Month: November 2019

PFAS Chemicals in Bloodstream of 99% of All Americans (Steve Glass blog) PFAS are used in many consumer products, included carpets, couches, and food packaging; this, in addition to their use in foam firefighting retardant… In an earlier report from the Environmental Working Group (EWG) PFAS compounds may be in the drinking water of up to 110 million Americans.

Brazilian Amazon Burns at an Accelerating Rate (Steve Glass blog, including his personal observations on a birding trip)

City Releases Climate Action Plan (City of South Bend) The Mayor Pete Buttigieg administration has released Carbon Neutral 2050, a climate action plan for the City of South Bend. The Carbon Neutral 2050 Plan sets ambitious community-wide goals to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, first targeting a 26% reduction by 2025, to demonstrate South Bend’s willingness to honor the U.S. commitment to the Paris Agreement. The implementation of these goals aims to culminate in South Bend becoming carbon neutral by 2050.

Galvanized by disaster: Mayor of Goshen, Indiana, sets town on sustainable path after devastating floods (Indiana Environmental Reporter)

Wild bee community change over a 26‐year chronosequence of restored tallgrass prairie (research article)… this is good news. From the abstract: Bee abundance and raw richness increased with restoration age from the low level of the pre‐restoration (agricultural) sites to the target level of the remnant prairie within the first 2–3 years after restoration, and these high levels were maintained throughout the entire restoration chronosequence. Bee community composition of the youngest restored sites differed from that of prairie remnants, but 5–7 years post‐restoration the community composition of restored prairie converged with that of remnants.

Report: Closing Coal Plants Would Save Indiana Customers Money, Reduce Pollution (WFYI)… The faster Indiana can transition from coal to renewable energy sources, the better for Indiana customers. That’s the takeaway from a new report prepared for the 21st Century Energy Policy Development Task Force charged with creating a statewide energy plan. 

Oklahoma approves largest single-day commutation in U.S. history: In a flurry of signatures Friday afternoon, Oklahoma moved one step closer to shucking its distinction as the state with the highest incarceration rate in the United States. On Monday afternoon, 527 people serving low-level drug and nonviolent offenses will go free in what Oklahoma lawmakers are calling the largest single-day commutation in both state and U.S. history. (MSN)

Yellowstone Bison Engineer an Endless Spring to Suit Their Grazing Needs (Smithsonian Mag) The cycle of grazing and fertilizing prolongs spring-like vegetation in grasslands and makes green-up more intense in following years

Indiana NAACP Environmental Climate Justice: Calling for Equitable Clean Energy -Indiana State Conference of the NAACP (Facebook video)

The Forest Service Is About to Set a Giant Forest Fire—On Purpose (The Atlantic)

A thread on “greenwashing,” how corporations attempt to put an eco-friendly veneer on unsustainable business practices (Twitter)

Diversifying Crops Is Good For The Planet. But Can It Be Good For Farmers’ Wallets? (NPR)

I know it’s risky to drop the F-bomb on a workplace blog post, but it’s time to confront something we don’t talk about enough.

Failure, with a capital F.

[cricket chirp]

At the 2019 Stewardship Network Conference at Michigan State University, we heard a presentation from Allison Catalano, a Ph.D student at the Imperial College of London. Her bio states that she is “researching how conservation professionals learn from failure. In particular, I am interested in the dynamics of confronting and managing failure from the perspective of individuals, teams, and organizations. I study how cognitive biases and past experiences affect an individual’s ability to discuss failure. I also research how psychological safety and other team learning behaviors influence group response to failure.”

She gave examples from the aerospace, where the harsh mistress of gravity ensures that the consequences of failure are often fatal. Here, the inability to openly discuss failure is not just poor practice, it could mean that someone has to make a phone call to a family explaining why mom wasn’t coming home that night. As a consequence, this industry has a much more developed system of openly discussing failure & learning from it.

The consequences in other fields are perhaps less abrupt, but no less catastrophic.

My field of ecological restoration is still in its infancy in many ways. Never before have humans so thoroughly & systematically disrupted nutrient flows, hydrology, soils, and habitat during industrialization. We then decided that we wanted to piece things together, and we do it mostly with Europeans trained in the university-industrial model without the consult of people who were indigenous to these ecological communities. The goal is to restore the thousands of unbelievably complex, dynamic relationships in a context that is continuing to undergo change.

This is an extremely tall order, and we should not expect the task to be easy. It is a context ripe for many theories and techniques to fail. And the consequences are severe. I’d like to avoid dramatics, especially in assessing the importance of my discipline, but in reality we are talking about nothing less than the health & continuance of the biosphere on this pale blue dot we call Earth.

So many of these crisis in relation to biodiversity are deaths by a thousand cuts: habitat loss, poaching, climate change, and pesticide use. All while field science departments continue their decline throughout academia.

It’s costly to admit failure. Embarrassing. At businesses, non-profits, churches, and relationships, we prefer to put our best foot forward. Only our closest friends get the unfiltered truth. 

But why should we expect everything, even most things, to succeed? It’s certainly not nature’s way, which is constantly experimenting & running trials to see which combination is best-fit for each context. Fear of failure prevents the opportunity for growth and evolution.

But let’s think through the consequences of indulging in this protective instinct. In the business world, we need to know if a product or service is truly needing the needs of our customers. We need to know early in the design process before lots of resources have been deployed.

In most Christian denominations in the U.S., weekly attendance has been in decline for quite some time. These challenges can be a moment of introspection for communities to question their role in the broader society, their ability to sustain a building or a large staff, etc. Inability to openly admit that changes have happened only delay the day of reckoning and narrow the options available. So many of my friends and family have been faced with this.

Professionally, if we think every project & initiative we do is God’s Greatest Unblemished Gift to the world, we fail to improve & hone our craft, or even to see where our behavior is detrimental to our co-workers or institution.

This blog is already getting lengthy, so let me begin to wrap up by repeating a great maxim that I heard recently. It comes in some variations, and deserves a whole post on it’s own: Fail fast, fail often, fail early, and fail cheaply.

One of my favorite examples of embracing failure is this SpaceX video. SpaceX makes rockets and is trying to start a human colony on Mars. It requires, well… actual rocket science, so one would expect a lot of mistakes. They livestream all of their rocket launches, so if something fails, the whole world sees it in real-time.

With the carnival-like music, this compilation of rocket failures looks like an attack video made by a competitor, not a professionally compiled series of videos by their own communications department!

And yet, what has been the the result of all these failures? SpaceX has revolutionized the space industry and captivated the imagination of millions from the broader public (like myself, if you couldn’t tell). My daughters and I try to watch all the rocket launches online now.

Here is another video, this time of a boat (“Ms. Tree”) catching the nose cone/fairing of a rocket that fell from space:

Rocket fairing falls from space & is caught by Ms Tree boat pic.twitter.com/nJv0Ry1iKk

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 7, 2019

If that wasn’t enough, they used a massive 3-piece rocket (the Falcon Heavy) to launch a sports car into orbit around the sun on its test flight. They then simultaneously landed two of the pieces upright at Cape Canaveral on live television. The 3rd piece attempted to land on an autonomous drone ship in the ocean (named Of Course I Still Love You). It failed, missing the ship and exploding on impact with the ocean surface.

Volkswagen is pretty well known for their massive moral failure to protect human health by lying about their vehicles’ emissions. It was one of the largest corporate failures in human history, and they were (rightly) fined billions of dollars, now being used to accelerate the transition to electric vehicles. 

Since then, they have become perhaps the leading legacy car company in regards to aggressively pivoting towards electric vehicles. This includes the recent European launch of the ID 3, a vehicle that is expected to sell in significant volumes. Say what you will about the relative “sincerity” of a global corporation making this pivot, but nevertheless, they are doing it.

This advertisement encompasses the entire story in a very poignant way:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMbPINvLp-I

Perhaps they went so low, so publicly that they had no other choice, but such an embrace of their failure is now setting the stage for the next step in their evolution.

The irony is amusing… long-term success depends on embracing failure, while penalizing failure ultimately undermines long-term viability.

In keeping with this spirit, stay tuned to hear of some of my less-than-successful projects (see, I just can’t bring myself to use the F-word!).

We are very excited to see yet another solar array going up in Marshall County! Cheers to Marianne & the Recycle Depot staff.

WTCA reporting:

During Monday’s Board of Directors meeting, Executive Director Marianne Peters presented members with three bids to put solar arrays on the property and use the electricity generated to operate the Recycle Depot and the main office building...

Peters said, “With the amount of money we have sitting in our rainy day fund I’ve been looking for a project that would use some of those funds to the benefit of Marshall County residents and reduce our costs.”  She went on to say, “We have the land, we have the available funds, it will reduce our utility costs tremendously and serve as an educational tool for people in the county who want to go solar and it’s part of our mission.”

After reviewing the bids submitted the board of director unanimously voted to go with Wellspring Solar at a cost of $51,068.19.  Peters will need to submit an additional appropriation from their Rainy Day Fund to the County Council for approval.  She is hopeful that the project could be completed before the end of the year. (full story here)

Sunday evening I attended an accountability session at St. Michael’s school, organized by a local chapter of Faith in Indiana. Faith in Indiana is a statewide faith-based organization that works with clergy and leaders from various faith traditions to address and resolve social justice issues facing rural, urban, and suburban communities; it is a catalyst for marginalized people and people of faith to act collectively for racial and economic justice.

I normally focus here on the various ecological concerns of our world, but of course there are many interconnected & multifaceted societal issues we are facing (which is kind of the point of integral ecology). I’ve taken interest in a few of these other issues as a member of our Justice Seekers group & as a citizen raising my family here.

At the session, heard testimony from local families, teachers, non-profit leaders, business people, and the school superintendent around two main issues: the need to address the opioid crisis with treatment, not jails; and exploring a City ID program for city residents who are unable to access State ID’s.

The quotes here I have excerpted from the Pilot News coverage of the evening (look there for complete coverage of the evening).

Both candidates were asked the same question, ‘Will you work with us in developing a strategy which includes prevention, treatment over incarceration, and finding alternative treatments to opioid addiction?’

Mr. Walker responded, “Absolutely. Yes. 100% percent… When we look at our county jail, we know that it is overcrowded. There is an issue with that because we cannot keep cramming people into a jail over low level drug and alcohol offenses. We need to do more to prevent those and to educate them… I believe that treatment and recovery are more effective than incarceration…”

Mr. Senter responded: “Absolutely… I would be more than happy to talk about prevention and treatment. As we know, the Marshall County Commissioners right now are talking about adding on to our jail. We do not need that. We really have to come up with a different plan.”

Both candidates were also asked, “Will you meet with us within 30 days of the election to work on these issues?” to which they both agreed.

The conversation then moved to the emerging need for a Plymouth City ID. There are many reasons for a municipality to initiate such a program, such as obtaining medications at a pharmacy, visiting your children at the public school, and identifying oneself when talking with the police.

Among the speakers was Sam Centellas, Executive Director of La Casa de Amistad, which administers City ID programs for South Bend and Goshen. He expressed his willingness to administer the program were it approved for the city.

Both candidates were asked the same question, ‘Will you support us to develop a city ID for the residents of Plymouth, Indiana?’

Mr. Walker responded, “Yes, absolutely…as I’ve been campaigning and meeting with people and families, Hispanic and Latinx families… this is the number one that continues to come to the forefront of the conversation… So yes, that will be one of my top priorities if I am elected mayor.”

Mr. Senter responded: “Absolutely… yes, my administration… we looked maybe a year and a half ago here at St. [Thomas] Episcopal, we had a meeting about that then… That is one of the subjects that came up that night. Yes, I would absolutely put a committee together.”

Both candidates were also asked, “Will you convene a meeting of yourself, the Plymouth School Superintendent, a representative of the Chamber of Commerce, the Chief of Police, and our leaaders within 30 days of taking office in order to work on a solution which is helpful to our families and to the Plymouth community?”

Mr. Walker responded, “Yes, absolutely.”

Mr. Senter responded: “Yes, I would.”

Election day is Nov. 5th. The 30 day deadline is Thursday, Dec. 5th.