Borrowed Time

Climate Change is affecting the health of millions of people on the planet and it’s going to get a lot worse before it, and if it, gets better. The planet itself is sick. The atmosphere is full of toxic emissions, the warming and acidifying ocean water is full of plastic and the land has been slashed and burned. I’d prefer to continue on about nuclear waste, landfill, the hole in the ozone layer (it’s still there!) and so many other depressing but true details but I need to move along to get to some funny business. If Earth is sick, shouldn’t we seek a cure? I’ve heard that laughter is the best medicine. I would much prefer a radical reduction of carbon emissions & a world where redwoods aren’t cut down but I’ll take what I can get. For now. 

Last summer three academics at the University of Colorado published a report titled Good-natured Comedy to Enrich Climate Communication, which as the name implies, advocates for using humor to discuss climate change. Not only does humor help humans emotionally cope with all the darkness but it also functions for educational purposes and fosters hope – at least according to some smartypants in Colorado. 

I was happy to stumble onto the report because as our Library made plans to organize a year-long series of events addressing climate change, some of my coworkers questioned how accessible the series would be if everything is doom & gloom. As it turns out, the response from the community so far is ready for doom and gloom! Or in their words, they want to talk about the issues honestly and realistically with the urgency that it demands. But we also started a merit badge incentive to encourage participation in a fun and accessible way and through that process, I started making jokes about climate change for my own amusement. I shared them with my coworkers who almost universally told me they were bad but sent me mixed signals by also laughing at them and asking for more.* 

I’m no comedian but thankfully I am friends with a few. Dhaya Lakshminarayan, who is an internationally recognized comedian and was the Grand Prize Winner of The Ultimate Comedy Challenge filmed in Singapore – among other accolades such as recipient of the 2016 Liz Carpenter Political Humor Award (previously awarded to Samantha Bee and Wanda Sykes) agreed to help workshop my material. Dhaya helped improve every single one of my jokes, which were probably just as bad as my coworkers implied. Hopefully the jokes now have potential to cure our sickness with laughter. The previous statement, unfortunately, is as logical as some of my jokes. But if the podcast episode can support the report from Colorado and help anyone cope with our collective sorrow or feel inspired to talk about the issues honestly, then I guess these jokes are worth sharing. 

* The only coworker that claimed to find the jokes funny is one that I supervise so I have doubts about his sincerity and believe he might be trying to humor me.

When I was asked to interview a teenage climate activist, I said, “yes,” immediately. I always want to know what young people think about the world and their futures. Teenagers aren’t a monolith more than any other group, of course, but what is the general vibe? Are they hopeful? Depressed? Indifferent? I vividly remember the frustration of being in high school, having strong opinions about the world, and feeling like I had very little power over my own future (as adults were messing it up). Many teenagers across the globe feel the same today. We can all give recent examples of teenagers in the news begging adults to listen to them and to care.

Sarah Goody is a Youth Ambassador for Greening Forward (one of the largest youth-led nonprofit organizations in the United States). She generously shared her story of becoming a climate activist, what she is willing to risk for a better future (including her education), and what adults can do to support and join the youth at the forefront of this movement.

More than anything, I was impressed and inspired by how Sarah is empowered by knowledge and how uncovering truths (including some very dark truths) make her feel more connected to humanity and those fighting for the future.

Here are some links to topics Sarah and I discussed in this episode:

Greening Forward (Sarah is a member of this youth-led environmental non-profit organization)

Climate NOW (Sarah is the founder and president)

“We’re doing this because climate change is real” (An article about the MTA flood testing Subway entrances)

“Dianne Feinstein rebuffs young climate activists’ call for Green New Deal”

Natalie McCall of Mill Valley Public Library

The first time I ever saw salmon was in Halibut Cove Lagoon off the Kachemak Bay across the spit of Homer, Alaska. My friend identified the two of them as pinks and she thought that they were lost. We were spending the night in a cabin run by the state park system that is only accessible at high tide. As we neared the steps of the dock a porpoise breached the surface and all aboard turned around to attempt to spot it surface once more but instead saw – and heard – an eagle flying across the lagoon. It was my first (figuratively) jaw-dropping moment in Alaska and within the hour we saw a black bear foraging on the shore from the steps of the cabin. Soon after the bear spotting, we walked to a nearby dock and I saw halibut for the first time, though they were dead and gutted. And it was from there that we saw the pair of salmon. I was exhilarated. I was leaps and bounds more excited to see salmon for the first time than when I saw moose for the first time, only a few days before. 

The salmon didn’t breach the water like the porpoise nor did they speedily soar over the lagoon like the eagle. They simply swam into the shallows for a moment and then slowly swam out of sight. And that moment was much more exciting to me than seeing the bear forage on the shore or moose munching willow in the wild. I’ve been fascinated by salmon for years. In the most simple terms, everything about their life cycle and relation to their habitat intrigue me. And because of that, I didn’t know how to approach an interview with Derrick Jensen about salmon. I didn’t want the conversation to just be two dudes talking about their mutual appreciation of salmon. The day before the interview, I only had two prepared questions. One is the first question that I ask in the interview. I didn’t even ask the second question, which was really just a variant of the first question but about salmon instead of people. 

But I cobbled together some more questions by reviewing the questions I had not asked during our first interview. After the first interview, it felt to me, and I hope so for Derrick too, that there was plenty more to say. I’m hopeful that our conversation about salmon is the first of a miniseries of sorts within the Borrowed Time series. Our next conversation will be about redwoods, which seems like an appropriate segue because of the relation between salmon and forest. Plus, Jensen has written a book (Strangely Like War) about deforestation. 

In our discussion on salmon, Jensen mentions a photo sent to him from Alaska of a river that appeared pure brown that proved to be full of salmon. I had the opportunity to live in Alaska for a year and although I never saw a river completely full of salmon, I did see patches of darkness so dense that just like Jensen’s need to look closer at the photo, it did take me a moment to verify the dark patches were all fish and not shadows of the trees. When Jensen discusses ‘that level of fecundity’ I was reminded of my first visit to Alaska because my first impressions of seeing eagles, dall sheep and moose everywhere wowed me. But just as quickly as I observed the abundance of wildlife, it dawned on me under the midnight sun that everywhere in the lower 48 was once also just as full of life. 

The observation I made in Alaska is similar to the one Jensen and I separately but similarly made in Colorado watching open space replaced with urban sprawl. As we discussed during the interview, prairie dogs were once easily spotted from the road everywhere along Colorado’s Front Range. There are still some scattered along the train tracks and anywhere they can find a spot to burrow in the sprawl. One spot where they are somewhat protected is the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge, just eight miles from downtown Denver. The site opened to the public in 2004 but had previously been used by the Army to manufacture chemical weapons and by Shell Oil Company to produce pesticides. After chemical weapons stopped being produced, the area became a disposal site. Once that work was completed, it was found to be a hazardous waste site. During the cleanup process, bald eagles began to roost in the area and because bald eagles were an endangered species at the time, it became a wildlife refuge – though it took almost twenty years for the area to be deemed safe to open to the public. Along with prairie dogs and eagles, the site today is also inhabited by bison, ferrets and a heck of a lot of deer. 

It feels surreal to walk on a former chemical weapons manufacturing site turned wildlife refuge. It also seems to fit our societal view of wilderness – use a space unsafe for humans to protect animals that don’t otherwise have access to their habitat. The wildlife is considered protected but it is also managed, which means humans are dictating how many of each species there can remain. The bison population is set to a finite amount until more space is procured. A bubonic plague outbreak last year reduced the prairie dog numbers and the response to the outbreak leveled burrows after a flood of pesticides was released back into the very ground that once supported pesticide production. The area around the site is now being developed to build even more townhouses and stripmalls and Jensen’s comment about salmon bashing ‘themselves against the dam trying to get home – and that seems like a wonderful and powerful metaphor for how all of us should be – just implacably trying to get home’ makes me think of my old home that was once abundant with prairie dogs. But I am happy the eagles came home to roost (not figuratively) so the prairie dogs, and precisely 60 bison, still have a small space to live. Perhaps some other endangered species might make a home at the nearby Rocky Flats site that once produced plutonium pits and poisoned local water supplies. It might be the best bet for the animals. 

I feel bad ending things with cynicism because my conversation with Derrick Jensen left me feeling very hopeful and optimistic. But, ‘until this madness stops’ to use his words…

Climate change impacts communities in different ways. For us in Brooklyn, Superstorm Sandy and its destruction forced the city to confront our changing climate. Many of our neighborhoods are still dealing with the impact of that storm, and it is one reason why Brooklyn Public Library invested in making our buildings more physically resilient to natural disasters and in decreasing our energy consumption overall. The hope is that our branch libraries will continue to be hubs of support and information in the event of another storm. It was interesting to us, too, to think about the ways that libraries more broadly can serve as social infrastructure in the wake of disaster. The story of community recovery after Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico shows us how important it is to invest in public institutions particularly in areas that are vulnerable to natural disasters.

Kathleen Fowler We decided to come to the branch because we still had Metrocards here, petty cash was still here. So we came in through the side door… and what a disaster. The force of the water was so strong that it pushed the Snapple machine through the door. The floor was still wet. It was horrible. We couldn’t believe it. It was unbelievable.

Felice Belle If you were living in Brooklyn six years ago, you probably remember Superstorm Sandy.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras The storm started on Sunday October 28, 2012, with the brunt of the hurricane arriving in New York City on Monday morning. Schools were closed, the entire subway system was closed, and several New York City neighborhoods were put under mandatory evacuation.

Felice Belle Much of southern Brooklyn and Queens, lower Manhattan and Staten Island were battered by storm surges. Seventeen percent of New York City flooded during Sandy. Nearly two million people lost power, some for several weeks.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras Kathleen Fowler, a librarian at BPL’s Coney Island library, returned to her branch just days after Sandy to find her library destroyed.

Kathleen Fowler Unbelievable. Just that feeling of, wow everything is gone. Everything is gone. No more books down here. All the books were totally damaged. Computers, damaged. Just, where are we going from here?

Felice Belle Where do we go from here? 

Krissa Corbett Cavouras Today, we’re talking about how libraries are preparing for climate change, and how neighbors come together in the wake of a natural disaster.

Felice Belle From Brooklyn Public Library, this is Borrowed. I’m Felice Belle.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras And I’m Krissa Corbett Cavouras. 

Felice Belle In its most basic form, a library is a building. And a building provides shelter from the elements.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras On snow days, libraries can be places to warm up. And on really hot days, libraries are often designated as cooling centers.

Felice Belle We want people to come to our buildings to take refuge from the weather, if they need it. And looking at what happens to a public library during the most severe weather events can help us learn how to better serve our communities. It can tell us how to be useful to a neighborhood during a time of intense need.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras For us in Brooklyn, that means talking about what happened after Superstorm Sandy. It’s our most recent major storm. Sandy is an emotional, devastating subject to talk about for lots of New Yorkers. More than 40 people died in the city, and thousands had their homes or businesses either damaged or completely lost.

Felice Belle Sandy isn’t just part of Brooklyn history. The storm is still impacting Brooklynites today. Emotionally, but also physically. On the day our producer visited Coney Island library to talk to the staff there about the impact of Sandy, the sound of a jack hammer interrupted her recording.

Virginia Marshall And the construction next door right now, that’s not…? 

Kathleen Fowler Oh, my gosh. That’s—they call it “phase two.” It is from Sandy. Today they’re doing the sewerage and then they have to lay another trench, starting he’s not sure when… For something else. But for two years. It’s going to go on for two years.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras Coney Island was particularly hard-hit by the storm. There was major flooding and power outages. Out of the six Brooklyn library branches that had to close for repairs after Sandy, Coney Island was the last to re-open, almost exactly a year after the storm. News 12 was there to report on it.

Announcer: “The renovations cost about 2.6 million dollars from city and private funds and from insurance and FEMA money. Residents say that the new library is the final remedy to get rid of painful Sandy memories.

Patron: This was, like, more important than like chicken noodle soup. We’ve been missing this. This community needs this…

Felice Belle For many in Brooklyn, it’s hard to capture the full impact of Sandy. Even after library branches open back up, communities still feel the effects of the storm. Some never moved back to neighborhoods that were badly damaged.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras And for those who were used to taking refuge at the library—whether for intellectual pursuits, or to find community, or a warm place to spend an afternoon—suddenly that was gone.

Felice Belle Red Hook, another Brooklyn neighborhood, dealt with similar fallout after the storm.

Nurys Pimentel We always lived in a storm… in a zone. Nothing’s ever happened. And since the majority of the people live—I think like 80 percent of the people live in the projects. So, they’re strong buildings, they’re New York City built buildings. Strong, can withstand anything. Nothing’s ever happened.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras Nurys Pimentel is a librarian at Red Hook.

Nurys Pimentel I’ve lived here all my life. This was my library. I went to school down the block at P.S. 15. So I think of Red Hook as a small town library in a big city. Because people that come here, live here. It’s just the bus that comes here. If you’re taking the bus, you live here. It’s not necessarily going through.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras Red Hook is in a pretty isolated part of Brooklyn. It’s directly south of Carroll Gardens, but it’s cut off from the rest of the burrough by the Brooklyn Queens Expressway and it’s surrounded by water on three sides. In 2012, when Superstorm Sandy was about the make landfall in the Northeast, residents of Red Hook were warned.

Nurys Pimentel We saw the alerts, they’re coming down all week. Okay, this is real, this is hitting us. We have to be careful. Eh, its okay, nothing ever happens here. We live in these strong buildings. That water’s not going to come up, we’re going to be fine. Then, you start getting the knocks on the doors. “You guys have to evacuate. This is serious. This is real, this is going to happen, you guys have to get out.” And, this is all that we know. So of course, stay your ground. And then the lights went off… And then you start realizing how isolated you are. You can’t connect, all the phones are down, the wifi, the internet was down. And I thought about the library. Like, oh my God, what’s going on with the library, the schools, all the stores back here?

Felice Belle After that scary night, Nurys got up the next day and went to check on her library. She found the lights on, and miraculously, the branch still had electricity and heat. The community needed a place to get information, to check in on each other and warm up during the day. That’s what a library usually does for a community. And in those first days after the storm, that’s what it continued to do. 

Nurys Pimentel We didn’t take the time to see, wait a minute, are we supposed to be open? Because we started hearing about things not being safe for us. But still, we came, we opened, full time. Forget the library because we’re not checking anything in or out. We had food, blankets, we had workers from FEMA here, letting people know they can apply for certain things. I felt like these were my people. This is all I’ve known. So when I saw my mom’s older friend, “I’m hungry”… Oh no. We’re gonna—it’s okay. It became a personal connection. I was fine. I was fine. And my coworkers were fine. So we had to make sure everyone else was okay. That’s what we became for about two weeks before they came and told us it’s not safe for us to be here.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras So, this is remarkable. The library stayed open for two weeks, not lending books, just being a space for the community. And then they had to close for several months to clean out the mold, to put in new floors, new shelves, new computers. The branch re-opened in March of 2013. 

Felice Belle The impact of a storm like that lingers. For one thing, the physical damage is still present.

Nurys Pimentel We still have generators, there’s still floodlights. There’re still some buildings and some blocks that still don’t have their street lights on the side of the buildings. It’s still dark. We have still not 100 percent have gone back to how we were before that.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras As Nurys walked down Walcott Street and onto Lorraine, pointing out the generators, she passed a young patron she knew on her way to the library. The little girl was wearing a paper hat shaped like a pig and was pouting, clearly upset about something. But Nurys picked her up, gave her a hug, and asked her what was wrong. She told her: “We’re going to have fun today, I promise.”

Felice Belle It’s clear that Nurys is invested in her community. As a librarian and a resident, she knows first-hand the impact of the storm. And it’s not all bad news. The community has changed for the better, too.

Nurys Pimentel What’s changed, though, is the attitude. What’s changed is things like… this can happen, we have to be ready. And I think that after the storm, it was almost like you didn’t want it to define the neighborhood, or define your experience of living here: pre sandy, post sandy. No. It’s a complete reinvention. We’re going to see ourselves different. We’re not limited to being these poor people that got… dunno, their neighborhood got destroyed. Not at all. So many organizations, you see these restaurants. And we got so much more out of people having faith that this community would rebuild itself. We’re not that. Trust us. We’re fine. We’re actually better than we were. And don’t ever count us out.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras Unfortunately, big storms like Sandy are only going to get more common as our climate changes. Last year, the National Center for Atmospheric Research published a study in the Journal of Climate that projected hurricanes will become stronger in force, with more rainfall.

Mackenzie Kinard What we’ve seen for the past 50 years is not what we’re going to see for the next 50 years. Our buildings need to be a little bit stronger. More Sandy’s are going to happen.

Felice Belle This is Mackenzie Kinard. She is the Energy Analyst for Brooklyn Public Library. It’s a pretty new position, one that other big library systems are starting to add to their staff too. It’s MacKenzie’s job to make sure the library is keeping up with climate change. 

Mackenzie Kinard So the city is pushing everyone to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050. So we’re benchmarking ourselves and keeping track of our energy use, the projects we’re doing to reduce that use, but also building to create more sustainable buildings. So when things like Hurricane Sandy or the more severe weather that we’re expecting actually happens, we have buildings that survive it.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras We want our branches to be the kind of resource that Red Hook was able to be for the neighborhood immediately after Sandy.

Felice Belle With funding from the Governor’s Office for Storm Recovery as well as the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the library is making physical improvements to several of our branches.

Mackenzie Kinard In total, five of our libraries are going to be getting solar panels. Four of them are a combination of solar panels and rooftop battery storage.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras Those four branches are in flood zones: Kings Highway, Coney Island, Mill Basin and Gerritsen Beach libraries.

Mackenzie Kinard So these batteries will kick in any time there’s an electrical disconnect. So it’s not just when another Sandy happens, its if there’s a blackout it’ll work too.

Felice Belle We’re lucky that in Brooklyn, we have an extensive system of library branches. These buildings are a vital part of their neighborhoods, ready to be of service when they are most needed.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras But that’s not the case everywhere in the United States, right? Thinking about Superstorm Sandy made us think about Hurricane Maria, a more recent, and more devastating storm. Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico in September of 2017 and about 3,000 people lost their lives during the storm and its aftermath.

Felice Belle And, unlike other storms in the United States, hurricane Maria hit a place that was already lacking sound infrastructure and public institutions like libraries.

Frances Negrón-Muntaner The city of San Juan, which is the largest city in Puerto Rico, does not have a public library since the Carnegie library closed years ago.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras This is Frances.

Frances Negrón-Muntaner My name is Frances Negrón-Muntaner. I’m a professor at Columbia University and one of the leads of Unpayable Debt and Valor y Cambio projects

Felice Belle Three years ago, Frances and her colleagues began to study Puerto Rico’s debt crisis and its impact on Puerto Ricans.

Frances Negrón-Muntaner And as we went along in our research, we realized that one of the hardest hit resources in Puerto Rico had to do with education, information, libraries.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras One third of Puerto Rico’s public schools are on their way to closure, which means that the number of libraries across the country is drastically declining. That creates what Frances called library deserts in many parts of the island.

Frances Negrón-Muntaner In a country where about 50 percent of the population lives under the poverty line, many people don’t have computers at home. So they are relying on the school, the school library or the public library in order to access those resources of computers, information, and books.

Felice Belle The defunding of public institutions like schools and libraries, and city infrastructure—that was all a problem before Hurricane Maria. But the hurricane brought those issues to the forefront.

Frances Negrón-Muntaner So if you look at the whole scenario—destruction of resources as a result of the debt crisis and the hurricane, and resulting weakened infrastructure which curtails the number of libraries that you can access and the materials in the libraries—then you are talking about an emergency.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras After the storm, Frances and two of her colleagues, Angel Lopez and Libertad Guerrea, wrote a proposal for a new library system, which they call Multiteca Libre. 

Frances Negrón-Muntaner We envision this as a place that has multiple functions that is capable of addressing community needs or engaging with them. Everything, not only from storytelling but also to… in case of emergency, perhaps these buildings need to be outfitted so they have solar capabilities, wifi capabilities in case of emergency to communicate out. So we envision this as a 21st century library for the Caribbean in the era of climate change.

Felice Belle But when Frances and her team started fundraising, they encountered a lack of enthusiasm, perhaps because a library seemed antiquated. It was hard to get people excited about it. So, Frances shifted tactics. She wanted to show that people in Puerto Rico want and need community spaces and free access to information.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras That’s when the idea for Valor y Cambio, or Value and Change was born. Frances and Sarabel Santos Negrón, her collaborator, found an old ATM and outfitted it with a video camera and microphone. Then they put the ATM in a public place and invited everyone in the area to come and share stories about what they value.

Frances Negrón-Muntaner And in exchange of that story you would get a bill randomly, which went from one to 25. There were six denominations.

Felice Belle But it wasn’t a standard American bill. These were special pesos, a form of community-supported currency that could be used at over forty local businesses. Community currency is a pretty amazing idea, one that other countries experiencing economic insecurity have used in order to build trust within a community.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras Valor y Cambio was an immensely popular project. For the nine days this past February when the project was ongoing, people waited on line for as many as three or four hours to use the ATM.

Felice Belle As they waited on the line, people talked to each other. Some had traveled from other cities and towns to use the machine. For a brief period of time, the ATM became a community gathering point and a place where information and ideas were exchanged.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras And Frances and her team discovered something remarkable in the course of the project. 

Frances Negrón-Muntaner The vast majority of people did not use the currency. Of the about 1,700 bills that were circulated, less than 100 were used. It was clear that people valued what the currency represented more than what could be purchased with it. Which I think goes back to the library project. That in many ways, people really need and value community, and this is something that is not new but is certainly underscored by the experience of Maria. If we remember, neither the federal government nor the local government came to assist people immediately after the hurricane and a lot of people only managed to survive because of their neighbors.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras That’s something we learned here in Brooklyn, too, after Sandy. We learned that libraries create community, and that in times of need, like a hurricane or a debt crisis or sometimes both, community can be the thing that saves us. 

Borrowed is produced and written by Virginia Marshall, with help from Fritzi Bodenheimer, Jennifer Proffitt, Meryl Friedman and Robin Lester Kenton. Our music composer is Billy Libby

Losing Earth: A Recent History by Nathaniel Rich is essential reading for anyone that wants to understand the current political climate of science denial and ineffective actions to address climate change over the last 40 years. The oil companies knew the threats of climate change since the late 70s, which seems so often mentioned as a mere factual detail and nothing more. In Losing Earth, Rich hammers home who knew what and when in great detail casting the characters involved as heroes, villains or victims focusing on ten years ranging from 1979-1989. That the oil companies knew climate change was a threat is an understatement. The oil companies, and also scientists and politicians, understood the severity of the threat and recognized it was more than just a threat but a path towards grim reality if practices didn’t change. 

Practices did not change. In fact, more carbon emissions have been released in the last four decades than all of the previous combined years throughout civilized history. As Rich notes, it wasn’t just the oil companies that knew – everyone knew. The first three parts of the book, which are the bulk of the book, is the detailed history of actions and responses to the science from politicians, scientists and industry interests. But more than just a detailed history of missed opportunities, in the afterword Rich captures something else: the human delusion that puts short-term economic interests or electability concerns above life on earth. 

Rich succinctly expresses why this history matters in the context of today and for the future. It is in the afterword in which I quote from during our interview when Rich notes the human tolerance for self delusion. Delusion may be the best logical explanation to accept where we are today following the history of ignoring, hiding and then denying the science by those that knew. Or maybe it is just my own delusions that make that scenario more acceptable than greed and indifference as being the explanation for ‘stealing our future’ as Greta Thunberg says. 

In our interview, and aligned with the theme of heroes, villains and victims, Rich discusses Greta Thunberg’s message and more than once addresses environmental racism. In Losing Earth, Rich captures everything in a single sentence: ‘The relationship between those who have burned the most fossil fuels and those who will suffer the most from a warming climate is perversely inverted.’ His statement is true both in socioeconomic terms and also in chronological terms. People in poverty and people of color will burden the consequences of climate change before the so-called developed nations, who have the means to better defend and adapt. Those that profited by oil booms will check out before young people cope with the results.

This past weekend I was browsing the environmental section of a used bookstore and was reminded how many books published decades ago were written waving warning flags of different aspects of ecological collapse. Some looked dated, such as books published in the early 70s about protecting whales and harp seals but perhaps those books helped influence the laws that followed soon (ish) after to protect whales and harp seals. Others, like The Fight to Save the Redwoods (1983), were more sad to see because although over 90% of old growth redwoods had already been cut down at the time of its publication, the book is presented as a history of preserving the remaining trees as an accomplishment, without foreseeing that only three years after its publication, the Pacific Lumber Co. would start clearcutting forests at a rapid rate previously unseen. 

My point, hopefully, is much like the point of Losing Earth: everyone has known our actions are destructive to our habitat. John Muir advocated to preserve the redwoods almost as soon as they began cutting them down. Ed Ricketts and his protege John Steinbeck warned of overfishing and a lifeless ocean in The Log from the Sea of Cortez (written in 1940, published in 1951). Some books, like Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) generated small successes such as banning DDT but eleven years after its publication, Roundup was patented. We seem to care that DDT and Roundup harm humans but based on our actions, we are less concerned that we are poisoning our water and food – to say nothing of the insects the poisons are designed to kill that help keep our ecosystem in balance. I’m reminded of George Santayana’s quote, ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’ that is more often remembered in Winston Churchill’s words, ‘Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it’ and my concern is that the history Nathaniel Rich shares is a reminder of what we have already failed to learn and the consequences of climate change are reaping what we have sown. But perhaps the 3.3 billion people born since the science was clear should be called victims. As Rich states in the afterword about a government that denies the science, it is, ‘guilty of more than merely bowing to corporate interests; it commits crimes against humanity.’ Rich also says the, ‘fears of the young will overwhelm the fears of the old’ and my hope is that we still have the time to see that come true.

The subtitle of the first volume of Endgame by Derrick Jensen is The Problem of Civilization. The book begins with twenty premises that individually stand as logical statements that anyone with a general knowledge of history and basic understanding of how our society functions can understand. If one accepts each premise, then the twenty premises pieced together like a puzzle form the foundation to support the argument that civilization is the problem.

In Endgame, Jensen uses a fantastical example that exemplifies the problem: if aliens from outer space cut down our trees, poisoned our water, and destroyed all wildlife, would humans stand around and tolerate it? Like the plot of many action movies, Jensen believes humans would take up arms against the aliens. So why do we tolerate lumber companies clearcutting forests, mountaintop removal for coal mining or offshore drilling disasters? If someone can make a short term profit on it, we can accept the destruction of wilderness. Jensen argues our culture has bought into the system and further makes his point by saying we’ve been trained to think drinking water comes from the sink and food comes from the store. More than just a disconnect from the natural world and disconnect from where things come from, the reliance on our existing system for survival makes us complacent in our complicit role in allowing our ecosystem to collapse. And also apathetic. 

What does it say that the easiest way for us to recognize this problem is to use an example of imaginary aliens from outer space? For me, I think it proves his point. Our culture is so dependent on civilization that we’ve not only become disconnected from nature but have surpassed our effort to dominate nature and have moved on to discussing inhabiting Mars (will we share it with the aliens?) after we’ve destroyed this planet. Another example that Jensen uses is that his students often discuss what they will do in ‘the real world’ after they finish school. Of course the students are referring to their careers but this is more than just semantics – the real world has come to mean our status in civilization instead of the actual real world. Civilization could use a reminder that the gravitational pull from the sun makes the world go round and not money. Or that reality TV is not real and that products with the Kraft Real Cheese trademark are not cheese at all, ETC. 

The majority of my favorite books that cover climate change focus on the consequences of releasing so much carbon emissions that raise the global temperature beyond a liveable habitat. Some, like Losing Earth show how we got here. The Sixth Extinction exposes the damage humans are causing to other species. The Uninhabitable Earth provides the blueprint for a wide range of colossal disasters that we currently face. Floating Coast uses a single location to share the history, the toll and what could happen elsewhere. Authors that tackle this depressing subject sometimes propose solutions to the problems and all address the obvious: civilization’s dependency on fossil fuels. What I appreciate about what Jensen offers to the discussion is looking past the short-term solutions to the immediate problem of carbon emissions and pointing out that civilization itself is, and never can be, sustainable. Spoiler: electric cars won’t save the planet. 

If the idea that civilization can never be sustainable sounds a bit much, just read Endgame. I’ve been using the words civilization and culture not interchangeably but based on Jensen’s definitions from the book. In our interview, I asked Jensen if it was safe to say that he believes climate change is the symptom and not the problem but I’ll urge you to listen to the recording to hear his answer. The conversations surrounding climate change often miss the point, or the bigger picture. Right now Australia is on fire and today’s headline was that a celebrity donated $500,000 directly to local fire services. My friends are calling for donations on social media. Money may help but it doesn’t make the world go round and money alone won’t put out the current fire or prevent the next one. The real world is on fire and the seas aren’t rising fast enough to put it out.

One day while at work I was passing through the office and saw our graphic designer working on a poster with the front cover of The Dreamt Land and I did a double take because some weeks prior I had written to the author and asked about his availability to make a public presentation at our library next summer. I never heard back. It turns out that Mark Arax, author not only of The Dreamt Land but also The King of California, In My Father’s Name & West of the West had already agreed to speak at a Mill Valley Historical Society presentation at our library so I quickly wrote to him a second time and asked if he would be willing to be our first interview for the Borrowed Time series. 

We hoped to include Arax in our series because we selected The Dreamt Land as our featured book recommendation in August to examine water resources in California. As Arax notes at the end of our interview, his intended audience for the book was not just Californians or people interested in water rights but a general audience interested in the ‘manipulation’ – to use his word – of our land and resources. The state and federal laws on California water are as complicated as its history and all of it is intertwined together like tributary, river and lake but convoluted by dam and aqueduct. Arax does an amazing job by presenting all of the information in not only an accessible way but also in a very poetic manner. I confess my prior impressions of the Central Valley were tainted by Bay Area elitism and only based on what I could see (and smell!) from the highways as I yearned to reach my destinations beyond the valley. But from the get-go in the preface, Arax twisted my perception of the Central Valley by painting the same views from Highway 99 through a brighter lens of someone expressing their love of their hometown. I’m certain the oleander in the median will catch my eye the next time I make the drive. 

Reviews have compared Arax, and specifically so this book, to Steinbeck and I’ll wholeheartedly reinforce that thought. Arax captured something special in this book – the essence of California. In our interview, when discussing what it’s like to write about your neighbors, Arax comments he sometimes has to be the ‘persona non grata’ but my hope is that this book will help shape how other Californians along the coast in big cities view, and better appreciate, our neighbors on the other side of the mountains. It pleased me that Arax also quoted Steinbeck in our interview, ‘No one forgets a drought faster than Californians’ (Steinbeck really said, ‘And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way’ – I am a librarian after all). 

The Dreamt Land begins with a story about apricots blossoming in January and then producing no fruit by spring despite the promise of the many buds. Arax calls his neighbor Brad for insight and is then shown the pistachio orchard on his neighbor’s farm, which also failed to produce. Brad explains that for both the apricot and pistachio, the trees never hibernated through winter because it didn’t get cold enough and says a few words Arax describes as rarely spoken by farmers in the Central Valley: global climate change. The epilogue returns to climate change but the 500+ words in between don’t directly discuss it. For that reason, I approached the first interview for the series with caution. I was surprised later that night at the Historical Society presentation when Arax went a bit darker than our interview and discussed climate change with more focus and made the threat of wildfire uncomfortably real. Audience members asked what could, or should, be done and I saw more than one face squirm when we discussed recycling water from wastewater. 

But I held back a bit in the interview. I had hoped to discuss the Tulare Lake more in depth but like the words climate change, the lake is mentioned but not prominent in Arax’s book. I first learned of the lake in a different book, The State of Water by Obi Kaufmann. The Tulare Lake was once the second largest lake west of the Mississippi. Today, very few people know of it because there is no water in the basin. Arax, in our interview, notes he didn’t know of it until a flood in the late 90s when his editor at the Los Angeles Times sent him to report on it. But John Muir and Mark Twain wrote about the lake a hundred years ago. And for hundreds of years before that, the rich habitat provided for thousands of Native Americans. Salmon once swam up the San Joaquin River into the lake. The lake disappeared after dams were built upstream and the water diverted for agriculture. 

Like the Tulare Lake, grizzly bears, elk, wild mustangs and antelope all once called the Central Valley home only a few generations ago. Today the delta smelt is at the center of a water resource debate. Farmers in the Central Valley want more water diverted from the delta for farming but the flow doesn’t meet the desired amount to protect the delta smelt, an endangered species. With weakened protections to the Endangered Species Act, the farmers might get what they want – more water and more profit and all for the short term. In our interview, Arax notes the delta smelt could be the new canary in the coal mine in California. If the delta smelt isn’t protected, which species will be the next to go? 

Although I felt like I held back in the interview, and the words ‘climate change’ are not overstated in The Dreamt Land, Arax does more than once use the words ‘massive manipulation’ to talk about human influence on California landscapes and what is climate change if not a massive manipulation to our world? In the book, interview and presentation at our library, Arax addressed the sinking of the land in some parts of the Central Valley. The ‘massive manipulation’ by removal of groundwater has sunk the land in some places by 30 feet and has taken all of the infrastructure with it. The Steinbeck quote about California drought amnesia should apply beyond flood and drought. We have forgotten the Tulare Lake and that grizzlies roamed the Central Valley. We acknowledge and then overlook what it means that thousands of Native Americans, as Arax notes, were the victim of California’s first exploitation. If we lose the delta smelt, we may forget them just as we have with the former salmon and steelhead runs in the Russian and Eel Rivers. 

If you have listened to the podcast, I hope this writing is of further interest. If you have not listened to the podcast, please do!