A New York Times opinion piece titled “Is Algebra Necessary?” caught my eye the other day. My first job out of college was teaching algebra to teenagers. I can still factor a quadratic equation, and I actually find it kind of fun. However, many students, at the high school and college levels, fail the required course in algebra and drop out. The eloquent author of the piece – an emeritus professor of Mathematics – argues that quantitative reasoning is essential, but mastery of algebra is an unnecessarily narrow measure of quantitative skill, and our society is poorer for excluding students who are befuddled by algebra.

In other words: a too-rigid insistence on a particular analytical technique (algebra) is tripping up people who “get it” (have a sufficient general grasp of quantitative issues), and we are worse off as a result.

In a recent edition of Rolling Stone, Bill McKibben beautifully demonstrates the importance of not getting tripped up on details, but firmly understanding the big quantitative picture. In “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math” (which I highly recommend), McKibben avoids the trees and tells the lesson of the forest, in its blindingly obvious and powerful simplicity: We have to change dramatically, and quickly, to preserve the planet as we know it.

McKibben’s message stirs you deeply. It evokes an existential, even spiritual response. And it does so by appealing to our hearts and our guts. There’s enough math to convince our heads, but his message is not aimed at our heads. We know what’s going on in the world. We can feel it. McKibben knows that, and aims to connect with us where we feel things, not in the left side of our brains.

Which leads me to the question: does the environmental movement have the equivalent of an algebra requirement? Do we tacitly insist that everyone master the complex facts before they get involved? If so, should we? Does everyone need to be a left-brained, deep diver into the complexity of the debates, or is it sufficient that they feel strongly that it’s time to act, and are compelled to do so by their heart, their gut or their spirit?

This is somewhat uncomfortable terrain for us. Let’s acknowledge that. We have seen examples in the public realm of policy being based solely on faith, without regard to evidence from the real world. Sometimes this can be disastrous. And it is a rock-solid principle of our movement that policy must be based on sound science and evidence. All of that is entirely true and I would never veer from it.

But there are many people who could be our allies who are not, even though they know the same truth: we need to change in order to save the planet as we know it. And to avoid massive human suffering in the near future. And to protect species faced with extinction. And to deliver a more equitable world. And even to help promote a world better aligned with spiritual forces much larger than us.

Does our preoccupation with matters of the head prevent us from reaching those for whom matters of the heart and soul are more motivating? Is that our “algebra”?

My hunch is that as a movement we expect too much “head” and not enough “heart,” in general. We look for people who can “figure out” what to do next, and trust that if we can win people’s minds either their hearts will follow or we don’t even need their hearts.

What if we attracted to our movement people who appeal to the hearts of others, to begin with? Who see water pollution in the lower Mystic River in Boston, for example, not as an issue of discharge pipes and toxicity but as an issue of hunger and hope, exclusion and unity? What if we talked about climate change not as sea level rise and drought, but as a threat to our spiritual wellbeing?  Would we reach different audiences, and could they help us achieve our mission, having become part of us?

Recently I read two books, one new and one old, on the subject of environmentalism and spirituality, or at least environmentalism and much bigger, existential themes.

The first, Between God and Green, is by Katharine Wilkinson, who is a friend and former classmate of CLF staffer Ben Carmichael. The Boston Globe recently reviewed the book, saying:

Wilkinson tells a vitally important, even subversive, story at the heart of this carefully researched book. Over the past 30 years or more, even as the culture wars raged, an honest-to-God “evangelical Center” came to life in the political no-man’s land between the old-guard religious right and the secular liberal establishment. And as Wilkinson shows, one of the most significant expressions of that increasingly assertive center — as it seeks to broaden the “evangelical agenda” beyond abortion and sexuality to include global poverty, health, and social-justice issues — is a far-reaching environmental movement, based on the theology of “creation care,” and the effort by a new generation of moderate leaders to put climate change on the evangelical map.

I was struck by this more general observation by the author (p.8), about how messages grounded in spiritual terms can be more powerful than those aimed at the head, which we normally rely upon: “The guilt-based, fear-inducing messages that have often dominated can lead to paralysis rather than action, but religion is in the business of communicating a future worth fighting for. It can generate new meanings for climate change that drive engagement.”

The second book was Moby Dick, by Herman Melville. It is a true New England original – written in a snowy winter in the Berkshires (looking out at Mt. Greylock, in fact), also describing New Bedford and Nantucket in some detail, and expressing (it seems to me) the New England Transcendentalists’ view of the natural world and humans’ place in it. My colleague at CLF, Robin Just, like me, also just re-read this great fish tale and pronounced it “a strange and wonderful book.” I concur. It’s worth the time and investment, yielding sentences you stop and re-read several times, just for the joy of it. But I was arrested by this famous passage, from ch. 35, the Mast-Head, where Ishmael explores his spiritual connection to nature, high aloft in a crow’s nest on the mast, scanning the sea for whales:

. . . lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant, unconscious reveries is this absent-minded youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature; and every strange, half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him; every dimly-discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by continually flitting through it. In this enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs away to whence it came; becomes diffused through time and space . . . forming at last a part of every shore the round globe over.

There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gentle rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God. . . .

If we as an organization – and a movement – began appealing more to the heart, where would this take us? What would we do differently? What would it cost, and what returns can we expect?

These are tricky questions for us, but we have to pursue them. Otherwise, we will continue to fail to include large parts of our population in our movement, just like algebra may be excluding many who should be thriving in our society, and helping it thrive. The environmental movement needs a change of “heart.” We must not steer away from evidence-based, quantitative reasoning, but we must also reach out to people’s hearts. That’s where they feel their deep connection to nature and the planet.

At this unsettled and noisy time, it may be much easier to reach people’s hearts than their minds.

Warren (where I live) has become the first municipality in the state of Rhode Island to lease town-owned land to a farmer. The Warren Town Council unanimously agreed to lease two acres of land at the Community Farm and Gardens to Bleu Grijalva, founder and executive director of New Urban Farmers. The New Urban Farmers is a non-profit organization that works to preserve and restore the environment by creating sustainable agricultural systems by increasing healthy food access while nurturing minds in the cities of Pawtucket, Central Falls, and surrounding areas by eliminating barriers to healthy food and empowering low-income individuals, families, and at-risk-youth with education and collaboration. It believes that a community that grows together grows together.

Urban agriculture can play an important role in creating a more livable, carbon resilient, healthier, economically vibrant, and environmentally sustainable town — when smart policies are put in place — and this is just what CLF is doing now with the announcement of the Growing Green report. By addressing New England’s regional food system, CLF can begin to make New England more resilient to the impacts of climate change already underway. CLF and CLF Ventures are working together to shape and foster the development of a robust New England regional food system.

What exciting news for urban farmers! Mr. Grijalva will spend the next decade growing berries, setting up an orchard, making honey, and start growing mushrooms (a wooded, dark area is perfect). Part of the vision is to teach young children about local farming, sustainability, and organics.

This is real boon for urban agriculture in our state!

Last week I found myself on the beautiful shores of Lake Champlain in Burlington Vermont at the 36th Annual meeting of the New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers.

Normally, this meeting is a low key affair that doesn’t have a big impact on the place where it is being held. That was not the case this year. Protests outside the meeting drew attention to issues, like potential import of tar sands oil into New England, that were not on the formal meeting agenda.

An Op-Ed by CLF President John Kassel which ran in a number of regional newspapers before and after the meeting and can now be found on the CLF blog, as well as those protests and pointed inquiries by the press in the meeting forced drew focus towards important and contentious issues like tar sands oil imports and the Northern Pass project.

But the action inside the conference was real and important.  Some notable highlights:

• The Governors adopted a plan for “regional procurement” of renewable energy that creates an important framework for getting much needed clean renewable energy to get built across New England
• The Governors and Premiers came together to hail the progress that has been made to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across our shared region since 2001 and to lay out a framework for further action
• A plan was adopted for moving towards a cleaner transportation system that maintains and builds mobility while moving away from gasoline and other dirty fuels that produce a range of pollutants

The overall story here is of a cross-border region that is struggling to do the right thing for its economy and its environment.  The challenge we all face is ensuring that our states and provinces live up to the promises of their words, making the difficult transition away from dirty fossil fuels and providing leadership to both the United States and Canada to build a new clean energy economy.

Recently, Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation attempted to make recycling easier for Rhode Islanders by creating “single-stream recycling.” Now households do not have to separate paper from plastic – everything can go in the same bin and other items can also now be recycled, such as plastic cups, tissue paper and just about any plastic container 2 gallons or less in volume. Sounds simple and great, right? Sadly, it hasn’t caught on yet.

The state’s recycling rate is still only at 15.9 percent. And the state’s largest city, Providence, is at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to recycling at all. With the lowest rate of diverting materials from the Central Landfill (18.2%), Providence is bringing down the state’s overall recycling rate. To see how your city or town is doing visit this website.

Providence Mayor Angel Taveras has stepped up to the plate by launching the Neighborhood Recycling Challenge (running until September 7) to get more neighborhoods to recycle.  Five “teams” or neighborhoods will be competing for five new trees and a neighborhood barbeque if they improve their recycling rate by the largest margin. The goal is to get the recycling rate up to 25 percent.  It’s not only better for the environment; the city saves $250,000 in recycling costs.

For those living in Rhode Island: help your neighborhood, your city, and your environment. Get your recycle game on.

Champlin’s Marina may be CLF’s oldest active case. Originally filed in 2003, the case has been to the Supreme Court (more than once), Superior Court (more than once), and the Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC) (more than once).

The most recent hearing before CRMC was Tuesday evening, July 31, 2012. Here is how this came about.

In January 2011, the full CRMC voted unanimously to deny Champlin’s a permit to expand its marina in Block Island’s Great Salt Pond. Champlin’s appealed to the Superior Court, as it had a legal right to do. In the Superior Court, Champlin’s filed a brief raising a curious issue: Champlin’s claimed that it had suffered a violation of its equal protection rights because CRMC had granted a permit for Payne’s Dock to expand, but had denied Champlin’s application to expand.

In the Superior Court, CLF argued that, for two different reasons, Champlin’s should not be permitted to make this argument:

• As a strictly procedural matter, Champlin’s had not included this argument in its Complaint; and court rules usually prohibit arguing issues not presented in the Complaint.

• As a substantive matter Champlin’s had already presented its equal protection argument in court and had had the argument dismissed; raising the same losing argument again was frivolous and abusive.

You can see CLF’s Superior Court brief on this subject here.

The Superior Court Judge ruled that Champlin’s could at least try to present its equal-protection argument, but that Champlin’s had to do so first in the CRMC. So the Judge sent the case back to the CRMC. That is how we got to the CRMC on July 31.

The hearing was long and contentious. Champlin’s lawyer tried repeatedly to put improper matters into the record. Objections to Champlin’s improper actions were made by lawyers on our side, and those objections were sustained by the CRMC. Evidently deeply frustrated, Champlin’s lawyer lost his temper and became insulting toward members of the CRMC.

At the close of the hearing, it was clear that Champlin’s would not be successful in its efforts to have the CRMC rule that Champlin’s had suffered unequal treatment at the hands of the CRMC.  This is true for at least two different reasons:

• As a matter of fact and of law, Champlin’s did not suffer any equal protection violation.  While it is true that CRMC approved Payne’s permit to expand its marina and denied Champlin’s application, the two situations were entirely different.  Payne’s marina is at a different location than Champlin’s; Payne’s is a different size; Payne’s presents different environmental impacts and different navigational challenges than Champlin’s; and Payne’s expansion does not impinge on other mooring fields as Champlin’s did. That is, the CRMC treated the Payne’s application differently than it treated the Champlin’s application because it was different – not because of improper bias.

• As a practical matter, Champlin’s lawyer only alienated and offended CRMC members with his rudeness. Shouting at CRMC members and interrupting them when they speak is not conduct likely to persuade skeptics of your position.

The next step in the process is that the parties will file written briefs. Champlin’s will try to persuade the CRMC that it (Champlin’s) was a victim of bias. This will be difficult for Champlin’s to do, because there is not a shred or scintilla of evidence of bias in the record. Objectors will argue that there is no evidence of bias. Briefing will take until mid-autumn. After the CRMC opines on whether or not Champlin’s was a victim of bias, the case will return to Superior Court, probably early in 2013.

The story of renewable energy development in the United States has included many important moments in which the states have provided leadership – most notably through fostering the shaping and building of new markets for renewable energy markets through programs like Renewable Energy Standards (also known “Renewable Portfolio Standards”).  These efforts have been of great value to the states who put them in place and have complemented and reinforced the incentives and programs to build up renewable energy resources like wind and solar by the Federal Government.

We are at a critical moment in the history of renewable energy development.  The collapse of coherent federal renewable energy policy, due to congressional inaction, in the form of failed attempts to put in place a Renewable Energy Standard and renew the Production Tax Credit, has created a greater need for state action – especially when clean renewable energy is an essential puzzle piece in solving the fundamental climate crisis that we face.

An interesting new element in this story is the quest by the New England States, working through a variety of vehicles, to develop a new “regional procurement” strategy that will allow the states to minimize the cost and maximize the benefits of renewable energy development for the region. This idea, also being discussed by leading scholars, could be a way to move forward smart and effective energy and climate policy, producing great value for a very reasonable investment.

This is far from a theoretical question.  Last year, in July 2011, the New England Governors directed their staff and the New England States Committee on Electricity who work with that staff, to continue to develop and build a mechanism for regional procurement. On July 29-30, 2012 the Governors meet again in Burlington Vermont and will hear a report on how that work has gone.  Will they take the critical step of moving beyond study and consideration of this idea and take action?

Right whale skim feeding off Provincetown, MA. Photo: Brian Skerry

Shipping lanes in and around San Francisco Bay are being changed to protect the many whales that feed in its krill-rich waters. Blue whales, fin whales, and humpbacks will all benefit from the changes. This action took two years of collaboration, data-sharing, and negotiating among the shipping industry, government agencies, and environmental groups. This, in a nutshell, is the regional ocean planning process.

Why does this matter to a New England conservation group? Well, besides the fact that everybody loves a happy ending, New England has been a leader in this type of effort for many years now.

If there is one dramatic example of the need to coordinate our activities in New England’s ocean it is the tale of our beloved but extremely endangered North Atlantic right whales and the shipping traffic that was threatening their recovery.

Right whales love our productive Gulf of Maine waters – they find an abundance of their favorite krill and copepods that teem in our coastal areas. People are keeping a close eye on these urban whales, since there may be fewer than 500 of them left on the planet. This careful watching was why we knew that shipping traffic in and out of Boston Harbor was causing big problems for the right whales. In short – right whales are shallow feeders, making them highly vulnerable to fatal ship strikes. And each whale matters in such a small population.

Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary staff decided to take action to protect the right whales in a bold and unprecedented way. Using 25 years’ worth of whale sighting and state of the art acoustic research Stellwagen Bank officials discovered that the shipping lanes through the Sanctuary also contained the highest concentration of whales, resulting in too often fatal collisions. In a process that took three years and involved collaboration with the Port of Boston, researchers with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Cornell Bioacoustic Research Program, and a Texas-based energy company that relies on shipping in and out of the harbor – high quality data on the movements of whales in and around the Sanctuary was mapped and compared with shipping traffic in and out of Boston Harbor.

As a result, in 2007 the Sanctuary slightly altered the shipping lanes – reducing whale strikes by 81 percent.

This wouldn’t have happened without scientists, conservationists, local officials, federal agencies and private industry deciding to work together.

To ensure continuing whale protection there are buoys “listening” for right whales throughout the bay, and there’s even an app for ship captains so they can receive whale location updates on their cell phones – alerting them to slow down or avoid certain areas. A lot of people came together to create an innovative solution to this complicated problem by using the principles of regional ocean planning. Everyone who had a stake in the process had a seat at the table.

This type of coordination is the heart of regional ocean planning. It’s simply about making sure everyone has a say in what in happens in our busy waters, including those of us who value protecting wildlife and natural habitats. As we have more happening in the Gulf of Maine, more ships, more whales, more renewable energy development, we need to be careful to organize these activities in a way that also protects existing commercial and recreational uses.

The pioneering Massachusetts and Rhode Island state ocean use plans are serving as the building blocks of New England’s regional ocean plan for federal waters. CLF is at the vanguard of ocean planning, innovating in New England what has become a national policy initiative intended to improve stewardship of vulnerable marine wildlife and habitats with responsible ocean uses.

CLF is pushing the ISO-NE to fully and properly account for all of the valuable energy-efficiency programs that the six New England states are already operating.

Energy efficiency is the cleanest and cheapest way for New England to meet its energy needs. We can save money and create jobs while reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change. To learn more about what CLF is doing to promote energy efficiency, click here.

“ISO-NE” stands for Independent System Operator-New England; this is the organization of engineers and technical experts that runs New England’s electricity grid. To learn more about CLF’s work with ISO-NE, click here.

Together, the six New England states are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on energy efficiency programs. In 2011, the ISO created an “Energy Efficiency Forecast Working Group” to forecast how much energy efficiency was actually going to get bought for all that money. CLF has been participating in this ISO-NE Working Group since its inception.

The first report of this Working Group, published in April 2012, was very exciting, because it predicted that more than 100% of projected electricity load increases for New England over the next three years could and would be achieved  through energy efficiency, not from new generating plants. This is good news for the environment because it means lower levels of greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, CLF thought that there were some mistakes in the forecast, mainly from under-counting the energy efficiency expenditures of those states (Massachusetts and Rhode Island) that had made the most enthusiastic commitments to energy efficiency.

On July 11, 2012, CLF sent a letter to the ISO-NE’s Energy Efficiency Forecast Working Group, urging it not to repeat those same under-counting mistakes in its work on the 2013 energy efficiency forecast. You can see the full text of CLF’s letter, here.

Ultimately, energy efficiency is paid for by electricity customers. In order for ratepayers to get all they efficiency they are paying for, the ISO-NE needs to count all the money that is being spent.

If CLF’s recommendations are adopted by the Working Group, it will benefit ratepayers by reducing electricity bills; and it will benefit the environment by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It’s a classic win-win!

Urban agriculture holds great promise for Boston.

This post was coauthored by Melissa Hoffer & Jo Anne Shatkin.

We are excited to share with you the news that today CLF and CLF Ventures released a report that, for the first time, details the economic development potential for urban agriculture in Greater Boston, assesses its environmental and health co-benefits, and examines current market and policy barriers to expanded food production in Greater Boston. The report‘s findings confirm that urban agriculture can play an important role in creating a more livable, carbon resilient, healthier, economically vibrant, and environmentally sustainable city—if we put smart policies in place and encourage market development for Boston grown foods.

Download a free copy of the report here.

The City of Boston has taken important steps over the past two years to advance urban agriculture, and new businesses are taking root, including City Growers, a Mattapan-based farming business that is featured in this report. There is a palpable sense of excitement about the potential of this new urban vision for agriculture for communities; possibilities abound. But CLF and CLF Ventures believe it is more than possible— it is a necessity, and an urgent one at that as we face the challenges of climate change, an obesity epidemic, lack of availability of healthy foods in many communities, and a fragile economy.

The report found that converting as few as 50 acres of vacant or underutilized land around Boston into agricultural production would spur job creation, improve access to healthy, local, fresh food, and reduce environmental harms. Key findings of the report include:

• Land is available. 50 acres – an area the size of Boston Common – is a small portion of the vacant or underutilized land available in Boston.
• Urban farms would stimulate the economy by creating jobs. 50 acres of urban agriculture in Boston will likely generate at least 130 direct farming jobs and may generate over 200 jobs depending on actual business characteristics and revenue.
• Healthy, local and affordable food. 50 acres in agricultural production would provide enough fresh produce to feed over 3,600 people over a six-month retail season. If the produce is used to prepare healthy school lunches in Boston Public Schools, 50 acres could provide more than one serving of fresh produce for each lunch served to a student eligible for free or reduced school lunch over a six month period. If 800 acres of potentially available City-owned land were put into agricultural production, the food needs of approximately 10 percent of Boston’s total population could be fully satisfied during a six-month retail season.
• Significant environmental impacts. Urban agriculture in Boston will result in a net reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. 50 acres of properly managed soils would sequester about 114 tons of cabon dioxide (CO2) per year and may result in an additional CO2 reduction of up to 4,700 tons per year.
• Community adaptation. No less than 6,000 new temperature records were set during the recent March 2012 heat wave, and more than 40,000 have been set for the year-to-date. Meanwhile, the July 2011-June 2012 period was the warmest 12-month period of any 12-months on record for the contiguous U.S., with the first half of 2012 being the hottest ever recorded. The International Energy Agency’s recent projection of a 10.8 degree F temperature increase over pre-industrial levels by the end of this century underscores the fact that a more decentralized food system will be necessary to enable our communities to better adapt to changing climate conditions, including the impacts of more frequent severe weather. Urban agriculture is a part of this solution.

As Jo Anne said in the press release announcing Growing Green, it’s clear that even 50 acres of sustainable agriculture on available land would be an economic stimulus and environmental resource for Boston. While we focused on a 50 acre test scenario, these conclusions are scalable across New England. Imagine how vibrant New England would be like with a robust and sustainable regional food system.

In addition to the potential benefits, the report also considers the policy and market barriers to fully realizing the potential of urban agriculture, examining the ways in which promoting urban agriculture will require city and state involvement and key needs for such involvement. Such barriers include the need for policies that provide affordable access to land, one of the key market barriers for both new and experienced farmers; strategies to reduce the risks associated with the Commonwealth’s hazardous material cleanup law; improved access to high quality compost; and better financing options to overcoming prohibitive capital and operating costs, amongst other findings.

Our ongoing work seeks to link urban agriculture to the larger regional food system, and focuses on how to overcome some of the barriers we have identified.

Boston is ideally positioned to play a lead role in coordinating with the Massachusetts Food Policy Council, other New England states, and cities around the region to build a vision for a New England regional food system and make it happen. Boston is emerging as a national leader in urban agriculture innovation, and can be a voice for the benefits of urban agriculture and as one of the region’s largest consumers, help to build the market for regionally grown food.

Download a free copy of the report here.
Find an infographic detailing the report here: http://bit.ly/clfgrowinggreen
To read more about CLF’s Farm & Food Initiative, click here: http://www.clf.org/our-work/healthy-communities/food-and-farm-initiative/