I’ve been going to public lectures on climate change at Harvard, MIT, and other places since at least 1980.  Lately I’ve been thinking that I have yet to hear an ecologist talk about the subject.  I’ve seen climatologists, atmospheric chemists, atmospheric physicists, glaciologists, rocket scientists (thanks, S Fred Singer), oceanographers, and geologists address the subject.  But I can’t recall hearing an ecologist talk about climate change and ecological systems.  This becomes even more frustrating to me when I attend a lecture on geoengineering.  In the last couple of years, a joint Harvard and MIT group has been meeting to discuss this topic and the enormous intellectual effort devoted to rather simplistic solutions to complex systems problems is astonishing to me, especially since there seems to be such a great reluctance to engage on the systems issues.

Recently, some friends and colleagues have begun trying to remedy the situation, focusing on the global carbon cycle and, in particular, soil carbon.  Part of this is through the work of Allan Savory and his practice of Holistic Management in relation to livestock grazing patterns.  Another part is through the work of Tom Goreau protecting and, in some cases, restoring coral reefs.  Through their efforts, this year’s Northeast Organic Farming Association Summer Conference will have an extensive “Soil Carbon and Climate Track” introducing practicing farmers to ways in which their daily work can sequester carbon from the atmosphere for years, decades, and even centuries, becoming an important tool in diminishing climate change and, just possibly, reversing it.

A few weeks later, the NOFA Massachusetts chapter will host two day-long workshops with Dr. Christine Jones, an Australian soil biologist, on “Practical Options for Food Production Resilience in an Increasingly Variable Climate.”  One workshop will be in the Boston area and the other will be in Western Massachusetts.

Lastly and certainly not least, they are organizing a conference at Tufts University at the end of November on “Restoring Ecosystems to Reverse Global Warming.”  Not only will the conference bring together experts from all over the world to talk about ecosystem solutions to confront climate change and global warming but it is also designed to start a global conversation and network to begin practicing these systemic solutions, sharing what works and understanding what doesn’t and why.

This is a development I have long waited for and will participate in as much as I can.

Switzerland came to the Boston area a week or so ago.  There was a conversation with one of the political leaders of the country, Doris Leuthard, Councillor of the Swiss Federal Department of Environment, Transport, Energy, and Communications, at MIT on “Future Energy Supply and Security in Switzerland” and the next day a seminar on Watt d’Or, the Swiss award for the best energy projects in the country ( http://www.bfe.admin.ch/org/00… ), at Northeastern University to celebrate the opening of an exhibit that will stay up at Northeastern’s International Village until September.

I attended both events and learned quite a few exciting ideas from the Swiss and, inadvertently, something more about the limitations of MIT’s view of the energy future.

On Friday, May 2, 2014 FossilFreeMIT

( http://www.fossilfreemit.org ) declared a flood zone all around their campus at Hurricane Sandy strength plus projected 2050 sea level rise to publicize their divestment campaign.  It was also a good advertisement for the same weekend’s annual Sustainability Conference focusing on resilience and coastal cities.  Here’s how the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer looks under this climate change scenario.

MyCityGardens.com is up and running for the season.  We’re a local yard sharing website that connects gardeners, mentors, and people with access to space, to neighbors who want to roll up their sleeves and dig in.

If you have extra space in your yard you’d like help cultivating, need a gardening plot this summer or are willing to lend gardening advise to your neighbors, please sign up!

our site: mycitygardens.com

keep up to date on: https://www.facebook.com/MyCityGardens

about: The MCG team is comprised of small group of Boston Area (Cambridge, Somerville and Brookline) students and young professionals who are passionate about building sustainable communities and are developing the site in their spare time. Don’t hesitate to contact us at info@mycitygardens.com if you have any questions or want to get more involved.

HEET Home Energy Efficiency Team, a Cambridge, MA nonprofit which organizes public weatherization parties and barnraisings, is crowd funding a natural gas leak monitoring project in Cambridge and Somerville.  Boston University Professor Nathan Phillips, who drove the streets of Boston last year with a high-precision methane analyzer to find 3,356 natural gas leaks, will loan HEET his methane analyzer and other equipment to drive the roof Cambridge and Somerville roads mapping every leak. Moving at 15 MPH, covering both sides of every street should take about three weeks.   You can learn more about HEET’S Squeaky Leak project and help fund it, if so inclined, at http://www.heetma.com/what-we-…

Professor Phillips will analyze and map the results and HEET will do the driving, following up thusly:

Map of the leaks on the HEET website

Report the leaks to NSTAR to get all Grade 1 leaks fixed

Share the location and amount of leaks with the governments of Somerville and Cambridge so they can work with NSTAR to fix these leaks

Publicize the map to raise awareness about natural gas leaks in order to make sure effective actions are taken on the ground and in our legislature (https://malegislature.gov/Bills/BillHtml/122690?generalCourtId=11) as soon as possible to reduce the leaks not only in Massachusetts, but across the country

Lastly, to compare the amount and number of leaks between Cambridge and Somerville, to see whether Cambridge’s decade-long policy of fining NSTAR heavily for opening any roadway that the City is not already working on, while charging it nothing to repair pipes under the roads the City is about to work on succeeded.  Since NSTAR has not shared with the city any map or information about the current or past gas leaks, Cambridge does not know whether this policy worked or not.  HEET’s and Prof Phillips’ project would provide that data.