The U.S. Environmental “protection” Agency strikes again

This past week, the U.S. Environmental “protection” Agency (EpA) proposed to rescind the Endangerment Finding—the legal underpinning for regulating greenhouse gases based on their effects on human health.¹ If successful, this would mean the EpA can no longer regulate climate emissions, including vehicles’ tailpipe emissions. Mostly the EpA used legal arguments to support this, but the agency also supported its decision with a new Department of Energy Climate Working Group report on U.S. climate impacts.

Now it’s one thing when a conservative think tank creates books providing teachers with false climate science. Or another think tank produces videos making it seem like more CO2 emissions is good for life. But when the Department of Energy (DOE) is co-opted to produce a report that questions 40+ years of climate science, hiring five climate skeptics to suggest the models ‘run hot,’ CO2 is good for plant growth, and extreme weather events aren’t becoming more frequent, we’re in a new phase of brain fever (perhaps connected to warming temperatures?).

I’m not going to go into the report, though if you want critiques of it, here’s a nice E&E article.² Instead I’m going to share with you a few paragraphs of writing from David Orr. Fortunately, just after I read about the report, I opened EarthEd: Rethinking Education on a Changing Plant, looking for a quotation for the Cycles of Gaia nature journal currently under development. I got pulled into reading David Orr’s powerful and still timely foreword, even eight years later.

David wrote it in the wake of the first election of Trump in 2016. He pointed out the importance of understanding systems, and how this lack of understanding is at the root of Americans’ inability to pursue paths in line with the real limits of Earth (and thus in their long-term interest). He then highlighted how systems thinking and ecological literacy is missing in idealogues’ education and imagined what would’ve happened if they had this type of education. So I leave you with his soothing words in the wake of more absurd, hair-pulling news from the self-destructing American empire.

David Orr on systems thinking

“Could better education have made a difference? If, as children or young adults, the ideologues and extremists assuming power in the United States and elsewhere had been exposed to educators and authors such as those writing in this book, might it have made a difference? If they had spent more time outdoors as children, might they have bonded to nature and acquired a deeper love of and respect for life? Had some of them read Aldo Leopold instead of Ayn Rand, would they know better how to separate truth from nonsense?

Might they even have become ecologically literate? Would a lasting acquaintance with soils, animals, water, forests, and plants, tutored by ecologically grounded teachers, have broadened and deepened their attachment to the Earth and to the other species with whom we share this planet? Might better science courses have sparked their curiosity about what is connected to what and why those connections matter?

If they had read more widely, say the writing of Loren Eiseley or Thomas Berry, might they have comprehended the larger narrative in which humankind is a bit player? Had they read Edward O. Wilson or Elizabeth Kolbert, might they have understood the peril of the “sixth extinction” and the importance of preserving large parts of the Earth as a safe haven for biological diversity? Had they read economist Herman Daly, would they have understood why thermodynamics is more fundamental than economic theories?

The fact is that an ecological education does matter, and it matters a great deal whether or not the leaders and followers of whatever, wherever, and whenever understand the fine print of human life on a planet with a biosphere as reflexively as they understand the laws of gravity. If humans are to persist on Earth and thrive, ecology must become the default setting for ethics, farming, forestry, land management, living, building, governance, politics, investment, and business. We need a revolution that must begin with a sea change in our thinking.”

Cycles of Gaia

Earth-centric education is multi-faceted, as I wrote eight years ago in EarthEd, and consists of systems thinking, ecoliteracy, deep learning, moral education, socio-emotional learning, and much much more. While our Cycles of Gaia ecological calendar is just a small part of this multi-threaded web, I do think it can play an important role in helping students think more deeply and systemically about our dependence on and connection with the ecosystems we live within and are part of. And hopefully help them become the ecologically literate leaders humanity will require to survive the coming polycrisis. So, if you haven’t signed up yet for our Cycles of Gaia launch, it’s not too late! Hope to see you August 13th at 7pm ET!

Endnotes

1) I cannot in good faith just write EPA when the agency is working aggressively to destroy the environment. While I’m tempted to call it the EDA or Environmental Destruction Agency, there are many employees there still working to make the U.S. cleaner and safer (even in now adverse conditions). So Environmental “protection” Agency (or EpA for short) seems to capture its shifting purpose well.

2) Please take the time to publicly comment to this outrageous EpA proposal. Americans need to be vocal and take action to show this denial of reality from the agency designed to protect Earth is not acceptable.