High Polluting Victoria, Australia, Hell-Bent on Increasing Greenhouse Gas Pollution

The State of Victoria, Australia, is the worst polluting state in Australia which in turn is one of the worst countries in the world for annual per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution. However the new ultra-conservative government of Victoria is trying to increase greenhouse gas pollution in all kinds of ways and has just announced its intention to scrap an existing plan for “20% off GHG pollution by 2020″.

At the end of March, The Age On-line reported that the Baillieu Liberal Party-National Party Coalition Government of Victoria, Australia, had decoded to scrap Victoria’s plan to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 20% by 2020:

“A plan to cut Victoria’s greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent over the next decade is set to be dumped by the Baillieu government on the basis that it would merely lighten the load imposed on other states. An independent review of the state’s key climate change laws, to be released today, has found ‘‘no compelling case’’ to keep the target following the introduction of the Commonwealth’s minimum target to cut emissions by 5 per cent, to be mainly achieved through Labor’s carbon tax.”

The Age kindly published my following comments on the article. The pro-coal, pro-gas, anti-environment Brumby Labor Government thoroughly deserved to be kicked out but its successor the pro-coal, pro-gas, anti-environment Baillieu Coalition Government is even worse and deserves the same fate even more so under the fundamental voter strategy of “Punish the incompetent incumbent”.

The anti-environment Baillieu (Fail you) Government:

1. allowed cattle into the Alpine National Park,
2. sabotaged Victoria’s wind and solar energy industries,
3. backs logging of Victoria’s native forests (the best forest carbon sinks in the world),
4. is promoting massive expansion of exploitation of Victoria’s 430 billion tonnes of brown coal (complete combustion would yield 520 billion tonnes of CO2 or 87% of the global terminal budget of 600 billion tonnes of CO2 that can be emitted before zero emissions in 2050),
5. backs and subsidizes expansion of dirty gas and dirty coal burning for power,
6. now scraps a “20% off greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution by 2020″ target, and
7. ignores the shocking reality that Victoria is among the worst annual per capita GHG polluters in the world.”

In 2009 the WBGU which advises the German Government on climate change estimated that for a 75% chance of avoiding a disastrous 2C temperature rise (EU policy) the World must emit no more than 600 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) between 2010 and zero emissions in 2050. Australia’s domestic plus exported greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution is so high that it had already used up its “fair share” of this terminal GHG pollution budget by mid-2011 and is now stealing the entitlement of all other countries, including impoverished and global warming threatened countries like Somalia and Bangladesh (see “Shocking analysis by country of years left to zero emissions” and “2011 Climate Change Course’).

Victoria, like the rest of Australia, is committed to remorselessly increasing GHG pollution despite the fact that Victoria is the dirtiest state in one of the worst GHG polluting countries in the World. Thus “annual per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution” in units of “tonnes CO2-equivalent per person per year” (2005-2008 data) is 0.9 (Bangladesh), 0.9 (Pakistan), 2.2 (India), less than 3 (many African and Island countries), 3.2 (the Developing World), 5.5 (China), 6.7 (the World), 11 (Europe), 16 (the Developed World), 27 (the US) and 30 (Australia; or 64 in 2010 if Australia’s huge Exported CO2 pollution is included).

Noting that the world population is expected to reach 9.5 billion by 2050 (UN Population Division) , it is estimated that the world is facing a worsening Climate Genocide involving deaths of 10 billion people this century, this including roughly twice the present population of particular mainly non-European groups, specifically 6 billion under-5 year old infants, 3 billion Muslims in a terminal Muslim Holocaust, 2 billion Indians, 1.3 billion non-Arab Africans, 0.5 billion Bengalis, 0.3 billion Pakistanis and 0.3 billion Bangladeshis. (see Climate Genocide).

What can decent people do? Decent people must (a) inform everyone they can and (b) urge international action to force climate criminal, climate racist Australia to get to zero emissions. Such actions might include, sanctions, boycotts, green tariffs, sporting boycotts, International Court of Justice litigations and International Criminal Court prosecutions.

 

Green Blog

The Brown Revolution: Increasing Agricultural Productivity Naturally

by Lisa M. Hamilton.

Dusk in western South Dakota. A half-hour ago, at sunset, the world here made its last pulse for the day: Birds hurried between fence posts, mosquitoes emerged from the shadows and feasted furiously, the sweet clover turned iridescent yellow in the late light. Now, the movement has ceased. Even by day it is a quiet landscape, inhabited primarily by
meadowlarks and grasses. But as night draws its blue self over this place, the silence is profound.

On this particular 8,000-acre section of the Plains there is a single light in view, coming from inside a trailer. Bustling about camp are three men — cowboys, you’d probably call them. They certainly look the part, dressed in boots and wide-brimmed hats, one of them splitting old fence posts with an axe to build a campfire, another working on some beef for dinner. They call this pasture Horse Creek for the water running down its center, and on it they have 1,100 yearling cattle.

And yet, for these men the bovines are only a means to a greater end. According to the unofficial ringleader, Jim Howell, their goal is nothing less than helping the world to avert a looming global catastrophe. What they’re doing here is not just herding cattle; they are starting what they call “The Brown Revolution.”

Howell is not revolutionary looking, being of medium height and middle age, with gray spun into his short, blond hair and a bit of John Denver in his face. Back home in southwest Colorado he runs cattle on land that his family has ranched since the 1880s, but over the years he has worked with cattle from New Mexico to New Zealand. He thinks about the world in a vast way, and articulates his globally-minded perspective with clarity and depth, even when sitting by a campfire.

He is the first to offer that the name the Brown Revolution has its drawbacks, foremost of which is that for many it calls to mind a movement based on dung. (Full of conviction, he wonders optimistically if that will spur people to seek more information.) The name is a modern spin on the Green Revolution of the mid-twentieth century. The Green Revolution greatly increased agricultural productivity in developing countries to meet the demands of a growing world population, then one of the world’s great challenges; Howell and his group aim to increase agricultural productivity around the world as a way of addressing one of
the great challenges of our time, climate change. But while the Green Revolution hinged on implementing new technology, the Brown Revolution relies on restoring natural systems.

The underlying technique is called holistic management, and was developed by biologist Allan Savory in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) beginning in the 1960s. He saw that the arid grasslands on which the region’s people, livestock, and wildlife depended were succumbing to desertification. In looking for a solution, Savory recognized that the
grasslands had evolved out of a symbiotic relationship with large, grazing herbivores. In time, he saw that the same was true of similar ecosystems around the world, including that of western South Dakota and the rest of the Great Plains, with its once-great herds of bison.

In arid environments, plant matter doesn’t degrade easily on its own — it needs these large animals to break it down in their rumens and stamp it into the ground and generally work the land. This was accomplished naturally: As the herbivores traveled in large herds for
safety against their predators, they would cause a great disturbance to the land; then, for their own sake, they would leave and not return until the plants had had enough rest to regenerate.

Now take away the Great Plains’ bison, or the equivalent animals elsewhere, and replace them with cattle, property lines, and fences. The equation still includes large, grazing herbivores, but because they are relatively stationary within the landscape, the symbiosis is lost. Certain areas are overused, and elsewhere plants simply oxidize and die off from underuse; microorganisms decline, water cycles fall apart, and the land gradually collapses.

The basic premise of holistic management is to use livestock like wild animals. But whereas bison on the Great Plains moved through the landscape by instinct, now ranchers must supply that direction. Rather than simply turning cattle into a pasture, these ranchers conduct them like a herd, concentrating bodies to graze one area hard, then leaving it until the plants have regenerated. The effect can be tremendous, with benefits including increased organic matter in the soil, rejuvenation of microorganisms, and restoration of water cycles.

According to Howell and his colleagues, there can also be an exponential increase in the land’s ability to sequester carbon. Savory explains in his paper “A Global Strategy for Addressing Global Climate Change” that there are already 12 million hectares (29.7 million acres) of rangeland managed holistically in Australia, Africa, and North America. Increasing those soils’ organic matter by 1 percent would remove 3.6 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) from the atmosphere. (For context, he offers that “the annual total emissions from all sources for the year 2000 was an estimated 44 gigatons.”) Savory goes on to argue that increasing the organic matter by just 0.5 percent across all of the world’s 4.9 billion hectares of rangeland would sequester 720 gigatons of CO2e; increasing it by two percent would sequester 2,880 gigatons. In a nutshell, the Brown Revolution consists of sequestering massive amounts of carbon by bringing holistic
management to the world’s arid grasslands.

“It has to be done on a freaking massive scale,” Howell says, “so it’s going to require huge flows of capital to make it work. We’re not going to own the whole world, but hopefully we’re going to be a significant player at the table and influence land management policy on a global scale.”

Howell’s goal is twofold: to implement holistic management on enough land as to have an impact on climate change, but also to provide a model that becomes the standard for grasslands management around the world. And he and his team intend to go big, fast. More than once, Howell and his partners referred to the Gates Foundation as an example
of the level of influence they hope to wield in coming years.

For now, they have partnered with a handful of alternative-minded investors who are fronting the money to buy land that Howell and his crew then manage and transform; Horse Creek’s 8,000 acres are less than one percent of what they hope to buy in the western Plains over the next three years. In the long run, they imagine a publicly-traded entity
with shares available to even $ 10-investors. Because Howell feels so
confident in the power of holistic management, his predominant attitude
is that more or less all that lies between here and there is just buying
the land and making it happen.

“If we have real numbers at scale, if we are generating real numbers
in terms of returns on investment that are competitive,” he says, his
voice rising like a venture capitalist selling a dream deal, “we have
this great store of capital out here in the form of land that’s not
going to evaporate, and we’re producing healthy food, and our biological
monitoring transects are showing that our species diversity is
increasing, and we’re covering our soil — our assumption is that a lot
of people are going to want to invest in that.”

But that is the future. Right now, dinner is coming out of the
trailer and being dished onto blue tin plates. Howell and his partners
settle in around the blazing pile of fence posts and begin devouring
their beef and noodles like any other group of cattlemen at the end of a
long day. As they eat, the conversation turns less global, more local,
to area ranchers and the cattle industry of the western Plains.

Listening to them, I’m struck by an odd contrast: It seems that for
them, addressing climate change is relatively cut and dry — a challenge,
for sure, but one with a strategy to match. More vexing is the question
of how to engage and inspire the surrounding community in their
efforts. It is essential, for in their minds one cannot fix a landscape
that has collapsed without also fixing the community that has collapsed
alongside it. But how to do that? That is perhaps the greatest challenge
they face.

* * *

The nearest town to Horse Creek is Newell, S.D., 10 miles
southeast. According to a weathered sign greeting visitors, it is the
“Nation’s Sheep Capital,” but judging from appearances, even the town’s
purported fame has not saved it from the decline that is epidemic in
rural communities of the western Plains.

Downtown is a quiet stretch of respectable old buildings, roughly
half of which are unoccupied. No more doctor’s office or pharmacy, no
more lumberyard or variety store.
It is not without commerce: There is still a grocery, as well as a ranch
supply store and a meat locker. As in many small communities in South
Dakota, there is a municipal bar and packaged liquor store, run by the
town for desperately needed income. There is even a gift shop/vitamin
outlet/jewelry store/ice cream counter as well as a hotel/fitness
center/café around the corner, though it must be noted that when you
ring the bell at the former you will be helped, after a brief wait, by
the same woman who would help you at the latter. (Rarely does this cause
a problem — business is slow at the café, and the fitness center goes
largely unused.)

At its peak in the mid-20th century, Newell had roughly 1,000
residents. These days a sign at town limits announces 675, although that
is wistfully outdated; the most recent census numbers show the
population to be 603. The causes for contraction are a familiar
mish-mash of seemingly intractable problems. Farms got bigger.
Agriculture needed fewer people. People started shopping at chain stores
in nearby Sturgis. The 1980s farm crisis bankrupted a number of area
farms. The drought of the last decade wiped out some more. And on top of
all that, Newell has become a town of grandparents. With more than 30
percent of town over sixty years old, death will soon thin the numbers
even more.

Despite all this, many locals perceive Newell as being in better
shape than an outsider might guess. Yes, downtown is sluggish compared
to its previous self, but the community has a secret weapon: water.

Throughout the western Plains, water is the difference between slow,
inevitable death and the possibility of survival, and yet its
availability is largely a whim of nature and luck of geography. As one
local farmer put it, “This country revolves around water: When you’ve
got a lot of it, everything’s good and easy. When you don’t have it,
everything’s a lot tougher.”

From the beginning, Newell has been an attempt to defy that reality.
While there were several small communities in the area at the turn of
the century, Newell itself did not exist until the federal government
created it in 1904. That was the year the Bureau of Reclamation
officially approved plans for the Belle Fourche Irrigation Project,
which would convey, store, and deliver water from the Belle Fourche
River (whose origin is in neighboring Wyoming) to the farmland around
Newell. The project’s centerpiece was, for years, the largest earthen
dam in the world.

Newell was created as a population center for what would become the
newly fertile and booming agricultural region. Originally it was thought
that the municipality would be called “Craig” after an area banker, but
instead it took its name from Frederick Haynes Newell, a New Englander
who was the chief engineer for the Bureau of Reclamation. Water has
always been at the core of the town’s identity. For as long as it
lasted, the local newspaper was called the Valley Irrigator. To this day, the high school sports teams are not the Cougars or the Broncos; they are the Irrigators.

In its heyday in the mid-20th century, the area had a robust
agricultural industry built on crops like sugar beets, cucumbers, and
dairy — all of which would be commercially impossible without imported
water. Those products rippled out to create other economic
opportunities: Both Newell and nearby Nisland had pickling plants among
the biggest in the United States; the USDA had a large experimental farm
just outside town. And irrigation led to denser settlement than in
dryland farming areas, which in turn led to greater social services for
the people of Newell, things like multiple schools and medical
facilities that were unknown in smaller, dryer towns around the region.

Over time, the other factors that have caused Newell to contract have
chipped away at that prosperity, but the water continues to be a source
of life that makes the town different from its dying counterparts. That
the Irrigation District is headquartered right there in town means a
reliable source of jobs and income. More importantly, the project
enables irrigation on 57,068 acres of farmland. These days, that land
grows mostly alfalfa and corn rather than the high-value specialty crops
of yesteryear, but it still makes the land far more profitable on a
per-acre basis than the rangeland and dryland wheat surrounding it.
Looking at a satellite image of the area in summer, the difference is
clear: The land that stretches to the north and east is the dun of dusty
old shoes; the pocket around Newell is deep green, the color of money.

* * *

Along with the prosperity of irrigation comes an inherent risk, in
that the artificial supply carries no guarantee. The reservoir that
feeds Newell-area canals has been sloshing full for going on four years
now, and yet in the three years preceding, it reached an average of only
44 percent capacity. This ebb and flow is constant, and unpredictable.
In 1932, the reservoir reached near capacity, but in 1931 it had “zeroed
out” thanks in part to an annual precipitation of less than nine
inches, compared to the average 17. The 1940s were relatively
stable times, but every decade since has held at least one drought year;
most have had more. And the future does not look bright: Climate models
predict decreased precipitation and rising temperatures for the region,
which would mean an increased frequency of drought.

Any time the reservoir level sinks, the allocation of water to
farmers sinks proportionately. Whereas in a normal year farmers might
receive 20 inches of water, if the reservoir is at 50 percent, they
will receive only ten. Less water translates directly into less land
planted or a smaller harvest. And yet it’s not the irrigating farmers
who suffer most. Because of scarcity, prices for irrigated hay and feed
go up; at the same time, prime customers — the dryland farmers and
ranchers who rely exclusively on rain and wells — become even more
dependent on purchased feed. For irrigators, drought years can actually
be a boon.

For the rest, though, drought years can be crippling. Unable to pay
the high price of supplemental feed, ranchers are often forced to sell
off their herds. As many of them do this, the market becomes glutted and
prices drop. Amidst the vicious cycle that ensues, bankruptcy is not
uncommon. One local rancher recalled the sell-off that took place during
the drought that stretched from 2004 to 2007: “You couldn’t even sell
them to be butchered,” he said. “If you wanted to sell them [to the
slaughterhouse] you had to wait four months — and feed them while you
waited. These are the things that pluck businesses and families out of
the economy, and out of the community.”

Linda Velder, an energetic history buff who runs the Newell Museum,
explains that, with every drought, these on-farm losses have rippled out
into the community. Less tax revenue from ranches has meant less money
for schools, and so fewer extracurricular activities, shortened
classes, lower wages for teachers — at times local schools have even
struggled to pay their electric and water bills. With the ranching
community spending less money, stores in town have reduced their
inventory and hired fewer people. Some businesses have let their
customers buy on credit, but in extended droughts that has led to the
stores themselves closing down. Likewise, banks, unable to collect on
loans, have shuttered their doors.

All this is to say that while the town is fortified by imported
water, it is not invincible. Even the miracle oasis of the Belle Fourche
Irrigation Project cannot fully protect Newell from the reality that it
exists in a dry land, a place where survival is never guaranteed. In
the introduction to his 1969 book, The Sound of Mountain Water,
Wallace Stegner laid bare the Sisyphean reality behind projects like
that in Newell and throughout the arid West. “Not all the irrigation
works of the next century … can affect the absolute amount of water
that the mountains can produce,” he wrote, “nor alter the climate
sufficiently to take the dry clarity from the air or change the gray and
tawny country to a green one.”

* * *

The Brown Revolution’s sexiest element is sequestering carbon on a
global scale — that is what gets people talking. But that is possible
only when there are people who are able and willing to do the work of
transforming the landscape. Therein lies the revolution’s more humble,
perhaps trickier goal: figuring out how to create stable, dynamic
communities in these arid regions, where the capacity to support human
life is limited.

For Jim Howell and company, the solution lies in having more water.
But rather than import it from elsewhere, their method is to make more
of what’s naturally available. The person who demonstrated to me how it
works is Brandon Dalton, the youngest of the crew at Horse Creek. Blond,
scruffy, and six-foot-four, he looks to have walked out of a Garth
Brooks video. In truth, he’s a wildlife biologist trained at the
University of Washington who came to ranching through his wife’s family.
At Horse Creek he is respected as an expert on wildlife, but as the
Brown Revolution’s first employee, Dalton is known more practically as
the guy who lives part-time in the trailer and is charged with moving
cattle and fences from one place to another.

To explain the water cycle, Dalton took me to the creek itself, which
by that day in mid-July was not a flowing stream but rather a chain of
wet spots marking the vein of moisture that runs down the property’s
center. Within sight of one another were both the problem and one
possible solution. The first was a shallow pothole filled with green
grass and holding a couple of inches of murky water, the second a
twisting line of water flowing deep in the ground between banks
three feet high. The latter looked more like a creek in the traditional
sense, but it was in fact the issue that needed correcting.

Dalton jumped across the mini chasm between the banks and explained
that in this formation, the water runs through fast. A heavy rain will
bring heavy moisture for only as long as it takes to flow from one end
of the property to the other; what’s more, it will carve the creek
deeper, so that the next rain will flow through even faster. The erosion
also lowers the floor of the creek, which in turn lowers the elevation
of the water running through it and thus the water table. He showed me
how above, on the creek’s banks, the soil had dried out and the plants
were thin and sparse.

“You can basically see the land falling apart,” Dalton said. He kicked the bank and a chunk of soil broke off into the water.

In the pothole, however, the moisture would spread out laterally and
raise the water table in a swath beyond its discernible edges. Simply
put, rather than running off the land, the water stays there, and the
grasses and other plants in that area are subirrigated naturally. This
matters in any year, but in times of drought it can be the difference
between having grass for cattle to eat and having to rely on expensive
feed from outside — the difference between staying afloat and going out
of business.

Dalton explained that the gully version of this creek results from
too little of the animal impact that was inherent in the self-herding of
bison: As the land is overrested, root systems fail to hold the soil
in place, allowing the great force of spring rains to turn naturally
gentle depressions into sharp banks. He went on, explaining that this
damage can be corrected by the bison-like herding of cattle: Heavy
stepping of hooves smooth out steep banks, which allows grasses to
germinate there, which in turn will hold soil and begin the process of
turning the gully back into a pothole.

Already in that first year at Horse Creek they were stocking far more
animals than the former owner — 1,100 yearlings as opposed to the
roughly 160 cows and calves of the previous year. The cattleman from
whom they got the yearlings was skeptical that the land could support
that many, but after visiting their operation he conceded that the
pastures grazed early that spring looked as if they hadn’t been touched
all year; indeed, they were ready to be grazed again. Dalton explained
that the land hadn’t even been significantly improved yet; the increase
was possible simply as a product of following the bison pattern of heavy
grazing followed by sufficient rest. This year, Howell and company more
than doubled the herd to 2,250 head, and the land appeared to be
improved even further: greener, and with a greater diversity of grasses
and forbs proliferating.

In the long-term, Dalton envisions a water cycle so improved that
beavers and other uncommon wildlife might populate this creek. This
early in the game, there’s no telling what will happen, but throughout
the holistic management community there are examples of great
transformation that inspire fledgling projects like this. One renowned
rancher in Wyoming rehabilitated the main creek on his ranch and
expanded its riparian area from a width of 30 feet to a half-mile. In
six years, he increased his land’s productive capacity by 150 percent.

“To the extent that you can gradually make that happen more and more
and more,” Howell explains around the campfire, “the more biological
wealth you have out there that is going to sustain life of all forms, as
well as profitability for humans. So at the end of the day, that’s
totally what it all comes back to. That’s why these landscapes have
collapsed and people can’t make a living off of them anymore and the
towns have collapsed: It’s because water is evaporating or running off
as opposed to soaking into the soil.”

* * *

The third partner on the ground at Horse Creek is Zachary Jones, a
funny-guy type with wild dark hair and a goatee. He raises cattle on a
ranch outside Harlowton, Montana, that has been in the family for more
than a century, but like his Brown Revolution compatriots, he is
noticeably unconventional: He drives a Subaru station wagon instead of a
pick-up. He makes kombucha mushroom tea in a vat at home. In the
trailer at Horse Creek, he is never far from his MacBook. In the group
of three, Jones is the philosopher, the one to introduce a cosmic
perspective that reframes a conversation.

As we discuss the practical strategy behind improving the water
cycle, he interjects: “But before you get to managing the soil surface,”
he says, “you have to get to what manages the soil.”

Howell picks up his lead. “Right! Which is human beings and their
tools. So, at the end of the day, it comes back to that: a shift in what
drives our decision-making. Ultimately it’s about getting water to soak
in, but there’s so much that has to happen before that.”

That may be the biggest challenge the Brown Revolution will face in
South Dakota and elsewhere in the arid West: getting people to change
their relationship with the land. The crew at Horse Creek can create a
model of what’s possible, and even, by buying enough land, have an
impact on a larger scale. But the real revolution will come only when
this change is made throughout the region by the individual owners who
together hold more land than Howell and company ever will.

It comes back to holistic management’s premise of emulating the
natural ecology of a place. The larger the scale, the better the concept
works; ideally it would entail enormous herds of animals moving across
entire regions — for instance, not just Newell but all of the western
Dakotas, or the High Plains of Texas and New Mexico. At that magnitude,
it would be possible to restore the entire water cycle and not just a
section of creek. The obstacle is that it requires a fundamental shift:
People must see the land not as a series of individual properties, but
as one larger whole.

There is a movement in the Great Plains to reintegrate individual
holdings into a single landscape. Called the Buffalo Commons, it would
involve landowners selling their land to public ownership in order to
create essentially a giant nature preserve. The idea is to establish
some semblance of the open, bison-covered plains that existed before
Americans cut the range into pieces. There’s just one problem: It
requires essentially dismantling the community and economy that now
exists in the rural areas of the Plains, which, ragged as it may be, is
composed of more than 3 million people.

As Howell and Jones see it, simply deleting people from the picture
doesn’t solve problems for the long run. “What is necessary is to have
competent, rooted, native people who know how to live in these places,”
Howell says. “Without a skilled human element we can’t bring about the
ecological shift.”

From Howell’s perspective, the problems stem not from our presence in
this particular landscape but from how we’ve chosen to act there. Ever
since European settlers arrived in the 19th century, the core of the
Plains identity has been independence and dig-in-your-bootheels
resilience. It has seemed necessary — those needing outside help simply
don’t last in this ruthless environment.

I thought of this as I looked through the Butte County Post one
morning. The “Rural Newell News” section told mostly of ladies’
luncheons and visits from out-of-town guests, but the first two items
read as follows:

Merle Vig of the Mud Butte area got rid of the neck brace. He and a
horse had a difference of opinion and the horse won that round.

Don Stomprud had some of his buildings rearranged out at the ranch
when the tornado went through his place. He felt that he was lucky that
the damage was not worse.

As much as community matters deeply to people who live in places like
Newell, their first response to the world’s challenges is a sort of
radical self-reliance. Therein lies the greatest challenge that Howell
and company face in these parts: seeing the landscape as a larger whole
requires that people see themselves as part of a larger whole.

I recall explaining the Brown Revolution to a local ranching couple,
who seemed cautiously intrigued. But when I suggested that the concept
might be accomplished through ranchers forming a cooperative, the wife
looked at me askance.

“You mean they’d need to work it as a sort of coalition?” she said.

“Yes.”

“That’ll never happen.”

That was the end of the conversation.

* * *

The Horse Creek crew is not yet ready to debate the core Plains
identity with the crowd down at the diner in Newell, but privately
Howell suggests that perhaps the foundation supporting this immutable
independence is faulty. It’s thinking made popular by Wallace Stegner,
who believed that pioneers heading west over the hundredth meridian
brought with them a relationship to the environment shaped by ample
rainfall as exists in the eastern United States and much of western
Europe.

“The history of the West,” Stegner wrote, “has been a history of
importation of humid-land habits (and carelessness) into a dry land that
will not tolerate them; and of the indulgence of an unprecedented
personal liberty, an atomic individualism, in a country that experience
says can only be successfully tamed and lived in by a high degree of
cooperation.”

Seated in the trailer at Horse Creek, Howell argues that that
misplaced identity is exactly why towns like Newell are collapsing
throughout the western Plains. In his view, the entitlement to autonomy
that is possible in lands with ample rainfall should be replaced here by
a new pattern of settlement guided by what the land is capable of
providing.

“When I say that the community needs to be healthy and stable and
secure to realize the land’s ecological potential, that doesn’t
necessarily mean salvaging all the little towns,” he explains.
“Ultimately, that’s what’s driving us: to create a new culture, a whole
new approach to living out here on these landscapes, one that’s
appropriate to this place. And that’s the hardest thing of all, for
cultures which are based on habits to change and evolve over time.”

Howell and company recognize that such change takes generations, and
that they’re unlikely to happen here in Newell in the immediate future.
So for now they are focused on just implementing their model and growing
it as big as they can. At least in terms of expediency, abandoning the
immediate pursuit of major social transformation is actually a plus. Not
saddled by the collaborative process, they can simply buy land and
change its management overnight, bringing improved carbon sequestration
that much more quickly.

The drawback is that this approach, too, relies on imported resources
– not mountain water from Wyoming but rather investment capital from
New York City.

There’s an old joke among cattlemen that the best way to make a small
fortune in ranching is to start with a big one. And yet the Brown
Revolution’s lead investor, the Greenwich, Conn.-based Capital
Institute, is optimistic about their investment specifically because it
seems secure in comparison to the current financial market. The strategy
is not centered on real estate — they don’t intend to “flip” the land
after improving it, the way some housing developers do. They aren’t
waiting to cash in on carbon credits, either, though that may provide
additional income down the road. In time they’d like to expand into
producing grass-fed beef for the specialty food market, but for now the
model revolves around minimal capital investments and steady returns.
Their medium is the humble industry of custom grazing, whereby
contractors fatten yearlings on pasture, then return them to their owners
to sell.

It goes like this: The Brown Revolutionaries buy under-utilized land
for cheap, implement holistic management as contractors using other
people’s cattle, and collect profits in the form of fees for the custom
grazing service. As the land improves through their management, they’ll
be able to accommodate more yearlings and collect more profit.

“If you invest a hard number each year with no capital investments
and you can double that over x amount of years, you have a much more
stable investment than most,” reasoned John Fullerton, the Capital
Institute’s founder and president. “It’s not like buying Google when it
was still a private company, but from my vantage point, on a
risk-adjusted basis it’s actually quite attractive.”

There is a precedent for just this sort of profit-oriented
speculation from afar, in the cattle barons of the Old West. Beginning
in the mid-19th century, massive herds grazed the open range of
western South Dakota. (At the turn of the century, Belle Fourche, 25
miles west of Newell, was the world’s premier livestock shipping point,
with 2,500 railcar loads of cattle leaving each day.) Those animals were
herded by hired cowboys and owned by investors who mostly lived
elsewhere — often in more humid climes such as New York City and Great
Britain. But as fencing and farming changed the circumstances of the
West, it became clear that owning cattle was a risky business; savvy
investors took their money out of raising meat and put it into
processing.

What’s to say that the Brown Revolution’s funders won’t pull out if
their investment falters? How will they guard against the folly of
humid-land thinking, expecting the land to produce at a desired rate
rather than recognizing its ebb and flow? And what if drought returns?
Would a few dry years prove the holistic approach, or would it disband
the revolution?

It must be said that the investors are not driven solely by dollar
signs. Fullerton, for one, believes that such socially responsible
investment has meaning beyond money. “Our purpose,” he says, “is to
demonstrate that there is a way to deploy capital in a way that’s
aligned with the ecological crisis we’re facing, but on the investment
side of the line that separates investment and philanthropy. We’re not
doing this because it’s the biggest way to get a return, but I think
it’s a pretty smart thing to do with my money as opposed to putting it
in the stock market.”

But is that enough to sustain a revolution? While local ranchers
would have their roots to carry them through the ups and downs of a new
system, it remains to be seen how long outsiders will hold on through
hard times. In her book Dakota: A Spiritual Geography, Kathleen
Norris captured the nature of this place and the beings that try to make
it their own. “The Plains are not forgiving,” she wrote. “Anything that
is shallow — the easy optimism of a homesteader; the false hope that
denies geography, climate, history; the tree whose roots don’t reach
ground water — will dry up and blow away.” If this new vision for
western rangelands is to succeed, the commitment of its visiting
visionaries — Fullerton and Howell alike — must prove deep enough to
last until the local community is ready to join the revolution.

Grist.org – the latest from Grist

Americans are Using Less Energy But Imports of Solar Energy are Increasing

There is no doubt that Americans are united in the fight against imported and environment-damaging sources of energy. Energy efficiency has become a great weapon against foreign oil. The cars being manufactured today use less and less gasoline. American homes are being tested in increasing numbers for wasted energy and this is equating to a decrease in electricity use (and thus, coal use), and this is expected to level off and maybe even decline.

Light bulbs of today are much more efficient, as are all appliances. The home of the future will use less energy and manage resources better. From 1980-2000, residential power demand grew about 2.5 percent a year. From 2000-2010, the growth rate slowed to 2 percent. Over the next 10 years, demand is expected to decline by about 0.5 percent a year, according to the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit group funded by the utility industry.

But homeowners are not the only ones in the game. IT companies such as Google are doing a lot to reduce their carbon foot prints and reduce energy cost. Last week Google released a white paper called Google’s Green Data Center that details the company’s efforts. Commercial lighting also is going through a radical change that will save manufacturers, warehouses and large commercial businesses lots of power and money.

This new energy revolution would be a great way to create jobs in a way that has never been done before — something new. All of this could be financed with electrons in the form of the sun’s rays, the same way that solar companies are financing solar panel installations with a lease plan. This would create jobs that will eventually pay for themselves and then would even return a profit. Imagine that.

But progress always seems to come with question marks. Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, that is the promise of the new green economy. Lately the whispering has been about solar panel manufacturers filing bankruptcy. This is not an affliction exclusive to the solar or wind industry. Bank of America is about to lay off a large portion of its staff. We need to look at all the reasons that these solar giants are losing their battle and it may be more insidious than you think.

Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) has written a letter to President Obama in which he recommends actions to combat unfair Chinese practices crushing the U.S. solar industry. From his Press Release: The global market for renewable energy technologies is increasingly being dominated by Chinese manufacturers reaping the benefits of unscrupulous trade practices that give them an unfair competitive advantage against U.S. industries. This is a critical problem for the U.S. solar industry facing an expected 240 [percent] increase in the import of Chinese solar panels this year. U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), chair of the Senate Finance Committee’s Subcommittee on Trade, called on President Obama to take action to curb the flood of Chinese subsidized solar products, identifying existing trade tools that he can use to level the playing field for American manufacturers. Wyden indicated he would initiate legislative action if the president was unwilling to respond.

While I applaud all the efforts being taken to save money on energy and to reduce our carbon footprint, I also caution all Americans to be aware that billions of dollars NOT sent to the Middle East for oil should stay at home and not go to other countries. World trade hawks refuse to make other countries trade fairly and we seem to be in denial as there is little discussion, let alone outrage, about this. The world marketplace is not fair when even one country subsidizes its goods and services. There is nothing wrong with international trade but can we afford to help others at the expense of jobs right here at home?

By George Lopez
Executive Director

Decision on Walmart wind turbines postponed

Asbury Park Press

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Solar panels: latest hot spot in US-China trade tensions

Financial Times (blog)

But the latest broadside from Capitol Hill hits out at a new, and somewhat surprising, target: cheap Chinese solar panels being installed on American homes. The attack comes from Senator Ron Wyden (D., Oregon), who alleges that Chinese-made solar …
 
Exxon’s Russian Roulette

The New York Review of Books (blog)

The investments have been encouraged by bullish numbers from, among others, the US Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration, which earlier this year estimated that the Marcellus contains an astounding 410 trillion cubic feet of natural gas …
 
Ohio moves ahead with shale exploration while other states take a break

Plain Dealer

Ohio officials may be gearing up for a frackfest, but other states are backpedaling as they move to block the practice while they await a pair of federal studies by the US Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy. New Jersey Gov. …

The Solar and Wind Expo