Hey, happy Earth Day! Who wants to talk about climate change?

Yeah, okay, fair, I kinda figured the answer to that would be "ugh do we have to?" What if I told you I have good news though? Good news with caveats, but still good news.

What if I told you that since the Paris Agreement in 2015, we've avoided a whole degree celsius of global warming by 2100, or maybe more?

Current projections are 2.7C, which is way better than the 3-5C (with a median of 3.7C) we were expecting in 2015. It's not where we want to be - 1.5C - but it is big, noticeable progress!

And it's not like we either hit 1.5C and avoid all the big scary consequences or fail to hit 1.5C and get all of them - every tenth of a degree of warming we avoid is going to prevent more severe problems like extreme weather, sea level rise, etc.

This means that climate change mitigation efforts are having a noticeable impact! This means a dramatically better, safer future - and if we keep pushing, we could lower the amount of global warming we end up with even further. This is huge progress, and we need to celebrate it, even though the fight isn't over.

It's working. Keep going.

That’s right. It took effort and it was a real concern, but because of that effort and many others, the ozone layer is healing, acid rain isn’t melting our statues and buildings anymore, whale populations are increasing back to pre-whaling levels.

We ARE able to change our planet for the better. We have proof. Let’s keep up the good work.

How to begin a sustainable way of life

This is a draft of something I've been writing for a couple months. It is mainly focused on the culture of the USA. Feel free to repost or otherwise share, with or without credit.

Do not tell people what to do—help them do it! 

Give the gift of relief from being forced to engage in society’s unsustainable ways of life. 

You cannot control others’ behaviors, but you can free them from being controlled. 

If you think to yourself, “But this would be so difficult to do!” ask yourself WHY? Why does your society coerce you into less sustainable ways of living, forcing you to consume excessively? After thinking about this, consider that it is less simple and easy than you thought to make more sustainable choices, so why would you judge others for not doing it? 

Do not act alone—act with others! 

Environmentally friendly behaviors that can be done alone, without collaborating with or consulting another person, are the least powerful of all. Whenever an “environmentally friendly” behavior is suggested, figure out “How can I give this as a gift?” or “How can I make this possible on the level of a whole community?” 

“Personal choices” do not work because every single person has to make them individually. If you are focused on making your own personal choice, you are not focused on others. If you are not focused on others, you are not helping them. If nobody is helping each other, most people won’t be able to make the “personal choice.”

You inherently share an ecosystem with your neighbors  

            Start with your neighbors, the people physically close to you. You live on the same patch of land, containing roots from the same plants and trees. You can speak to them face to face without traveling, which means you can easily bring them physical things without using resources to travel. 

            Always talk to your neighbors and be friendly with them. Offer them favors unprompted and tell them about how your garden is doing. Do not be afraid to be annoying—a slightly annoying neighbor who is helpful, kind, and can be relied upon for a variety of favors or in times of need is a necessary and inevitable part of a good community. If you make the effort to be present in somebody’s life, they will have to put up with you on some occasions, but that is just life. We cannot rely on each other if we do not put up with each other. 

Simply spending time with someone influences them for good 

Every hour you spend outside with your neighbor is an hour your neighbor doesn’t spend watching Fox News. Every hour you spend talking with someone and interacting with them in the real world, eating real food and enjoying your real surroundings, is an hour you don’t spend only hearing a curated picture of what reality is like from social media. 

            Isolation makes it easy for people to become indoctrinated into extremist beliefs. When someone spends more time alone, watching TV, Youtube, or scrolling social media, than they do with others, their concept of what other people are like and what the world is like comes more from social media than real life. TV and online media are meant to influence you in a specific way. Simply restricting the access these influences have to yourself and others is helpful. 

A garden is the source of many gifts 

If you grow a garden, you can give your neighbors and friends the gift of food, plants, and crafted objects. This is one of the foundational ways to form community. When you give food, you provide support to others. When you give plants, you are encouraging and teaching about gardening. It is even better when you give recipes cooked from things you grew, or items crafted from things you grew. You can also give the gift of knowledge of how to grow these plants, cook these recipes, or craft these objects. 

More on gift-giving

            Some people are uncomfortable with receiving items or services as gifts. They want to feel like they are giving something back, instead of having obligation to return the favor hanging over them. 

            It can help to ask a simple favor that can be easily fulfilled. People generally like the feeling of helping someone else. 

When you give someone a gift, it can help to say something like “Oh, I have too many of this thing to take care of/store/eat myself! Do you think you could take some?” This makes your neighbor feel like they are helping you. 

When allowing others to borrow items, you might not get them back. Don’t worry about that. It just means the item found a place where it was needed the most. You can ask about the item if you think it might have been forgotten, and this can create an opportunity for a second meeting. But don’t press. 

If the person you give to insists upon some form of payment, this is a good opportunity to negotiate a trade. 

Ask to be given compostable or recyclable things 

Ask your neighbor to save compostable scraps, biodegradable cardboard and paper products, and any other items that might be put to use. Use them in your own compost pile. Or, start a compost pile at the edge of the yard where you both can add to it. Remember that “wet” compost like vegetable and fruit bits needs to be mixed with twice as much of “dry” and “woody” compost like cardboard, leaves, small twigs, paper and wood bits. 

Use the front yard for gardening

Overcome the cultural norm that the front yard is only decorative. Use the front yard for gardening so you can be seen by others enjoying your garden, and others can witness the demonstration of the possibilities of land. In the front yard, anything you do intentionally with your land can be witnessed. It also makes you a visible presence in your community. 

Grow staple foods 

Don’t just grow vegetables that cannot be the core component of a meal themselves. Grow potatoes, dry beans, black eyed peas and other nourishing, calorie-dense foods. Grow the ingredients of meals. You could even build a garden around a recipe.

Invite neighbors and friends over to eat food made from things you grew 

Be sure to send them home with leftovers.  

Grow plants for baskets 

Containers are one of the fundamental human needs. If we had more containers, we wouldn’t need plastic so much. You can learn to make baskets, and to grow plants that provide the raw materials for baskets. 

If someone rakes their leaves, ask to have the leaves  

If you see someone putting leaves in bags, don’t be afraid to ask if you can have the leaves. More likely than not they will be happy to agree. 

Collaborate with neighbors to plant things in the no-man’s-land of the property line 

In the border land between your neighbor’s yard and your yard, it is almost always just mowed grass because no one can plant anything without it affecting their neighbor. But these border lands add up to a lot of space. It would be much better if you talked to your neighbor about what would be nice to plant there, and together created a plan for that space. 

Give others the freedom to wander 

Make it clear that you will not get mad if the neighbor’s kids play in your yard or run across it. Invite the neighbors onto your land as much as possible. Tell them they are allowed to spend time in a favored spot whenever they would like.  

The power of the hand-made sign 

If there is a yard sale, you always know about it because of the hand-drawn signs placed around. Therefore, a cookout or unwanted item exchange can be announced the same way. In rural areas I have seen hand-made signs that say: FIREWOOD or WE BUY GOATS or EGGS. This is one of the few technologies of community that remain in the USA. If someone who looks to buy and sell can put up a hand-made sign, why shouldn’t you?  

Religious people or people with strong political opinions like to put signs everywhere. If they have the confidence and courage to do so, why shouldn’t you? 

So if there is a message you would like everyone to see, use the simple power of the hand-made sign. Proclaim “BEE FRIENDLY ZONE!” above your pollinator garden with all the confidence of a religious fundamentalist billboard. Announce to the world, “VEGETABLES FREE TO ALL—JUST ASK!” “WE TAKE LEAVES—NO PESTICIDES.” Instead of YARD SALE, or perhaps in conjunction with YARD SALE, you can write, PLANT EXCHANGE or SEED SWAP or CLOTHING SWAP. Who can stop you? 

Someone has to do it for society to change  

Some of these ideas might be eccentric, strange, or even socially unacceptable, but there is no way to change what is normal except to move against it. Someone has to be weird. It might as well be you. 

If you grow fruit in your front yard people WILL come and chat with you about it. Gardeners LOVE to find other gardeners. I've got a lot more native berries in my neighborhood since I planted some and then made myself available for chatting by doing work on my front porch- they want to know what that is? Oh, the honeyberries? would you like to try some? So easy to grow, since it's native. Lovely fall foliage, to. Yeah, you can buy these just up the road at the urban farm supply store. Great place.

Seems like all the things people say are "missing the point" or "not doing enough" about saving pollinators, actually are doing some good.

Like No Mow May and leaving your lawn weeds alone, sure it's important to be planting species native to your area, but cosmopolitan lawn weeds like dandelions are actually really important for pollinators even in areas where they're not native. Gas powered lawn mowers put out a shit ton of CO2, way more per hour of use than cars, and the other air pollutants caused by lawn mowers are bad for us, so it's great to cut down on lawn mowing any way possible.

And on top of all that, a month of not mowing gives enough time for wild flowers to start growing where they couldn't before, so if you participate in no mow may, you might not NEED to plant native flowers because you might already have them

same thing with "save the bees" and focusing on honeybees, the pesticides that are affecting honeybees are also killing our native pollinators, so it will benefit them all to stop spraying.

people getting into beekeeping is good, even though honey bees aren't the ones endangered, it shows people how they are in symbiosis with other life forms.

And I'm reading a book about beekeeping, cause dad wants to keep bees, and the book says if you keep bees you will have to talk to your neighbors about pesticides and how they will harm the bees. That is a benefit to the whole ecosystem if someone is educating the people around them about the harms of pesticides

On top of that, more people are experiencing firsthand that honey comes from bees and consequently, understanding that insects aren't just scary and bad, and when they see a bee maybe they won't feel threatened and want to destroy it but instead think "oh yeah that is my friend that gives me delectable treats"

It is recommended to offer your neighbors honey from your hives. If they put pesticides on their flowers, they will put poison in the honey they were promised, if they get any honey at all

i guess i'm not as despairing as many people about the future of the planet simply because the fact that we're not in way worse shape today suggests the earth is crazy resilient

Reading anything about environmental history is like "and by 1956 the river was so full of uranium and bubonic plague that the only living organism found in it was an single amoeba which died immediately after being documented" and I'm like okay maybe today's problems aren't necessarily uniquely disastrous and unsolvable

This is only one example but apparently malaria was introduced to the USA by the slave trade but there was a program in the 50's to wipe it out and we did. by dusting thousands of tons of Paris green (an arsenic compound) as well as a shit ton of DDT all over our wetlands

@notpockets Where are you getting "accept mass death of humans" from this?!

I am very firmly arguing against the "we should not bother planning for the future because we're all going to die and so we should all sit on the internet and wait for the Glorious Day When Someone Murders All The Billionaires Which Magically Fixes All Problems" school of thought which I would argue is significantly more anti-human than anything else

@casspea I'm pulling this out of replies because I want to give a serious response to it, because this is very important to me. I will start by asking a question that will initially appear unrelated.

Do you know why it is so hard to leave an abusive relationship?

I didn't. I understood, like most people do, that people don't get into abusive relationships because they are stupid or made clearly avoidable stupid decisions, but I didn't *understand*—meaning that I couldn't really imagine myself getting into that situation. I had a strong sense of my own worth and I knew all the signs of an abusive relationship, so I just...innocently figured I would see that sort of thing coming.

[Narrator: She did not see it coming.]

What I didn't know was WHY smart people end up in abusive relationships—really, I was mistaken about the whole nature of wisdom and intelligence and knowledge. I saw those things as stable characteristics of myself or any person, facts, failing to realize that everything, everything, everything takes up energy.

Even knowing takes up energy.

Your body and mind evolved to account for this fact. Your body and mind evolved to allocate your energy based on your needs—in order to keep you alive. Have you ever had a panic attack? I have. That's your body pouring all your energy into preparing for whatever action is necessary to face the threat.

Certain things are necessary for a human to feel safe—to be safe. Steady access to food. Shelter. Privacy. Bodily integrity. Stability. Support from other humans. In terms of energy, it is incredibly costly to not be safe.

Hold onto that, because it's important. It is incredibly costly to not be safe.

You said in an earlier reply that my post sounded like I had never lived in an impoverished region. I find that offensive, and here's why: It is incredibly costly to not be safe. If you are just one accident, one mistake, one sickness, one stroke of bad luck away from losing your house, your health, your stability, your family's supper tomorrow, you are not safe and your body knows. And this is why poverty kills you. Slowly. Every day of your life.

So this is how a smart person gets into an abusive relationship: You live with this person, and it's okay right now. If things can just stay okay for a while...you can make it. You just need things to keep being okay, because you are not safe you're tired, and you need a little time to recharge after the last time you had to talk and set a boundary with them, because you are not safe that conversation was stressful and took a lot of energy.

You set a boundary. And it takes a lot of energy to explain to them what they did to hurt you and why, but you think they get it, finally.

And then they push that boundary. And you have the conversation again. And things are okay.

And then they push.

And the less privacy, the less security, the less you have—the more they encroach upon your basic needs—the costlier it becomes to set and enforce boundaries, because you have less and less energy left to change or interrogate your situation.

And they start raising the cost. Pricing you out of the boundaries you have already set. You can't afford to defend those boundaries anymore, so you back off, ceding more and more of your safety to them. And not being safe is incredibly costly.

You were a smart person. Now you're too tired to think. You don't have the energy to do anything, anything, anything except survive, and you can't even see your situation for what it is, because you are expending all your energy trying to stop it from getting worse.

Now, I guess the idea of people being terrified all the time about climate change and thinking about dying and other people dying and losing everything they value and love and not having a future for themselves or their children (if they were so bold as to have them) is really, fucking, gratifying in the sense that it means they feel the gravity and seriousness of the situation the appropriate amount. I guess. Awesome!

But terrified people are not very good at solving problems because being shitting-your-pants terrified all the time makes you stupid (for reasons that are not your fault)

And terrified people are incredibly resistant to change because adjusting to change takes energy and they don't HAVE energy because literally all their energy is going toward the fucking monumental task of staying fucking alive

And people that have KNOWN their whole goddamn lives, in the marrow of their bones, that they don't have a future, cannot imagine the future.

We have to imagine the future.

We have to.

Have you ever had a panic attack? Like a bad panic attack? Have you ever fully, truly, deeply believed you were going to die? I have. I was 10. Panic attacks are supposed to last 20-30 minutes max but I guess my body wants to live more than most because I have 2-3 hours of it in me. And yet there is a point at which you lie down and wait for it to kill you, because you can't hang on anymore. Because you can't DO anything.

And you can learn to be resilient! I sure fucking did! I learned to shove on through that shit like a zombie, indestructible, completely unable to locate or name my own discomfort screaming through my body like an air raid siren! I pushed through! Except I wasn't moving 'through' anything! I was just Dying Physically!

This is to say that the gut-wrenching certainty of facing a future ruled by unspeakable horrors is quite familiar to me thankyouverymuch, and it wasn't exactly fertile ground for developing a "solutions" mindset.

The idea that not being in despair about the earth means you must not love it? Well, that just about boils my blood.

Because I did love the Earth when I was a little kid, but all throughout my whole teenage years I never thought of doing any kind of volunteer work or getting involved in my local community or even LEARNING about it that much. Why?

Because I thought we were all fucked anyway, so why bother. Because I was already dealing with my own shit and I couldn't bear taking that grief upon my own shoulders. I HATED my hometown, hated it, never had the tiniest bit of love for it in my heart, and honestly in my mind it was worthless, because the old growth had been cut down and the wolves and bison were gone and housing developments were built, and I was convinced i would live to see it get worse, and worse, and worse, see more woods get destroyed and my beloved creek be bulldozed and polluted, and I couldn't just go out and pour my heart into something I knew was doomed to be fucking obliterated anyway. I was trying to fucking survive.

And that's what I saw everyone else doing. Mourning. Bemoaning how we were going to watch tigers go extinct and the forests burn. Nervously joking about the unlikely possibility that we would make it to 50.

I fucking grew up in the Bible Belt, surrounded by people who thought the Earth was nothing more than a piece of tissue to be crumpled up and thrown away! My parents grew up having nightmares about nuclear bombs raining down on their hometown and so did I! The only stories about the future I can think of have zombies, fascism and/or child death tournaments! We are not exactly encouraged to give ourselves gentle things in our dreams of what tomorrow may bring.

So i was a creative writing major for a while and as a result read a lot of literary poetry, and if you don't know what literary poetry is, it's poems by someone who has a MFA or PhD in poetry and are published in very fancy self-important journals.

Anyway once upon a time I read this poem

And I wasn't exactly shining rays of sunshine out the crack of my ass in those days but this shitty poem snapped me out of my pessimism. Oh God, I thought, I may write edgy and depressing shit sometimes but I'll never put a cold wet snot rag like this into the world.

Ants? Ants are going to go extinct? Fucking ants? I want to punt this writer out of the solar system for the hubris of that alone.

It's so...self centered, this mindset the poem shows. So self-pitying. Poor little me! Humans are the virus and I'm so sad that we're such a disease upon the earth! Boohoo!

And it seriously got me thinking: Do these projections and predictions actually motivate anyone to take action? Do they do anything except satisfy some self-indulgent urge to wallow in depression and misanthropy?

This poem doesn't emerge from love; that's what struck me at the time. The author doesn't love the Earth if she lacks the basic curiosity to learn what algae even is (photosynthetic! Not found in caves!) nor to learn of the wonders of the world of ants (definitely not going to go extinct). Her projected future is bizarre—why would humans live in caves? Why are cockroaches the only animal expected to survive? Is she confusing climate change with a nuclear war?

But it's the air of admonishment that gets me. The bold insinuation that people are "doing nothing" while the Earth dies non-specifically.

Lady, trees fucking died for the paper this sludge was printed upon.

People think instilling dread is doing something. It's not. People think cultivating despair is doing something. It's not. People think that fear, fear of a thousand horrible futures shown to us by every imagination on every screen and page, will be a goad to jab people toward some unclear but presumed-accessible "action," but this ongoing fear and grief and despair over our world DOES NOTHING except deplete what meager reserves of energy people have left after being alive in the world these days.

My generation is constantly desperate for numbness, rest, and escapism because living gets more and more untenable all the time. Have you noticed Fascism? What about the economy? Have you seen the people around you just constantly shutting themselves down to avoid thinking about a future that feels hopeless?

What is the expectation? That people feel terrified forever? Terror isn't fuel, it's the act of burning up all your fuel at once. After your energy runs out, something arrives to replace terror. For most people today, that something is apathy and despair, because it's easiest.

We need solutions to the climate crisis. We need community building. We need ideas, we need WORK, steady unsexy boring slow work, we need commitment to the work and to our communities, commitment that is only driven by love and genuine investment, and fear will not create these things.

Without hope, we have NOTHING.

I have hope because I believe there is hope, and I have hope because I fucking have to. I came to the place where I could no longer sustain being terrified, and I had to choose.

I can't exist in a world this scary, I thought. I can't do it. It's impossible. To accept this world as it is exceeds the tensile strength of the human soul.

And the answer was, Then don't exist, but I didn't like that answer, so the answer was, Then you must change it.

Once upon a time I could not imagine the future. All I saw was death. Fire. Extinction. I saw no hope for me or my planet. I only wished to experience some happiness before it all collapsed.

And then I rescued a tree.

Well. A lot of trees. It took me a while to learn to care for them. But I rescued a tiny sycamore tree from the edge of a parking lot and I took care of that tree and it grew and flourished under my care, and I marveled at my own power to make a difference to this one tiny tree...

...and I thought, this tree will grow taller than me. This tree will be big enough for birds to nest in its branches someday. Someday...

and I looked ahead, at that horizon many years in the future that had always been filled with nothing but ash and dust, and I saw something new.

I saw a tree.

I returned to Nature—to my Nature, the pavement and gravel and scrubby woods—and, just, holy fuck, I started to see. I observed the weeds—the dandelions, the amaranth, the tough little bastards that grow in pavement and concrete, and something clicked. They adapt. They survive. They are tough as nails, growing in places nothing else can grow in spite of all our attempts to eradicate them. And they help everything else survive and grow. They are healers.

I thought, can we learn from them? Can we ally with them?

Nature is our ally. Not as a princess in a tower waiting to be saved. Nature adapts, moves, changes. Nature is constantly, relentlessly fighting back.

I think Nature has a lot to teach us about adaptation, about collaborating and helping one another. About survival. I learned much more—I learned to see the symbiosis that connects all things, and saw how we fit into that symbiosis, when we are willing to participate in it.

This is what the dandelions showed me: When you heal, when you thrive, when you are happy and flourishing, you make the world more habitable for others. Dandelions pry open compacted soil with their taproots, provide pollen and nectar for survival of insects, keep the ground moist and encourage organic matter to collect. Dandelions are food and medicine, and they can sprout and grow at any temperature. This is how an ecosystem works: when one hardy weed takes hold and thrives, the others, more delicate, can then begin to arrive.

You are not separate from every other thing. You are part of humankind, part of a social community, part of your family and friends. This means that hope is powerful.

The more joy and love you cultivate in your relationship with the planet, the more she will replenish you, restore your hope. The more you share this joy, the more powerful the force for change becomes.

I have seen this in my own life, when I have healed and improved my own life, I have been able to give back so much more to the world than ever before. I try to enact this—as people flee my impoverished, deep red state for their safety, as Fascism tightens its grip, I dig my roots in deeper. I am relief in this wasteland. I will stand my ground. I will be visible, opinionated, uncompromising, because the more vulnerable cannot be.

Despair is poison. It will kill us dead. It will kill our planet. We need hope. And there is hope, both in us and the ecosystems around us.

I believe we, humans, hold the potential to be a weed species. Not only surviving, but facilitating, creating a path for the healing of Earth. We are caretakers. This role has been well recognized by indigenous peoples for thousands of years.

In this wasteland, the beautiful flowers struggle to grow and the little trees do not dare reach for the sky. So I'm a fucking dandelion. Kudzu kicking ass on a lifeless abandoned copper mine. I'm Amaranth utterly refusing to die. I'm a sycamore tree patiently inching roots under asphalt. I'm a scrappy cedar grabbing hold amid the rocks. I'm crabgrass and spotted spurge and all the weeds that make the guys on r/lawncare weep and wail.

I got sprayed with despair and survived, and now I'm resistant. My seeds and pollen are everywhere now. Hehehehehehe.

It’s not just that the leaves will break down on their own (and enrich the soil while they’re at it!). During the winter, all sorts of insects use leaf litter for shelter, and they’re the first food available to larvae in early spring. Leaves also insulate the plants under them during the winter, which is important if you’re in an area prone to frost heaving.

One of the best thing you can do for native pollinators in your area is Leave the Leaves!

My mom stopped raking her leaves when she found out about this but her neighbor used his leaf blower to clear out her yard the first year she decided to try. So she started posting a Leave the Leaves sign in the yard each year with an explanation about why it’s good and two winters later only one house still rakes their lawn each year.

We’ve seen a dramatic increase in the biodiversity in the neighborhood since. We have birds that we haven’t seen since we moved into the city from living rurally and those birds are starting to nest in the trees and gardens in spring. The swallows and bats are back at night. The single woodpecker we would only occasionally see visits daily and even has a friend that has joined it. We have more squirrels and rabbits and shockingly fewer moles and voles. We heard an owl outside last fall.

Leave the leaves indeed.

Outstanding

this is like one of those scenes in anime where they put a drop of magic in the water and it gets purified, except the magic is people being people

you can say "oh, people being people is also the reason things got that bad in the first place," but that's a buildup of garbage dumped over a period of years. by hundreds of people. and a few dedicated people cleaned it up in a day.

sometimes we can win.

Can I get some anti-lawn people to weigh in on the issue of ticks? Because people who mow their lawn too damn often, they're always like "durr hurr not mowing a lawn means ticks", and then they look horribly smug when I don't have a response to that. All I know for positive about lawns is a) they look stupid when they're mowed and b) I hate the sound of lawnmowers, neither of which is accepted as a counter-argument.

@headspace-hotel has made some pretty informative posts about this… I’m having difficulty finding them at the moment, but I think the gist of it — or at least the bit you could use as a counterpoint — is as follows.

The reason that, in some areas, leaving your lawn un-mown for a short period of time seems to lead to finding ticks is actually because of all the mowing and pesticides: the process kills off or drives away most of the other animals in the local ecosystem. Ticks are pretty hardy, though, and their main food source is still there (in the form of you and your neighbors), so they stick around. That’s why so many suburban lawns seem to get filled with ticks as soon as you look the other way: it’s actually a pretty good environment for them.

If you leave your lawn to its own devices for longer, or actively plant native species, the number of ticks in your area will probably go down because animals that compete with or eat ticks will start showing up again now that the space is hospitable to them. (Of course, your interlocutor may or may not dislike those animals as well… anyone who’s as vocally pro-lawnmower as the original post indicates probably has a hostile relationship with wildlife in general.)

Apologies if this is wrong; I’m trying to recount posts I remember reading in the past. If it is wrong, I hope someone will correct me.

In theory lawns would be less hospitable to ticks because closely cropped vegetation would expose them to more sunlight and ticks will die if they dry out.

However...lawns definitely don't protect you from ticks. If you've been outside in an area with ticks, you need to check for ticks. I've gotten ticks on me from walking through freshly mowed grass clippings. Mowing doesn't appear to stop them from being in your yard.

I've found ticks crawling on me or my clothes more times than I can count, I've only ever been bitten by a tick once in my life and that was years ago. Wearing long pants of a light, breathable fabric, tucking your pant legs into your socks, and tucking your shirt into your pants, and then just changing clothes when you get inside seems to be incredibly effective protection from tick-related woes.

It's interesting: scientific studies all say that the place where ticks are most numerous is in the woods proper, where there is plenty of shade and leaf litter, but I don't think I've ever picked up a tick from being in the woods. I almost always get them from overgrown grass where the area was last mowed several months ago.

I imagine that if you just stopped mowing your lawn and let the grass get tall, there would be a lot of ticks in there because overgrown grass seems to be the most risky environment. Assuming that lawn= lowest possible risk and that ticks increase directly proportional to vegetation or 'wildness' wouldn't be accurate.

This is coming from somebody who is outdoors constantly. I've gone wading around in wildflower meadows up to my shoulders in plants, crawled through briar thickets, slid facedown on the ground through leaf litter in the woods, crashed through brush all day long and not found a single tick on me. Then I crouch down among some knee-high grasses and boom, ticks crawling up my arms. I don't know if that "overgrown-grassy" environment attracts their host animals, or is hostile to their predators, or what.

I think maybe it's just that grass blades are better for climbing up and getting into contact with an animal as it brushes past compared with, say, a goldenrod that branches off into a ton of different leaves.

But yeah, an intentionally designed native plant garden is going to be a very different environment than a lawn that has been left to grow for a bit. (In some areas just leaving the lawn to grow, or die, whatever it wants to do, gets neat results, but in my region, the lawn grasses are so invasive that you kind of have to get rid of them or they will choke everything else.)

Broad spectrum pesticides for killing ticks are not the best idea because they also kill off the main predators of ticks, which is other arthropods such as spiders and ants, and prey populations recover faster than predator populations.

I gather from the internet that there are some pretty domesticated suburban areas where tick populations are astronomically high, much higher than I've ever experienced or had to deal with. I can't confirm the reason, but I have suspicions that it's insecticides: the ticks are always going to come back because suburbs, where there are plenty of dogs, cats, squirrels, and songbirds, have an abundance of food and transportation for ticks—there might even be an abnormally high density of mammals. And the suburbs are full of people spraying poisons that kill all the ticks' predators on an erratic basis.

So I definitely see how that could turn nightmarish.

I've been seeing a lot of Discourse around outdoor cats that talks past one of the biggest problems addressing community cats/outdoor working cats so I thought I'd chime in with my two cents.

Many arguments I see just... don't think about the cats at all? Or don't consider the logistics of actually addressing the feral cat problem in a humane way. It's always about how outdoor cats shouldn't be outdoors, which is neither realistic nor helpful.

I used to volunteer at an municipal animal shelter in the USA that had a TNR program (Trap, Neuter, Return) and also adopted out community cats to local farms and businesses. Here's my side of the story.

"Your cat doesn't need to be outside" -- Yes, correct. Your domesticated (non-feral) house cat does not need to go outside at all. They can have a fully actualized life safely indoors. When I see this argument, proponents of indoor only cats are correct in most or all their arguments regarding this.

"Outdoor cats are the largest invasive species in the world, and decimate bird populations." -- This is also correct, and part of the reason why you can help by bringing your house cat indoors. Cats are the largest invasive species. Spay and Neuter your cats, bring them inside, and socialize them so they don't become feral.

"TNR doesn't work." -- False. Whether we like it or not, feral cats exist. We have two methods by which we can address the feral cat population -- decimating them (humanely euthanizing the whole colony) or TNR. For a long time, euthanasia was the preferred way to address the feral cat problem. Afterall, if the cats aren't there, doesn't that save the local wildlife population?

Except that we found, studying these colonies, that when a colony is wiped out, the cats of another colony will spread into their territory and continue to have kittens and the population of feral cats is neither controlled nor diminished.

Hence, TNR. What we found performing TNR on cat colonies was that this controlled the population of the colonies, allowing them to stay in their territory, which kept other colonies from spreading (especially colonies we hadn't performed TNR on yet). We at the shelter felt this was the most humane way to control the feral cat population and safely deflate their existence without dealing with the population blooms that euthanasia caused.

"What about kittens?" -- Kittens from these colonies were brought into the shelter, socialized, and fostered out until they could be adopted. Some of these semi-feral kittens needed special homes to be adopted into, but this was the best quality of life for these cats.

"What about cats that get missed during TNR?" -- We would return to the colony several times over a period of several years to perform TNR on the same colony. We mark cats that have been neutered by clipping their ear (this is done humanely, but is the most reliable way to tell if a cat has been neutered so the poor thing doesn't have to have surgery 3-4 times in their life). Also, during the TNR process the cats would be vaccinated to ensure disease did not spread from the colony (i.e. rabies). Still, even getting 60% of the colony TNR'd would dramatically reduce the number of kittens being added to the colony each year. This controlled the population by allowing the territory to naturally deflate in size over time, buying us time to address the larger feral cat problem.

"What if the colony was in an unsafe location?" -- There were two ways we addressed unsafe colony locations -- remember, we know that when the colony is removed, a new colony will move into its place, so we tried not to move the colony unless we really felt the cats or the public was unsafe -- one was to move the whole colony to a new location. Preferably someplace like a warehouse where we have an agreement with the owners of the warehouse. Some of the cats were even relocated to shelter grounds as our community cats. If the colony was small enough we would bring them into our Feral Cats room and adopt them out as community cats.

"What is a community cat?" -- The way the program worked, was that anyone who needed a working cat could apply to the program. These were often rural farmers or businesses with warehouses that needed rodent protection. We trained the farmers and businesses on how to acclimatize the cats to their new home, and as part of the agreement, they had to care for the cats (veterinary care, vaccinations, food and water). This gave businesses and farms an alternative to expensive and environmentally unfriendly rodent control, and also gave these feral cats good places to live out their natural lives.

"Can't you just adopt out feral cats?" -- No. Cats that have not been socialized around humans as kittens, or who have several generations of feral cat in them could not interact with humans in a way that did not cause them undue stress. This was not a humane way to handle feral cats. However, when a cat was brought into the feral cat room, they would be monitored for up to a week. If the cat displayed signs of being semi-social or fully social (hanging out outside of their den, allowing staff to pet them, showing interest in staff in the room), then we would either move the cat into the adoption room or place them in foster to be socialized before adoption. Feral cats who displayed signs of being able to live full and healthy lives with human companions were NOT adopted out as community cats. We also observed this behavior during TNRs and would do the same for those cats too.

"But aren't cats bad hunters?" -- Compared to other species, cats are not the most effective form of rodent control. This is true. However, you have to understand that feral cats exist. There is no "undo" button we can push to stop them from existing. We have to deal with the problem we have right now, which is to safely and humanely decrease the number of feral cats in our communities. And yes, we do that by using cats as rodent control in the community.

"What can I do?" -- Stop saying community cats shouldn't exist. That's not helpful and doesn't solve the problem we have. Bring your cat indoors. Spay and neuter your cats. Adopt from shelters. Volunteer with a TNR team. Support TNR efforts in your community. Recognize that those of us actively dealing with the community/feral problem are trying to do what is in the best interest of our communities and the animals we love. We aren't sitting over here saying these cats should exist -- a feral cat will not have the same quality of life as one that is indoors with a family -- but we have to address the problem in practical terms. We don't have the moral high ground to just do nothing while pontificating solutions that have no basis in actuality.

And yes, it's okay to celebrate community cats. If your local farm has a couple of working cats, that means that farm is helping participate in the safe deflation of the feral cat population. Don't shame a farm or business for using community cats. We're all doing the best we can to solve the problem that we have.

It’s not just that the leaves will break down on their own (and enrich the soil while they’re at it!). During the winter, all sorts of insects use leaf litter for shelter, and they’re the first food available to larvae in early spring. Leaves also insulate the plants under them during the winter, which is important if you’re in an area prone to frost heaving.

One of the best thing you can do for native pollinators in your area is Leave the Leaves!

My mom stopped raking her leaves when she found out about this but her neighbor used his leaf blower to clear out her yard the first year she decided to try. So she started posting a Leave the Leaves sign in the yard each year with an explanation about why it’s good and two winters later only one house still rakes their lawn each year.

We’ve seen a dramatic increase in the biodiversity in the neighborhood since. We have birds that we haven’t seen since we moved into the city from living rurally and those birds are starting to nest in the trees and gardens in spring. The swallows and bats are back at night. The single woodpecker we would only occasionally see visits daily and even has a friend that has joined it. We have more squirrels and rabbits and shockingly fewer moles and voles. We heard an owl outside last fall.

Leave the leaves indeed.

In the future, children will think our ways are strange. "Why do old people always grow so much milkweed in their gardens?" they'll say. "Why do old people always write down when the first bees and butterflies show up? Why do old people hate lawn grass so much? Why do old people like to sit outside and watch bees?"

We will try to explain to them that when we were young, most people's yards were almost entirely short grass with barely any flowers at all, and it was so commonplace to spray poisons to kill insects and weeds that it was feared monarch butterflies and American bumblebees would soon go extinct. We will show them pictures of sidewalks, shops, and houses surrounded by empty grass without any flowers or vegetables and they will stare at them like we stared at pictures of grimy children working in coal mines

We will be feeding our grandchildren strawberries and raspberries we grew in our gardens, dragging them along to the farmers' markets for tomatoes and eggs and goats milk and pickles and pecans and salsa and sunflower seed butter and jars of honey, as they complain and drag their feet because Gramma always stands around talking to people for like an HOUR

and we will say "When I was YOUR age, fruits and vegetables came from a supermarket and they were bred to get shipped 1000 miles in a truck and sit on shelves for weeks, and they tasted so sour and watery it was like eating paper compared to these ones. It wasn't even legal in some places to grow your own food"

and they will roll their eyes like yeah yeah just because everything was miserable in the 20s doesn't mean I have to have a smile on my face standing in the hot sun while you listen to that one guy talk about his bees FOREVER

But they will go, because there might be baby goats.

Since I made this post, dozens and dozens of people have left tags telling me that it was the first thing today that made them want to continue living, that it was the first thing that made them consider that they might be okay years in the future, that they might grow old, that it was the first and only post of its kind they'd ever seen—the first post that boldly predicts a future where we make it.

And many other people have been just spitting, foaming at the mouth fucking FURIOUS. How dare I have the audacity to imagine a future where things get better?

Don't I know how BAD things are? Am I not aware of the TERROR and DEVASTATION of climate change and fascism and biodiversity loss? How dare someone be so bold, so callous, as to imagine something other than misery and suicide. How dare someone suggest it will get better. How dare a person propose that there is a future where we will be okay, in the face of so much terror. Hasn't she seen the abyss opening its jaws before us?

Well? What do you think?

Do you think I've seen the abyss?

the idea that there is hope for the future is the only way we have this kind of future.

there were kids who stayed inside because of the black plague and went on to help cure it.

there were women who sat at home and cleaned the house and dreamt up a world where they could vote and have jobs.

there were kids in the mines who thought up a life outside of it. there were children who hid in annexes and wrote a diary where they prayed for a future without a terrible man in control

there were slaves who wanted freedom so badly and had hope that it would get better

there were gay people who hid in the corners of clubs and fought back for a future where they could walk down the street together

do you know what all of that has in common? they had hope that things would get better and they made that change. they looked at the world in its cruel ways and fought back.

so now, there are kids and teenagers and young adults and new adults who dream of a world so beautiful and the only amazon their grandchildren know is the rainforest

and it is in everything we do that we find this hope. wishing on dandelions, counting the stars, making our own clothes out of crochet or knit or sewing it, watching the sunset, going to the farmer’s market, feeding the birds, planting seeds.

step by step, we dream up, like our ancestors before us, a beautiful world

THE ONLY AMAZON OUR GRANDCHILDREN WILL KNOW IS THE RAINFOREST

During the 2008 recession, my aunt lost her job. Her, her partner, and my three cousins moved across the country to stay with us while they got back on their feet. My house turned from a family of four to a family of nine overnight, complete with three dogs and five cats between us.

It took a few years for them to get a place of their own, but after a few rentals and apartments, they now own a split level ranch in a town nearby. I’ve lost track of how many coworkers and friends have stayed with them when they were in a tight spot. A mother and son getting out of an abusive relationship, a divorcee trying to stay local for his kids while they work out a custody agreement, you name it. My aunt and uncle knew first hand what that kindness meant, and always find space for someone who needed it, the way my parents had for them.

That same aunt and uncle visited me in [redacted] city last year. They are prolific drinkers, so we spent most of the day bar hopping. As we wandered the city, any time we passed a homeless person, my uncle would pull out a fresh cigarette and ask them if they had a light. Regardless of if they had a lighter on hand or not, he offered them a few bucks in exchange, which he explained to me after was because he felt it would be easier for them to accept in exchange for a service, no matter how small.

I work for a company that produces a lot of fabric waste. Every few weeks, I bring two big black trash bags full of discarded material over to a woman who works down the hall. She distributes them to local churches, quilting clubs, and teachers who can use them for crafts. She’s currently in the process of working with our building to set up a recycling program for the smaller pieces of fabric that are harder to find use for.

One of my best friends gives monthly donations to four or five local organizations. She’s fortunate enough to have a tech job that gives her a good salary, and she knows that a recurring donation is more valuable to a non-profit because they can rely on that money month after month, and can plan ways to stretch that dollar for maximum impact. One of those organizations is a native plant trust, and once she’s out of her apartment complex and in a home with a yard, she has plans to convert it into a haven of local flora.

My partner works for a company that is working to help regulate crypto and hold the current bad actors in the space accountable for their actions. We unfortunately live in a time where technology develops far too fast for bureaucracy to keep up with, but just because people use a technology for ill gain doesn’t mean the technology itself is bad. The blockchain is something that she finds fascinating and powerful, and she is using her degree and her expertise to turn it into a tool for good.

I knew someone who always had a bag of treats in their purse, on the odd chance they came across a stray cat or dog, they had something to offer them.

I follow artists who post about every local election they know of, because they know their platform gives them more reach than the average person, and that they can leverage that platform to encourage people to vote in elections that get less attention, but in many ways have more impact on the direction our country is going to go.

All of this to say, there’s more than one way to do good in the world. Social media leads us to believe that the loudest, the most vocal, the most prolific poster is the most virtuous, but they are only a piece of the puzzle. (And if virtue for virtues sake is your end goal, you’ve already lost, but that’s a different post). Community is built of people leveraging their privileges to help those without them. We need people doing all of those things and more, because no individual can or should do all of it. You would be stretched too thin, your efforts valiant, but less effective in your ambition.

None of this is to encourage inaction. Identify your unique strengths, skills, and privileges, and put them to use. Determine what causes are important to you, and commit to doing what you can to help them. Collective action is how change is made, but don’t forget that we need diversity in actions taken.

streets with rain gardens and streets without

DR ADAM LEVY ClimateAdam ROSEMARY MOSCO

In the future, children will think our ways are strange. "Why do old people always grow so much milkweed in their gardens?" they'll say. "Why do old people always write down when the first bees and butterflies show up? Why do old people hate lawn grass so much? Why do old people like to sit outside and watch bees?"

We will try to explain to them that when we were young, most people's yards were almost entirely short grass with barely any flowers at all, and it was so commonplace to spray poisons to kill insects and weeds that it was feared monarch butterflies and American bumblebees would soon go extinct. We will show them pictures of sidewalks, shops, and houses surrounded by empty grass without any flowers or vegetables and they will stare at them like we stared at pictures of grimy children working in coal mines

We will be feeding our grandchildren strawberries and raspberries we grew in our gardens, dragging them along to the farmers' markets for tomatoes and eggs and goats milk and pickles and pecans and salsa and sunflower seed butter and jars of honey, as they complain and drag their feet because Gramma always stands around talking to people for like an HOUR

and we will say "When I was YOUR age, fruits and vegetables came from a supermarket and they were bred to get shipped 1000 miles in a truck and sit on shelves for weeks, and they tasted so sour and watery it was like eating paper compared to these ones. It wasn't even legal in some places to grow your own food"

and they will roll their eyes like yeah yeah just because everything was miserable in the 20s doesn't mean I have to have a smile on my face standing in the hot sun while you listen to that one guy talk about his bees FOREVER

But they will go, because there might be baby goats.

“Is it possible to turn things around by 2050? The answer is absolutely yes,” says Kai Chan, a professor at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia.

Many scientists have been telling us how the world will look like, if we don’t act now. However, others, like Chan, are tracking what success might look like.

They are not simply day-dreamers either. They aren’t being too optimistic. They are putting together road maps for how to safely get to the planet envisioned in the 2015 Paris Agreement, where temperatures hold at 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than before we started burning fossil fuels, this article from July states.

“Three decades is enough to do a lot of important things. In the next few years—if we get started on them—they will pay dividends in the coming decades,” says Chan, the lead author of the chapter on achieving a sustainable future in a recent UN report that predicted the possible extinction of a million species.

Making these changes won’t mean years of being poor, cold and hungry before things get comfortable again, the scientists insist. They say that if we start acting seriously NOW, we stand a decent chance of transforming society without huge disruption. 

No doubt, it will take a massive switch in society’s energy use. But without us noticing, that’s already happening. Not fast enough, maybe, but it is. Solar panels and offshore wind power plummet in price.  Iceland and Paraguay have stripped the carbon from their grids, according to a new energy outlook report from Bloomberg. Europe is on track to be 90 per cent carbon-free by 2040. And Ottawa says that Canada is already at 81 per cent, thanks to hydro, nuclear, wind and solar. 

Decarbonizing the whole economy is within grasp. We can do this.

“If we have five years of really sustained efforts, making sure we reorient our businesses and our governments toward sustainability, then from that point on, this transition will seem quite seamless. Because it will just be this gradual reshaping of options,” Chan says, adding: “All these things seem very natural when the system is changing around you.”

Hoping people with more relevant knowledge and science parsing skills than I do might comment on this …

I think it is absolutely vital that people be able to picture The Healed World. Honestly I think it’s one of the most important things we can do.

Look at how many different apocalypses people can visualise. Our brains can freely feast on unlimited scenes of scarcity, competition and fear. Everywhere we turn we can consume endless content about killing our neighbors for scraps, about hurting children, about bleak planets and extinction, and lots and lots of guns. It is easy, accessible and cheap. Our minds gobble up as much of this content as the market generates and the market gleefully generates more. We feed and feed upon a future of suffering and loss. We feast on images of brown children being hurt, unnecessarily, and say smugly that “that’s just what humanity is like.” Our brains are programmed away from the natural human responses to crises (fix it, help each other, rebuild and hope) and TOWARDS the mindsets of fictional apocalypse (cause it, turn on each other [it’s just what humans do! We’ve all seen the same stories!], collapse, fight each other for crumbs, the world is doomed anyway.)

It’s pretty unnecessary. And frankly pretty cringe. Imagine being part of some of the most prosperous, empowered, educated, connected group of humans to ever exist, and having a brain that can only picture the future as apocalypse-movie.

And where is the food of abundance, equality, beauty, hope, diversity? Where is the actual food of the future? Oh. It’s in, like, three solarpunk anthologies, huh?

Huh.

Anyway not to get all Amitav Ghosh on main but we have GOT to address this unnecessary and EMBARRASSING failure of imagination. Because we are the generation currently failing in our responsibilities as caretakers of the earth, because of this deranged inability to picture the world as being a real place, and the future being a place where people will live.

So, basically, yes, let’s just say it and start saying it regularly. The work is now and we have to do it. It isn’t impossible. Yes there is hope. Yes it can all be done. Yes there is a future for fucksake. It’s within our grasp. that is what futures are.

👆 Not sure if I’ve already reblogged this, but @elodieunderglass is 100% right here. We find it so easy to picture doom, but we find it so hard to picture healing.

Also, giving up on a future that is still possible means not only giving up on your own life, but the lives of your loved ones, on the poor and disadvantaged people who will face the worst impacts of the climate crisis, and giving up on nature itself.

For some people, climate disaster is already here. There are millions of people already fighting for survival. They don’t have the privilege of sitting back, giving up, and waiting for the apocalypse to come.

They don’t have the privilege of saying “Oh well, the world’s doomed anyway so why should we bother?” And neither should anyone else.

We need more hope-keepers in the climate justice movement. More people who hold evidence-based hope in their hands that celebrate the continued momentum and progress that is being done. Because without them, who would we lean on in times of despair? -qbv

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