November 2015 – Climate Action Alliance of the Valley

November 22, 2015

Climate News Roundup 11/20/2015

Because of the Thanksgiving holiday there will be no Weekly Roundup next week. The next one will come out Dec. 4.

Rachael Willis, in Huffington Post Green, has some interesting ideas about how we, the public, can act on climate change.
A paper published in the journal Science Advances has revealed that the biodiversity of the communities on the ocean floor near Antarctica is being altered by the increased meltwater runoff, which carries a high load of silt and clay that falls to the ocean floor.
If you were following the news last week you know that Secretary of State John Kerry generated a tempest by stating that the Paris climate agreement was “definitively not going to be a treaty.” Simon Evans of Carbon Brief explains why the legal form of the agreement matters. Meanwhile, following the ISIS terror attack, the Paris Climate Summit will proceed as planned, although rallies, concerts, and other ancillary activities will be banned.
Last March a research study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences asserted that there was a link between climate change and the Syrian civil war, but that idea didn’t get a lot of attention outside of the climate change community. However, when Bernie Sanders claimed in the second Democratic debate last Saturday night that climate change was the biggest national security threat facing the U.S., his comments were subsequently called “daffy” by Peggy Noonan, a former Reagan speech writer, on Face the Nation. Joe Romm gives his take on the issue at Climate Progress. David Roberts at VOX looks at the language used to describe the impacts of climate change. Megan Rowling of Thomas Reuters Foundation explains how economic development and stronger government can reduce a country’s vulnerability to climate change.
The World Meteorological Organization warned on Monday that the current El Nino is expected to strengthen further, causing severe impacts throughout the tropics and subtropical zones. As a result, the World Food Programme expects many in Central America and east and southern Africa to need food aid. A spokesman for the World Health Organization said “The world is much better prepared for this year’s El Nino, but the socio-economic shocks will still be profound.”
In the on-going saga between NOAA and House investigators over the erasure of the “pause”, scientists and top officials from NOAA have agreed to start interviews similar to depositions this week.
Both NASA and the Japan Meteorological Agency have declared October to be the hottest October in the temperature record. In addition, according to NOAA it is almost certain that 2015 will be the hottest year on record by a considerable amount. Chris Mooney at The Washington Post analyzes how this impacts the argument over the “pause”.
Many countries depend on snowpack to store water and release it slowly during the summer as the snow melts. However, changing precipitation patterns resulting from climate change are causing more rain and less snow. This results in too much water part of the time and too little when it is needed.
Even though Florida has abundant sunshine, it only ranks 13th in solar installations. The reason is the same as the reason that solar energy is not as abundant here in Virginia as it could be; poor regulations. Read how Floridians are working to change that.
U.K. Energy Secretary Amber Rudd has stated that all U.K. coal fired power plants will be closed by 2025, to be replaced with natural gas-fired and nuclear plants. The plan is being criticized by both coal and renewables advocates, as well as by David Carrington at The Guardian.
A new paper from the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication presents the five “best practice” insights from psychological science to improve public engagement with climate change. This is an open access article so you can read the entire article if you wish. However, you can get the important points by looking at Table 1, which you must click on to see.
A new study, just published in Nature, examines the future contributions to sea level rise from Antarctic glaciers and concludes that they are less than projections from some other recent papers that I have included in the Weekly Roundup. In an unusual move, one of the authors discusses the paper in a newspaper, The Guardian. One thing to recognize is that disagreement among scientific studies is common, particularly in a field that has received relatively little study. More studies and knowledgeable discussion will ultimately lead to a better understanding. That is how science works.
A new study by the consulting firm ICF International has found that a large-scale shift to renewable sources of electricity would result in a net gain of 2 million jobs by 2050 and result in an additional $300 to $650 in disposable income per household.
The Christian Science Monitor is providing comprehensive coverage of the Paris Climate Summit. You can subscribe here.
Joe Romm, founder of the blog ClimateProgress.org, has a new book entitled Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know. It is part of the Oxford University Press “What Everyone Needs to Know” series and is written in a Q & A format.

These news items have been compiled by Les Grady, member and former chair of the CAAV steering committee. He is a licensed professional engineer (retired) who taught environmental engineering at Purdue and Clemson Universities and engaged in private practice with CH2M Hill, the world’s largest environmental engineering consulting firm. Since his retirement in 2003 he has devoted much of his time to the study of climate science and the question of global warming and makes himself available to speak to groups about this subject. More here.

November 14, 2015

Climate News Roundup 11/13/2015

The big news last week was President Obama’s rejection of TransCanada’s application for the Keystone XL pipeline. There were many articles about that after I sent out the Weekly Roundup, so I’m including a few here:
1. Bill McKibben reflected in The New Yorker and The Guardian on the fight against the pipeline and what it might mean for what lies ahead.
2. Ben Adler in Grist provided a retrospective on the fight against the pipeline.
3. Reuters examined the impact of Keystone on the role of direct action in bringing about the needed changes in energy production.
4. Michael Regan examined TransCanada’s options in the Christian Science Monitor.
5. Climate Action Network Canada recommended that the Canadian government work with Alberta to phase out the oil sands sector.
The World Meteorological Organization announced on Monday that the global average CO2 concentration exceeded 400 ppm in the early months of 2015. While individual measuring stations have previously reported concentrations above 400 ppm, this is the first time that the global average has exceeded that value. Also on Monday, the U.K.’s Met Office reported that Earth’s average temperature for the first 9 months of 2015 exceeded historical values by 1 degree C for the first time.
A new paper in Science reports that the base of yet another Greenland glacier is melting from the bottom because of warm sea water, potentially destabilizing it. The glacier has lost 95% of the ice shelf that used to stabilize it, thereby opening up a major floodgate from Greenland to the ocean. Over time, this glacier alone will contribute around 1.5 ft to sea level rise. In The New York Times Magazine Jon Gertner takes a deep dive into what we can learn from the Greenland ice sheet about our chances of responding on time to climate change.
Carbon dioxide emissions and climate change are having major impacts on the oceans, yet they have seldom been considered in climate negotiations. The authors of five papers published Thursday in the journal Science hope to change that by documenting the major impacts and calling them to the attention of negotiators. Roz Pidcock of Carbon Brief looks at what the scientists had to say about the deep ocean. Also published this week, but in the journal Nature, is a study presenting maps showing the impacts of climate change on shallow-water fish and invertebrates by 2025 and 2115 under a business-as-usual scenario.
In terms of total area burned, 2015 was the first fire year on record in the U.S., primarily because of the large number of fires in Alaska and Washington. Global Forest Watch Fires allows anyone to see the movement of fires in near real-time. By using that tool, World Resources Institute was able to gain insights into the 2015 fire season.
In a new report the World Bank said that climate change could drive more than 100 million people into poverty by 2030. Meanwhile, the current El Nino threatens millions in east and southern Africa with hunger, disease, and water shortages.
The 43 member states of the Climate Vulnerable Forum have called upon all nations at the upcoming Paris Climate Summit to adopt a goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees C, rather than the current 2 degree goal. Meanwhile, analyses of India’s energy plans have indicated that they will make it difficult for the world to even meet the 2 degree goal. So, a major question is how India will bring electricity to the 300 million people lacking it without wrecking the global climate.
In a settlement with New York’s attorney general, Peabody energy, the nation’s largest coal company, has agreed to disclose the financial risks of climate change to its investors.
According to a report released on Monday by Greenpeace, global use of coal fell between 2.3% and 4.6% in the first nine months of 2015 compared to the same period in 2014. As a result, coal consumption is poised for its biggest decline in history. On the other hand, the head of the World Coal Association has a different opinion. Meanwhile, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has released its World Energy Outlook 2015. In it the IEA states that renewable energy is expected to overtake coal as the major source of electricity production by the early 2030s. Simon Evans of Carbon Brief provides an analysis of the major IEA findings. You can download the executive summary of the World Energy Outlook 2015 here.
According to a report compiled by Oil Change International and the Overseas Development Institute, the G20 nations provide approximately $450 billion annually in a variety of subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. Of that amount, approximately $20 billion are provided in the U.S. Nevertheless, a new report from the group Carbon Transparency states “Climate action by the G20 has reached a turning point, with per capita emissions falling in 11 members, and renewable energy growing strongly.”
A new economic analysis by ICF International (funded by NextGen Climate America) shows that shifting to renewable energy to reduce America’s CO2 emissions by 80% by 2050 would create two million additional jobs and increase GDP by 0.9%.
If you want to get an idea about what the future may hold for solar panels, batteries, and energy storage then you will want to check out what Skeptical Science has to say about graphene. Then you can go to GreenBiz to get their take on BP’s Technology Outlook, which conjectures about the next 25 years.
The Union of Concerned Scientists has released a new report on the life cycle analysis of electric vehicles. A brief summary and a link to the full report can be found here. In addition, the author of the report comments on her findings.
Ivy Main has a new blog post explaining how the addition of more nuclear energy to the electrical grid makes it more difficult to integrate wind and solar energy.
Many believe that a revenue-neutral carbon tax is the most effective way to reduce CO2 emissions, thereby lowering the driver of climate change. Although there is not yet a serious effort to pass such a tax at the federal level, some states are giving the proposal serious consideration. Climate scientist James Hansen has published an article entitled “Environment and Development Challenges: The Imperative of a Carbon Fee and Dividend.” It can be downloaded in pdf format.

November 11, 2015

Post Card to Paris Climate Summit

Postcards to Paris-190.600 — Icehouse Eiffel Tour, November 29, 2015. © Bob Adamek

Thanks to the Postcard to Paris organizers and everyone who came out for a meaningful and inspiring evening, Sunday, November 29. Re-energizing our world will take everyone!

WMRA.paris_2_0.600

Find Christopher Clymer Kurtz’s coverage of the Postcard to Paris event for WMRA here. Photo above is of Earl Martin signing the Post Card. Photo credit: WMRA.

Event photos by photographer Bob Adamek are here.

On Friday, November 13, Paris was rocked by multiple devastating terrorist attacks involving many dozens of deaths and injuries. The organizers of this Post Card to Paris event send our heartfelt concern and grief over these tragic events. We are hopeful the UN Conference of Parties 21, scheduled in Paris from November 30 – December 11, will prevail in hopes of a more just and livable planet.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 4:30 PM
ICEHOUSE, 217 S LIBERTY ST, HARRISONBURG

Come one and all! Add your voice to the global plea sending an urgent message to the pivotal United Nations Conference on Climate Change convening in Paris. Help create a new coalition of faith groups, student and environmental groups, business and government, to build positive changes in the Valley. Join us in lighting up Harrisonburg’s own Eiffel Tower as a sign of our commitment to the future.

Our first action is a gathering at Harrisonburg’s Icehouse Eiffel Tower on Sunday, November 29 at 4:30 PM to:

1. Send a message to negotiators in Paris demanding a just and swift transition to 100% renewable energy.
2. Call for action in the Valley to increase energy efficiency and move to renewable energy sources for a sustainable and resilient place to live now and in the future.
3. Pass the torch to our young people as they light up our own Eiffel Tower as a beacon of hope for the future and signal of support for global consensus in Paris.

2015 is on track to be the hottest year in recorded history, and this December 195 world governments will meet in Paris to try to strike a global agreement. It will be the biggest gathering of its kind since 2009, and it’s a big deal for our planet.

So far, however, commitments from world governments just aren’t adding up. We are out of time and we can’t afford another failure at a moment when renewable energy is becoming a revolutionary economic force that could power a just transition away from fossil fuels. The solutions are obvious: pull out all the stops to encourage energy efficiency and renewable energy everywhere we can, and make sure communities on the front lines of climate change have the resources they need to respond to the crisis.

This could be a turning point – if we push for it. Join us on November 29 for serious conversation, music, fun and food – and join the movement to re-energize Harrisonburg and the Valley for a livable planet and a viable future.

Facebook event page here.

What to expect at the Postcard to Paris gathering, an inaugural event for a new coalition, on Sunday, November 29 at 4:30PM: There will be short speeches explaining the action, the “solar torch of renewable energy” will be passed from old to young, a photo will be taken of everyone gathered around the tower and a giant Post Card to Paris, and there will be music, snacks, and conversation (indoors where it will be warm!) And most critically, there will be an opportunity for outreach to the world and local government through signing the Post Card to Paris and a petition to City Council.

InPlace The Harrisonburg Eiffel Tower sculpture was constructed on the Icehouse patio on Saturday, November 21 under the watchful eye of local structural engineer Johann Zimmerman of JZ Engineering. Area student groups joined the project site that afternoon to paint the Tower. The Icehouse Eiffel Tower, Harrisonburg’s newest downtown attraction, is scheduled to stay up through the end of the year.

On Monday, November 23 starting around noon, the Tower was raised, anchored in place with sandbags and strung with solar powered LED lights. Come to the Icehouse to check it out then be sure to return for the call-to-action, galvanizing, community gathering around the Icehouse Tower on Sunday, November 29 at 4:30PM.

Ryan Cornell wrote about the tower and project for the Daily News-Record as published on 11/24/15: A Towering Task: Eiffel Tower Sculpture Sends Climate Message.

Janson Silvers reported on this effort for WHSV-TV on 11/24/15: Postcards to Paris Working to Change the World.

ON.OFF.action.300 If you’re part of an organization, share this invitation and bring your group’s banner to hang with those of our sponsors and (current) coalition members:

New Community Project/Vine and Fig, Shalom Mennonite Church, Climate Action Alliance of the Valley, JMU GIVE Volunteers, Voluntary Gas Tax, Community Mennonite Church, Young Activists of Harrisonburg High School, EMU Earthkeepers, EMU Sustainable Food Initiative, JZ Engineering, Solarize Harrisonburg, Shenandoah Group of the Sierra Club, Harrisonburg Rockingham Green Network, Divest JMU, Shenandoah Riverkeeper, JMU EARTH Club, Harrisonburg Mennonite Church, EMU Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, and the Shenandoah Valley for Bernie 2016 group.

Thanks to local business supporters: Pale Fire Brewing Co., Strites Donuts, Dunkin’ Donuts, and the Friendly City Food Co-op! Thanks to JMU’s Food for Thought for their contributions to our event food table!

Click on the images above for a fuller view of the posters. The one on the left is about the Eiffel Tower itself and an artist’s statement from Johann Zimmerman. The poster on the right describes the Postcard to Paris Project.

This event is the official public launch of a long term campaign to move Harrisonburg toward 100% renewable energy.

It is the product of a (yet unnamed) newly formed coalition of local student, faith, and other social and environmental groups committed to a more globally engaged and sustainable Harrisonburg. The group emerged from 350.org‘s worldwide, grassroots campaign to turn on renewable energy and turn off fossil fuels. The local campaign has four goals:

• To be a local movement within a larger global movement
• To send a unified message to Paris for the upcoming United Nations Climate Summit, urging our world leaders for a swift and just transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy
• To highlight the renewable infrastructure that is already present in our neighborhoods
• To create positive change in our city by creating pathways for more renewable energy

Collaboration and input about how this can be a movement for positive social and ecological change in our city is welcome; shaping and realizing this vision for a re-energized Harrisonburg will take everyone.

For more information or to get involved, please contact Tom Benevento at New Community Project/Vine and Fig at 540-432-3696, ncpharrisonburg@gmail.com, or CAAV representatives at contactcaav@gmail.com.

Eiffel Tower sculpture being assembled and painted on November 21, 2015, on the rooftop beside Pale Fire Brewing Co.:

November 7, 2015

Fasting and Climate Change

FastingCharlie.crop Why would anyone voluntarily decide to live on water only for 18 days? Why, while not eating, would anyone agree to sleeping on the floor of a church often getting dizzy as you try with great effort to stand; get up at 5:30 AM each day; use 4 flights of stairs for a sponge bath (no showers available); walk 12 blocks, stand passing out literature related to your cause or sit on a noisy street for about 11 hours a day, just being? Wonderful odors drifting up the street from the food trucks, beautiful displays of fresh fruits along the walk and trips to the bathroom often in food courts only add to your discomfort. Indeed, why?

Our group of 12 set out on this journey (fasting) to try to get the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to pay attention to citizens’ very serious concerns in relationship to pipelines and other noxious fossil fuel infrastructures for which FERC grants permits. FERC gets its money from the fossil fuel industry through the permitting process and just rubber-stamps anything the industry wants to do. We have tried to meet with FERC officials on various occasions, tried civil disobedience with arrests and now a hunger strike.

Some of our neighbors to the south (Highland, Augusta and Nelson Counties) seek to be heard concerning a pipeline that is being jammed down their throats. Eminent domain, which is supposed to be for the public good, is being used for private gain to take their land and place dangerous infrastructures near their homes, schools and communities. Pristine public land will also be destroyed. The same thing is happening across the country, from Cove Point, MD to Jordan Cove, Oregon. In fact, in Oregon, it is for foreign private gain. It is estimated that over 4000 miles of new pipelines, related to fracking in Pennsylvania alone have been proposed.

Personally, the fast with its daily challenges helped me to understand better those poignant pictures of children, mere skin and bones because they lack food. Of course my situation was quite different because I had an end date. I had clean water to help sustain me, which much of the world does not have. Fasting also deepened my awareness of those whose homes and communities are threatened by fossil fuel infrastructures. Imagine yourself in a similar situation. What if such a structure ran close to a school in Harrisonburg? You would not feel good about yourself knowing that you are part of the problem.

Put yourself in the shoes of future generations. What will they say about us when their world is falling apart because we were unwilling to make changes to protect them, when the chemistry and physics of climate change is so clearly understood? Denial is no longer an excuse. We need to act now to put a price on carbon and stop digging a deeper hole that our grandchildren may not be able to get out of.

This fast was timed to coincide with Pope Francis’ speech to Congress, with its emphasis on the need for a moral commitment to creation care. “I call for a courageous and responsible effort to redirect our steps, and to avert the most serious effects of the environmental deterioration caused by human activity.”I am not Catholic, but I can really appreciate a person of his stature who walks the walk for humanity and climate justice.
Attempts were made to get Senators Kaine and Warner and Representative Goodlatte or staff person to visit the fast site and discuss our grievances with FERC. No one could make it. Please stress to our elected officials that time to act is growing short. It is my hope and prayer that each reader will use their power as a voter to elect and support candidates who recognize the gravity of this issue in our time. We need to push our elected officials to make the necessary difficult choices. We can do this with a little empathy and will power. There is no plan(et) B.

Charles Strickler DDS
Harrisonburg VA 22801

I tried to get this published in the Daily News-Record within a week of the fast. After 2 weeks with no reply, I called and they said there “was no context” and would not print it. I then sent it to Staunton News Leader and after a week or so they said “not before the elections if at all.” – Charlie, November 7, 2015

November 7, 2015

Climate News Roundup 11/6/2015

The big news this week was that the State Department determined that the Keystone XL pipeline is not in the national interest and that President Obama rejected TransCanada’s application for a permit. This decision has big symbolic implications as we move toward the Paris Climate Summit, asserting that the U.S. is serious about being a world leader on climate change.
Wen Stephenson, a former editor at the Atlantic and the Boston Globe, has recently written a book entitled What We’re Fighting for Now Is Each Other: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Climate Justice. In this article in Salon, excerpted from the book, Stephenson profiles Bill McKibben. It’s a very interesting piece.
In previous Weekly Roundups I have provided links to the investigative reporting by Inside Climate News of Exxon’s climate change research program in the 1970’s and 80’s. Now a group of more than 40 environmental and social justice organizations has called for a federal investigation of the company. Justin Gillis and John Schwartz of The New York Times provide a look at what has transpired and a critique of the comparison of Exxon to the tobacco industry. Meanwhile, New York’s attorney general has launched an investigation into whether ExxonMobil misled the public and shareholders about the investment risks from climate change.
Doug Hendren has released a new song about Exxon.
A major message at the recent Conservative Clean Energy Summit was that clean energy should not be a partisan issue, but rather, a concern of everyone. Amanda Little reports on the Summit and efforts to bring conservatives into the clean energy fold. This would be very good because according to Christiana Figueres, the UN’s leading climate official, the U.S. is currently “playing catch up to China” in clean energy. Of course, government is not the only actor on tackling climate change. Business has an important role to play, as discussed by Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever.
A strong climate deal in Paris will reportedly launch a $90 trillion energy revolution, as projected by the International Energy Agency. This article is almost enough to make one feel very optimistic about a global energy revolution. In addition, a new report from the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law has found that the U.S. could gain up to $10 trillion in benefits by 2050 from other countries’ actions on climate change.
News reports presented in previous Weekly Roundups have suggested that pledges for the Paris climate summit are sufficient to hold global warming to 2.7 degrees C by 2100. However, as Joe Romm points out, this is true only if certain optimistic assumptions are met. He argues that warming is likely to be greater; around 3.5 degrees C. Similarly, a new report by the U.N. Environment Program states that current pledges will only take about half way to where we need to be in limiting CO2 emissions.
A new NASA study published in the Journal of Glaciology has found that the ice mass in East Antarctica is still increasing, although at a diminishing rate. While the rate is still larger than the rate of ice loss from West Antarctica, at some point it will be insufficient to offset those losses. The findings are proving to be controversial, even among NASA scientists. To help sort this out, Robert McSweeney of CarbonBrief takes a deeper dive into the topic. Meanwhile, a modeling study of the West Antarctic ice sheet has indicated that another 60 years of melting at current rates could set off irreversible glacial loss over the next several hundred years, ultimately raising sea level around 10 ft.
By mid-century more of the Arctic will be ice-free and for longer periods, causing a variety of cascading effects, according to a new study published in Nature Climate Change.
Women in developing countries are far more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change than men for a variety of reasons.
Based upon wind speed as the measure of the strength of a hurricane, the U.S. is currently experiencing a drought in tropical hurricanes. According to a recent paper in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society there are better indicators of hurricane strength, such as pressure. When they are used, the drought disappears.
While a majority of people in the U.S recognize that climate change is happening and is largely the result of human activities, most people are not concerned. In fact, less than 25 percent of people say that they are worried, according to a new AP-NORC poll. On the other hand, a new report by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication shows that the number of people concerned about climate change increased in response to the Pope’s encyclical. To further complicate matters a new Pew poll of people in 40 countries found that overall 78 percent of the respondents thought that their countries should reduce emissions as part of an international agreement. However, people in the U.S. and China were the least concerned.
Senators Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Jeff Merkely (D-Oregon) have introduced a bill entitled “Keep It in the Ground Act”. As the name suggests, the bill would ban all new fossil fuel development on federal lands and cancel current leases that aren’t producing. The bill was cosponsored by five other senators.
The U.S. electricity sector is expected to emit the lowest amount of CO2 this year since 1995 according to a report from Sierra Club.
New data from China indicate that it has been burning up to 17% more coal than previously reported. This will be a complicating factor during the Paris climate summit.
A new NOAA report examined 28 severe weather events that occurred in 2014 and determined that 14 of them were related to climate change as a contributing cause. National Geographic provides a summary of the major results while Mashable provides more in-depth analysis. On a similar note, a study by the U.K. Met Office has found that climate change made the wet winter of 2013/14 seven times more likely.

November 2, 2015

Reality Check

On October 4th, 2015, CAAV Steering Committee Co-chairperson Joni Grady delivered this heartfelt sermon to her congregation at the Harrisonburg Unitarian Universalists Church. It is a message of hope with spot-on descriptions of many of Joni’s fellow, local, passionate, climate warriors.

Welcome to another step in my attempt to make sense out of an increasingly irrational world. When I picked the title, Reality Check, I had a rather different talk envisioned, one dealing only with the painful bifurcation of my life and the lives of everyone involved to any extent with that most dreadful task, saving the only livable planet we seem to have. In one part of my life, the dreaming world, we try to remember to vacuum the rugs and take out the trash, put money into Sophie’s college savings and reserve a beach house for Christmas. In this world, which seems so familiar, so pleasant, a bad problem is not finding the type of tea I like at Martin’s or getting stuck at too many red lights. A serious issue means the AC has gone out and the mattress needs replacing. And a tragedy would of course be sickness or death amongst family or friends. In this world, mainstream media news means killings, wars, politicians and celebrities. Sometimes on the front page or at the top of the hour but usually hidden on the inside or never heard or shown at all are floods, heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and storms. These, thank goodness, are simply “acts of God” that come and go randomly around the world but, happily, rarely in the Peaceful Valley. (Or at least that’s what I thought until Tuesday when the dreaming world intersected the waking world and an unusual (new normal?) storm dropped 4 inches of rain and a lot of it ended up in my basement.) Both worlds were interrupted by an actual Reality check!!

Normally, in the other, equally real, weirding-climate, waking world that I also live in 24/7, the minor day-to-day issues revolve around making sure there are enough materials for tabling at the Farmers Market, getting out the word for various events and keeping the CAAV facebook page up-to-date. (CAAV, for those new to the area, is the Climate Action Alliance of the Valley.) The more complicated ones involve designing a display to draw people in at the International Festival when they really just want to eat and have fun, not be bothered by inconvenient truth, and planning next month’s educational forum (which is, in case you’re interested, the inside story on fighting western forest fires, from training to living in camp to the actual hard and very dirty work of controlling a wildfire, brought to us by Sophie’s dad Alan Williams.) And the news I read is all climate, all the time: some good, some bad, some optimistic, some terrifying.

The difficult part is to do these things in the presence of the dreamers who inhabit the first world, the ones living in a trance from which they will only awaken, possibly, when disaster strikes them personally. And when I really feel sorry for myself, I can feel even worse when I read the hate mail, the threats, the obscenities that are thrown at the scientists, the real climate warriors—even though I know these are written from the nightmare world of conspiracy belief inhabited by the DNR editor and James Inhofe. When I think about the Syrian and other climate refugees dying to escape a part of the world no longer viable, and envision that small part growing and expanding to affect and engulf us all, I get so depressed I want to give it all up and go back to sleep –to sleep, perchance to dream.

This kind of thinking is a real recipe for burn out and serious depression and recently, all the advice from Marcus Aurelius and Rev. Gingrich to just “keep on working” didn’t seem to help. Probably I should get therapy! But I didn’t. I simply decided to step back, take a new position and get a different perspective on the situation. The events of the past week actually helped me get some perspective on both worlds. In the middle of even this minor climate-related hardship, I found myself so absorbed with the nitty gritty of sticky orange silty water all over my floor that I rarely thought about what CAAV or 350 or Sierra Club are planning for this fall leading up to the Paris climate conference. No wonder most people, who don’t have my privileged leisure time, don’t worry very far into the future. On the other hand I began to get a real, though tiny, inkling of what regular life is like now in many places. And I found, through the kindness of friends, relations, and total strangers, that there is always hope and help, and even a hug from the IHOP cashier.

Sure, our work with CAAV probably seems trivial to most people, but it’s a way to work on one little cog, to hope there are so many little cogs and gears beginning to mesh and so many incredible people in the world working on them that a massive engine of change is being built with the leverage to move the world. There are people I might never have known about, much less met, without my totally unexpected immersion in this, the second, the waking world. These are not the usual suspects like Ralph and the Sierra Club, though goddess knows we couldn’t do without them, but people you may not know at all or know in a different context.

Valerie Serrels and her twin sons Grant and Garret helped found iMatter Youth, a group that dared to sue the United States on the basis that every citizen has the right to a place on a safe livable planet—what gall they have!

Jeff Heie and Earl Martin are Mennonite builders who are part of a volunteer group that renovates homes for low-income folks and whose Voluntary Gas Tax group assess themselves for the CO2 they burn each year. This year they raised enough for a $5000 grant to launch a major solar power project for the Gift and Thrift shop along Mt. Clinton Pike. And anyone who wants can donate $200 and buy a panel to help out.

Lynn Cameron and the Friends of Shenandoah Mountain try to protect and preserve our highlands and Rev. Kate Lehman and the other Riverkeepers protect our waters. Lynn learned, and tried to teach me, that working with a wide range of stakeholders on a problem takes finesse, patience, and a willingness to listen to all points of view—I haven’t learned it yet, but she has tried.

Wayne Teel, Rob Alexander and Jeff Tang teach their JMU students what’s going on and aren’t afraid that the truth will be too scary for their tender young minds, Amy Thompson does the same in Bridgewater. And there are so many folks at EMU who work from their hearts to get to the heart of the problem, even if it takes them into the halls of the Pentagon, like Dr. Lisa Shirch, our last CAAV speaker.

Through CAAV I have gotten to know students at JMU and EMU who have already decided to devote their lives to solving the problem and are working right now to get JMU and EMU to divest from fossil fuels. Others are working with CAAV to bring inexpensive solar power to the Valley. And there are our staunch supporters led by Mark Fink at CourtSquare Theatre who are willing to work with us whenever we want to bring provocative films to town.

I love the “creation care” people who have worked so hard to wake up their congregations and the ministers across the Valley, people like Ramona and Bill Sanders, the Reverend David Miller, Bill Rosenow, David Pruett and Michael Snell-Feikema. Doug Hendren and the Occupy Harrisonburg contingent, and the farmers such as Bobby Whitescarver and others in the Valley Conservation Council all understand that economy and ecology are part and parcel of the same thing. Without a livable planet how would any of us make a living?

When I decided to try some grass-tops organizing to promote the free weatherization of low-income houses, Karen Thomas, Stan Macklin, the inimitable Doris Allen and all of the NorthEast Neighborhood Association welcomed me into their midst and made me feel at home. Jamie Miller from New Bridges helps our new immigrant neighbors with the application forms for getting their homes weatherized.

I’m proud to call April Moore and Andy Schmookler friends and compatriots, two with the courage to run for political office against entrenched politicians with ties to the big money interests of fossil fuels. Again, what nerve! ?! I now know and work with lawyers and architects like Bishop Dansby, Tom Domonoske and Charles Hendricks who stick their necks out in city council and the school board meetings, trying to prepare Harrisonburg for the 21st century. And they do this with the help of committed public servants like Thanh Dang and our old HUU friend Kai Degner. I’ve learned from Bish that it doesn’t hurt to write perfect strangers and ask them for information or help—which explains why I’m the unlikely pen pal of an ex-Oxford Univ. professor and expert in product branding!

The core of my support is my own favorite bunch of wide awake people, the steering committee of CAAV: Cathy started it all, Charlie cares so much that he risked his health in a protest fast last week. Rickie Wertz is our secretary and in from the beginning. Anne Nielsen, artist, biologist, educator, may know even more Valley folk than Cathy; Lynn Smith loves art and children’s books as much as I do and creates wonderful displays; our Chairperson Laura Dansby is willing to lead her legislative committee into conversations with the unwilling and still remain calm, cool, and collected; Adrie Voors is a climate refugee from Katrina and a veterinarian who loves animals even more than people and who inspires my social media work with her own great talent as webmaster. Joy Loving almost single-handedly started the solar revolution in Harrisonburg and now has her sights set on Rockingham, Page and Shenandoah counties. Carl Droms is treasurer and how many other mathematicians do you know would put on a polar bear suit to draw attention to the melting Arctic ice and march around Main St.? Pete Mahoney is our spiritual leader whose goodness and perseverance inspires us all, and our newest, youngest, members, Emily Blake and Alleyn Harned are teaching by example that renovating old buildings has a much lower carbon footprint than building new. And obviously there’s Les, whom I forget to tell how much his support and hard work mean to me and how much I admire the way his brain works, not skimming the surface like mine, but delving deep and really learning and sharing the complexities of this horrible mess we’re in.

Others I can’t name here are all just as important because they are willing to be awake and face real life, whether or not they work with us directly. Some come regularly to our events, our forums, our movies, our tables, some just check out our website and Facebook page or receive our weekly round-up of the best and worst climate news. I would never in a million years have gotten to meet so many passionate, committed men and women, if I hadn’t begun working with the gang at CAAV. These are people who are too busy to stay depressed for long and being around them buoys my spirits too. And this is just my local disrupted-climate community, strands and nodes in an interconnected web of concern. The web stretches across the state, across the country and around the world. It is made up of activists, scientists, artists, politicians and statesmen, CEOs and volunteers, mothers and fathers, children and elders, writers of fiction and creators of documentaries, Bangladeshis and Inuit, UUs and Evangelicals and even, would you believe, a pope! What a grand group of people who have decided that, for the good times and the bad times too, let it be a dance!

References (in order of appearance, and just a few of the many working in the area)

1. Climate Action Alliance of the Valley: www.climateactionallianceofthevalley.org and www.facebook.com/caavva to get announcements of events, the Weekly Roundup of top climate news, and minutes of our open public meetings, subscribe to our listserv at contactcaav [at] gmail.com

2. Sierra Club: http://www.sierraclub.org/virginia/shenandoah

3. iMatter Youth: www.imatteryouth.org

4. Voluntary Gas Tax: www.voluntarygastax.org

5. Friends of Shenandoah Mountain: www.friendsofshenandoahmountain.org

6. Riverkeepers/Waterkeepers: http://www.waterkeeperschesapeake.com/about-us/resources/item/56-shenandoah-riverkeeper

7. Wayne Teel: http://www.isat.jmu.edu/people/teel.html

8. Rob Alexander: http://www.jmu.edu/polisci/faculty_alexander.shtml

9. Jeff Tang, Associate Dean of the College of Integated Science and Engineering, was instrumental in starting the Harrisonburg/Rockingham Green Network. H/RGN is made up of representatives of various environmental/climate groups, and meets monthly to keep an eye on projects to improve the sustainability and resilience of the area.

10. Amy Thompson: https://www.bridgewater.edu/about-bc/faculty-students/amy-thompson . CAAV Speakers Bureau member Les Grady regularly visits her geology class to talk about climate change.

11. Lisa Schirch: http://www.emu.edu/personnel/people/show/schirchl

12. Doug Hendren: https://www.facebook.com/MusicalScalpel?pnref=lhc for protest songs about the environment and the 1%

13. Valley Conservation Council: http://www.valleyconservation.org/

14. NorthEast Neighborhood Association: http://www.nenava.org/

15. April Moore: http://aprilmoorestatesenate.com/

16. Charles Hendricks: https://harrisonburgarchitect.wordpress.com/charles-hendricks/

17. Doug Holt: www.brandclimate.org