COMMENTARY: Good News for The Earth

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, December 29, 2021

Last July, The Beachcomber welcomed a new bi-weekly column coordinated by The Whole Vashon Project and featuring authors from a variety of island enviro groups. “Green Briefs” have covered the good, the bad and the ugly to inform readers about what’s going on with the climate crisis, locally and globally. Some of this news has been disturbing, so to close the year the “Green Briefs” editorial team is offering good news about our planet, with the hope that progress toward saving Earth will continue. “Green Briefs” will continue in 2022.

Terry Sullivan

Given the fact that a handful of powerful corporations control our food supply, I am heartened by the rise of small farmer cooperatives in Iowa and Minnesota retaking control over the production, processing, and distribution of their products. This trend is creating redundancy and resilience in our food system while focusing attention more and more on the local and regional level, keeping the profits in the community rather than sending them to corporate coffers.

Accompanying this trend is a growing reliance on regenerative agriculture which is rebuilding our soil, sequestering carbon, and revitalizing wildlife habitat. It is expected that many more people will be able to make a living growing food, living more meaningful lives, and revitalizing small towns across the country. The best way to beat the big agriculture corporations is to make them irrelevant.

Steve Bergman

According to Rachel Wagoner, director of the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery, the biggest change to California’s trash since recycling started there in the 1980s is the new mandatory residential food waste recycling program set to take effect in January 2022. She said it “is the single easiest and fastest thing that every single person can do to affect climate change.”

Food scraps and other organic materials put in landfills emit methane when they decay. Methane is a greenhouse gas more damaging in the short term than CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels. California legislators figured out that food waste is a valuable resource and plans to start converting residential food waste into compost or energy from biogas.

Vermont is the only other state that bans residents from disposing of food waste in the trash, under a law that took effect in July 2020. Vermont residents can compost the waste in their yards, opt for curbside pickup or drop it at waste stations. Cities including Seattle and San Francisco have similar programs. Don’t you think now is the time for Vashon and the rest of King County to follow suit? If so, let our legislators know. Our soils need healing and adding compost is a great way to sequester carbon and deal with the climate crisis.

From Rondi Lightmark

In Western culture, books exploring indigenous teachings have regularly hit the bestseller lists, from “Black Elk Speaks,” by John. G. Neihardt to “The Teachings of Don Juan,” by Carlos Castenada. A chief criticism: they were not written by their subjects.

Today, knowledge about how indigenous tribes stewarded their lands is coming into the climate change conversation. New stories are emerging, not invented or related second-hand, but told by a prime source. “Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants” by Robin Wall Kimmerer, an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, is one example.

“As Long as the Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock,” by journalist Dina Gilio-Whitaker, a member of the Colville Confederated Tribes, argues that “modern environmentalists must look to the history of Indigenous resistance for wisdom and inspiration in our common fight for a just and sustainable future.”

From Tag Gornall

As we go on to a new year, I’m sure we want to leave the turmoil and stress behind. Numbers and facts tail us each day but there are many individuals who have overcome adversity and who give me hope. They are the young people.

Certainly, the very young that we see each day, full of joy and curiosity, hold our attention. Young adults, who are testing the waters, need our support. Search out the stories. Malala Yousafzai-born in 1997 in Pakistan, shot for going to school in 2012, wrote her memoir. At age 17, she received the Nobel Peace Prize — the youngest ever. She graduated from Oxford in 2020. Greta Thunberg, age 18, Swedish environmental activist, a person with Asperger syndrome, Time Magazine’s Person of the Year in 2019. David Hogg, now 21, activist, has dyslexia and a must-read story. Gabriel Boric, age 35, will become the President of Chile in March 2022. We leave the world in the hands of young capable people like these.

From Lynn Greiner

With alarming climate news reports, now daily, do you ask yourself “what can I do?” Most of us struggle with this, thinking our efforts are inadequate—a minuscule drop in the bucket. But help is here. Check out the new book, “Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation,” by the team that produced the 2017 seminal text “Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming.”

“Regeneration” contributors bill the book as “The world’s largest, most complete listing and network of solutions to the climate crisis. And how to do them!” This what-to-do manual lists an incredible array of ideas and actions that we can all take to stem the climate crisis in one generation. Get your hands on a copy or link regeneration.org/home. The Regeneration team has launched a related project — “Nexus.” Entries include global resources, initiatives, people, influencers, and organizations that teach, engage, and transform — find more hope and optimisim at regeneration.org/nexus.

The authors are environmental leaders on Vashon.