Hi friends,
This has been a rough week on earth. And we are going to have more of them, to be sure.
Lena’s job — Food Access Coordinator at the Intervale Center in Burlington, VT — is to feed hundreds of people each week with produce gleaned from farms in the Intervale, which is located in a fertile floodplain. The climate writer Emily Sanders interviewed Lena about the devastating flooding at the Intervale this week. (Yes, I got scooped. That’s okay!).
After surveying the farms, all of which were underwater on Tuesday, Lena told Emily:
“There’s going to need to be a huge amount of fundraising to offset the losses farmers are experiencing financially. But even if the money is replaced, that food can’t just come back — you can’t replace time and energy and soil and all of the things that go into growing food. We’re going to see the impacts of that on our local food supply for the rest of the growing season, and I’d imagine into the storage crop season as well, which gets us through the winter here.”
Donate generously to the Intervale Farmers Recovery Fund (use the drop-down menu).
Nonetheless, the destruction of roads, buildings, farms, and other infrastructure requires mitigation planning and investment.
Tell the president to declare a climate emergency. This action has been updated.
Support 350.org’s great campaign to get the World Meteorological Organization and NOAA to name climate disasters for the fossil fuel companies that cause them.
Tell the WMO and NOAA: Name climate disasters after fossil fuel companies!
Interestingly, this Saturday is City of Water Day in New York. In the future, we will all need to know how to paddle a boat and steward the waterways. Also, no one said we had to stop having fun.
Check out City of Water Day activities!
There were several rallies outside City Hall today. In addition to demanding climate action, the people were out protesting the Mayor’s reversal of a street safety plan for McGuinness Boulevard in Brooklyn that would have removed one vehicle lane in each direction to make room for bike lanes.
If you’re not sure we need more bike lanes and less car traffic, read the new report from TransAlt on traffic fatalities. If you are sure, use it to educate your neighbors.
It seems that all of our senses are under a strain right now, which is not sustainable. Hypervigilance does not support overall good health.
Here’s a good discussion of why high-low sirens are better than the wailing sirens we are accustomed to. Council member Carlina Rivera is collecting public comments about siren noise. Raise your voice — not too loud — to defend our ears.
Express your concerns about siren noise. The form makes it easy!
The Supreme Court’s infuriating ruling in Biden v. Nebraska, which rejected the president’s plan to cancel up to $20,000 of federal student loan debt for tens of millions of borrowers, has raised another sustainability question.
Read “America’s Student Loans Were Never Going to Be Repaid” by Laura Beamer and Marshall Steinbaum.
Beamer and Steinbaum make a compelling case that the student loan system is broken, and their imagery of an overflowing bathtub with a stopped-up drain is very helpful for understanding the problem.
More students purchasing more undergraduate and advanced degrees at increasing tuition prices is the water gushing out of the faucet, and non-repayment is a blockage in the drain. The drain is blocked because despite what economists, policy-makers and educational administrators claim, a college degree doesn’t always “pay off.”
Their research found a significant drop between 2020 and 2022 — from 60.7 percent to 53.7 percent — of outstanding student loans with a higher balance than when they were first issued. They credit the decline to the pandemic-era pause, which allowed some borrowers to pay down their principal.
A student loan system in which borrowers do not generally repay their student loans during normal times, but in which they do repay them when they’re not required to, cannot be said to be functioning well.
They explain the lack of vision that got us where we are. Essentially, rather than using government funds to support public colleges and universities, these institutions have had to move to a tuition-based revenue model, which requires federal loan money and student debt. The labor market is not providing the salaries needed for workers hoping to pay their debts.
Beamer and Steinbaum explain the impact, using a scary phrase:
a profound failure of social reproduction.
What they mean is that people burdened by student loan debt are less able to form families, buy homes, or save for retirement and their own children’s education.
Adulthood must be made possible. Families must be possible. Beamer and Steinbaum envision a federal university system. I don’t know if that’s the best plan or if it’s politically feasible AND I do know that the system, as it is, cannot sustain social reproduction. We need to envision a future that makes sense.
Submit a public comment by July 20 on Biden’s Plan B for student debt cancellation. This action is from the Debt Collective.
with love,
L