Originally Published in Colorado Central Magazine
Sociologists and climatologists say the rate of change is accelerating. We live in a whirlwind of alarming news on all fronts. The September column is due tomorrow and I have confetti-brain, with bits of paper containing alarming thoughts written in tiny letters swirling between my ears. Here are a few:
Bee Colony Collapse: Bees are being infected with mites that kill them. This didn’t happen in the past because bees feed on complex sugars in nectar (obviously) and secreted by fungi in decomposing plants woodlands (not obvious). A certain fungus invades them and kills the mites without harming the bees. But beekeepers feed their bees on simple, sterile sugar to help them survive long hauls from Florida to California, to Maine and Florida and back. We keep clearing forests to grow monoculture crops, so no rotting plants, no fungal protection from mites. Add drought in the West, destruction of soil fungi by tilling and pesticides, and bees will die. Bees pollinate about 80% of our food crops, so I predict food shortages will be food for alarmists in the near future.
The recent heat wave in the Pacific Northwest killed billions of mollusks and millions of tons of the microfauna they feed on. Shellfish rotted on the beaches, dead crabs floated on the water, and baby hawks jumped out of their nests to escape the heat, not to mention burning trees. Other animals that depend on marine life for their food will also die. Back east, Tampa Bay lost 600 tons of fish, dolphins, and manatees due to algal Red Tide. The alga feeds on nitrogen and phosphorus, key ingredients in fertilizer and sewage. Florida’s economy depends on big agriculture and huge tour ships, and both pump their waste into the seas around Florida.
COVID cases are rising exponentially. 99% of all cases are in unvaccinated persons. Not to pick on Florida, but Florida’s percentage of COVID hospital patients are three times the national average, yet Florida’s Governor continues to oppose vaccinations. COVID is now showing up in deer populations, yet Salida shelters hundreds of deer who have little fear of humans. Governmental ignorance is clearly the more dangerous disease.
At least 500 humans are dead or missing after floods in Western Germany. After a disastrous flood in 1910, officials proposed building a retention reservoir, but World War 1 postponed the project. After the war, with the surging interest in automobiles, they decided it would be more profitable to build the now famous Nürburgring motor raceway instead. Turns out Mother Nature wasn’t interested in fast cars.
Once again, the rate of ice melt in Greenland and Antarctica exceeds all predictions.
Do these far-apart and far-different events influence life in the Upper Arkansas Valley? Based on my smoke-irritated eyes and nose, I’d say yes. If I had to pick an underlying cause of the floods, fires, and rising seas, it would be short-term, separation-based thinking that ignores long-term natural processes. Because we kill all other animals, we think of ourselves as the top of the food chain, but the chain is really a web: we are only one strand woven into a complex tapestry, with no way to separate one strand or one vested interest from all the others. As a race and as individuals, we think of ourselves as being separate from each other and from “nature”. But nothing is separate; everything is woven together. In nature, this results in resilience and adaptability. In post-industrial humanity, it results in flooded homes, forest fires, collapsing condo towers, and collapsing food supplies.
In Chaffee County, green pastures are irrigated and produce hay, grass, or alfalfa. Some of the brown fields are too rocky to grow crops, but much of the brown is on small plots around large houses. Ranchers and farmers are in a quandary: the development value of land is far higher than the cash value of the crops and cattle the land supports, so when it’s time to retire, it’s preferable to sell the land to a developer than to another rancher. Compensating landowners for loss of development dollars will require a broad-based, well-funded program, plus the cooperation of separate (that S-word!) interests, hopefully before a disaster forces an awakening.
The largest water reservoir in the Upper Arkansas Valley is our soil, and soil’s ability to retain water depends upon roots of perennials like hay, grass, and alfalfa. A 1% increase in organic matter increases water retention by 20,000 gallons per acre. Water enters the soil primarily by irrigation, soaking into properly farmed and grazed ground. On bare ground it runs off, ending up in the Pueblo Reservoir along with thousands of tons of soil every year. Subdivided pastures lose water and soil, physically, legally, and permanently from the Valley, yet we have no system in place to keep agricultural land in agriculture. It’s a nasty problem, with many seemingly conflicting interests to weave into the fabric of the future, including home buyers, developers, ranchers, and citizens in town and country.
Western Europe has stronger government participation in land-use decisions than in the USA, especially in the West where settlement is a recent event, (at least by us Europeans), so land and water are still treated as tradeable commodities. The long-term consequences are degraded land, but this will eventually change, but even in Europe, it took a catastrophe to force it.
Natural disasters in the Upper Arkansas Valley will probably not be dramatic events killing hundreds of people. It will be the slow conversion of a lovely but brittle agricultural setting into a Disneyland of retirement homes, eroding recreational trails, and brown fields sending dust into the air and mud into the river.
The confetti whirlwind is settling, and the bits of paper are spelling something: “Hold the center.” It’s each of us thinking about the separation-based things we do, buy, and say, and turning toward doing, buying, and saying things that connect. We can live in the calm at the whirlwind’s still center of turning.