There’s a new feature film out, “Little Pink House,” based on the true story of the 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469, “a case involving the use of eminent domain to transfer land from one private owner to another private owner to further economic development. In a 5–4 decision, the Court held that the general benefits a community enjoyed from economic growth qualified private redevelopment plans as a permissible "public use" under the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment.” I couldn’t say it better, Wikipedia.

I covered this story – which unfolded an hour from where I live – for multiple outlets. I visited several of the families who lived in what seemed a tight-knit community on the shore of Long Island Sound. Suzette Kelo was the owner of said little pink house and lead plaintiff for the whole neighborhood that was destroyed when they lost their case at the high court. Even more maddening, again quoting Wikipedia, “The case arose in the context of condemnation by the city of New London, Connecticut, of privately owned real property, so that it could be used as part of a ‘comprehensive redevelopment plan.’ However, the private developer was unable to obtain financing and abandoned the redevelopment project, leaving the land as an undeveloped empty lot."

I went back to see the destruction after all the families had been forced out.

This court decision is what has enabled the taking of private property for private gain over and over in the past 13 years. Like the destruction of thousands of trees along 26 miles of a proposed fracked gas pipeline in Pennsylvania – including the sugar bush (trees yielding sap for maple syrup) of a family that invited people onto their land to resist the taking until they were stopped by a court order and marshalls armed with semi-automatic weapons to “protect” the workers who took the trees down. Then New York State, where 100 more miles of the pipeline were to be built, killed the project so it never saw the light of day. Click here to hear/read my Between the Lines interview with  Megan Holleran, who led the family's fight.

Many more recent examples of the use of eminent domain for private gain have been occurring in Virginia and West Virginia, as homeowners and their supporters fight the Mountain Valley and Atlantic Coast pipelines. One particularly egregious story involves the Reilly family – mom, dad, and four home-schooled children who were raising animals on an organic farm in bucolic southwestern Virginia. They were openly opposed to the Mountain Valley pipeline passing through their land, threatening their home, their water and their peace of mind. Yet FERC (the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) gave EQT Midstream Partners, LP, the lead company building the pipeline, permission to start felling trees along the 303-mile route, even though it didn’t have all the final approvals it needed. When a protester took up residence in a tree along the pipeline route, the family expressed their support, since such actions slow down these projects. The company took them to court and a judge fined Ian and Carolyn Reilly each $1,000 – payable to the company. You can hear/read my interview with Carolyn Reilly here.

People are still resisting, and it seems a majority of the tree sitters have been women – in many cases, older women. After one was forced down when law enforcement prevented her support team from delivering food or water for several days, another woman began a tree sit in a nearby tree.

As my friend Lyn wrote in an email sharing these latest developments with friends, “Suppose I lived in a beautiful forest. Then suppose that my parents, grandparents and great grandparents had also lived there. For years my family had felt blessed by the forest. Suppose further that one day the beauty, peace and God-given stillness of my place were shaken by huge death machines that threatened everything with extinction and poisoning. I wonder what I would do...Would I say to myself, ‘I am powerless, a small person. I guess I'll just move to another place. After all, some consider this destruction to be necessary progress.’ Would I?”

I hope I wouldn’t. And even if we don't have to make such a heart-wrenching choice ourselves, we can support these brave aerial activists. For more, read this inspiring article from the Guardian.

I just got back from an impressive, many faceted, inspiring action called Cuomo Walk the Talk. It involved a protest just a few blocks down the hill from the Capitol building in Albany, where the Cuomo administration wants to build yet one more fracked gas power plant in a low-income, majority people of color neighborhood to power the Capitol building itself.  

Then we marched through city streets – about 1,500 strong – to the Capitol for another rally outside the building. One of the speakers was Robert Howarth from Cornell, who was one of the first scientists to point out the powerful impact of methane on warming the planet (“natural” gas is about 95 percent methane) – 86 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in the first 20 years after release, which is the time frame we need to deal with.

The theme of the day is that Cuomo, who has presidential ambitions, fancies himself a climate hero – his administration banned fracking in New York State in 2014 – yet he is enabling all kinds of fossil fuel infrastructure to proceed, while killing a few of the most egregious projects. His goal is to move to 50% renewables by 2030, while protesters are demanding a quicker transition. Organizers say right now New York is powered just 3 percent by wind and sun (which obviously doesn’t include hydro).

After the rally we all marched into the Capitol, chanting at the top of our lungs – and the sound echoed deliciously off the walls of the staircase as we climbed to Cuomo’s office. On top of the state seal activists unfurled a beautiful cloth sun declaring, “The sun is setting on fossil fuels, the sun is rising on renewables.” Then more than 50 of us sat down in a hallway in a long oval, each in turn saying why we came and why we were willing to risk arrest to press Cuomo on the issue of climate justice. I could have given a hundred reasons, but what I said was that my granddaughter is growing up in California between climate change-powered wildfires and sea level rise, and we have to do better in addressing the crisis. One of the best parts was all the chanting and singing we did, led by an incredibly talented and passionate member of the Peace Poets, Lu Aya. He did a workshop the day before the action where we learned some techniques for effectively teaching songs and chants, which I hope to use in the future.

We were taken into custody by very polite state police officers, handcuffed and escorted in an elevator to a big room on a lower level, where we were asked a few questions and released into the room to chat with each other until all 55 of us were processed and released together, charged with disorderly conduct. For many it was their first arrest, and I joked with people that being arrested is usually not like this. We didn’t have to sit on a cold concrete sidewalk blocking doors or be taken to a freezing cold jail and spend several hours before being released. We had plenty of snacks and early access to bathrooms.

I got to talk to new friends on both sides of me – one a musician/activist who teaches music workshops around the world, the other a brand new college grad who got a job working for an organization focused on climate change and public health. And I got to visit with old friends from Vermont, New Jersey, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. We have to go back to Albany in May to deal with our infraction.

This was by far the most racially diverse climate action I’ve ever been in, and it was the result of coalition building between some radical climate activists (almost all white) and some people of color community organizations (brought together by New York Renews) whose demands were not as radical (e.g., Food and Water Watch wanted the demand to be 100% renewables by 2030, while New York Renews proposed 100% by 2050). Because of that, some climate activists declined to participate. The demands of the action were: Stop all fossil fuel infrastructure projects! Move New York State to 100% renewable energy! (with no date attached because the different groups couldn’t agree on one). And Make the corporations polluting our air and water pay!

It seems to me that we need to broaden our base of support for climate action and work with groups we don’t agree with 100 percent of the time, assuming their demands aren’t actually antithetical to ours. One friend who didn’t participate does feel that the differences are too great, but while I was marching with all these fired-up white climate activists and African Americans from impacted communities across the state (from Buffalo to Albany to New York City), I felt like we were on the same page and that we are more powerful together than separate. 

Happy Spring!
In my neck of the woods (Connecticut) it’s way below normal temperature (in the 30s) and the fourth late winter (early spring) snowstorm has just begun.
We just returned from several days visiting family in Orange County, California – which I’ve always dissed as having boring weather where it’s always in the 70s and sunny – but this time it was a nice reprieve, even though it was colder than normal there (topping out at around 60 degrees).
We’re always looking for fun new things to do with our 5-year-old granddaughter, Eliza. This time we visited the mission at San Juan Capistrano, about a half hour drive from her home in Irvine. Ever since I learned that the migratory swallows always return to Capistrano on March 19, I’ve been intrigued with visiting, since that’s my birthday, St. Joseph’s Day.
We were departing on March 17, so we missed that by a couple of days, but we went anyway on March 16. We saw the former homes of some swallows, built under the eaves of some of the old buildings, but we didn’t see a single swallow. We learned that major construction to stabilize the mission church many years ago drove a lot of the swallows elsewhere – now the peak viewing areas are nearby highway underpasses – but in more recent years at least some have returned. However, I couldn't find any reports that they actually did return on March 19.
The highlight for me was seeing all the beautiful flowers and some trees, many of which I was able to identify with a brochure featuring the flora and their locations on the property. I don’t know why, but I enjoy these things more when I know what they are, and they are completely different from what grows where I live. Eliza had a great time feeding about a dozen huge koi that were swimming around a fountain, and she also stayed engaged as we walked around the premises for two hours with a phone-like apparatus that talked to us each time we punched a different number, to learn about the history of the place.
The mission was one of either 7 or 9 (accounts vary) established by Father Junipero Serra along the California coast. He was a Spanish priest who came to California in the late 1700s to convert the indigenous peoples he encountered. The talking history mentioned that the interaction between the Spaniards and the natives was “challenging” to the latter, but overall made it sound like they benefitted more than lost through European contact. They were given a choice of whether to come into the mission, and if they did they had to give up their culture and become Catholic. Some accounts say they were basically treated like slaves; the most generous interpretation is that they were treated like children.
Serra was beatified in 1988 (an important step toward sainthood), and canonized by Pope Francis in 2015, and was therefore referred to as “Saint Serra” in the explanations we read at the mission. There was some opposition to this process by some indigenous scholars (one called the missions “concentration camps” and “a place of death”), although according to Wikipedia, other native people supported it, saying on balance that Serra treated the Indians well and sometimes intervened to protect them from the rapes and beatings of the Spanish soldiers garrisoned at the missions. Some of his supporters say much of the criticism results from “ahistorical value judgments” – that old slippery slope, if ever there was one.
The photo above shows the ruins of the mission church, which collapsed in an earthquake just a few years after construction was finished.
The day after we visited the mission, we went to a bird sanctuary just a few minutes from Eliza’s house and saw hundreds of cliff swallows – the same species that made Capistrano famous.
They seemed to dive-bomb us, not out of hostility but because we just happened to be on their erratic flight paths. They are beautiful with iridescent dark blue backs. We also saw all kinds of other birds, from giant pelicans to tiny jeweled hummingbirds. Another highlight of our trip.
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I’ve managed to get to the end of February without posting my monthly blog. It’s not that there’s nothing to write about; in fact, it’s the opposite. I’ve been so deluged with actions to organize or attend, and bombarded with mostly horrible news, that I don’t know where to begin.

Well, the thing on top of mind is, of course, the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. The students’ responses have been incredibly inspiring, and they’ve already gotten action in Florida: raising the age of purchasing long guns from 18 to 21, creating a short waiting period before purchase, and banning bump stocks.* They didn’t get their main demand – banning assault rifles. But they – and students across the country – are going to keep organizing. They’ve already raised millions of dollars for their March 24 rally in D.C. for gun safety, which I plan to attend. I’ll also help fund students to go from Connecticut.
* Correction: I should have known this was too good to be true. None of these has passed yet, though all are on the table, which in itself may be a tiny victory.

Action in D.C. will be a lot harder, but I really feel this may finally be the change we’ve needed for decades. Besides legislation, some businesses have cut ties with the NRA and Dick's Sporting Goods said it would stop selling assault rifles and not sell any guns to anyone under 21.

Also a lot going on climate-wise. I attended a Teach-In for a Livable World! Climate Justice Now! that was organized largely by 350 CT and Sierra Club of CT. There was a good turnout (about a hundred people) for a six-hour event that included some excellent speakers who all made the point that if we don’t practice intersectionality across our various “silos” (like the environment, and women’s, labor and people of color movements) we will never succeed in our quest to lower greenhouse gas emissions enough to save the earth for humanity (and other living things).

The labor speaker was Sean Sweeney from Trade Unions for Energy Democracy, and he gave a great talk about the need for public energy systems, not private, for-profit ones, even if they are “green.” An excerpt of his half-hour talk is at this week’s Between the Lines radio show.

(There's a glitch in my website where instead of highlighting a word, it highlights the whole paragraph, so just click anywhere on it to connect to the link.)

Anne Hendrixson, director of Population and Development Programs at Hampshire College, raised some controversial issues regarding women’s reproductive rights and population, denying almost any role of population in contributing to climate change. I’ll be posting some of her talk later, so check back here for links.

When I feel burned out or depressed, I’ve loved listening to and spying the cardinals, who always sing at the tops of trees. They’re around all winter, of course, but they don’t sing for months in the fall and early winter – ‘til about February, when they start up again. The winter – aside from some bitter cold days in December – has been mostly mild, with little snow, which makes me sad. But we could still get a storm or two before spring fully springs. I’m already looking at seed catalogues for my garden.
 

Some of us are old enough to remember the career advice Dustin Hoffman got in The Graduate (or young enough to have seen it in reruns): “One word, son: plastics.” That was in 1967. And plastics did indeed take off, proliferating into an unbelievable flowering of disposable and non-disposable items. Think plastic bags, plastic storage containers, plastic bottles, plastic utensils, plastic pots for plants, plastic wrap, plastic cups and more long-lasting items like plastic pipes in the ground, plastic cars on the road and plastic jets in the air (or at least partially plastic).  We even have plastic clothing: it’s called Fleece. And plastics are critical in the health care field, from heart stents to replacement body parts.

For years I’ve tried to minimize my use of fossil fuels, from which plastic is made, but which are consumed much more abundantly in gasoline and heating fuel and electricity. I always thought plastics were a tiny percentage of the problem and not something I needed to worry about.

But at the summit against oil and gas infrastructure last November in Pittsburgh, for the first time I heard people talking about fighting “cracker plants,” explained here in a report from State Impact Pennsylvania, a joint project of NPR stations in the state: “In June 2016, Shell Chemical Appalachia announced it plans to build a massive, multi-billion dollar petrochemical plant (known as an ethane cracker) in Potter Township, Beaver County, about 30 miles northwest of Pittsburgh. ‘Cracker’ is industry lingo for a plant that takes oil and gas and breaks it into smaller molecules, to create ethylene, which is used in plastics manufacturing.” It would create toxic air pollution and lead to negative health outcomes for at least some residents.

But plastics manufacturing isn’t a “tiny” part of the problem. According to an article in The Guardian, plastic production is planned to increase by 40% in the next decade. “The global plastic binge, which is already causing widespread damage to oceans, habitats and food chains, is set to increase dramatically over the next 10 years after multibillion dollar investments in a new generation of plastics plants in the U.S.”

So I decided to do a “plastics cleanse.” But it’s not that easy. I use a straw to drink my coffee, and I plan to get a set of bamboo straws, but first I thought I’d use up the dozens of plastic straws I’ve accumulated over the years. My daughter uses a lunch bag that is an alternative to plastic bags, and I can get one, but first I may as well use up the hundreds of plastic bags of all sizes I have in the house. I have three fleece tops, and nothing could be cozier in cold weather, and since I already have them I might as well keep wearing them, though if they ever wear out (they show no sign of doing so) I could replace them with flannel or wool. There’s also a lot of plastic in all my electronic devices, and I’m not sure how I’d replace them when they wear out or get broken.

Since the conference, I’m more aware of who pays the price for my plastic conveniences, and I hope that will help me minimize its use.

P.S. The photo above has nothing to do with this topic; it’s just showing how I like to decompress after dealing with all these daunting problems. Oh, wait! My skis are partially made of plastic, too.

Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/creating-plastic-from-greenhouse-gases-180954540/#WljJye53ZYyAM30w.99

10 Things You Can Do to Minimize Plastic Use -- http://bit.ly/2nI9TEi

https://phys.org/news/2017-07-billion-metric-tons-scientists-total.html#jCp

To maintain my sanity in these insane times, I have to focus on positive developments, ongoing fights that have a chance of succeeding, or at least actions showcasing solidarity. There have been plenty of them lately. 

A few weeks ago I attended the People vs Oil and Gas Infrastructure Summit (catchy name, I know) in Pittsburgh, with more than 300 other activists. I met people working on both gas and oil pipeline struggles, including many native Americans from Canada and the U.S. A highlight of the conference was an indigenous-led “water walk” from the hotel several blocks to where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers merge to form the Ohio River (which later flows into the Mississippi, giving a clear sense of rivers as being the veins of the earth). It’s a very sacred place, and when we got there the leaders said prayers and smudged us with sage. It was evening of a mid-November day, but in keeping with the warm weather we’ve had almost all fall, it was just a lovely evening (no gloves or hat needed), albeit a reminder of the “climate, changed” as one woman put it.

I interviewed a man who works with the Sierra Club’s Labor and Economic Justice program, who had some insights into how labor activists and climate activists can support each other more. You can listen/read about it here.

An awards ceremony featured three grassroots activists who have either won battles or have helped move the struggle forward in significant ways. I was really touched by Frank Finan, a widower who bought a high-tech FLIR camera that reveals leaking gas that otherwise is invisible and has no smell either. He has taken it on his own dime all over the country to help myriad other fights. I mention he’s a widower because when he gave his brief acceptance speech he gave his wife so much credit for his life’s work, which endeared him to me. Another Pennsylvania man, Ray Kemble, has been on the front lines of the fight against Cabot Oil and Gas Corporation, which in turn has filed a SLAPP suit (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) against him, putting him in danger of losing his home (which is surrounded by fracking wells). The other winner was Ranjana Bhandari, a woman from Texas who organized her neighbors and won a fight to stop fracking in Lake Arlington.

Early Monday morning after the conference, Rising Tide Pittsburgh and allies pulled off a great action by erecting two tripods with a person suspended from each and three people locked down to each other between the tripods (see photo above) at the entrance to an office park that houses many fossil fuel companies, and succeeded in blocking the road for several hours.  They were raising the alarm about the terrible destruction that fracking does to their families and communities. Someone at the conference had suggested that it might be more effective to lobby elected officials as the woman from Texas had done, but the direct action proponents always point out that they act after all the other avenues of redress have been exhausted and their concerns have not been addressed. I was with a team that blocked the road further up, advising drivers to make a U-turn because they couldn’t get through anyway. All were compliant; most were silent but a half dozen cursed us. I kept thinking of Heather Heyer being mowed down in Charlottesville and hoped none of the drivers would weaponize their vehicle toward us.
When the cops dismantled the protest, just the tripod-sitters were charged with a couple of misdemeanors.

You can read a story about it here.

Closer to home, on November 30 about a dozen of us pulled off a very fun but meaningful action around the City of New Haven’s tree lighting festival on the Green, which happened to be sponsored by Wells Fargo. We have a campaign to get the city to move its $10 million-plus per day operating budget out of Wells, so we wrote new words to some holiday songs, donned our elf hats, and strolled the Green, singing to thousands of people and handing out flyers. You can read the story and watch the two-minute video

here.

The mayor responded that the city is gradually moving its money (which is fine, but we’re saying it should be to a local bank and she hasn’t yet declared a definite alternative bank for the bulk of the funds), and she said Wells Fargo was being a “good corporate citizen” by sponsoring the event. That sent some of us into paroxysms of scornful laughter; “corporate” doesn’t go with “citizen,” and “good” doesn’t go with “Wells Fargo.”

I’m hoping to do some real caroling before the month is out, and grab a little holiday spirit. Our son, daughter and granddaughter will be with us for Christmas, which will be a big shot of happiness.

We recorded all ten episodes – 18 hours – of Ken Burns’s and Lynn Novick’s Vietnam War documentary and have been watching it a half-hour to an hour at a time, and we just finished.

I have several strong impressions about this film. One is that almost all the footage – and all the footage of the war itself – was new to me. That’s because when I transferred from a small, conservative Catholic women’s college to the University of Wisconsin in the fall of 1967, I was primed to get involved in the antiwar movement. The first time I ever passed out a leaflet it was to tell my fellow students about a protest against Dow Chemical recruiters coming up on October 18. Dow, the makers of napalm. You’ll note that we just passed the 50th anniversary of that event.

I went to my Sociology 101 class and the professor dismissed us early, telling us our assignment was to either participate in the protest or to observe it, and then share our impressions either way. I don’t remember if I tried to enter the building where the recruiters were going to be and couldn’t get in, or preferred to join the protest outside, but in any case, I was outside when all hell broke loose. The cops went crazy shooting tear gas everywhere (they were wearing masks that did make them look like pigs, though I never called them that) and beating any protester they could get their hands on.

When I watched the report in my dorm on the nightly network news, I was so disgusted by the coverage – all pro-cop and anti-student – that I vowed never to watch TV news of the war or protests again, and I didn’t.

Seeing the unbelievable destruction the U.S. carried out in that small country – dropping more bombs than we did in all of World War II, defoliating a quarter of the land with birth defect-creating Agent Orange, dropping napalm bombs on civilians and combatants alike, burning villages and killing men, women and children – underscored why I was so against the war, why I marched with fellow students and was tear-gassed on what seemed like a weekly basis.

Another thing I was unaware of was how many Americans marched in favor of the war as late as 1972.  I knew about the “silent majority,” and I heard about the hard hats who beat protesters in New York City, but I didn’t know there were big marches with people as motivated to protest for the war as we were against it.

With the burning of the cities in the 1960s, the assassinations of JFK, MLK and RFK, and the rage of the anti-war movement and corresponding rage of the cops and the National Guard, it seems a miracle so many of us survived that decade from 1965 to 1975. While I was in the middle of it, it didn’t seem that crazy or dangerous. Maybe it was the confidence of youth.

I had a sign in my dorm room that read, “Girls say Yes to boys who say No” (unaware of the sexism inherent in that) and in fact my first really serious boyfriend had not even registered for the draft and then had taken part in a draft file burning action as a member of the Catholic Left. I spent a lot of time going to trials in Milwaukee, Chicago, Indiana and Washington, D.C. and visiting folks in prison.

There is a false equivalency portrayed in the Vietnam War film, showing that both sides did terrible things. I’m sure both sides did do terrible things, but the level of destruction carried out by the U.S. military was unprecedented and we had invaded their country, after all, so it was not surprising the Vietnamese fought back.

What are the lessons? Well, one is that it’s good to have some protection against tear gas (and now pepper spray), which is why some protesters – not just the cops – now wear gas masks.

Another is that the military learned not to let reporters and photographers have unfettered access to a war zone, to show what’s really happening on the ground.

Another is that, even though I felt part of a big, collective, anti-war society, we were in fact very isolated from anybody who didn’t think as we did, and it’s important to have conversations with others who have different points of view, and to build broader coalitions than we had 50 years ago.

Trump just visited Vietnam, and polls show he’s more popular there than he is at home. American companies operate all over the country. It’s not exactly the outcome I expected when I protested the war and the U.S. lost.

We returned to FERC -- the Federal Energy Regulatory Committee -- on Sept. 20 for its first commissioners' meeting in 8 months. Without a quorum, they couldn't approve all the fracked gas pipelines, compressor stations and other projects waiting in the wings (more than 50). Beyond Extreme Energy, the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, Green America and Berks Gas Truth (a local group in PA) organized the FERC Vacancies Campaign, with more than 200 groups signing on. We carried out phone and Twitter campaigns, personally lobbied all Senate offices, and conducted four protests of the commissioner nominees at the Senate's Energy and Natural Resources Committee resulting in arrests, including of a 25-year veteran of FERC.

Even though their quorum has been restored, and the two final nominees will be approved any day, we've also scored some important victories. For one, on Aug. 22, according to an activist group in Virginia, "the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued a landmark decision, vacating FERC’s approval of the Sabal Trail Pipeline in Florida.  The court determined that FERC is required to consider the foreseeable effects of developing gas pipelines and that those effects include the production of greenhouse gases from methane. This decision is a potential game changer for the Mountain Valley and Atlantic Coast Pipelines, because it is estimated that together they will produce greenhouse gases equivalent to that produced by 45 coal-fired plants or 158 million metric tons per year.  In fact, these two pipelines alone would more than double Virginia’s carbon footprint."  (More details here.) This is huge, since FERC always claims it has no mandate to consider global warming impacts of the projects it approves.

Then, in what the group calls a "stunning reversal," on Sept. 7 the West Virginia DEP withdrew its earlier approval of a water quality permit required for the Mountain Valley pipeline to proceed. It gave no reason for this extraordinary action, saying only that it needed to “reevaluate the complete application.”

And, the Williams company challenged the NY Department of Environmental Conservation's  denial last year of the water quality permit for the $1 billion Constitution Pipeline and lost in court.

Finally, the NC Dept. of Environmental Quality in mid-September announced a minimum several-month delay in approving a permit for the Atlantic Coast pipeline, which would go from West Virginia through Virginia and North Carolina. Maybe it had something to do with a two-week fast undertaken by Greg Yost, a fellow BXEer, in front of the DEQ headquarters. In any case, pipeline opponents all over the country are revved up to keep fighting -- and winning as many battles as possible in hopes of not losing the war.
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Below is the op-ed published last week in the New Haven Register, in case you haven't seen it elsewhere:

My brother is a denier of human impact on climate change and I’m a climate activist. He thinks the Republican governors of Texas and Florida, Greg Abbott and Rick Scott, respectively, provided great business-like leadership in organizing their states’ responses to hurricanes Harvey and Irma; I think they’re criminals who contributed to the disaster by denying the human impact on climate change and, at least in Scott’s case, forbidding state employees to even use the term “climate change.”

My brother thinks these unprecedented storms – Harvey for dropping the most rain ever in one event on the U.S., Irma for being the most powerful Atlantic hurricane ever – are just random events, and furthermore says there haven’t been many hurricanes lately, especially not any to hit Florida in the past several years. I think these super storms are exactly what climate scientists have been predicting will be the result of global warming, as warmer ocean water generates stronger – not necessarily more – hurricanes, and warmer air holds more moisture. I guess he also doesn’t count super-powerful hurricanes and cyclones that have hit other parts of the world in recent years, like the Philippines.

He agrees with Republican politicians who say it’s wrong to “politicize” the disasters by talking about climate change. I say climate disruption is about physics, not politics, and the stronger storms, massive flooding, season-long forest fires and other disasters we see on a regular basis are not influenced by what politicians say. All these events could, however, be influenced by what we do – or don’t do.

Another problem is that the media almost never mentioned the climate connection in their 24/7 coverage of the storms. A report from the watchdog group Public Citizen looked at a full week’s worth of coverage of Harvey from 18 outlets and found that only four included any significant reporting on climate. Rather than “politicizing” the issue, these four just reported what’s actually happening. The lack of coverage – like the governor’s edict not to mention the words “climate change” – reminds me of the small child who covers her eyes and thinks no one can see her. Climate disruption is the elephant in the room, whether we choose to see it or not.

I long for the days when concern for the climate was a bipartisan issue. Remember that TV ad back in 2008 with Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich sitting on a couch together, agreeing on the need for action? And in other parts of the world it’s just an everyday topic of conversation. On my once in a lifetime trip to the Alps this summer, a guide pointed to the glacier in front of us and noted that it has shrunk drastically in the past 20 years “due to global warming.” 

Climate scientists say the atmosphere should hold no more than 350 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide if we want to avoid fundamental changes to our earth systems. Pre-industrial levels were at 280 ppm, and we’re now at 407 ppm.  So we have our work cut out for us.

Kevin Trenberth, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, has a good way of explaining it. In an article in the Atlantic, he said, “…a storm like Harvey could have happened even if there was no climate change.” But, he added, “The human contribution can be up to 30 percent or so of the total rainfall coming out of the storm. It may have been a strong storm, and it may have caused a lot of problems anyway—but [human-caused climate change] amplifies the damage considerably.”

So, I say to my brother, “I’ll agree that climate change isn’t causing all the hurricanes if you’ll agree that climate change does play a part.” Deal?

My husband, Rob, and I planned a two-week hiking trip through France, Italy and Switzerland, circumnavigating Mt. Blanc, the highest peak in Europe (15,781 feet). This was a big trip for us to celebrate our 40th anniversary. We don’t fly much apart from the two trips a year we take from Connecticut to southern California to visit our daughter and her family, mostly due to concerns about climate change, since flying is by far the quickest way to blow up your carbon footprint.

While in Chamonix, France (the base from which hikers and alpinists get to Mt. Blanc), I would look up and see a dozen or more multi-hued sails floating through the air with two people attached to them: an instructor and a newbie, paragliding. It looked irresistible to me, and I decided I had to try it.

With the help of the wonderful staff at our small hotel, we found a company and I signed up for a noon meeting with my instructor, David, at the base of the ski lift that would take us to the jumping off spot. He checked all his lines (there were dozens) and helped me into my harness, which was similar to a climbing harness so I was a little familiar. He told me he would tell me when to run off the cliff and to not stop running until we were in the air. He also apologized that his previous customer, after insisting on doing aerial acrobatics, had thrown up on him and he hoped it didn't smell too bad. I assured him I couldn't smell anything. So we took several running steps and found ourselves airborne. It was amazing, thrilling, beautiful. Unfortunately almost immediately after take off I began feeling slightly nauseated – nothing two serious but a little uncomfortable. It was better when he talked to me so he pointed out several things including two small glaciers that we're right in front of us. He, as a Chamonix native probably about 30 years old, pointed out that they had receded drastically in his lifetime "due to global warming" he said.

I found this little exchange enlightening, like it was just a normal thing for a regular person (not a scientist or political activist) to bring up the issue of climate change, like it was just a fact of life and not controversial at all. Of course in France and just about everywhere else in the world outside the U.S., it is just a fact and not controversial at all. It’s also very sad (and devastating for the Chamonix economy) that the glaciers are disappearing.

We took several great hikes on our own before we were to meet up with the group and leader who would guide us through the three countries around Mt. Blanc. Unfortunately, an hour before we were to meet, Rob threw his back out and we ended up using our trip insurance to come home almost a week early, since he felt that doing several more days of rigorous hiking (and especially the downhills) would be either impossible or foolish.

He thought the problem started as we sat in the economy section of the flight going over, so we got booked on Business Class on a non-stop flight from Geneva to New York. That was a first for me and truly amazing. How was it different from what I like to call “steerage”? Let me count the ways. The bathrooms are twice as big, with free tubes of moisturizer available. We were offered a hot, damp washcloth at the beginning and end of the flight to refresh ourselves. There were tons of movies and TV shows available for free. The food – two full meals – was excellent. There was tons of leg room. And the seats were set up in alternating rows, so everyone on board had a chance to fully recline. (In other words, no one was sitting directly behind or in front of another passenger.) And one of the flight attendants came by and asked me by name if I needed anything.

Ironically, a few days earlier I’d read an article saying how damaging air travel is for the planet but suggesting ways to minimize one’s carbon footprint if one is going to fly anyway. It said that flying first class or business (which seem the same to me) can generate up to 9 times the global warming gases of a seat in economy. So it was a little ironic that as we flew in those seats, Rob was reading a book about climate change.