Eco-act 21:09: acting for the neighborhood and for 2050

Last fall, we reflected on what poet Mary Oliver called the season’s exquisite, necessary diminishing.

We also wondered “… what if everyone in the Union community who gardens, or who could garden, decided to plant extra tomatoes, or lettuce, or spinach, or onions, peppers, melons, squash, potatoes, …. Could we grow enough food to make a difference for someone else?”

Now we are thankful for the continuation of the annual cadence: Easter rebirth leads to Pentecost’s message of growth. Spring promises summer. And Oliver observes, “in spring there’s hope … in summer there is everywhere the luminous sprawl of gifts, the hospitality of the Lord….”

We’ve also got an answer to our fall question, as the photo left illustrates. Last Thursday Union gardeners delivered seven bags of greens, along with turnips, snap peas and chard; the produce was delivered to, and appreciatively accepted by, Compass House.

Let’s keep this going! For everyone interested in joining the Union Gardens project, mark Thursdays on your calendars. That’s when you can bring your produce to the McColloughs’ house in North Seattle, or the Downeys’ in West Seattle, or Union before 1:00 PM. The Union team will take it from there.

Now, let’s step back for a moment and glance at the bigger picture: fighting climate change on a global scale. This month, the International Energy Agency (IEA) released a special report entitled Net Zero by 2050. Executive director Fatih Birol describes 2021 as “a critical year at the start of a critical decade,” and the report notes that the current pace of carbon/greenhouse gas emissions reduction will miss the 2050 deadline for “net-zero.” But rather than dwell on “gloom and doom,” the report sets out a detailed set of milestones—400!—whose achievement will mark the path the world needs to follow to reach its net-zero goal—with global equity(1)—by mid-century. Some examples:

• By 2021: no new oil or gas fields, or unabated coal plants(2), receive governmental approval

• By 2025: no more sales of fossil fuel-powered boilers

• By 2030: universal access to energy; all new buildings will be zero-carbon-ready(3); 60% of global new car sales will be electric vehicles; most of the required new clean technologies for heavy industry will be demonstrated at scale; solar and wind generation additions will exceed 1,000 gigawatts annually; unabated coal plants will be phased out in advanced economies

• By 2035: 50% of new heavy truck sales will be electric

• By 2040: 50% of aviation fuel consumed will be low-emission

• By 2045: 50% of global heating demand will be met with heat pumps

• By 2050: nearly 70% global electricity will be generated by solar and wind

Is creating a list of milestones the same as meeting those milestones? Of course not. Much of the success in reaching net-zero by 2050 will be driven by technologies not yet developed or proven at scale today, for one thing. And, as the IEA report notes, innovation will require governments to put “R&D, demonstration and deployment at the core of energy and climate policy.” More daunting still, a high degree of international consensus and collaboration will be needed. Hmmm…. And yet, it’s possible to find hope in this special report, for at least two reasons. First, this is not an alarmist “the sky is falling! Quick, we’ve got to do something!” document. Instead, the report presents tangible measures—things we can watch for and work for. And secondly, we as individuals are not relegated to the sideline; we have a role to play. The writers are clear: “A transition of the scale and speed described by the net-zero pathway cannot be achieved without sustained support and participation from citizens…. We estimate that around 55% of the cumulative emissions reductions in the pathway are linked to consumer choices….” So how might we contribute?

• Through our consumer choices: making our next vehicle electric, installing energy-efficiency upgrades and heat pumps in our homes, choosing to walk, bike or take public transport, and using the car wisely when it’s necessary, ….

• Through our voting/political choices: supporting candidates who back clean energy, zero-carbon R&D, job retraining for workers displaced by fossil fuel phase-out, expansion of clean-electricity grids, solar and wind farms, ….

• Through our investment choices: investing in companies/projects working to develop and scale technologies needed to achieve net-zero by 2050.

The path is indeed narrow, as the IEA press release notes, but we do have a path, and ways that we as individuals can help stay on it. That’s encouraging. It’s also encouraging that we have a way—Union Gardens—to help at the neighborhood level. We really can, at both the local and global levels, act with purpose and hope. Reasons to be thankful!

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(1) Per the IEA Report: “Providing electricity to around 785 million people that have no access and clean cooking solutions to 2.6 billion people that lack those options is an integral part of our pathway.”

(2) “Unabated coal-powered plants:” operating with little or no carbon capture/storage

(3) “Zero-carbon-ready:” capable of producing carbon-free renewable energy onsite, or procuring carbon offset

Eco-act 21-02: Abundantly Overflowing

As we heard last week, Eco-Faith is growing in an exciting direction in this next year. And we want you along for the ride! Again, three focuses you can expect from us this year are: (1) occasional ideas of personal action that you can take to move toward climate healing; (2) climate-focused legislative initiatives that Union could actively support/engage in; and (3) Union Gardens, a socially distanced community garden that aims to grow produce to share with others in our wider community.

Today, we’ll be focusing on the possibility and impact of #3, Union Gardens. With the pandemic and all of the physical distancing that has come with it, our community has had to pivot to continue feeding our underserved and at-risk neighbors. We’ve rolled ~300 burritos almost every single Saturday (which get distributed as a hot, nutritious, personally wrapped meal to up to 7 different organizations per week). We’ve channeled tons of produce, canned and pantry goods, Farestart meals, and other items to LUV, Compass House Dexter, and other places. Our community has also cooked ~60 meals per week for Compass House residents and 40 meals for ICS clients weekly. And yet, with the pandemic continuing to increase income loss, poverty, hunger, and the housing crisis, — with a disproportionate impact on BIPOC folks compared to white folks — our community is even more in need of fresh produce and accessible food.

Union Gardens

Growing for our community

This spring and summer, if each of us took some time to pray, prepare, and tend to some dirt (in the backyard, on the porch, on the windowsill, in 415’s garden boxes), imagine what we might be able to create together! We could include more nutrients and greens in our meals and more sweet and abundant fruit for families and individuals in our city. We could save on some production costs while also growing local and offsetting emissions! And, when we are able to deliver fresh produce and burritos with ingredients from our gardens, our tangible care in the form of food says, “We see you and we care” AND “We’ve been thinking of you since the winter…with every weeding, watering, and harvest”.

As you prepare your own gardens now, looking toward spring and summer, would you consider planting a little extra for Union’s food ministry?

Right now, we are working on developing resources for when and what to plant, as well as how much we need. We will have more specifics soon, but we know our ministries currently use/need: red bell peppers, onions, greens of all kinds, garlic, potatoes, tomatoes, squash, carrots, and celery.

Again, we’ll have more on quantities and planting/growing tips soon (and we welcome your help and input as you’re interested)! We envision this as a type of victory garden experiment, and as a way to do something together while apart. We look forward to planting and growing with you this year — stay tuned for more!

Eco-act 21-01: a time to plant

Today we’re excited to begin our second season of eco-faith posts. Thanks for joining us! We’ll get started by planting seeds for three projects we hope to “cultivate” this season. Then we’ll talk a bit more about planting actual seeds to produce tangible crops that we can begin to harvest in the not-too-distant future. First, the projects.

1. Individual actions: Eco-Faith’s first season focused primarily on steps each of us can take on our own to care for the planet: diligent recycling, for example, or responsible disposal of electronic devices, or intentional repair/repurposing/gifting of items we no longer use, or regrowing scallions on windowsills—or even creating worm bins (!) to enhance soil quality. Ideas like these for earth-friendly individual actions will always crop up. So, for 2021 project #1, we will from time to time identify or revisit an individual action for your consideration. For example, last year we introduced Ridwell, a disposal service that handles non-recyclable food packaging and certain other plastics; batteries; clothes/fabric, shoes—and a “rotating” category for things such as strings of Christmas lights. Ten dollars/month provides a discreet outdoor collection bin and regular pick-up. We have now joined those of you who use this service to step up their recycling game conveniently and cost-effectively.

2. Climate change community actions: Even in the darkness overshadowing this post-election period, seeds of hope are being sown with respect to our physical world: the U.S. return to the Paris Climate Accord … General Motors’ decision to move away from fossil fuel-powered vehicles … the U.S.-hosted Earth Day Climate Summit … cancellation of the Keystone Pipeline Project …. In fact, all kinds of climate-friendly actions are being undertaken nationally and at the Washington state and King County levels as well. The future harvests that these actions promise are truly encouraging, but many workers will be needed to bring them in. So, our second project for this season will be looking more closely at various legislative initiatives to try to unearth specific opportunities for some or all of the Union community to actively support. Stay tuned!

3. Union Gardens: With the arrival of February, the gardening season quietly (and damply) begins. Time to clean up the garden beds, loosen and amend the soil, and think about what to grow this year. For serious gardeners, it’s also time to think about indoor starts—and actually to sow peas and spinach outdoors. In fact, before too many more weeks pass, it will be time to transfer starts or directly seed:

• Arugula

• Cabbage

• Cauliflower

• Celery

• Collards

• Kale

• Leeks

• Lettuce

• Onions

• Peas

• Potatoes

• Radishes

• Scallions

• Spinach

Eco-faith 2021 Directions

Individual Acts, Communal Acts, Union Gardens

In a post last October, we wondered …

“…next spring, what if everyone in the Union community who gardens, or who could garden, decided to plant extra tomatoes, or lettuce, or spinach, or onions, peppers, melons, squash, potatoes, …. Could we grow enough food to make a difference for someone else?”

Which leads to this question about a third project: Can Union members plant and manage a “socially-distanced community garden?” The idea would be to plant and grow enough veggies in the back yard, on the deck, in the pea patch, or wherever, for the enjoyment of the gardeners—AND someone else … some Lake Union Village residents, for example, or Union’s burrito-rolling team, ICS sandwich makers, Compass House residents, or ….

So, these are the three project “seeds” we want to plant with respect to Eco-Faith season two: (1) occasionally sharing ideas that Union members can implement on their own to benefit our physical world; (2) climate-focused legislative initiatives that Union could actively support/engage in; and (3) Union Gardens, a socially distanced community garden that aims to grow vegetables to share with others in our wider community.

As we get rolling in the coming weeks, we’ll be on the lookout for purposeful individual actions to share. We’ll be browsing legislative programs for community action opportunities. And we’ll be digging into the possibility of gardening for others as well as ourselves.

We would love to hear what you think about these ideas!

Eco-Act 024: “To every thing there is a season ….” (Ecclesiastes 3:1)

Planting and tending a garden, and feasting on the harvest, are always satisfying activities, whether the garden is our own yard/patio/windowsill or the gardens that stock farmers’ markets and grocery store bulk food aisles. But this year gardening has offered something more profound: hope—the calming reassurance that at some deep level, the world still works: plant—nurture—say thanks—enjoy.

Garden

+ hope

But now this wonderful season comes to what Mary Oliver, near the end of “Six Recognitions of the Lord,” called the exquisite, necessary diminishing. What might we do now, to keep hope alive? Six thoughts are humbly offered.

1. Gardening is diminished, not done. A variety of gardening books, Food Grown Right, In Your Back Yard, for example, list ways to garden into late fall/winter. Garlic will over-winter and can still be planted outdoors for spring/early summer harvesting. Other hardy plants still have a chance outside too—chard and kale, for example, particularly if you can find starts. (But hurry….) Now is also the time for a last weeding/clearing-out and amending the soil. And consider a bit of indoor winter gardening—herbs in pots, or recycled scallions.

2. Buy vegetables, beans and grains that don’t come in packages. In other words, choose foods available in supermarket organic and bulk-food aisles or, if you’re comfortable shopping there, at farmers’ markets such as Pike Place Market. Think of this as your act of solidarity with other gardeners whose crops travel a shorter distance to your table—and, ideally, use less plastic.

3. Enjoy another kind of “garden.” Make it a point to regularly walk in nature. On your walks, choose specific trees, or hedges, or garden beds, and notice their cadence as they, and we, progress into and then out of winter. Or visit a formal garden such as the Seattle Japanese Garden to enjoy gardening on an entirely different scale.

4. Reflect. If we let them, gardening and food shopping can link us in a tiny way to climate change and global food security. According to Food Forward, “Currently, we produce enough food for the global population, but not everyone has equal access to food, due to income inequality, geopolitical conflicts, and other factors. In fact, we produce (and waste) so much food that if we prevented just 25% of global food waste, which totals at 1.3 billion tons annually, we could feed all 870 million people suffering from chronic undernourishment.” How can we embody this reality in our individual actions?

5. Think, then act.

• We can start with our own behavior: we can waste less food, which includes buying blemished produce along with the perfect specimens and buying only the quantities we need.

• We can include beneficial foods such as oatmeal, shade-grown coffee and seaweed, in meal plans. We’ve talked before about using our purchasing power to encourage farmers and food companies to behave in more eco-friendly ways. Farmers could plant oats or barley, for example, between rows of corn and soybeans—if we incent them to do so. Who would have thought that eating more oatmeal could be an act of eco-care?! According to this same article, “green eating,” which includes eating less meat, would bring affluent nations into closer alignment with their own dietary guidelines and “greenhouse gases from food production would fall by 13 to 25 percent.”

• We can consider garden modifications that take climate change into account. These might include introducing native plants/controlling invasive species; growing plants that support pollinators and birds; retiring gas-powered yard tools; reducing water consumption with mulch, rain barrels, drip irrigation, spot watering and limiting watering to early morning/evening; composting waste; planting trees to absorb CO2; reducing hardscapes; and creating a rain garden.

6. Dream. Recently we started to wonder … next spring, what if everyone in the Union community who gardens, or who could garden, decided to plant extra tomatoes, or lettuce, or spinach, or onions, peppers, melons, squash, potatoes, …. Could we grow enough food to make a difference for someone else? Would you participate in such a project? What other gardening dreams might we turn into reality as purposeful, hopeful acts of caring for the world and each other? We also invite you to attend our first Eco-Faith Virtual Discussion on 10/29 @ 7 pm, more info here.

Eco-Act 006: Let Nothing Be Wasted

Again we encourage you to center, learn from, and support Black environmentalists. Here are a few more to add to our list from last week’s post:

@marandas_world [Low-Waste, Sustainability Parent]
@greengirlmagic [Climate/ Environmental Justice Lawyer]
@rasheena.fountain [Environmental Educator / Writer]
@climatediva [Climate Advocate / Writer]
@climateincolour [Climate Conversation Bridge]

reduce food waste

(this outranks electric vehicles & solar farms!!)

News about climate change and our environment seems overwhelmingly negative these days, doesn't it? It leaves us feeling anxious, guilty, angry, resigned … or thinking in panic "we've got to DO SOMETHING!" But what? Well, here's a positive step to consider.

According to Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming, the #3 most powerful environmental action we can take is to REDUCE FOOD WASTE. Think about it: shrinking food waste outranks electric vehicles and solar farms in potential environmental benefit. And each of us can act on this TODAY.

The USDA estimates that 1/3 of available food is wasted each year in our country. And greenhouse gases are released in producing, transporting, storing, and disposing of this food in landfills.

Clearly, what we produce must be better aligned with what we consume. But this adjustment will take time. Positive steps we can take RIGHT NOW are available. We can align our family shopping more closely to our actual eating patterns, for example. Here’s a list of 20 steps that start there and then go on. You can also send some of your food scraps to a worm bin to create nice compost for your garden.

We can also make and donate meals to put our unneeded food to excellent use. Union offers several ways to do this.

The bottom line is that we CAN DO SOMETHING. And in so doing, maybe we can relax a bit, knowing that we’re following the guidance of Jesus after he had fed 5000: “Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted.” (John 6:12)

Eco-Act 005: Center Black EJ activists

center Black EJ* activists

Black Lives Matter. *Environmental Justice

This week as we continue to lament, reflect, and act on police brutality and white supremacy in our communities and country, we want to amplify and share Black voices in the environmental justice field. We invite you to read “A Little Patch of Something” by Imani Perry (written 6/3/20), where she talks about the long history of Black planting and tending alongside racialized atrocity and grief. Closer to home, you can also read more about Seattle’s Black womxn farmers and support some of their work.

Here are other people to learn from and support in the Black environmental justice community…

In Seattle:

• Black Farmers Collective: Seattle-based YES Farm!! BFC is a group of urban food system activists dedicated to providing opportunities to improve the health of [Black] communities through all aspects of the food system. Donate!!

• FEEST: is an organization led by youth of color in South Seattle and South King County working to improve health in our schools. Youth leaders celebrate food and culture at community dinners and build power to win policy changes that increase food access for all students. Donate & volunteer!

• Feed The People: Chef Tarrik Abdullah & others in the Seattle Kitchen Collective have been providing AMAZING free meals in Seattle to any who need it.

• Nurturing Roots Farm: is a community farming program focused on educating youth & community members on healthy food choices. Creating community through gardening.

Elsewhere:

• Natl. Black Food & Justice Alliance: NBFJA organizes for Black food and land, by increasing the visibility of visionary Black leadership, advancing Black people’s struggle for just and sustainable communities, and building power in our food systems and land stewardship. On their Support page, you can donate and support other actions; check their resources on the Info page.

• Soul Fire Farm: Soul Fire Farm is committed to ending racism and injustice in the food system.

• Aja Barber: is a writer and fashion consultant. “[Her] expertise is in race, intersectional feminism and ... fashion (focusing mostly on sustainable and ethical fashion)”. (Patreon)

• Amber Tamm: farmer, horticulturalist, floral designer

• Black With Plants: D’Real learns from plants and works in concert with communities to make strategic gains towards Indigenous Sovereignty and Black Liberation. Donate (Venmo, Paypal, Patreon, Cash App) @blackwithplants.

• Leah Thomas: intersectional environmentalist, activist, eco-communicator. She has a helpful article on the Good Trade, created the text graphics shared in this post, and is the subject of the other illustration by Alja Horvat. She also has a great list of other intersectional environmentalists on her Instagram feed!

These are a few of MANY Black folks doing this work (and admittedly, many here are young)! Who else do you follow and support? Drop their info in the comments below! To close, we share this list from Leah Thomas and commit to a more intersectional environmental justice. #blacklivesmatter

Eco-Act 003: Tending a Garden

Tend your own garden

& share your bounty!

Gardening is a great opportunity to get your hands dirty, reconnect with the earth, and tend to life (our first vocation according to the Creation story). Often this sense of rootedness can inspire feelings of wonder, gratitude, and connectedness to the land — not to mention, provide delicious, accessible food that you grew yourself! It is the most local you can eat, and inevitably becomes more neighborhoodly as “you will have produce to give away and the need to borrow [your neighbors’] tools.”*

Short on space? Plant in pots, window boxes, or go vertical! Join a local P-patch or community garden (COVID-19 P-Patch tips here) or work the space you got. In the vein of creative use of space, we are excited to report that Afsaneh Rahimian, who lives nearby 415, has adopted our parking lot planter boxes as the home for an herb garden! One of our longtime friends from the Women’s Shelter still visits 415 and has helped tend the plants too. She donated enough soil for Union’s garden, and to share with our friends at LUV who are working on their own boxes. We love planting food, tending to life, and sharing resources #fortheneighborhood!

So, what will you plant? Are you excited about a particular garden project you’ve been working on while at home? Feel free to use this gardening resource list compiled by Seattle Tilth and share any other gardening tips with us (link on our Eco-faith page). We’ll leave you with some words from Michael Pollan (we recommend his article about the importance of gardening, link below!):

The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world.

-Michael Pollan*

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*Michael Pollan’s NY Times article “Why Bother?” from 2008