On Sept. 14, NASA released its most expansive study on UFOs so far. Besides re-naming them as UAPs, or unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), the study didn’t do much. The observations they studied were easily explained—weather balloons, space junk, optical illusions. While many observers say this study should be the end of it, the experts say they want more.
The experts need new satellites and more artificial intelligence. And NASA now has a director of UAP research to “establish a robust database for the evaluation of future data.” So there ya go.
Another conclusion might be that if Earth is really alone as the home of living creatures we’re doing a really bad job of taking care of it. We need to step up our game in the saving-the-Earth department. Climate change is not going away and all we have to make a difference is our very own resources.
Younger generations might have a better grasp on this than us elders do. A friend that helps out the teachers in an elementary school (call him “Earl”) told me that the kids in one of his classes are being schooled in the mysteries of greenhouse gasses. While we remember planting herbs, tomatoes and marigolds in a third-grade garden way back when, the lessons were just about how things grow. Today’s kids, Earl said, learned that trees and plants take up carbon dioxide that we create when we run our cars and busses. Even at the third-grade level, they’re learning that we create more carbon dioxide than the plants can handle.
For Earl himself, the school lesson was instructional. He really hadn’t run across the idea of carbon footprint in his everyday life as a farmer and school helper. Discussion of climate change in our neighborhood is pretty much focused on how drought is affecting crop yields or how high our water bill is to water the cattle since the ponds have dried up.
Playing devil’s advocate, I exclaimed, “that’s going to scare those kids!” but Earl just shrugged. He repeated the teacher’s lesson: Carbon costs are gasses that are emitted when fossil fuels are burned. These gasses trap the sun’s heat and create a “greenhouse” type of blanket around the Earth. Icebergs melt, the ocean warms. He himself hadn’t quite connected the dots between our own behavior (we were slamming through the woods and checking fences in a four-wheel polluter called a utility terrain vehicle, or UTV.)
We stopped to look at a truly majestic oak tree and marvel at how much good it was doing the planet. A little later in the conversation, we touched on the idea of how we and our neighbors could convert some crop land into forests. Could that save the planet?
The conversation moved to our desires for good electric tractors and lawn mowers. My scheme is to trade the old UTV for an electric one this winter. I hear they’ve got some good ones these days.
Every now and then, a column hits a nerve with readers and I get a flurry of e-mails commenting on it. The column for 2023 that got the most comment is the one about the carbon cost of unnecessary travel. The e-mails agreed that our travel habits must change, but with family flung all over the planet it’s hard, and maybe impossible. My answer has been that maybe we can’t be with our own kids, but we can be in the community and help each other. But, somehow, that doesn’t completely satisfy.
And, then, there’s the weather … so, now, as we’re all thinking about how we’ll get out of the winter weather and into something warm, it’s time to re-visit that idea.
When climate activist Greta Thunberg, now age 20, needed to cross the ocean she rode in a zero-carbon racing yacht. For most of us, that isn’t an option. One of the schemes to keep the travel industry thriving is the sale to passengers of “carbon offsets” or “carbon credits.”
Theoretically, the money you pay for a carbon credit goes to save forest or to plant trees in someone’s patch of deforested land. Landowners can, indeed, sign up with carbon credit companies and keep their land in trees. The income will keep the landowners from harvesting their trees to make money from the wood. For now, it just seems like bookkeeping and the companies that have sprung up to broker these deals just seem like go-betweens. And isn’t a forest a zero-sum game, deteriorating as much as it is growing? And what about forest fires? Don’t they release unmatched amounts of carbon?
Traveling to a warm place may seem necessary (at least to me) when the temperature dips down to the single digits. But, while February makes me long for a pool or the ocean I won’t be going. The carbon footprint cost of unnecessary travel is simply too high.
Margot Ford McMillen farms near Fulton, Mo., and co-hosts “Farm and Fiddle” on sustainable ag issues on KOPN 89.5 FM in Columbia, Mo. Her latest book is “The Golden Lane: How Missouri Women Gained the Vote and Changed History.” Email: margotmcmillen@gmail.com.
From The Progressive Populist, October 15, 2023
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