Our finite pool of worry

Earth Day is coming up and I am having a hard time with climate change.  It’s such a big, complicated issue.  Climate change, according to Columbia University’s Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CRED),  is  inherently abstract, scientifically complex, and globally diffused in causes and consequences.  People have a hard time grasping the concept, let alone taking action.  What can one person do to have an impact on such an overriding problem?

Turns out I’m not the only one who thinks that way.

Research shows that most Americans are  aware of climate change and even rank it as a concern,  but they don’t perceive it on a par with, say, the economic downturn or health care reform.   According to CRED,  most Americans do not currently associate climate change with disastrous impacts, such as drought, extreme weather events, and coastal flooding. And although most people can recite at least a few things they could do to help mitigate global climate change (like replacing light bulbs or carrying  reuseable grocery bags) – most are not doing them.

I’m ashamed to say,  I’m in that category.  I forget my grocery bags.  I use the car when I should really walk.  I  wash dishes by hand rather than using the dishwasher.  (What’s that?  Did you know that a running faucet can waste 2.5 gallons of water every minute!  So if I do the dishes by hand and it takes me 15 minutes, I’ve just wasted 37.5 gallons of water.  It’s better for me to run the dishwasher  – which uses only 11 gallons of water per use – even if it isn’t full. But I’m an old dog and habits die hard.)    It’s not easy, is it?  Don’t you just feel like throwing up your hands?

I’m faced with decisions every day in our fabric collection that could have far reaching effects – for example, a supplier wants to know if it’s o.k. to use the mill which has antiquated water treatment because that mill is closer (thereby reducing the energy needed for transport) and, not least, they’re cheaper!  There it is again -   Cost.  The bottom line in most decisions.  And if we decide to go with the sub optimal water treatment,  we might gain a cost advantage (so YOU might buy the fabric) but what will it mean in terms of the health of our children and the kind of world we leave them?

Each day I do more research into the effects that synthetic chemicals are having on us and our environment.  It chills me and I really believe that we’re causing ourselves harm.  We’re playing Russian roulette with the chemical mix we allow in our systems – thinking that since we’re not sick now it’s really nothing we have to worry about.   I absolutely believe that long term effects of our love affair with synthetic chemicals will be profound and that we must do something to stem the tide.  I proselytize to expectant mothers (I can’t help myself) about using organic fabrics and mattresses for their infants and themselves – because much of the research shows exposure in utero is when the most harm can be done.  But research also shows that future consequences are discounted, so people think they’ll just put off thinking of this until they have more time.

I guess what I’m getting at is the fact that we still behave in destructive ways – we don’t buy organic foods because it costs more (and it’s not gonna kill us – tomorrow, anyway),  we forget our reuseable grocery bags and we don’t take the time to replace light bulbs.  It’s like losing weight or exercising – we know it’s good for us, but we still don’t do it.

A report entitled The Psychology of Climate Change Communication, released  by CRED, looks at how people process information and decide to take action …  or not.  It seems people can deal with only so much bad news at a time before they tune out.   Social scientists call this the “finite pool of worry”.   And for really big threats like climate change, people are likely to alleviate their worries by taking only one action, even if it’s in their best interest to take more than one action.

For Americans, recycling has become the catchall green measure, the one action that anybody can do and feel that they’re doing something.  As with every action, there are costs and benefits.  The recycling of some products, such as computers and other electronics, creates a more severe strain on the environment that do other types of products, such as newsprint.  Again, even this topic is so fraught with subtleties and variety that dissecting it is hard.

I’d like to focus on plastics because the textile industry has concentrated sustainability efforts on recycled polyesters – many fabric collections claim green credentials because certain of their fabrics are made of recycled, rather than virgin, polyester.  And we all smile and pat ourselves on the back because we’re doing something – and hey, it doesn’t even cost any more.

Polyester is just one of the many plastics that are in use today;  plastic recycling – bottles, packaging, bags – has been adopted  as the mascot of our green efforts – as one school program says, it “teaches children social responsibility and reinforces learning to respect and take care of the environment”.   But what does plastic recycling really accomplish?

Stay tuned.

Why does wool get such high embodied energy ratings?

The more I learn about organic farming the more impressed I become with the dynamics of it all.   As Fritz Capra has said, we live in an interconnected and self-organizing universe of changing patterns and flowing energy. Everything has an intrinsic pattern which in turn is part of a greater pattern – and all of it is in flux.  That sure makes it hard to do an LCA, and it makes for very wobbly footing if somebody takes a stand and defends it against all comers.

For example, I have been under the impression (based on some published LCA’s) that the production of wool is very resource inefficient, largely based on the enormous need for water: it’s generally assumed that 170,000 litres of water is needed to produce 1 KG of wool    (versus anywhere from 2000 to 5300 to produce the same amount of cotton).  That’s because the livestock graze on land and depend on rainwater for their water – and some LCA’s base the water use on the lifetime of the sheep (reminding me to check the research parameters when referring to published LCA’s).

In addition, industrial agricultural livestock production often results in overgrazing.  As we now see in the western United States, overgrazing in extreme cases causes the land to transform from its natural state of fertility to that of a desert. At the very least, it severely limits plant reproduction, which in turn limits the soil’s ability to absorb water and maintain its original nutrient balance, making overgrazing difficult to recover from. And then there’s methane: livestock are often vilified for producing more greenhouse gases than automobiles.

The exciting thing is that what is known as “holistic management” of the soil makes it possible to use animals to improve, rather than degrade, land.  What’s consistently ignored in the research  is the failure to distinguish between animals raised in confined feedlots and animals grazing on rangeland  in a holistic system.  Research on holistic land management is, in fact, showing that large grazing animals are a vital and necessary part of the solution to climate change and carbon sequestration. Read about holistic land management on the Holistic Managmeent Institute (HMI) website.

The reason holistic practices work, according to HMI, is that grazing animals and grassland co-evolved.  According to the HMI website, hooves and manure accomplish what mechanical tilling and petrochemical fertilizers cannot: healthy, diverse grassland with abundant root systems and improved soil structures that makes highly effective use of existing rainfall.  Domestic animals can be managed in ways that mimic nature, called “planned grazing”:  rather than allowing animals to linger and eat from the same land repeatedly,  animals are concentrated and moved according to a plan which allows the land long periods of rest and recovery.   This planned grazing allows the animals to till packed soil with their hooves, distribute fertilizer and seed in their manure and urine, and move from one area to another before they can overgraze any one spot. In fact, the animals help maintain the soil, rather than destroying it, and increase the amount of organic matter in the soil, making it function as a highly effective carbon bank. Properly managed, grazing animals can help us control global climate change:  soil carbon increased 1% within a 12 month period  in a planned grazing project (a significant increase).

This carbon is essential to not only feeding soil life and pasture productivity, but it also affects water infiltration rates. On one trial site where planned grazing was implemented, within two years, the  soil water infiltration rate increased eightfold in comparison to the conventional grazing treatment.

In addition, holistic management of grazing animals eliminates the need for the standard practice of burning crop and forage residues.  That burning currently sends carbon directly into the atmosphere.  If we convert just 4 million acres of land that’s operating under the traditional, conventional agriculture model to holistically managed land – so the residue is not burned – the carbon is captured rather than released.   Look at the difference in erosion in the picture below: compare the severely eroded, conventionally managed riverbank on the left with the Holistically Managed bank on the right.  All the shrubbery and grass means abundant root systems and healthy soil infrastructure underground – both of these sequester CO2.

What you see on the right is the result of managed animal impact.                     Source: Holistic Management International

According to Christine Jones, Founder, Australian Soil Carbon Accreditation, “The fabulous thing about sequestering carbon in grasslands is that you can keep on doing it forever – you can keep building soil on soil on soil… perennial grasses can outlive their owners; they’re longer-lived than a lot of trees, so the carbon sequestration is more permanent than it is in trees: the carbon’s not going to re-cycle back into the atmosphere if we maintain that soil management… and there’s no limit to how much soil you can build… for example, we would only have to improve the stored carbon percentage by one percent on the 415 million hectares (1,025,487,333 acres) of agricultural soil in Australia and we could sequester all of the planet’s legacy load of carbon. It’s quite a stunning figure.”

 

Data from a demonstration project in Washington State is confirming other worldwide research that grazing could be better for the land than growing certain crops in dryland farming regions – it reverses soil decline (erosion and desertification), restores soil health, and instead of losing carbon through tilling or systems requiring inputs (like wheat farming) planned grazing sequesters carbon; biomass to soak up carbon is increased, and the use of fossil fuel has been reduced by more than 90%.  Wildlife habitat has improved.  The Washington State project even sells carbon credits.

In April of this year, Catholic Relief Service, one of the country’s largest international humanitarian agencies, is launching a worldwide agricultural strategy that adopts a holistic, market oriented approach to help lift millions of people out of poverty.   Read more about this here.