Photo credit: Therese Brummel.
 
When I turned 60 my son gave me a T-shirt as a birthday gift. It is bright green with a squiggly sketch of trees and, written in cursive, is the word "trees". He said, "Mom, it’s your color...and your name!"
 
My love of trees runs deep. I taught my young kids: “If you are lost, hug a tree”. It’s more than a directive for a lost child to stay put. A tree is a comfort, protection, cover, shade from the heat, retreat from danger, and home to birds, bugs and bees.
 
Once again, I am considering the value of our urban trees. Two 100-year-old oak trees near my house died this month and were ground to mulch. I think about the loss of not only their beauty and comfort and shade and habitat, but the loss of the carbon sequestration such huge trees provided. A newly planted tree will need decades to become an equal workhorse.
 
City pruning around power lines has begun in my area. Is there an arborist approving these workers’ choices? A small group of neighbors is asking this question.
 
Pasadena has been known as a city of trees - 60,000 it claims - but our Climate Action Plan calls for planting only 500 trees this year.
 
If our city followed the City of Los Angeles’ aspirational goal to plant 90,000 trees by 2021, quadrupling their usual 23,000 annual tree plantings, scaled for the size of our city, our goal could be to plant 3,000-4,000 trees by 2021.
 
https://laist.com/2019/08/05/la_hires_its_own_lorax_to_manage_and_care_for_our_trees.php
 
The City of LA hired an arborist, Rachel Malorich and obtained a grant specifically to achieve this goal. What a great investment, as Ms. Malorich said to ”reduce urban heat island effect, and... obviously reduced rates of asthma. And then (there's) that feeling of positive social well-being."
 
This fall, the Pasadena Audubon Society and the Arroyo and Foothills Conservancy will host a public discussion and film on trees as habitat and the state of our urban forest. Watch this space for details.
 
-----Therese Brummel.

Imagine a campfire with people sitting in a circle around it. The fire makes a center to focus your attention on while one person speaks. With your eyes focused on the fire your ears take in sound and your mind is free to focus on the sound of the speaker's voice. You listen deeply.
 
This is Council. It's an indigenous practice that people have been doing for millennia. It's very old. There is a center inside a circle of people. The speaker holds a talking piece that focuses our attention. Like an invisible rubber band, the talking piece attaches to the center and to each person's heart. Council is the practice of listening and speaking from the heart so as to awaken connection with self, others and the natural world.
 
When I first started participating in Council circles, I was struck by how close I felt to the people sharing the circle even though those people had been complete strangers an hour ago. There is something magical about this process that transforms people and creates community.

Council is a Transition Pasadena project and one of our offerings in the realm of Inner Transition. I facilitate this Council circle on the 1st Tuesday of every month from 7pm to 8:30pm. We'll have a center but, instead of a roaring fire, there will be a candle and a variety of interesting objects to focus on.
 
I want to explore the inner dimensions of living on Earth today. How it is for us members of industrial society as we cope with current events and the background of environmental degradation? What does it all mean? I envision this monthly Council as a safe space for people to come together and express how life is for them. Primarily, I was thinking about the crises facing our world but it's open to whatever subject participants bring.
 
I do create a plan each month but I am ready and looking to follow what participants have spoken about and move in directions spontaneously. Often, poetry is a good route to introspection. Wendell Berry, Rumi and Rilke have served me well.
 
I invite you to come to a Council circle. Hear other people's stories and share your own. You will experience connection and community. I know it's not easy, in our busy lives, to create a space for Council. There are many benefits once you have sat in the circle. Like meditation, the benefits are not obvious until you have finished and are sitting at the end of the meditation. Sometimes it is indescribable, but beneficial nonetheless.

-----David Cutter
 

Photo credit: Sylvia Holmes.

This past August the California Energy Commission approved Pasadena's latest 20-year plan for procuring electricity. This brings us two pieces of good news:  
 
1)  No more long-term contracts for fossil fuels. 
 
2)  Pasadena Water and Power managers tell us Pasadena was the first utility in the state to include the social cost of carbon in such a plan, and they hope they have encouraged others to follow suit.  
 
What does this have to do with Transition Pasadena?
 
The backstory:
 
In 2017 and 2018, "Pasadena 100" (a project of Transition Pasadena) worked to persuade the City to move more quickly to ween its electric utility away from fossil fuels. The City had an existing commitment to coal usage, extending through 2027, and had opted into a scheme to replace the coal-fired Utah plant with a gas-fired plant. This would have emitted even more carbon pollution and possibly even extended the City's commitment until 2077!  
 
Pasadena 100 used a classic inside-outside strategy to encourage change.  First, members met with the Mayor, City Council members, and Water and Power executives to learn their views and build our case. During 2018 the City was required to revise its 20 year Integrated Resources Plan and, as part of that process, the City Manager appointed a Stakeholder Technical Advisory Group of residents to meet with Water and Power managers. Our members, John Odell and Cary Belling, were appointed to this Technical Group.  
 
Meanwhile, on the outside, Pasadena 100 connected with other environmental organizations to stimulate more citizens to speak up in support, making clear our Technical Reps were speaking for more than just themselves. Many groups lent their logos to two beautiful cards that explained what was needed (see photo). We also received a gift of public relations expertise.
 
Pasadena 100 advocated that the City commit to signing no new long-term fossil fuel contracts extending beyond 2035 and that they get as close as possible to 100% clean energy by then. Pasadena 100 also argued that, if the City is going to choose among alternative energy portfolios based on cost, they should account for the indirect costs that society pays by burning carbon fuels. These indirect costs? Worsening climate change. Caltech had already started counting this social cost of carbon in major investment decisions but the City had never done so! 
 
In addition to advocating at the governmental level, collaborating with allied environmental organizations also paid off. When Water and Power held public hearings, citizen turnout was impressive, in particular at the Hastings Ranch Library, where some 100 people packed the meeting room and no fewer than 50 lined up to speak. All but one of those speakers hammered the same point:  we must get off fossil-based energy faster in the face of climate change. Present was Margaret McAustin, elected City Council Member and chair of the Council committee that oversees Water and Power. She later remarked that, while participating in such reviews for over a decade, she had never seen such forceful public participation!  
 
Our patient, coordinated campaign demonstrated the effectiveness of collaboration and citizen lobbying. Most importantly, Pasadena decided to opt-out of a 50-year commitment to natural gas. Their new plan concluded that no other long-term commitments to fossil energy would be cost effective.  (Bad news:  LA is still going ahead with that gas plant even though other cities opted out. What’s up with that, Garcetti?)
 
Over the two decades of this new plan, Pasadena is also likely to import electricity on short-term contracts from elsewhere in California, some of which will be generated by gas. But the 2018 state law known as SB-100 requires the entire state to phase down gas combustion during this time.   
 
Pasadena Water and Power also agreed for the first time to add indicators for the social costs of carbon to some computer models they used to estimate the lowest cost portfolios. There was no evidence they would have taken this step if not for the persistent work of Pasadena 100. They warmly thanked our reps for helping make the plan better.
 
In 2018, the share of renewables in Pasadena's electricity portfolio was 38%, which was above the state minimum but not high enough. The coal plant will continue to be responsible for the bulk of our electric carbon emissions until 2027, when those emissions will fall sharply.
 
The moral of the story:  persistent advocacy and allied collaboration works.

----John Odell

Photo credit: George Patton

After service on Sunday, our community took home over sixty pounds of freshly picked, organically grown fruits and vegetables from the Throop Learning Garden which was established in 2010 as a project by Transition Pasadena. The bounty included:  Blue Hubbard squash, plums, Chinese bitter melon, golden purslane, purple tree collards, grapes, cucumbers, eggplant, amaranth leaves, yellow zucchini, and bay leaves. This is what can happen when a crew of dedicated volunteer gardeners - joined by the direction of experienced Head Gardener George Patton since 2017, the support of inspired Pastor Tera Klein and the appreciation of the entire Throop Unitarian Universalist Church community - give the earth the loving care and attention it deserves.
Love made real! 
 
------Thom Hawkins
Throop Learning Garden team member since 2016 
 
 

Photo credit: Pixabay

Carbon offsets have been compared to purchasing an indulgence (i.e., donating money to a church) to erase the stain of a sin.

We are all sinners in the carbon confessional, to the tune of about two metric tons of CO2 per person per month. The largest piece of greenhouse gas emissions U.S. citizens contribute to climate change is generated by from airplane travel. But many of our daily habits have a carbon footprint too:  driving, using cell phones or AC, cooking, eating meat, using plastics and having the Amazon delivery truck stop at your house.

Climate change is a cancer of our biosphere. Of course, anyone with cancer would first want to know how to eliminate it, not just how to medicate it. So not flying, not driving, and eating local plant-based foods are the first line of attack on the carbon cancer.

The palliative medicine for the climate-changing cancer embedded in our lifestyle is carbon offsets. We can buy solar panels for India or biogas stoves for Kenya to reduce the carbon there to offset the emissions we’ve produced at home.

Soothing the moral urge to compensate for the pleasures and conveniences of our lifestyles is easy to calculate and simple to purchase offsets for. Projects around the globe are certified for effective use of funds to offset carbon. Terrapass.com has a simple calculator. Terrapass estimates the cost of one month of carbon offset for one U.S. person to be $15. GoldStandard.org, whose umbrella org is World Wildlife Fund, is a clearinghouse for certifying carbon offset projects.

The questions arise: Are offsets the right thing to do? Or will they breed complacency in reducing our carbon footprint? Will the money we give make a difference? Will the recipient of our fees actually spend our dollars in addition to what they were already doing? The concept of “additionality” is one measure in the certification process.
The International Air Travel Association (IATA) says that Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) can reduce greenhouse gas emissions from planes by up to 80%. These fuels are currently used in less than 1% of flights. The transition to SAFs is at a snail's pace with a projection of only 2% by 2025. Thirty years is the projected timeline to achieve sustainable air travel. Interestingly, thirty years is about the lifespan of planes which airlines already own. Electric-powered planes are not expected until 2040 yet Tesla’s electric multi-axel semi trucks are already in production.

Good practice: Buy Certified Carbon Offsets to cover air travel.

Better practice: Buy offsets which are Gold Standard Certified to cover your personal carbon footprint of 2 metric tons of CO2 per month.
AND stick to striving for minimal carbon footprint in the choices that you make each day.

Best practice: Live more locally. Join Climate Scientists Who Don’t Fly. Don’t drive. Go vegan. Shun plastic. Ditch your cellphone. Hang clothes out to dry. Turn off the thermostat. Thank a tree. Plant a tree.
AND consider becoming net carbon negative by purchasing some offsets beyond your own carbon footprint.

-------Therese Brummel
 

I have 500 words to resolve the contradictions in my title. Here goes.
 
Any rational and scientific view of the assembled facts, including the sixty plus tipping points that have been tipped, the increasing release of methane, and the potential loss of our ability to grow food as temps rise and growing conditions change would suggest that human extinction is a real possibility.
 
I think that facing the feelings about such a possibility is important and healthy. Shoving the feelings away, ie denial, is unhealthy and leads to a false view of the situation. One example, that of having hope that renewable energy will replace the energy found in fossil fuels is unfounded. I think renewable energy is part of the future but it won't supply the same quality and quantity of Joules (units of energy) that oil does.
 
Having non-rational hope prevents you from experiencing your grief over a situation. That can lead to ineffective action. If you feel the pain then you can see past it and take actions that actually make a difference.
 
Once you have experienced your grief over our predicament, there's more on the other side of grief. I think it's possible to find some real hope. I feel hopeful now because I have and still do take action with others. I have helped to build a community of people who are taking action. I remain unattached about the results but it feels good nonetheless.
 
Some additional reasons why there's more beyond the conclusion of extinction. First, humans are really bad at predicting the future. No expert really knows how this will all turn out. Second, the idea that facts are slippery creatures. Any scientist will tell you that they modify their positions based on new experimental evidence and so with time what was "true" can change. There was a time when most people considered it a fact that the Earth was flat. With enough time facts can change.
 
Third, our culture is steeped in rationality. So much so that it might be impossible to take in this next idea. There are other ways of being that don't involve rationality and they are just as valid as rationality. For example, intuition, beauty, nature, currently unexplainable phenomena and miracles. Miracles to me are things we can't explain from our current perspective. These things and more make up our non-rational world.

Finally, consider that anger and other negative emotions have long term health consequences. Dealing with negative feelings is a step toward a healthy life. There don't seem to be any long term health consequences caused by carrying too much happiness.

----David Cutter

Photo Credit: Lorenzo Muschi-Unsplash

If you are rationally minded and a believer in the ability of scientific study to isolate facts and build an understanding around those facts, then you are likely very concerned about the future of humanity on this Earth.

No one wants to talk about the possibility of near term human extinction but in our Wisdom Circle we will. Our wisdom search is based on the premise that the current climate and pollution crises mean early extinction of most species, including humans, in about ten to twenty years, and that extinction is already well underway and too late to reverse. In these monthly small group conversations, we explore our emotional responses to this unfolding tragedy and examine spiritual and ethical issues as we prepare ourselves for what is certain to come very soon.

We are your hosts, Thom Hawkins and Charles Jacobsen, and our Wisdom Circle meets the first Sunday of every month from 12:45 to 2:30 in the Fireside Room of Throop UU Church, 300 S. Los Robles Ave., Pasadena. Our meetings are non religious and open to everyone. the public. We share heartfelt wisdom and look forward to the continuing enrichment of this conversation as we struggle together to cope with the tragic reality of diminishing life on our Earth.
 
If you don’t yet fully share the conviction of near term human extinction, you are stilll welcome to participate in our wisdom circle as long as you focus on how you might feel and act if you were to accept our premise of near term human extinction. If you have questions about the evidence supporting our premise, please go to the many resources available online and in print that we will mention. We are not here to discuss and debate the evidence, but feel free to share with the group relevant references from your own reading and observation.
 
It feels good to treat the earth respectfully, so keep doing what you can to mitigate the damage and to adapt. Action is the best antidote for despair, much better than false hope. Just don’t become attached to outcomes, because nothing can stop imminent extinction at this late stage. Thank you for having the courage and compassion to consider joining us.

In spite of envisioning pre-Tupperware family Christmases in the 50s which were easily Zero Waste, the norm today for disposable living made attaining a Zero Waste wedding challenging. We are grateful to have held our event at Throop Church Hall, the 10 year home of Transition Pasadena.  
 
We congratulate ourselves on avoiding single use plastic to a very high degree. No plastic bottles, no drinking glasses, no plastic plates or utensils thanks to Throop’s 100 China plates and ragtag mix of silverware. One difficult-to-avoid concession was clamshells for berries.
 
Here are the challenges we faced:
Using plates means needing dishwashers.
Hiring dishwashers is a lot more costly than buying disposable plates! I am grateful to three Transitioners who volunteered to wash dishes, Sylvia, Greg and Stephen. A truly wonderful gift!
With six people total running the kitchen, we underestimated the five hours it would take to serve dinner and clean up afterwards.
 
Next was finding a caterer who will not use plastic.
Tender Greens was our final choice. The 0.6-mile sourcing added to the plus column. Since their salads are delivered in plastic clamshells, we only ordered hot food from them. We tossed our own salads from bagged salad mixes. This was a fail on SUP but smaller enviro-impact and far less costly. Hot food was delivered in aluminum chafing dishes. We reused them the following day to chill and transport skewered fruit to the newlyweds’ dance party. These aluminum pans came in a sleeve of thin corrugated cardboard, emblazoned with red logo. Use as lasagne mulch in the garden is debatable. Recycle is a possibility for both the pans and sleeves.
 
The final test was drinks on a warm summer day.
We collected 100 second-hand wine glasses, a new resource for Green Circle’s Plates for the People. One wine glass was at each place setting to be used for wine, fruity canned sparkling water, or spa water from jugs and the champagne toast. No one went thirsty for lack of having three separate glasses. Beer drinkers seemed to get their beverage of choice down without a glass.
 
Linens were rented, costly but responsible. Appetizers, accompanied by David Cutter’s Piano a la Carte were finger foods, no plates needed.  Cookies, delivered by Karen’s Apron Strings Community Bakery in her reusable containers, were served in paper pastry bags.
 
A large Zero Waste event is a challenge, but attainable. It would have required more helpers to cook the food and make salads from scratch. But that’s how weddings and funerals were in days gone by. I fear my generation is the last to remember that. Do younger folks raised on convenience have a harder time envisioning another way of doing things? When I weigh the financial cost added to avoid convenient plastic it is far outweighed by the benefits of knitting community. And the feel-good for bride and groom and parent-hosts for reducing environmental impact? Priceless!
 
------Therese Brummel
 

I've noticed that I don't have to explain to people I meet what sustainability is about. It seems to be on everyone's mind and certainly that's true for Climate Change. I think it's a good time for a community brainstorm. This could be any community and any group of people large or small.
 
I've been thinking about this for years and my preferred way to do it would be something called Open Space. The following is a paraphrase taken from the website <www.openspaceworld.com>
 
Open Space (Technology) is a simple way to run productive meetings, for five to two thousand or more people. It's also a powerful approach to leadership in any kind of organization, for everyday practice and during turbulent change.
 
This is not electronic technology but simply a way to organize people in space and time. In the most common form of Open Space meeting, every issue of any importance, to any person           willing to take some responsibility for it, gets posted on the community bulletin board, sometimes called the Marketplace wall. As work on those issues progresses, notes and other products get posted as well.  Simple enough on the surface but with depth that just keeps on going.
 
After more than thirty years and in more than 140 countries, Open Space has been a daring and marvelous exploration of the vastness and the urgency of personal and organizational transformation. For others, it’s just an exceedingly effective, and efficient, meeting methodology.
 
What sets open space apart from anything else I've participated in is the complete hands off from the organizer(s) to the participants. Because the agenda is completely participant driven, the "real meat" of an issue quickly rises to the surface where it can be discussed and solved in a respectful and open manner. Rarely will management ever hand over that much authority to front line "staff".
 
An Open Space event begins with a provocative question or theme that participants have a stake in. For example, how can Pasadena residents create a more sustainable community in the face of resource depletion and environmental degradation? Here are a couple descriptions to give you a better picture of Open Space:

The Village Market Place.
After the organizer hands off the process, self selecting participants create groups to discuss aspects of the theme. Using the sustainable community example above, someone wants to lead a group around issues of transportation. That person would post the name of the group on the wall. Someone else might want to discuss the issue of conservation. As people come forward and post their group names on the wall, this becomes the marketplace.
 
Rule of Two Feet.
Once there are no more new groups then everyone in the room is told to self select a group that most appeals to them. Then groups move off to start their discussions. It's possible that a group member might realize they don't want to be in a particular group. That person must employ the Rule of Two Feet and leave the group. Nothing needs to be said. Just leave and return to the Marketplace to choose another group. 
 
If this kind of a meeting sounds appealing to you, please email me back at dcutter@aceweb.com
 
----David Cutter
 
 

To be part of a civilization assumes belonging. If we look at older human civilizations, ones that were actually sustainable, young people had to go through some rite of passage to become part of the adult world. Being an adult in those societies wasn't just assumed. Someone didn't have the right to be part of adult civilization, they had to earn it through a rite of passage.
 
As our modern world evolved, rites of passage have slowly been replaced by rights. The Bill of Rights, human rights etc. I'm not suggesting rights are bad or that we eliminate them, I'm just noticing something. Actually I got these ideas from Orland Bishop who works in Los Angeles with gang members.
 
Rites of passage require an individual to give up something. Something important to them. So important that it is part of their identity. So important that the loss of identity is risky. There is risk in a true rite of passage. Does that sound like the world we live in today?
 
For a moment just set aside all of the facts that we know to be causing our predicament and consider  that another way to see our predicament is as a rite of passage brought on by the phenomenon called Precession.
 
Precession is the slow rotation (change in direction) of Earth's axis in a circle. A complete rotation is a 26,000 year cycle and during this cycle the backdrop of stars in the celestial dome appear to move slowly over time. 
 
Using Astrological terms the Earth has been moving against a backdrop of stars called Pisces and is now moving past a different group of stars called Aquarius. It takes a roughly 2000 year period to move from one constellation to the next. 
 
A belief in Astrology isn't required here. Due to precession, the Earth is simply moving against a backdrop of stars. What might that mean with regard to gravitational effects on living systems? Could this rite of passage we are experiencing have something to do with precession?
 
Orland Bishop suggests further that the human species isn't alone in facing this rite of passage. The entire biosphere and all of planet Earth is going through this rite of passage together. 
 
Part of my feeling of hope is tied to belonging to a community. I mean other people that I meet face to face and work together with. I know the work we do is important despite it's seeming insignificance against larger forces. It still feels good to be doing something that makes a difference. I know it makes a difference because I can see it in other people's faces. 
 
I think a large part of feeling hopeful in these times is getting busy and working with others. It doesn't matter what you work on. Choose something that calls to you but do something to serve your community. You will feel better for it and if we are in a rite of passage, who is more likely to pass? Someone on the couch or someone in the trenches?

----David Cutter