Easter Sunday in the Church of Green
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(April 12, 2020) Happy Easter Sunday in the Church of Green! This is one Easter that nobody saw coming. But it’s still Easter and it’s still spring, even in the time of COVID-19. There’s gardening to be done and clean air and water to protect. As usual in these time, Peggy and I will be broadcasting the show from home. I wouldn’t say that Zoom is exactly our best friend, but it has made life easier.
Skip to a specific segment in today’s podcast here.
6:26 Dr. Allan Armitage
53:46 J.C. Kibbey and Mark Nabong from NRDC
1:23:28 Meteorologist Rick DiMaio
If you’re celebrating Easter Sunday in the Church of Green, it’s good to have an expert on hand. Dr. Allan Armitage is one of the best in the business and he’s been on our show a number of times. Allan is a world-renowned writer, speaker and researcher who was raised in Canada and has continued to move south, stopping at Michigan State University to get a Ph.D., then continuing on to the University of Georgia in Athens, where he now makes his home.
His books include Herbaceous Perennial Plants, Armitage’s Garden Perennials, Armitage’s Native Plants for North American Gardens, and, his latest effort, Of Naked Ladies and Forget-Me-Nots. He has written a monthly column for the national greenhouse publication, Greenhouse Grower, for more than 30 years. He’s also author of hundreds of articles and papers for all kinds of publications.
One of the things we’ve discovered is that when he’s on the program, the conversation never flags. Just a few days ago, Allan wrote a piece called There is no Sugar Coating This. Here’s part of it.
If people can’t get out, they won’t buy, even landscapers are going to suffer, as are the producers who supply them. Garden centers are in a battle just to be allowed to stay open, but innovations such as drive- through gardening will be far more common at independent garden centers in the next few months that ever before. Some businesses will be shuttered. Everyone in this industry is going to take a hit.
Gardening is Part of the Solution
However, we need not cower; we need not live with dread. Let’s all of us spread the word that gardening is one of the few exercises people can enjoy without fear. Spreading the word by actions and deeds may even soften the reality on the ground. Gardening provides mental and physical exercise and without doubt provides therapy. Oh my, how we all need some of that!
True enough. And Allan followed through just yesterday with a live streaming online tour of his own garden. He called it a “walkabout,” actually, and you can watch the video here. We’ll talk about that, and the gardening world during a coronavirus outbreak and who knows what else this morning.
Who will protect our environment?
Easter Sunday in the Church of Green isn’t just about the gardens in our backyards. It reaches out much farther than that. While we live in The Age of Coronavirus, we still live in The Age of Climate Change. So it’s been a revelation to see clear skies in some of the largest cities in the country. The Washington Post reports on what that means in terms of specific air pollutants.
It will take time for scientists to sort out how much of the variations in NO2 levels in 2020 are from to coronavirus-related changes in human activities, such as reduced driving, compared to changes in weather patterns. However, data NASA released Thursday suggests that the human signal during this pandemic is significant.
Drawing on data from one of its satellites, the agency found that, for the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, March 2020 had the lowest monthly atmospheric NO2 levels of any March since at least 2005.
What’s even more startling is what is happening in some of the most notoriously polluted metropolitan areas in the world. Take a couple of minutes to view the before and after photos in this story from The Guardian. They will take your breath away. Or restore it.
Sadly, those skies will begin to darken again once we return to “normal.” But something even more disturbing is happening in America. According to Audubon, when it comes to fossil fuel leases, it’s “full speed ahead.”
[T]he coronavirus crisis is not stopping the U.S. Department of the Interior from pressing ahead on controversial policy initiatives with major consequences for birds and other wildlife. Nor has it delayed the department in selling fossil fuel leases during a severe crude glut with oil prices at their lowest in nearly two decades. In this new and shifting landscape, conservation advocates and policy experts are urging Interior to slow down and give a distracted and distressed public more time to shape decisions that will have lasting impacts on shared natural resources.
That’s just one story. Here’s another. An opinion piece on CNN doesn’t mince words when it declares in its headline, Trump administration is rushing to gut environmental protections. It is written by Avi Garbow, the longest serving general counsel at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
While our nation reels from the coronavirus pandemic, the Trump administration is accelerating a harmful agenda — rollbacks that dismantle critical health and environmental protections, and that will surely deepen the climate crisis.
He then launches into a laundry list ways that the Trump administration is threatening our clean air, water, bird population, natural lands, and the rule of law.
We’re talking about some of those issues on today show because, frankly, somebody needs to be watching out for our environment. That’s why we have groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Two weeks ago, the NRDC’s Luke Tonachel echoed concern about the Trump Administration’s rollback of the Obama clean car standards.
It’s hard to believe. While we are in the middle of a global pandemic, the Trump administration is dramatically weakening safeguards that protect our health and welfare. People are dying of virus-inflicted respiratory illness, and President Trump is acting to make the air dirtier.
On top of that, the Trump administration’s rollback of clean car and fuel economy standards makes the United States weaker economically by increasing gasoline bills, cutting jobs, and stifling innovation.
While, in the Age of Climate Change, that’s horrible, it’s not the worst of what’s being done to our environmental protections. The EPA is being emasculated even as Americans hunker down in their homes. When they’re finally allowed to congregate again in public, what environmental protections will be left?
Peggy and I have been itching to have this conversation on the radio. So, today, we are joined by J.C. Kibbey, Illinois Clean Energy Advocate for the NRDC. Kibbey analyzes and advocates for policies that advance renewable energy, energy efficiency, clean transportation, sustainable development, and grid modernization at the state public utilities commission, the legislature, and with other partners and decision-makers.
Also with us this morning is Mark Nabong, NRDC Senior Attorney for the Climate & Clean Energy Program. Nabong specializes in transportation and energy policy, with a particular interest in electric vehicle policy in the Midwest.
Perhaps they’ll have some answers as to why the mantra of this administration is “cut, kill, dig, drill.”