Climate Change? Global Warming? What’s the difference?
Climate change is generally referring to long-term shifts in climate; weather patterns, temperatures, and sea levels mostly thought to be due to the use of fossil fuels. And global warming is the increase in our flat earth’s average surface temperature from human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.
I’m writing about this for selfish reasons…I want to know more about the subject. Which means I’ll pass it on to you and hopefully you will pass it on to others. The more people that are aware of how we waste resources daily, how our ‘normal’ way of life perhaps needs an update, a paradigm shift if you will, the strength in numbers could possibly mean something.
I wrote the first Climatosis post in June and, as there is so much material to cover under the umbrella of CC and GW, I’m going to slowly dole out bits and bobs over time.
Today I’m going to write about Tucson resident Brad Lancaster who has arguably done more for the water harvesting movement here, and possibly internationally, than anyone else. Since the early 90s, he’s run a successful permaculture & regenerative design, consulting, and education business focused on integrated and sustainable approaches to landscape design, planning, and living. Check out his bio here.
We first heard about Lancaster from an Arizona Illustrated piece on our local PBS station.
One of his main arguments is that in Tucson, Arizona (where we get an average of 11 inches [280 mm] of annual rainfall), more water falls as rain on our city in an average year than the entire population of the city (over half a million residents) consumes of municipal water (the bulk of which is imported/pumped in at great cost from the Colorado River over 300 miles away) in a year. So, we’d typically have more free local water than we need if we’d consciously harvest it, rather than wastefully drain it away. And we don’t need any fancy equipment or large infrastructure to do so.
You start where you are—where you live, work, study, grow, and/or play; in a way that lifts you, as it also lifts others, our larger communities, and the ecosystems we’re all nested within; so that our combined health and potential—our true wealth—improves and evolves.
This is news to me and seemingly terrific news, if water is harvested in large doses. We have two 75 gallon tanks next to a ramada and an 865 gallon tank that gathers rainwater from the house. They fill up pretty quickly during monsoon. Working through the Watershed Management Group in town we were able to get a city rebate for the large tank…you can, too!
One of the points that Lancaster makes in the PBS feature is that sometimes people living in so-called ‘third world’ countries use creative and ingenious methods to survive in inhospitable environments. It was in 1995 that he first met Mr. Zephaniah Phiri Maseko and his family in Zimbabwe, who set him on his water-harvesting path by way of his productive example of numerous innovations and applications of very effective and accessible systems that plant the rain throughout his land with simple water- and fertility-harvesting earthworks. Read more here from the Permaculture Research Institute website.
One more video worth a watch.
Oh, OK, I’m going to stray for one moment from the subject of Brad Lancaster…yesterday’s post by Kay Sather (written in her blog New Stuff Sucks - you should subscribe), who is a relatively new acquaintance, is on the Monarch butterfly, which is now listed on the endangered species list. Shit. I’ll wrap up by quoting the last three paragraphs from her story.
We need to continue to wage these battles. If we fail at this lifesaving thing, well—I can only take the long view. In our planet’s history we have one-celled organisms, vegetation looking straight out of a Dr. Seuss book, fantastic sea creatures, humongous dinosaurs, and—not that long ago—huge wooly mammoths. What evolution did once it can do again, maybe with even more fascinating variations. We humans may or may not be around to see them, but isn’t that all the more reason to spend time and wonder on what’s still here, today?
So yeah: Watch that latest David Attenborough film. Make some popcorn and let yourself cry some tears over the beauty and awe, or jump up afterward and look up that conservation nonprofit you were drawn to the other day.
Either response is appropriate.
And now…
👍
or both.