Who will save planet earth?

The Bible has stories of environmental catastrophe. It’s usually an expression of God’s judgment. There is a movement among evangelical Christians today connecting the two, suggesting that God intended us to be caretakers of creation. Our shirking of that responsibility—misusing creation for profit and domination—has consequences. It’s all connected, and the Bible reflects that.

 

Some Christian media promote a disconnect between these. They say that God, being in control of climate, exempts humans from responsibility for the planet’s climate catastrophes. They limit sin to an individual and personal matter, feeding the common assumption that climate change is none of our government’s responsibility, nor of ours.

 

Many of us don’t like those arguments. We prefer to simply reduce our fossil energy usage. It’s not just because the rest of the planet’s peoples point their fingers at the US for being the biggest fossil hydrocarbon burner per capita. It’s rather because the changes we could make are obvious. We have easy access to technology to retool our energy use to renewables. The benefit to our economy, now bent on fossil hydrocarbon burning, in the long run would easily outstrip the costs of reconfiguring. Our prestige worldwide would gain: we would start living up to environmental principles we espouse. Our current military presence around the globe could be replaced with technical assistance to mitigate climate disasters, saving lives and American tax dollars. But there’s a real downside: Such a change in mentality requires major cerebral energy to reconsider evidence and envision our path to change, regardless of its clarity and ease. That’s our difficulty.

 

A small evangelical Spanish church in New York City is an inspiration for the mind changing just beginning to happen even in Montana. The United Revival Mennonite Church there is co-owner of the first US apartment complex built to strict international “passive house” environmental standards (http://passiv.de/en/). The $8.5 million building with 24 units is designed to cut energy use by 90%. According to a recent New York Times article, Europe had 25,000 of these certified structures built by 2010. Today, there are only 13 similar energy efficient buildings in the US. Occupants are finding surprising economic benefits living in a building designed to reduce energy consumption by 90% (as compared to conventionally constructed buildings). 

 

We at Greenwood Farm have a potential fourteenth, but need research to back our innovations. Like the “passive house” international standards, what we spend in extra insulation and solar energy design is offset by our miniscule heating/cooling installations. Two of our structures have no backup fossil energy source. The most recent, a 2600 square foot home, has a fossil energy backup: an ordinary cheap 20-amp 30 gal hot water heater plumbed in-line with the pex floor heat loops. These loops are normally heated by a solar hot water panel impervious to frost damage, and on cold cloudy days by a wood stove harnessing combustion expansion to accelerate draft to a forge temperature. This forces vent gases through thirty feet of horizontal steel chimney, down in the floor. It’s all assembled with salvaged steel. Our first structure with this design just completed its fourth winter season without backup heat, and with constant family occupancy. It consumes about 20% of the wood consumed by efficient wood stoves.

 

Our systems are designed for ease of operation, with occupants highly engaged in monitoring and adjusting for comfort. This eliminates many conventional high-tech controls and sensors. We take maximum advantage of the sun’s heat, the thermal mass of our concrete walls, the earth beneath our floors, and our super insulation. We have automatic insulated shades.  These protect against radiant heat loss when closed at night in winter and open for solar gain on sunny winter days. Burning Russian Olive firewood keeps our fuel use in the planet’s carbon life cycle (unlike the megatons of carbon flowing by us on the Burlington Northern conduit, destined to rise into the sky above). Systems like ours can be easily adapted to commercial use.

 

Anyone is welcome to come review our systems. We learned from many others and little of what we do is our own innovation. We especially appreciate Paul Wheaton and associates at permies.com, based in Missoula. Our interest is in helping good ideas spread.  These are natural approaches connected with God’s way of healing our planet.  They are one way of balancing the ongoing massive human excavation and burning of hydrocarbons God placed deep under the bedrock of our planet. Does He really want humans to extract and burn in a few centuries most of what he placed there ages ago? 

 

(Following are comments not included in the Big Horn County News edition of the column):

Our rocket mass heater technology incorporates very high temperatures in a  small firebox with oxygen loading from the forge-like rocket effect. This effectively burns hydrocarbon particulates and harmful gases (carbon monoxide, H2S, etc) so the effluent from the stack is cooled water vapor and the other gases normally present in healthy air to breathe. See some of these links, or come stand on our roof (next winter, please) to breathe the air from one of our rocket mass heater vents.

 

http://www.richsoil.com/rocket-stove-mass-heater.jsp

 

https://www.google.com/search?q=rocket+mass+heater+design&es_sm=91&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=FqB-U4ecDsWoyAT334DIDw&ved=0CCoQsAQ&biw=1320&bih=712&dpr=0.9

 

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-build-a-Rocket-Mass-Heater/

 

Biblically based environmental organizations, Christian:

 

http://www.creationcare.org/

 

http://ecostewardsprogram.wordpress.com/

 

https://www.plantwithpurpose.org/about-us/

 

 

Resources for sustainable technology in case planet Earth lasts a while yet:

 

http://www.permies.com/

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4usXIAoy9us

 

http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics/2014/05/20/climate-activist-bill-mckibben-get-arrested-wearing-a-suit-for-the-earth/

 

Just use a few search words and start reading, then visit rural communities nearer the northpole, along seacoasts, near mountains, glaciers, forests, anywhere on the planet, and ask residents.

 

 

--
David Graber

Hardin, MT  59034

graberdb!@gmail.com

Tipi pole politics

Tipi pole politics

Since coming to Montana Indian country with my family in ’73, there’s one lesson I learned slowly: We humans are all connected. That means that if we are to stand strong, like poles of a tipi planted firmly staked into the earth, we must trust each other.  Canvas, ropes, stakes and poles operate with nothing hidden from the sky or earth, with all details of the structure united for protection of something precious. Inside that small round perimeter, children are born and learn about their own links to earth, sky and other living things. A tipi provides safety from the threats of weather and predators. But it remains transparent to all that it exists for the good of humanity.

We planted a tipi at Greenwood Farm the spring of 08 when we first moved here. We erected the poles and laid them all into position, then lashed the chief pole into position and wrapped the canvas around the cone of poles. We attached cords to pebbles lashed into the canvas edge. These we connected firmly to stakes driven so powerfully into the spring-droughty hard clay that some of them splintered a bit. Our grandchildren enjoyed sleeping in our tipi that summer. In the fall we neglected to take it down. Guests used it again the next summer. And then it went through a second winter.

A tipi is an amazing round structure, able to withstand the force of wind better than any similarly strong square (or cube) structure. But I ignored sound advice from our adopted Indian relatives about how long term tipi care. Two years of freezing and thawing deviously loosened the stake-hold some poles had with the earth. The first big windstorm of the third spring jerked loose some stakes. The canvas waved in the wind and shook the structure, lifting some of the poles.

Soon the loosened skirts of canvas, waving gleefully in the gale, tore the pebble connections. At that point, the system’s foundation was broken, in spite of the lashing ropes at the top holding the poles tightly together. The whole cone suddenly tipped in a gust, and flew loose from its moorings.  It crashed onto my car, breaking the windshield and smashing the hood. There I found it, poles still connected by the unyielding lashing, much of the canvas still in place, but flopping uselessly in the diminishing storm.

Here in Big Horn County we too often see our social support systems held together at the top, but tipped over, trashed and useless for the purpose intended. Real connections to the ground of human need are damaged. This is not just Big Horn county, it's all over the world.  Dysfunction, secrecy, and even in some cases threats of violence displace the original intent and design of political systems.  It's what makes politics a dirty word for many of us. Denials of uncomfortable truth are dictated by those firmly holding the tipped poles together. Their reason for being—the good of humankind—is often lost in excessive profits and a race to control tax dollars. Most of us know pain at the family level in America because of one or another of our dysfunctional and deceptive top-down politics.

Dangerous cynicism takes hold. We begin assuming humans are incapable of honest dedication to the common good espoused in our creeds, and will only do right with motivation by fear. For that reason, we have developed a huge legal system of justice based on fear of punishment that is dedicated to complicated conflict of interest detection.  We assume that other people cannot make decisions based on altruism and a true desire to help support each other. Assuming the worst, we lose connection to the best.

I believe humans can do what tipi poles are designed to do.  We can stand strong and connected, embracing those things that hold us together as people.  We can protect those we love and still touch earth and sky.  When will we loosen our grip on divisive rhetoric, and re-stake ourselves to the ground of common good, cloaked in a fabric of transparency? Let’s invest again in our workplaces, schools, churches, and volunteer organizations in working together and assuming the best intentions of each other.  Neighbors held together at the ground-level will survive the strongest winds.

--
David Graber
Hardin, MT 59034
graberdb@gmail.com