Community and Environmental Rights

A lot of people don't think of "the environment" has being owed rights. "What? Give trees rights?" You might think it's something to scoff at but there's a long tradition of recognizing nature as being owed something other than a numerical dollar value for its extractive potential, its ability to be turned into a chair, a car, or a hand-held device, or its value as property.

In 1948, Aldo Leopold wrote "The Land Ethic" in A Sand County Almanac. He believed that things were owed moral status if they are part of the community. He wrote,

All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. His instincts prompt him to compete for his place in that community, but his ethics prompt him also to co-operate (perhaps in order that there may be a place to compete for).

The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land.

These simple lines have infused much of the environmental movement's ethics for 60 years. They resonate to some degree in the work of environmentalists' and environmental groups' rhetoric to varying degrees. And some take it more seriously than others.

Today on the show, we will be talking to Ben Price of the Community and Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF). They argue that the escalating ecological crises we are living in has resulted from decisions made powerful people in our major institutions. They argue that "sustainability will never be achieved by leaving those decisions in the hands of a few – both because of their belief in limitless economic production and because their decisions are made at a distance from the communities experiencing the impact of those decisions." What's the answer? In part, it's to change the power dynamics by invoking the rights of communities to determine their futures. The community is that broadest community including the environment, or what Leopold called the land.

Price helped craft State College's Community and Environmental Bill of Rights and Fracking Ban so successfully fought for by GroundswellPA and passed in 72% to 28% landslide. But recently passed legislation that has resulted in Act 13 of the Oil and Gas Law threatens local ordinances to regulate natural gas drilling operations. Will the State College referendum stand? Will the lawsuit against the state by seven Pennsylvania municipalities succeed? Do we need a revolution against what some call a corporate kleptocracy? We'll ask Price these and other questions.

Call in with questions this afternoon from 4-5 pm: (814) 865-9577. You can also join us on Facebook and Twitter as well.

Searching beneath our feet, working with our hands, and moving from the heart.

Do you ever wonder why lawns sit empty? Have you looked at your neighbors' yards or pieces of the park and thought, "What else could be there?"

I know I often think about what it would be like to see stands of maples, oaks, walnuts, and cherry trees where sprawling lawns sit. And other times I envision lawns surrounded by wildflower meadows where bees and butterflies dance. Or I see beds of rich loam with intermingled vegetables in rows arranged in beautiful arrangements with compost chambers, piles of leaves, and jumbled pile of hand tools.

Do you wonder what it would be like to be invited into that place if it isn't your property? Or what if the people who owned the garden asked you to eat some produce by just putting out there for you? Or what if you wanted to do it with your own lawn but weren't sure where to begin? Maybe all you want is a beautiful place that nurtures your spirit and gives you peace of mind and, you hope, a smile to others. A food commons. A beauty commons. A peaceful commons.

Today's guests are taking some of those ideas and feelings and bringing them to life. Dana Stuchul started something she calls Veggie Commons, "is to join together (as kids, teens, beginning farmers and gardeners, dwellers, and elders) in the cultivation, harvest, and enjoyment of wholesome, locally nurtured food. Utilyzing food, labor, land, and love, we endeavor to fortify our community, transforming lawnscapes into foodscapes." [Garden pictured at right.] Dana, like our previous guests Asher Miller of the Post Carbon Institute, Katherine Watt of Spring Creek Homesteading and formerly of the Transition Town Initiative, is something of radical re-localizer. There is great promise in meaningful work with the land, something our mechanized and digitized society has lost but can regain through work in the commons.

And maybe you want to take a crack at creating your beautiful space but aren't sure where to begin. Woody Wilson has started Home Grown Farms (Facebook page here), a company that designs, installs, and manages residential and company gardens in State College. Wilson says, "Home Grown Farms bridges the gap between where food is grown and where people consume it."

Both are grounded (pardon the pun) in a love of our place, love of the land, and the possibility of local resilience. Rather than fret and kvetch about sprawl, climate change, peak oil, and the destructive nature of our stuffing and starving food system, they have gotten their hands dirty. Quite literally, this is labor of love and labor for love.

Dana posted the words of Ivan Illich on the Veggie Commons blog a few days ago. He said,

As philosophers, we search below our feet because our generation has lost its grounding in both soil and virtue. By virtue, we mean that shape, order and direction of action informed by tradition, bounded by place, and qualified by choices made within the habitual reach of the actor; we mean practice mutually recognized as being good within a shared local culture that enhances the memories of a place.

What is happening here with Dana and Woody? What if more of us recognized and nurtured our relationship with the soil to which all terrestrial life owes its existence?

So join us today on the Lion 90.7 fm. As always, feel free to call in (814) 895-9577 with comments and questions. You can also find us on Facebook where you can post articles and interact with other SN listeners and readers or join us on Twitter at SustainNowRadio.

Veggie Commons in Central PA

Two of our former guests, Chris Uhl and Dana Stuchul*, have started an intitiative in Central Pennsylvania called Veggie Commons. Their yard is one of the most productive food spaces in the area and here you can see it:



Stuchul says, "We are increasingly interested in doing more for ourselves and learning in the doing and stretching the boundaries of what's possible. Just our notions of a lawn looks like grass. Well really? If it's receiving lots of sun and you like to eat and if you have just the tiniest bit of experimentation urge, plant something and harvest it and eat and enjoy it. You'll notice that it's beautiful in the doing as well."

Seems that in the New Year, many of us could do with more fresh vegetables, bread, and eggs instead of what we've been eating over the winter holiday. Maybe I'm just speaking for myself...but I doubt it.

Later this spring we hope to have at least Stuchul back on the show to talk about work in the commons and the work of Ivan Illich.
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*Dana Stuchul and Christopher Uhl are both on Peter Buckland's doctoral dissertation committee.

Groundswells Matter

The past week has been remarkable for environmental sustainability and energy.

On the local level, the State College Borough passed a Community Bill of Rights that includes a fracking ban. The referendum was passed nearly 3:1. This was in large part due to the work of Groundswell PA led by Braden Crooks and our team at work on the ground with EC3 and Sierra Club Moshannon.

On the national level, President Obama has delayed the Keystone XL Pipeline which would connect the dirty tar sands oil fields to Texas refineries and shipping. Last Sunday, 12,000 people surrounded the White House to show people want something different - less carbon, less pollution, more health, and more sustainability. People from the Centre Region have been involved in these issues. In September, Toni Gripp Brink went to Washington to join Bill McKibben, Josh Fox, Naomi Klein, James Hansen, and hundreds of others to protest the pipeline and the tar sands. Last weekend, Krystn Madrine of the Sustainable Kitchen went with her daughter to be in the human chain surrounding the White House. Obama landed in his helicopter during the event. It must have been quite a sight.

Perhaps Groundswells are on the rise. Occupy movements. Surrounding the White House. The recent Ohio referendum revoking the anti-union work of Ohio's governor. What's next?

Will peak everything bring peak resilience?

A few years ago, author and activist Derrick Jensen wrote in Orion magazine, "The most common words I hear spoken by any environmentalists anywhere are, We’re f***ed." I'd say that assessment - that a lot of environmentalists say that anyway - is pretty accurate.

Face it. Current and coming generations of people and other organisms face a wicked problem of interconnected wicked problems. Here are six:

• Global human population will hit 7 billion this October and is projected to climb to 9 billion by ~2050.
• Global warming has already reduced sea ice in the Arctic Ocean and caused extensive ice cap and glacial melting from Greenland to Argentina to Antarctica. Projected warming from the IPCC and other scientific bodies will cause further melting which will raise sea levels over the coming century, flooding coastal cities and sinking islands.
• Deforestation, especially tropical deforestation, prevents carbon sinking and increases other greenhouse gas emissions while also changing the way equatorial weather patterns that regulate other weather patterns.
• Industrial production is increasingly toxifying air, water, and land in many different places across the Earth and the most educated societies in the world do not understand the interactive effects of tens of thousands of unregualated chemicals.
• Anti-biotics and vaccinations drive bacterial and viral virulence.
• The modern industrial and post-industrial economies have been built with fossil fuels, mostly oil for transportation. Coal and oil peak production has more or less been reached while natural gas from deep shale gas is on the rise.

These problems all feed one another. Peak everything is here or coming and the response to it by big government and big industries is, well, sorely lacking according to today's guest.

Janaia Donaldson hosts Peak Moment TV, "online television series featuring people creating resilient communities for a more sustainable, lower-energy future. Programs range from permaculture farms to electric bikes, ecovillages to car-sharing, emergency preparedness to careers for the coming times." Like other guests on our show working with the "transition" and "slow money" movements, Donaldson has focused on how the big wicked problems above can be tackled by resilient and skilled people working together. She has interviewed women who have worked to bring gardens to school, psychologists examining reactions to climate change, economists critiquing growth economics, and environmental activists rallying people to find strength within themselves.

If there is anything we can be sure of, Donaldson has witnessed and soaked up a lot of wisdom on sustainability and resilience.

Hear her on today's Sustainability Now on the Lion 90.7 from 4-5 pm.

Catering for the local economy by sustaining a healthy appetite

Krystn Madrine, the "kitchen maid" of the Sustainable Kitchen came on the show yesterday and served up some great thoughts on how we feed ourselves and how we can do it better. To Madrine, sustainability means, "being able to keep it going... and with food the path we're on is not sustainable." Listen to her talk with us about food security, regional food systems, sustainable food systems, seasonality, health, and knowing about your food.

What we found so great to hear about are all of the people Madrine gets to know from her work and the web of pretty direct benefits buying her food brings. Learn more about her work with Chef Andrew Monk and the Sustainable Kitchen by listening to the show at this link. You can find them each week at the Boalsburg Farmer's Market on Tuesday and on Saturdays at the North Atherton Street Farmer's Market at Home Depot. They also cater lots of events. To see what they are about you can go to the State Theater in State College on Wednesday Sept. 21st for the showing of Forks Over Knives.

P.S. The Veggie Patty sandwich and the Italian Wedding soup is amazing.

Groundswell for a Sustainable State College

Farmers markets in full swing

June means that the farmers markets and community supported agriculture (CSA) are in full swing. If you are looking for fresh local produce, local meats, eggs, cheeses, or milk, fresh cut flowers, honey, or a nice place to spend some of your afternoon, go to the local markets.

In the Centre Region we have several markets within about 25 miles of State College each week:

• Tuesdays: Boalsburg Farmers Market at the Pennsylvania Military Museum and State College Farmers Market on Locust Lane
• Thursday: Huntingdon at Portstown Park
  
• Friday: State College on Locust Lane and Philipsburg on Main Street
  
• Saturday: North Atherton in State College at Home Depot, Bellefonte at the Gamble Mill, Millheim Farmers Market, and Philipsburg
  
• Last Saturday of the summer months Village on the Green Market in Julian, PA
  

If you want to find farmers markets and farms near you, use the search feature at the Buy Fresh Buy Local page through the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture website. It's also a great way to get in touch with your local growers to see about buying weekly shares of food that can be delivered to market for you. Or if you just want local flavors served up for you in beers or meals, restaurants and bakeries can be found too.

If you want to get some insight on vendors or have some to leave, you can also use Local Bounty as well. It's a website that offers "users the chance to find local sources for goods of all kinds — from apples to art, pets to pumpkins. Users can enter information about local producers, write reviews, and rate their experiences."

Eat fresh. Eat local.

PBS Need to Know: The Price of Gas

In all of our discussion of natural gas development in the Marcellus Shale region, and soon the Utica Shale region, we have not looked much at what is happening in other parts of the country. The PBS show, Need to Know, did a special last year on the effects to water and communities of hydraulic fracturing and gas development in the Wyoming shale plays. Watch it here:



What do you think of the argument that companies can use "intellectual property" as a reason to hide harmful chemical mixtures to which the public could be exposed?

The Rural Impacts of Natural Gas Drilling and Fracking

This video shows some pretty startling footage from Colorado. Citizens there have stories about well blowouts, contaminated water, plummeting property values, drug and crime problems from transient workers, and other negative impacts.



If you follow the blog talk and speak to people on the street in much of Pennsylvania, I think it's fair to say that many of these problems have transferred to this state.

Later in the series, there are some suggestions about what to do. What do you think should be done? How can you work to affect local politics, state politics, regulations and enforcement, and community organizing? Is it possible to slow this down or change its direction?