrating is that he seems seduced by its uses in corporate culture, cybernetics and the internet, and particularly entertainment systems.  However he does cover (briefly) cell systems and immune systems, and spends more time with cities as organisms (which I find very interesting) before he gets caught in the morass of the world wide web and online games.

However, just when I was about to give up on the book, he steers into emergence and decentralization in politics and gives the WTO Seattle protests of 1999 as an example.  (Of course, this type of organizing was going on long before this--I see it dating back to feminist and anarchist organizing in the 1970s.  For more about what was happening back then, see my post Social Movements in the Seventies, 3/30/09.)  I wish he spent more time on this.

This is a good book to read in conjunction with other systems books and books on decentralization.  By itself, it’s only a small (but significant piece) but it’s incredibly useful in understanding the whole.  I’ll end with the warning at the end of the book: “...it is both the promise and the peril of swarm logic that the higher level behavior is almost impossible to predict in advance.  You never really know what lies at the other end of a phase transition until you press play and find out.  That is the lesson of Gerald Edelman’s recipe for simulating a flesh-and-blood organism: you set up a system of various pattern-recognition devices and feedback loops, connecting the virtual organism to a simulated environment.  And then you see what happens.”

That’s emergence.

Quote of the Day:  “This emphasis on rules might seem like the antithesis of the open-ended, organic systems… but nothing could be further from the truth.  Emergent systems... are rule governed systems: their capacity for learning and growth and experimentation derives from their adherence to low-level rules…  If any of these systems… suddenly started following their own rules, or doing away with rules altogether, the system would stop working: there’d be no global intelligence, just a teeming anarchy of isolated agents, a swarm of without logic.  Emergent behaviors… are all about living within the boundaries defined by rules, but also using that space to create something greater than the sum of its parts.” - Steven Johnson

The Four Rs

As we think about social change, what are kind of change are we aiming for?

One term that many folks use--and I've used it a lot in the past (for 87 posts according to Bloggers label tally)--is sustainability.  (An early post I wrote on this is Sustainability, 10/14/08.)  At this point, I no longer believe that simple sustainability can be the objective.  While it's better to have things sustainable than not, being sustainable is the least we can do.  As one activist put it, "If you have a new relationship and someone asks you how it's going, how does it sound to answer, 'It's sustainable'?  Certainly not very enthusiastic."

What lies beyond sustainable?

1) Restorative.  The world is already degraded.  Do we want to sustain it in its present, debilitated state? Our first goal should be to return the planet back to healthy, thriving ecosystems.  Imagine streams cleared up, soil built back, forests and farmland restored.  One of the keys to restoring the planet is having more plants.  Plants take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, put more oxygen into the atmosphere, and provide food for animals and fungi.  (See my post on The Most Important Chemical Equations, 11/14/14)  Things like planting trees, growing food, and using green roofs all involve the use of plants and can help restore the air and build back ecosystems.

2) Regenerative.  Here we are going beyond restoring systems to creating systems that are renewing and revitalizing. We are keeping the momentum going, working toward a world that models the way ecosystems work and grow, and keep growing and keep creating new life. Compost is one way to do this. (See my post, Thinking in Circles, 1/6/13) It's important to note that we are talking about growth that's in balance, growing life within systems, not the kind of unrestrained growth of cancer or capitalism.  We're talking about new life, not just more of the same.

3) Robust.  Strong, sturdy, healthy, vigorous.  Not only renewing and regenerative, but capable of dealing with adverse conditions.  If we're talking about going beyond sustainable, we're definitely talking about creating things that are strong.  How do we protect fragile ecosystems?  How do we build systems that not only survive, but thrive?

4) Resilient.  Beyond even robust.   Able to withstand trauma and bounce back quickly from problems.  Here we create things that can be thriving and sustainable even when things get rough.  And, as we know, no matter what kind of world we work for and create, there will always be difficulties. Here we are building to last, and last in a way that supports dynamic, flourishing systems.  While nothing is invulnerable, things that are robust and resilient can take a lot of wear and tear.

Imagine creating a world that's restorative, regenerative, robust, and resilient.  Imagine something that's thriving and flourishing.  Doesn't that sound much better than sustainable?

Next, 4R communities.


Quote of the Day: "Resilience is true security." - Starhawk

Is Everything Connected?

Last year, when I thought that I was going to be moving to a Lyme-ridden area of New York state, I started reading everything I could find on ticks and Lyme disease.  When I found that the library had a book on the ecology of Lyme, I knew I had to read it.  And it was a pretty good book, covering aspects of the disease I hadn't found in other places.  But one statement in the book, a little section about ecology rather than Lyme, irked me.  Here's part of the passage:

"Just as I began my research on the ecology of Lyme disease in 1991, I read what to me was an astonishing statement by leading scientists about ecological systems.  The statement was published in Science magazine as a part of what was called the 'Top 20 Greatest Hits of Science'.  This was a list of the 20 most important, fundamental, and enduring generalities, or 'laws,' in all of the sciences...  The science of ecology was represented by one entry, listed as number 20: 'All life is connected.'
"Of course, this statement  in no way represents a universal law of ecology and does not belong on a list intended to foster scientific literacy.  The main reason is that it's too vague to interpret unequivocally or to evaluate rigorously.  ... 'All life is connected' is either a false statement (think about trying to detect the effect of an oak tree falling in Delaware on a blue whale in the South Pacific) or utterly untestable."

(Richard S. Ostfeld, Lyme Disease: The Ecology of a Complex System, Oxford University Press, 2011, pp 5-7)

As someone who does believe that 'All life is connected', I was bothered by this statement.  I suppose from a strictly scientific view, this is an untestable proposition.  He later quotes John Muir: "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe."  He says that this "is lovely poetry, but it is not science."  Well, poetry or science or faith, I do believe that everything on earth is connected.  And, personally, I feel like Richard Ostfeld had thrown down the gauntlet when he talked about "the effect of an oak tree falling in Delaware on a blue whale in the South Pacific."  Is there an effect?  What is it?  Can we show it?

I do believe that I can show the effect of that tree falling on the whale that's so far away.  But before I try to demonstrate, I'm going to ask you, my unseen reader, to take a moment to see if you can figure out what effects the tree might have on the whale.  It's a puzzle, if you will.  I saw an answer rather quickly.  What do you think?

(These images are here to give you a chance to stop and take a bit of time to see what you can figure out.)

Okay.  Here's my thinking:

I think that the oak tree falling would have an effect on the blue whale but it's so small that it would be hard to detect.  For purposes of this thought experiment, let's amp it up--instead of one tree falling in Delaware, what would happen if all of them fell?  Let's clear-cut the state.  (This isn't so preposterous as it seems.  A lot more timber than that gets cut down yearly in the Amazon and the estimates I've seen would make the amount of forest lost around the world in a year about 25 times the size of Delaware.)  One of the immediate effects of this tree loss would be a significant lessening of oxygen in the air and an corresponding increase in carbon dioxide.  (See my last post on The Most Important Chemical Equations for more on this.)  But the whale is in the ocean.  How does the change in atmosphere effect her?

The increasing amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a large contributing factor to ocean acidification.  The more CO2 in the air, the more acid the oceans.  And, of course, the increase in carbon dioxide is contributing to global warming and particularly the rising ocean temperature. I doubt that the whale would enjoy either the warming temperatures or the more acid waters.

So, yes, a single oak tree falling in Delaware would have an effect (very small) on a blue whale in the South Pacific--and clear-cutting the state would have an even bigger effect on the whale.

Okay,  so once again, I still believe that everything is connected--and especially all life on earth.

Quote of the Day: "We are all together in this, we are all together in this single living ecosystem called planet earth." - Sylvia Earle

The Most Important Chemical Equations

I've become a chemistry geek in my old age.  It's surprising because I hated chemistry in college.  These days I'm busy memorizing the first few lines of the periodic table.

I certainly don't expect most people to share my love for chemistry, but there are two equations that I wish that everyone knew, because all human life and almost all life on earth depends on them.  I have written about the equations before (in posts on Biology 101: Photosynthesis, 5/17/12, and Biology 101: Cellular Respiration, 5/10/12) but this is important, and it's been a while, and I'm hoping this post will tie some of this together.  I also hope to build on this in upcoming posts.

The first equation is the one for photosynthesis: 6 CO2 + 6 H2O (+ sunlight) → C6H12O6 + 6 O2

This means that a plant uses six molecules of carbon dioxide and six molecules of water as well as the energy of the sun to create a molecule of sugar (glucose--C6H12O6) and six molecules of oxygen.  It's an elegant equation.  You can count the carbons (C), hydrogens (H), and oxygens (O) and there's the same number on each side of the arrow.

Basically plants suck carbon dioxide out of the air and (along with water) use it to build sugars--and from there build themselves (plant walls are made of cellulose which is made from long chains of glucose strung together).  When you look at a towering tree, you are looking at something built mostly out of carbon dioxide and water.  On a planet facing climate disruption because there is too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, more plants and more trees are a big part of the answer.

There is a second, equally important equation that explains why we and most life exists.  It's the equation for cellular respiration, which is the process that cells (including our cells) use to function, and therefore it's the process that keeps us alive.  And it's exactly the reverse of the equation for photosynthesis:
C6H12O6 + 6 O2 → 6 CO2 + 6 H2O (+ energy)

What this says is that, in order for our cells to get the energy they need to survive, they use oxygen and food (broken back down into glucose).  This is why we need to breathe and eat.  And the process of cellular respiration gives off carbon dioxide and water (which we exhale and pee out of us).

Notice that plants (during the day) give off oxygen and store sugar which is what we need to survive, and we give off carbon dioxide and water, which is what the plants need for photosynthesis.  It's a perfect circle.  And all of us are totally dependant on plants for oxygen (plants are the reason for the oxygen in the atmosphere) and the sugars (etc) we need for energy.

All the carbon in our bodies comes from plants--directly or indirectly.  Even an extreme carnivore who eats nothing but carnivores is dependent on plants (someone somewhere along that food chain eats an herbivore that eats plants), because almost all animals (and fungi, for that matter) can't photosynthesize and need to get their carbon from plants which can.

So study these equations and thank a plant for your life.  Plants are what make the world sustainable.


Quote of the Day: "We cannot cheat on DNA. We cannot get round photosynthesis. We cannot say I am not going to give a damn about phytoplankton. All these tiny mechanisms provide the preconditions of our planetary life." - Barbara Ward

Bioshelters

The first half of the book, Bioshelter Market Garden, by Darrell Frey, is your standard tour around a permaculture farm.  (In fact, that's the subtitle, "A Permaculture Farm".)  It isn't that different from  Sepp Holzer's book (see my post, Permaculture--Austrian Style, 8/5/14) or the book by Ben Falk that I hope to review next, except that Sepp Holzer's farm is in Austria and Ben Falk's farm is in Vermont, USA.  Darrell Frey's farm (Three Sisters Farm named after the Native American and permaculture 'guild' of squash, beans, and corn growing together) is also in the US, in what he refers to as "northwestern Pennsylvania".  He seems reluctant to give a more exact address, probably to discourage unwelcome visitors.

But what makes this book stand out is what he focuses on in the middle of the book, the bioshelter of the title.  Bioshelters were developed at the New Alchemy Institute, which ran for twenty-one years on Cape Cod in Massachusetts (1971- 1992).  According to Frey, "A bioshelter is a greenhouse managed as an indoor ecosystem.  ... they represent a synthesis of energy-efficient architecture and ecological design."  The bioshelter is the centerpiece of the farm and book has two chapters devoted to 'Bioshelter Defined and Designed' and 'Bioshelter Management'.  It goes on to chapters on 'Compost and Biothermal Resources' (both within the bioshelter and outside of it) and 'Chickens in the Greenhouse' (a part of their bioshelter ecosystem).  He also includes an interesting chapter on 'Permaculture for Wetlands'. 

There's lots and lots of useful stuff in this book--especially if you want to learn about bioshelters and how they could be helpful for commercial farming.  I'd strongly recommend it.  About my only complaint about this book is that for some reason the author included the exact same picture that he took of the "Composting greenhouse at The New Alchemy Institute in 1988" three times in the book--twice with the exact same caption--something that's odd but doesn't negate anything in the book.


Quote of the Day:  "Biodiversity and environmental quality are not just nice things to learn about on cable TV or in magazines.  The natural world is the foundation upon which we all depend.  Stewardship begins in our yards and gardens, and it extends to the choices  we make in what we consume.  The decade or two ahead are critical.  Humans have managed and impacted bioregions for tens of thousands of years.  But the choices we are making now have a stronger and longer-lasting impact on the planet than at any time in human existence." - Darrell Frey

Permaculture--Austrian Style

Permaculture is from Australia.  Sepp Holzer is a farmer in Austria, halfway around the globe.  He inherited his farm in 1962 and began experimenting and doing his work his own way.  In 1995, he was told that what he was doing was permaculture.  Herr Holzer said that when he then read a bunch of books on permaculture, he agreed with all the principles.  He was surprised to find out that what he had been doing was basically the same as the methods of a world-wide movement, a movement officially begun in 1978, sixteen years after he had started his experiments.

Sepp Holzer's Permaculture is a useful addition to a permaculture library, focusing on how a farmer in Austria independently discovered the same principles that Bill Mollison and David Holmgren came up with.  What's important is that, as Patrick Whitefield points out in his foreward to the book, is that just as each place on Earth has its own ecology, so must the application of permaculture be different in each place.  Whitefield says that "An important part of permaculture is getting to know your own individual place.  Every patch of the Earth has its unique personality and character, just as each person has."

Sepp Holzer developed his own take on permaculture, a version adapted to the Alpine region he lives in.  And he came up with some methods different from what other permaculture farmers were doing.  One thing that he is known for is the development of Hugelkultur, a technique that uses the idea of burying branches or logs to fertilize the soil, add carbon, and retain water.  I found it interesting that the word hugelkultur is not used in the book--I suspect that this is a case of overtranslating the book. (Originally in German, of course.)  However, the concepts behind hugelkultur are clearly spelled out in the section of the book on raised bed gardening.

While the book concentrates on land design, alternative agriculture, and gardening (permaculture mainstays), Holzer devotes one chapter to fruit trees and another to cultivating mushrooms.  There's lots of useful information in this book, especially if you're doing permaculture in a temperate landscape.  It's interesting to me that Holzer's farm, Krameterhof, is another place not included in Birnbaum and Fox's Sustainable [R]evolution (see my last post). Holzer also devotes a chapter to other projects that he's working with in Scotland, Thailand, and in a section of Austria almost two hours north of his farm.  He also mentions consulting on projects in Brazil, Columbia, and Montana (USA), which he says that he talked more about in his previous book The Rebel Farmer.  I think this book is worth reading if you want one more version of what is possible.


Quote of the Day: "You must see and understand this technique as a whole, so that it can be used profitably.  Only those who practice permaculture can also understand it and pass it on to others.  This is why it makes no sense to simply create a permaculture system just like mine.  You must learn it for yourself like learning the alphabet at school." - Sepp Holzer

Worldwide [R]evolution

Charles Reich's The Greening of America was published in 1970.  Marilyn Ferguson's The Aquarian Conspiracy came out in 1980.  Paul Hawken's Blessed Unrest was published in 2007. In my post in 2009 on The Great Turning (11/15/09), I critiqued all of them.  It's easy to see mass social movements--but what becomes of them?

Not quite a year later, I said something that I didn't see connected all of this at the time.  I ended my post entitled From the Ground Up (9/20/10), talking about how various social movements were "pointing us toward something. Something new and radical, something that guides us in an alternative direction, toward a different kind of world. A blueprint, if you will, for building a new way of living. From the ground up." 

For my Quote of the Day, I chose lines from Chellis Glendinning, including:  "This urge to wholeness is with us still; ... Many of the social and cultural movements of the twentieth century are expressions of it: Gandhian nonviolence, the worker's movement of the 1930's, the kibbutz, Martin Luther King, Jr., the anti-war efforts, the hippies and yippies, the women's movement, the human potential movement, back-to-the-land, natural foods, Earth Day, permaculture, bioregionalism, the men's movement, voluntary simplicity. So too is the vast arising of passion for spiritual pursuits: Tibetan Buddhism, drumming circles, wilderness quests. And then there are today's social and psychological uprisings: the call for democracy and environmental justice, ... the rising of indigenous identity and self-empowerment." 

Another way of looking at this is to see Reich's, and Ferguson's, and Hawken's work as ongoing documentation of what Chellis Glendinning is calling that 'urge to wholeness'.  There is something going on outside the mainstream press, with many failures, but continuing on.  I've been documenting some of it in my posts on communities. 

Recently, I've read a bunch of books that look at permaculture related things, some in the form of communities and some as farms or other projects.  My next few posts will review some of these books focusing on attempts to create permaculture stuff around the world.  I want to begin with a book that focuses on these projects all over the globe.  The book is called Sustainable [R]evolution by Juliana Birnbaum and Louis Fox.

It's subtitle is 'Permaculture in Ecovillages, Urban Farms, and Communities Worldwide'.  The most notable thing for me about this book, which covers sixty projects, is how many amazing communities and projects that I know of that it doesn't cover.  None of the projects covered in the next three books that I plan to post on are covered in this book.  Neither is any of the communities in the Federation of Egalitarian Communities  (see my posts on Egalitarian Communities, 10/22/08, and Communities of Communities, 6/9/12) listed.  Nor are what I think of as two of the top eco-villages in the US, Dancing Rabbit (also see my posts on First Week at Dancing Rabbit, 5/28/13, and Thoughts as I Leave Dancing Rabbit, 6/14/13) and Earthaven. And one of the most amazing places outside of the US as far as I'm concerned, Gaviotas  is also not mentioned, although another place in Columbia (the Atlantida Ecovillage) has a listing.    At first I was disgruntled about all that they didn't include, but on second thought, I'm excited.  They have sixty projects and don't even include all the ones I just mentioned.  Maybe there is a ground up, worldwide [r]evolution happening.

There are a bunch of projects that I know of listed, although I wouldn't think of some of them as top tier.  Some of the better known include The Farm (in Tennessee), the Lama Foundation (in New Mexico), the LA Ecovillage (in California), the Ecovillage at Ithaca, New York, Growing Power (in Wisconsin), Findhorn (in Scotland), Tamera (Portugal), Damanhur (Italy), the Dead Sea Valley Permaculture Project (Jordan), Auroville (India), the Ladakh Project (India), and Melliodora (Australia), which is the farm run by David Holmgren, one of the founders of Permaculture.  I had also heard of most of the other North American projects, which included OUR Ecovillage (in British Columbia), the Bullock Homestead (in Washington state), City Repair (in Oregon), the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center (in California), and the Greater World Earthship Community (in New Mexico).  (Actually, I'd heard of the Earthships more than the community on that one.)  However, the entry that really surprised me was for The People's Grocery in California.    I've been there and blogged about it (see my post entitled Update 4: Eco-Oakland, Riveting Richmond, and Groovy SF, 10/18/12).  It's a great place and doing really important work, but I didn't think of it as being well known at all.

The book also includes a useful introductory section that goes into basic permaculture concepts and some points about how the book is organized.  I got it out of the library, but if you want to get a taste of what seems to be a growing worldwide movement, this is a good book to get.


Quote of the Day:  "At the time of this writing, hundreds of thousands of people worldwide have completed permaculture design courses, and the network continues to expand on the original ideas through thousands of related trainings, publications, garden projects, and internet forums.  There are projects in at least seventy-five countries in the world, and during the period we were doing the research for and writing this book, the number of these projects grew exponentially.  The approach is being used to design new sites, both urban and rural.  It is being applied by individuals and communities in existing towns and cities on every scale.  Permaculture design initiatives have achieved inspiring results, restoring degraded landscapes, reversing desertification, and creating self-sustaining food systems.  It includes hundreds of strategies that together begin to mitigate climate change, some directly drawing carbon out of the atmosphere through healthy soil-building cycles, no-plow farming methods, and tree planting." - Juliana Birnbaum

Ecology as a Bridge

Last year, as some few followers of this blog may remember, I spent much of the year reading a textbook on biology--and posted some of what I learned, including posts on cells (Biology 101: Cells, 5/3/12), Cellular Respiration (5/10/12), and Photosynthesis (5/17/12).  In spite of the fact that I wrapped up the series early, I read through almost all of the book--almost everything except for the last section which was on ecology.  That was ironic because ecology was one of the things I was most interested in.  This year, as I was traveling--and up to the present, the book has been in a sealed box in a friend's basement.

However, as the last bunch of posts indicate, as I've been resting from my community travels, I've been going on a science reading jag.  I got very excited when I found a classic book on ecology and ecosystems at the co-op next to where I'm living.  The book is Ecology: A Bridge Between Science and Society, by Eugene P Odum.

This is a great introductory text.  It covers almost all the basics including Levels of Organization, emergent properties, The Ecosystem, biotic communities, the Gaia hypothesis, Energetics (which I'll write a bit more on later), various cycles (hydrological, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, and carbon), soil as a resource (see my post on Soil Science, 7/20/13), Population and Community Ecology (including things like r- and K-Selection, carrying capacity, commensalism,  cooperation, mutualism, and a whole section on the lichens),  successional theory, and Major Ecosystem Types of the World.  Eugene Odum ends the book with a chapter focused on how the human race can become sustainable, which he calls The Transition from Youth to Maturity.  The book is written simply but with lots of clear information. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to get a basic understanding of ecology and ecosystems.

Eugene Odum's brother, Howard T Odum  was also an ecologist. I was able to get one of his books (Environment, Power, and Society) out from the library.  This book is focused on energetics and is a lot more technical and detailed than his brother's Ecology book.  I can imagine it would be useful if you wanted to study ecological energetics in depth, but I decided that it was too technical for what I was currently looking for.

If you are interested in permaculture or understanding how ecosystems work or even the biological and ecological understandings of today's multiple crises, I think that Eugene Odum's Ecology: A Bridge Between Science and Society is a great place to start exploring the concepts you need to understand.

Quote of the Day: "These scenerios are not predictions, since, as we have already stressed, no one (and no computer) can really predict the future; they are more like weather forecasts that have a certain probability of being right or wrong.
"...The logical consequences of placing value only on the individual are continued rapid expansion of world population and degraded life-support ecosystems.  Together these will lead to a less than satisfactory life for all but perhaps a few very rich people, since air, food, and water will be increasingly poor in quality and short in supply.
"The alternate scenerio ... is based on the assumption that we will turn more and more to the long-term view, with value placed on species (ours and all the others) and on maintaining healthy ecosystems worldwide. The logical consequences ... are reduced population growth (with stabilization in the next century) and healthy life-support systems, leading to favorable survival for all people and all life." - Eugene Odum

The Earth's Spheres

While reading books on meteorology and ecology, I've found references to the 'spheres' of the Earth.  One book mentions four spheres and another book mentions four spheres in one place and five in another.  In one place it's called 'the Earth system', in another 'the climate system', and a third just calls it 'Spaceship Earth'.

Some quotes: "As we study Earth, it becomes apparent that our planet can be viewed as a system with many separate but interacting parts or subsystems.  The hydrosphere, atmosphere, biosphere, and solid Earth and all of their components can be studied separately.  However, the parts are not isolated.  Each is related in some way to the others to produce a complex and continuously interacting whole that we call the Earth system."  - Lutgens and Tarbuck, The Atmosphere, p 4

"...there is a climate system that includes the atmosphere, hydrosphere, solid Earth, biosphere, and cryosphere. (The cryosphere is the ice and snow that exist at Earth's surface.)  The climate system involves the exchanges of energy and moisture that occur among the five spheres." - ibid, p 321

"The biosphere or ecosphere merges imperceptibly (that is, without sharp boundaries) into the lithosphere (the rocks, sediments, mantle, and core of the earth), the hydrosphere (surface and ground water), and the atmosphere, the other major subdivisions of Spaceship Earth." - Eugene Odum, Ecology: A Bridge Between Science and Society, p 31

As I've been reading books on geology, soil science, meteorology, and now, ecology (probably the subject of my next post), I've become more and more aware of how connected they all are.  I tried to get that across in my post on The Chemistry of the World, 8/2/13, where I talked about how plants use minerals from the Earth's crust (the lithosphere) and chemicals from the atmosphere (especially carbon dioxide and nitrogen) as well as water (from the hydrosphere) to grow from, and how we then get those same elements from the plants.  And, as I've talked about in my posts on composting (see for example, Thinking in Circles, 1/6/13), eventually we return those elements back to the earth.

It's interesting thinking about these spheres in terms of climate change as well.  The book on The Atmosphere listed the elements in the atmosphere by percentages and parts per million.  They listed Carbon Dioxide (CO2) as 0.036% or 360 parts per million.  The book has a copyright of 1998.  The news this year is that CO2 in the atmosphere has just reached 400 ppm.  The book also states that "...glacial ice is the Earth's largest reservoir of water outside of the ocean, accounting for 85 percent of the planet's fresh water.  ... As glaciers are composed of solid water, they are usually considered to be part of the hydrosphere.  Sometimes Earth's ice is placed in it's own 'sphere',the cryosphere (cryo is from the Greek for 'icy cold')."  It occurs to me with the rate that the glaciers are melting, that distinction may not be that relevant for long.

It's all only one planet and everything is connected with everything else--and everything changes everything else.  The boundaries between what we call living things and the systems of air, rock, water, and ice aren't as great as we might think.


Quote of the Day:  "The biosphere includes all life on Earth and penetrates those parts of the solid Earth, hydrosphere, and atmosphere in which living organisms can be found.  ...it should be emphasized that organisms do more than just respond to their physical environment.  Indeed, through countless interactions, life-forms help maintain and alter their physical environment. Without life, the makeup and nature of the solid Earth, hydrosphere, and atmosphere would be very different.  ...
"Humans are part of the Earth system, a system in which the living and nonliving components are entwined and interconnected.  Therefore our actions produce changes in all of the other parts." - Frederick Lutgens and Edward Tarbuck

The Possibility Alliance

A week ago Monday, we got to visit yet another community, this one in La Plata, 40 miles away from Rutledge, called the Possibility Alliance (and also known as the Still Waters Sanctuary).  I had hoped to visit it after I was done with my Dancing Rabbit visit because the train station I was being dropped off at is in La Plata.  However, I was told the only time we could visit was in the middle of our DR stay (because they're in a 'retreat year'), so I figured it wouldn't happen.  However, it turned out that most of the
visitors group wanted to check out the Possibility Alliance and a couple
of people had cars so a whole bunch of us went off attend their community
tour.

The tour was led by Ethan Hughes, their charismatic leader. (At least one
person at DR warned me about him--but for our brief visit he seemed fairly
easy-going.)  He began the tour by citing the mission of the Possibility
Alliance: "Living for the upliftment of all life and reaching for our
highest human potential."  He also claimed that the PA was guided by five
practices: 1) Simplicity--he said others called it 'radical simplicity'
and he thought of it as 'necessary simplicity', 2) Service--many different
kinds of service, but one that's often associated with the PA is their
'Superhero Bike Rides' where people dress up as superheroes and ride into
towns offering to help in any way that's useful, 3) Social Engagement and
Nonviolent Activism, 4) Self Transformation, and 5) Silliness,
Celebration, Gratitude, and Joy.  Finally, after quizzing us on things
like dying people's regrets and what our most passionate wishes were, he
led us on a tour of the sanctuary.

We got to see his house and the new timberframed/straw-bale home that they were building, the very mellow draft horses that they own, the pond that they've recently tranformed, and the land and how they've been taking care of it.

Life at the Possibility Alliance is extremely low-tech.  They don't have
electricity (they use candles, they also don't have a website although
they do have a phone).  All the building done there is with hand tools
rather than power tools.  They try to apply permaculture principles to
their work.

They also run on 'the gift economy'--taking what is offered but not
charging for all their courses and workshops, including a permaculture
design certification course which other places often charge enormous
amounts of money.  We all enjoyed the tour and the place, although we were
clear that this was only a taste of what the place was about.

For another view of the PA, see this post by leavergirl on her blog Leaving Babylon.


Quote of the Day: "What we would like to do is change the world.  Make it
a little easier for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God
intended them to do.... There is nothing we can do but love, dear
God--please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor,
to love our enemy." - Dorothy Day (as quoted in the Possibility Alliance
newsletter)

Humanure

If you read my last post, you may know where I'm going with this.  If you're squeamish about body functions, you may also want to stop reading now.  And, warning, the language is going to get a bit rougher than usual.

Joseph Jenkins, the author of The Humanure Handbook, puts it bluntly: "The world is divided into two categories of people: those who shit in drinking water and those who don't.  We in the western world are in the former class.  We defecate in water, usually purified drinking water.  After polluting the water with our body's excrements, we flush the once pure but now polluted water 'away', meaning we probably don't know where it goes, nor do we care."

The Humanure Handbook means to change all that. Jenkins originally wrote it and self-published it, creating 250 copies--which was about as much as he could imagine selling.  The first edition went through four printings and eventually sold over 10,000 copies.  The second edition (which I got out of the library) is distributed by Chelsea Green publishers and will probably sell a lot more.

It covers all the basics that you need to know: how to make a simple bucket toilet arrangement and how to compost what you collect; where to buy composting toilets (which are quite expensive--compared to the do-it-yourself versions); the process of composting (basically anything, but with an emphasis on humanure--which is shorthand for human manure); a detailed chapter on pathogens entiled 'Worms and Disease'; and lots of reassurance on the safety of the process.  The important thing to know is that you need to add a carbon source if you don't want it to get smelly and attract insects--most toilets I've used (and what he recommends) use sawdust, the same way that food scrap composting piles tend to use leaves.  He also includes a chapter on 'Alternative Graywater Systems', which doesn't quite have to do with humanure but is also quite useful, and has appendices on 'Sources of Wetland Plants' and 'State Regulations' for 'Composting Toilets, Graywater Systems, and Constructed Wetlands'. 

As you might guess, I think this is an amazing and incredibly useful book.  Given the complexities of the subject and concerns about spreading disease if you don't do it right, I would recommend that anyone who wants to compost their feces should read this book.  My one concern is that Jenkins occasionally attacks or puts down 'fecophobes'--ie, people who can't deal with the fact that their excrement needs to be dealt with.  I understand his frustration, but given the importance of spreading this information, a more understanding approach might be in order.  However, this shouldn't stop anyone from reading this book.  I think we all need the information it contains.

If you are skittish about composting your feces and want to start with something simpler, or you just pee a lot and don't always want to mix that into the compost (as Jenkins suggests that you do), the book Liquid Gold by Carol Steinfeld is a starting place for thinking about simply collecting and using urine.  It lists the composition of urine (lots of nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, calcium, magnesium, and sulfur--but also a lot of sodium and chloride), how to think about the carbon-nitrogen balance issue (urine is heavy in nitrogen and almost lacking in carbon), and recommendations on the best way to use it (compost it, add it to graywater, or dilute it and use directly on plants).  For use directly on plants, Steinfeld recommends eight parts water to one part urine. She ends the book with a chapter filled with examples of gardeners and farmers who use 'liquid gold' to increase productivity.  Unfortunately, the first third of the book is filled with 'urine lore' and pictures of cute urinals--which seems like filler material to me.   The author could have concentrated on the agricultural aspects and created a shorter, tighter pamphlet that would have addressed all the significant issues.  Still, the stuff here is important enough that I think it's worth at least reading this book.  It may be worth ordering or at least finding out if your local library will get it.

Finally, on a related subject, is a book called How to Shit in the Woods by Kathleen Meyer.  This is oriented toward campers and how not to pollute streams and groundwater with your droppings.  I wish I could recommend it but it is filled with camping tales and info on the word 'shit' and low on the information I think is important.  (Yes, an even higher ratio of filler material to the useful stuff than Liquid Gold.)  As far as I'm concerned, the most important information (as in how to actually 'shit in the woods') is simple and could be summed up in two sentences: "Choose a location well away from creeks, streams, and lakes--150 feet is generally recommended..." and "... dig down six to eight inches".  Beyond that, there is information about the spread of Giardia (a pathogen that for some reason Jenkins doesn't cover--and he covers a lot of pathogens), a chapter on peeing in the woods for women, and an interesting chapter on natural alternatives to toilet paper.  If any of this interests you, or you want a book with amusing stories of squatting in the woods, or if you find it cheap in a used bookstore, it may be worth getting.  Unfortunately, I doubt many libraries will carry it.

Just like regular composting, humanure (and 'liquid gold') closes the loop and creates a sustainable way of dealing with what is, after all, a natural process that each of us does every day.  If we want to create a world where we enrich the soil (rather than deplete it) as well as a world of zero waste, we are just going to have to deal with this.


Quote of the Day:  "It is ironic... that we humans have consistently ignored one problem that is very near to each of us--one waste issue that all of us contribute to each and every day... Perhaps one reason we have taken such a head-in-the-sand approach to the recycling of human *excrement is because we can't even talk about it. ... For *waste is not found in nature--it's strictly a human concept, a result of our own ignorance.  It's up to us humans to unlock the secret to its elimination.  Nature herself provides us with the key..." - Joseph Jenkins

Thinking in Circles

Yes, this is partly a play on the title of Donella Meadows' book, Thinking in Systems.  (See my posts on Learning from Modeling, 1/31/12, and Leverage Points and Graphs of the Future, 2/15/12, for a bit more about the book.) To be able to think in systems is a wonderful thing but I do find it difficult.  On the other hand, linear thinking is easier but causes many problems.  I think the first step to system thinking is thinking in circles. Circles (or 'loops' as the systems people would say) is the way that nature works on the small scale.

The most powerful first example I can give is photosynthesis and cellular respiration.  (I've discussed these in detail in my posts on Biology 101: Photosynthesis, 5/17/12, and Biology 101: Cellular Respiration, 5/10/12.) In photosynthesis, plants take in energy (in the form of sunlight) and carbon dioxide and water, and create sugars, as well as giving off oxygen (as a 'waste' product).  In cellular respiration, our cells take in sugar and oxygen and get energy from them--as well as giving off water and carbon dioxide.  Neither process would last long without the other.  We give the plants (and other organisms that use photosynthesis) what they need (carbon dioxide and water), the plants give us (and other animals) what we need (sugars and oxygen).  Yes, this is highly simplified, but the truth is that it does form a nice circular system--and one essential to our lives.

My other three examples are all drawn from composting, a process near and dear to my heart.  At least two of them can be compared with the 'linear' process that we now use--processes that seem crazier and crazier to me the more I think about them.

The first and most basic step is what most people think of as composting.  You take table scraps and leaves and let them rot together and you get rich soil.  You can then use this soil to grow more plants.  The circular model goes like this: food is eaten but the food scraps are used for compost which creates soil which is used to grow food which can be eaten and generates more food scraps to create more compost.  It goes round and round and round.  Compare this with the linear model that many people have lived by: food comes from somewhere (the supermarket?), we eat it and the scraps go out in the garbage to somewhere (in this case, usually landfills).  Meanwhile, conventional agriculture builds the fertility of the soil with chemicals made from oil (fertilizers) and there is a growing waste problem as our landfills fill up.  Which is sustainable?

But the process of composting can go two levels deeper.  (Warning, this is not for the squeamish--I will go to levels some people don't want to think about.  I suspect it's this very squeamishness that may be at the root of some of the problems.)

The next level down of composting is what happens to the food that we do eat.  Yes, we digest it and we excrete what we can't use.  The linear model for this is that we eat food from the supermarkets and then flush what we can't use down the toilet where it goes to that magical land of 'away'.  (In reality, into septic systems and often into our oceans.) In my next post I will review The Humanure Handbook by Joseph Jenkins, but a preview is that we can compost our feces (and urine), and use that to create even richer soil.  Again this becomes a circle where we eat food, and what our bodies can't use leaves as feces which can become composted into soil to grow more food.

But there is a deeper level of composting even more unimaginable to many people and that's composting ourselves.  Yes, our bodies after death can be composted. Natural burial is an alternative to the embalming, and metal caskets, and concrete vaults, that prevent nature from doing what it wants to do, and that's to turn our bodies back into soil.

Several authors that I've read point out that nature has no toxic waste sites.  The woods are not filled with the excrement of all the forest animals nor with their dead bodies.  Everything in nature is recycled back to the soil and from the soil grows more plants which feed the animals in the forest.  Nature acts in circles.  We need to think in circles. That's the only thing that's sustainable.


Quote of the Day: "We can't impose our will on a system. We can listen to what the system tells us, and discover how its properties and our values can work together to bring forth something much better than could ever be produced by our will alone." - Donella Meadows

Update 4: Eco-Oakland, Riveting Richmond, and Groovy SF

I can't believe that I'm out in Oakland, California.  As someone who seldom likes to leave New England, it seems bizarre to me to be traveling the country.  But I have a very dear friend out here who has wanted me to visit for a long time and this seemed like the best opportunity I'd have.  I took the train out here and I will write a post on my train adventures in the near future.

While I've been in Oakland I've visited some of the community groups that my friend has been working with.  One is Phat Beets Produce. They have a garden where they teach young people about growing food and make all of what they're growing available to the neighborhood.  They also run a great little farmer's market, which we visited on last Saturday. Another cool group that he is involved with is the People's Grocery.  They have a garden behind the California Hotel--a place which houses people with disabilities. When we visited the People's Grocery they were hosting an event where they made 'smoothies' with fresh vegetables and fruit and offered them to anyone who came by the busy urban intersection by the Hotel (located in a very low income area).  The MC for the event managed to pursuade on young skeptical kid to try a smoothie--which he then spat out.  Turns out he likes eating nachos.  But the MC stayed with him and got the smoothie makers to create a fresh food drink that he liked.  Maybe this will spark an interest in eating better--or at least create a seed that might flower later.  I was very impressed with the work that both of these groups are doing.

My friend and I also took a bike ride up to the Rosie the Riveter National Historical Park in Richmond, CA.  (Richmond is few towns north of Oakland.)  This is an amazing exhibit about how the needs around World War II led to changes that eventually sparked many social change efforts.  It gave me a view of the situation of women, blacks, and Asian and Latin groups in the 1940s and how the war changed everything.  It was a good reminder that the movements of the 50s, 60s, and 70s, did not come out of nowhere.  (For more on this time in US history, see my posts on World War Once More, 3/2/09, through Social Movements in the Seventies, 3/30/09.)

Recently we had a great time in San Francisco, which is across the bay from here. We did Sunday morning meditation with the Gay Buddhist Fellowship which had a nice group of mellow men, took in some of the 'Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival' (which featured Patti Smith--who is truly hardly bluegrass and who we didn't see--and Emmy Lou Harris--who is sort of bluegrass and who we caught a little of), and spent a night at the Red Victorian in Haight Ashbury which is not only a bed and breakfast, but also "a living peace museum".  Needless to say, wandering around Haight Ashbury was a trip.  Monday we biked around Golden Gate Park where we saw bison, as well as a whale off in the distance in San Francisco harbor and a blue heron up very close up in the lagoon behind the Tree Fern exhibit (very prehistoric looking) in the Park.

There are some wild and amazing things happening out here in the Bay Area.  But, much as I've enjoyed it, New England is still my home and I'm still hoping to settle down somewhere on the east coast.


Quote of the Day:  "What We Work For, What We Want:

1. Health Care Without Harm
2. Strong Economic Opportunities for small, disenfranchised farmers [sic]
3. Edible Parks, Edible Communities
4. Neighborhood Based Food Micro-Enterprise
5. Empowered Youth that Shape their Food System
6. Resiliant Communities Organized Through Food and Healing" - Phat Beets Produce brochure

Update 3: Life on the Farm

I'm now finishing up my time at Acorn. (See my last post, Update 2: The Acorn Community, for more about Acorn.) Here I want to focus on what it's been like living here.

I'm a city boy. For example, I always thought of morning glory as a pretty flower that grows on people's fences. Here at Acorn I've been trying to wipe it out because the vines were taking over and strangling the melons and squash that are being grown. And onions have always been just onions to me and garlic just garlic. Here I have been packaging 'Alliums' and I've been learning about many different varieties of onions, garlic, shallots, and leeks. (My favorite are 'Egyptian Walking Onion' and a variety of garlic called 'Music'.) And packaging seeds has taught me about many heirloom varieties of vegetables, beans, and grains.

(Incidentally, correction from my last post. I was told by another Acorn member that we don't actually buy produce from local farmers--almost every vegetable served here is grown here--or dumpster dived. They spend very little money on food here--at least according to someone who works in the gardens.)

The land here is beautiful--fields and woods and old farm buildings. At night I go out and look at all the stars (many more than you can see in Boston). I've been living in a tent for over three weeks and it's been fine--it's been kind of nice to be outdoors so much. (Although I suspect I'll enjoy being indoors in a real bed once again.) I've also been making friends with the dogs and the goats that live here--and and harvesting beans and okra and watermelons. Pretty heady stuff for someone who has never really lived on a farm before.

Today a group of us went out to Living Energy Farm, a community that's starting up about ten miles from here--it's really wild and green out there. The land is recovering from being clear-cut and they've started building some simple structures on it, as well as growing lots of vegetables there. They have been very slowly building on the land since they bought it about two years ago and the buildings are still pretty primitive. I'm not sure anyone lives there full time and the LEF community is really only a couple of people and a bunch of volunteer help. Very much a work in progress. I intend to visit them again when I'm at Twin Oaks in November.

 And I don't think I've flushed a toilet since I've been out in Virginia. We're encouraged to pee in the woods here and they have composting toilets for creating 'humanure'. When I have used a regular toilet, I've followed the 'mellow yellow' rule. Truly we can live fairly simply here on the farm.


Quote of the Day: "Acorn Community is a rural community of people living on the same plot of land and managing business together. ... We will share our land, labor, income, and other resources equally or according to need. ... The members of Acorn Community will strive to live our lives in a way that supports the basic human rights of people here and in the rest of the world. ... The members of Acorn Community will attempt to live in a way that is gentle on the environment, attempting to show an example of how this can practically be done." - from Acorn's Mission Statement

Biology 101: A Premature Wrap

I'll be traveling soon so I'm trying to tie up lots of loose ends.  I'm still reading that Biology book, but I have neither the time nor the energy (at least at this point) to cover any more topics.

In any case, even at this point the most enlightening things I read were the stuff on cellular respiration and photosynthesis and I'm glad I put out detailed posts on them.  (See Biology 101: Cellular Respiration, 5/10/12, and Biology 101: Photosynthesis, 5/17/12.)

I've since studied things like cellular communication, genetics, evolution, plant biology (aka botony), and I'm currently reading through "Animal Structure and Function" (aka anatomy and physiology--with a side trip through nutrition).  I just finished an interesting chapter (and side readings) on the immune system (which is a *lot* more complicated than I thought) and I'm currently reading about temperature regulation, water balance, and the excretory system.  I'm hoping to finish all the animal A&P before I leave, but I know I won't have time to get into the final section of the book which is on ecology, something I'd really like to have a mainstream scientific understanding of.  So I will be keeping this big heavy textbook, both so I can read the ecology section at some point and because this is such a great reference for so many things that I'm interested in.

I would recommend to anyone interested in knowing how life works that they pick up a used (or free, if you can find it) relatively current college Bio textbook.  You may be surprised at what you learn.


Quote of the Day: "Biology, the study of life, is rooted in the human spirit.  ... Biology is the scientific extension of this human tendency to feel connected to and curious about all forms of life.  It is a science for adventurous minds."  - Neil Campbell and Jane Reece

The Great Triple Love

In the middle of all my busyness and worry, I want to write about love.  Love, compassion, kindness, caring, concern, generosity, and forgiveness.  These are central themes in my life and I'd like to devote my next two posts to them.

I see love (etc) as having three focuses.  (Many religious people will want to add a fourth.)

I want to begin with love of self.  This is often disparaged as being selfish, yet it's absolutely essential.  The bible says (Leviticus 19:18, Mark 12:31), "Love your neighbor as yourself."  It sounds good, but how would that work if you didn't love yourself?  At a Sufi dance I went to, someone taught us the song, "I love me so much, That I can love you so much, That you can love you so much, That you can start loving me."  (Attributed in at least one place to James Bevell.)  I think we need to begin by loving ourselves.

This allows us to love others, which is the second focus of love.  I will talk more about this in my next post, but I think we need to focus on loving everyone we possibly can.  The bible says to not only love your neighbor, but to love your enemies (Matthew 5:44), love the stranger (Deuteronomy 10:19), and, most important, love one another (John 13:34). While I think it's important to love everyone, I think it's most important to love everyone you come in contact with.  (Loving world figures, people in the news, "the oppressed", "the oppressors", politicians, etc, is good but I think it does more good for you then for them--unless you actually see them or email them or otherwise get in contact with them.)  I try to imagine how I can be loving with each person I meet today.

Beyond loving others is loving the world.  This focuses on the natural world, but includes humanity since, really, we are part of the natural world.  We forget how dependent we are on it but gaia/the ecosystem/the earth gives us our life as well as what we need to live.  We wouldn't live a minute without it and it is a beautiful, amazing process that isn't hard to love if we open ourselves up  to it.  And we need to love and care for the world because if it dies we die and everything we love dies.

So we need to love ourselves, others, and the world, and we need to work on ourselves, support each other, and take care of the world.  This is why I talk about personal growth, social change, and ecological awareness.


However, from a whole systems perspective, as well as an ecological perspective, a Buddhist perspective, a Taoist perspective, etc, there really isn't any separation between ourselves, everyone else, and the world.  We are all one giant interconnected system and therefore the Great Triple Love is really only one love. Love all, serve all, be grateful to everyone, be grateful for everything.


Quote of the Day: "If you love yourself, you love everybody else as you do yourself. As long as you love another person less than yourself, you will not succeed in loving yourself, but if you love all alike, including yourself, you will love them as one person..."  - Meister Eckhart

Biology 101: Photosynthesis

Biologists define us humans, as well as almost all other animals, fungi, and even many bacteria as heterotrophs--which means we can't make our own food. Plants, algae, and cyanobacteria, on the other hand, are defined as autotrophs, or more specifically, photoautotrophs, which means that they make their own food from carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight.

We get our nutrition from plants. Even extreme carnivores who might eat nothing but meat really get their nutrition from plants--it's just that they get it by eating animals who eat plants, or even animals who eat animals who eat plants. This is what's meant by eating lower on the food chain. At the base of that chain is plants (and algae, etc).

In my last post (Cellular Respiration, 5/10/12), I talked about why we need oxygen and ended with the question: 'where does the oxygen come from?' From plants, of course. Plants and algae and cyanobacteria.

It's believed that Earth's original atmosphere was mostly methane, and the first organisms were anaerobic. Cynobacteria came along and began giving off oxygen, which triggered what is sometimes called the 'Great Oxygenation Event' or the 'Oxygen Catastrophe'--where some of the oxygen caused rust and mineral formation, some of the oxygen combined with the methane to form carbon dioxide, and some of the oxygen stayed in free form. This killed off much of the aerobic population and allowed the formation of oxygen breathing creatures.

Plants (etc) keep oxygen in the atmosphere and, as I said, feed us as well. In my last post I gave the formula: C6H12O6 + 6 O2 → 6 CO2 + 6 H2O, which means we take in glucose (and other carbohydrates) and oxygen and break them down into carbon dioxide and water. Photosynthesis allows plants to do the opposite, to take carbon dioxide and water and using the energy from sunlight, make them into glucose and oxygen. The formula for photosynthesis is the reverse: 6 CO2 + 6 H2O → C6H12O6 + 6 O2.

Photosynthesis is a two part operation. First the plant collects light using the 'light-dependent reactions', then it feeds the generated energy into what's called the Calvin cycle or even the 'dark reactions' (because light isn't needed for this).

So here's another question, similar to why do we need oxygen and where does the oxygen come from: Why are plants green?

Light, as you may know, is made of a spectrum of colors. We see black when something absorbs the entire spectrum of light, and we see white when something rejects (or reflects) the full spectrum. The spectrum goes from red to blue and purple--and apparently the colors at either end have the most useful energy for the plants. The plants look green to us because that's what's in the middle and what the plants can't use. The chloroplasts of the plants are filled with pigments that pull in the red and the blue and reflect back green (chlorophyll), as well as pigments that pull in other parts of the spectrum and reflect back yellow (xanthophyll) or orange (carotene)--this is why, when the chlorophyll disappears in the fall, leaves turn yellow or orange.

All of these pigments collect photons from the light and pass them to a 'Reaction Center' which uses the energy to excite electrons from the hydrogen in water (H2O) to send along an electron transport chain (similar to what I talked about in my last post). The protons are sent through various pumps and the oxygen is given off as a waste product. (Yes, this is the oxygen we breathe.) It also uses the energy from the electron transport and the proton powered pumps to create ATP and NADPH--which, as I explained in my last post, are just ways of storing energy.
The Calvin Cycle is sort of like the Krebs cycle in reverse. It takes in carbon dioxide and the reconstituted hydrogen from the electron transport system (and the energy from the ATP and NADPH created by the system) and uses them all to form sugars.

All this happens in the chloroplasts of plants. It also happens in the chloroplasts of algae. Something similar happens in cyanobacteria, but they don't have chloroplasts--in fact, the theory is that cyanobacteria were absorbed by the ancestors of plants and algae and became the chloroplasts.

Again, plants take in carbon dioxide and water and give off oxygen as well as creating sugars, starches, proteins, etc. We breathe in the oxygen and eat the nutrients from plants and breathe out carbon dioxide and pee out water--which is what the plants can use. Photosynthesis and cellular respiration are connected in a cycle that basically keeps the whole planet alive. This is why I think learning this stuff is important. As I heard someone once say, every time you breathe, you should thank a plant.

Quote of the Day: "On a global scale, the collective productivity of the minute chloroplasts is prodigious; it is estimated that photosynthesis makes about 160 billion metric tons of carbohydrates per year... No other chemical process on the planet can match the output of photosynthesis. And no other process is more important than photosynthesis for the welfare of life on Earth." - Neil Campbell and Jane Reece