Environmentalism

Is the First Great Drought happening now?

We have been given the incredible gift of access to knowledge and access to each other. We are in this adventure called life together as members of the only real race, the human race.

Dearest readers,

I have to share something important with you. The more I learn about the drought in California and other states, the more I am convinced that we are actually experiencing the First Great Drought I wrote about as fiction in I Call Myself Earth Girl. While I was working on the novel in 2010 and 2011, I was aware that the western and southern states were experiencing severe drought conditions, including more and longer-lasting forest fires. At the time, I did not think that these droughts would still be going on in 2014.

In the book, Gloria is a contemporary woman living in Newport, RI. She is disturbed by recurring dreams in which a young girl who calls herself Earth Girl speaks to her. Gloria eventually becomes convinced that she is pregnant with Earth Girl's child who was conceived in another lifetime. In the dreams, Earth Girl recounts the story of her life to Gloria. She tells of living in a bleak and barren time.

She first mentions the drought this way: My father told once told me that they stopped putting pictures in books when he was a boy. ... Once, I heard him tell my mother that he thought they kept the pictures out of books because they didn't want the next generations to know how beautiful everything had been before the first great drought.

Later in the story, Earth Girl recounts her father's fears that a Second Great Drought had begun. He predicts that millions of people will die because the second great drought is happening before the earth has had time to recover fully from the first one. He knows how bad things became during the previous large scale drought. He tells his daughter that "people didn't pay attention to the first great drought until it was too late."

Earth Girl also tells Gloria what her mother told her about the droughts and famine: But people weren't very smart, she said, because if the famine was in a different country, they would just thank God it wasn't happening to them. They didn't even notice when bigger parts of their own countries got drier and drier and they had less drinking water and less water for hydroelectric power. ... She said that people kept on doing all the things that hurt the earth and then they were surprised when the earth could not recover.

I think that we are the people to whom Earth Girl's parents were referring. We are not paying enough attention and soon it will be too late. If you find this hard to believe, please do a Google search on droughts. I will include some links to articles at the end of this blog, but if you do your own search, you will be amazed at what you find. There is a wealth of information, and yet, there seems to be a dearth of concern in the general public.

At first Gloria did not pay attention to the mention of the droughts. When she finally does, she is distressed to discover that in 2011, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration published this report: An intense drought has gripped the southern tier of the U. S for several months, accompanied by destructive wildfires, low water supplies, and failed crops. Dry conditions emerged as early as October of last year and culminated in one of the driest winter and spring seasons in the observed record for the region. ... At the peak of this year's drought in July, exceptional drought conditions were spread across nearly 12 percent of the U.S., from Arizona to Florida, reaching the highest recorded level of drought since the U.S. Drought Monitor began reporting conditions 12 years ago.

This excerpt is not fiction. I copied it directly from the report. Gloria is alarmed by what she reads, but she does not want to believe that it really matters. She asks herself if this could be the beginning of the first great drought that Earth Girl keeps talking about in the dreams. She tries to convince herself that it is not: Get a grip, girl! Don't let some crazy dream make you think this stuff really matters. If this was really serious, the government, the scientists and politicians would be all over it. There is no way they would ignore this stuff.

Is Gloria right? Would the government ignore something this serious? Wouldn't politicians on both sides of the aisle devote hours to this? After all, the drought and its effects - including lack of clean water and failing crops - are major problems.

And if that drought were continuing, wouldn't it be a major news story? If we were really in a serious drought, wouldn't the networks devote as much time to it as they did to Justin Bieber egging a neighbor's house, or Paula Deen's lawsuit, or the birth of the newest heir to the British throne?

Of course, they would! But, they didn't. So I am.

In the first of the Earth Girl series, a young girl named Ella does pay attention and she begs grown-ups to pay attention too. In the sequel, Ella's father, one of the many who did not pay attention, is now dead and living in three different realities. Two of those realities are in the future, but they are very different from each other. One is the future that may result if people don't pay attention. The other is the future that may be ours if people do pay attention.

I feel compelled to draw people's attention to the seriousness of climate change and the impending water crisis in my novels, in my blog, on Twitter, facebook, and in general conversation. Just take a moment to think about what life would be like for you if water were a scarce luxury instead of something you take for granted. (I realize that in some parts of the world this is a reality right now.)

Think about this: Today, one-third of the world's population is living without access to adequate supplies of freshwater. By 2025, up to two-thirds of people in the world may be facing serious water shortages, including people in 35 percent of cities in the U.S. (Statistic from WATER CONSCIOUSNESS)

Take a moment to picture some of your favorite natural places. How different will they be without water? California is already finding this out. Why aren't we alarmed by this?

Of course, being alarmed really counts for nothing. Figuring out how we, as individuals, can make a difference is what really matters. One way is to let your local, state and federal government representatives know that environmental protection matters to you. I'll be blogging about this in various ways throughout the rest of 2014.

If you're with me in this, please spread the word. Share this blog or re-blog it. Write your own blog about it. Put this on facebook. Bring it up in conversation with your friends.

It matters. Let's not wait to discover how much it matters. It will be too late by then.

As I have written a few times in my blog, we have the privilege of being the people who are on earth right now at this critical juncture in human history. Thanks to the internet and the ease of communication across continents we can transcend national barriers and collaborate together to solve these problems. We have been given the incredible gift of access to knowledge and access to each other. We are in this together as members of the only real race, the human race.

Let's use these gifts now. Let's revel in our privilege of being alive right now when we have the power to improve the present and shape the future.

Do it for your loved ones. Do it for my loved ones. Do it for everyone who has loved ones. Do it for those who struggle with lack of water now. Do it for those who will live in the future that our choices create for them. Do it because you can. If you don't, who will?

Dry reservoir photo: http://darkroom.baltimoresun.com/2014/01/california-suffering-possibly-its-worst-drought-in-a-century/#1

Forest fire photo: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2013/10/17/report-western-wildfires-growing-more-intense-insurers-deeply-concerned/

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/dec/17/planet-climate-change-risk-drought-famine-epidemic

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/feb/18/california-drought-as-seen-from-space-nasa-picture/

http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2014/01/16/drought-west-disaster-declarations/4522651/

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/DroughtFacts/

WATER CONSCIOUSNESS - How We All Have to Change to Protect Our Most Critical Resource

AlterNet Books, San Francisco, 2008

www.alternet.org

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/amid-drought-california-and-other-western-states-gird-for-a-landmark-year-in-forest-fires/2014/02/13/ec23fbae-9417-11e3-84e1-27626c5ef5fb_story.html

Come join me in the mission of the new millenium

We are the lucky ones who get to participate in the most amazing adventure of the new millenium.

My dear readers, I have come to a turning point with this blog. I started it when I was looking for a publisher for my book. I named the blog What a Heart Can Hold with the general intention of writing about all sorts of different things and building up a readership before I actually signed with a publisher. It turns out that I found a publisher sooner than I expected (yay!) It also turns out that writing a blog about all sorts of different things is not necessarily the best way to promote a novel. So, I intend to reinvent this blog over the course of the next few weeks (well, let's be truthful...the next few months).

I noticed looking back on my posts that there are topics I just naturally wrote about the most: the environment, peace, and the power of love. Although I only wrote once directly about my book, without even being consciously aware of it, I was writing most often about the three major themes in my novel. This makes sense because these are topics that fill my heart to overflowing.

Now I am working on the sequel to the book and I find myself frustrated by trying to promote my first novel while writing the next one. I feel that I spend too much time on promotion and not enough on writing. I have the uncomfortable feeling of letting my passion be dulled by the need to promote. In the past few weeks, I have been moved to finish this book and get its message out SOON because I believe that every one of us is being called to create a new and better future.

Although I never would have predicted this, I feel that my purpose in life is to get people to pay attention to this. More specifically, I feel that I have a message for all of us who are living right now: We are all now, at this very minute, living through a transition of enormous significance. I believe that we have been chosen by God, or the universe, the spirit world, or random chance to guide ourselves and this planet on which we live through a period of vast change.

In the last 5 years, almost all continents have experienced extreme drought conditions. We need to take this seriously and we need to do whatever is needed to reverse this trend. If the trend can not be reversed, we need to figure out how to make sure everyone has access to clean water. This should be a major concern of all governments and all citizens, everywhere.

This is our task as the people who are living on the planet right now. It is our responsibility. But it is more than a task and a responsibility. It is a privilege. It is an honor to be the people who are living on this precious planet right now. We are the lucky ones who get to participate in the most amazing adventure of the new millenium.

We have been chosen to usher humanity into a new and better way of living. We, yes my dear reader, you and I, were born to be living here now for a reason! We are the leaders we have been waiting for.

The earth has been placed in our hands.

Do you see how beautiful it is? Can you feel the life that pulses through it? Look carefully at it. Its beauty is majestic. Yet it is fragile and growing ever more so. It needs our care. It needs our love. It needs us to learn to work together to protect its resources. This is our challenge. This may even be why we are here!

We can do this. Let's begin right now. Together.

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If you love the ocean, now is the time to show you care.

Think for a moment about the oceans. What do they mean to you?

For most of my life, I have lived less than an hour's drive from an ocean and it gives me comfort to know that I am so close. I can't really imagine not being able to see, smell and hear the ocean whenever I want to. For me the sea shore is a place where I find peace; where I feel most connected to the infinite energy that gives us life.

I feel loved and loving when I see a sunrise or a sunset on the water. I feel connected to those who live on the "other side" of the immense and beautiful sea that connects one continent to another. I feel, indeed, that I could not live without the ocean.

And I am right. Even if I lived hundreds of miles from it, I could not live without the ocean. Neither could you. Literally.

Oceans are integral to human survival.

Maybe that is why so many people love to be near them. Is there something deep in our collective unconscious that knows our survival as a species is intricately connected to the oceans that make up over 70 percent of the earth's surface?

Without being consciously aware that 94 percent of life on earth is aquatic, do we realize in the depths of our being, that we land-dwellers are a small minority and that we are, indeed, dependent on the biodiversity the ocean contains?

When I used to scuba dive in the Caribbean, I was amazed by the diversity and beauty of the underwater life I saw. I never stopped to think about the bio-medical products that have been made possible by the diverse forms of marine plant and animal life.

When I enjoy the majesty of Gloucester's rocky coast, or Cape Cod's sandy beaches, I never once think about how the ocean transfers heat from the equator to the north and south poles, or how it moderates carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. I simply bask in its beauty and relax into the peaceful, contented feeling that being near the ocean always gives me.

I know that millions of people share this love of the ocean. That is why so many people choose ocean-based vacations. Lately, though, I have begun to think that we are drawn to the ocean, not by its beauty, but by our subconscious understanding that it makes life on earth possible.

Has God or the universe created us to have an innate love of the ocean in order to help us understand that we need it? I think the answer is yes.

And, if the answer is yes, then it is important to understand what the ocean does for us. Even more important may be understanding what is happening to the ocean due to the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

I am not a scientist so my explanation will be simple. I will include references at the end for more thorough understanding.

The ocean plays a vital role in removing CO2 from the atmosphere. Right now, almost half of the carbon emitted by burning fossil fuel is absorbed by the earth's oceans. More carbon dioxide can be absorbed and processed safely in cold water than in warm water.

As the earth's temperature rises, it affects the temperature of the water in the ocean. The warmer the ocean becomes the less able it is to absorb CO2 without harm to marine life, and to the ocean itself.

So, we have a huge problem: as more carbon dioxide is emitted global temperatures increase and the ocean water itself warms and is, therefore, less able to absorb the CO2.

But that is not the only problem the ocean (and we humans who depend on it) is facing. The ocean water is becoming more and more acidic due to the increase in carbon dioxide. Human activities are adding 24 million tons of CO2 to the oceans every day. Research has shown that the acidity has increased almost 30 percent in the last 100 years! This really matters because a balanced pH level in the ocean is crucial to the ocean's ability to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Nature gave us a beautiful system of carbon exchange between the earth, the ocean and the atmosphere. We have unwittingly debilitated that system. We have taken something beautiful and life-giving and turned it into a vicious cycle.

I don't blame us for what has happened. Most of us didn't know, or didn't understand. But that is in the PAST. All of the information is available to us now. We have no excuse not to know.

We are so privileged to be the ones who have been given the gift of knowledge. We must not reject this gift. We can not return it because it isn't comfortable. We must accept it with gratitude. We must embrace it. We - you and I - are here NOW.

Martin Luther King, Jr's words from almost 50 years ago state it well : "We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is a such thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time."

We can not wait. We must learn how to live differently. We are the leaders the earth has been waiting for. We are the stewards the ocean needs. We are the humans who have been chosen to join together and heal the earth. We can do it. We must do it. Let us begin now.

Remember that what happens next is up to all of us. We are all connected.

“When people are determined they can overcome anything.” (Nelson Mandela, Johannesburg, South Africa, Nov. 14, 2006)

References and resources

http://www.noaa.gov/ocean.html

http://www.seaweb.org/markets/health.php

http://www.climate.org/topics/climate-change/ocean-uptake-climate-change.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24904143

Speech delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City.

I Call Myself Earth Girl, novel by Jan Krause Greene

http://www.seaweb.org

SeaWeb helps mitigate ocean pollution by sharing and supporting safe, sustainable and responsible ways to interact with our marine environment.

SeaWeb's KidSafe Seafood program provides guidance for selecting healthy, sustainable fish for child consumption. KidSafe Seafood informs parents of the dangers of eating mercury- or PCB-laden seafood while providing sustainable, healthy alternatives.

Learn what you can do to live healthy and sustainably while helping the ocean

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