The anticipation of waking to the calls of purple martins in the morning may be the one thing that prevents me from seeking a way to park the earth in its orbital position sometime around mid-April when the nights aren't too cold and the days aren't too hot. Maybe it would work better if we could synchronize the tilt of the earth so that it is always mid-Spring here as we orbit the sun. Of course, that would be about as stupid as building data centers on land that has no water just because the land is cheap. Still, knowing that the furnace is going to be turned up to eleven in the next month is bearable knowing that at least I will awaken to those cheery calls. I am thankful for every morning that I get to hear them, ignoring the fact that I will need to hide away in a cave after midday to keep my brain from melting. It's not just the martins. There is the anticipation of the first night call of the elf owls, the first "Free-bird!" call of the Brown-crested Flycatcher, or the first song of the Blue Grosbeak. And then there is the first song in late June of the Yellow-billed Cuckoo, which sometimes can be seen prior to them starting to sing.
Unfortunately, even with the moderate rain in early winter and an early, but short, wildflower bloom, this spring has been fairly lackluster. While the morning chatter of the martins is there, only one to three are ever seen flying around, where past years there have been multiple pairs doing acrobatic shows over the saguaros, all chattering away. What was really disappointing was the utter lack of migrating warblers that typically pass through the valley. Other than a few Wilson's Warblers, it was mostly a “no show.” Last spring had a pretty good showing after a slow start. It is hard to know what was up this year. Maybe it was the insane heat wave that pounded us mid-March that made you wonder who left the furnace on. It was as hot at the Spring Equinox (102 ℉) as it was on the Summer Solstice this year.
Cactus blooms are pretty mediocre as well. Saguaros have a low count of flowers, while prickly pear barely even tried, choosing growing pads over blooms. The lack of fruit will be missed by both humans and wildlife.
The almost complete lack of insects could be a big factor in both the skipping of this area by migrators and bloomers. Why stick around or spend the energy pushing out flowers if there aren't insects to eat or pollinate? Who knows, but I have not seen a single giant mesquite bug and the fear that we might get an irruption of buck moth caterpillars (known locally as "Burn Worms") due to the numerous buck moths last fall, was not warranted. While the lack of insects is pleasant from a human perspective, it continues to be worrisome here in terms of ecosystem health. Watching a bedraggled Vermillion Flycatcher chase a single insect around and around an artificial water feature demonstrated how slim the pickings are.
One insect I didn't expect to see again since the wave of them passed through the valley a couple of summers ago was the tamarisk beetle. The same week that I boldly proclaimed at a wildlife connectivity meeting here in Cascabel that the tamarisk beetle came and went and hasn't been heard from since, I walked on the river on our property and found many of the tamarisk turning brown. I looked at the remaining green stems and found tamarisk beetle larvae all over them including some adults. They seem to be doing quite a number on our property, but there are still areas on the river that are quite lush with tamarisk.
Once again we hear the phrase "wetter than normal" for monsoon season. Last year that meant a hot dry summer that ended in a monsoon-like fall long after the "official" dates of monsoon (June 15 - Sept 15). Guess Mother Nature doesn't listen to the PR departments of our local news services. Despite an early monsoon-like system in the middle of June that teased our little area, the moisture seems to be ebbing away and the furnace turning up.
With the continued lack of natural water, most wildlife are found around manmade water sources. Thus, the backdrops to many of this season’s pictures are a bit less varied.
I am not a politically active person. Mostly because I don't buy into the dualistic, winner-take-all, “we have a mandate even though we only won by .0001% of the popular vote”, “the other side is so evil we must eliminate them” narrative that has become the mainstay of the American political system. Also, because both of the available parties are embedded in an economic system that refuses to acknowledge the realities of the world and primarily focus on gaining power by vilifying the other side and courting the wealthy.
At least, that is how it feels to me.
So I have stopped listening to talking heads that are immersed in the system, no matter how intelligent or empathetic they seem, and continue to look outside for genuinely creative and thoughtful discourse about where we need to go. Thus, I missed the emergence of the Abundance Movement in recent political discussions, even though I now recognize its influence within various political figures. At first I was interested, then I was disappointed, and eventually became angry. It took some time to process my anger at the audacity of these urbanists preaching abundance while I was also processing the number of threats to this rural valley due to unrealistic consumption from the outside. But I wanted to understand what I was reacting to, so that I could attempt to find a way out of that anger.
The basic principle behind the Abundance Movement (also known as supply-side progressivism) is that the costs of essential goods and services are artificially inflated due to regulation and that certain acts of deregulation can bring the costs of such things as housing, healthcare, and transportation down while other regulations can still promote market competition and innovation. One of its main tenets is to increase funding of technological solutions for such things as "sustainable energy" to help increase abundance and availability. Its main critique is of zoning and environmental regulations that create, what they would refer to as, an artificial scarcity that prevents the building of necessary infrastructure.
While I resonate with some of the critiques of the current system by the Abundance Movement and see how it has short term political advantages, I ultimately find its solutions to be too reductive and lacking when it comes to the real problems facing us. It definitely won't help our valley because it is still embedded within the mythology of an economic system that values gold, copper, and lithium over what really matters, like clean water, clean air, and relatively undisturbed, unfragmented lands that create the biotic systems that generate what is required for life on this planet. Without a land ethic to drive the movement's value system, consumption of land and resources will continue to be the default. The Abundance Movement will continue to degrade our ecosystems as long as it refuses to acknowledge these important values as primary, instead of merely relegating them as "externalities" to overcome. Only if a land ethic based in reality is adopted can projects be fully evaluated in terms of their true cost to the whole system instead of the reductive costs by which they are currently valued, which defers and hides the real costs.
Merely increasing availability through deregulation, artificially lowering costs and promoting more building, is a narrowly-focused, short-term set of solutions that opens the door for continued exploitation of the lands we desperately need to live. Each "infrastructure" project will reductively justify itself as "required" or "worth it". The tools are well honed to justify virtually every proposed project out there. When we take away the currently inadequate tools that protect the lands and water without providing better systemic tools based on real values, then we will continue the degradation of our home. We no longer have the luxury of basing decisions on a value system that always values consumption over conservation.
We live on a planet that is unique within our ability to observe or experience. No other planet that we have observed with our ever increasing abilities is anything like the Earth. The cost of mining our solar system or terraforming other planets is the sacrifice of our current ecology that supports all life that we are aware of.
The valley I live in is a microcosm of what is happening to all open spaces. The first massive transmission line is complete and a second is permitted and ready to start. Two natural gas pipelines are planned in the area, one slated to run from Texas to California through our valley, headed up by the same company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline. Mining exploration permits have been granted to a real world LexCorp backed by real world Lex Luthors (Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates) in search of the real world equivalents of Kryptonite (jadarite) as a source of Lithium. These permits have been granted on the grazing leases of ranchers in this area, including those of the Saguaro Juniper conservation ranch that we work with. Copper mining is going full steam ahead north of us, new exploration for copper is just south of us, several new solar farms are being constructed, and data centers are being proposed. With water levels in the few sections of the river that are perennial or ephemeral either dried up or shrunk, wildlife becomes even more dependent on artificial water sources provided in the area. All of this is in service of an all-consuming economy that does not value life and the basic components required for it.
What are these "biotic systems" that I am referring to? Most are probably not even recognized (intentionally?) and the ones we are becoming aware of were thoroughly disputed when first posited, but are now getting their due. One that has started to make its way into the mainstream is the Mycelium Network of underground communication. Another, less known one, is the Biotic Pump.
The term “biotic pump” infers a circulation system driven by biological processes. This concept shows forests as being the major factors in manipulating atmospheric processes to cycle rainfall taken up by trees throughout all continents and back to the atmosphere for further cycling. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biotic_pump)
A version of this can be witnessed during monsoon season in southeast Arizona. Watching cumulonimbus clouds forming over the sky islands of the Rincon, Santa Catalina, Galiuro, and Winchester mountains that surround this valley is a visual of this system in process. In this area, the forests are at the top of the mountains. The treeline is the line above which forests grow. Around noon, when all the pieces come together, the chaotic interaction of water vapor pushed in from the gulf coast, over super heated forests that are transpiring their own water vapor, accumulates over the top of these sky islands creating convection and its own weather system. These systems develop their own propulsion by sending cold air from higher elevations down to ground level (known as outflow), as well as being driven by prevailing winds that send these systems wandering off, dumping their accumulated water vapor as precipitation over lands that desperately need it. Locals complain that the current version of monsoon — lots of localized storms randomly wandering around dumping torrential and damaging rains as they go — is different from what monsoon used to be like: rain clouds developing over broader areas and dispersing lighter, more useful rain over generalized areas. One wonders how the expansion of heat islands like Tucson and Phoenix and other land disturbances like open pit mines and solar farms has affected the formation of these weather systems. What we do know is that without this biotic system, water vapor would not develop into rain in this area. In the larger system, the “biotic pump” theory posits that deforestation is equally responsible for the continued rise in global temperatures as fossil fuel use.
Right now, this valley is unusual in our bustling world because there are still brief moments, usually on a calm morning, when all you hear are the calls of birds or the buzzing of insects. Not a single mechanically or digitally generated sound. No planes, trains, or automobiles. No leaf blowers or lawn mowers. No Tiktok or Spotify. Just sound generated by real life. Non-mechanized human activity is also a welcome sound. All of this within walking distance of an active human community.
But those times are increasingly briefer and less frequent. They will completely disappear if the road through the valley is paved all the way to San Manual and an I-10 bypass is created through this valley, as was proposed decades ago and is likely still on somebody's docket.
MISTER PROSSER: I’m afraid you’re going to have to accept it! This bypass has got to be built and it is going to be built. Nothing you can say or do -
ARTHUR DENT: Why has it got to be built?
MISTER PROSSER: Wha - what do you mean, “why has it got to be built?” It is a bypass! You’ve got to build bypasses!
- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy" (Fit the First), Radio Drama
The Abundance Movement's reaction against artificial scarcity is understandable, but what is being lost is that working within limits, working within our actual means, actually can promote creativity. Without limits, we just keep doing the same thing over and over again and never build the resilience needed to handle the real crises that develop. Limits aren't inherently bad.
Land ethic, limits to types of growth, etc... all need to come out of community based values assessment and priorities as well as informed science. Systems like what have been developed in Taiwan (see: plurality.net) for such assessments need to be implemented. These systems need to scale to city, county, state, and national levels. We need to move away from blaming others for the problems we are a part of and find common ground that listens to what reality is trying to teach us. We need to quit allowing those seeking power to manipulate our feelings and biases. The only way to do that is through actual dialogue. Right now there is a push for national rules that would ban community pushback on infrastructure projects, including data centers. This kind of top down enforcement is specifically designed to reduce community engagement and promote complacency (which eventually leads to panic), yet community engagement is ultimately the key to values-based growth and resilience.
So, why do I resist going to the Regional Plan meetings put on by the county? Mostly, I am allergic to meetings and an introvert, but it is also the case that the system in which these meetings exist isn't really open to engagement. Instead of it being a ground up synthesis of ideas and values, it is: "here's the plan, comments welcome." All you are really doing is reacting to someone else's proposal instead of having had some input into the original proposal from the outset. There are different methods of encouraging community engagement that create bridging statements that develop common ground for decision making. Statements that people sign on to and that eventually iterate into proposals. The Taiwanese Sunflower Movement eventually developed tools for facilitating such dialogue as promoted by Audrey Tang (see: plurality.net) and have been applied to a number of policy issues going forward. While plurality.net is technologically based, other systems are also being created, such as the Transition Towns Movement - Transition Network international. If your goal is to turn NIMBYs into YIMBYs, then these are the types of strategies that need to be developed.
The current system is broken and I see nothing in the Abundance Movement that fixes it. It merely disguises the same old way of doing business and provides no new way forward. It will continue to promote the “grow grow grow” economy that is eating away at the very systems that allow it to grow. Seeking resilience through community programs, not by waving money in front of monopolistic corporations, is the only way forward that will build back the biotic systems that we all need to live and be healthy.
In the end, abundance is something that must be nurtured, not exploited. We must build resilience within the systems that create and support life. It requires a new (yet ancestral) mentality that prioritizes balance and reciprocity over consumption with the recognition that our lives depend upon it.
While processing and writing about all of this, I ran across an interview that said everything I was trying to say, but better, and with real world examples being put into action: "The Missing Half of Climate Change: Why Our Planet is at 50% Capacity and How to Get it Back". Brett KenCairn works with the City of Boulder, CO to rethink policy based on the existing research over the past 60 years of how climate works and how local changes can make real differences on how biotic systems function. He uses historical and present-day knowledge (like how we dealt with the “Dust Bowl”) to help design community-based initiatives that are having real effects and aren't dependent on big monopolistic projects that are primarily fueled through the lure of wealth accumulation. A practical guide to building real abundance and resilience through community projects on the land.
For a well-researched and balanced report on the reality of data centers in general, and specifically in Cochise County, see the recent edition of "The Ground Party Papers". While I may not agree with every assertion, I appreciated the attempt to be balanced in the approach.