“I used to think the top global environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that with 30 years of good science we could address these problems. But I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy, and to deal with these we need a spiritual and cultural transformation, and we scientists don’t know how to do that.” (James Gustave Speth)
While this coming election makes a lot of choices really easy* there’s Proposition 30, on the California ballot: this is an environmental/climate related measure and simpy put, it would tax higher incomes (above $2 million annually) in order to help speed up the adoption of and transition to electric vehicles (via tax credits, charging infrastructure investments). A smaller amount of the collected tax would go towards wildfire prevention measures, and all that is bundled into some kind of “clean air” language. I guess that all sounds rather good?
This would probably be good “End Notes” material but I’m enjoying it too much to bury it in there: this video from KBPS, “Desert Seasons“, documents in a, for the observer familiar with this landscape, rather non-chronological order, the seasons in the desert.
The water crisis in California is real. Of course it is. In July, governor Newsom asked Californians to cut their domestic water usage by 15% — which sounds reasonable and doable. But then the first numbers came in, and usage only dropped by 1.8%.
It’s summertime in Southern California and August was, quite expected, a more or less eventless month, photographically. Aside from a short trip that is, but what it yields with regards to photography remains to be seen as I evaluate, cull and develop the images. While that happens, here’s a look back at what’s been going on this month, in my monthly end notes for August 2021.
“Men come and go, cities rise and fall, whole civilizations appear and disappear — the earth remains, slightly modified. Heartbreaking beauty where there are no hearts to break… I sometimes choose to think, no doubt perversely, that man is a dream, thought an illusion, and only rock is real. Rock and sun.” (Edward Abbey)